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(February 7, 2010 at 9:04 pm)tackattack Wrote: Here you're clearly stating a comparitive definition of faith as blind hope.
I made no such conjunction. However, having faith in the most unlikely of all possible outcomes is technically the same as having blind hope.
tackattack Wrote:So then how do we have a "better understaning" of mental illnessses or criminal tendencies?
Fixed. To effectively answer that then you must ask to what degree must guilt be proven? Beyond a reasonable doubt, of course. It's the highest level or standard of proof required in a legal action to discharge the burden of proof, that is, to convince the court that any given proposition is true.
tackattack Wrote:Why is having a basis in reality the only way to constructively contribute to the betterment of society?
Because a cooperative society that cannot distinguish fact from fiction, true from false, opens itself to every conceivable form of abuse there is, internal and external. Our modern-day civilization wouldn't last long under that mentality.
tackattack Wrote:And what's your definition of reality?
As much as I enjoy your asyndetic thinking, don't go all 'metaphysical objectivism' on me today. Reality, as most people like to define it, is the state of things that are real, what actually exists.
tackattack Wrote:Here's is another wild definition of faith. What do you really define as faith? Ok you guys ahave had some seriously good stuff on here but could each of you do a short recap of things so far? Maybe we can get definitons straight.
Faith's broad definition is the confident belief in future events or outcomes and in the context of belief involves a concept that does not rest upon on logic or evidence. Because of this you can substitute 'trust' in place of 'faith' as well.
When dealing with something as complex as reality itself I rationally try not to put trust in anything.
1- So mathmatics, philosophy, psychology can't contribute to society, or are they considered real? Why stop there?
2- I agree with your definition of faith, however I'm sure you put more trust in reality a lot more than you give yourself credit for, if not consciously, subconsciously.
"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry." -- Philip Stater, Huffington Post
always working on cleaning my windows- me regarding Johari
Forgive me if I've missed some points in this thread:
You don't take the sun coming up tomorrow morning as a faith based argument.
The sun has come up for millions of years, and for as long as human civilization has been around, there has been no deviation from the plan. Scientific evidence does not lead us to accept the sun as an uncertainty, far from it. In our lifetime at least, it is a very practical certainty, not an absolute one. There is always the unforseen event, the factor that is by definition unaccountable that can cause a catastrophic change or demolition to the entire system. This is where faith comes in.
You have faith that a destructive or disruptive event WON'T happen. Since you don't have evidence for the unforseen element, you can rely on faith to reinforce your assessment of what is demonstrably certain.
You don't have faith that the sun will come up. It demonstrates the furthest degree of physical certainty we can have in this lifetime on this Earth. You have faith that something WON'T occur to impede this event, since faith is an assertion when no evidence is present.
We have evidence to fully understand that the sun will continue to provide the Earth with energy for millions of years to come. When you have evidence to infer or predict an outcome that has been accurate beyond deviation, it leaves the realm of faith.
As leo pointed out before though, believing the sun will come up tomorrow just because it's done it for the last few billion years isn't an evidence supported belief. I've lived for the past 22 years...that doesn't mean I'll be alive tomorrow.
Our belief that the sun will come up tomorrow is based on evidence because of our knowledge about the laws of nature which tell us *why* the sun comes up over the horizon.
February 13, 2010 at 8:33 am (This post was last modified: February 13, 2010 at 8:35 am by Welsh cake.)
(February 11, 2010 at 10:03 pm)tackattack Wrote: 1- So mathmatics, philosophy, psychology can't contribute to society, or are they considered real? Why stop there?
These are all models, workings and concepts that are mental constructs based on reality, so they can indeed contribute to society.
tackattack Wrote:2- I agree with your definition of faith, however I'm sure you put more trust in reality a lot more than you give yourself credit for, if not consciously, subconsciously.
An erroneous assertion; I already said that I don't put absolute trust or "faith" in anything. Science does a good job of explaining phenomena, but I don't put any 'trust' in it. Take my lifespan for example, while I can be optimistic that if I look after my body and avoid taking unnecessary risks then maybe, I'll live to be 90, but I won't have any confidence in that prospect whatsoever.
"Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)"
(February 12, 2010 at 12:35 pm)tavarish Wrote: In our lifetime at least, it is a very practical certainty, not an absolute one. There is always the unforseen event, the factor that is by definition unaccountable that can cause a catastrophic change or demolition to the entire system. This is where faith comes in.
You have faith that a destructive or disruptive event WON'T happen. Since you don't have evidence for the unforseen element, you can rely on faith to reinforce your assessment of what is demonstrably certain.
You don't have faith that the sun will come up. It demonstrates the furthest degree of physical certainty we can have in this lifetime on this Earth. You have faith that something WON'T occur to impede this event, since faith is an assertion when no evidence is present.
What exactly do you mean? While I agree on many points you made, destructive and/or disruptive events are often occurring in our universe. If you're claiming the periodicity of mass extinctions that occur for given any possible catastrophic future change to our orbit and rotation of the sun, we rely on hypothesis using information available to us to predict said outcomes, not faith.
We don't need faith for hypothetical unforeseen elements, in the past the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event happened and a similar collision may happen again, we don't know for certain, but you'd be in error to assume having faith in that it won't happen again will somehow make it so, that's not just wishful thinking, its basically Special pleading.
For any object large enough to dramatically alter earth's rotation the gravitational disturbances or anomalies caused by the rogue planet/brown dwarf/star tearing through our solar system would be detected *long before* it passed and/or collided. Science doesn't just stop working when suddenly there is new information available. You can't have faith in countless uncertainties and claim it's a sensible thing to do, since we know speculating the "What Ifs" is about the most unproductive thing you can do.
then our differences lie in the fact that call religion a concept that is a mental construct based on my percievable realityand you discount it because my percievable reality isn't percievable to you.
"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry." -- Philip Stater, Huffington Post
always working on cleaning my windows- me regarding Johari
February 13, 2010 at 11:26 am (This post was last modified: February 13, 2010 at 11:27 am by Welsh cake.)
Tack can you acknowledge my point that was just made previously please? Let's try to keep our discussion a little more coherent as we've now leapt from one subject to yet another.
Anyway you're generalising a bit, I don't discount your perceived reality merely on the grounds that your subjective worldview isn't the same as reality, neither dismiss it as irrelevant simply because no one else can be justified by your personal experiences. It's because said religious beliefs are abstract in the sense that they're completely incompatible within our shared reality is why I discount them and where the actual 'difference' between us lies.
(February 11, 2010 at 10:03 pm)tackattack Wrote: 1- So mathmatics, philosophy, psychology can't contribute to society, or are they considered real? Why stop there?
These are all models, workings and concepts that are mental constructs based on reality, so they can indeed contribute to society.
tackattack Wrote:2- I agree with your definition of faith, however I'm sure you put more trust in reality a lot more than you give yourself credit for, if not consciously, subconsciously.
An erroneous assertion; I already said that I don't put absolute trust or "faith" in anything. Science does a good job of explaining phenomena, but I don't put any 'trust' in it. Take my lifespan for example, while I can be optimistic that if I look after my body and avoid taking unnecessary risks then maybe, I'll live to be 90, but I won't have any confidence in that prospect whatsoever.
"Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)"
(February 12, 2010 at 12:35 pm)tavarish Wrote: In our lifetime at least, it is a very practical certainty, not an absolute one. There is always the unforseen event, the factor that is by definition unaccountable that can cause a catastrophic change or demolition to the entire system. This is where faith comes in.
You have faith that a destructive or disruptive event WON'T happen. Since you don't have evidence for the unforseen element, you can rely on faith to reinforce your assessment of what is demonstrably certain.
You don't have faith that the sun will come up. It demonstrates the furthest degree of physical certainty we can have in this lifetime on this Earth. You have faith that something WON'T occur to impede this event, since faith is an assertion when no evidence is present.
What exactly do you mean? While I agree on many points you made, destructive and/or disruptive events are often occurring in our universe. If you're claiming the periodicity of mass extinctions that occur for given any possible catastrophic future change to our orbit and rotation of the sun, we rely on hypothesis using information available to us to predict said outcomes, not faith.
