A 'killer' Quote That I Found Today.

[bornagainathiest]

"Faith is anathema to the pursuit of truth because it dictates the end result, forcing us to make the evidence fit the result that faith dictates. That is no way to find the truth. The truth is found, though imperfectly, by examining the evidence and going where it leads."

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"Faith is a foggy lens through which the faithful read their Bibles and that foggy lens distorts the words and molds them into a preconceived meaning. Once that foggy lens is removed and the words are read for what they actually say, the Bible's worthiness is exposed for what it really is."

 

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Now, it's important that I contextualize these words.

 

They are excerpts from a reply to an article about faith and belief, posted in the blog of a person who, imho, is engaged in an honest and fair-minded pursuit of truth.  Their blog deals with matters of religion, science, philosophy, metaphysics and psychology.  I'm very much impressed by the blogger, not just for the searching questions they're prepared to ask but also for their willingness to examine their own thoughts, feelings, motivations and personal history.

 

Please note that since a certain predatory "Christian" may well be reading this, I will not openly divulge the identity of the blogger, nor will I provide a link to their blog.  However, if anyone else would like this information, please PM me and I will gladly forward it to you.

 

Thank you.

 

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The moment I read the above words (and the rest of the message they are taken from) a question sprang to mind and I determined that I would share it here, at Ex-C.  However, before I do so, I'd be most interested to hear what other people think about them.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA

[mymistake]

Very nice.  The way I see it science and religion approach investigation from opposite directions.  One method can work and the other cannot.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Love it.  The words in the first paragraph, "examine the evidence where it leads," are reminiscent of the goal attributed to Socrates several times by Plato, to "follow the argument where it leads."  

 

OrdinaryClay posted a link to a Wikipedia article on the Socratic Method a few days ago.  I think the words in your quotation come closer than do OC's ripostes to the spirit of Socrates' questioning.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

This is a pretty impressive quote.  Sometimes the most frustrating thing for a scientist is when the evidence leads into a different direction than was expected (that's also what makes science so fun!).

[ExCBooster]

This is a pretty impressive quote.  Sometimes the most frustrating thing for a scientist is when the evidence leads into a different direction than was expected (that's also what makes science so fun!).

Not to mention some of the most important discoveries. Experiment to measure the flow of Ether around the Earth by measuring the speed of light shows that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant. Whoops. Turns out that there's no "Ether" for light waves to propagate in... Enter Einstein, and a massive redefinition of the ways our universe works.

[Chikirin]

"Faith" in the english language sounds pretty, it's even used as a girls name. 

 

But what is so good about faith? Maybe there are some good things, I can't think of any off the top of my head.

[NeverAgainV]

The quotes are really good!! I would give you an UP but I guess I've used my quota! LOL

[RipVanWinkle]

"Faith" is good for practical use in the real world, not for discovery the unknown. When you are going to travel by

commercial airline, it's good to have faith that the plane is capable of making the flight. But if you want to hop a plane to Pluto, it's best to see what science has to say about it. Faith should disappear once there are actual known facts that refute it. This is the main thing that escapes the minds of  Xtians.

                                                                                                                                                                                        Bill

[OrdinaryClay]

This is simply empiricism rewarmed. Empiricism is a modern faith. It's faith that all the answers will be provided through the empirical method. In other words they are claiming an intellectually higher position that does not exist. This position is self refuting in that any attempt at claiming empiricism is the only vehicle through which truth is established itself is not empirical.

The choice is not between reason and faith. Every person on the planet must at some point rely on reason and faith to establish the truth.

"Each person must make their own decision about which path they will take. "

At least this statement is true, and the decision has eternal consequences.
 

[mymistake]

This is simply empiricism rewarmed. Empiricism is a modern faith. It's faith that all the answers will be provided through the empirical method. In other words they are claiming an intellectually higher position that does not exist. This position is self refuting in that any attempt at claiming empiricism is the only vehicle through which truth is established itself is not empirical.

 

The choice is not between reason and faith. Every person on the planet must at some point rely on reason and faith to establish the truth.

 

"Each person must make their own decision about which path they will take. "

 

At least this statement is true, and the decision has eternal consequences.

 

 

Nonsense.  There is no reason to believe that humans will discover all answers.  Produce somebody who honestly believes that science will discover everything humans could ever imagine or else you are guilty of using the straw man fallacy.  Empiricism is the opposite of faith.  Faith is believing without evidence or despite evidence.  Empiricism follows the evidence wherever it leads.

 

Faith never establishes truth.

 

Edit:

And science has discovered that the Big Bang is a bottleneck on what we can know.  We can't see what went on before that using any technology we can imagine so your claims start off bankrupt. 

[OrdinaryClay]

Faith never establishes truth.

 

And you believe this to be true based on faith.

