Why Atheists Get the Idea of "Faith" Wrong

[DBT]

I have faith that the primary characters who are posting in this thread will never come to an agreement, and I didn't even have to read that much of the thread to come to that conclusion. The evidence is overwhelming.

Can you understand that it's possible to misrepresent what a person says?

Nobody has misrepresented your proposition that atheists get the idea of faith wrong. It has been falsified.

 

[ideologyhunter]

This dog has been chasing its tail for 5 weeks.
Suppose you give us examples of evidence-based religious findings/beliefs/doctrines that are not susceptible to the pitfalls of circular reasoning, in-house consistency that doesn't match secular knowledge, special pleading, insistence on miraculous events and personages that can't be demonstrated...all the features of theology that are meant to baffle rational analysis.

Here's the text of the OP:

Atheists tend to see the idea of faith as weak, irrational, and the product of religion only while many of the religious think faith is quite sensible, universal and strong. I think that on this issue I must side with the religious. Faith doesn't need to be "blind," lacking in logic and evidence but can just as easily be supported be supported by sound thinking. Faith is essentially the trust or confidence we place in a conclusion. As such, it is not necessarily religious. So, for example consider a climatologist who has studied the melting ice in Antarctica. She gathers a lot of data regarding the reduction of ice there and compares it to the increased CO2 in the atmosphere over the past decades. Based on the evidence available to her she concludes that yes, rising levels of atmospheric CO2 is causing the ice to melt in Antarctica. The confidence she places in that conclusion is her faith.

So we all have a certain level of faith, and there's nothing wrong with that. Having logic and evidence isn't enough. At some point we need to put our brains in gear and judge if it's enough to trust our ability to see the truth. That's faith, and it's unfortunate that many atheists have made it "the new f-word."

If you read what I posted carefully, nowhere do I claim that religious faith is necessarily free of fallacies. So how are you getting that I said religious faith is not susceptible to fallacies? Like almost everybody else here, you are reading that into what I'm saying.

Thank you, my private prediction was correct -- that there would be no examples. Just wind.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

This dog has been chasing its tail for 5 weeks.
Suppose you give us examples of evidence-based religious findings/beliefs/doctrines that are not susceptible to the pitfalls of circular reasoning, in-house consistency that doesn't match secular knowledge, special pleading, insistence on miraculous events and personages that can't be demonstrated...all the features of theology that are meant to baffle rational analysis.

Here's the text of the OP:

Atheists tend to see the idea of faith as weak, irrational, and the product of religion only while many of the religious think faith is quite sensible, universal and strong. I think that on this issue I must side with the religious. Faith doesn't need to be "blind," lacking in logic and evidence but can just as easily be supported be supported by sound thinking. Faith is essentially the trust or confidence we place in a conclusion. As such, it is not necessarily religious. So, for example consider a climatologist who has studied the melting ice in Antarctica. She gathers a lot of data regarding the reduction of ice there and compares it to the increased CO2 in the atmosphere over the past decades. Based on the evidence available to her she concludes that yes, rising levels of atmospheric CO2 is causing the ice to melt in Antarctica. The confidence she places in that conclusion is her faith.

So we all have a certain level of faith, and there's nothing wrong with that. Having logic and evidence isn't enough. At some point we need to put our brains in gear and judge if it's enough to trust our ability to see the truth. That's faith, and it's unfortunate that many atheists have made it "the new f-word."

If you read what I posted carefully, nowhere do I claim that religious faith is necessarily free of fallacies. So how are you getting that I said religious faith is not susceptible to fallacies? Like almost everybody else here, you are reading that into what I'm saying.

Thank you, my private prediction was correct -- that there would be no examples. Just wind.

You can check my post #251 where I prove my case.

 

[abaddon]

The fundamental error in the OP and through the whole thread, has been the red herring of arguing definitions. The definition is being used as an assertion of truth: theists define faith as a reasoned process. But that's not a definition's role. "The definition says they rely on reason and evidence so therefore they do!" is a mere assertion. But it's the OP's basic argument.

What deflecting to definitions does, is make it falsely seem like nobody can argue the claim. A definition is a definition; presumably you're to simply accept that that's how people use the word. But "theists reason their faith" isn't a definitional matter, it's a claim lacking an argument. The one single way to prove the claim is true is to discuss the quality of the reasoning itself. Which the OP doesn't want to do, he wants the definition by itself to serve as a completed argument.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

If you look up gay in a dictionary it will have multiple contextual meanings.

