blindwatchmaker
December 22, 2003, 10:02 AM
It seems to me that given that there is so much we don't know about the universe, it is important to think about methods for finding truth.
Let us consider the two most common methods and evaluate them (as impartially as possible) on the basis of their merits and acheivements.
Method 1: Believing things by faith
What this means is believing things to be true even without a single shred of solid evidence because we have a strong "inside" feeling that it must be true.
It is not always the case that things believed by faith have totally no evidence but quite often there is none, or people can't agree on whether the evidence definitely justifies the belief.
Method 2: Believing things through evidence that supports the belief
What this means is that in order for an idea to be believed, there must be
some evidence available to justify the belief. Sometimes the idea comes after seeing the evidence (eg someone leaves a message on your answerphone and this is evidence that they have tried to contact you) and sometimes the idea comes before the evidence(eg you suspect that someone commited a crime and then find evidence that proves that they did, such as being caught on security camera).
Pretty much everything we claim to know comes as a result of these two processes. But as an approach to collecting knowledge, how do they compare? Are they just as good as each other? Both worthy of equal respect and acceptance?
Looking at what man has acheived in the way of knowledge about the universe and how it works, about ourselves, our bodies, the world around us and other important knowledge, how much has come from method 1 and how much from method 2? Which appoach has proved historically more "useful" and which has a higher error rate?
I think that any reasonable person would accept that evaluating ideas on the basis of evidence(method 2) has acheived much more "truth" about the world than belief through faith. If anyone challenges this assertion I would challenge them to come up with ten advances that we have made that have added to our understanding or quality of life that are based purely on faith.
There is another way in which belief through evidence is far superior to faith. This is that belief through evidence is "self policing". By this I mean that quite often, we have incorrect beliefs as a result of misinterpreting the evidence, or because we don't yet have the full picture. Then at some later stage, if new evidence comes to light we are forced to modify or abandon the original belief. The beauty of this system is that the incorrect beliefs get washed out of the system as time goes on, and only those that are extremely well founded are allowed to "stay in the club".
Does faith have any such filtering or quality control? I think not. If you were to take all the ideas that have been believed purely as a result of a "feeling inside" by all people throughout history to the present day, it would certainly be the case that most of them turned out not to be true. This may at first seem like an unproven assertion, but think about it. All the ancient civilizations with their war gods, sun gods and sky gods. All the people who burned innocent women and young girls for being "witches". All the witch doctors who claimed that a sick child could be cured by "shaking the leaves of the village tree over them" (before the child died), all the prophecies that have never come to pass (I've lost count of how many times the earth was meant to end), all the hunches that modern day people have that turn out to be untrue, all the money lost in gambling halls by people who "just have a feeling deep inside", all the different religions in the world who all believe their "inside feelings" just as strongly but by virtue of their different beliefs must contain a majority of people who belief falsehoods(If Islam is factually correct then all xtians must be wrong and vice versa etc..)
This list goes on. What's more, the strength or passion with which a feeling of faith is felt does not make it any truer.
There is another sense in which belief through evidence scores more highly than faith. This is in it's ability to make successful predictions. Almost all religions are filled with ambiguously worded prophecies of what is to come. The vast majority turn out to be either false, smudged(ie written after the event) or come true either by being worded generally enough that they were bound to, or by being obvious in the first place. The performance and accuracy of religious prophecies pales into limp significance against the pinpoint accuracy of scientific predictions. Show me a prophecy that will tell you to the nearest minute, what time a certain comet will appear in the sky over a point on earth in four hundred years. Basing beliefs on evidence allows predictions of this accuracy to be made every day.
It is my contention that given there is so much about the universe that we don't know (and perhaps never will) then if we want our beliefs to be true (rather than just fun and comforting whether true or not) we should adopt the approach to finding truth that is most likely to yield results. I find it hard to see how "faith" can reasonably be considered a realistic alternative to scientific method and evidence.
I am not a scholar of science or theology and if through lack of knowledge, I have under valued the power of faith to inform us of useful truths, then please educate me by telling me which ones it has given us.
There is one more point to note on this subject. People who claim to accept faith as a valid reason for believing, tend to be very selective about when to do this. At all other times, they too demand evidence. For example, if I were to say to a faith believer, "I'm sorry but your house has burned down" and they said "how do you know?", if I said "I just have a deep inside feeling that it has", they would think that I was a liar or insane. They would certainly take steps to see the evidence (blackened burned out shell etc) before contacting their insurers to make a claim. Why should some ideas demand evidence and others be exempt?
Some people with religious beliefs claim that their beliefs are founded not just on pure faith but on their interpretation of the available evidence. To them I would say that if they are 100% sure that they have researched the evidence through unbiased sources and still conclude that it points toward their religious beliefs being true, then the topic of debate should move to weighing up the evidence itself and exaiming the merits of the different interpretations to see which is more consistent and which scores better at making successful predictions etc.
In light of the above, I would love to hear a well reasoned argument that favours faith as an approach to truth.
