Is faith a reliable path to knowledge?

[Goldtop]

So, this "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow is actually evidence-based, and so is the "faith" that your mother loves you. This is different from the kind of the religious faith I want to discuss here.

This is interesting because even "evidence based" faith can be shown to be false knowledge, in a way. For example, the sun will come up tomorrow, but eventually the sun will burn out, engulf the earth and there will be no more sunrises. Your mom may eventually get Dementia or Alzheimers and completely forget who you are. This would show that only evidence based reasoning is valid, that even evidence-based faith is not.

 

[Write4U]

This would show that only evidence based reasoning is valid, that even evidence-based faith is not.

I agree.
This would show that only evidence itself is reliable information. Everything else is probabilistic at best.

 

[Marathon-man]

Most believers in God, when asked, will say that their belief is based in part on certain types of evidence that they trust, and in part on faith. The weight given to evidence and faith varies from person to person, but with a little pushing the honest believer will usually admit that God's existence cannot be established on the basis of evidence alone, and that faith is always involved.

I would like to explore in this thread the question of whether faith is a good way to arrive at reliable knowledge about the nature of the world and the things in it. In particular, I would like to discuss whether it is reasonable to believe in God because one has faith that God exists.

Let me start by getting one potential point of contention out of the way. People say things like "I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow", or "I have faith that my mother loves me". This is not the kind of faith I want to discuss here, and it is important that we have that clear at the start. Our "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow is based on past experience - that the sun has risen every day of our lives without fail, and there's no reason to suppose it won't continue to do so in the near future. And your "faith" that your mother loves you (if you have it) is based on your lived experience, too. Probably your mother cared for you as a child. You probably keep in touch regularly. Your mother does things for you without always expecting you to do things in return. And so on and so forth.

So, this "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow is actually evidence-based, and so is the "faith" that your mother loves you. This is different from the kind of the religious faith I want to discuss here.

Religious faith might be defined, approximately, as "belief even in the absence of good evidence". The term "leap of faith" is commonly used in this context. Perhaps as a believer you went to church, read the bible (or other religious text), and concluded that there's some evidence that God exists. But the evidence alone doesn't quite get you across the line. So, you make a final "leap of faith" - a choice to believe in God regardless of the lack of definite proof that God exists. This is the kind of faith that I'm talking about.

My question is this: is this religious kind of faith - belief even in the absence of evidence - a good way to go about obtaining reliable knowledge about the world and what is in it?

To start the ball rolling, I would like to ask the believers in God who are here the following questions:

1. Do you admit that your belief in God is based, at least in part, on faith?
2. What percentage of your belief in God would you put down to evidence, and how much to faith? Is there anything else I've overlooked that leads to your knowledge of God's existence?
3. Apart from your belief in God, is there any other area of your life where you rely on faith to make decisions or choices, or to believe in something? Please give an example or two if your answer is "yes". And keep in mind my definition of faith - belief even in the absence of evidence.

I look forward to your responses.

Marathon-Man
Of all the major faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism and even Confucianism) I found that Buddhism is the most logical approach to the world and Man. It is highly organized. For instance, the Kalama Sutra is a treaty on how to think in order to avoid the pitfalls of dogma. Quoting a section of it:
"Do not blindly believe religious teachings, he tells the Kalamas, just because they are claimed to be true, or even through the application of various methods or techniques. Direct knowledge grounded in one's own experience can be called upon"
The Kalama Sutta states (Pali expression in parentheses):
Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing (anussava),
nor upon tradition (paramparā),
nor upon rumor (itikirā),
nor upon what is in a scripture (piṭaka-sampadāna)
nor upon surmise (takka-hetu),
nor upon an axiom (naya-hetu),
nor upon specious reasoning (ākāra-parivitakka),
nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over (diṭṭhi-nijjhān-akkh-antiyā),
nor upon another's seeming ability (bhabba-rūpatāya),
nor upon the consideration, The monk is our teacher (samaṇo no garū)
Kalamas, when you yourselves know: "These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness," enter on and abide in them.'

Secondly, Buddhism does not acknowledge or deny the existence of an external God but attempts to realize the "God" within Man. It is the Eastern version of Greek Humanism but at a much deeper level. It seeks to "awaken" the unconscious mind and the dormant spirit into a mind of a "Superman'. To understand man's state of mind the Lotus is used.
-The roots embedded in mud - is the world we live. Our "reality is constrained.
-The stem of the Lotus. rising through the water- is the mind under meditation striving to awaken the subconscious.
-The blossom that opens up and faces the sun - Is Nirvana when the mind awakens to the reality.
the difference of the roots in mud to that of the blossom facing the sun is the difference of our reality to that of Nirvana.
PS: I am Catholic.

 

[Vociferous]

Most believers in God, when asked, will say that their belief is based in part on certain types of evidence that they trust, and in part on faith. The weight given to evidence and faith varies from person to person, but with a little pushing the honest believer will usually admit that God's existence cannot be established on the basis of evidence alone, and that faith is always involved.

Most believers, like most people in general, are not rigorous thinkers who rationally analyze their own views. That is not unique to nor universal among believers, so it doesn't mean much.