We don't need faith for hypothetical unforeseen elements, in the past the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event happened and a similar collision may happen again, we don't know for certain, but you'd be in error to assume having faith in that it won't happen again will somehow make it so, that's not just wishful thinking, its basically Special pleading.
For any object large enough to dramatically alter earth's rotation the gravitational disturbances or anomalies caused by the rogue planet/brown dwarf/star tearing through our solar system would be detected *long before* it passed and/or collided. Science doesn't just stop working when suddenly there is new information available. You can't have faith in countless uncertainties and claim it's a sensible thing to do, since we know speculating the "What Ifs" is about the most unproductive thing you can do.
(February 13, 2010 at 11:26 am)Welsh cake Wrote: Tack can you acknowledge my point that was just made previously please? Let's try to keep our discussion a little more coherent as we've now leapt from one subject to yet another.
Anyway you're generalising a bit, I don't discount your perceived reality merely on the grounds that your subjective worldview isn't the same as reality, neither dismiss it as irrelevant simply because no one else can be justified by your personal experiences. It's because said religious beliefs are abstract in the sense that they're completely incompatible within our shared reality is why I discount them and where the actual 'difference' between us lies.
1- I agree that mathmatics, psychology, etc are all models, workings and concepts that are mental constructs based on tangible shared reality contributing to society. God, for me, is an intangible shared reality concept that contributes to society. You said incompatible within our shared reality above.. that I'm assuming refers to atheists, not me, because it's not incompatable at all from my perspective. You simply have no evidence to qualify the spiritual. My equation doesn't preclude you from knowing, you're using incomplete data for your assesment in my opinion.
2-I'm not talking about cataclysmic events. I'm talking about practical application of faith in the present , through decision, achieving a specified outcome. You have faith that the chair you sitting in won't fall apart, that your computer won't crash, etc. You don't consciously analyze every single minutae of decision you do every day. You don't consciously evidence every single assertion. Your subconscious does that for you predominantly. Your conscious mind trusts that your subconscious has weighed and measured every decision. You'd be suprised if your chair just collapsed, you might say.. "that's no suprise I'm a fat ass" Or you might say, "what a coincidence" ,etc. None of the reaction matters in this context. You made you decision based on the fact that 99% of the time the chair won't break, because it hasn't yet and most likely won't. Not that it couldn't, of course it could! Just because something is evidenced and tested in tangible reality proves nothing of truth. Science uses many axioms which are mental constructs.
"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry." -- Philip Stater, Huffington Post
always working on cleaning my windows- me regarding Johari
(February 13, 2010 at 8:33 am)Welsh cake Wrote: What exactly do you mean? While I agree on many points you made, destructive and/or disruptive events are often occurring in our universe. If you're claiming the periodicity of mass extinctions that occur for given any possible catastrophic future change to our orbit and rotation of the sun, we rely on hypothesis using information available to us to predict said outcomes, not faith.
(February 13, 2010 at 8:33 am)Welsh cake Wrote: We don't need faith for hypothetical unforeseen elements, in the past the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event happened and a similar collision may happen again, we don't know for certain, but you'd be in error to assume having faith in that it won't happen again will somehow make it so, that's not just wishful thinking, its basically Special pleading.
I completely understand, and I never said faith changes anything. It's simply a psychological concept illustrating mankind's approach to the unknown.
I do agree with you though.
(February 13, 2010 at 8:33 am)Welsh cake Wrote: For any object large enough to dramatically alter earth's rotation the gravitational disturbances or anomalies caused by the rogue planet/brown dwarf/star tearing through our solar system would be detected *long before* it passed and/or collided. Science doesn't just stop working when suddenly there is new information available. You can't have faith in countless uncertainties and claim it's a sensible thing to do, since we know speculating the "What Ifs" is about the most unproductive thing you can do.
I agree.
I never said it a sensible thing to do, perhaps I'm illustrating something that operates on a subconscious level, but I think faith is something that is taken for granted for the most part, and to say "the sun comes up everyday" is a statement of faith rather than evidence is a false assertion. Perhaps I phrased my argument incorrectly. I do agree with you though.
