Resist
From The Improbability of God again. Page 383.
If there were an all-good and all-powerful God who could act in time, then we would have better evidence than we have…Why would such a God hide? Some theists answer that, if the evidence for God were stronger, believers would not need faith.
But why is that an answer? Why is that an objection? Why is faith taken to be a good thing? Why is it supposed to be a loss if we don’t need it? Apart from the obvious protective reasons – the obvious contorted explanations that theists offer to explain inconvenient realities such as God’s strange failure ever to drop by and say hello.
Is the idea that faith is – what – generous, gratuitous, loving? But anything can follow from that. You get epistemic chaos from thinking that way, and from epistemic chaos you get disaster. You could have ‘faith’ that a loving god wouldn’t let anything bad ever happen, and so do nothing.
It’s the same as the problem with claiming that we can’t know what all possible goods are but God can, so we aren’t in a position to know God is not good. Both of them are disastrous because both of them amount to saying that our best tools are not just fallible, not just incomplete, but fundamentally wrong. That’s a desperately bad, reckless, irresponsible idea, because we have to do our best. We have to. It doesn’t matter to us if there are infinitely wise benevolent powerful beings in some other part of the cosmos if we can’t get at them; we have to do what we can do, and if we don’t, we just make things worse. ‘Faith’ is dangerous, the idea that ‘faith’ is a good is dangerous, and the idea that what looks like pain and suffering is actually beneficial in some deeply hidden secret way is extremely dangerous. Some of the twisted things that philosophers of religion say are not just wrong but – anti-human.
“… God’s strange failure ever to drop by and say hello.”
Except they say he used to. What the particular significance of that period thousands of years ago could be for a being with eternity at its disposal is a little mysterious. But then, there’s a lot unaccounted for, isn’t there? If he’d been around for eternity before “In the beginning…,” why didn’t he ever do anything? Lazy sod.
Very much in agreement about the “goods” question. The “mysterious ways” defence is incompatible with regarding God as the ultimate source of morality – which makes it meaningless to state that God is “good”.
On the other hand, I like the universe and existence and all that to be in some sense mysterious: I would hate it if God dropped by and said hello or gave in some other way irrefutable proof of his existence. I would likewise hate it if science succeeded in giving a complete explanation of the universe and our place in it. The very idea makes me feel claustrophobic. The very “openness” of philosophical problems, their intractability, is what attracts me to them.
And I think there is no necessary conflict between such an attitude to the philosophical problem – one acknowledging both its relevance and the fact that rational disagreement is possible – and ‘faith’. Because to me, the latter seems to imply anything but certainty about one’s affairs. I do not have ‘faith’ in that I will tend to wake up at some point after falling asleep. I simply assume it as a matter of course, and know it wouldn’t bother me if I turned out to be mistaken. ‘Faith’ to me is more trusting that things will eventually turn out to be allright, despite indications to the contrary. It can be good, bad, or everything in between.
I think ‘faith’ is only dangerous if some kind of exclusive claim to God’s benevolence or love is made: exclusive to other people, or to the plants and the animals, or to whatever life-forms go about their business around Tau Ceti.
Any religious system of thought claiming that some basic morality is not universal and accessible to believers and unbelievers alike is pretty much bankrupt in my opinion.
The idea that faith is very highly desirable is promoted so widely in so many way that most people never think to question it. I was raised as a Lutheran & went to a private religious school, so of course I got the message loud and clear there, but the selling of faith as one of the great human values is part of the broader culture too. In almost any popular novel, tv show, or movie, characters who rely on evidence and reason to understand how things really are are, at best mistaken & due to be wised up by experience, or at worst villans. The most sympathetic characters always value subjective intuitions above reason, evidence, and conversation and they are always right to do so. (“Use the force Luke, stretch out with your feelings!”)I don’t think this propoganda is all about religion protecting itself; it’s more about the fact that the idea of faith in action is closely tied in people’s imagination to aspects of behavior that we do really value and admire, like loyalty, courage, and a fierce commitmant to moral values. The trick is to convince people that there’s really no necessary connection between these values and a refusal to honestly look for the truth.
Seems to me that if we can’t know all possible good things but a god can, and that means we aren’t in a position to know that said god is not good, well, we aren’t in a position to know that he/she/it IS good either…Knowing good things doesn’t automatically make one good does it?
