Why Atheists Get the Idea of "Faith" Wrong

[Unknown Soldier]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

What's so terrible about categorizing atheism as a religion? I generally don't worry about it unless I think calling atheism a religion is misleading. In any case, it seems to me that many atheists are "faith phobic" thinking that everything related to religion including faith must be bad. It's unfortunate because faith is a very important part of life for everybody.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

Or, alternatively, “religious beliefs are as logical as scientific ones.”

If you disagree that religious beliefs are not as logical as scientific ones, whatever that might mean, then argue your case.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

What's so terrible about categorizing atheism as a religion?

In one word? Dogma... the lack of it.

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

Or, alternatively, “religious beliefs are as logical as scientific ones.”

If you disagree that religious beliefs are not as logical as scientific ones, whatever that might mean, then argue your case.

Are we talking religious beliefs like gods control the weather (faith) or religious beliefs like the Earth was flooded 4500 years ago in a massive event that killed most life on Earth (faith) or religious beliefs like their is a God and it created the universe (faith)?

 

[James Brown]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

What's so terrible about categorizing atheism as a religion?

Because it's only said by the religious when trying to deflect criticism away from their religion. They bend the definition of religion so much in order to include non-religious concepts that tit becomes meaningless.

I generally don't worry about it unless I think calling atheism a religion is misleading. In any case, it seems to me that many atheists are "faith phobic" thinking that everything related to religion including faith must be bad. It's unfortunate because faith is a very important part of life for everybody.

Well, I'm an atheist, and I'm faith-phobic, because faith is an unreliable method to obtain knowledge.

[There is] what may be termed the central dilemma of faith: Insofar as faith is possible, it is irrational; insofar as faith is rational, it is impossible.

This dilemma is a consequence of the fact that reason and faith cannot simultaneously be offered as grounds for belief. A belief can be based on reason or faith, but not both. This makes it impossible for the Christian to maintain the rationality of faith, because as soon as a belief is rationally demonstrated, it ceases to be an article of faith.

Consider the alleged Resurrection of Jesus. Either this belief can fulfill the requirements of knowledge or it cannot. Either it is based on evidence, is internally consistent as a belief, and is capable of integration with one’s previous knowledge, or it is not. If the belief in the Resurrection can fulfill these standards, it should be accepted as true—but it has then become a proposition of reason and can no longer be accepted on faith. On the other hand, if the belief in the Resurrection cannot meet the requirements of reason, it may be accepted on faith—but it can no longer claim the status of rational. And so it goes with every article of faith.

--George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God

 

[Shadowy Man]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

What's so terrible about categorizing atheism as a religion?

What’s so terrible about calling faith belief without evidence? You are seemingly committing the same offense you are railing against atheists for doing. That is, defining a term for someone else and claiming that is the correct definition.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

Or, alternatively, “religious beliefs are as logical as scientific ones.”

If you disagree that religious beliefs are not as logical as scientific ones, whatever that might mean, then argue your case.

I effectively have already by pointing out logical issues like confirmation bias and the lack of independent unbiased measuring tools whose accuracy can be measured against universal observables. Please indicate to me where this is being successfully done by practitioners of religion and I’ll gladly change my views.

Do you seriously want to claim that religious believers come to their beliefs through scientific means? You expect me to have to argue against that to disprove your claim? You sure?

 

[steve_bank]

The word faith is synonymous with religious beliefs when used by Christians. To have faith is to believe. For example a Christian might say 'I am a man of faith'.

So, if a religious believer’s faith is simply his trust in the truth of his conclusions and a scientists trust is the exact same thing, then I, as a scientist, could tell a believer “I am a man of faith” and I should expect him to understand what I mean and not assume I am religious. Is that a sensible result of Unknown Soldier’s argument here?

Not so clever sophistry.

Same question as I posed to Soldier unanswered.

An engineer knowing the hostory of flight and experinced desiging and testing planse has trust that the theories of aerodynamics are reliable.

A Christian belives in paryer. When he prays for someting and it happens he declres prayerr works and god exists but dimesses all te tmes he prayed and nothing happened.

Are the two situations both 'faith'?