[mymistake]

 

Faith never establishes truth.

 

And you believe this to be true based on faith.

 

 

No, I believe it due to logic.

 

 

Edit:

To drive the point home consider this.

 

X and Y are real numbers.  What is the value of X/Y?

 

 

There is no way to solve that.  But you could use faith and assume the value.  You would have an infinitely small chance of being right.  X/Y could even be undefined.  You are not going to establish the truth of X/Y by guessing.  In the rare case that you did guess right you would have no way to know it was right unless you had some way to check.  

 

This is exactly like guessing which god is real.  You are left with a faith that shows no sign of being any better than any other religion invented by men.  For all you know you will get to the afterlife and find that you made a big mistake by not worshiping the Aztec god Tlaloc.  Tlaloc is very angry at you.

 

Or what if the real god is something humans never even considered?

 

You will never establish the truth by guessing alone.

[pawn]

 

 

 

 

 

Faith never establishes truth.

 

And you believe this to be true based on faith.

No, I believe it due to logic.

His logic circuit is malfunctioning.

[OrdinaryClay]

 

 

Faith never establishes truth.

 

And you believe this to be true based on faith.

 

 

No, I believe it due to logic.

 

Let's see it.

[mymistake]

 

 

Let's see it.

 

 

 

You have that backwards.  The one who made the positive claim "Every person on the planet must at some point rely on reason and faith to establish the truth" has the burden to demonstrate his claim.  Since relying on reason is already accepted you may take that as a given and only need to demonstrate the part I put in blue.

 

 

If that is too hard for you how about a test?  I will put actual numbers on paper for X and Y form post 12.  You can pray to God and use any other means available to you, including faith, to figure out the value of X/Y. Then you can try to establish the truth.

[sdelsolray]

"Faith" is good for practical use in the real world, not for discovery the unknown. When you are going to travel by

commercial airline, it's good to have faith that the plane is capable of making the flight. But if you want to hop a plane to Pluto, it's best to see what science has to say about it. Faith should disappear once there are actual known facts that refute it. This is the main thing that escapes the minds of  Xtians.

                                                                                                                                                                                        Bill

There are a few different definitions of the word "faith".  

 

One definition describes "faith" as trust based on empirical evidence.  Thus, in your commercial airline example, I can have faith (i.e., trust) that the Delta Airlines plane I will ride in is capable of making the flight because Delta Airlines has a maintenance regimen and a history of safe flights.  This definition can be described as the secular definition of "faith".

 

Another definition of "faith", which I describe as the religious definition, is basically wishful thinking and hope without empirical evidence to support that wishful thinking or hope.

 

In this thread, and in many discussions concerning the word "with", folks mix up these two quite different definitions without distinction.

[OrdinaryClay]

 

 

Faith never establishes truth.

 

And you believe this to be true based on faith.

 

 

No, I believe it due to logic.

 

 

Edit:

To drive the point home consider this.

 

X and Y are real numbers.  What is the value of X/Y?

 

 

There is no way to solve that.  But you could use faith and assume the value.  You would have an infinitely small chance of being right.  X/Y could even be undefined.  You are not going to establish the truth of X/Y by guessing.  In the rare case that you did guess right you would have no way to know it was right unless you had some way to check.  

 

This is exactly like guessing which god is real.  You are left with a faith that shows no sign of being any better than any other religion invented by men.  For all you know you will get to the afterlife and find that you made a big mistake by not worshiping the Aztec god Tlaloc.  Tlaloc is very angry at you.

 

Or what if the real god is something humans never even considered?

 

You will never establish the truth by guessing alone.

 

First we'll deal with your logic errors ...

 

Your claim: "Faith never establishes truth"

You've chosen to use induction to prove your assertion. You chose poorly.

1) You're using a random guess as your inductive step, which is powerless in drawing a universal conclusion. A guess maybe correct so your induction is worthless. In order for induction to be correct you must demonstrate that for all steps your conclusion is true.

2) This is not crucial to your point, but If X=1.5 and Y=1.5 then X/Y=1 so it's solvable. Not sure what your point is with your equation example.

 

You've also made an additional assertion that guessing which God is real is logically equivalent to guessing what an answer to an equation is. Again, you make unfounded assertions based on yuor faith.

[OrdinaryClay]

 

"Faith" is good for practical use in the real world, not for discovery the unknown. When you are going to travel by

commercial airline, it's good to have faith that the plane is capable of making the flight. But if you want to hop a plane to Pluto, it's best to see what science has to say about it. Faith should disappear once there are actual known facts that refute it. This is the main thing that escapes the minds of  Xtians.

                                                                                                                                                                                        Bill

There are a few different definitions of the word "faith".  

