Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.

How is this not unquestioning obedience to authority?
Gen 22:12 — Banno

I'm never going to live that down am I? Look, he was very drunk at the time and the guy can throw fucking thunderbolts!. Have you ever been hit by a thunderbolt? It fucking hurts!

Ah, defending your abuser... interesting.

What is belief in God if not religious faith? — Janus

Well... that's what the article is about. "mere belief in God may be reasonable even if false" Why mere? Because he is distinguishing belief from faith.

Look at the whole of the sentence your quote is from:

Faith in a creed is no virtue, but mere belief in God may be reasonable even if false.

Ah, defending your abuser... interesting. — Banno

You should see some of the people mum sold me out to.

To be clear...

Are you suggesting that there ought be no rules governing human behaviour? That there ought be no such thing as an enforceable clearly written code of acceptable/unacceptable behaviour?

:worry: — creativesoul

No, of course not. I’m saying that any rules governing human behaviour must be based on a sound relational structure, not the words themselves or any particular or traditional interpretation of those words. I’m saying that a “clearly written code of acceptable/unacceptable behaviour” operates as such only with the trust and confidence (faith) of a community that lives by them, not just the authority of those who interpret or enforce them - and for any ‘authority’ to enforce blind obedience without opportunity to understand, question or challenge interpretation is unacceptable, in my book.

Ultimately, theism [...] — Wayfarer

If so, then Protestantism, Sunnism, and many other religions, are no longer theisms.
Redefining theism like so, doesn't really do much here (except rhetorically perhaps).
Not sure you can speak on other people's behalf so cavalierly.

By odd verbiage, Eagleton abstracts away semblance of common religions, and takes off into the clouds.
I suppose that may be fine in lofty theology, and your faith perhaps.
(I might take it one step further, and say that Eagleton conjures up strawmen to replace Dawkins by misrepresenting what he's on about; don't know that much about Dawkins, though he seems to care less about, say, panpsychism and Spinozism than common religions.)

"Ultimately [...]" and Eagleton doesn't represent typical faiths of people on the ground.
Not sure what Anthony Kenny would have to say; maybe this is an indication (emphasis mine):

If we reflect on the actual ways in which we attribute words such as “know” “believe” “think” “design” “control” to human beings, we realize the immense difficulty there is in applying them to a putative being which is immaterial, ubiquitous, and eternal. With a degree of anthropomorphism we can apply mentalistic predicates to animals, computers, institutions; to organisms that resemble us or artefacts that are our creations; but there are limits to anthropomorphism, and an extra-cosmic intelligence appears to me to be outside those limits. It is not just that we do not, and cannot, know what goes in God’s mind; it is that we cannot really ascribe a mind to a God at all. — Knowledge, Belief, and Faith* by Anthony Kenny, 385-386

"Acting" isn't really in atemporal's vocabulary.
We'd be talking strangely inert and lifeless, more like abstract objects.

A bit more on the faith aspect...

It is too much to say that faith requires no justification: many religious people offer arguments not just for belief in God but for their particular creed. What is true is that the kinds of arguments they offer cannot be claimed to have anything like the degree of warrant that would justify the irrevocable commitment of faith. It is true that faith brooks no argument, not in the sense that the faithful are unwilling to offer responses to criticisms, but that no argument will make a true believer give up his faith, and this is something he is resolved on in advance of hearing any argument.

Faith is unshakable belief in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The saying goes "walk by faith not by sight". The key point above is the last statement. One with faith has already made up their own mind that nothing will change what they already believe, and they've done so - many times - quite deliberately, consciously, and knowingly. To do so in Christianity is held up as one of the most admirable qualities, if not perhaps the most admirable that a believer can have.

Yes, he does: — Possibility

One might gather together the works of Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus and Thucydides into an epitome of Greek thought. The anthology would share a common cultural tradition and cohere as well or ill as the bible does. But we would not treat it as a single book, to be treated differently from all other books, because there has never been a Hellenic rabbinate or episcopate to canonize such a collection.

Clearly, he is showing tradition insufficient.

But if it is reasonable to believe in God, why would it not be reasonable to believe in revelation?

Anyway, if faith in a creed is taken to be anything more than a personal commitment (binding only on oneself), then it becomes unreasonable, as I've already said several times: it incorrectly takes itself to be knowledge and becomes fundamentalism.

One with faith has already made up their own mind that nothing will change what they already believe, and they've done so - many times - quite deliberately, consciously, and knowingly. To do so in Christianity is held up as one of the most admirable qualities, if not perhaps the most admirable that a believer can have. — creativesoul

The problem is that you are ignoring the fact that there can be no evidence to the contrary. To say there could be would be to commit a category error.

There can be no evidence to the contrary for any Christian beliefs?

Are you saying that?

What do you have in mind?