(I have not posted this in S and S because I wish the focus of discussion to be on the merits/faults of faith that underpins religious belief)
Let us consider the two most common methods and evaluate them (as impartially as possible) on the basis of their merits and acheivements.
Method 1: Believing things by faith
What this means is believing things to be true even without a single shred of solid evidence because we have a strong "inside" feeling that it must be true.
It is not always the case that things believed by faith have totally no evidence but quite often there is none, or people can't agree on whether the evidence definitely justifies the belief.
Method 2: Believing things through evidence that supports the belief
What this means is that in order for an idea to be believed, there must be
some evidence available to justify the belief. Sometimes the idea comes after seeing the evidence (eg someone leaves a message on your answerphone and this is evidence that they have tried to contact you) and sometimes the idea comes before the evidence(eg you suspect that someone commited a crime and then find evidence that proves that they did, such as being caught on security camera).
Pretty much everything we claim to know comes as a result of these two processes. But as an approach to collecting knowledge, how do they compare? Are they just as good as each other? Both worthy of equal respect and acceptance?
Looking at what man has acheived in the way of knowledge about the universe and how it works, about ourselves, our bodies, the world around us and other important knowledge, how much has come from method 1 and how much from method 2? Which appoach has proved historically more "useful" and which has a higher error rate?
I think that any reasonable person would accept that evaluating ideas on the basis of evidence(method 2) has acheived much more "truth" about the world than belief through faith. If anyone challenges this assertion I would challenge them to come up with ten advances that we have made that have added to our understanding or quality of life that are based purely on faith.
There is another way in which belief through evidence is far superior to faith. This is that belief through evidence is "self policing". By this I mean that quite often, we have incorrect beliefs as a result of misinterpreting the evidence, or because we don't yet have the full picture. Then at some later stage, if new evidence comes to light we are forced to modify or abandon the original belief. The beauty of this system is that the incorrect beliefs get washed out of the system as time goes on, and only those that are extremely well founded are allowed to "stay in the club".
Does faith have any such filtering or quality control? I think not. If you were to take all the ideas that have been believed purely as a result of a "feeling inside" by all people throughout history to the present day, it would certainly be the case that most of them turned out not to be true. This may at first seem like an unproven assertion, but think about it. All the ancient civilizations with their war gods, sun gods and sky gods. All the people who burned innocent women and young girls for being "witches". All the witch doctors who claimed that a sick child could be cured by "shaking the leaves of the village tree over them" (before the child died), all the prophecies that have never come to pass (I've lost count of how many times the earth was meant to end), all the hunches that modern day people have that turn out to be untrue, all the money lost in gambling halls by people who "just have a feeling deep inside", all the different religions in the world who all believe their "inside feelings" just as strongly but by virtue of their different beliefs must contain a majority of people who belief falsehoods(If Islam is factually correct then all xtians must be wrong and vice versa etc..)
This list goes on. What's more, the strength or passion with which a feeling of faith is felt does not make it any truer.
There is another sense in which belief through evidence scores more highly than faith. This is in it's ability to make successful predictions. Almost all religions are filled with ambiguously worded prophecies of what is to come. The vast majority turn out to be either false, smudged(ie written after the event) or come true either by being worded generally enough that they were bound to, or by being obvious in the first place. The performance and accuracy of religious prophecies pales into limp significance against the pinpoint accuracy of scientific predictions. Show me a prophecy that will tell you to the nearest minute, what time a certain comet will appear in the sky over a point on earth in four hundred years. Basing beliefs on evidence allows predictions of this accuracy to be made every day.
It is my contention that given there is so much about the universe that we don't know (and perhaps never will) then if we want our beliefs to be true (rather than just fun and comforting whether true or not) we should adopt the approach to finding truth that is most likely to yield results. I find it hard to see how "faith" can reasonably be considered a realistic alternative to scientific method and evidence.
I am not a scholar of science or theology and if through lack of knowledge, I have under valued the power of faith to inform us of useful truths, then please educate me by telling me which ones it has given us.
There is one more point to note on this subject. People who claim to accept faith as a valid reason for believing, tend to be very selective about when to do this. At all other times, they too demand evidence. For example, if I were to say to a faith believer, "I'm sorry but your house has burned down" and they said "how do you know?", if I said "I just have a deep inside feeling that it has", they would think that I was a liar or insane. They would certainly take steps to see the evidence (blackened burned out shell etc) before contacting their insurers to make a claim. Why should some ideas demand evidence and others be exempt?
Some people with religious beliefs claim that their beliefs are founded not just on pure faith but on their interpretation of the available evidence. To them I would say that if they are 100% sure that they have researched the evidence through unbiased sources and still conclude that it points toward their religious beliefs being true, then the topic of debate should move to weighing up the evidence itself and exaiming the merits of the different interpretations to see which is more consistent and which scores better at making successful predictions etc.
In light of the above, I would love to hear a well reasoned argument that favours faith as an approach to truth.
(I have not posted this in S and S because I wish the focus of discussion to be on the merits/faults of faith that underpins religious belief)