Question about "faith"

[Sal]

If "faith" is defined as "complete trust or confidence in someone or something".(dictionary.com) As an atheist, do you have complete confidence or trust in anything? or anyone? If so, what is the foundation for that "complete" faith.

I'm not looking for an argument, so you don't have to be guarded. I'm simply wanting to learn more about your belief, or absence of belief.

I do not use "faith" in that manner.

For me, the word has no actual use in understanding the world, not even when used colloquially as "trust" or "confidence" in anything. I used to, more than 2 decades ago, say the phrase: "Beyond the boundaries of knowledge, lies faith." It can be interpreted in two main ways. The first is that outside of knowledge lie unproven, undemonstrable, unfalsifiable or otherwise thoughts which cannot be shown to be true, ever. The second interpretation is that, given that our knowledge increases over time, makes this boundary between knowledge and faith increasing from the relative perspective of knowledge, and receding from the relative perspective of faith.

For me, "faith" is the sound we make for the unknown, in a futile attempt to excuse ignorance. Evolutionary, it's nothing more than a Type 2 Error in cognition (false negatives) which had little to no cost other than unfounded fear, while a Type 1 Error meant they were dinner for our primeval ancestors. So, even by natural selection, we're stacked by hereditary predictors to believe in falsehoods so easily. That's faith.

I'm an apostate. The path that lead me to atheism, is also why I remain an atheist today: Doubt.

Doubt is looked upon by scorn by the believer, especially so by Christians of most strides (apart from maybe the Gnostics), to the point of attributing doubt to the same level of contempt as a mortal sin (whereas sin, IMO, is akin to intentionally breaking your bones, all the while offering the cast in which you want to heal those broken bones - except those bones never heal, you remain in the cast forever & and are offered crutches to get around as a replacement as salvation).

My foundation is Doubt of the highest order, which by itself, invalidates the very concept of "faith".

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The lack of doubt means you never get to correct an error, because how could you? It takes doubt in your "faith" to know you just might be wrong, and without doubt, you never get that far.

The lack of doubt means you become comfortable in your "faith", while making you unable to distinguish between knowledge and "faith".

The lack of doubt makes you confident that what you have in "faith" is true, without ever even entertain to think otherwise.

The lack of doubt makes you susceptible to lies and deception by those you hold "faith" in, because of your inability to question "faith".

The lack of doubt in "faith" itself is what binds you, enslaves your mind and makes a mockery of your reason.

It is only with doubt that you are able to really apply reason, free your mind, free yourself from the shackles of "faith", and this because of probability, provision, uncertainty and thusly making room for possible correction. Isn't it often said that the wise are full of doubt, and idiots so cocksure of themselves?

The same can be said about lies and deception, because if you're so cocksure of yourself, you will find it impossible to doubt others as well.

And hasn't an unquestioning confidence in oneself often been the shortest path to delusion in oneself as well?

And what about the ultimate descriptor, knowledge? Are you so sure what you know to be true, actually true? How would you tell? You first have to entertain the possibility that you might be wrong for even having the option for saying so. This post too. Everything actually.

[Angrboda]

I think that you and I can do better than some boilerplate emotivist/cognitivist bit

You answered your own question in asking it, anyway.  -If- we have no other way of "knowing", than feeling like we know, then we don't know anything.  There are no true cognitive statements.  "I am alive" is not knowledge, it's not true - it's just a feeling.

Again, knowledge and faith are not equivalent, and no amount of unfortunate mistakes or happy accidents of knowledge and faith could make it otherwise.  Even in the case of our having nothing other than feelings - that would be us being incapable of knowledge, not the two being equivalent.  There's more than a little bit of irony in a disagreement (or in questions over a disagreement) from a non-cognitivist pov, don't you think?  Are you expecting a position informed by facts from a creature incapable of knowledge?  Something logical that proceeds from true (or at least sound) cognitive propositions?

Engaging in the discussion, all by itself, reduces the objection to a stolen concept.  Requiring the truth of what we're arguing against.  We'd have to require the proposition "we know what we know on account of feeling like we know" to be cognitively true.  This sort of objection well and truly reduces to a comment on how, on account of some people being bad at math, there is no fact of two and two.  It's true enough of people, but not true of facts, or of two and two.

Well, that's interesting and all, but I don't see that as an answer to my question. Are you or are you not drawing a categorical distinction between propositions we believe to be true because we feel like we know that they are true and some other category of propositions which we hold to be true, but by some other means? If you aren't asserting such a distinction, then I have misunderstood you, and we'll have to back up and try to reach some level of mutual understanding. If you are asserting such a categorical distinction, then you need to produce it.

