That is all off topic. Law speak is more akin to science. You need reason to sift through laws and commands, like reason navigates through physical laws and necessities. — Fire Ologist

You seemed interested in the topic, since you responded to Frank raising it. You argued that what is good is what is the law, or something along those lines. But if you want to leave that topic, I'm happy.

I have argued that they are not good in virtue of or due to their faith — Banno

You just stated it. You didn't argue it.

rather than to address the arguments presented. — Banno

You haven't addressed mine.

Why fabricate ethics, good, and laws at all? Why do you do that if you can only base your actions on reason and science (which can not tell you what to do)? If science cannot tell you what to do, how are you not uncomfortable with any ethics, any assessment of some platonic "good"?

I have argued that they are not good in virtue of or due to their faith — Banno

You may have been unable to recognise the argument.

I pointed out and gave an example of faith, defined as subjecting a belief to its consequences, leading to dreadful and terrible consequences.

Hence it does not follow that acts done in faith are always good. And so it cannot be that acts are good in virtue of being done in faith.

You haven't addressed mine. — Fire Ologist

Fabricate? Platonic good? We have no choice but to act. And I have been at pains to say that our actions are not determined by reason and science. If I did not address you argument, it was becasue I did not recognise that it was proposed to be an argument.

Hence it does not follow that acts done in faith are always good. And so it cannot be that acts are good in virtue of being done in faith. — Banno

I agree. Not all acts done in faith are good. I’m not saying an act is good because it is an act of faith. An act is what it is.

But if some acts done in faith ARE good, then it doesn’t follow that all acts done in faith are bad.

You say you are not arguing that all acts done in faith are bad, but by the way you talk about faith (willfully resistant to reason, used to justify and praise badness), you still seem to be building a case that all faith leads to no good. I’ve seen nothing even neutral, let alone good about faith in your estimation of it.

But that is demonstrably false. Tons of real charity, life giving sacrifice, happiness, comfort, all brought into the world, daily, for thousands of years, directly in the hope and belief in things only known in faith. Tons of goodness because of faith and religion.

All of the pain and suffering and barbarity and lies and badness - it was always already there as it remains. Faith didn’t cause it. Science doesn’t cause it either. Science helps some of it; faith does too.

I’m not even really trying to argue faith is good. Just trying to keep straight what it is from what it is not, and recognize faith as necessary - you really don’t believe in anything that you haven’t already proven? Of course you have some beliefs that are not yet proven. You are interested in philosophy, so I know you don’t know a lot of things for sure, yet you must act anyway like anyone else. You have your beliefs, like everyone else. Beliefs are a necessity, and some of them are a good.

Why say reason is an enemy of faith, when you are a reasonable person who occasionally acts on faith like everyone must? I think you are selling faith short, to your own disillusionment with organized religion.

Well at least now you are beginning to address what I actually argued rather than what folk expect or want to think I argued.

Faith, understood as belief without or even despite the evidence, is not a virtue.

Faith, understood as trust, might foster commitment or dedication and these are (perhaps) virtues.

The Binding of Isaac and the Trials of Job speak of acts of cruelty, where unjustified suffering is inflicted in the name of faith. Moreover these are held up as admirable, to be emulated.

I don't agree. I hope other also disagree.

I'll work hard to set aside any jokes about onanism. — Banno

:smirk:

As my fundamentalist friends often say, "Don't think, don't reason, have faith." — Tom Storm

Waste of grey matter. :pray:

Teleological explanations ... — Hanover

are avoided by modern biologists.

:up: :up:

The law always tells you what to do. That's what a law is, what it does. — Fire Ologist

My point was that Hammurabi was both king and head of the national religion. He was seen as transmitting laws that originated with a Babylonian divinity. The very idea of law comes from religion.

Therefore Banno's comment that religion tells you what to do while science doesn't is just kind of naive about our religious heritage. Religion was pervasive social technology.

And as climate change sets in and civilization struggles to cope with the volatility, our ability to communicate who we are to the people who live 5000 years from now will probably come down to this ancient capability wrapped up in what we call religion.

