Evidence and Religion

[Smallc]

That wouldn't count as faith.  At least, not the baseless kind. 

[GostHacked]

I joined in on that conversation.  And I gave up after some time, because of Charles's replies to the irrefutable that is 2+2=4.  The semantics he got into were just annoying really, and did not feel genuine. To say they did not require proof is a tad false as I was grilled on this notion, they demanded proof, evidence.

What's a two??  Come on.

[The_Squid]

1 hour ago, betsy said:

The sun's always been there....would taking it for granted that it'll still be there tomorrow count as faith?

 

As I said above:

I have historical data from the last several decades of my own life that the sun does indeed show up on the horizon every day.  So I have a belief that is strongly supported by actual evidence that the sun will "rise" tomorrow.  This is not faith.

 

Quote

We still use the terms sunrise and sunset....don't we?

Do you believe the sun revolves around the Earth?

Edited December 6, 2016 by The_Squid

[?Impact]

1 hour ago, The_Squid said:

Do you believe the sun revolves around the Earth?

"For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"

[Moonlight Graham]

19 hours ago, msj said:

I noticed that Michael Lewis's new book "The Undoing Project: a friendship that changed our minds" comes out tomorrow for Audible.

The story that Michael Lewis talks about in his book Moneyball is so fascinating, and has incredible life lessons.

The point is:  evidence works.  Untested hunches and traditional rules of thumb so often do not.  And people who have spent their lives relying on these hunches can be very threatened and resistant when you tell them the facts say they're wrong.  Baseball teams were run like a religion before stats maniacs Bill James and Billy Beane.  Now they're run like a science. 

Theo Epstein proved that curses are BS and after a century of losing hunches that never worked won the World Series for both the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs within 10 years of each other.

[Moonlight Graham]

19 hours ago, The_Squid said:

 

I think first it's important to define the terms. 

 

Faith - belief without evidence.

 

Belief - the reasonable acceptance that something is true.

Fixed.  reason isn't needed for a belief.  I used to believe that Santa was real.

[dre]

5 hours ago, betsy said:

We still use the terms sunrise and sunset....don't we?

The sun's always been there....would taking it for granted that it'll still be there tomorrow count as faith?

 

No its not faith at all. We have evidence of how fast the earth rotates and we know to the millisecond when it will rise and when it will set. We complete understand the physics involved. So faith plays no part.

Also "evidence" does not have to be completely conclusive. It just has to result in belief in a reasonable mind. People who believe in the "evidence" could still be wrong... But they will be right a lot more of the time than someone that reads a 2 thousand year old book written by people that thought the earth was flat, and accept it as the truth.

You just flat out lack the most basic critical thinking skills. Your posts are so packed full of logical fallacy, and long ago debunked assertions its amazing people even respond.

[drummindiver]

We look at science as observation,  hypothesis, theory, and then very rarely, law. Through science, which  is mathematical equations at its base, we can make an educated guess as to what will happen in the natural world around us,  as well as some aspects of the man made ie engineering therefore a belief in science is reasonable imo.

There is no definitive evidence to prove claims of religion and therefore is not reasonable imo.

Of course,  many are desperate to believe to add reason to existene.  Pascal came up with the "double down" wager.

http://www.princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/phi203/Pascal.html

Edited December 7, 2016 by drummindiver

[eyeball]

5 hours ago, The_Squid said:

I have historical data from the last several decades of my own life that the sun does indeed show up on the horizon every day.  So I have a belief that is strongly supported by actual evidence that the sun will "rise" tomorrow.  This is not faith.

Do you believe the sun revolves around the Earth?

I have scientific evidence that says the horizon will intersect with the sun tomorrow morning at 8:03 am PST, and that the Earth will continue rotating in its orbit around the Sun for the rest of the day and quite likely the rest of the universe. 

Knowing is so much more comforting than belief.

Edited December 7, 2016 by eyeball

[drummindiver]

24 minutes ago, eyeball said:

I have scientific evidence that says the horizon will intersect with the sun tomorrow morning at 8:03 am PST, and that the Earth will continue rotating in its orbit around the Sun for the rest of the day and quite likely the rest of the universe. 

Knowing is so much more comforting than belief.

But comets and asteroids. Suns exploding and such.

As you say, likely.

