Are all forms of religious faith indicative of insanity? (My counter example.)

[Whateverist]

"There are two ways to slide easily through life," the noted linguist and mathematician Alfred Korzybski once said. "To believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking."

Those two paths-unquestioning belief and unyielding disbelief, fundamentalist faith and radical skepticism-have for years polarized the debate over religion. In its starkest equation, the polemic pits those who view reason as wholly antithetical to their beliefs, against those whose rationalism leaves no room for the mysteries of faith. But is there some middle ground?

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason...html#doubt


I do think there is something to this. There is no easy choice which is neutral and unquestioningly rational and reasonable. If you think there is an obvious balance to strike between faith and skepticism, I think you're taking the easy way out. Radical skeptics need to explain to me why they accept the existence of other minds and the existence of a 'real world' that is not a subjective construct. "Well obviously" hides an undefended compromise short of consistent skepticism. No stance requires defense more than another. Everyone needs to think.

Anyone who can reflect on and discuss their stance without hysteria and recognize the reasonableness of others taking a different stance are essentially reasonable. Am I wrong?

[Thumpalumpacus]

For me, the key lies in understanding the tension between emotion and reason, and understanding that they are two ways of looking at the world and processing experiences which happen to be complimentary, not confrontational. Reason is useful for some decisions or processes, less so for others, and the same is true of emotion.

Using the right tool for the job is pretty important. I don't want to use reason when I'm assessing some things, like how to comfort a grieving widow. By the same token, I don't want to turn to emotionalism when doing things like repairing my truck. Each sensibility has its place in human cognition.

A favorite band of mine, Rush, recorded a song about this tug-of-war between the Apollonian and the Dionysian quite a while back, which sums up the point neatly:

We can walk our road together
If our goals are all the same.
We can run alone and free
If we pursue a different aim.
Let the truth of love be lighted,
Let the love of truth shine clear.
Sensibility, armed with sense and liberty,
With the Heart and Mind united in a single perfect Sphere.

I agree with you that tolerance of differing views is one measure of reasonability. But I don't think "reasonability" in this case comports precisely to using the faculty of reason. I think in this context it means being sensible in order to get along with others.

I'm always suspicious of binary thinking, too.

[robvalue]

My immediate response is that I don't actually strongly believe that anything or anyone is "real", even myself. I have no way of knowing if I am the only form of what appears to be sentience, or not.

I make pragmatic assumptions that things which seem real are real. But I do not even attempt to justify them further.

I do agree that if you continually doubt absolutely everything and never decide to believe anything you can't personally be certain of, you'll end up making things worse for yourself. It's about learning where confidence is reasonable, and where it isn't.

In contrast, believing everything leaves you wide open to all kinds of problems, not least of which is contradictory beliefs. A sensible medium is best.

A basic principle could be to apply scepticism in proportion to how extreme and unusual the claim is.

[Whateverist]

A sensible medium is certainly best. Like you I find no role for gods. But I do allow for a layer of mystery which underlies consciousness. Or maybe the 'mystery' is only extreme complexity resulting from the same processes which produce 'me' also producing 'the world'. Contamination may be inevitable when the part of the world we try to understand is the part known as 'me'. In that task especially, observer expectancy may inevitably produce a hall of mirrors. Perhaps god is simply the shadow of subjectivity clinging to the 'world' which consciousness presents us with. At its best, religious experience may be the acceptance of 'god' as the projection of the mystery which underlies our selves for the sake of understanding ourselves and the world better. Of course I'd respect a theist more who could articulate this strategy rather than going literal.

[robvalue]

I agree, the idea of conciousness and identity is the biggest mystery to me. I can use as many scientific terms as I want, but here I am, stuck in the middle of it and it feels weird. It's the one thing I can never properly objectively examine, because anything I do is going through the filter I'm trying to study. I hear others describing the same thing, but I can't experience or test it in the same way that I do for my own.

I often find myself thinking that life is so utterly ridiculous that it being unreal is more likely than it being real, in whatever sense that may be.

[abaris]

I never once thought, all kinds of religious faiths are a sign of insanity. In the case of literalists and fundamentals, I'm tempted to make that judgment, but otherwise, no.

Usually it's a sign of people wanting some guidance, wanting to be taken by the hand instead of facing to be all alone in an often hostile environment. And let's face it, there are moments in life, when everyone of us wants to be taken by the hand. It's just a different hand, we, as non believers, are expecting.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I do not see this as an either/or between irrational faith and rational disbelieving. I also see rational faith and irrational disbelief.

[Thumpalumpacus]

A sensible medium is certainly best.  Like you I find no role for gods.  But I do allow for a layer of mystery which underlies consciousness.  Or maybe the 'mystery' is only extreme complexity resulting from the same processes which produce 'me' also producing 'the world'.  Contamination may be inevitable when the part of the world we try to understand is the part known as 'me'.  In that task especially, observer expectancy may inevitably produce a hall of mirrors.  Perhaps god is simply the shadow of subjectivity clinging to the 'world' which consciousness presents us with.  At its best, religious experience may be the acceptance of 'god' as the projection of the mystery which underlies our selves for the sake of understanding ourselves and the world better.  Of course I'd respect a theist more who could articulate this strategy rather than going literal.

Be aware that there are suspected neurological underpinnings for religious experiences, too.  That's not to say that the ineffable doesn't exist -- there are certainly depths of emotion and experience in us that do not submit to rational linguistic analysis. But if there is an intracranial explanation for things like feelings of oneness, or feeling the presence of a deity, then it seems to me possible that mystery is where consciousness loses track of a portion of the brain for a time. This view appears to comport, in a way, with what you've written in the quote above.

[Whateverist]

I do not see this as an either/or between irrational faith and rational disbelieving. I also see rational faith and irrational disbelief.

I think that is Moyers' point in the bit I clipped. One can hold their faith both rationally and reasonably. In its best forms it needn't over simplify anything about the world in general or what science can reveal of it. Meanwhile, disbelief resulting from reflexive (but actually selective) skepticism can be unreasonable.

For theists, the danger is literalism and an over reliance on unquestioned doctrine. For atheists, over simplification and unquestioned assumptions are a pitfall. For either one, a hostility toward other points of view and an unwillingness to understand those from the perspective of the person that holds them is a flaw.

[Angrboda]

Be aware that there are suspected neurological underpinnings for religious experiences, too.  

This presents a quandary because it seems the same underpinnings, such as theory of mind, are responsible both for the projection that others have minds, which seems reasonable, and the projection that there are disembodied minds, which is less so. We don't have rational control over what these underpinnings end up delivering to us because they are underneath the rational. We take the reasonable with the unreasonable and hope for an intelligent way to sort them out. But because both come from the sub layer, both seem real.