Sqrl said: "If you can't make a logical argument for a belief it has faith as its basis"
donathos said: "I'm not sure that I agree that the lack of belief in something (like god) is the same thing as a belief in something. If I were to propose some completely made up fantasy creature--the Sperzitt, an eighteen-headed flying eggplant monster--and I ask if you believe in such a thing, and you say "no"... well, I'm not sure that I would describe you as "believing" something new. Or that I would insist that your lack of belief is somehow "faith-based.""
A lack of belief does not constitute a belief. But a lack of belief based on something constitutes a belief in your basis to disbelieve. So if you have a reason to disbelieve then you have a new belief, namely the thing that made you rule out the belief.
donathos said: "But, that aside, let me construct a small scenario, touching on how I see "logic," "belief" and "faith," and maybe that will serve as a quickish answer:
Let's say that I were to look in the TV Guide and see that there's going to be a marathon of Designing Women on tonight, starting at 8pm. I would "believe" the TV Guide--I would believe that Designing Women would indeed be on at the specified time.
Now, I don't think that such a belief would require "faith" on my part. After all, I've read TV Guide in the past, and it hasn't steered me wrong; every time it's said that a television show would be on... lo and behold, it was. And based on everything I would have heard or known about TV Guide, I wouldn't suspect any duplicity on its part.
And so I would eagerly look foward to an evening with Delta Burke, Meshach Taylor, and the (underratedly scrumptious) Annie Potts."
First let me say this example is fundamentally different from what you are trying to make it analogous to. Specifically this example used the TV Guide which has a long track record of delivering an accurate TV schedule in the vast majority of cases.
With that said you do still use faith here in two ways. You have faith that no errors were made by the TV Guide staff, and you have faith that you read it correctly. Both of which are real possibilities even if in this example specifically they are minor possibilities.
The example attempts to highlight absurdity in the reasoning I'm using by showing that it produces an untenable standard when applied to an everyday example. It falls short of this because the example, unlike the case I applied it to, has observable evidence and sound logic that supports the conclusion that what you saw in the TV Guide is correct.
With that said there are still cases where TV guide has gotten the information wrong, or like you show later, people can misread/misremember the information. Either way you must trust (ie have faith) that this is not one of those times. If you accept that you are trusting that this time they are correct then you are accepting my argument that you use faith to make the final leap to the conclusion of what time your show is on.
But this is a very technical use of the argument and I'm not advocating its use where there is observable evidence supporting a position. With that said the use of these standards holds up in all cases, although it may produce a result that clashes with the daily usage of the words faith and belief when used in cases where observable evidence exists and as a result a need for rigorous scrutiny of positions does not exist.
donathos said: "But now, suppose that later on that same day, I overheard a radio commercial advertising a New Series... and--WTF--it's on the same time and station that Designing Women is supposed to be on! Ack. Crisis. I believe x to be true (Designing Women), but now there is a claim that not-x (New Series) is true.
My mind explodes at supposing x and not-x, and so I feel compelled to seek out new information, because deep down I reject the idea that x and not-x coexist. It isn't "logical."
I rush home to the TV Guide and re-examine it. And, to my shock and chagrin, I make a telling discovery: the TV Guide is from 1989. Oh yeah, I think, why in the world would anyone watch Designing Women in 2009 (Potts notwithstanding)?
The day is saved. New information has allowed me to reorder my beliefs so that now, instead of x and not-x, I have x and y.
However, if I now continued to believe that Designing Women would be on tonight instead of the New Series... I hold that that belief would be grounded in faith."
Again here you are trusting (ie having faith) that the information was passed to the radio personality correctly, that he read it correctly, and that you heard it correctly. Faith plays a role in the exchange of information in many aspects of every day life. This is why scientific studies use large samples, confidence intervals, etc... Everyday life does not require rigorous proof, so people don't wait for it, they use probability of correctness instead, and they assess that probability from past experiences with direct observations.
I do want to note that where it concerns your perception this is not questioning one's senses in the larger sense but the smaller sense. Questioning whether you've made a mistake in a specific instance (smaller sense) as opposed to questioning whether any input can be trusted at all (larger sense).
Sqrl said: "Having found no reason to believe in something is only partial logic to not believe it."
donathos said: "I think that "having found no reason to believe in something" is an excellent reason "to not believe it." If I must sacrifice logic to get there, or accept "partial logic," then so be it.
But I really don't think that logic is at stake, here. The way you seem to treat logic feels very foreign to me. I see logic more as an ordering tool--a way to find and root out contradiction. Whereas, it seems like you feel that every belief that a person takes on must be carefully pre-fitted into a syllogism."
You're moving away from the argument I'm making here. I'm not trying to confine people's beliefs at all. I have no objection in someone's choice to believe something...I just take issue if they assert it as a fully logical conclusion if it isn't. To be clear on your last point I'll reiterate that I'm not advocating a constant classification of every professed belief.
Sqrl said: "from there it is faith that your logic and reasoning to that point had you headed in the right direction that you use to make a leap to the conclusion"
donathos said: "Hmm... I really don't like this sentiment at all.
It seems to suggest that, not only must a person's beliefs be strictly "based on logic" somehow (which, imo, is a different sentiment than the one I like to endorse--that beliefs "be logical," i.e., non-contradictory)... but that having beliefs "based on logic" isn't enough, because then you'll find that faith is required to trust in the results of your logic and reasoning.
Yeah, anyways, I'm sure I could go on (and on), and probably will in the future when I see the replies, but for tonight I've got to get to bed! :)"
I'm not making any demands on the way people reach a belief...only taking issue with how they characterize them to others...or specifically mischaracterize them to others. To reiterate what I said above in perhaps a new way, I'm not requiring rigorous standards to be used as a test for holding a belief. I'm saying that if you want to say "my belief is logical" then you should be able to show how others can use logic to arrive at that belief and no other.
What I'm personally advocating is that where it concerns cases of very little or no evidence such standards must be used because it is precisely in this cases where mistakes in logic run rampant in the absence of facts to bind and catch the errors.
To give you an example of why I bring this up I would point to the many many debates I have about global warming. One of the constant factors in these debates is the insistence for supporting evidence of factual and logical claims. We debate ideas back and forth but often ideas are based on data and people ask for proof of that data from a source. This is an example of where casually someone's word is considered "taking it on faith" and a scientific paper is "evidence". We could show that even this "evidence" probably contains a bit of faith at some level but the point is that by moving it away from a single person expressing a belief to something everyone can look at and check and assess for themselves it submits itself to the agreement of multiple senses rather than relying on the fallable senses of a single individual.
The reason I draw the line at this evidence issue can be explained quite clearly and actually goes back to the larger sense of being able to trust human senses. In that case it is the overwhelming agreement of people on what we perceive that makes trusting our senses legitimate...after all if we all disagreed on what we perceived I doubt we would find our senses so useful. In cases where evidence exists for a position people can examine it and decide for themselves, but in cases like the "god" question there is no evidence and the only thing people can examine for themselves is the logic of others to see if they follow and agree with it.
PS - "Intellectually dishonest" might not be the right word/phrase for it tbh. I'm not trying to say there is necessarily an intent to deceive (although in some cases that is probably the case), only that there was at minimum a lack of effort to vet their own views.
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