If religion made sense (atheist, quote, faith, Christianity)
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This is the sort of thing that really dumb New Atheist types are prone to say. It's why they are an embarrassment to their own cause.
One may indeed have faith in something that doesn't make sense. A faith in the Tooth Fairy is simply irrational.
Faith is trust in something that can't be objectively known. I place faith in a ladder when I step onto it. If I've previously inspected the ladder, the degree of faith may be very small - but the ladder may still collapse.
Faith is the step one takes after evidence and logic have taken him as far as they can. If evidence and logic point in the direction of a God, and of that God being the God of Christianity, placing faith in this God is an entirely rational act. It is no different in substance from stepping onto a ladder, although certainly different in degree.
This doesn't mean the God of Christianity necessarily exists, merely that it isn't irrational to believe he does.
One may indeed choose to place faith in the God of Christianity with no regard whatsoever for evidence and logic. Whether the object of this sort of faith is ontologically real will be a matter of pure happenstance.
Obviously - except to really dumb New Atheist types - faith isn't "required" because religion "doesn't make sense." Religious faith is rational when the religion has epistemological warrant, irrational when it isn't.
Precisely the same may be said of atheism - a truth lost on the really dumb New Atheist types. Hence they post non sequiturs they think are clever but that would cause a first-year philosophy class to collapse in giggles.
One may indeed have faith in something that doesn't make sense. A faith in the Tooth Fairy is simply irrational.
Faith is trust in something that can't be objectively known. I place faith in a ladder when I step onto it. If I've previously inspected the ladder, the degree of faith may be very small - but the ladder may still collapse.
Arguments like these sound OK (or at least plausible) in the abstract..... but then fall apart as soon as the proponent provides examples of things they think qualify as analogous "faith."
"You place faith in the plane that it won't crash, every time you fly." Or "You place faith in that medicine you take every morning, that it is what it says it is on the bottle, and will work the same as last time." And now we have the faith in ladder analogy.
Problem is, every one of those has enormous evidence behind it. The safety of the plane, the content of the medicine, the construction of the ladder.... have been vetted by others, there are manufacturing processes and QC checks and entire federal agencies devoted to ensuring their safety, etc, etc. There are literally billions of documented instances of other people using those planes and pills and ladders without problems.
And then there is your own personal experience, presumably to good end. Plus you can (and do, whether you realize or not) visually inspect that pill before you pop it or the ladder before you climb on it. The plane is important enough that there are teams of people running checklists to visually inspect before each flight. That all constitutes EVIDENCE. Verifiable, objective evidence that supports the trust.
The faith being discussed here (in the God of Christianity, or any other divine being) is much closer to the faith in the Tooth Fairy... which you reject as irrational... than faith in that ladder. I don't know if that qualifies me as a "Dumb New Atheist," but I can recognize a failed analogy when I see it.
This is the sort of thing that really dumb New Atheist types are prone to say. It's why they are an embarrassment to their own cause.
One may indeed have faith in something that doesn't make sense. A faith in the Tooth Fairy is simply irrational.
Faith is trust in something that can't be objectively known. I place faith in a ladder when I step onto it. If I've previously inspected the ladder, the degree of faith may be very small - but the ladder may still collapse.
Faith is the step one takes after evidence and logic have taken him as far as they can. If evidence and logic point in the direction of a God, and of that God being the God of Christianity, placing faith in this God is an entirely rational act. It is no different in substance from stepping onto a ladder, although certainly different in degree.
This doesn't mean the God of Christianity necessarily exists, merely that it isn't irrational to believe he does.
One may indeed choose to place faith in the God of Christianity with no regard whatsoever for evidence and logic. Whether the object of this sort of faith is ontologically real will be a matter of pure happenstance.
Obviously - except to really dumb New Atheist types - faith isn't "required" because religion "doesn't make sense." Religious faith is rational when the religion has epistemological warrant, irrational when it isn't.