Let me start by getting one potential point of contention out of the way. People say things like "I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow", or "I have faith that my mother loves me". This is not the kind of faith I want to discuss here, and it is important that we have that clear at the start. Our "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow is based on past experience - that the sun has risen every day of our lives without fail, and there's no reason to suppose it won't continue to do so in the near future. And your "faith" that your mother loves you (if you have it) is based on your lived experience, too. Probably your mother cared for you as a child. You probably keep in touch regularly. Your mother does things for you without always expecting you to do things in return. And so on and so forth.

So, this "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow is actually evidence-based, and so is the "faith" that your mother loves you. This is different from the kind of the religious faith I want to discuss here.

That seems like a false distinction. If pressed, many believers would likely say they have plenty of "lived experience" as evidence. Just as one might attribute selfless deeds to love, a believer can attribute many occurrences to the divine. Since we cannot prove that someone feels genuine love, rather than displaying a sense of maternal duty or ulterior motives, nor the ultimate cause of many occurrences, there seems to be little distinction at all, aside from your own bias.

So you seem to want a scientific criteria of evidence, even though your example of "lived experience" does not qualify. Seems muddled.

Religious faith might be defined, approximately, as "belief even in the absence of good evidence". The term "leap of faith" is commonly used in this context. Perhaps as a believer you went to church, read the bible (or other religious text), and concluded that there's some evidence that God exists. But the evidence alone doesn't quite get you across the line. So, you make a final "leap of faith" - a choice to believe in God regardless of the lack of definite proof that God exists. This is the kind of faith that I'm talking about.

This seems to be conflating the above two points. Yes, if you presume that a person has not rigorously evaluated their own belief AND somehow doesn't attribute any experience to the divine, their belief is in the absence of good evidence. But both found together would seem relatively rare, if they coincide at all. What's much more common is a lack of rigorous evaluation AND attributing many experiences to the divine. And if you really what to make a point, you should be arguing the steel man, someone who is rigorous in their beliefs and has "lived experience".

My question is this: is this religious kind of faith - belief even in the absence of evidence - a good way to go about obtaining reliable knowledge about the world and what is in it?

While the obvious answer is "no", it's also a straw man of real people's beliefs. No one genuinely feels like they believe something "in the absence of evidence", even if that evidence is just their experience growing up in a religious family and seeing its strength therein.

1. Do you admit that your belief in God is based, at least in part, on faith?

Not really. I largely came to my adult belief in a God through logic and experience. But yes, insofar as faith is just trust, there is an equal degree of trust that my family loves me as there is that God exists.

2. What percentage of your belief in God would you put down to evidence, and how much to faith? Is there anything else I've overlooked that leads to your knowledge of God's existence?

What percentage of your belief that your family loves you would you put down to evidence, and how much to faith? There's your answer.

3. Apart from your belief in God, is there any other area of your life where you rely on faith to make decisions or choices, or to believe in something? Please give an example or two if your answer is "yes". And keep in mind my definition of faith - belief even in the absence of evidence.

By your definition, no, neither God nor anything else. By the fact that people don't just believe things without reasons to do so, yes, everything that cannot be demonstrated to scientific certainty.

 

[James R]

Vociferous:

A big ask, I know, but have you read through this thread? Because you are covering ground that I addressed in various posts earlier in the thread. For instance, here is one I prepared earlier on the approximate topic of "lived experience":

I can understand that a person might be complete convinced that ghosts exist because he truly believes he has seen ghosts. However, his report that he saw ghosts does very little to convince me that ghosts actually exist. To me, his eyewitness testimony on this extraordinary occurrence is a very weak form of evidence for his claim. For all I know, he could be deluded, mistaken, or simply making the whole thing up.

It comes back to the oft-cited maxim that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

If ghosts actually existed, then the world would be radically different to the world as I currently conceive of it. I would be fundamentally wrong about the nature of existence itself. Therefore, I set the evidential bar very high when it comes to proof that ghosts exist. The same would be the case if somebody claimed that magical flying unicorns have been discovered in Madagascar, for example.

It seems to me that your threshold for acceptance of the existence of flying unicorns is somewhat lower than mine. How many eyewitness reports would convince you that the unicorns exist? Just one? A few? Hundreds? Or would you want more evidence of a different kind (e.g. photographs or other objective evidence, perhaps)?
​

And this:

What worries me is that you're potentially spending a lot of time and effort on something that might have no factual basis. Suppose that God doesn't exist after all, contrary to what you believe. Then all that time you spend trying to develop God consciousness would be a wasted effort, wouldn't it? I'm very willing to concede that practices such as meditation may have side benefits that do not depend on the existence of God. There are plenty of atheists who meditate, for example. And things like studying scriptures may help develop life skills such as textual analysis and certain types of thinking, which are useful even when separated from a religious context. But the specific parts of your practice and study and devotion that are concerned with God would be wasted effort.

For more conventional religious believers, the costs of their devotion to their God and their religion may be higher than it is for you, and the benefits smaller, if God turns out not to exist. A Muslim, for example, is expected to pray to Allah five times a day, to fast, to give money, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca and so on. What if Allah doesn't exist. Was all that time spent praying justifiable on the basis of side benefits, do you think? My own inclination is that, in large measure, it's wasted time.