I have for a long time wondered why people so desperate to reconcile a good deity to a nasty universe, always seemed to go with an omnipotent but cruel one, and never with one that really did want the best for us but didn’t (yet) have the power to make it happen. I concluded that it was some form of vicarious machismo that made them not entertain the idea of a god or whatever with limited powers. Polytheistic systems at least had some sort of checks-and-balances going, but their gods were still a bunch of psychos, as I recall.
I asked a friend what was his take on theodicy, and he said he liked the Iliad better.
Merljin, I think this is one of those areas where defining terms is a big deal. You did so: “‘Faith’ to me is more trusting that things will eventually turn out to be allright, despite indications to the contrary.”
I think such a generally optimistic attitude is a fine thing, and I try to embrace it myself. But I would call it ‘hope,’ rather than faith. If one merely “trusts that things will eventually turn out” in the loose sense you seem to mean, one doesn’t base actions on that trust as if it were a true fact about the world. The “faith” you describe is not a belief which can serve as the premise for an action or argument – or at least, I don’t think you mean it to be.
But your idiosyncratic definition does not seem at all consistent with what is generally meant by how most people use the word ‘faith,’ and most especially in the context of religion. The ‘faith’ pretty much everyone else is talking about means holding BELIEFS – beliefs that inform one’s perceptions, decisions and actions; beliefs that one takes to be true without regard to evidence and reason, and sometimes even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
Certainly, that’s the sort of faith that OB decries as dangerous, as epistemological chaos. Faith couldn’t possibly constitute epistemological chaos unless it involved belief and justification (or, in the case of faith beliefs, absence of justification). Faith couldn’t lead to disaster if it didn’t involve believing things that form the basis for actions. And you know all this, I know you do. So to bring up your idiosyncratic definition – which doesn’t really involve believing anything in particular – introduces a completely unwarranted and misleading equivocation.
I’m calling you on this move not because I think you did it intentionally: Your next sentence indicates that you realize there’s more to be said about the meanings and varieties of faith and the content of faith beliefs. But I wanted to point to it anyway, because this is one of the most common varieties of equivocation in this sort of discussion. In fact, switching between different definitions for the word “faith” – especially moving back and forth between beliefs based on faith and simple hope misleadingly labeled as faith – is almost as common switching definitions of “God” whenever convenient. PZ Myers has a great post about that equivocation move with respect to the Orr/Dawkins debate.
So let’s be clear. When I’m railing about faith – and I think OB is with me on this, but she can certainly speak for herself – I mean people having beliefs about the world and about life (human nature, morality) which they adhere to because they CHOOSE to believe, without regard to rational and evidentiary justifications for said belief (and often in the face of justifications for believing otherwise). Faith is thus not necessarily religious: Many people have pointed out that Communism, Fascism, Marxism, etc. are faith positions at the core because conclusions always come before justification in those ideologies.
While the equivocation is probably not intentional, your next move does seem to follow from the equivocation, and that move is problematic: “I think ‘faith’ is only dangerous if some kind of exclusive claim to God’s benevolence or love is made: exclusive to other people, or to the plants and the animals, or to whatever life-forms go about their business around Tau Ceti.”
Well, no. To me, it seems obvious that this completely misses the point of OB’s current discussion (and many prior discussions) of epistemology. It isn’t just that some specific CONTENTS of faith beliefs are a problem: Taking propositions to be true as a matter of faith is the path to epistemological chaos NO MATTER WHAT THE CONTENT. Having faith – deciding to believe without justification (that is, without critical evaluation of the belief in terms of evidence and reasoning) – is not a good way to decide what to believe, period. Some contents may be more objectionable than others, but the very act of believing something (anything whatsoever) with complete, deliberate and willful disregard for justification is highly problematic in itself.
From everything you’ve said, Merljin, I don’t think you’re inclined to do have this substantial sort of faith, to believe something through nothing more than an act of will. But you should at least acknowledge that other people do so – that lots and lots of other people do so, and their doing so has a lot to do with religion – and not mince words about it.
Yes. Beautifully said (again), G.
Merlijn, for one thing, the kind of faith in the passage I quoted is – surely – clearly not the kind you have; surely that’s the point of it – God hides because otherwise we wouldn’t need ‘faith’ in the sense of believing in God despite God’s hidden-ness. That’s pretty obviously faith=belief without evidence.
So I flatly disagree with this:
“And I think there is no necessary conflict between such an attitude to the philosophical problem – one acknowledging both its relevance and the fact that rational disagreement is possible – and ‘faith’.”
