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Faith vs Logic

Magic Man

Magic Man

Reaper of Conversation
Escéptico;1122317 said:
I love how I get characterized as neither normal nor open-minded. I fail to see how this supports the point about religion explaining who and why.

You never get tired of your favorite shell game, do you, Matt?
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I didn't say you aren't normal. I was indicating that seeing it the opposite way that you do is normal too.

You never get tired of obstinately refusing to see another point of view, do you?
 
Dunemeister

Dunemeister

Well-Known Member
Manipulated said:
Gravity can be proven,so how then can you have real faith in it?
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That depends on your philosophy of science. You are espousing a "realist" view of science in which the forces and explanatory thingies in science are all real. That's not the only view (and I'm not even sure it's a majority view). There are nonrealist philosophies of science. For instance, "gravity" might just be a theoretical harmonization of observations, no more real than the tooth fairy. It might just be a useful idea that helps us to make predictions, but the reality may be quite different. And so on (there are lots of ways to be a non-realist about scientific theories). To be a REALIST about scientific theories, you need faith. There's quite a gap between "these are our observations, here is our math, here is our explanatory theory" and "this is entirely real." How do you bridge that gap? Reason won't do it. It's like Hume said. We believe in "causes" but nobody has actually seen a causal relation. But we habitually attribute "cause/effect" relations between events that regularly occur. What's the mechanism at work here? Probably faith.
 
Charred.Atheist

Charred.Atheist

Reverend
Don Penguinoini said:
Which is more important? What is the stronger force out of the two?
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For me, logic led me away from faith. I never really had faith, but I was raised as a Christian. Religion was just sort of there, and then I turned 6 and started going to school, rational thought started and I found answers to my questions.
 
M

Manipulated

Pilgrim
Dunemeister said:
That depends on your philosophy of science. You are espousing a "realist" view of science in which the forces and explanatory thingies in science are all real. That's not the only view (and I'm not even sure it's a majority view). There are nonrealist philosophies of science. For instance, "gravity" might just be a theoretical harmonization of observations, no more real than the tooth fairy. It might just be a useful idea that helps us to make predictions, but the reality may be quite different. And so on (there are lots of ways to be a non-realist about scientific theories). To be a REALIST about scientific theories, you need faith. There's quite a gap between "these are our observations, here is our math, here is our explanatory theory" and "this is entirely real." How do you bridge that gap? Reason won't do it. It's like Hume said. We believe in "causes" but nobody has actually seen a causal relation. But we habitually attribute "cause/effect" relations between events that regularly occur. What's the mechanism at work here? Probably faith.
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Interesting,So we all in fact live by faith,only the object of our faith differs.And the intensity of our faith.which leads me to think of a scripture that states,if you have enough faith you can move mountains.Do you think that scripture refers to faith in God?
 
Magic Man

Magic Man

Reaper of Conversation
Manipulated said:
Interesting,So we all in fact live by faith,only the object of our faith differs.And the intensity of our faith.which leads me to think of a scripture that states,if you have enough faith you can move mountains.Do you think that scripture refers to faith in God?
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Of course it means faith in God. What else would it mean?
 
Dunemeister

Dunemeister

Well-Known Member
Manipulated said:
Interesting,So we all in fact live by faith,only the object of our faith differs.And the intensity of our faith.which leads me to think of a scripture that states,if you have enough faith you can move mountains.Do you think that scripture refers to faith in God?
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In context, it actually means faith in Jesus (by implication God, but that's not immediately apparent from the context). Of course "move mountains" is typical Jewish hyperbole -- it's almost apocalyptic. The point is that faith in Jesus is effective. He's also saying that it doesn't matter how MUCH faith you have, but it matters very much what the object of your faith is. The entire biblical canon emphasizes that faith in the Creator God YHWH leads to wisdom but faith in anything else is a delusion.
 
Don Penguinoini

Don Penguinoini

Modi.
I think they are opposite, faith is something which is not proven, which is why it is faith, not logic. Logic is things as it is. No needing top prove it at all.
 
Dunemeister

Dunemeister

Well-Known Member
Don Penguinoini said:
I think they are opposite, faith is something which is not proven, which is why it is faith, not logic. Logic is things as it is. No needing top prove it at all.
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Logic is certainly not "things as they are." Logic is an abstract discipline. It's like mathematics, except that instead of performing operations on numbers, they perform operations on propositions. The game is entirely fixed ahead of time. It's an internally consistent system of invented rules.

And it's not entirely clear that the rules we take for granted in logic are true. For instance, take the material conditional relationship, A --> B. You can read this "If A, then B" if you like. In this sentence, A is called the antecedent, and B is called the consequent. Classic Russelian logic holds that this relation is false if and only if BOTH A is true and B is false. So:

A is true and B is true: (A --> B) is true.
A is false and B is false: (A --> B) is true.
A is false and B is true: (A --> B) is true.
A is true and B is false: (A --> B) is false.

But this is quite peculiar. For when we substitute real propositions for A and B, we get some odd results. Let's take a sentence where A = "My father works graveyard shift" and B = "my mother is dead." Let's let A be the antecedent and B be the consequent. When we relate these propositions by material conditional, we get the following sentence:

(1) If my father works graveyards, then my mother is dead.

This whole sentence is false if and only if it's true that my father works graveyards but my mother isn't dead. But wait a minute? What does my father's work schedule have to do with whether my mother is alive? Well, nothing. So how can (1) have any truth value if A isn't relevant to B? Well, that doesn't really matter as far as classic logic is concerned. But this is a real puzzle and it has led to the development of relevance logic, which proposes different conditions for the truth of (1). I won't get into them because my point here is just to show that the logic we take for granted in most discussion is open to serious critique. It doesn't follow that we abandon it, but it certainly means we should pause before giving it the authority some of us tend to give it.
 
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