The second point of difference between us that I see is a difference in commitment to the idea of objective truth. I like to think that I place a high value on believing in and valuing things that are true - not just true for me subjectively, but that are objectively true. I would say that I value knowing what is true above believing in things that might make me feel good about myself, other people, the world, or whatever. I also believe that it is mostly for the best if other people know the truth about things, even if the truth may be harder to handle than a comforting fantasy.

From what you've said, it seems to me that you don't really mind what people believe. If it's true for them, then that's ok. Let them believe what they want to believe, even if you don't believe it yourself and think you know better.

Now you might argue that I'm an interfering busy body who ought to keep his nose out of other people's beliefs, because they are none of my business. But, in fact, other people's beliefs do affect me in various ways. Laws that apply to me are made on the basis of what other people believe. People start wars and hurt other people based on what they believe. And differing religious beliefs are an obvious source of conflict in the world. This is why I think a commitment to a joint effort to discover the Truth is a valuable goal to aim for. And the Truth I'm talking about is an objective truth that people can agree on based on rational analysis. If the best you can do to assert the supremacy of Allah over Vishnu is to argue from personal experience and opinion, then I don't see how there can be any hope of getting to a useful consensus between competing ideas.
​

And this:

Introspection can be valuable, but it only gets you so far in understanding yourself. Often, it turns out that you have blind spots regarding yourself that somebody else has to point out to you before you become aware of them. As for God, I'm very wary of the idea that looking inside yourself can give you reliable access to anything external. Whatever you feel or think or imagine about God, that may be just the product of your own mind rather than any connection to a divine being.
​

And this:

I'd just like to add at this point that history has seen science slowly push up against religious claims. The progress of science has also tended to be a gradual process of taking over by science of domains of knowledge previously thought to be the province of religious revelation. There was a time when the Catholic Church proclaimed that the Earth was the centre of the universe, and anything anybody said to the contrary was false and a heresy. Science won that argument, though it took almost 400 years for the Church to admit that it got things wrong. The bible suggests that the mathematical number pi is equal to 3. That is incorrect. At one time it was thought that heaven was a place that existed beyond the orbit of Saturn, and that God lived there. Science has made that claim untenable.

More recently, science has shown that you can induce certain religious-like experiences by stimulating the brain in certain ways. This is just one more reason why I think that personal religious experience is weak evidence for God.
​

This is all from the first three pages of the thread, out of the 39 pages that current appear on my list.

 

[Vociferous]

Vociferous:

A big ask, I know, but have you read through this thread? Because you are covering ground that I addressed in various posts earlier in the thread. For instance, here is one I prepared earlier on the approximate topic of "lived experience":

I can understand that a person might be complete convinced that ghosts exist because he truly believes he has seen ghosts. However, his report that he saw ghosts does very little to convince me that ghosts actually exist. To me, his eyewitness testimony on this extraordinary occurrence is a very weak form of evidence for his claim. For all I know, he could be deluded, mistaken, or simply making the whole thing up.

It comes back to the oft-cited maxim that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

If ghosts actually existed, then the world would be radically different to the world as I currently conceive of it. I would be fundamentally wrong about the nature of existence itself. Therefore, I set the evidential bar very high when it comes to proof that ghosts exist. The same would be the case if somebody claimed that magical flying unicorns have been discovered in Madagascar, for example.

It seems to me that your threshold for acceptance of the existence of flying unicorns is somewhat lower than mine. How many eyewitness reports would convince you that the unicorns exist? Just one? A few? Hundreds? Or would you want more evidence of a different kind (e.g. photographs or other objective evidence, perhaps)?​

No, like you don't have the time to support your own opinions elsewhere: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/the-impeachment-of-president-trump.162501/page-7#post-3611491
I don't have the time to catch up on the entirety of every thread I deign to post in.

That said, I've already covered all this ground in direct responses to you:

And that's the problem of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Even if someone were to tell you that God was as ordinary as the people you meet everyday, you'd likely believe that God should be more than that. So either way, you would not accept any tomato-like evidence for God. Either the evidence is not extraordinary enough or the description of God isn't extraordinary enough. It's a criteria that insulates itself with incredulity.
...
The natural explanations of morality originated solely as in-group mechanisms and do not explain why such study results correlate so well with religious notions. Yes, I said anecdotal experience is a factor, and those are even less compelling, because they are personal, subjective experience.

Compelling? Check!
Extraordinary claims? Check!
And as I just pointed out to you elsewhere, ~80% of the world is a far cry from whatever percent believe in pink/flying unicorns.
And my last post:

That seems like a false distinction. If pressed, many believers would likely say they have plenty of "lived experience" as evidence. Just as one might attribute selfless deeds to love, a believer can attribute many occurrences to the divine. Since we cannot prove that someone feels genuine love, rather than displaying a sense of maternal duty or ulterior motives, nor the ultimate cause of many occurrences, there seems to be little distinction at all, aside from your own bias.

Lived experience? Check!
You've yet to detail how those two differ.

 

[Luchito]

1. Do you admit that your belief in God is based, at least in part, on faith?
2. What percentage of your belief in God would you put down to evidence, and how much to faith? Is there anything else I've overlooked that leads to your knowledge of God's existence?
3. Apart from your belief in God, is there any other area of your life where you rely on faith to make decisions or choices, or to believe in something? Please give an example or two if your answer is "yes". And keep in mind my definition of faith - belief even in the absence of evidence.