I flatly disagree because ‘faith’ in the sense meant in the theists’ argument is the opposite of open-ended; it’s the refusal of open-endedness; it’s a matter of deciding to believe and believing that X is true in the absence of evidence. It’s not just confidence or trust, it’s something else. The word can be used in your way, of course, but that’s clearly not what it means in the argument, so it would have to be specified that that was what was meant. And exactly what G said: ‘Taking propositions to be true as a matter of faith is the path to epistemological chaos NO MATTER WHAT THE CONTENT.’
Having faith – deciding to believe without justification (that is, without critical evaluation of the belief in terms of evidence and reasoning) – is not a good way to decide what to believe, period. Some contents may be more objectionable than others, but the very act of believing something (anything whatsoever) with complete, deliberate and willful disregard for justification is highly problematic in itself.
I suppose that is the core of the issue – but I am not sure if I agree with you here. I do believe the contents of the proposition, and any pragmatical effect they may have, do matter in as far as we speak of unjustified belief as being “dangerous”. The first issue is to what extent some very basic beliefs (such as that in other minds, an external world, causation, etc.) are rationally justifiable, rationally justified in practice, or just adopted because they are “obviously” true and the alternative is unworkable (which is already some kind of pragmatic justification). Second, I’m not sure to whether extent the adoption of an (unjustified) belief in God leads to epistemological chaos regardless of the content. There does seem to me to be quite a big difference between an unjustified belief in God and an unjustified belief in being able to jump from high buildings and fly like a bird – and it is a pragmatical one, and it does result to the results of the behaviour likely based on the belief.
Finally, to which extent is faith belief without “rational and evidentiary justifications”? Is it “rational” to adopt a religious belief on the basis of a personal religious experience? Does (dodgy) evidence such as “My aunty’s arthritis got much better after I prayed to her”? Probably not to your (or my) standards. But it does point to a problem with defining faith as beliefs held in the absence of reason or evidence. People strongly believing something might easily find “evidence” and ignore potential counterevidence – not just in matters of religion. There’s a difference here between ideal standards and what actually goes with most people.
Also, don’t underestimate people’s talent for compartmentalizing. Dodgy epistemics in one area do not necessarily cause chaos in others.
So I’m sticking to my guns on this one. I would note, though, that here and elsewhere as well I stressed the need to acknowledge the possibility that “one may be mistaken” which I do not believe necessarily conflicts with faith. I’m well aware that for many people it does, and that that is potentially dangerous. And that combined with faith-based positions on the superiority of one’s own, it becomes actually dangerous.
OB: I broadly agree with your demolishing of the argument that you’re demolishing. I just do not agree that faith is bad (or indeed, good) regardless of the content of the proposition believed. And I am not at all sure to what extent the theists of the argument you quote hold a faith position in the sense of “belief without evidence. Case closed”.
Well…all right Merlijn: faith defined as belief without evidence then. That is one meaning, and I would maintain it’s the usual one; but fair enough: I can stipulate: that’s the one I mean when I worry about epistemic chaos.
“don’t underestimate people’s talent for compartmentalizing”
I’ve been thinking about compartmentalization a lot lately – partly because of the items JS has been posting at Talking Philosophy: about Philippa Foot on Dummett, for instance. Wondering if compartmentalization is the answer to the apparent puzzle.
The same items were on my mind as well. I’m struck by JS’ speculation about religious experiences being “veridical” in that they impose themselves on the subject, as somehow basic or self-justifying beyond doubt. I have had no such experiences, so it’s hard to comment. But I would suppose that it is possible to reflect on “oneself holding belief X” and compartmentalize in a benign fashion, even if critical reflection on the belief itself and the experience that grounded it is impossible.
I have an ambivalent attitude towards compartmentalization because of the inertia the concept seems to entail. I do think science, philosophy and (in my case) religion all work to influence one’s whole world picture, and one should strive to make that one as coherent as possible. The downside is that I’m sure there are many people with quite coherent, quite uncompartmentalized and quite hideous beliefs – and that compared to those, some measure of compartmentalization may well be preferable.
OB: “faith defined as belief without evidence”
So, I’m thinking about this discussion of “faith”.
The first 3 definitions from the Maquarie Dictionary are:
“1. confidence or trust in a person or thing.
2. belief which is not based on proof.
3. belief in the doctrines or teachings of religion.”
