I'm French, and as such, people around me are mostly not religious, or if they are, tend to not express their religious view. France being a secular country since 1905, religion has been pushed away pretty hard. But there is a small part of the population for whom religion is important, and this group seems to grow.
Now I'm living in Belgium, which is not a secular country. I haven't met enough people here to be able to say anything general, but it seems that religion is not more important here than in France, despite the "religion" class in public school.
I have a female colleague here, and we spoke about religions and beliefs a couple times, and she's more "spiritual" than religious.
And yet, this position still bothers me. Like my parent's, who tell me that they basically don't believe in the christian god, but in a "higher power".
Despite my "respect believers, not beliefs", I still can't accept this position, just like I don't accept the "good christian" or "good muslim" nonsense.
I have a major problem with faith. Religions, beliefs, that's almost accessory. Faith is the real problem here. Faith is basically "believe what you want", regarding its reality. If anyone can believe anything, and we have to accept that (in the sense that in our society, faith is always presented as a positive thing, beyond criticism), how can we judge the actions of a believer over the other actions of another believer ? Daesh's actions are violent, but it's because their faith lies in a violent book. Why christian people's faith would be "better" than a djihadist's ? Just because the djihadist's actions are more violent ? I don't think so. If you accept faith as an pure source of moral judgement, on which you base your values, then you have to accept all actions based on faith.
That's why I think we need to get rid of religion altogether : you can't have "good believers" without the "bad" ones. And the price is too high.
It's pretty much like gun ownership. You can't have responsible owners without the dumb ones, so you need to get rid of guns altogether. Here too, the price is too high.

Well, you make the distinction between faith and religion, and say that religion is almost an accessory. This being the case, how would getting rid of religion solve the problem of faith? Secondly, I can't see how it would be possible to get rid of faith, which is an inner belief. We can't police thoughts.

Fallible wrote:Well, you make the distinction between faith and religion, and say that religion is almost an accessory. This being the case, how would getting rid of religion solve the problem of faith? Secondly, I can't see how it would be possible to get rid of faith, which is an inner belief. We can't police thoughts.

yeah I meant get rid of faith. And education is the answer. Education can teach you that magic doesn't exist, and anything you claim has to be verifiable, otherwise it's shit and will be treated as such. But most of all, we need to stop treating faith as a positive thing.

We do teach kids about testing and verifying, sadly this hasn't stopped faith. I would like to see the end of religious content in schools. I don't necessarily mean RE classes, but the daily Christian-based act of worship we still have here should go, and any insinuation that God is real which can creep into the whole school day. I'm assuming that by faith you are referring specifically to theistic/deistic faith. I can think of occasions where faith in for example someone, something or oneself can be a positive thing.

Fallible wrote:We do teach kids about testing and verifying, sadly this hasn't stopped faith. I would like to see the end of religious content in schools. I don't necessarily mean RE classes, but the daily Christian-based act of worship we still have here should go, and any insinuation that God is real which can creep into the whole school day. I'm assuming that by faith you are referring specifically to theistic/deistic faith. I can think of occasions where faith in for example someone, something or oneself can be a positive thing.

Well that's clearly not everywhere, far from it.

You can't teach faith out of the people who value it. They will apply skeptical inquiry where they see fit and not elsewhere if they believe faith to be a valuable, appropriate concept to apply to certain facets of their lives.

aban57 wrote:

Fallible wrote:We do teach kids about testing and verifying, sadly this hasn't stopped faith. I would like to see the end of religious content in schools. I don't necessarily mean RE classes, but the daily Christian-based act of worship we still have here should go, and any insinuation that God is real which can creep into the whole school day. I'm assuming that by faith you are referring specifically to theistic/deistic faith. I can think of occasions where faith in for example someone, something or oneself can be a positive thing.

Well that's clearly not everywhere, far from it.