To me taking an informed risk is not faith. Mostly it's taking a punt, that the skills, training, equipment, knowledge and physical strength you have as a fireman or solider will make the activity a success, knowing full well that you could die. I don't see this functioning as faith, but I can see how poetically it can be made to fit. — Tom Storm

H'm I'm not sure what to make of the last sentence there. But I think you are missing my point. The fireman (person?) heading into a burning building has lots of equipment and training, not to mention protocols behind him. They cannot sort all that out for themselves. They need to have faith - to trust, if you prefer - that all of that is as it should be and that their project is worthwhile. You and I might want to say that they need to trust in science and reason. My point is that, so far as I can see, that trust is hard to distinguish from the trust of a believer in whatever they believe, whether it be God, or luck, or the stars. I realize that's heretical, but the question does not just go away.

For me using the word "faith" outside of a Christian or Islamic religious contexts is problematic.
— Tom Storm
Why so? That makes no sense to me.
— Ludwig V
For reasons I have explained: that it is not properly comparable. I understand that you disagree, many do, particularly those from Christian backgrounds. — Tom Storm

Could you possibly steer me to where you explained? I would very much like to see what you say.

Faith, understood as belief without or even despite the evidence, is not a virtue. — Banno

I think you are over-simplifying, or at last taking for granted the context in which we evaluate beliefs. First, there is an issue about what counts as evidence. Classic example, belief in a creator God. Someone like Dawkins will not agree with his religious opponent about what is to count as evidence. Who decides? Second, evidence does not grow on trees. We have to learn what counts as evidence for what. If we don't trust what we have learnt, we are sunk. Second, not all propositions can be neatly parcelled with their evidence. Methodological principles, such as the experimental method or the principle of sufficient reason come to mind. In addition, scientists don't approach their issues with a blank sheet of paper. They take for granted, trust, well-established part of science and build on them to refine, extend or revise what is known.

Faith, understood as trust, might foster commitment or dedication and these are (perhaps) virtues. — Banno

Well, I'm not clear about the differences here. I'm inclined to go further and say that faith just is commitment, But either way, I agree that whether faith, trust, commitment, dedication are good or bad things depends on what they are in or to. Evaluating cases - given the absence of the usual processes of evidence, etc. will come down to evaluating outcomes. This can be tricky, but we seem to be able to carry out evaluations quite effectively in some cases at least. The "not in my name" defence is a complication, however.

All of the pain and suffering and barbarity and lies and badness - it was always already there as it remains. Faith didn’t cause it. Science doesn’t cause it either. Science helps some of it; faith does too. — Fire Ologist

I would agree with that. But saying that neither faith nor science didn't cause the bad things that have been done in their name does concede much to the claims of those who have faith. Some Christians, at least, do claim that their faith enables them to lead better lives. Similarly with science. More than that, people do claim their faith, whether in religion or science, is the motivation for their actions. Others of the same faith may reject that claim on the grounds that their understanding of their faith is not "true". But can we necessarily accept that excuse?

We have no choice but to act. And I have been at pains to say that our actions are not determined by reason and science. — Banno

I agree with the first sentence. But given the difficulty in establishing everything required to provide a full justification of what we do, don't we have to trust our authoritative sources and/or our common sense in order to act at the time we need to? For the second sentence, I'm not sure what you mean. People do cite reason and science as well as their religion as justifications for their actions. Do you mean that they are always mistaken? Or do you mean that there is some additional element - perhaps something like motivation - that is needed?

And this is the culpability of faith, when it encourages folk to cruelty.
— Banno
Which is pretty much my problem with faith. There is no act so barbaric that it can't be justified by an appeal to faith. As a way of deciding action, it is very poor and entirely unaccountable. — Tom Storm

There is no way to asses a faith, so far as I can see, but by its fruits. Religious faiths come out with a pretty mixed record. Are we sure that science and reason (Enlightenment) comes out much better?

Faith, understood as belief without or even despite the evidence, is not a virtue. — Banno

Anything anyone thinks without balancing it with their own experience, without reason, is foolish. That’s not good faith.

Faith, understood as trust, might foster commitment or dedication and these are (perhaps) virtues. — Banno

Magnanimous of you to say. Doesn’t go far enough. Perhaps you don’t have to trust anyone for anything. Certainly trust can be broken, so when it is, does that mean we should shoot for a world where we don’t have to trust anyone? Trustworthiness is the virtue; trusting is more like, being vulnerable.