That's correct. So when somebody uses the word "gay," then know what they mean by gay. If you don't know what they mean, then ask them if you can. Once you know what they mean, then don't say that they mean something else.

Gay as happy and carefree is an outdated term . It was a common term in the 30s 50s to mean a carefree person.

If today somebody tells me he or she is gay I will think it means sexuality.

Again, it's best to make sure that you know what they mean.

Which goes to the point on defining faith.

It is contextual and religious faith implies a belief in that wchich has no objective evidence..

Again, just ask the religious what they mean by faith or look it up. I did both, and I found that what you're saying here is false. Yes, religious faith can be blind, but that's not the official understanding of faith among the religious.

And by the way, to keep repeating that religious faith is devoid of reason and evidence when the facts show otherwise is as blind a faith as you can have.

You posted a link or made a comment about Christians having evidence and faith being evidence based, is that what you men by atheists don't get religious faith right?.

No. There is no absolutely "right" definition of faith or any word for that matter. What atheists like you are doing is twisting what the religious mean by faith by saying their faith is something different than what they say it is.

Christians use the dame logical and reasoning faculties as science does. The difference is the nature of the alleged evidence and the premises.

That's correct but irrelevant. I never intended to discuss the quality of the logic and evidence the religious use but the fact that they use logic and evidence at all which they do.

The idea that science and religion are equivalent faith based is beyond silly.

I never said any of this. Not all faith is equally valid, of course.

Science is faith based, scientists have a faith that their conclusions are valid. Cosmology and the BB is given as an example. Or no one has ever seen an electron or photon, so their existence is faith based.

What's wrong with any of that?

Christians have faith god created the universe and they logically deduce it from observation.

Ahh--so you concede that the religious use logic. You are finally getting it!

Therefore creationism and cosmology/science are equally valid.

That doesn't follow. It's a non sequitur but is still logic.

Do you think religious and scientific logic are equally valid in drawing conclusions about reality?

No, but that's irrelevant to the topic I raised in the OP. I'm not debating the quality of religious faith but the nature of religious faith.

 

[steve_bank]

1. Atheists tend to see the idea of faith as weak, irrational, and the product of religion

Huh? Says who, you? Your claim is soundly refuted by multiple posters on the meaning of and contextual nature of the word. I can only speak for myself not 'all atheists'. Religion is not necessarily irrational, it can be a way of coping. It is the irrational extremes that are the issues.

And yet again, atheist has no affirmative meaning, one can be atheist and blive in international magic. Some do. I generally align with naturalism and freethought.

2. So we all have a certain level of faith,

A conflation of religious faith with the general forms of faith. Faith in general usage is synonymous with trust. Someone who knows nothing of science and engineering can read news and get a sense of the general reliabliity of jet travel, and have a faith that while the risk is there he or she is not likely to be in a crash. A faith. We all have that. No one person can know everything sufficiently to completey understand everything.

3. Having logic and evidence isn't enough. At some point we need to put our brains in gear and judge if it's enough to trust our ability to see the truth.

Surely you jest. The religious explicitly trust their faith in god. I did some contract tech work for an Evangelical entrepreneur and spent time at his house with his family. He needed help on an audio bsness he was string. His wife told ne god put me on the oath to them because they needed my help. They had an important trade show coming up and decded to take a Hawaiian vacation. They said god/Jesus would ensure everything turned out ok.

The wife invited me to a regional Christian home school debate. I was a judge and lued to articulate teens mavery reasoned logical theological debate and defend a thesis for two days. It was an educational experience. It was part of a national Christian tournamnet where kids competed for scholarships.

They beled in faith healing. He traveled to a faith healing center in Ca for training. He recited
examples of faith healing as evidence but never saw one.

In the 80s I got invited t dinner by a Christian I worked with, He said he does not worry aboyt diet, god will take care of him.

Of course Christians like all groups have a spectrum.

4. That's faith, and it's unfortunate that many atheists have made it "the new f-word."

Religious faith is a red flag for many atheists and others because of the historical oppression of religion n the USA and the west in genrral going back a very long time. Things doe in the name of a religious faith. The issue of Christians taking Native American kids by force to be indoctrinated as Christians is still a topic here in the PNW. People are alive today who lived through it.

 

[Shadowy Man]

No. There is no absolutely "right" definition of faith or any word for that matter. What atheists like you are doing is twisting what the religious mean by faith by saying their faith is something different than what they say it is.

but isn’t it also a twist of the word “faith” to *equate* a religious believer’s faith in their god to a climate scientist’s ‘faith’ in science? Isn’t that you claiming what a scientist thinks the word means when we don’t?