I look forward to your responses.

The answer is:

Pythagoras.

Pythagoras is an assumed teacher of the ancient times to whom may ideas and math/geometry teachings have been credited.

This man never wrote a single word to posterity.

He is known by us because Aristotle mentioned him several times, specially to demonstrate Pythagoras (the school of Pythagoras) was in error.

Aristotle never knew Pythagoras but knew of his teachings because the school of Pythagoras was still in existence in his years.

From here, we have the name of a man who is known solely by witness, a man who never left anything signed by him but his teachings spread by his followers everywhere.

Pythagoras is admired by many, and his teachings still are valid up to today.

Will be weird to have faith in Pythagoras as if he was a god, but surely no one doubts that the teachings come from him, that belong to him... by a kind of faith.

There is not need to have much knowledge about who was Pythagoras, people think is enough with his teachings in order to know that person.

Same as well, religious people don't need to know exactly who or what is God, because knowing His teachings is more than enough to know Him.

 

[Michael 345]

surely no one doubts

I'm not sure your assertion no one would stand up to scrutiny

Your assertion does have a tiny hint of evidence. Just barely enough for faith to hold onto. Faith tends to be stronger according to the depth of involvement

knowing His teachings is more than enough to know Him.

Even though said teachings go back long before the book you rely on as being his teachings are suspected of being cribbed from said earlier teaching?

Anon writer of the bible "Hey look at this. Looks like good advice. Let's put it in our book"

Put a bit more detachment in your faith

 

[Luchito]

I'm not sure your assertion no one would stand up to scrutiny

Your assertion does have a tiny hint of evidence. Just barely enough for faith to hold onto. Faith tends to be stronger according to the depth of involvement

I will play the skeptic and ask for someone you know or have read of, saying the harmony of the spheres, in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse side is equal to the sum of squares of the other two sides, etc. do not belong to Pythagoras.

Attempts to discredit Aristotle as put confidence on him as a witness have failed, other sources also with skeptic tendencies about such methods using mathematics and bringing on the other side a high advanced conceptual definitions of the world, all of these from eras so ancient even for a Greek culture which reached those goals but many centuries later, this is to say, hard to believe Pythagoras really existed, but even so, itis the common understanding he was "the man", a genius, a thinker, somebody out of the common.

He is known only by what others said about him.

Even though said teachings go back long before the book you rely on as being his teachings are suspected of being cribbed from said earlier teaching?

Anon writer of the bible "Hey look at this. Looks like good advice. Let's put it in our book"

Put a bit more detachment in your faith

Well, I have been reading the mixed biblical Hebrew inheritance we have up to today, and something I have noticed is that the first book is really old, this is to say, like Pythagorean ideas, coming from an era which was totally different, and the reading is so particular that coincides with a style not found when language changed centuries later. This lack of uniformity is detectable and identifies the writings according to their chronological origin.

Perhaps I can see what others can't, but to me, the idea of God also comes from witness, not so from individuals who invented a story for certain reasons.

And same as skeptical people might argue that can't be possible such knowledge from those ancient times, and that those writings can't bring anything valuable for today's knowledge, what the bible shows is something completely different.

You read that "god" put Adam to sleep, and made a cut on his side, took part of his body, close the cut and with the taken part "god" made Eve.

Let's translate it into modern language.

"God" used anesthesia and put Adam to sleep. Later "god" proceeded to perform a surgery and took body parts (flesh and perhaps bone) and closed the cut. While Adam was in recovery and later released, "god" cloned Adam and made Eve.

With this understanding, you have "god" with an unknown method of cloning for us, plus this "god" is practically 6,000 years more advanced in technology than us.

You will excuse me, but it is more wise to put your faith in a "god" capable to do such kind of work than the current science which still is barely in diapers when is about cloning a human or an animal just by taking body samples and doing it in a lab not so looking for a female host to proceed with the cloning.

Faith at the end is not blind, and if you research deep those ancient writings, and you become capable to understand them, perhaps your concept of faith and religion might also change as vwell, because I am skeptical, but I am mature enough to recognize knowledge when I see it.

 

[Michael 345]

the idea of God also comes from witness

Sure, the god of Thunder THOR come from witnesses who heard thunder and invented THOR as a god who was responsible

"God" used anesthesia and put Adam to sleep. Later "god" proceeded to perform a surgery and took body parts (flesh and perhaps bone) and closed the cut. While Adam was in recovery and later released, "god" cloned Adam and made Eve.

Oh are you very very smart to interpretate what god did into modern version language

You really just made that up

Seriously no need to translate (make something up). If you accept a god capable of doing ANYTHING take it as a given without fretting about HOW

With this understanding

So you are equating your made up stuff up as knowledge????

but I am mature enough to recognize knowledge when I see it.

At 64 you should be, unfortunately you are not

DICTIONARY

knowledge

noun

facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education

the theoretical or practical understanding of awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

Definitions from Oxford Languages

Sadly none of the above applies to your post

 

[James R]

Vociferous:

No, like you don't have the time to support your own opinions elsewhere: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/the-impeachment-of-president-trump.162501/page-7#post-3611491
I don't have the time to catch up on the entirety of every thread I deign to post in.

