The morality of faith

[RadarArtillery]

To begin with, I wasn't sure where to place this, because it is an ethics question, but it addresses religion quite heavily.

 

Faith is not something without place in the world... Hey, wait a minute, don't laugh just yet! Read on for a bit.

 

In any kind of social relationship, faith is necessary for normal functioning. When someone asks you to come over to their house to watch a movie, you have no way of knowing that they don't intend to tie you to the sink and steal your kidneys, so you must take it on faith. In cases like this, faith is what separates 'normal' people from those with certain anxiety disorders. In a more realistic situation, you often have faith that someone you're in a relationship with won't betray you for someone else.

 

A lot of people carry the human tendency to believe without evidence over into religion. You may wonder this, then: If faith in a relationship is a good thing, why is faith in a religion often portrayed as a bad thing?

 

Well, I'm sure many people have many opinions on this, but consider the following: If you have faith that your friend will not murder you and you go to his home to watch a movie, and he does murder you, you're the only one affected by your misplaced faith. If you had instead told all of your friends that you trust this man, without any evidence towards his being deserving of your trust, and he then murdered you and all of your friends, some of them would undoubtedly blame you. While it's true that you did not murder your friends, you still lead them into the situation in which they were murdered. In this case, people would more likely then not condemn your faith in this man's character.

 

Compare this to the case of religion. Imagine you have faith in a god. No one will fault you with this, because the only person who can be hurt if you're wrong is you. Imagine, though, if you begin to try and share this faith with other people. Imagine if you convince millions of people that your faith should be followed, and they all do. Now imagine that the religion you have faith in tells all of these people that, for example, gravity does not exist or that the world rests on a giant turtle.

 

This is why faith in religion is, in my opinion, a bad thing: It has the potential to hurt and misguide a lot of people for no real reason. After all, there's no evidence to support ideas that have to be taken on faith: If we don't have any reason to believe in an idea that can hurt and mislead people, then wouldn't teaching others this idea without evidence be... Immoral?

 

In conclusion, I want to make a few things clear: I'm not trying to say that the right to spread faith should be questioned. If you begin legislating ideas and concepts, then who's to stop you from going farther? Who's to stop you from, for example, making it illegal to take any standpoint you disagree with? While faith on a grand-scale does appear to me to be quite damaging, I believe it's something a free society has to eventually work out of its system by being taught not to do, not made not to do.

[Phi for All]

To begin with, I wasn't sure where to place this, because it is an ethics question, but it addresses religion quite heavily.

 

Faith is not something without place in the world... Hey, wait a minute, don't laugh just yet! Read on for a bit.

 

In any kind of social relationship, faith is necessary for normal functioning. When someone asks you to come over to their house to watch a movie, you have no way of knowing that they don't intend to tie you to the sink and steal your kidneys, so you must take it on faith. In cases like this, faith is what separates 'normal' people from those with certain anxiety disorders. In a more realistic situation, you often have faith that someone you're in a relationship with won't betray you for someone else.

 

I break belief down into three parts: trust, hope and faith. Trust is based on reality, experience and observation. Scientific explanations have a methodology you can test yourself, making trust easier. A good explanation doesn't have to be "proven" as long as it was developed to be trust-worthy.

 

Hope is wishful thinking. When there are things I want to be true but can't support with evidence, my belief is more hope. I HOPE this person I'm going to the movies with won't steal my kidneys. I have lots of supportive evidence that this person is a good candidate for movie-watching, but I have very little criteria for determining if anyone is a secret kidney thief. So I hope.

 

Faith is believing strongly in something you have no way of knowing for sure. Faith is a type of belief that really is reserved for things that aren't observable or testable. Faith is held up as the strongest belief but it has the least to support it.

[RadarArtillery]

 

I break belief down into three parts: trust, hope and faith. Trust is based on reality, experience and observation. Scientific explanations have a methodology you can test yourself, making trust easier. A good explanation doesn't have to be "proven" as long as it was developed to be trust-worthy.

 

Hope is wishful thinking. When there are things I want to be true but can't support with evidence, my belief is more hope. I HOPE this person I'm going to the movies with won't steal my kidneys. I have lots of supportive evidence that this person is a good candidate for movie-watching, but I have very little criteria for determining if anyone is a secret kidney thief. So I hope.