[brewer]

Is this enough responses about faith rocky?

Morals might be a good subject for the next thread.

[rockyrockford]

brewer, could you please tell me, is "atheism" considered a human religious belief system, even though a deity isn't worshipped? Or would an atheist consider themselves 100% void of any spiritual belief. That they simply exist one day, and they don't the next.

Thank you!!

Nope, not a human religious belief system. Atheists have little in common other than a lack of belief in god(s). Not much of a religion. 

You'll need to define "spiritual belief". There is human spirit, team/group/community spirit, which is based in emotion but I don't think that's what you are referring to. I am void of any beliefs in god(s). 

And yes, the same as all living creatures, individual existence begins and ends. If I procreate a part of my DNA may continue for a time. There is no after life except as memories of others. 

You seen to reference concepts in extremes, ............... i.e. complete, eternal, 100%, ......... just an observation. My guess is that it's related to the god concept.

In regards to eternity. Most Christians ( I won't speak for other religions) believe that the body is made up in three parts, a body, a Soul and a Spirit. Without the presents of an eternal God keeping the soul alive, the body and the spirit die due to the presence of sin...Beginning with Adam. The spirit lives on after death in an eternity void of a living eternal God. What many refer to as Hell. But, the Christian belief system is that with a living God present in the soul, the belief is that the soul and spirt live on as one in the presents of an eternal God. I know (but with very limited knowledge) that many folks who believe in reincarnation don't consider themselves Christians, but believe that their soul and spirt come back to a new body.

Interestingly, more atheists are able to tell me why they DON'T believe in God, than those who say they do believe in God. I attribute this to atheists spending more time weighing physical facts, while others rely on physical tradition.

Your openness about what you believe is greatly appriciated. I'm writing a paper on "faith" and the different ways folks perceive it. You've all been extremely helpful!!

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If "faith" is defined as "complete trust or confidence in someone or something".(dictionary.com) As an atheist, do you have complete confidence or trust in anything?

The difference between an atheists faith and a theist's faith, in that context, is the difference between trust and confidence.  We can all trust that some x was made to do y (or that some person x wants to do y)...but how many things (or people) do we have complete confidence in actually doing that y?

People and things made to do or who want to do some x can be trusted, and they can even be competent - and for reasons wholly unrelated to them, can fail.  Complete confidence is bound up with omnipotence.  Think of it like this.  A professional driver in a purpose built car can avoid alot of collisions - but they can still be blindsided or rear ended or just generally wrecked.  We could drop a bomb on them, see how their skills and gear work then.   An omnipotent driver in an omnipotent vehicle could not, and the bomb would be ineffectual.

-and that's before we comment on misplaced trust and misplaced confidence, which all people engage in.

How about you?  Laying aside misplaced feelings of trust and confidence, and assuming that you can very easily trust, do you have complete confidence in anything?  What do you base that on?

I place my complete trust and confidence in The Lord Jesus Christ, and that He shed he innocent blood for me on the cross of calvary. I believe with all my heart that Jesus died, was buried, and three days later rose from the dead, and I believe what scripture says, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. - I base all of this belief on "fellowship" with God. In prayer, in Bible reading, In songs, In thoughts...

But I imagine if you and I were sitting at a bus stop, and we struck up a conversation, we would quickly find common ground and enjoy each others company until the bus arrived... The topic of eternal "faith" or lack of, would never come up.

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Faith is ultimately a question about how we know things as true, and what qualifications we give to that knowing based upon our path to knowing.  Religious belief and other types of belief tend to use significantly different pathways towards confidence in what one knows, and as a result, the qualifications one ends up applying to the two are going to be different.  I'm just spitballing my way toward other points here, but that may be one of the issues regarding interfaith discussions between atheists and theists is that, combined with relatively shallow concepts of things like faith, people with different riders attached to propositions which one regards as true may, being unvoiced, simply differ, with the result that people end up talking past one another.  It gets even worse when such questions are raised in the context of an apologia or attempt to convert another toward one's chosen viewpoint.  

Ultimately though, faith is about knowing, and the philosophy of knowing is epistemology.  Ignoring the tendency of people to have largely unintentional epistemologies, which they apply without any great consciousness that they are doing so, the long and short of it is that epistemology is still a very open question in philosophy with a great many unanswered questions, so there really is no conventional wisdom beyond Plato's justified true belief about how one navigates the subject.  I find the subject fascinating, but my own personal views on the subject are hardly more intentional or consciously developed than anyone else's.  So, as with many things, as I've aged, I've moved away from confidence I once held in certain propositions and toward embracing agnosticism across the board to a greater extent than I did when I was younger.  That still leaves me with the epistemological questions, which, despite some misgivings of pragmatism as a formal philosophy, the pragmatist approach has assumed greater emphasis in my life.