Okay. If you're interested in finding out what I think in more detail, you know where to start looking. In the meantime, it seems like you're keen on getting a specific, personalised response on a number of matters. I might try to address a couple of those questions of yours. Bear in mind, though, that I've probably covered a lot of the same ground in previous posts, in more depth.

And that's the problem of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Even if someone were to tell you that God was as ordinary as the people you meet everyday, you'd likely believe that God should be more than that.

Clearly, the usual definitions of God imply that God is more than an ordinary person you meet everyday.

So either way, you would not accept any tomato-like evidence for God. Either the evidence is not extraordinary enough or the description of God isn't extraordinary enough. It's a criteria that insulates itself with incredulity.

If you want to define God as a tomato, that's your prerogative, I guess, but I think you'll find that most people don't think of God that way. I am happy to accept the existence of tomatoes, and if you say that God is in every tomato (or God is every tomato, or whatever), then I guess my only issue with that is that I don't think you're telling me anything new about the tomato by making that claim (or definition, or whatever it is).

On the other hand, if you want to talk about God as a being with all the usual traits - omniscience, omnipotence etc. - then I'm afraid I'm going to ask you to present something more extraordinary than a tomato to establish the existence of your God.

I think that, really, the problem is that you have no tomato-like evidence for God. There is nothing about tomatoes that shouts "God" at me, even if it does the trick for you. What specific features of the tomato are specific to the God in the tomato? How would the tomato be different if the God wasn't in it? Can you point to anything?

The natural explanations of morality originated solely as in-group mechanisms and do not explain why such study results correlate so well with religious notions.

The in-group morality mechanisms were in place before the religions - or else the religious ideas developed in parallel with the morality mechanisms, to some extent. Given that, I don't think it's very surprising that religious moral codes reflect the existing moral ideas of the writers of those codes. Do you?

Compelling? Check!
Extraordinary claims? Check!

I'm not seeing any of that in what you've posted. Well, the extraordinary claims are there...

And as I just pointed out to you elsewhere, ~80% of the world is a far cry from whatever percent believe in pink/flying unicorns.

Is your argument for god(s) an appeal to popularity?

If pressed, many believers would likely say they have plenty of "lived experience" as evidence. Just as one might attribute selfless deeds to love, a believer can attribute many occurrences to the divine. Since we cannot prove that someone feels genuine love, rather than displaying a sense of maternal duty or ulterior motives, nor the ultimate cause of many occurrences, there seems to be little distinction at all, aside from your own bias.

If all we're discussing is a person's individual subjective feelings and how they attribute them, then I agree with you that it is as valid to question whether a person genuinely feels love for another human being as it is to question whether a person genuinely feels the presence of God. However, "love" is an abstract kind of concept, whereas believers in gods tend to claim that their gods are actual beings that exist independently of any particular human experience of them.

If we want to establish, objectively, whether your mother loves you, then we have no way to interrogate her objective feelings. We can certainly ask her what she feels to be true. But to test what she says, we would need to look at external signifiers as well - i.e. evidence from the physical world. For example, we might look at how she interacts with you and treats you, in practice, and then compare that to ideas of what kinds of attitudes and treatments are commonly thought to be indicative of love.

You might object that, at the end of that process, all we would really be able to conclude was that your mother's actions appear to be consistent with commonly-accepted definition of "love" (or not), and we still wouldn't be able to tell whether her love for you was real. However, that kind of argument would assume that "love" exists independently of what human beings do and say, and I don't think it does.

Contrast that with God, which is said to exist independently of human beings, in the same way that tomatoes exist independently. If somebody says tomatoes exist, we don't have to rely on their anecdotal assurances alone. We can go out and look for tomatoes in the world. The same thing ought to apply to God. Shouldn't it?

Lived experience? Check!

I don't deny that there are many claims about "lived experiences" of God. But those don't get us very far, even with the 80% prevalence of belief you cite. Lots of falsehoods have been believed by 80% of the world's population, at one time or other.

While your own "lived experience" might very well be sufficient to convince you that your God exists, or that your mother loves you, you have to realise that it is subjective. It is weak evidence to present if you're in the business of trying to convince anybody else of either of those two claims.

Most believers, like most people in general, are not rigorous thinkers who rationally analyze their own views.

I agree.

Yes, if you presume that a person has not rigorously evaluated their own belief AND somehow doesn't attribute any experience to the divine, their belief is in the absence of good evidence. But both found together would seem relatively rare, if they coincide at all. What's much more common is a lack of rigorous evaluation AND attributing many experiences to the divine. And if you really what to make a point, you should be arguing the steel man, someone who is rigorous in their beliefs and has "lived experience".

I agree with your statement about what I ought to be arguing. If you think I'm arguing something else, I think you're mistaken. I agree with you that believers typically attribute some or all of their experience to the divine. I also say that doesn't get us very far towards proving that the divine is real.

Maybe you're confused about the distinction between actual (objectively verifiable) "lived experience" of a God and merely holding the subjective belief that one has "lived experience" of that God.

No one genuinely feels like they believe something "in the absence of evidence", even if that evidence is just their experience growing up in a religious family and seeing its strength therein.

