Evidence for Believing

[Inqwizitor]

I agree with you that faith is not knowledge. I disagree that there isn't value, sometimes tremendous value, in strong convictions about what we cannot definitively prove, though. There is danger there too, but I'd rather not throw the baby out with the bathwater (and I do believe in a divine baby, after all).

I don't think that the concept of God in itself is necessarily an object of faith. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit is (and I guess so is the FSM if there is an ounce of sincerity in it) but not the metaphysical concept of actus purus; but igtheism makes a good point that the word "God" in itself, at least semantically, might be meaningless.

There can always be the appearance of tremendous value or tremendous harm in any wishful self-deception.   There can also be the similar potential for tremendous apparent value and harm in revelation of demonstrable facts.   The overall value of the contingent effects of both wishful self-deception and  demonstrable facts, may on a first approximation be said to be similar,  and both are a wash.


The difference is what remains when the up and down swings of contingent value that sums up to nothing is removed.   In the case of faith nothing remains.   In the case of facts there will always remain the actionable understanding of what really is there.

But faith by nature does not give way to facts, and instead seem to propagate and aggrandize itself at the expense of facts and truth.

So the "tremendous" value in faith of which you speak are at best a random fluctuation that may seem to tick up today, but could just as easily crash down tomorrow.    But embracing faith likely comes at the opportunity cost of sacrificing the lasting value derivable from understanding of demonstrable facts.

You might have to clarify this further for me to be sure that I understand what you mean. This calculation assumes that faith is merely wishful self-deception that is blind or opposed to facts. To my mind, that's superstition. I don't agree that all faith is superstition. Faith must be consistent with facts, and likewise its proper object is understanding objective reality; the difference is that it cannot be demonstrated with direct empirical evidence or logical proof (as in mathematics). The opportunity cost cuts both ways, by rejecting faith there is potentially a loss of beneficial truth.

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We've moved on to the apologetic phase of whining that their god can't meet basic standards.  

Omni-impotent.

Meanwhile, there's nothing arbitrary or irrational about a brute fact.  If that were so, no argument to irreducibility (so important to god and all things non-natural) could be accepted.

A brute fact is reducible, logically, and that's the problem with it. We can logically reason that something is reducible, but then there is an assertion that, no, actually, that's all there is. The rational explanations simply stop there, because we can't physically observe or measure more than that.