The Binding of Isaac and the Trials of Job speak of acts of cruelty, where unjustified suffering is inflicted in the name of faith. Moreover these are held up as admirable, to be emulated. — Banno

But the story of Abraham does not tell us how to show faith - Jews and Christians don’t need to do any violence ever, based on faith (those who say and do otherwise, like you, misunderstand all of it). Isaac lived. Abraham fathered children who, like him, knew God, as countless as the stars, just as God said he would. The story of Abraham means that God will justify your faith in him. We can trust God no matter what. It’s not about, what crazy murder can someone commit. At all. Abraham was rational, he trusted God, and was right and justified.

I’m not going to defend the prosecution of God with you here.

I will defend faith. Anyone who thinks abandoning your own reason is ever right or good, is a fool, or not a functioning person. Faith is not opposed to reason.

If a person performs some ritual, to praise God and bring blessings, they are using reason throughout, as necessary to complete any task successfully. Just because you don’t see God and don’t see blessings, doesn’t mean they are not there, or that the faithful person is not seeing something you don’t.

So you still haven’t found one good thing about faith. How belief in certain things, like Santa Clause, or justice, or some other person’s faith in you, might actually be an important, even necessary part of improving the world. Not even on a raw, practical, people managing their hard lives level.

Fine, but then, good luck working whatever muscle allows people to trust each other, and good luck building a world where trust between two people is not needed. Good luck building love.

Faith is not opposed to reason. That’s a shallow, essentialist view of “faith”, creating a use function and truth value suited towards insulting other intelligences.

You could just trust me about it, but I hope you use your own reason and figure out a deeper, broader significance to faith than you currently display.

The Binding of Isaac and the Trials of Job speak of acts of cruelty, where unjustified suffering is inflicted in the name of faith. Moreover these are held up as admirable, to be emulated. — Banno

Biblical interpretation is a field unto itself, and your interpretation based upon what you believe it means from a casual reading isn't really helpful without citation to sources. What you've done is just chosen the least generous read for whatever reason.

For the many diverging views on the story: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac#:~:text=According%20to%20Irving%20Greenberg%20the,sacrifices%20were%20the%20norm%20worldwide.

I'd also point out that the faith referenced in the Hebrew Bible is not the modern faith being addressed here. The question then was of what faith did the Hebrews have in the power of God, as in to what degree could he be trusted for protection and safety. It was not as to whether he existed or whether he could perform miracles. They saw seas split and manna fall from heaven. They didn't need faith to know miracles happened. They had empirical evidence.

Isaac was the offspring of a 90 year old Sara who God told Abraham he'd provide to her. This is why I've never been impressed by Kierkegaard's claim Issac's binding was a great act of faith. Miracles were abundant back then and a God that could make good on impregnating a post-menopausal Sara (and, yes, the text mentions that) probably should be trusted with whatever request he might make.

I'd also point out that by some estimates, Isaac was in his mid-20s and Jewish sources put him at 37 at the time of the binding. https://versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/how-old-was-isaac-when-he-went-to-be-sacrificed

Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born, meaning the 37 year old son must have been compliant when his 137 year old pops tied him up. My money would have been on the 37 year old in that slug fest. This speaks to a level of consent, particularly considering the text doesn't describe a struggle.

Which is all to say, stop with the literalism. These stories were not meant for such analysis. And stop with the sympathy for the characters. They aren't real. It's like feeling sorry for the fox who couldn't get the grapes. The fox wasn't real. He talked for God sake. Isaac wasn't real. Nuclear powered Viagra couldn't have made that happen, and I'll save the description of what Sara's physical response might have looked like.

I was recently told by an 80 year old that it gets better every year. :grimace:

Which is all to say, stop with the literalism. — Hanover

While I duly appreciate the comment and will, as always, uphold it in full, wanted to draw attention to certain possibilities of how at least some well known myths might have nevertheless developed form historical truths (maybe).

The flood was previously mentioned in the thread – this as possibly having been adopted from the Mesopotamians. On one hand, the flood myth is actually very wide spread, to include ancient Greek myths of how Zeus flooded the lands to punish humanity. Here pertinent to the Western hemisphere (to include migrations to and from it), though, is the so far viable Black Sea deluge hypothesis – which could have been a historical fact that can thereby account for all flood myths both west and east of the Black Sea.