The age of the earth for starters???

Only stupid fundamentalists take the bible literally enough to believe the Earth was created around 6,000 years ago. BTW, I am not a Christian of any stripe, so I don't have a dog in that race.

But if it is reasonable to believe in God, why would it not be reasonable to believe in revelation? — Janus

Belief in revelation is evidently unreasonable either way. Put differently, personal revelations are unreliable.


• Did Jesus Really Visit the Americas? (Carlos René Romero; Jul 2008)
• Argument from inconsistent revelations (Religions Wiki)
• Argument from inconsistent revelations (Wikipedia)

Only stupid fundamentalists — Janus

...and true Scotsmen.

Belief in revelation is evidently unreasonable either way. Put differently, personal revelations are unreliable. — jorndoe

How do you know they are unreliable? Unreliable as to what? You realize that purported revelations can be taken literally or allegorically, and that vast numbers of intelligent Christians do the latter?

I suspect you are trying to bring this back to the empirical. Any empirical claims made by religions are subject to falsification obviously, just like other empirical claims. But such claims are not central to religious faith, unless it has become fundamentalism.

Your point if you have one?

The argument that it is only this or that religion that is subject to @creativesoul's criticism is special pleading. It remains that Christianity makes predictions about how the world is. Even a faith binding only to oneself, if it is to be of any significance, will make a difference, somewhere, to what one does or to how one claims things are.

Otherwise it reduces to mere silence...

It's not special pleading at all, but recognition of the distinction between literal and metaphorical interpretations of scripture. Give an example of a prediction that is essential to Christianity that purports to tell us about how the world is.

How do you know that a faith taken to be binding only upon oneself will necessarily "make a difference, somewhere, to what one does or to how one claims things are."?

Perhaps religious faith should reduce to mere silence. But in relation to what cannot be said, where philosophy cannot tread, there is still poetry. What is wrong with seeing religious faith as consisting in being inspired by a species of poetry?

Clearly, he is showing tradition insufficient. — Banno

Agreed - your point being...?

A bit more on the faith aspect...

It is too much to say that faith requires no justification: many religious people offer arguments not just for belief in God but for their particular creed. What is true is that the kinds of arguments they offer cannot be claimed to have anything like the degree of warrant that would justify the irrevocable commitment of faith. It is true that faith brooks no argument, not in the sense that the faithful are unwilling to offer responses to criticisms, but that no argument will make a true believer give up his faith, and this is something he is resolved on in advance of hearing any argument.

Faith is unshakable belief in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The saying goes "walk by faith not by sight". The key point above is the last statement. One with faith has already made up their own mind that nothing will change what they already believe, and they've done so - many times - quite deliberately, consciously, and knowingly. To do so in Christianity is held up as one of the most admirable qualities, if not perhaps the most admirable that a believer can have. — creativesoul

Again, I think this is a misunderstanding of faith as interpreted within certain (most) Christian traditions. The idea that faith is an unshakeable authority, that it is upheld in spite of evidence to the contrary, is a distortion that has emerged since the Enlightenment, as a self-preservation strategy. It reifies authority in the text and in its traditional and/or community interpretation. Prior to this, religious institutions were not above destroying evidence, testimony or traditions to the contrary - their authority upheld as ‘unquestionable’ in most social structures affording them license to do so. That they needed to resort to such actions is evidence in itself that the authority of faith is far from ‘unshakeable’.

As to the bible reference: your interpretation of this is again based on a tradition that has distorted ‘faith’ as an authority rather than a confidence. In context:

6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 For we live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

‘Sight’ (eidos) refers specifically to outward appearance, not knowledge or understanding (these are different Greek words). There is nothing here to indicate that anyone has ‘made up their mind’ - only that their mind or spirit (no distinction made) is more trustworthy than their body.

Faith is not unshakeable, not irrevocable and not authoritative. It’s only portrayed as such within most Christian traditions, institutions and officials desperate to hold onto their authority.

Give an example of a prediction that is essential to Christianity that purports to tell us about how the world is. — Janus

A true Scotsman will simply say "That's not essential to being Scots!".

See the problem?

How do you know that a finding taken to be binding only upon oneself will necessarily "make a difference, somewhere, to what one does or to how one claims things are."? — Janus

Ah. So it's a beetle in a box - no not even that, since we can at least talk about our respective beetles.

Faith is acceptance of an authority - a text or community. Faith is irrevocable; merit comes from belief despite the evidence. — Banno

What does 'evidence' consist of, in this context? You see, typically, we will start with the presumption that the sacred texts of the religious traditions convey no truth, that they're mythological, and then demand that any truth-claims based on them must be proven. By what standard? Scientific, double-blind experiments? What precisely is it that is being 'accepted on authority'? And what could constitute ‘evidence' in the presumption that none of what the faithful consider the testimony of their tradition is valueless in the first place?

