Faith is nothing more than a willingness to await the evidence…. It is the search for knowledge on the installment plan: believe now, live an untestable hypothesis until your dying day, and you will discover you were right.
(Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 66)
Think Mr. Harris is by any chance willing to wait that long for me to pay him?
Personally, I’d prefer to be able to find out whether the evidence backs up the hypothesis a little sooner – like, while it still makes a difference. Because, living your entire life waiting for the evidence, then not getting it, seems like a waste of a life. What *else* is he putting on hold while waiting for this evidence?
Harris is not recommending this. He’s trying to show how silly faith can be.
Great quote. I love Harris for his focus on intellectual honesty. I might happen to disagree a bit on this one, though I think there is a lot of truth in it.
Faith is probably a mix of things. I think it’s often just a semiconscious refusal to accept reality, and I don’t say that with contempt. Reality can stink, but many of us have found it’s best to take it head on. I also think there may be something physiological about faith that Harris himself has been researching. I’ve rambled on about this recently on my blog:
http://kaweah.com/blog/2008/05/30/to-believe-is-human/
Faith may get silly but it is all we have in my opinion. Sam Harris comment indicates a failure to recognize his own point of entry for knowing. When ones presuppositions go unexamined and we make statements or contentions against other beliefs we are merely going nowhere. It would be much more beneficial to engage matters of knowing/beliefs on this level than any other. Therein lies a true dialogue that will enhance understanding for all parties. See Wikipedia’s entry the Epistemological Validity of Faith and Fideism and Pistisism.
I checked out the “Epistemological Validity” article and I find that it is dependent on a convenient shift of the goal posts. Most people of faith do not consider faith to be a conditional approximation or a best guess. Yes, faith as defined in the article is very scientific, rational, and above all, relativistic–Nietzsche might just like it–but it is a useless argument for those who hold faith to be absolute. I am astounded at how often people redefine “faith” just to be able to utter a phrase like “faith is valid.”
I read the wikipedia article you recommended, Miguel.
What I’ve never heard from a fideist is a good answer to the question of why one should be fideist about their articles of faith rather than someone elses.
Dan Jensen, I agree with your assessment for the most part. However, even the categorical term “absolute” needs defining. If one presupposes an “absolute certainty” in an empirical sense well then their faith will be in the empirical sense. Your starting point will determine the result. “All facts are theory-laden”: I do think this is an irreducible reality in our knowing. It is the “hermeneutical circle” if you will.
David E, your thoughts are interesting. Could you please develop that thought a bit more for me. Thanks!
Thanks for sparring guys.
I could propose a detailed philosophical argument for the invalidity of fideism on the basis of its providing no grounds for preferring one faith to another. But why should I do all the heavy lifting?
Its a simple, straightforward question—less in need of developing than answering.
Supposing one is sympathetic to fideism, why prefer one set of articles of faith to another?
David-
Your last line was all I needed, thanks. I assumed it was a straightforward question, but I am more of a simpleton than your simple writing can take. ;)
You stated that because fideism cannot provide any grounds to prefer one faith to another that it makes it invalid – I disagree with this statement. It would not render fideism invalid to be unable to provide a “so what now?”
I do believe there is a reasonable approach to discerning what article of faith one could adopt over another, but that is as you yourself alluded to a much more detailed conversation beyond the scope of comment scale.
What’s interesting is your need, demand or desire to have a ground for one faith over another. Your question seems to indicate that there is an absolute faith or standard for determining one over another. This runs contrary to a consistent atheistic belief. You, yourself are seeking grounds or justification when your presupposition cannot provide one for anything. You trust in reason after the Baconian tradition and conclude, “there is no god.” But you cannot even justify this over another starting point (read article of faith) yourself.
What’s interesting is your need, demand or desire to have a ground for one faith over another. Your question seems to indicate that there is an absolute faith or standard for determining one over another.
My question indicates one and only one thing: I see no reason, if I am a fideist, to be a fideist christian rather than a fideist buddhist or fideist anything else.
And I am wondering, if you are a fideist, why you prefer christian fideism over fideism in regard to any other religion.
You, yourself are seeking grounds or justification when your presupposition cannot provide one for anything. You trust in reason after the Baconian tradition and conclude, “there is no god.” But you cannot even justify this over another starting point (read article of faith) yourself.