I don't see how one's experience of growing up in a religious family experience in any way advances the argument that God is objectively real. I suppose you think that the God is somehow responsible for the religious family environment? Is that it? I think you're not giving enough credit to the parents.

I largely came to my adult belief in a God through logic and experience.

You have experience of God? Want to share? Or is it an indirect logical inference you make from other experiences? If it's the latter, obviously I'm interested to see your chain of logical reasoning.

But yes, insofar as faith is just trust, there is an equal degree of trust that my family loves me as there is that God exists.

That's an interesting way of putting it. If you had to rate your confidence level in the statements "My family loves me" and "God exists" on a scale from 0 to 100%, you'd give the same numbers for both statements - equal confidence? What would your number(s) be for those statements? Is "trust" the same thing as the "confidence level" I'm putting to you here, or do you mean something different by it?

What percentage of your belief that your family loves you would you put down to evidence, and how much to faith? There's your answer.

Well, when it comes to my family loving me, I think that love is a complex and multifaceted thing. I'd have to ask what aspect of love you are asking about. Put it this way: I don't think that my family is entirely uncritical of my life choices, so there are probably things about me that individual family members "love" to lesser or greater extents. On the other hand, if you asked me whether I could count on my family to support me in a crisis, or something like that, I can absolutely say that they would and have. If that's the love you mean, then it's 100% evidence-based. So, maybe my answer to the family love question is, say 95% evidence and 5% faith.

Is it the same for you and your God? I don't see how you can just assume in advance that your answer will be the same as whatever my answer is to the "love" question.

 

[Dicart]

You have experience of God? Want to share? Or is it an indirect logical inference you make from other experiences? If it's the latter, obviously I'm interested to see your chain of logical reasoning.

You have experience of a right line ? Or is it an indirect logical inference you make from other experiences? If it's the latter, obviously I'm interested to see your chain of logical reasoning.

Same here.

 

[James R]

You have experience of a right line ?

What's a right line? You mean, like a line that make a perfect right angle with another line?

I'd say a "line" in that sense is a mathematical abstraction, a concept, and therefore not something that somebody can directly "experience". It is a thought in your head.

In the real world, there are lots of things that are approximately at right angles to other things, so depending on how you define the term "right line", I might have direct experience of that kind of thing, I suppose.

Do you believe in God? Do you think God is just a concept, or a real being in the physical world? Do you have experience of God?

 

[Dicart]

What's a right line? You mean, like a line that make a perfect right angle with another line?

I was just think about a line, a straight line concept that cant exist in the real world. (i think linguee, because i tried to verify the designation of "a line" did me a joke).

I'd say a "line" in that sense is a mathematical abstraction, a concept, and therefore not something that somebody can directly "experience". It is a thought in your head.

Yes, it is a concept, and furthermore a wrong formed concept, coming from our experience of things that looks like lines.
A line can not exists because (and this is a general concern with almost any mathematical or scientific objet) it is supposed to be a line...

I know that could be laughtable saying like that, but what i mean precisely is :
A line can not exist because it is supposed to be only a line.
But, i hope you agree that there can not be a line, even in a conceptual mean, with nothing around that contradict the concept of line
If you want to have a line, you need "a contrast", something you can distinguish the line from.
So the concept "line" is malformed, it has infinitesimal tickness and if you speak about this line concept, you speak about everything but the line (we can draw a line, doing some illusion of a line, but for a real line if the tickness tend to 0, it is what is around the line that define the line).

Same with the number 1 (used by peano):
It can not exist without the number 0 (at least).
So if you use 0 or 1 and think you are talking about something coherent, you are wrong.
Having only 0 forbid the existence of 1 (and having only 1 forbid the existence of 0)
How can we the use them (0 and 1) as if they were independant ?
etc, etc, etc...

So, ok, now if we understand and accept that we are dealing by habits with wrong concepts, and so trying to correct the error, how should we correct that ?
I think by considering that you must use the concepts with a little of all other concepts in it.
In the real world, nothing is independant to anything.

In the real world, there are lots of things that are approximately at right angles to other things, so depending on how you define the term "right line", I might have direct experience of that kind of thing, I suppose.

Yes we have direct experience of things looking like lines.

Do you believe in God? Do you think God is just a concept, or a real being in the physical world? Do you have experience of God?

So now for God.
2 possibilities :
1 God is the reality independant of all, and has no link to the world and can be defined solely without any need of "contrast".
2 God is the concept we use to talk about 1, so all we have around us has something to do with Got.

So, the fact that you can experience the world is the proof that a independant "G.ot" exists.
We can not say anything about Him, but we can experience Him.

 

[Michael 345]

So, the fact that you can experience the world is the proof that a independant "G.ot" exists.

Funny I was of the opinion the fact I can experience the world was proof I exist and myself and the all the stuff outside of myself was proof a independant system of physics operated

 

[Dicart]

Funny I was of the opinion the fact I can experience the world was proof I exist and myself and the all the stuff outside of myself was proof a independant system of physics operated

So you are a wise man.

How can you know that you are not, like with concept of the line, the only thing you think you are ?
So it is possible that you are not you, but you are all what is around you, so we.
That could also explain the continuation of "the you" while a NDE.

