Posts
There have been a series of posts by John Loftus on his
Debunking Christianity blog where he argues that reasonable faith is an
oxymoron. John defines faith as, “An attitude or feeling whereby someone
attributes a higher probability to the evidence than what the evidence calls
for.” Is this a good definition? On one hand, yes, John is right to talk about
probabilities because the only thing that we can know with absolute certainty
is that we exist, everything else must be believed or rejected with varying
degrees of certainty. On the other hand, I think that John’s definition is not
very precise because how can we know how high a probability has to be?
What are some other definitions of faith? Merriam-Webster
dictionary defines faith as, “Firm belief in something for which there is no
proof.” I’m taking the Merriam-Webster definition as referring to absolute
proof. The philosopher, Immanuel Kant defines faith as, “A rational attitude
towards a potential object of knowledge which arises when we are subjectively
certain it is true even though we are unable to gain theoretical or objective
certainty.” Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the
conviction of things not seen.” I think these definitions work better. From these definitions I
think there is a faith element to all beliefs outside of the belief in our own
existence. This is something that John disagrees with, but I think this is
largely because of the religious connotations of the word faith, and his aversion
to anything religious.
Now let’s get back to John’s discussion of faith. He writes:
I do not deny that at any given time we must assume some things since we cannot place on the table everything we think is true and examine them all at the same time. This is especially true about our notions that we exist, are communicating with other minds, that our memories represent the past, that there was a past, that there is a material world, that our senses give us accurate input that we are not dreaming right now, etc. What I deny is that we accept any of these things by faith. We might be wrong, but faith isn’t what allows us to accept such things. Scientific reasoning does. I can defend each one of my conclusions about such things though, and I do. These prior conclusions provide the background knowledge I have when involved in any discussion, and I’m allowed to have them.
John is right that we must make assumptions such as a
universe exists outside of my mind but this assumption cannot be proven
scientifically. John goes on to talk about our fairly reliable memories, archaeological evidence and scientific evidence for the Big Bang. It appears
like we have these things, but what if all this stuff are just elaborate
fictions fed to our minds by an evil genius who is trying to deceive us? What
if Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin and their work are just
literal as Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes and Bilbo Baggins? There is no way to be
certain, but the fact that I can’t be absolutely certain that the world, which
appears to surround me, literally exists doesn't dissuade me from being
confident that the world exists because I can rationally make the assumption that
there is no good reason to doubt the universe’s existence.