Both use logic, IOW IF AND OR and so on. The difference is premise and nature of the evidence.

as far as I can tell, and I’d be happy to admit I’ve been misunderstanding him, yes this appears to be his argument. Both of those situations are to be called “faith”. If you have reasons to believe something and you believe you have evidence for that then your trust in the truth of your conclusions is what is being called “faith”.

He is arguing that atheists are incorrectly attributing their own definition of the word faith to religious peoples.

Yousums it up nicely.

Soldier conflates many things on hos threads.

Both relgion and science draw logical cnolcusions. But a valid logcal argument alone meaning bo fallacies does not equate to truth. Whether logic bares out depends on the nature of premisise.

In Soldiers thinking

p1 science uses logic and reason
p2 religion uses logic and reason
c sceince and religion are both the same faith in something and atheists get it wrong.

The guy who died taking others with him in his submersible near the Titanic wreck recently had faith in his ideas, but he ignored science. In an interview before the accident he said he had faith in his innovative ideas, Ideas that were not tested at that depth.


Science is based on physical experiment that ohters can repeat. You can call it a faith in science, but it is not the same mening as relgious faith.

 

[steve_bank]

Well Soldier let's see.

You had a rhread saying 1+1 does not always equal 2 and as therefore math is inconsistent and we were all stupid and do''t get math, but of course you do.

You posed what you thought were mind boggling puzzles that were not do mind boggling.

This thread has shown you wrong.

I am heavy with anticipation of your next topic.

 

[pood]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

What's so terrible about categorizing atheism as a religion?

Religion, from the Oxford dictionary: “The belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods.”

Does atheism fit this definition? No. So, you’re wrong to say that atheism is a religion. It’s not by definition.

Of course, Oxford’s third definition of religion is: “a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.” This is using “religion” is a looser, colloquial sense, which is often done with words, and so in that sense, if there are atheists who ascribe supreme importance to atheism, than perhaps they fit the colloquial sense of religious. Or course lots of atheists attach no importance to atheism at all. It’s just a description: “lacking belief in a God or gods.”

 

[pood]

I'm not going to wait for you to specify A though cuz I've waited on responses before only to watch you dodge.
tion for that needs to be there.

I said what A is in the OP:

Faith is essentially the trust or confidence we place in a conclusion.

So in the context of religion, the religious see faith as their confidence that their doctrines are true, and they trust their God(s) to make good on His/Her/Their promises.

I think you are playing word games, the irony is that it seems to be you who is telling religious people who think faith is A that it’s not A at all.

I quoted earlier from the bible: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

This is of course far stronger than the bland statement, “faith is essentially the trust or confidence we place in a conclusion.” According to the biblical statement above, faith itself is the evidence for the conclusion — which, obviously, is entirely circular.

You then compared religious faith to the confidence or trust a climatologist puts in her conclusions. But a climatologist adduces conclusions from actual evidence — the climatologist certainly does not have faith in her conclusions, and then asserts that the faith is her evidence! Nobody does science that way! The problem with your argument, such as it is, is that according to the bible, the faith itself provides the evidence for things unseen — but science deals with things that can be evaluated, weighed, and tested; things with properties. Things that are, well, seen.

Basically, the biblical quote above acknowledges that God and gods cannot be seen, so just have faith in them and that’s your evidence. This is not how science or rational people go from evidence to conclusion.

 

[bilby]

What's so terrible about categorizing atheism as a religion?

The same thing that's terrible about categorising "bald" as a colour of hair - it's factually wrong, and represents a deep misunderstanding of the topic.

If you don't care that you are wrong, then just be wrong. But don't expect to parade your sad error on a discussion board, and not have it laughed out of town.

 

[pood]

Some of you might be interested in this blather by Paul C. Davies (a scientist) and a bunch of other mean scientists who jump all over him: Taking Science on Faith

 

[ideologyhunter]

I'm not going to wait for you to specify A though cuz I've waited on responses before only to watch you dodge.
tion for that needs to be there.

I said what A is in the OP:

Faith is essentially the trust or confidence we place in a conclusion.

So in the context of religion, the religious see faith as their confidence that their doctrines are true, and they trust their God(s) to make good on His/Her/Their promises.