I find that I can comfortably use “faith” in the first sense, but not in the other two. I can have trust (or faith) in a person, because experience (evidence) indicates that I can.
In this context, and this alone, I agree with Merlijn: “I just do not agree that faith is bad (or indeed, good) regardless of the content of the proposition believed.”
Keith: Actually, I think it’s quite reasonable to have at least limited “faith” in a person in this sense without having any particular evidence. After all, it is a pragmatically well-established principle that people’s reactions are often based on your expectations. So to extend a sort of minimal expectation of goodwill, honesty, or ethical behavior more generally from a complete to stranger is warranted. Minimal expectation, mind you: I wouldn’t walk up to a stranger and say, “Could you keep an eye on my goddaughter for a minute?”
Merlijn: Hmm. Lots of good food for thought in your responses. I need to address your points carefully, and separately.
Your first objection is a non-objection, at least from my perspective – since I am perfectly satisfied with even minimal pragmatic justification. In fact, I’m pretty much a pragmatist about most epistemological puzzles: Broadly, I tend to think the “problem of other minds” and such are pseudo-problems stemming from bad epistemological assumptions (which bad assumptions are in turn rooted in Idealism – Platonic or German, it’s all rubbish in my book – and/or various strains of Rationalism). Anyway, no argument on that point.
Your second objection is a point of genuine disagreement, though: My claim is that faith as I defined it is always a bad epistemological move, not that it always has bad consequences. Yes, I do think that part of faith’s badness is that unjustified beliefs about the world and its people are much more likely to lead to disastrously bad actions in the world and towards the people in it. However, judging faith to be a bad epistemological move because it increases the likelihood of bad consequences on the whole DOES NOT then require that I am then obliged to apply the same consequential judgment standards to each particular faith belief separately. I read your objection as assuming that one leads to the other, but it ain’t necessarily so.
In this, I think epistemology is like law. If I claim that a law is bad because it leads to overwhelmingly bad consequences for many individual citizens, it is no counter-argument to point to people who are unaffected and say, “But look, this law has no bad consequences for these people. It’s not the law that’s bad, it’s just some of the instances of the law’s application.” The problem with this reasoning is that the law applies to everyone! The fact that only some people happen to run athwart of a bad law doesn’t mean that it’s only partially a bad law. Similarly, I think sound epistemological standards apply to everyone. Anything less doesn’t just lead to epistemological chaos, it simply IS epistemological chaos. It is no less chaotic just because every individual instance of bad epistemology doesn’t automatically result in disastrous consequences.
I think your third objection is mis-aimed: I never claimed that justification is perfect, or even perfectible. Furthermore, if someone simply has a belief about God (or whatever) based on poor reasoning or faulty evidence, is that person’s belief a matter of faith at all? If you agree with me that all faith beliefs aren’t religious, then surely you would allow that all beliefs with religious content need not necessarily be grounded in faith. This consideration does cause the matter of whether something is believed as a matter of faith (rather than justification, however shoddy) a little less perfectly transparent, but I don’t think it makes the distinction meaningless.
One way to get at the distinction is with a simple question about a believer’s attitude towards a given belief: “Do you think evidence and arguments you might encounter in the ordinary course of life could change your mind about belief X?” If the believer answers “No” to that sort of question, they seem to be holding belief X as a matter of faith rather than justification. To use your example: If someone who claims to believe in God because his auntie’s arthritis got better after he prayed for her would not stop believing when his other medical prayers went unanswered, then the prayer-answering clearly isn’t *really* the justification for his belief.
How about a more plausible, real-world sort of example? Think about people who claim to belief in ESP phenomena as a matter of empirical evidence, but then make ad hoc excuses for the failure of every well-controlled empirical test. (“The negative attitudes of the skeptics who conducted the test polluted the psychic resonances required…”) The believers’ responses to a justificatory challenge of their beliefs belies their claim to believe on the basis of justification in the first place, and shows that their belief in ESP (or dowsing, or whatever) is and always was really a matter of faith.
(And before anyone objects: Drawing a clear distinction between two varieties of belief – faith-based beliefs and justification-based beliefs, to attach clunky but clear labels – is NOT an example of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. The dividing line between the two is not arbitrary, and the definitions are thoroughly grounded in real-world distinctions. Foreclosing such an objection is why I troubled to come up with a real-world example.)