I think that, in some respects, my earlier confidence in certain propositions may have been more an expression of hope, optimism, and vested interest (bias) than it was a product of sound thinking, so in hindsight I think I may have not uncommonly exceeded the warrant that the evidence gave me, trusting to my intuition without any rigor backing it up.  I'm less inclined to do that these days, though I'm sure that like anybody else, I still do, the question is now more the extent to which I do that, and how doing so is likely to play out in my life.  Yet another feather in the cap of the pragmatist approach there being that one can be more pluralistic and accommodating, even if it does come at the expense of certainty, and the moral mandate that certainty in a proposition seems to provide.

I don't have a settled epistemology, and while I understand why someone wants to compare faith in religion versus faith in secular contexts, it's very easy to, as with my former beliefs, let intuition and hope take one where the evidence and understanding have not yet visited.

In the past year, as well, I've come to the conclusion that, using ordinary common understandings about God in the Judeo-Christian religions, there can be no evidence for the existence of God.  This is not a view which is likely to be embraced by religious people largely due to different understandings involved, so in practice I adopt a more colloquial view in which there can be and is evidence of God, and simply keep my own view under my hat.  I find plenty to disagree with in discussions with other people without going there.  The main one, which often splits atheists themselves is the question of whether or not there is evidence for God.  If one adopts the negative position, that there isn't, one is going to come away with a radically different understanding of religious faith than if one doesn't.

(ETA: I see that I neglected to answer the question.  As with Peebo there is little if any completeness in my understanding, so the best I can say is that I have faith of different kinds in varying degrees on many things, so the question about faith itself is not likely to be very illuminating without being more specific.  A lot more specific.)

"people end up talking past one another. It gets even worse when such questions are raised in the context of an apologia or attempt to convert another toward one's chosen viewpoint."

Well said. This is why I really wanted to have an open discussion about "belief" or lack thereof. I wanted to avoid debate because I believe  more can be learned by listening than debating.  

Thank you for your very honest and well thought out answer.

[brewer]

Glad you enjoyed your interaction with the godless heathens.

Be sure to keep an eye on your babies when we're around. 

[Foxaèr]

Did someone say Infant Back Ribs?

[Angrboda]

Well said. This is why I really wanted to have an open discussion about "belief" or lack thereof. I wanted to avoid debate because I believe  more can be learned by listening than debating.  

Thank you for your very honest and well thought out answer.

A well-marbled steak may look extremely appetizing when you pull it out of the fridge, but until you put it into the fire, you really don't know what you've got.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, that's interesting and all, but I don't see that as an answer to my question.  Are you or are you not drawing a categorical distinction between propositions we believe to be true because we feel like we know that they are true and some other category of propositions which we hold to be true, but by some other means?  If you aren't asserting such a distinction, then I have misunderstood you, and we'll have to back up and try to reach some level of mutual understanding.  If you are asserting such a categorical distinction, then you need to produce it.

Produce the distinction between emotivism and cognitivism....?  

The category of things we believe to be true because we feel a certain way about them - emotivist.
The category of things we believe to be true because they can be true or false and are true - cognitivist.

Our new christian friend, for example, feels a certain way about christ.  Whether or not I am alive can be true or false, and is true.

[Angrboda]

Well, that's interesting and all, but I don't see that as an answer to my question.  Are you or are you not drawing a categorical distinction between propositions we believe to be true because we feel like we know that they are true and some other category of propositions which we hold to be true, but by some other means?  If you aren't asserting such a distinction, then I have misunderstood you, and we'll have to back up and try to reach some level of mutual understanding.  If you are asserting such a categorical distinction, then you need to produce it.

Produce the distinction between emotivism and cognitivism....?  

The category of things we believe to be true because we feel a certain way about them - emotivist.
The category of things we believe to be true because they can be true or false and are true - cognitivist.

Our new christian friend, for example, feels a certain way about christ.  Whether or not I am alive can be true or false, and is true.

I didn't ask about emotivism and cognitivism. And neither emotivists nor cognitivists are categories of things they believe to be true, by any method. Emotivism, afaik, is a theory of ethics, not knowledge. You seem to be engaged in numerous category errors. But let's go with your ersatz categories and strawmen. How does a cognitivist determine that what he believes to be true is true?

[rockyrockford]

Is this enough responses about faith rocky?

Morals might be a good subject for the next thread.

It's been great !! Thank you all for the open discussion!!