The idea that faith is an unshakeable authority, that it is upheld in spite of evidence to the contrary, is a distortion that has emerged since the Enlightenment, as a self-preservation strategy. — Possibility

That's not quite true. What this refers to is 'fideism', which is 'the doctrine that knowledge depends on faith'. There are strong fideistic tendencies in Christianity but it was especially accentuated by Luther and Calvin, and the doctrine of 'salvation by faith alone'. If you look at it from an outside perspective, the non-believer is being told that they MUST believe, on pain of eternal damnation. So it's hardly surprising that very large numbers of people have declined. That's why Dawkin's atheism is sometimes described as 'Protestant'.

[In religion] we find an initial idealised state, an evil intrusion, a present dreadful state caused by the intrusion, the promise of a future idealised state assured by the elimination of the intrusion. There is a glorious leader and even a sort of New Man. The message is pitched both at the level of humanity and at that of the individual.

Dawkins's message is basically that we are social animals on an evolutionary trajectory to ever more rational and therefore higher moral standards, but that the process has been derailed somewhere along the line by the appearance of religion. It had looked until recently as though we were shaking off religion and entering an Age of Reason. But now, with the rise of religious fundamentalism, there is a relapse which accounts for the world's present troubles. Nevertheless, thanks to the enlightenment Science brings, we can root out religion and get back on track.

Protestant Historicism

The Dawkins historicist variant of a trajectory from a primitive idealised state to a later higher one being knocked off course by religion derives from a particular Protestant historicism within the overall Christian pattern. This is the idea that the original Christianity of the New Testament has been corrupted by Catholicism but brought back on course by Protestantism, thanks to a messiah figure, Martin Luther.

In this context, we need to bear in mind that there is a very important sense in which religion has been a dirty word for Protestants. It has stood for all those aspects of Catholic Christianity which they rejected at the Reformation: idolatry, superstition, tradition, hierarchy, authoritarianism, mumbo-jumbo, whatever. ...

Overall, what Dawkins has done is generalise on the Protestant historicism. In his basic scheme, primitive Christianity has been replaced by a primal human state, Catholicism as bad religion has been replaced by religion in general and the Protestant Reformation by the Scientific Revolution, by the discovery of evolution by natural selection in particular. The Protestant Age is of course replaced by the Age of Science and Reason.

https://www.bytrentsacred.co.uk/index.php/dawkins-protestant-atheism/the-virus-of-faith-historicism-1

So you wish to say that you are confident without warrant... Fine. It's the "without warrant" part that is salient here.

your point being...? — Possibility

Here's the argument in the article, in less than twenty words: add warrant to belief and knowledge; faith is belief that is neither warranted nor known. No reference to tradition.

And, for that matter, what would warrant religous belief? What's on offer? If it turned out to be a good bet, what would the winnings look like?

A true Scotsman will simply say "That's not essential to being Scots!".

See the problem? — Banno

No, I don't see your purported problem.

If some Christians say that a particular belief, for example that the world was created around six thousand years ago, is central to the their faith, and some Christians say it is not central to their faith, then it follows that it is not central to the Christian faith, simply because some identify themselves as Christians and yet do not hold to it. I think it is actually the case that the majority of Christians don't believe the world was literally created around six thousand years ago.

So, it really has nothing to do with Scotsmen, True or otherwise.

How do you know that a finding taken to be binding only upon oneself will necessarily "make a difference, somewhere, to what one does or to how one claims things are."? — Janus

Ah. So it's a beetle in a box - no not even that, since we can at least talk about our respective beetles. — Banno

I don't know how "finding" got in there; it should have been 'faith'. In any case I have no idea what you are trying to say here.

Though I would say that one's personal Christian faith should make a difference, for the better, (if one does more than pay lip service to it) to one's behavior, since, whatever else we might take that faith to be, it is, according to the scriptures, a religion of love.

what would warrant religous belief? — Wayfarer

Well, apparently, nothing... that's the issue.

Well, apparently, nothing... that's the issue. — Banno

No, that's your issue. That's what you believe.

If some Scott say that a particular belief, for example that porridge should be eaten with salt, is central to the their being a Scott, and some other Scott say it is not central to their being a Scott, then it follows that it is not central to being a Scott, simply because some identify themselves as Scottish and yet do not hold to it. I think it is actually the case that the majority of Scotts don't put salt on their porridge — Janus

Nuh.

hough I would say that one's personal Christian faith should make a difference, for the better, — Janus

If the point is moot, why the argument?

No, that's your issue. That's what you believe. — Wayfarer

What?

As in, would you mind going back and setting out what you are saying, 'cause you lost me.

Edit: Do you agree that in the article, Kenny is setting faith out as unwarranted belief?