 

Faith is believing strongly in something you have no way of knowing for sure. Faith is a type of belief that really is reserved for things that aren't observable or testable. Faith is held up as the strongest belief but it has the least to support it.

I like your way of looking at it, but there is one problem with it: You say that a good explanation does not have to be proven.

 

Well, that really depends on what you mean by "proven". Does proof, to you, constitute absolute 100% proof? If so, your position makes sense, since you can never really prove something beyond ninety nine percent. At that point, we have to start trusting that, since all the proof available leads us to one conclusion, it is more likely to be true then any other conclusion.

 

Does proof to you, instead, constitute say... Above 80% certainty? This is the point where the majority of the proof points in one direction, but there still exists a few nagging bits here and there that detract from your conclusion. Here the line between trust and hope begins to get just a little bit blurry, but it's still reasonable to believe in whatever the subject of this certainty is.

 

Does proof to you, instead, constitute just barely above 50% certainty? At this point, you have nearly equal evidence to support your conclusion and to detract from it, but just a tiny fraction of the evidence is on your side. Here there is very little if any line between proof and trust,

 

I think, for me, proof would be either 100% certainty or 80% certainty (Depending on the context we're talking in). "Proof" in an absolute sense can only really be 100% certainty, but "Proof" in the sense that evidence is good enough to allow you to trust in the correctness of your conclusion (Which would really be trust, if I understand your definition correctly) without 100% certainty required.

 

This is an interesting subject, because there would naturally be a "Perfect ratio" of certainty. A perfect percentage. If we required 100% proof of everything in science, we could never advance. If we required 0% proof, we could never know that anything in it was correct. There must be a perfect point between these two percentages that allows science to advance as rapidly as possible while maintaining its credibility. I wonder what it is.

Edited February 11, 2014 by RadarArtillery

[Phi for All]

While faith on a grand-scale does appear to me to be quite damaging, I believe it's something a free society has to eventually work out of its system by being taught not to do, not made not to do.

 

I think the culprit here is a lazy definition. Just like "theory" has come to have a very relaxed common meaning, "faith" is misused to mean "trust" in everyday speech. "Have faith that all will work out for the best" is very different than, "Have faith in Jimmy, that he won't wreck the car like he did the last two times he borrowed it".

 

I think if a great deal of religious people were asked to really think about what faith is, what their religion wants it to be, they'd find the definition incompatible with how they really feel. Take just the Christian god - we're talking about a deity that chooses to be unobservable directly, who has been attributed with healing cancer but refuses to regrow a lost limb, and whose followers so completely disagree about what it means to worship It that they've busted up the religion into over 9000 different sects. How can I claim to have FAITH, supposedly my strongest form of belief, about something I can't possibly know?

[RadarArtillery]

 

I think the culprit here is a lazy definition. Just like "theory" has come to have a very relaxed common meaning, "faith" is misused to mean "trust" in everyday speech. "Have faith that all will work out for the best" is very different than, "Have faith in Jimmy, that he won't wreck the car like he did the last two times he borrowed it".

 

I think if a great deal of religious people were asked to really think about what faith is, what their religion wants it to be, they'd find the definition incompatible with how they really feel. Take just the Christian god - we're talking about a deity that chooses to be unobservable directly, who has been attributed with healing cancer but refuses to regrow a lost limb, and whose followers so completely disagree about what it means to worship It that they've busted up the religion into over 9000 different sects. How can I claim to have FAITH, supposedly my strongest form of belief, about something I can't possibly know?

You cannot! That's why faith in a religion is a bad thing.

 

I still feel, though, that it's something society should be taught not to do rather then made not to do. That is: Teach that evidence is necessary for any kind of trust (using your definition again, as I like it) in a conclusion. Teach that faith really isn't a good thing to base important decisions on. Do not, instead, begin to arrest people for having (or even sharing) faith.

 

With science becoming more and more accessible to people, and with the internet becoming so widespread, it really is only a matter of time before society changes for the better in this regard.

