I talked about how faulty it is to “reconcile” or “parallel” science and faith. But one response piqued my interest.
I looked at the dictionary, and faith is defined as deep trust, confidence, or belief in someone or something, often without complete proof. If it has concrete objective evidence, it wouldn’t be faith now, would it?
So why look for complete proof and evidence to “defend” this faith?
You were promised something, either from your holy book, maybe a “divine” vision, or your prophet.
The “signs” from your personal perspective, interpreted by your individual subjective intuition, and how you interpret the world, should be enough to reassure you that whatever it is that was promised beyond what you think you know would be delivered.
If those words, promises, and “signs” don’t reassure you, can you even call that faith?
So no, you don’t need evidence; that’s why it’s called faith.
I think it reassures most believers just fine, but that doubters exist and have cogent reasons for doubt, challenges that assurance. So the whole apologist project from what I have seen is twofold: (1) Devalue the arguments against religious faith to convince themselves that there’s no serious counterargument in the first place, and (2) appeal to unbelievers that religious faith has some sort of rationally palatable basis. Of course on this second point, the young earth creationists have a particularly heavy lift to perform, because they have to create a whole pseudoscience to oppose the actual science that disagrees with their literalist interpretation of scripture.
I believe that most such believers intuit that their faith is inherently fragile, which is why they elevate “doubt” to the chief sin and spend so much time Gish galloping their way around any objections. They know that Hitchens was right – religious faith can disappear in a “puff of logic” very easily (it certainly happened that way for me). They see this not as a weakness so much as a heroic struggle against Error and the protection of a thing that is incredibly precious to them.
It’s fine when people believe that reality is created a certain way for a certain reason. You can believe that those who do not follow your version of the message you claim to receive will be punished somehow. However, there is something that religion can do that is objectively real: the people who follow it can bring that “hell” or punishment to make others suffer in some way or another, for the simple reason of not following what they peddle.
I do agree that the biggest religions have spread the teaching of “Blessed is the mind too small for doubt” as part of their core message. Doubt is like rot to a people or gathering where Spirituality and Law are basically the same thing to them. “One bad apple and the barrel is spoiled,” so to speak. But unlike apples, however, people have lives and jobs outside their prayer congregations, in which they see that reality isn’t what they were taught themselves to be.
So I see their need to somehow defend their personal culture and faith, and probably convert some disbelievers along the way. In the face of logic and evidence, fallacies and beliefs cannot take it head-on, so they must bend it in some way.
Trying to explain the natural world through religion would be a total disaster. However, there is something I struggle with. And that is morality.
My very existence is astray from the “path” that everyone else around me is following. That means I am often called immoral, exploitative, stupid (yes, people call me stupid), and at worst, evil.
For what reason? Simple, the gender I choose to align myself with.
However, what evidence do I have to prove that my gender doesn’t make me evil, and that I do not even commit the acts they think I do? Would you trust one person ostracized by their family or an entire community of people? Whose word holds more “truth” to it?
Religion cannot back up its claims for the physical world with evidence, but it can clearly shape people’s morality and how they should view others. That view with enough parrots becomes proof.
What I think you’re running into there is the notion that fundamentalist morality is not based on empathy and compassion but on Divine Command Theory or whatever you want to call it – that morality isn’t legitimate unless it has authoritarian backing by the Author of the moral code. And they take a very literal interpretation as well, so cannot accept you as you are.
I hope you are not saying that you are struggling with whether or not YOU are “moral”, but a lot of people in your situation probably suffer from the constant gaslighting so as to wonder if they are sane, much less moral.
As an aside, FWIW, my oldest grandchild is a trans woman and so as much as I can without being non-gender-normative, I understand the situation on the ground for you, and wish it were different. Fortunately my daughter and her husband are 100% supportive, and even then, it’s hard in this environment.
To those people of faith, yes it becomes proof. Sad but true. Fortunately you don’t need their approval, but of course, in the Christo-fascist environment in a way their disapproval is a practical problem.
I don’t have a problem with believers of any dogma…as long as they don’t proselytize. You are entitled to your beliefs. My father believed the Cubs would win the World Series one day…granted, they did it 20 years after he died…but that belief was his…no matter how free it was from fact for 108 years…
As trivial as that sounds, that’s the importance I place on anything presented to me as hearsay evidence. As long as you don’t do it in the streets and scare the horses, I’m good. Where I have a genuine issue with believers is the casual way they approach indoctrination and conversion.
IMHO, religion or dogma should be handled in a similar way to getting a drivers license or voting. No formal participation or formal indoctrination until you reach 18.
Children are a notoriously vulnerable population. They have the misfortune of believing nearly anything an adult says without question. Exploitation is.
It’s almost cult like in that the religious communities tailor so much of their survival on starting with the children. At times it appears they are afraid the children will grow an independent mind and potentially reject them before the “program” has a chance to complete.
Another delusion I don’t share is the urge to prove is “I’m right and you’re wrong…” There is no amount of reason, fact or evidence that I can tote out to sway the mind of a true believer…or a convenient believer, either. My reason will never pull the rug out from under your faith. Your faith will never convince me to tread on your rug.