By your comments I conclude you are probably a presuppositionalist.
Correct?
Regardless, the matter of presuppositions seems central to your thinking on this issue. So I ask: are there unreasonable presuppositions?
For example, if I presupposed that JK Rowling is a real life witch and wrote the Harry Potter books to introduce the reality of the world of wizards and witches to us, the Muggle world, in a gentle, undisruptive way and then proceeded to interpret everything I experience according to that presupposition would you consider me irrational?
In essence, what I am asking is what makes one presupposition sensible and another nutty. Or do you reject the idea that ANY presupposition is irrational?
You, yourself are seeking grounds or justification when your presupposition cannot provide one for anything.
I don’t recall stating any presupposition which I hold.
I have simply asked a question which seems problematic for anyone who endorses fideism (and which, I note, you have still not answered).
David E.,
Engaging in this conversation has served me to notice that it is necessary for me to qualify my use of fideism. I begin my response by stating that I am not a “fideist” in the tradition of the disparaged use of reason or that I find reason unreliable. Some definitions of fideism hold a dichotomy between faith and reason. I believe this to be a false dichotomy.
I believe reason is an innate faculty in the mind of man that is the least at the service of intuition and social and intellectual constructs and categories of thought within a particular context. From a finite perspective this appears to me to be an irreducible phenomenon of all humanity. I believe “faith-ism” or Fidesim is the way that I employ it essentially states that all knowing begins by first believing, “Crede, ut intelligas”.
Anselm of Canterbury said, “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this I believe – that unless I believe, I should not understand.” I believe this statement typifies the process of all human knowing. In this sense of the word I believe you and I are fideist.
I realize I may have made this discussion a bit problematic by using fideism when there are possibly multiply usages of the term. I should have qualified that in the beginning. It may have been better to simply say, “credo ut intelligam” – “I believe in order to know.” I simply provided the Wiki link because it seemed to capture some of the essential nuances of the knowing process which I believe needs an across the board attention.
Now this is where your question is begging and I agree that it should beg. You stated
“I see no reason, if I am a fideist, to be a fideist christian rather than a fideist buddhist or fideist anything else.”
And then asked,
“And I am wondering, if you are a fideist, why you prefer christian fideism over fideism in regard to any other religion.” …. “what makes one presupposition sensible and another nutty. Or do you reject the idea that ANY presupposition is irrational? ….Are there unreasonable presuppositions?”
I can answer the former question to an extent. But as I indicated in my earlier comment #9, it would lead to a much larger scope of conversation beyond comment scale. I will try to be clear and succinct.
Unless one has completely lost all wit and reason for anything, which is a frightening thought, one has to posit trust or be entertaining some belief at any given point in order to question or doubt another. If one doubts “p” one must be subscribing to another belief “r”. So David, when you say, “I see no reason…if I am a fideist, to be a” this or that, it is because your current belief employs reason in such a way that it may not or cannot make sense of this. Your reason is at the service of governing presuppositions like, “there is no such thing as the super-natural”, “there is no transcendental.” Unlike my presupposition starting from the personal disclosure of a God that is transcendental and therefore and requiring a “super-natural.”
You said you do not recall stating any presupposition you hold. Your right. You didn’t explicitly state them but I can to a degree perceive what your presupposition(s) may be by your logic. If I am correct in assuming you are an atheist, I believe you are an atheist that trusts in ‘autonomous’ and independent – detached reasoning after the tradition of the scientific method. Perhaps you fall into the categories (which I view as merely heuristic) of being an empiricist, materialist or a metaphyiscal realist. Forgive me if these labels do not help and only serve to complicate this discussion. I don’t think you are these things but I believe you think along these lines. My guess is that you are beyond being nominally informed of these categories.
If all begin knowing by first believing then are not all truth claims or faith statements essentially relative? Yes and no. If all start by faith and then build knowledge upon an unprovable foundation – of which modernism assumed knowledge could be built upon a foundation of indubitable proofs, but failed to recognize that their presupposition was determining this assumption – then truth has a great measure of subjectivity. There is a relative nature to knowledge.However this does not necessitate that we cannot have confidence in what we believe.
I believe that when the conversation goes in this direction when we are examining our faith positions ‘world views’ then we are essentially left to observe if our world views correspond to reality, if it is coherent and also on a practical level what does the world view produce.