 

To quote Doctor Phil Mason: "The internet is the place where religions come to die".

[Phi for All]

Well, that really depends on what you mean by "proven". Does proof, to you, constitute absolute 100% proof? If so, your position makes sense, since you can never really prove something beyond ninety nine percent. At that point, we have to start trusting that, since all the proof available leads us to one conclusion, it is more likely to be true then any other conclusion.

Proof is for math. If I was looking for proof, faith would be the logical way to believe. This is another bit of lazy definitions. Too many people want proof, and are too willing to accept some pretty feeble evidence as "proof" that a god(s) exist.

 

Does proof to you, instead, constitute say... Above 80% certainty? This is the point where the majority of the proof points in one direction, but there still exists a few nagging bits here and there that detract from your conclusion. Here the line between trust and hope begins to get just a little bit blurry, but it's still reasonable to believe in whatever the subject of this certainty is.

I don't really think in terms of percentages, or shouldn't. It's more a "preponderance of evidence" for me. I TRUST that evolution is the best available explanation for the diversity of life on this planet. I've seen arguments both for and against, and have been able to weigh evidence against what both sides have to say. The more I learn, the more I trust the theory, knowing that just one thing that refutes it could change what I've come to trust. I think it's smart that theory isn't set in stone, that it can be flexible and grow and change based on reality.

 

I HOPE my consciousness lives on after my body dies. I have nothing to support that, it's just wishful thinking. It differs from faith or trust in that I'm not going to do anything about it, not going to start worshiping a deity or sell off my house so I can build a pyramid. My hope is not going to affect anyone else, and I'm not going to start telling everyone to hope for an afterlife too.

 

Everything I read about FAITH says it's strong, abiding, ignores detractors, suffers through adversity and should remain steadfast and unwavering. To me, this sounds like someone who has put blinders on, closed off his mind and refuses to consider any other explanation. I don't have this kind of faith in anything.

[RadarArtillery]

Proof is for math. If I was looking for proof, faith would be the logical way to believe. This is another bit of lazy definitions. Too many people want proof, and are too willing to accept some pretty feeble evidence as "proof" that a god(s) exist.

 

I don't really think in terms of percentages, or shouldn't. It's more a "preponderance of evidence" for me. I TRUST that evolution is the best available explanation for the diversity of life on this planet. I've seen arguments both for and against, and have been able to weigh evidence against what both sides have to say. The more I learn, the more I trust the theory, knowing that just one thing that refutes it could change what I've come to trust. I think it's smart that theory isn't set in stone, that it can be flexible and grow and change based on reality.

 

I HOPE my consciousness lives on after my body dies. I have nothing to support that, it's just wishful thinking. It differs from faith or trust in that I'm not going to do anything about it, not going to start worshiping a deity or sell off my house so I can build a pyramid. My hope is not going to affect anyone else, and I'm not going to start telling everyone to hope for an afterlife too.

 

Everything I read about FAITH says it's strong, abiding, ignores detractors, suffers through adversity and should remain steadfast and unwavering. To me, this sounds like someone who has put blinders on, closed off his mind and refuses to consider any other explanation. I don't have this kind of faith in anything.

 

 

Well, that still depends on your definition of proof. Let's ignore percentages for now and just focus on what we believe to be concepts of proof.

 

I believe what you're trying to say is that "Proof would be absolute, complete, and total evidence for something". In this case, there never can be proof, because you can't even completely prove that, for example, The Easter Bunny doesn't exist. You can also never prove that every calculation ever done wasn't wrong. Instead you "Trust" things when the evidence is strong enough to support those things. Would that be an accurate description of your point of view?

 

Interestingly, I express a similar hope. Despite the fact that it's almost certainly not true, I very much hope that I'll go to Valhalla when I die. All the mead, sex, and food you could ever want for eternity. Sounds like quite a party. Despite that hope, it's had very little affect on my life. The most it's done is made me less terrified of death when I was in life threatening situations.

 

I agree. Having been raised in a home where faith was quite prevalent, I can tell you firsthand that it's like talking to someone who's been... Well, brainwashed. It's as if they've actually lost the capability to explore new ideas entirely.