 

[Vociferous]

Vociferous:


Okay. If you're interested in finding out what I think in more detail, you know where to start looking. In the meantime, it seems like you're keen on getting a specific, personalised response on a number of matters. I might try to address a couple of those questions of yours. Bear in mind, though, that I've probably covered a lot of the same ground in previous posts, in more depth.

Well try not to sound too magnanimous for addressing a post from 14 months ago↑, in which I had to reiterate things I had already told you. Could seem a bit hypocritical to preen about what you've already written while drawing attention to what you have failed to notice. And if it's too taxing to briefly answer pretty simple questions off the top of your head, your previous 14 months of silence would continue to suffice. No pressure. If you don't want to have an actual discussion, that's your prerogative.

And that's the problem of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Even if someone were to tell you that God was as ordinary as the people you meet everyday, you'd likely believe that God should be more than that.

Clearly, the usual definitions of God imply that God is more than an ordinary person you meet everyday.

Why would you have a definition preference for something you don't believe exists? Why would you simply accept the most common? I don't believe in extraterrestrial abductions, so why would I accept the most common accounts? It's not like I find them more compelling than people who admit that memory can be fallible. Now, I guess if I lent some credence to appeals to majority, that might sway me, but I know that would be fallacious reasoning.

So either way, you would not accept any tomato-like evidence for God. Either the evidence is not extraordinary enough or the description of God isn't extraordinary enough. It's a criteria that insulates itself with incredulity.

If you want to define God as a tomato, that's your prerogative, I guess, but I think you'll find that most people don't think of God that way. I am happy to accept the existence of tomatoes, and if you say that God is in every tomato (or God is every tomato, or whatever), then I guess my only issue with that is that I don't think you're telling me anything new about the tomato by making that claim (or definition, or whatever it is).

On the other hand, if you want to talk about God as a being with all the usual traits - omniscience, omnipotence etc. - then I'm afraid I'm going to ask you to present something more extraordinary than a tomato to establish the existence of your God.

I think that, really, the problem is that you have no tomato-like evidence for God. There is nothing about tomatoes that shouts "God" at me, even if it does the trick for you. What specific features of the tomato are specific to the God in the tomato? How would the tomato be different if the God wasn't in it? Can you point to anything?

Setting aside your conflation of "tomato-like evidence" with an actual tomato...

Depends on if you can accept that the usual traits of God (omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence) are limited by what is logically possible. For instance, a square circle is a contradiction, so it would not be logically valid to presume that an omnipotent being could make such a thing. So if the extraordinary is conflated with the logically impossible, it's a nonstarter that insulates itself in the willfully irrational.

If you accept that any valid definition of God must begin by being logically possible, then we can talk about what is and is not logically possible of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.

And let's be honest here. There's nothing at all that shouts "God" at you. If there were, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

The in-group morality mechanisms were in place before the religions - or else the religious ideas developed in parallel with the morality mechanisms, to some extent. Given that, I don't think it's very surprising that religious moral codes reflect the existing moral ideas of the writers of those codes. Do you?

No, and I'm not sure why you'd even ask. Seems rather trivial that a writer of moral codes would agree with them.

I'm not seeing any of that in what you've posted. Well, the extraordinary claims are there...

It can't be help if you lose track of the discussion after a 14 mouth hiatus. Reminder: I was listing things I had already addressed.

And as I just pointed out to you elsewhere, ~80% of the world is a far cry from whatever percent believe in pink/flying unicorns.

Is your argument for god(s) an appeal to popularity?

Just pointing out the fairly obvious false equivalency. I've repeatedly told you that popularity doesn't make something compelling.

 

[Vociferous]

Cont...

If all we're discussing is a person's individual subjective feelings and how they attribute them, then I agree with you that it is as valid to question whether a person genuinely feels love for another human being as it is to question whether a person genuinely feels the presence of God. However, "love" is an abstract kind of concept, whereas believers in gods tend to claim that their gods are actual beings that exist independently of any particular human experience of them.

Sure, love is abstract unless you feel it, and if you feel it, it exists in an actual being and is independent of any other particular human experience of it. So it seems you're trying to make a distinction without much difference. Anything that cannot be measured or quantified is an abstract kind of concept. To some extent, all abstractions are generalizations that exist independent of any particular reality.

If we want to establish, objectively, whether your mother loves you, then we have no way to interrogate her objective feelings. We can certainly ask her what she feels to be true. But to test what she says, we would need to look at external signifiers as well - i.e. evidence from the physical world. For example, we might look at how she interacts with you and treats you, in practice, and then compare that to ideas of what kinds of attitudes and treatments are commonly thought to be indicative of love.

You might object that, at the end of that process, all we would really be able to conclude was that your mother's actions appear to be consistent with commonly-accepted definition of "love" (or not), and we still wouldn't be able to tell whether her love for you was real. However, that kind of argument would assume that "love" exists independently of what human beings do and say, and I don't think it does.

So you think the outward appearance of love is always love, regardless of possible ulterior motives, and that the outward lack of such appearance always indicates a lack of love? It only exists when it is expressed and cannot be falsely expressed? If so, that would seem like a very naive take on human behavior and subjective experience.