Perception is reality. See Plato’s Allegory of the Cave for reference.
Interestingly to me in this regard, the Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish) kinda-sorta do this. Their children do not become full-fledged members of their sect until majority. When they reach that point there’s a ritual called “rumspringa” which translates to “running around”. They are given the freedom to do as they please, to party, get drunk, get laid, whatever, for a period of time and then they have the option to leave the sect or return, no harm, no foul. Supposedly most return though, which tells me that they have become habituated to the traditions, rituals and roles of Amish family life, and also that this “free trial” of outside life isn’t really a fair trial as they had zero experience with it and it’s bound not to go well with all the pent-up repression and naiveté that is involved. It also presupposes that life outside the sect is nothing but debauchery. So of course they’re going to return to the cocoon, by and large, probably somewhat chastened.
For this to work as you propose, children would need to not be taught the doctrines of the sect or subject to its ruleset, and I don’t see a practical way for that to happen. And in that scenario, children would overwhelmingly go “apostate” anyway. They already do quite often after a year out of the nest in the college environment.
So what the Amish are doing seems open-minded and non-controlling but the cards are heavily stacked in the sect’s favor.
I’m not proposing a prohibition on religion for children. That would be about as productive as Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No bullshit. No formal participation, would be a challenge, as societal delusions are just fine with the DSM.
I’d start with baptism, move on to Mitzvahs and brick Salah and Confirmations. I’m willing to give a pass on circumcision… Essentially, every prohibition on alcohol now applies to proselytizing anyone under 18.
Any religion that offers religious education to minors will be taxed at a 90% rate of all earnings and income. Pony up or shut up.
Well the rationale for this might be that any non-public-benefit aspects of a religious organization should be taxed (most would say, fully taxed). That would not be limited to children. It would apply across the board by default, because for example, holding worship services and indoctrinating people in the faith is not a public benefit activity, it is a strings-attached membership benefit. The only things that would not be taxed would be your soup kitchens (assuming no overt or covert proselytizing as a condition of service), food pantries, homeless shelters and the like.
I think the way to make your concept stick, and even broaden it, is to focus on what is member-benefit vs unconditional societal benefit. Religious orgs have been allowed to muddy the waters and get tax exemption for everything and then claim that society would become degenerate without them. I say, put up or shut up. Prove it. Don’t make people sit through an evangelistic service to get food or shelter, etc.
Faith has more than one definition, religious faith is defined as:
noun
complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
The second one defines religious faith, on countless occasions on here and elsewhere apologists have used false equivalence by pretending the two definitions are the same. It also goes without saying that one can have complete trust or confidence in someone or something, and be wrong.
Well not quite, “concrete” evidence would be a very good reason to have complete trust or confidence in a claim or belief. The religious definition of course would be entirely moot if one had such evidence.
Solely relying on personal experience sounds like the lowest possible evidentiary bar to me.
I agree that’s the rationale, I don’t of course agree with that rationale, as one could choose to believe almost anything using it, and objective facts are the things we have the most and most objective evidence for. The two things would be at opposite ends of a scale of reliable assertions.
That is coming very close to an argumentum ad populum fallacy.
Faith is a closed mind, it can only be strong as it must ignore the complete absence of any objectively verifiable evidence, the second part is as subjective as it is absurd.
Doubt is essential to avoid a closed mind.
Whilst this has a certain amount of truth to it, one is irresistibly reminded of a small child thinking it can evade an angry parent by covering its own eyes.
I think morality is both subjective and relative, but it is also an essential contract any species needs with other members of that species if they are to live in societal groups. This is no doubt why all animals that have evolved to live in societal groups exhibit morality.
Bigotry often masquerades as morality, as does blindly following religious doctrine, from archaic patriarchal societies. If people think they have the right to harm others, then have unwittingly sawn the branch that they’re sitting on for protection.
Of course evil is also a subjective term, many religious people might think I am evil because I lack theistic belief, however the way I understand this is that people with gender dysphoria don’t make anymore choice about that than I did to be born a straight cis male. Punishing or harming someone for who they are, when who they are harms no one, is pointless and to me immoral, far more than violating some archaic dogma that has gone unchallenged for far too long, because it was attached to a deity the ignorant and superstitious writers imagined to be real, as if that makes it a moral absolute that must remain inviolate.
I’ll give you one lower: Indirect/second-hand personal experience — “Someone told me that he experienced X that was due to Y, therefore Y must be true”
Oh it’s not surprising that decks get stacked, but I guess my implied rhetorical question for the Amish was, if your ideology is so compelling and effective why can’t you give your youth a truly fair trail of the non-Amish world? Indeed why can’t you give them accurate conception of the non-Amish world?
My own sect had its issues in this regard. We treated our faith like a fragile snowflake that could not stand up to any of the wiles of the evil world. We taught that people of faith were in constant peril of losing it. One durst not even privately think unapproved thoughts as it would lead to apostasy.
It never occurred to us that something that couldn’t sustain its own life might possibly be founded on sand.