Faith by definition is believing with out evidence. You may base it off of what you personally feel, but this position can be flawed and leaves no means of critical examination to discover those flaws. Some might point to a personal experience or old text and assert that's evidence. But this is just that person projecting their personal feelings onto that text or experience. This doesn't give them evidence to work with but rather more claims they have to find evidence for. If one does have evidence for their claim then faith is unnecessary to believe that claim. So how can one defend a position based on faith that by definition has nothing backing it up, and becomes an unnecessary position if it can back itself up?
i have faith that the sun will come up in the morning, and based on previous data, its just about a sure bet. but what if it didn't?
Can you really call this faith as you have empirical evidence supporting your conclusion?
@Moegreche Not entirely sure I followed everything there. Which is kind of rare for me so kudos. But I will give some questioning a shot.
You're move here would be to argue the method is unjustified because there is no account of evidence in the belief formation process. But this is clearly false - this would amount to a belief just spontaneously forming in someone.
So someone according to this couldn't just make stuff up?
You're argument, then, is that the belief is unjustified because the evidence for the belief (customs, parents, seeming to be true) is the wrong kind of evidence.
Perhaps not so much the wrong kind as not properly examined.
If there is a god, then the belief in that god would be justified by that god's existence.
Would that not require the proving of that god's existence in the first place before the belief is justified?
I would contend that affirming any such faith as irrational, although not entirely indefensible.
The person possessing said faith (as I myself once did, quite devoutly) may not view their justifications as irrational, and to them make perfect sense. Often times, as we all well know, one 'inherits' the belief system of their parents and/or other influential figures from their youth. When we are young we are innately trusting of authority figures and especially family, so much so that often times we still believe things we are taught at this age even when we are older and have encountered contrary evidence. These ideas become ingrained in us. Surely believing something simply because we are taught to do so is an irrational reason, however only when viewed from an external perspective.
There are many methods of defending (justifying, if you will) an idea which do not necessitate a chain of sound and empirically based arguments, religious faith being one of them. Surely it does not make it a logical position to hold, but one that can be presented in such a manner as to be defended.
Remember that one must only present their personal justifications for their personal belief, and as such one can make many compelling defenses from personal experience, however incorrectly interpreted, which could form the bedrock of a defense. As our ideas and opinions are personal in nature, regardless of how widely shared, so then our defense of them need only be personal. Although I, much as you do, prefer to be able to provide external justification for my positions, and empirical evidence is the surest way to do so, it is not necessary and a lack thereof does not demand that such a position is indefensible.
(sorry if this came out as a bit of a ramble, it's late and I'm immensely tired. Just wanted to get my jumbled thoughts on the subject out before I forget and don't get online for several days again.)
Remember that one must only present their personal justifications for their personal belief, and as such one can make many compelling defenses from personal experience, however incorrectly interpreted, which could form the bedrock of a defense.
How many times has someone just said they have faith as if it justifies the belief? Just saying the believe because the believe doesn't seem like the position is justified, but simply excused away. Even when pointing to a holy text or personal experience the argument still seems to come back to this line of thinking.
I agree with that Mage, however we are discussing as to whether or not such a belief is defensible, not rational. Surely one can make a defense of such a belief, regardless of whether or not is a logically sound argument.
at our current level of knowledge and intellect we cannot disprove that there is a deity and we cannot prove that there is one. we can assess the situation logically and dismiss certain beliefs about said deity(ies) based off of the logical likelihood that they are not true from what we view in our day to day existence. we can call such beings unnecessary, but that doesn't in fact disprove the existence of said being. Even upon finally connecting all of the math that as of yet doesn't make sense at certain points w/ regard to the "big bang" or the beginning first few instances of our creation(universe), that will not disprove that such a being exists. My position in a lot of the discussions has been that such an entity would/could possibly hold the position of catalyst for such situations. In a lot of reactions, catalysts/enzymes are unnecessary. The reactions will normally go in that direction w/o one. The rate of reaction is what changes. (I'm not saying this is universally the case...just symbolism)... so upon discovery and piecing together of our first few moments as a universe and seeing that the hand of a God can be viewed as unnecessary that still won't prove that there is not one. I'm aware that it happened in some way shape form or fashion and that we don't currently understand... I'm 99.99999999% positive that when we figure it out, we'll see that God was unnecessary. Analyzing the logicality of currently held beliefs and finding them having an infinitesimally small percentage of likelihood of being the true case still does not disprove that there is(are) a God(s).