How do you mean? We teach science in schools in the UK, France, Belgium, etc., which involves testing and verifying. We teach how to analyse and assess sources for accuracy in other subjects too. We could definitely do with logic/critical thinking classes, but we learn to apply critical thinking across different subjects already. In countries where the education system is fully secular, we still haven't got rid of faith and belief.

Think of it this way. No one is directly taught in schools that any weird perceived phenomenon which does not have an explanation is caused, for example, by the disembodied spirit of a dead person, but people still make the jump to believe that. My view on both this and theistic faith is that you won't rid the world of them through education in logic and critical thinking, because it by definition has nothing to do with logic or critical thinking. Faith is belief without evidence. In other words, many of those who have faith don't care for it to be scientifically or logically verified. They have faith for purely emotional reasons, and because they really, really wish it to be so.

People are, on the whole, thick as pig shit. You'll never convince them their favorite Magic SkyDaddy isn't in charge, because they want an edge when looking for a parking spot at Walmart.

aban57 wrote:
in our society faith is always presented as a positive thing beyond criticism

Faith is not always presented as a positive thing beyond criticism

The problems is that faith is essential to human functioning.
You have to have faith that your senses accurately reflect the outside world - there are well documented instances of where this is not the case and the individual is entirely unaware of what they are not seeing/feeling/hearing
You have to have faith that your brain's construct of your world is functionally accurate - there are precious few checking mechanisms for this.
You have to have faith that the future is worth working for, that the sun will rise, that the rains will come, that food will be available if you plan sufficiently etc.
Anyone setting up a business must have faith in their idea, in the people they work with etc.
All of scientific advancement relies on varying amounts of faith - in constructing the hypothesis through to investing in the effort to try to validate/disprove said hypothesis.

And so on. OK you can change the name to trust/belief, but in all instances we are placing our trust in something that we cannot either presently (or ever in some cases) validate, the amount of evidence we can provide in support of each of these beliefs varies - but makes it very difficult to isolate one type of faith / belief and to determine that that type of faith is unacceptable.

That's basically the argument that religious apologists make - we all have faith or beliefs and we think this is reasonable, so religious faith and belief is reasonable because it's the same thing. It isn't.

"Faith" is the excuse people give for believing things without evidence and/or contrary to evidence. A belief is a claim that one accepts as true. Faith <> Belief

This equivocation between the two words is what is harmful, and those who spout this conflation are doing harm.

scott1328 wrote:"Faith" is the excuse people give for believing things without evidence and/or contrary to evidence. A belief is a claim that one accepts as true. Faith <> Belief

This equivocation between the two words is what is harmful, and those who spout this conflation are doing harm.

The dividing line is less clear than you state.

Justified belief is what we hold to be true based on the available evidence. However we have beliefs we cannot reasonably provide justification for as I have outline above. Further talk to religious people e.g. the ID brigade and they will provide plenty of 'justification' for their beliefs. Faith in the secular view is one extreme, not in everybodies view.

aban57 wrote:I'm French, and as such, people around me are mostly not religious, or if they are, tend to not express their religious view. France being a secular country since 1905, religion has been pushed away pretty hard. But there is a small part of the population for whom religion is important, and this group seems to grow.
Now I'm living in Belgium, which is not a secular country. I haven't met enough people here to be able to say anything general, but it seems that religion is not more important here than in France, despite the "religion" class in public school.
I have a female colleague here, and we spoke about religions and beliefs a couple times, and she's more "spiritual" than religious.
And yet, this position still bothers me. Like my parent's, who tell me that they basically don't believe in the christian god, but in a "higher power".
Despite my "respect believers, not beliefs", I still can't accept this position, just like I don't accept the "good christian" or "good muslim" nonsense.
I have a major problem with faith. Religions, beliefs, that's almost accessory. Faith is the real problem here. Faith is basically "believe what you want", regarding its reality. If anyone can believe anything, and we have to accept that (in the sense that in our society, faith is always presented as a positive thing, beyond criticism), how can we judge the actions of a believer over the other actions of another believer ? Daesh's actions are violent, but it's because their faith lies in a violent book. Why christian people's faith would be "better" than a djihadist's ? Just because the djihadist's actions are more violent ? I don't think so. If you accept faith as an pure source of moral judgement, on which you base your values, then you have to accept all actions based on faith.
That's why I think we need to get rid of religion altogether : you can't have "good believers" without the "bad" ones. And the price is too high.
It's pretty much like gun ownership. You can't have responsible owners without the dumb ones, so you need to get rid of guns altogether. Here too, the price is too high.