I think you are playing word games, the irony is that it seems to be you who is telling religious people who think faith is A that it’s not A at all.

I quoted earlier from the bible: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

This is of course far stronger than the bland statement, “faith is essentially the trust or confidence we place in a conclusion.” According to the biblical statement above, faith itself is the evidence for the conclusion — which, obviously, is entirely circular.

You then compared religious faith to the confidence or trust a climatologist puts in her conclusions. But a climatologist adduces conclusions from actual evidence — the climatologist certainly does not have faith in her conclusions, and then asserts that the faith is her evidence! Nobody does science that way! The problem with your argument, such as it is, is that according to the bible, the faith itself provides the evidence for things unseen — but science deals with things that can be evaluated, weighed, and tested; things with properties. Things that are, well, seen.

Basically, the biblical quote above acknowledges that God and gods cannot be seen, so just have faith in them and that’s your evidence. This is not how science or rational people go from evidence to conclusion.

The OP is weak for these reasons and at least 2 others:
1- The premise of the OP is that, if a religious group claims its faith to be evidence-based, that's prima facie that it is evidence-based. You need not describe their lines of logic or evidence, just their credal statements. That's like a scientist claiming to discover a new element without any more backup than saying, "I assure you, I conducted a controlled experiment, and the element was detectable." Truth is, you can join any religious movement by reciting their creed and claiming to believe. That's what catechism class is all about. Investigative enquiry does not have to enter into the process at any point.
2- The OP fails to address the absurdity of claiming that religious faith is significantly evidence-based when there are thousands and thousands of faith traditions and deities. The pantheon of extinct deities is a list of imaginary beings that humans worshipped, and for whom they adjusted their diets, sex lives, and customs, and, miserably, for whom they oppressed and killed others. Faith of this sort is not evidence-based, because the chances of any of these thousands of narratives and invisible worlds and beings having substance is statistically insignificant. Odin, Quetzlcoatl, Baal, Anubis, Astarte, and Cronos are more than dead -- they never existed. Was faith in them evidence-based? Can anything be extrapolated from them about today's deities?

 

[bilby]

I'm not just an atheist; I'm also an aperpetualmotionmachineist too - I think that neither gods, nor perpetual motion machines, exist.

The latter is a far more central concept in my understanding of reality than the former; If atheism is a religion, then the understanding that there's no such thing as perpetual motion machines is also a religion.

Of course, neither is a religion; Both are the reasonable rejection of things unseen; of the substance of things hoped for.

If you want me to accept the existence of either, I have no dogmatic or moral objection to doing so. I'm completely ready to accept that these things do, in fact, exist, and that my current stance is in error.

All you have to do is show me.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

What's so terrible about categorizing atheism as a religion?

In one word? Dogma... the lack of it.

OK. What's wrong with dogma?

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

Or, alternatively, “religious beliefs are as logical as scientific ones.”

If you disagree that religious beliefs are not as logical as scientific ones, whatever that might mean, then argue your case.

Are we talking religious beliefs like gods control the weather (faith) or religious beliefs like the Earth was flooded 4500 years ago in a massive event that killed most life on Earth (faith) or religious beliefs like their is a God and it created the universe (faith)?

Faith isn't a set of beliefs but the conviction that beliefs are true.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Since this is evidently so hard to understand, let's take it in steps. Do you realize that the religious do not define faith as without reason or evidence?

It's the quality of the evidence and the soundness of the reasoning that matters most. Not all evidence and all reasoning is equal. Kids believe in Santa based on their evidence, which is what the adults and their parents and their friends tell them. It's very reasonable for the kids to believe these things parents tell them. And then those presents show up. And then the kids grow up and decide there's better evidence which makes them change their minds. Belief in Santa was reasonable and evidenced when they were younger. Disbelief in Santa was reasonable and evidenced when they got older. See how it works?

 

[Shadowy Man]

Since this is evidently so hard to understand, let's take it in steps. Do you realize that the religious do not define faith as without reason or evidence?

It's the quality of the evidence and the soundness of the reasoning that matters most. Not all evidence and all reasoning is equal. Kids believe in Santa based on their evidence, which is what the adults and their parents and their friends tell them. And then those presents show up. And then the kids grow up and decide there's better evidence which makes them change their minds.