some more imperfect symbolism of mine... imagine you have a piece of paper with a circle drawn on it w/ a dot in the center of this circle... and you have a hole puncher that goes along side the piece of paper... now, your goal is to punch out the dot in the middle (your hole punch can reach that far). The central dot represents the possibility of there being a God(or pantheon). The line that makes up the circle in this instance is made up of all of the beliefs about the existence of the deity(ies)... At first you find that you can't immediately punch out the center dot, but then you happen to see a dot along the circle that represents the concept of the Bible being perfect w/ no contradictions whatsoever (no fallacies...etc)... and you say to yourself "well, I've disproved the global flood theory" and find that you can punch a hole through that area (if you can prove the point wrong then you can punch it out(the central point is not the Christian god, but represents the possibility of there being one or more or whatever nature)... so you decide that by proving all of the points along the line wrong you will be able to punch out the full circle, and that will allow you to punch out the dot that is still in the middle. ...but does it really? does saying "its unnecessary" allow you to then punch out the dot? Does saying "there's no such thing as a bearded man up in the sky passing judgement" allow you to follow through? (that one sounds more like a point on the circle...) Does saying, "all of the currently held beliefs about the existence of higher beings I have proved wrong" allow you to do it? Does finding fault w/ everything surrounding something's existence prove that its not there or that it just isn't understood? Does saying all of those things actually prove that there is no entity that can be given the designation of being a God?
yea.... i know... that was wordy and convoluted.. and you can just as easily say "Yes...yes it does" do some if not all of that. but I tried...
and how I tie it in is... If you can't prove it to be false with absolute certainty, then saying "I have faith that there is a God out there w/ unknown parameters and unknown personality (if any)" becomes a little more defendable.
It then becomes... "then prove to me that one exists"....
"rove it doesn't exist"...
"no, its your duty to prove if you're advocating something"...
"well I can't prove it absolutely true and you can't prove it absolutely false... so therefore since I'm the one you claim is supposed to prove my faith is justified and can't, makes the concept my faith advocates wrong... when in reality it means we don't know and ur jumping to a conclusion based off of me not proving a concept even tho we don't know for fact your way is the correct way...even tho logically with what we do know it sounds the most correct, but we don't know everything so it might be wrong."
and how I tie it in is... If you can't prove it to be false with absolute certainty, then saying "I have faith that there is a God out there w/ unknown parameters and unknown personality (if any)" becomes a little more defendable.
Would you apply this to everything else that like God, has no evidence for it's existence, has disproven claims of it's actions and ultimately would not be needed for any of the accredited events to take place? For instance would you say claiming that Santa exists be defensible or saying "I believe in fairies"?
"well I can't prove it absolutely true and you can't prove it absolutely false...
Yes the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. If you can't provide any how is that defending your position of that claim? This forces faith into a corner, from which the person can either stay hiding in or let go of said faith. It's stuck having to try and find evidence to back it's claim up. This leaves only three options continuing to just rehash that you have faith, which isn't defending what you believe but just restating that you do. Forced to find evidence, in which case you are forced to abandon faith in favor of evidence. Or abandon the belief itself, again loosing faith. This also get's into another issue with trying to defend faith. Your trying to make a point of defending it against a position I don't hold. I'm not asking for it to be proven to be absolutely true, I'm (as many) are simply asking for any objective evidence and simply reserving believing in any such claim until then. I don't see this as defending ones faith as much as side stepping the opposition. This isn't the only example either how many times does the argument "How could it happen by random chance" or "how can something come from nothing" come up?
If this doesn't create a situation where faith is essentially cornered why is it such a common tactic to try and shift this burden of proof off the faith based claim?