This along the lines of how the Jonah and the Whale fable could potentially have in fact been Jonah being swallowed up in full by a great white shark in the Mediterranean sea. Great whites used to get bigger than they typically get today (due to our fishing). A large enough great white could swallow a person full in one go, so that the person remains alive and in one piece. Sharks are also known to regurgitate unpleasant eatings, so were the dude to start punching and kicking inside the sharks’ stomach, the shark would have likely regurgitated the human whole, and yet living. And the Mediterranean sea is upheld by at least some experts to be a nursery where great whites give birth. And, technically, in Hebrew its not a whale but expressed as being a "large fish".

No such possible account would be literalism. Quite obviously. But if any such account would be true, neither would the myths which developed from these accounts and which have taken on a life of their own be completely concocted out of thin air. Which isn't to say the same must apply to all myths out there. Anyway. Musings.

i was recently told by an 80 year old that it gets better every year. :grimace: — frank

Probably true, but I heard it flatlines at 99.

No such possible account would be literalism. Quite obviously. But if any such account would be true, neither would the myths which developed from these accounts and which have taken on a life of their own be completely concocted out of thin air. Which isn't to say the same must apply to all myths out there. Anyway. Musings. — javra

Makes sense the tales would come from real events. The best horror movies exploit our deepest fears. The Nile floods enough that it brings fear that one day it will consume the city. Something like that.

Topics such as this require that we take great care with the language we use. So even if faith were necessary - and it isn't - that would not make it a virtue; and somethings being justified is not the same as it's being determined.

Anyone who thinks abandoning your own reason is ever right or good, is a fool, or not a functioning person. Faith is not opposed to reason. — Fire Ologist

Is it reasonable to truss up your son and ready the fire? Read this again, and reconsider:

They arrived at the place God had described to him. Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He tied up his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice.

No, this behaviour is abominable, unjustifiable.

If a person performs some ritual, to praise God and bring blessings, they are using reason throughout, as necessary to complete any task successfully. — Fire Ologist

Madmen rationally justify their acts. What is described in Genesis 22 is madness.

Biblical interpretation is a field unto itself — Hanover

Indeed, bending over backwards to justify the unjustifiable. In the place of all those words, see a man preparing a fire, fettering his son and taking a knife to his throat. Judge that.

Stop with the literalism, becasue the literal story is of an horrendous act. One needs sophistry to move beyond that.

Religion, from the etymological root 'religare', means to unite. Its function is to unite a certain group of people so they move more together in a certain direction.

Faith then is the believe in a set of common values, without there necessarily being any justification other then the fact that a group of people have agreed to them.

It doesn't have anything to do with 'truth' in the empirical sense, it is future oriented, i.e. more about what society one wants to create... more about 'what should be', rather than about 'what is'.

It's a way to avoid prisoners dilemmas. It only works if people suspend there own short term self-interest for the longer term common good, which in the end is more beneficial for everybody than if people just all would pursue the own interest... a leap of faith.

Faith then is the believe in a set of common values — ChatteringMonkey

There's no argument here for that interpretation. You say religion is the believe in a set of common values, then in the next sentence replace "religion" with "faith".

The story of Abraham means that God will justify your faith in him. We can trust God no matter what. It’s not about, what crazy murder can someone commit. At all. Abraham was rational, he trusted God, and was right and justified. — Fire Ologist

It’s essentially about obedience. Abraham demonstrates unwavering obedience, carrying out God's command without expressing fear or doubt. His commitment to the task is so great that he even deceives his son with carefully chosen words, ultimately resulting in divine reward.

Fine, but then, good luck working whatever muscle allows people to trust each other, and good luck building a world where trust between two people is not needed. Good luck building love. — Fire Ologist

One challenge with religious faith is its inherent exclusivity to the specific tradition it embraces. Your defensiveness and rather ungenerous interpretation of what Banno is saying may be a demonstration of this.

Biblical interpretation is a field unto itself — Hanover

Frightening, when it comes to interpreting a story like this for obedient followers.

Cheers. I hope what I have said makes at least some sense.

Well religion is the institutionalisation of these values, how they get propagated in a given society, how and who can change them over time.

Faith is the belief in those values from the personal perspective.