Dave, where you stand and reason you can, according to that reason determine that beliefs are irrational. However, even these other beliefs employ a rationale that would according to its own would not be rational. In that sense….depending on where one posits rational/irrational is relative. But, that does not necessarily make this phenomena ultimately true in terms of an absolute truth. So to go with your example I would think that you are “nutty” and “irrational” though you may have a rationale for living in the world of JK Rowling. Sensibility and nutty are determined by my rationale.
What the biblical narrative (the Gospel of Jesus Christ) presents to me within the community of faith that I inhabit – being the Christian tradition – is a world view that does have a correspondence to reality, can make sense of coherence and has the power to produce what is desirable and profitable for all man. Does the Bible have all the answers to everything? No. Are there lots of unanswered questions and difficulties that man still feels has not been fully addressed in detail? Yes. No world view has perfect knowledge. But one thing I notice to be for sure is that the biblical narrative – the revelation of God makes knowledge possible. The grounds of the justification for coherence and the need for correspondence are transcendental.
Has this faith community sucked and failed at living in this reality that God is calling man to live into? Heck Yeah! But that does not make the faith invalid. The testimony of God is the testimony of God. All men can be liars and His word still remain steadfast.
Ultimately I have been captivated by the mind of Christ and have seen the aesthetic wonder of what He has revealed to man. This is personal knowledge, mediated by a person, a witness and a testimony. It is an irreducible fact that we all are trusting in the testimony of another or tradition.
Thank you for this discussion. I find it good and civil.
Peace
Your reason is at the service of governing presuppositions like, “there is no such thing as the super-natural”, “there is no transcendental.”
You are mistaken. I hold no such presuppositions.
I do not presuppose the nonexistence of the supernatural, of the transcendental or of God.
I believe that when the conversation goes in this direction when we are examining our faith positions ‘world views’ then we are essentially left to observe if our world views correspond to reality, if it is coherent and also on a practical level what does the world view produce.
“Corresponds to reality” in what sense? In what sense do you “observe your worldview to correspond to reality”? I know of little in the way of observations which tend to confirm the claim that God (or gods) exists, that an afterlife is real, that reincarnation occurs, that demons exist, that angels or ghosts exist. Etc. Etc. Not to mention that appealing to “observation” seems to be an appeal to empirical evidence—just the thing you seem to be claiming we DONT need to have good basis for belief.
Coherent is a very low standard if by that you mean that the belief system is not internally contradictory. False belief systems can easily achieve that.
As to the “practical level”, it is an observable fact that mutually contradictory religions can produce what is experienced by their believers as “what is desirable and profitable to all man”. So that doesn’t seem to get us anywhere.
It seems that such a way of approaching epistemology as you propose lets anybody’s belief be regarded as rational so long as it isnt selfcontradictory or observably disconfirmable (like if someone’s religion claims that the world will end on a specific date—then doesn’t).
Maybe you’re happy with that—-if so, you’re more easily satisfied than I.
My position in regard to theism, christian or otherwise, is simply this:
If God actually exists, he can give quite good empirical evidence in support of that fact (as just one example among the multitude of possibilities, he could allow all our dead relatives to visit in spirit form for an entire day, one year after their death, therefore confirming the existence of an afterlife, of angels, of which religion is the true one, etc).
If he doesn’t exist, of course, he can’t (fictional characters cant provide you with evidence they exist).
He hasn’t provided any such evidence so, even if he does exist, he certainly has little good reason to expect belief.
This position does not presuppose the nonexistence of God or the supernatural.
It is obvious that if one’s presuppositions are mistaken that all one’s judgements will be skewed by this error.
So is not the sensible thing to keep one’s presuppositions to the bare minimum?
For example, presupposing the truth of basic principles of logic which seem self-evidently true and other truly basic propositions. Even such propositions as “there is an external world” and “my wife is not a p-zombie” are, I would propose, probably not basic enough to be sensibly taken as presuppositions. And certainly not the truth of an particular religion or metaphysical theory.
I’m sure many will jump me for saying this, but in all seriousness, this quote sure sounds like the original case Charles Darwin made… the solid evidence wasn’t there for generations. Maybe we all have more ‘faith’ than we’d like to admit?
When we live only for reward in the next life (which may or may not be there), we miss out on so much in this life. This is all we really know we have, and christians are spending their precious time talking about the afterlife. What a waste.