Or do you admit that the appearance doesn't always indicate the actuality? If so, then obviously we cannot reliably point to evidence of love.

Contrast that with God, which is said to exist independently of human beings, in the same way that tomatoes exist independently. If somebody says tomatoes exist, we don't have to rely on their anecdotal assurances alone. We can go out and look for tomatoes in the world. The same thing ought to apply to God. Shouldn't it?

Does God exist independently of human beings? Who has said so? Where?
Certainly God is said to exist prior to humans, but most would agree that it was the divine breath that breathed life into man and that it is only by our own actions that we are separate from God. God being omniscient and omnipresent would make it aware of and present within every human.

Comparing something people can readily point at to something they cannot and pretending that the claims made about each are equivalent seems disingenuous or self-deluded.

I don't deny that there are many claims about "lived experiences" of God. But those don't get us very far, even with the 80% prevalence of belief you cite. Lots of falsehoods have been believed by 80% of the world's population, at one time or other.

While your own "lived experience" might very well be sufficient to convince you that your God exists, or that your mother loves you, you have to realise that it is subjective. It is weak evidence to present if you're in the business of trying to convince anybody else of either of those two claims.

And I've told you as much, many times.

I'm trying to see if anything even could convince you. If you demand only extraordinary evidence, you will likely only accept it once you've come up with any other justification to deem it less than extraordinary. If so, that's an endlessly moving target that nothing will ever satisfy.

Now, if you could accept that God may be more ordinary than you think (which again, seems odd for an atheist to cling to specific ideas about God), then you may actually be open to some argument or evidence.

I agree with your statement about what I ought to be arguing. If you think I'm arguing something else, I think you're mistaken. I agree with you that believers typically attribute some or all of their experience to the divine. I also say that doesn't get us very far towards proving that the divine is real.

Maybe you're confused about the distinction between actual (objectively verifiable) "lived experience" of a God and merely holding the subjective belief that one has "lived experience" of that God.

If you were arguing the steel man, you wouldn't repeatedly throw up the common beliefs (e.g. "usual definitions") of the vast majority who pretty obviously do not rigorously evaluate their own beliefs. Those are the only people who make claims about "proving that the divine is real".

"Lived experience", like all experience, is wholly subjective or qualitative. They cannot be objectively verified.

But do tell. Can you give a more concrete analogy of this supposed distinction between "lived experience" and 'the subjective belief that one has "lived experience""? That just sounds like doublespeak to me.

I don't see how one's experience of growing up in a religious family experience in any way advances the argument that God is objectively real.

Again, I've never argued that anyone can show that God is objectively real.

You have experience of God? Want to share? Or is it an indirect logical inference you make from other experiences? If it's the latter, obviously I'm interested to see your chain of logical reasoning.

Everyone has experience of God, whether they accept it as such or not. Acceptance is not something that can be shared or imparted. Experience being subjective, any inferences from it cannot be compelling, as the subjective perception can always be in doubt.

That's an interesting way of putting it. If you had to rate your confidence level in the statements "My family loves me" and "God exists" on a scale from 0 to 100%, you'd give the same numbers for both statements - equal confidence? What would your number(s) be for those statements? Is "trust" the same thing as the "confidence level" I'm putting to you here, or do you mean something different by it?

Yes, confidence. I have very high confidence that certain family members love me, but my confidence that God exists is higher. While there can always be some amount of doubt in others, I trust myself implicitly.

What percentage of your belief that your family loves you would you put down to evidence, and how much to faith? There's your answer.

Well, when it comes to my family loving me, I think that love is a complex and multifaceted thing. I'd have to ask what aspect of love you are asking about. Put it this way: I don't think that my family is entirely uncritical of my life choices, so there are probably things about me that individual family members "love" to lesser or greater extents. On the other hand, if you asked me whether I could count on my family to support me in a crisis, or something like that, I can absolutely say that they would and have. If that's the love you mean, then it's 100% evidence-based. So, maybe my answer to the family love question is, say 95% evidence and 5% faith.

Is it the same for you and your God? I don't see how you can just assume in advance that your answer will be the same as whatever my answer is to the "love" question.

Those numbers are a fine depiction of my belief in God. I could assume it because I know the extent that the analogy between God and love holds true.

 

[Michael 345]

So you are a wise man.

How can you know that you are not, like with concept of the line, the only thing you think you are ?
So it is possible that you are not you, but you are all what is around you, so we.
That could also explain the continuation of "the you" while a NDE.

Apart from the compliment I am wise (thank you) sorry the remainder is ??????? I know not what

 

[Dicart]

So why are some dogs attacking their own feets ?

Animal experts also diagnose this behavior based on when it seems to occur.
For example, Chris Bern, a Veterinarian from Georgia, says that a dog that attacks his legs during mealtime is most likely exhibiting symptoms of food protectiveness.
For such a dog, anything in his field of vision, including his legs, is seen as an enemy that wants to take away his food. Food protectiveness can be dangerous because it results in aggressive behavior such as biting people and other pets.

https://wagwalking.com/behavior/why-do-dogs-attack-their-own-feet

So why are some poeple attack their own brother ?

Is it possible we have some misunderstanding of our humanity, like the dog here on this video ?

So, can faith help to understand our mankind ?