Exactly. The evidence is as follows: a little girl makes a list of the toys they want. She gives it to her parents to mail it to Santa. She behaves good all year, being told that Santa is watching and keeping her on a list of good girls who deserve to receive gifts. Then those gifts show up on Christmas morning. Therefore, based on the evidence available to her she concludes that yes, there is a man who lives on the North Pole who flies around the world delivering presents to little children. Logic and evidence lead the child to believe that Santa exists. The confidence the child places in that conclusion is her faith.

How is this different from "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."

The argument that Unknown Soldier is making is that these are equivalent and the word "faith" equally applies to both scenarios.

 

[DBT]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

What's so terrible about categorizing atheism as a religion? I generally don't worry about it unless I think calling atheism a religion is misleading. In any case, it seems to me that many atheists are "faith phobic" thinking that everything related to religion including faith must be bad. It's unfortunate because faith is a very important part of life for everybody.

By definition, two different things can't be the same. A man is not the same as a woman, a dog is not a cat....

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Am I wrong? This sounds like the old "atheism is a religion, too" argument.

What's so terrible about categorizing atheism as a religion?

Because it's only said by the religious when trying to deflect criticism away from their religion. They bend the definition of religion so much in order to include non-religious concepts that tit becomes meaningless.

Yes. They normally fail to define what they mean by "religion."

I generally don't worry about it unless I think calling atheism a religion is misleading. In any case, it seems to me that many atheists are "faith phobic" thinking that everything related to religion including faith must be bad. It's unfortunate because faith is a very important part of life for everybody.

Well, I'm an atheist, and I'm faith-phobic, because faith is an unreliable method to obtain knowledge.

Faith isn't really a way to attain knowledge but to be confident in knowing something.

[There is] what may be termed the central dilemma of faith: Insofar as faith is possible, it is irrational; insofar as faith is rational, it is impossible.

This dilemma is a consequence of the fact that reason and faith cannot simultaneously be offered as grounds for belief. A belief can be based on reason or faith, but not both. This makes it impossible for the Christian to maintain the rationality of faith, because as soon as a belief is rationally demonstrated, it ceases to be an article of faith.

Consider the alleged Resurrection of Jesus. Either this belief can fulfill the requirements of knowledge or it cannot. Either it is based on evidence, is internally consistent as a belief, and is capable of integration with one’s previous knowledge, or it is not. If the belief in the Resurrection can fulfill these standards, it should be accepted as true—but it has then become a proposition of reason and can no longer be accepted on faith. On the other hand, if the belief in the Resurrection cannot meet the requirements of reason, it may be accepted on faith—but it can no longer claim the status of rational. And so it goes with every article of faith.

--George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God

Coincidentally, I was just thinking about Smith's treatment of religious faith in that book. (I've read it at least twice.) I love the book, but I don't remember how he defines "faith" in it. Based on what he wrote above, I must disagree with his idea of faith.

 

[pood]

[There is] what may be termed the central dilemma of faith: Insofar as faith is possible, it is irrational; insofar as faith is rational, it is impossible.

This dilemma is a consequence of the fact that reason and faith cannot simultaneously be offered as grounds for belief. A belief can be based on reason or faith, but not both. This makes it impossible for the Christian to maintain the rationality of faith, because as soon as a belief is rationally demonstrated, it ceases to be an article of faith.

Consider the alleged Resurrection of Jesus. Either this belief can fulfill the requirements of knowledge or it cannot. Either it is based on evidence, is internally consistent as a belief, and is capable of integration with one’s previous knowledge, or it is not. If the belief in the Resurrection can fulfill these standards, it should be accepted as true—but it has then become a proposition of reason and can no longer be accepted on faith. On the other hand, if the belief in the Resurrection cannot meet the requirements of reason, it may be accepted on faith—but it can no longer claim the status of rational. And so it goes with every article of faith.

--George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God

Coincidentally, I was just thinking about Smith's treatment of religious faith in that book. (I've read it at least twice.) I love the book, but I don't remember how he defines "faith" in it. Based on what he wrote above, I must disagree with his idea of faith.

Looks you disagree with the bible’s idea of faith, too, then. Were you planning to address it?