Your perspective is sluice, you should read up on such things as the epistemic relevance of controversy, disagreement as evidence, and deliberative constraint.

Pebble wrote:The problems is that faith is essential to human functioning.
You have to have faith that your senses accurately reflect the outside world - there are well documented instances of where this is not the case and the individual is entirely unaware of what they are not seeing/feeling/hearing
You have to have faith that your brain's construct of your world is functionally accurate - there are precious few checking mechanisms for this.
You have to have faith that the future is worth working for, that the sun will rise, that the rains will come, that food will be available if you plan sufficiently etc.
Anyone setting up a business must have faith in their idea, in the people they work with etc.
All of scientific advancement relies on varying amounts of faith - in constructing the hypothesis through to investing in the effort to try to validate/disprove said hypothesis.

And so on. OK you can change the name to trust/belief, but in all instances we are placing our trust in something that we cannot either presently (or ever in some cases) validate, the amount of evidence we can provide in support of each of these beliefs varies - but makes it very difficult to isolate one type of faith / belief and to determine that that type of faith is unacceptable.

Wrong.

You're confusing inference from insufficient data with uncritical acceptance of unsupported assertions. Which is wrong, because in the case of the former, you have at least some data to work with. Along with the possibility of changing your inference when better data arrives. The moment you're processing data to arrive at your inferences, you're dispensing with faith altogether.

I suggest that you are blaming faith and religion, for what is obviously human nature.

Legislating or even persecuting away the particular EXCUSE people apply to cover their acts of violence or suppression against each other, wont change the occurrence of acts of violence.

Calilasseia wrote:

Pebble wrote:The problems is that faith is essential to human functioning.
You have to have faith that your senses accurately reflect the outside world - there are well documented instances of where this is not the case and the individual is entirely unaware of what they are not seeing/feeling/hearing
You have to have faith that your brain's construct of your world is functionally accurate - there are precious few checking mechanisms for this.
You have to have faith that the future is worth working for, that the sun will rise, that the rains will come, that food will be available if you plan sufficiently etc.
Anyone setting up a business must have faith in their idea, in the people they work with etc.
All of scientific advancement relies on varying amounts of faith - in constructing the hypothesis through to investing in the effort to try to validate/disprove said hypothesis.

And so on. OK you can change the name to trust/belief, but in all instances we are placing our trust in something that we cannot either presently (or ever in some cases) validate, the amount of evidence we can provide in support of each of these beliefs varies - but makes it very difficult to isolate one type of faith / belief and to determine that that type of faith is unacceptable.

Wrong.

You're confusing inference from insufficient data with uncritical acceptance of unsupported assertions. Which is wrong, because in the case of the former, you have at least some data to work with. Along with the possibility of changing your inference when better data arrives. The moment you're processing data to arrive at your inferences, you're dispensing with faith altogether.

No you are confusing your world view with the right world view. In the view of 'believers' they are working with the evidence, the evidence may be incomplete and in some respects contradictory, but they are working with evidence. We may disagree with what they regard as evidence, we may disagree with how they weight/scrutinise available evidence - but that may be our bias (viewed from their perspective).
For example when Einstein came up with relativity, there was no supporting evidence. There was a previous Newtonian world view that worked perfectly well for all obvious problems. The difference then is that this was subsequently validated by empiric observation. But at the time of the initial mathematical modeling, it was simply a hypothesis that some people (Einstein for example) had faith in and appeared to solve some rather eclectic issues with the previous models.
Now move on to faith in the accuracy of your brains internal model of the world - how can you provide unequivocal evidence that this is so? Given all evidence you produce to support this is true or otherwise is filtered by the same brain!

nice try ....
The Bayesian brain compares continuously it's internal construct with new data. Without repetitious reinforcement it gets discarded.

had faith in and appeared to solve some rather eclectic issues with the previous models.