Precisely the same may be said of atheism - a truth lost on the really dumb New Atheist types. Hence they post non sequiturs they think are clever but that would cause a first-year philosophy class to collapse in giggles.
If religion made sense, people would have reason(s) to believe. Faith would not be required.
You reason the ladder will hold you because it has held you and others many times. The manufacturer of the ladder has made many thousands of them. They are ladder specialists. You trust the ladder will hold. The faith you place on its support is founded on past experience and makes sense. Ditto with airplanes.
Faith in a maniacal, narcissistic, bumbling god-thing conjured up by primitive anonymous, middle-eastern men is not comparable.
And I'm neither an old, or a new atheist. Not that there's anything wrong...
Perhaps, in which case they'd be begging the question ("Religion doesn't make sense because it requires religious belief").
As an atheist but one who frequently defends religious belief, I'm quite willing to accept the definition that anti-theists typically offer - namely "belief without evidence". Because it only gets them in more trouble, as evidentialism is pretty much bankrupt.
Arguments like these sound OK (or at least plausible) in the abstract..... but then fall apart as soon as the proponent provides examples of things they think qualify as analogous "faith."
"You place faith in the plane that it won't crash, every time you fly." Or "You place faith in that medicine you take every morning, that it is what it says it is on the bottle, and will work the same as last time." And now we have the faith in ladder analogy.
Problem is, every one of those has enormous evidence behind it. The safety of the plane, the content of the medicine, the construction of the ladder.... have been vetted by others, there are manufacturing processes and QC checks and entire federal agencies devoted to ensuring their safety, etc, etc. There are literally billions of documented instances of other people using those planes and pills and ladders without problems.
And then there is your own personal experience, presumably to good end. Plus you can (and do, whether you realize or not) visually inspect that pill before you pop it or the ladder before you climb on it. The plane is important enough that there are teams of people running checklists to visually inspect before each flight. That all constitutes EVIDENCE. Verifiable, objective evidence that supports the trust.
The faith being discussed here (in the God of Christianity, or any other divine being) is much closer to the faith in the Tooth Fairy... which you reject as irrational... than faith in that ladder. I don't know if that qualifies me as a "Dumb New Atheist," but I can recognize a failed analogy when I see it.
This is the problem.
In case of a ladder, perhaps you may personally inspect the ladder and have a higher degree of faith that it will not collapse (yet it still could). But in case of popping that pill in your mouth, you have personally not verified the claims made by the FDA and manufacturer of the medicine.
You put your confidence, or in other words, "faith", in the work of FDA and the manufacturer and pop that pill in your mouth WITHOUT having a real evidence at hand, and without verifying the claims.
What is being called faith when applied to all the examples given, including that pill, is more rightfully a matter of odds .
The ladder still might collapse, the plane still might crash, the pill might make you sicker but given the history behind them, the odds are what is considered when using them.
This analogy is brought up way more often than it should given that only a modicum of common sense shows how dumb it is.
This is the problem.
In case of a ladder, perhaps you may personally inspect the ladder and have a higher degree of faith that it will not collapse (yet it still could). But in case of popping that pill in your mouth, you have personally not verified the claims made by the FDA and manufacturer of the medicine.
You put your confidence, or in other words, "faith", in the work of FDA and the manufacturer and pop that pill in your mouth WITHOUT having a real evidence at hand, and without verifying the claims.
We've been through this before. It is a distraction, based on a condition I don't see anyone imposing (other than you), that evidence must be PERSONALLY OBTAINED for it to count. The evidence exists. You could, in fact, access the evidence if you really had doubts... but the point is that there *IS* evidence, and someone has it. Moreover, you have some of that evidence personally, if you've ever taken a pill or a plane flight or used a ladder, and they worked as intended. That is qualitatively and quantitatively different from a situation where no one has evidence.
ETA: as old_cold says, these examples are more accurately viewed as making decisions based on the odds... and they are very good odds. That is not the case with blind faith claims, for which there is zero evidence.
Last edited by HeelaMonster; 01-06-2019 at 10:03 AM..
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