Well, Jesus and Mo have now made the same point in comic form:
(Hat tip too many tribbles.)
The Adventures of a Friendly French-American ExMormon Atheist Mom Living in Switzerland!!!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Exactly!!
You remember my usual reaction when people of faith start accusing atheism of being a "faith"-based belief or a "religion"?
Well, Jesus and Mo have now made the same point in comic form:
(Hat tip too many tribbles.)
Well, Jesus and Mo have now made the same point in comic form:
(Hat tip too many tribbles.)
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7 comments:
Yet, to declare that which is unknowable is in fact known requires faith whether you claim God exists or not.
Hey Joe!!!
What do you mean "yet"? You're again making the same point that Jesus, Mo, and I made. If you think that "faith" means making unjustified claims, then you're saying that faith is a bad thing; eg. faith should be avoided.
Well, here's a fine and delightful coincidence this morning! Chanson, just 40 minutes ago, someone left a comment on my blog asserting that knowledge "...requires you to have faith in other people, trustworthy teachers, books, statistical findings, and information relayed through various mediums."
I have not responded yet. I'm thinking I might make a rather lengthy comment on the issue, and perhaps incorporate the cartoon you've posted into my reply.
One of the things I want to point out is that, given that we rely on others for most of our knowledge, is that not all the more reason why we and those others have a moral duty to base our beliefs on logic and evidence, rather than base our beliefs on faith if that faith is contradicted by logic and evidence?
Hey Paul!!!
So true! One thing I'd add is that "faith" isn't the right word when it comes to "other people, trustworthy teachers, books, statistical findings, and information relayed through various mediums." It would be more appropriate to go on trust and confidence. Sure, you can't do all of the primary research on every subject yourself. However, you can analyze what types of evidence and reasoning are used to back different claims, and you can use that analysis to judge how likely a given claim is to be true. It's not about picking whichever claims or authorities you like and then just believing them on "faith." (At least not if you're shooting for accuracy.) You can use our own brain to figure out how much trust/confidence various claims and authorities deserve.
Thank you for the distinction between faith and trust, Chanson. I probably would have missed making that distinction if both you and CD (Cognitive Dissenter) had not mentioned it.
Debating these fundies is a more or less new experience for me. For some reason, I don't get many of them on my blog.
No, I'm simply stating that atheism requires faith just as theism.
Faith isn't a good or bad thing, it's simply a belief in that which is unknown. It has nothing to do with justification or not; faith isn't based on concrete evidence or reproducible results.
Faith is a subset of belief.
The problem I have with many atheists and theists is when they suggest they "know" their position to be fact/reality. (This is a big problem I had with Mormons even when I was one; they often bear their testimony saying "I know..." yet they know no such thing; they believe, nothing more. [This largely goes back to a series of talks in the late 70s early 80s by, I believe, McConkie and Packard who preached that simply believing wasn't good enough; that if you believe strongly enough, that's as good as knowing. It's a total crock that has stuck.])
Hey Joe!!!
Joe, I'm an atheist, and I think that claiming to "know" something you don't know is not called "faith", it's called deluding yourself. I'm sure there exist atheists who delude themselves -- they're only human -- but I'm not going to say I think that's a good thing. If you think that "faith" = deluding yourself/lying to yourself = super cool, then bully for you, but it doesn't give me much reason to respect your faith.
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