You use faith completely incorrectly.

Awaiting further evidence has nothing to do with blind faith. Darwin's science informed him that there had to be a moth to match the long stemmed flower.
It's not faith, it's science reasoning awaiting confirmation and arrived at through discipline.v

Gets wearisome afterwhile.....freedom from religion gets more and more desirable

Pebble wrote:The problems is that faith is essential to human functioning.

Oxford dictionaries wrote:
1 Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

2 Strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.

Faith as in trust or confidence based on observational experience OK. Faith based on religious or spiritual conviction, not so much.

Pebble wrote:You have to have faith that your senses accurately reflect the outside world - there are well documented instances of where this is not the case and the individual is entirely unaware of what they are not seeing/feeling/hearing
You have to have faith that your brain's construct of your world is functionally accurate - there are precious few checking mechanisms for this.
You have to have faith that the future is worth working for, that the sun will rise, that the rains will come, that food will be available if you plan sufficiently etc.
Anyone setting up a business must have faith in their idea, in the people they work with etc.
All of scientific advancement relies on varying amounts of faith - in constructing the hypothesis through to investing in the effort to try to validate/disprove said hypothesis.

Just because labels for two different concepts are spelled and pronounced the same does not make them equivalent. The above is an example of word games that theists and or spiritualist like to employ to justify the unjustifiable. If someone like me says that faith, meaning religious faith, is belief in spite of an absence of evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary simply saying that I do it too and providing examples of faith that is not religious faith does not refute my statement. What it says is that you acknowledge the truth of my statement and are trying to justify your religious faith by claiming everyone is just as wrong as you.

Pebble wrote:And so on. OK you can change the name to trust/belief, but in all instances we are placing our trust in something that we cannot either presently (or ever in some cases) validate, the amount of evidence we can provide in support of each of these beliefs varies - but makes it very difficult to isolate one type of faith / belief and to determine that that type of faith is unacceptable.

The idea is that religious faith should not or cannot be questioned because it is personal. Most, if not all of the other types of faith that you've mentioned can be and are questioned without being seen as personal attacks.

This type of faith argument is akin to me telling you that I use my mandolin to slice my home fries and you arguing that you have a mandolin too and musical instruments don't make for good kitchen implements. Context is important when using words with more than one definition.

Pebble wrote:
For example when Einstein came up with relativity, there was no supporting evidence. There was a previous Newtonian world view that worked perfectly well for all obvious problems. The difference then is that this was subsequently validated by empiric observation. But at the time of the initial mathematical modeling, it was simply a hypothesis that some people (Einstein for example) had faith in and appeared to solve some rather eclectic issues with the previous models.

Your problem here is that Einstein's initial proposal wasn't taken on "faith" by anyone, even Einstein from what I've read. The first step was coming up with the idea. The next step was a rather lengthy period with Einstein, his wife and a few friends/colleagues trying to make the math work. Then ways of falsification were proposed by way of experiments, and finally those experiments were preformed resulting in verification not falsification. At no point in the chain of events was anything like religious faith employed.

That Einstein may have been confident about his idea from the inception of the idea is not faith. He was a trained and accomplished physicist that had an insight into the nature of matter and energy space and time from the viewpoint of someone studying light and electrodynamics of moving bodies.

But if you want to talk about Einstein and something approaching religious faith we can look at what Einstein called his "biggest blunder". Despite evidence contained in his own mathematical formulas Einstein had faith that the universe was eternal and static. He even went so far as to fudge his own mathematical formula to make it consistent with his faith in a eternal and static universe.