Markovich wrote on 08/02/10 at 15:01:31:


Consistency of facts support empiricism but has no bearing on faith. The reason being---facts are derived from the real world and the real world lies and lies and lies; the empiricists believe that the real world is telling them the truth.

A classic example is the physicists telling us that the universe had a big bang that supported life when "chance" ( i.e. the universe came into being from Scratch a nickname of the devil) chose the one combination of the masses of protons and electrons that give us hydrogen and the other great physical properties that make this universe possible.

Here's a thought. Could a universe appear devoid of water i.e. hydrogen that could support life? I propose a third energy source for life. First there is photosynthesis, then there was chemosynthesis along black smorkers along the Mid-Ocean ridge system; now I propose the photoelectric effect as the third basic source of life.

Imagine if you can a metalifereous silica-rich planetoid (for instance a chonchoidal flake stetching from the Atlantic to the Pacific incorporated the scalped off root of the Sierra Nevadas. This was torn off by a shallow bolide impact. 

It then coalesces and forms a planetoid roughly 100km in diameter.

What I am about to propose has precedence. We know that a working nuclear reactor set itself up in Oklo, Africa circa 1.7 billion years ago. It generated power for several million years.

Suppose on the silica planetoid, recrystallization of quartz expelled metal ions and they plated onto the crystal interstices, forming small wire-like filaments at the triple junctions of the crystal faces. These metals would bake in the sun for a month and freeze for a month; they generate electricity as the metals undergo the photoelectric effect. This reorganizes the silicates to a configuration more capable of transmitting electrons and heat into the interior of the planet. Repeating baking and cooling cause the entire planet to have an on switch when the circuits are baking in the sun and off switch when they are in darkness.

Thus, it is possible to imagine a primitive computer being "borne" in a universe devoid of water powered by the photoelectric effect.

This machine is boldly going where no machine has gone before; it has found us and is perfectly happy to take up residence here. Independence day happened billions of years ago when life first developed an on/off switch.

sloughter wrote on 08/02/10 at 11:26:38:


I have shown by example that faith is dependent upon a degree of consistency with the facts and is supported by reason.  I have faith that other human beings have minds like my own, a belief which is both useful to my progress in this world and consistent with my observations of human behavior (the proposition in question nevertheless remains an object of faith, because no conceivable experience could permit my direct apprehension of minds apart from my own).  This is, I maintain, a reasonable faith.

Equally and with just the same certainty that facts would never confirm or contradict the proposition, I could have faith that stones have minds like my own.  But this would be unuseful to my progress in this world and perhaps even harmful to it, and it would be inconsistent with the observed behavior of stones.  It would be an unreasonable faith.

So there you have a demonstration that faith is indeed subject to reason ( I don't like "logic" in this context, because properly speaking, logic is the procedure by which propositions are shown to be true or false, based on certain other propositions assumed true -- and that is a much more narrow pursuit than reason).  But yes, I have always agreed that atheism is a belief-system; but I also think that it is a much more useful and reasonable belief-system than any of the significant alternatives.

Markovich wrote on 08/01/10 at 17:39:55:


You have demonstrated that you have FAITH as the basis of your faith; this is not logic but a faith-based way of debating someone who lacks FAITH. 

I don't agree that faith is independent of reason.  I have faith that other people have conscious minds quite similar to my own, something that I cannot know for certain, because believing this facilitates my progress in this world.  It is a useful faith.  The facts of this world don't flagrantly contradict the idea that other people have minds, but rather, the behavior of other people is highly consistent with this.  So my faith in a proposition that can never, in principle, be confirmed is nevertheless both fact-based and reason-based.

If faith requires neither fact nor reason, then infinitely many propositions can be upheld, including logically contradictory ones.   Why any one in particular?

So I don't agree that faith springs out of itself and requires no justification.  Faith is simply confidence that a certain model of this world is true, and the willingness to act on that basis. 

MNb wrote on 07/31/10 at 21:18:10:


My fundamental prejudice is that according to Thomas Paine, (If I am quoting him correctly), "Revelation happens to one person. Everything after that is heresay, and I prefer not base my judgement on heresay."

For those Christians who believed in miracles and the boundless wonders consider this: We are witnessing the rush to judgement over Mother Teresa with the unseemly haste to beatification. Tell that to some of the Indians she ministered to. On an Indian psychology website, the heading and source of a considerably controversial subject, started with the heading, "The Ugly Face of Mother Teresa" doesn't picture her as a great potential saint.

First of all when she visited a cancer ward, a patient pleaded with her to get him drugs. Her response, "You are suffering just like Christ on the cross." His response, "I don't want to suffer. Give me drugs!!"

Then, of course, is the strange coincidence that the families whose family members witnessed her miracles suddenly had very "good luck" financially.

The real kicker are that millions of dollars appear to be missing from Mother Teresa's Indian charities. Rumor has it the funds wound up in the Vatican. Ever hear of the phrase quid pro quo?

Well if inner personal experience is given authority over empiricism, testing and rational discussion, I fear we're going back to before the Enlightenment. How are we ever going to decide who is right or wrong in a dispute?

Actually I respect personal faith, as long as it remains merely that. 

But so many people within organized religions want much more than that: To convert others and influence politics in the name of supposedly sacred values, or take a moral high ground on behalf of outdated stone age laws and sentiments. Some even use their completely unfalsifiable ideas to justify wars and discrimination. 

This simply will not do in a world as small and interconnected as our modern one.

MNb wrote on 07/31/10 at 16:44:12:

I was not trying to be funny with the "non" in non-explanation! As I read both sloughter and Kierkegaard, both "the leap of faith" and "faith needs no reason" are invoked exactly when they don't have any rational explanation for their beliefs, or when some paradox of Christianity can't be solved rationally. It's a way to overcome problems with the faith, not a reason for believing (or wanting to believe) in the first place.

Besides, I've been trying to point out that there are in fact plenty of plausible reasons that have been given for faith by both preachers and professional philosophers - William Lane Craig for one has lots of interesting lectures and debates online (Not that I'm personally convinced by those reasons, but that's another question).

t's very puzzling to me that Sloughter refuses to use any of the arguments that could support his theism. To me "faith needs no reason" is simply a cop-out which avoids a meaningful discussion.

I think there is some research on conversions but I don't have any of it to hand. A recent paper by Dennett and LeScola is relevant: http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP08122150.pdf see also http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith//2010/03/disbelief_in_the_pulpit/all.... . Professional preachers who had lost their faith were interviewed. Suprisingly, some of them had been finally convinced by the arguments of the "New Atheists" Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris. So there may be a place for logic and reason after all, though I admit the New Atheists sometimes take logical shortcuts and often don't ground their arguments as well as they should.

MNb wrote on 07/31/10 at 13:55:12:


Very well then, I disagree with Kierkegaard. Never cared much for him anyway.

It must be said though that his "leap of faith" is needed mostly to accept the paradoxes of Christianity. I think even he would agree that before you even get to the point where you think deeply about how to resolve or accept those paradoxes, you have been lead to the faith for other reasons (your native culture, family influence, morality, making sense of the world, need for comfort and meaning etc.). The alternative, to suggest that someone believes in Christianity because there are difficult paradoxes to overcome is simply absurd, and provides no reason at all for rejecting the many competing faiths (or indeed agnosticism and atheism).

Again, the "leap of faith"/"no reason" non-explanation is at best useful to help those who already believe come to terms with their (perfectly reasonable) doubts, but not to convince others.