 

One definition describes "faith" as trust based on empirical evidence.  Thus, in your commercial airline example, I can have faith (i.e., trust) that the Delta Airlines plane I will ride in is capable of making the flight because Delta Airlines has a maintenance regimen and a history of safe flights.  This definition can be described as the secular definition of "faith".

 

Another definition of "faith", which I describe as the religious definition, is basically wishful thinking and hope without empirical evidence to support that wishful thinking or hope.

 

In this thread, and in many discussions concerning the word "with", folks mix up these two quite different definitions without distinction.

 

You're stealing the concept. You've simply arbitrarily declared the two definitions different. Your definitions are meaningless because you've arbitrarily said all religious faith is wishful thinking. Faith is exactly the same in all cases and just because you mingle  reasoning with your faith does not make it magically different.

 

All humans use both reason and faith to establish truth.

 

Atheism engages in the same vacuous reasoning over and over again. It's a delusion to believe atheism possess the intellectual high ground.

 

[mymistake]

 

 

 

Faith never establishes truth.

 

And you believe this to be true based on faith.

 

 

No, I believe it due to logic.

 

 

Edit:

To drive the point home consider this.

 

X and Y are real numbers.  What is the value of X/Y?

 

 

There is no way to solve that.  But you could use faith and assume the value.  You would have an infinitely small chance of being right.  X/Y could even be undefined.  You are not going to establish the truth of X/Y by guessing.  In the rare case that you did guess right you would have no way to know it was right unless you had some way to check.  

 

This is exactly like guessing which god is real.  You are left with a faith that shows no sign of being any better than any other religion invented by men.  For all you know you will get to the afterlife and find that you made a big mistake by not worshiping the Aztec god Tlaloc.  Tlaloc is very angry at you.

 

Or what if the real god is something humans never even considered?

 

You will never establish the truth by guessing alone.

 

First we'll deal with your logic errors ...

 

Your claim: "Faith never establishes truth"

You've chosen to use induction to prove your assertion. You chose poorly.

1) You're using a random guess as your inductive step, which is powerless in drawing a universal conclusion. A guess maybe correct so your induction is worthless. In order for induction to be correct you must demonstrate that for all steps your conclusion is true.

2) This is not crucial to your point, but If X=1.5 and Y=1.5 then X/Y=1 so it's solvable. Not sure what your point is with your equation example.

 

You've also made an additional assertion that guessing which God is real is logically equivalent to guessing what an answer to an equation is. Again, you make unfounded assertions based on yuor faith.

 

 

 

You failed.  X/Y is lower than 1.  Want to use the new information to improve your guess?  If you do then it won't be faith anymore.  You will be doing science.  Why didn't God tell you the answer?  You have a direct line to the guy who watches everybody's sex life to see if they are doing it wrong.  Why couldn't God just tell you the numbers written on my paper?

 

I will give you another chance.  Use faith to establish the value of Z+A.  As before I will write the value of Z and A on my paper.  Surely God can read them and you can use faith to establishing the truth.

[mymistake]

 

All humans use both reason and faith to establish truth.

 

 

Demonstrate how humans use "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" to establish truth.

 

Or were you just equivocating?  

[mymistake]

OrdinaryClay did you abandon this topic?  Are you going to let your positive claims die from lack of support?  Well I was going to save this for further dialog but if the topic is going to collect dust then I will just toss it on the pile now.

 

 

Establishing truth requires evidence.  Faith is believing without evidence.  You cannot use faith when you have evidence.  So faith and establishing truth are mutually exclusive.  As for my test it seems that God did not take time out of his busy day to read my paper, or if He did then he couldn't be bothered to tell you.

 

Using a book to flip through I choose the following numbers.  X was 240.  Y was 75,361.  Z was 340.  A was 86.  Once you know those values it is trivial to find X/Y or Z + A.  But your chances of picking those numbers at random (by faith) out of the range of real numbers were hopeless.  You never would have succeeded.  And if you challenge this at a later time I will be happy to pick new numbers for God to read.  If you had wanted to you could have tried to improve upon your initial guess.  You could have derived that either one number was negative or X<Y.  You could have also derived that Y=/= 0.  But trial and error are the realm of science rather than faith.

 

Now that I have told you the values for X,Y,Z and A you can never look to your God to tell you because you already have the evidence and faith is believing without evidence.  Having something verified by evidence robs you of the opportunity to take it on faith.  But in the off chance that you beat the astronomical odds and guessed the numbers at random (by faith) you would have no way to know it.  You have no tool to establish the truth even when you stumble upon that truth.  Now since I took the position of extreme negation all you would have to do is find one case where I was wrong to prove me wrong.  Ah but finding one is the trick.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”  Hebrews 11:1

 

“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Mark Twain

 

“Faith is pretending to know things you don’t know” Peter Boghossian

 

None of these definitions apply to empirical science.  What science proves, we accept. This does not require faith, as fact is knowable.  What science has not yet proven, we still question.  This also does not require faith because we know we can devise experiments to test the hypotheses informed by our inquiries.