[carepov]

On 12/5/2016 at 4:49 PM, dre said:

That has nothing to with faith though. There are LOTS of things that we do that have nothing to do with faith OR reason. We are animals that have genetic traits. Our brains are wired to produce these emotions and behavior and feelings.

Also you CAN assess potential mates in an empirical way. You need to use the hot/crazy matrix...

I get your point and we can both agree that we humans make most of our decisions not based on reason.

I disagree however that this has nothing to do with faith - sometimes when make decisions based on no evidence (or even overwhelming evidence that contradict the decision), and "trust our gut feeling" - I see it as taking a leap of faith.

Examples of non-religious possible leaps of faith:
-Getting married
-Starting a business
-Determining what the point in life is
-Being certain of extraterrestrial life is a leap of faith
-Many ideological beliefs (invisible hand, human rights, nationalism, communism)

Edited December 7, 2016 by carepov

[carepov]

On 12/5/2016 at 11:19 PM, Moonlight Graham said:

Love is also a natural selection that means a mother/father stay after the offspring is born and will care for the offspring and feed them, protect them etc. Love means the male will also stay with the mother/kids to help protect, provide (traditionally speaking) and care for the ones he loves.  But then sometimes the sex instinct wins over and the male screws another female to spread the seed again.  Love also means the kids will care for the parents when they get older/sick.

Yes love can be a biological emotion based on attachment - bit it can be more than that.  I continue to argue that some kinds of love are rooted in faith.

-Most obviously love of God.
-The love of one's country to the point of enlisting and dying for
-The love of humanity where people make major sacrifices to help others even strangers on the other side of the planet

Edited December 7, 2016 by carepov

[dre]

28 minutes ago, carepov said:

Yes love can be a biological emotion based on attachment - bit it can be more than that.  I continue to argue that some kinds of love are rooted in faith.

-Most obviously love of God.
-The love of one's country to the point of enlisting and dying for
-The love of humanity where people make major sacrifices to help others even strangers on the other side of the planet

I don't see how faith is required for altruism. Altruism is hardwired into our brain... commiting selfless acts to help others stimulates the brains reward centers. We probably evolved this way because people helping others created a sense of community, and those traits were naturally selected. I don't see how faith is involved at all if I help a guy get a car out of a ditch. It feels GOOD to help so I normally do when I have a chance. What am I having faith in exactly?

[The_Squid]

3 hours ago, carepov said:

Starting a business

Let's just take this example....  how are you using faith when you start a business?

 

Faith - the belief in something without evidence.

What are you believing without evidence when you start a business?

 

Edited December 7, 2016 by The_Squid

[carepov]

2 hours ago, dre said:

I don't see how faith is required for altruism. Altruism is hardwired into our brain... commiting selfless acts to help others stimulates the brains reward centers. We probably evolved this way because people helping others created a sense of community, and those traits were naturally selected. I don't see how faith is involved at all if I help a guy get a car out of a ditch. It feels GOOD to help so I normally do when I have a chance. What am I having faith in exactly?

Sure some acts of altruism have nothing to do with faith.  I am referring to ones inspired by a belief/faith in a specific certain cause/mission/purpose.

[carepov]

4 minutes ago, The_Squid said:

Let's just take this example....  how are you using faith when you start a business?

 

Faith - the belief in something without evidence.

What are you believing without evidence when you start a business?

 

The evidence shows that most businesses fail.  Sure, many people carefully weigh the evidence and calculate their odds and reasonably start a business.  However, many people just take a leap of faith and trust their gut and decide to start  a business with no evidence whatsoever.

Edited December 7, 2016 by carepov

[The_Squid]

1 minute ago, carepov said:

The evidence shows that most businesses fail.  Sure, many people carefully weigh the evidence and calculate their odds and reasonably start a business.  However, many people just take a leap of faith and trust their gut and decide to start  a business with no evidence whatsoever.

You are making contradictory statements in your reply.

A "leap of faith" just sounds like they aren't 100% certain that they can make a go of it.   That doesn't seem like the type of faith that we're talking about here.

As I said in my first reply to the topic, we have to be working from the same definitions.  If faith to you means uncertainty, then we're working from totally different definitions and the conversation ends.

Faith is a belief in something without evidence. 

[The_Squid]

16 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

Fixed.  reason isn't needed for a belief.  I used to believe that Santa was real.

I think the definition has to include reasonable...   You had evidence (presents under your tree, the fact your parents were telling you it was true) for Santa ...   based on that, when you were a child it was a reasonable belief that Santa was real.