This is why my final definition of faith, which you quoted, was not phrased as belief simply “in the absence of justification,” but as belief “with complete, deliberate and willful disregard for justification.” You say you embrace fallibilism (“one could be mistaken”) and don’t think it necessarily conflicts with faith. But if a belief is genuinely revisable on the basis of ordinary** further evidence/reasoning, I think it is a mis-characterization to say that belief is a matter of faith. Faith beliefs have content, but what makes them faith beliefs is the character of the belief – the believer’s attitude towards the belief. And the attitude inherent to faith beliefs is inconsistent with fallibilism as a matter of fact, observable in the behavior of believers.
Your claim is technically true, , I suppose, insofar as this isn’t a matter of logical necessity at all: We could live in a world where people chose to believe some things as a matter of faith, without justification even entering into it, but then abandoned those beliefs as soon as even reasonably convincing justification was presented to them. But that world (which I would say is an ideal world, but let’s leave the judgment out of it) is manifestly not this world, not by a long shot. In the real world, justified beliefs do not automatically trump unjustified beliefs. Rather the opposite, all too often.
You also have a more substantial bit of wiggle room on this point: The content of a faith belief might be such that it isn’t subject to refutation or revision based upon further evidence because it’s not the kind of belief it is possible to have evidence about. (Various things you’ve said lead me to believe you’re sympathetic to the legitimacy of faith precisely because of such faith beliefs.) Conveniently enough, most of the vague, abstract conceptions of God advanced by deists and theologians seem to fall under this heading.
But in the cases of prima facie unfalsifiable (and unverifiable) propositions, I’m not sure you’d be correct to say they aren’t in conflict with fallibilism. I mean, if the principle of fallibility is that one might be wrong about any given truth claim, then where do claims whose truth or falsity cannot possibly be determined by their very nature fit in? For me, the oft-derided positivist position that any claim with no possible truth conditions is simply nonsensical grows more attractive every time this subject comes up. But I don’t have an argument more substantial than gut feeling to go on here, so I’ll leave that as a stated preference and stop here.
**Footnote: I included the word “ordinary” to rule out setting standards of evidence for revising the faith belief that are absurdly high. Of course, setting any standards of evidence for revision of a belief not based on evidence in the first place is a bit absurd, but whatever.
*beeeeeeeeeeeeeep*
ANAL RETENTIVENESS ALERT!
That would be “…claim tobelief believe in ESP…”
*beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep*
THIS HAS BEEN A TEST OF G’S ANAL RETENTIVENESS. HE FAILED. Or succeeded. Suppose it depends on how one looks at these things.
P.S. While I’m at it: I apologize, Merlijn, for misspelling “Merljin Merlijn” earlier. ;-)
And apparently the strikeout tag doesn’t work in comments, so I made a hash of making fun of myself for anal retentiveness, perpetuating the cycle of… something or other.
G’night all!
So, “god” doesn’t provide proofs of presence, and requires us to take him/her/it/them on “faith” as a sort of test.
This just means that “god” is a secretive, paranoid bastard.
Just as “god” is “good”, with all the suffering and injustice in the world, just goes to show that he(etc) is a cruel, torturing bastard.
Once, when I was teaching, a pupil (obviously from a religious family) asked me – “Don’t you believe in anything, sir?”
To which I replied – “Yes, I believe in Gravity” – picked up a small piece of chalk, and dropped it – “Look, it’s still working, isn’t that wonderful!”
The religious bullshitters really don’t like that one.
Similarly, the religious who claim that there are “no universal truths, except “god”, don’t like it when I tell them that this is codswallop, and then proceed to write out half-a-dozen Physics equations which are universal truths.
[ Newtonian gravitational attraction, reletavistic mass increase, e-to-the minus-i-pi, radioactivity decay relationship, velocity = wavelenth x frequency usually do quite well for starters … ]
Following up on G’s excellent arguments I seem to recall that similar distinctions were made in the Dover ID trial. The IDers pretend to be operating in a ‘scientific’ mode until you scientifically disprove their contentions at which point they restate their position in an alternative ‘scientific’way and so ad infinitum. The judge was absolutely clear that this was just a big con trick.
I just want to say thank you to G for such a clearly written but complete discussion of the underlying issues. As an undereducated non-philosopher, I say “bravo” for making it so clear and logical.
Hear hear (about thanks to G).
“This idea may partly explain why Turkish taxi drivers drive that way, too.”
Exactly. That’s a perfect synechdoche for what I’m claiming.
(Christian Science would be another. No blood; god will etc; clunk.)