 

You can provide any other definition of "faith" that you want, Clay.  But you will not be able to provide one that applies to science in the manner you stated.

[sdelsolray]

 

 

"Faith" is good for practical use in the real world, not for discovery the unknown. When you are going to travel by

commercial airline, it's good to have faith that the plane is capable of making the flight. But if you want to hop a plane to Pluto, it's best to see what science has to say about it. Faith should disappear once there are actual known facts that refute it. This is the main thing that escapes the minds of  Xtians.

                                                                                                                                                                                        Bill

There are a few different definitions of the word "faith".  

 

One definition describes "faith" as trust based on empirical evidence.  Thus, in your commercial airline example, I can have faith (i.e., trust) that the Delta Airlines plane I will ride in is capable of making the flight because Delta Airlines has a maintenance regimen and a history of safe flights.  This definition can be described as the secular definition of "faith".

 

Another definition of "faith", which I describe as the religious definition, is basically wishful thinking and hope without empirical evidence to support that wishful thinking or hope.

 

In this thread, and in many discussions concerning the word "with", folks mix up these two quite different definitions without distinction.

 

You're stealing the concept. 

…

Says you.  All I did was state that folks often use different definitions for the word "faith", and provided my view of two of those definitions.  If that is theft, then reporting the news is theft.

 

…

You've simply arbitrarily declared the two definitions different.

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I simply provided two definitions.  One is belief based on some amount of empirical evidence (see my example about flying on a Delta Airlines plane).  The other is belief without any empirical evidence.  That is hardly arbitrary.  That is merely a distinction.

 

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Your definitions are meaningless because you've arbitrarily said all religious faith is wishful thinking.   …

Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  But please be more precise.  I attempted to distinguish between the two definitions by using adjectives before the noun "faith".  Hence, "secular" faith which is belief, hope, conjecture, wishful thinking, prediction, etc. based on some empirical evidence and "religious" faith which is belief, hope, conjecture, wishful thinking, prediction, etc. not based on relevant empirical evidence.  Indeed, based on my observations over the years, I would expand the term "religious faith" to include belief, hope, conjecture, wishful thinking, prediction, etc. despite relevant empirical evidence.  Your particular beliefs, hopes, conjectures, wishful thinking, predictions, etc. are a prime example and could easily be used as Exhibit 1 of "religious faith", including such faith in spite of, despite, not referring to and ignoring relevant empirical evidence.

 

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Faith is exactly the same in all cases….

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Just not in anyway you can demonstrate.  Actually, you have already been called out on this issue in this thread and have (not surprisingly) failed to respond.  Does your credibility mean anything to you?  Running away from intellectual challenges does not build credibility in the eyes and minds of readers, myself included.  It diminishes it.

 

But still, you complain about my two definitions of the word "faith".  I observe you have provided no definition of the word "faith".  Please do so, as you seem to claim that it has but one meaning in all cases and at all times.

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 [J]ust because you mingle  reasoning with your faith does not make it magically different.

…

I might agree, if I was mingling reasoning with faith.  But I wasn't.  I merely provided two definitions of the word "faith".  No reasoning was required, used, employed, indicated or implied.  Reasoning is used upon evidence.  It is not used upon certain types of faith, which I identified as "religious faith".  Call it "blind faith" if you would like.  It's the same thing.  Faith is an end result.  Reasoning is a process.  Learn the difference.

 

Tell me about this claimed "magical difference".  Different than what?

 

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All humans use both reason and faith to establish truth.

…

 

Just not in anyway you can demonstrate.  Again, you have already been challenged about this mere assertion and you have failed to address it.  At all.  But you have a deep habit of making mere assertions and running away when challenged to support them.  You are not alone.  You fit a common pattern shared by nearly all narcissistic theists on this forum.

 

…

Atheism engages in the same vacuous reasoning over and over again.

…

 

Quite irrelevant to the definition of the word "faith", even if true.  More to the point, your projection is duly noted.

 

…

It's a delusion to believe atheism possess the intellectual high ground.

 

This is not relevant to defining the term "faith".  Not relevant at all.  But you already knew that, at least intellectually.  Emotionally, you did not know this when your wrote your sentence.  More succinctly, your sentence drips with emotionalism, and contains nothing else (other than yet another mere assertion).  I could be wrong, however, and it could be that you are just a disingenuous little shit.

 

Atheism does not possess an intellect.  Atheists possess the intellect they employ.  Identically, theism does not possess an intellect.  Theists possess the intellect they employ.  A worthwhile question is, "How much emotionalism does the atheist (or theist) use in their arguments?"