If these two situations are synonymous then the word has been devalued in meaning. That’s been my point on this thread.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The fundamental error in the OP and through the whole thread, has been the red herring of arguing definitions. The definition is being used as an assertion of truth: theists define faith as a reasoned process. But that's not a definition's role. "The definition says they rely on reason and evidence so therefore they do!" is a mere assertion. But it's the OP's basic argument.

What deflecting to definitions does, is make it falsely seem like nobody can argue the claim. A definition is a definition; presumably you're to simply accept that that's how people use the word. But "theists reason their faith" isn't a definitional matter, it's a claim lacking an argument. The one single way to prove the claim is true is to discuss the quality of the reasoning itself. Which the OP doesn't want to do, he wants the definition by itself to serve as a completed argument.

If there are errors in the OP, then please cite them with direct quotations.

 

[abaddon]

The fundamental error in the OP and through the whole thread, has been the red herring of arguing definitions. The definition is being used as an assertion of truth: theists define faith as a reasoned process. But that's not a definition's role. "The definition says they rely on reason and evidence so therefore they do!" is a mere assertion. But it's the OP's basic argument.

What deflecting to definitions does, is make it falsely seem like nobody can argue the claim. A definition is a definition; presumably you're to simply accept that that's how people use the word. But "theists reason their faith" isn't a definitional matter, it's a claim lacking an argument. The one single way to prove the claim is true is to discuss the quality of the reasoning itself. Which the OP doesn't want to do, he wants the definition by itself to serve as a completed argument.

If there are errors in the OP, then please cite them with direct quotations.

I didn't say there are errors in the OP, I said there's an error running through your whole argument from the OP to now. So I won't dissect the OP when that wasn't the point.

I think your upset is basically that atheists say "no evidence" when the theists have evidence (even if it's crap evidence), and they say "blind faith" when the theists have reasons for their beliefs (even if they're crap reasons). I'd agree with you if this is the actual bone of contention. So, I wonder, is it?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

1. Atheists tend to see the idea of faith as weak, irrational, and the product of religion

Huh? Says who, you?

Says Richard Dawkins on pages 23, 306, 308 of The God Delusion. He says: “religious faith … does not depend on rational justification”

 

[Unknown Soldier]

No. There is no absolutely "right" definition of faith or any word for that matter. What atheists like you are doing is twisting what the religious mean by faith by saying their faith is something different than what they say it is.

but isn’t it also a twist of the word “faith” to *equate* a religious believer’s faith in their god to a climate scientist’s ‘faith’ in science?

I already explained what the word "faith" means in the context of science and how it's like religious faith.

Isn’t that you claiming what a scientist thinks the word means when we don’t?

I don't know how scientists define faith, but I do know that scientists have faith that is basically like religious faith only without the supernatural. The difference between what I say about religious faith and what many atheists say about religious faith is that I base my understanding of religious faith on what the religious say it is while some atheists make up what religious faith is.

If these two situations are synonymous then the word has been devalued in meaning. That’s been my point on this thread.

The word faith has more than one meaning, of course. And if we refer to what somebody else means by faith, then the honest thing to do is make sure we don't say they mean something else.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I don't know how scientists define faith, but I do know that scientists have faith that is basically like religious faith only without the supernatural..

How do you know this? Are you a scientist? Have you spoken to many scientists about what they believe and why? Have you discussed with them what the religious believe and why and asked them if that’s how they feel about science?

Or are you putting words in the mouths of scientists in a way like your complaining atheists go to the religious?

 

[DBT]

This dog has been chasing its tail for 5 weeks.
Suppose you give us examples of evidence-based religious findings/beliefs/doctrines that are not susceptible to the pitfalls of circular reasoning, in-house consistency that doesn't match secular knowledge, special pleading, insistence on miraculous events and personages that can't be demonstrated...all the features of theology that are meant to baffle rational analysis.

Here's the text of the OP:

Atheists tend to see the idea of faith as weak, irrational, and the product of religion only while many of the religious think faith is quite sensible, universal and strong. I think that on this issue I must side with the religious. Faith doesn't need to be "blind," lacking in logic and evidence but can just as easily be supported be supported by sound thinking. Faith is essentially the trust or confidence we place in a conclusion. As such, it is not necessarily religious. So, for example consider a climatologist who has studied the melting ice in Antarctica. She gathers a lot of data regarding the reduction of ice there and compares it to the increased CO2 in the atmosphere over the past decades. Based on the evidence available to her she concludes that yes, rising levels of atmospheric CO2 is causing the ice to melt in Antarctica. The confidence she places in that conclusion is her faith.