If you still believed now, I think we could say that the belief is not reasonable because there is no good evidence that Santa exists.  But at the time, it was a reasonable conclusion.

[carepov]

10 minutes ago, The_Squid said:

You are making contradictory statements in your reply.

A "leap of faith" just sounds like they aren't 100% certain that they can make a go of it.   That doesn't seem like the type of faith that we're talking about here.

As I said in my first reply to the topic, we have to be working from the same definitions.  If faith to you means uncertainty, then we're working from totally different definitions and the conversation ends.

Faith is a belief in something without evidence. 

Without evidence, some people believe that their business will succeed.

[The_Squid]

11 minutes ago, carepov said:

Without evidence, some people believe that their business will succeed.

I don't believe that's true.

I think everyone who starts a business has a reasonable belief that their business will be a success.  They base this belief on evidence like their own skill-set at running a business, books they've read, courses they've taken, the fact that other businesses doing the same thing have been successful, etc, etc.  

Your use of the word faith is simply wrong in this instance. 

[carepov]

13 minutes ago, The_Squid said:

I don't believe that's true.

I think everyone who starts a business has a reasonable belief that their business will be a success.  They base this belief on evidence like their own skill-set at running a business, books they've read, courses they've taken, the fact that other businesses doing the same thing have been successful, etc, etc.  

Your use of the word faith is simply wrong in this instance. 

hmmm...

Some people 100 % know that they will succeed despite overwhelming evidence that indicate that they will fail.  If you don't call this faith what do you call it?

[The_Squid]

35 minutes ago, carepov said:

hmmm...

Some people 100 % know that they will succeed despite overwhelming evidence that indicate that they will fail.  If you don't call this faith what do you call it?

Bad judgement.  

[carepov]

26 minutes ago, The_Squid said:

Bad judgement.  

In some of these cases the business is successful and it turns out that the person was right all along - what do you call that?

***

If we were to continue down your line of reasoning, correct me if I am wrong, but it would then seem to me that a belief in the existence of a God/higher power can also be perfectly reasonable, based on all kinds of evidence.

[The_Squid]

27 minutes ago, carepov said:

In some of these cases the business is successful and it turns out that the person was right all along - what do you call that?

***

 

Good judgement?  I don't know what you're trying to get at...

 

If we were to continue down your line of reasoning, correct me if I am wrong, but it would then seem to me that a belief in the existence of a God/higher power can also be perfectly reasonable, based on all kinds of evidence.

Good evidence.   People believe all sorts of bad evidence and make all sorts of claims that there is evidence for God.   People claim there is evidence for ghosts too.  Once you dig a little deeper, the "evidence" is always anecdotal....  personal experience...   a feeling in your heart...   the bible...   they heard a bump in the night...

None of that is good evidence for the existence of the supernatural when you look at what would constitute good evidence and all of it has some other explanation that is just as good of an explanation as the supernatural.  

[Moonlight Graham]

3 hours ago, The_Squid said:

I think the definition has to include reasonable...   You had evidence (presents under your tree, the fact your parents were telling you it was true) for Santa ...   based on that, when you were a child it was a reasonable belief that Santa was real.

If you still believed now, I think we could say that the belief is not reasonable because there is no good evidence that Santa exists.  But at the time, it was a reasonable conclusion.

In that case yes.  But people also try to find reasons that aren't even there, or that they think is there but that evidence is so weak.  I mean, any belief makes reasonable sense to that person who has the belief because they're trying to make sense of the world.  I guess it's kind of moot, the main difference is in the strength of the evidence. The more factual, observable, verifiable, scientific evidence there is for any theory, and depending on the strength of that evidence, the more likely that belief is to be true.  There is evidence that ie: the story of Adam and Eve happened and the earth is only 6000 years old, but that evidence is essentially hearsay (anecdotal evidence), and so very weak, while the evidence showing that it didn't happen is so vast and overwhelming and literally almost infinite.  It's all about the probability that a belief is true or not.

I guess it simply comes down to a breakdown in logic.  An illogical belief is one that is contrary to the evidence, where to strongly maintain a given belief takes an illogically massive leap of faith in order to fill the large gap where the evidence is missing.  Like if you're ill and believing an unscientifically tested alternative therapy is more likely to work than mainstream medicine that's scientifically and statistically shown to have a high probability of success.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Moonlight Graham