So we all have a certain level of faith, and there's nothing wrong with that. Having logic and evidence isn't enough. At some point we need to put our brains in gear and judge if it's enough to trust our ability to see the truth. That's faith, and it's unfortunate that many atheists have made it "the new f-word."

If you read what I posted carefully, nowhere do I claim that religious faith is necessarily free of fallacies. So how are you getting that I said religious faith is not susceptible to fallacies? Like almost everybody else here, you are reading that into what I'm saying.

Thank you, my private prediction was correct -- that there would be no examples. Just wind.

You can check my post #251 where I prove my case.

Proved your case? No, you made a statement based on faith.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I don't know how scientists define faith, but I do know that scientists have faith that is basically like religious faith only without the supernatural..

How do you know this? Are you a scientist? Have you spoken to many scientists about what they believe and why? Have you discussed with them what the religious believe and why and asked them if that’s how they feel about science?

Or are you putting words in the mouths of scientists in a way like your complaining atheists go to the religious?

What is absent from religious faith - generally speaking - is the inclusion of evidence that passes scientific rigor.

When an engineer is asked if he has faith that his launch vehicle will achieve orbital velocity he might say, "Sure." If you ask him what he bases that faith on he might bury you with calculations about gravity, speed, mass, thrust, friction, etc, all things that are measurable and repeatable. Errors and accidents always are possible but enough scientific rigor has been applied so that he feels confident, has faith if you will, that it will work as planned.

When a religious believer is asked if he has faith that his soul will get to the afterlife he might say, "Sure." If you ask him what he bases that faith on he might bury you with a bunch of claims made in his holy writings, none of which have the slightest sniff of scientific rigor. He may even go on to say that it's absolutely impossible for his soul to not arrive at its afterlife, that there's no chance for error or miscalculation with regards to his certainty in his faith.

Those are two very different behaviors. If a religious person wishes to call them the same thing because the same words are being used in both cases then shame on him for being so dishonest.

 

[bilby]

1. Atheists tend to see the idea of faith as weak, irrational, and the product of religion

Huh? Says who, you?

Says Richard Dawkins on pages 23, 306, 308 of The God Delusion. He says: “religious faith … does not depend on rational justification”

You do know that his saying something more than once doesn't imply that he is a plural entity, right?

Dawkins is an atheist, but he isn't "atheists".

 

[bilby]

The difference between what I say about religious faith and what many atheists say about religious faith is that I base my understanding of religious faith on what the religious say it is while some atheists make up what religious faith is base their understanding on observations of what the religious do, rather than what they say.

FTFY.

If you're in the habit of believing stuff just because someone says it, your entire worldview is in serious trouble.

Indeed, that's the big problem with religions - they invariably require taking somebody else's word for stuff; Accepting it on faith, if you will.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Those are two very different behaviors. If a religious person wishes to call them the same thing because the same words are being used in both cases then shame on him for being so dishonest.

is that not exactly what is happening here?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Dude, you're the one misrepresenting what Christian theology says about faith. We keep giving you examples and explaining it. There is, to my knowledge, no Christian denomination that uses your definition of faith. All the way from Catholic, to Orthodox, to Protestant and Evangelical Christianity they all stress that faith is belief in spite of evidence. It's pretty core to Christian faith. If it's important to you that faith is based on evidence then you are better off picking another religion. Christianity isn't going to change. It's been like this now for 2000+ years.

Here's what the JWs say about faith:

HOW would you define faith? Some equate it with blind belief. Influential American essayist and journalist H. L. Mencken once called faith “an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”

The Bible, in contrast, describes faith as being neither blind nor illogical. God’s Word says: “Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.”—Hebrews 11:1.

Well played. But Charles Taze Russel was NOT a Biblical scholar. He was completely untrained academically and had no relevant skills for making Biblical exegisis. He was also far removed from any academic community from which he could test his hypotheses. His approach was a straight forward interprettation of the text and applying a commonsensicle laymans interpretation based on what what made sense in his own time and context. He did not have the relevant linguistic skills to read the origical texts.

He made this interpretations at peak positivism, when scientism and the belief in the progress of science was the strongest it would ever be. Which is why his interpretations leans so heavily in that direction. He was trying to make Christianity into a science.

Or to quote an ex-Jehova's witness friend of mine, "Russel's exegises is just plain bizarre".

What I meant is that there's no Christian denomination, that actually cares about the source material, which shares your defintion of faith.

The big problem with evangelical fundamentalists isn't so much that they are so fanatical. But that they have no idea what they're doing. They end up asserting stuff that is not in the Bible. Most of the stuff in the Bible relies heavily on being a Jew and just knowing basic stuff about the realities of being a Jew. The most extreme example of this is Revelation. Unless you're deeply steeped in Jewish mythology, that book will make no sense. Which is why the evangelical interpretations of Revelation are so silly.

From Wikipedia on "Faith" we have:

Faith, derived from Latin fides and Old French feid, is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept...

...Some see faith as being persuaded or convinced that something is true. In this view, a person believes something when they are presented with adequate evidence that it is true. The 13th-century theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas did not hold that faith is mere opinion: on the contrary, he held that it represents a mean (understood in the Aristotelian sense) between excessive reliance on science (i.e. demonstration) and excessive reliance on opinion...

...Alister McGrath quotes the Oxford Anglican theologian W. H. Griffith Thomas (1861–1924), who states that faith is "not blind, but intelligent" and that it "commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence..."

In Islam, a believer's faith in the metaphysical aspects of Islam is called Iman (Arabic: الإيمان), which is complete submission to the will of God, not unquestionable or blind belief.

So what you are claiming about religious faith is flat-out false. Now, I don't believe for one minute that this evidence will change the minds of any of the atheists here who insist that faith is bereft of reason and evidence. Their kind of faith is blind being without reason and evidence.

Christian faith, in particular, has it's own article.

Faith in Christianity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thomas Aquinas was part of the Catholic tradition to get away from original Christianity and make it better. That's not how they talked about it. But it was what they were doing. Catholicism is very much a product of the political chaos of Italy 400 - 700 AD. The Catholic church had to evolve to survive. Christianity has always had to evolve with it's time. Like any religion.

It's also important to understand that Thomas Aquinas was doing propaganda. Not so much philosophy. His maxims are silly and are a result of blind faith. There's no polite way to put it, but his basic assumptions are stupid. Him saying that belief in God is the result of evaluating evidence, but then immediatly asserting that God is the greatest goodness and must exist, for no aparent reason I can think of, is stupid. I think he knew it was stupid. I think he didn't care, because his goal was to convince people Christianity was true, not actually prove it was.

After the invention of the printing press and the Bible's started to get translated it became aparent to lots of Christians how far Catholicism had strayed from the Bible. Ignoring the little detail that the New Testament canon is very much a work of theological evolution compiled for political realities of the 300's AD. But anyhoo. The Protestants wanted to turn the clock back to 300 AD Christianity. Back to the Blind Faith definition. Which they did. And then Charles Taze Russel popped up, wearing a clown suit.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

is that not exactly what is happening here?

Yes. Scientific illiteracy and religious faith are near identical human behaviors. There isn't any fault or blame to be made of such. Apparently having an apple snack with a talking snake some time ago didn't work to fix the problem.

 

[steve_bank]

I already explained what the word "faith" means in the context of science and how it's like religious faith.

If anyting yiu are guilty of usng the logical faacyof false equivalence.

I have nver read Dawkins, although some seem to quote him like XChrtians the bible. I wtcd him in an interview and was not mporessed. He apeared to be more agnostic than atheist.

I have absolutly no use or interest for pop science and pop philosphy writers reghrless of any scientfic credentials.

Dawkins is a pop culture writer with a following.

You are conflating science with philosophy.

The only true definitions in science is the Sytems Inernational or SI primary and derved units. Like metres, kilograms, and seconds. There are no philosophical definitions in science. There are scientists who 'philosophize' but such philosophixng carries no weight or authority,.

International System of Units - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Whether a new theory becomess accepted or not happens over time. Even good theories will have those who reject it.

The basic equation for current and voltage in a circuit is Ohm's Law, E = I*R where E is voltage across the resistor, I is current through the resistor, and R the resistance. George Simon Ohm developed it in the 19th century.

Since then it has bee used so much without problens that it is acceped and used withiut question. I used it so many times I didn't have to consiosly think it to use it.

I trust in the theory based on history, mathematical quantification and measurement, and experience., I do not have faith as in a religious faith.

Same with Neewtons Laws and the Laws Of Thermodynamics applied in our surface macroscopic reality. I know from experience that measured results always conform to theory.

Unlike science religious faith is not subject to physical experiment, test, and measurement. If it were so religion would be science not faith.

Soldier, your reaponse seems to be I define faith the way I want it to be, therefor it is right.

Keep in mis some of us on the forum have experience with both religion and science.