There is no argument, it is description of what happens.

Well religion is the institutionalisation of these values, how they get propagated in a given society, how and who can change them over time. — ChatteringMonkey

Those values are not necessary, let alone peculiar, to religion. Nationalism is an obvious alternative. Both are somewhat parochial, even anachronistic.

This thread is at least in part an exploration of the difference between faith and mere belief. Saying that faith is just a belief in some set of values ignores quite a bit of what has already been said about faith.

Stop with the literalism, becasue the literal story is of an horrendous act. One needs sophistry to move beyond that. — Banno

The literal story is of a 37 year old man previously birthed from a 90 year old mother and of a father who bargained directly with God over the survival of Sodom and Gomorrah. And in the end, this grown man survived, having two children of his own, the youngest having birthed the entirety of the Jewish people.

But let's order this story for you: God promises Abraham and Sara a child and explicitly promises him this child's descendants will inherit land (Canaan) and will be a great nation. All this happens, including a child being born miraculously.

Would it not be foretold by these facts that Isaac could not have died, considering God made an explicit covenant with Abraham that Isaac was the future progenitor of Israel?

The story is literally preposterous, yet you want to imagine you were standing on the mountain side that day in shock among this crazy cast of characters in this absurdist reality with jaw on the floor watching a horrendous act?

Did the fox ever get fed or did he die of hunger for failure of Aesop to feed him? That's what we ought focus on.

I don't think nationalism is functionally all that different from religion.

The difference is that belief is the more encompassing term, also including empirical beliefs about what is. Faith is a type of belief, a subset... about values, about what should be... things that cannot simply be derived from what is.

I don't think nationalism is functionally all that different from religion. — ChatteringMonkey

That was my point.

H'm I'm not sure what to make of the last sentence there. But I think you are missing my point. The fireman (person?) heading into a burning building has lots of equipment and training, not to mention protocols behind him. They cannot sort all that out for themselves. They need to have faith - to trust, if you prefer - that all of that is as it should be and that their project is worthwhile. You and I might want to say that they need to trust in science and reason. My point is that, so far as I can see, that trust is hard to distinguish from the trust of a believer in whatever they believe, whether it be God, or luck, or the stars. I realize that's heretical, but the question does not just go away. — Ludwig V

I said "poetically" because I believe that using the word "faith" outside of a religious context serves as a literary or evocative expression rather than a precise or useful descriptor.

So we clearly disagree on this. I understand your point, which many religious people also make and I find it unconvincing. I don't agree that faith is a synonym for commitment.

Firefighters do not rely on faith in their equipment any more than passengers rely on faith when boarding a plane. We have ample evidence to justify our confidence in both aviation and firefighting, as both fields are underpinned by proven safety records and reliable procedures. Where is this good reasoning and evidence when someone uses faith to justify faith healing ?

There is no way to asses a faith, so far as I can see, but by its fruits. Religious faiths come out with a pretty mixed record. Are we sure that science and reason (Enlightenment) comes out much better? — Ludwig V

We can evaluate faith by examining the ideas it justifies. When faith allows children to die becasue the people believe god will heal and medicine is unnecessary, we can see how poor that chocie is. I'm not advocating for reason or science here; I'm simply asserting that faith is a poor pathway to truth. When individuals claim on faith that black people are inferior—a view I've encountered among some Reformed Christians in South Africa—they offer no reasoning, merely justifying bigotry. However, if they were to use eugenics to support their views, then we could engage in a rational discussion about the matter and the efficacy of the failed science of eugenics.

My point is that faith is a poor way to arrive at truth because there is nothing it can't justify. Which is why I've generally said if you have good reasons for believing in something, you don't need faith. For me faith is best understood as the excuse people give for a belief when they don't have good reasons.

So Abraham was faking it? He knew all along that god would not allow him to kill Isaac, but went along so as to garner favour from the Lord?

Moreover, such deceptions are somehow admirable?

Or are these comments just designed to mitigate the discomfort of taking the story literally? Indeed, some fairly extreme rationalisation is needed to maintain that a god who loves us and one that demands child sacrifice are the very same.

So the stories are indeed preposterous, as you say. The lesson one is supposed to take away is, as says, thoughtless obedience. This is not admirable.

This thread is at least in part an exploration of the difference between faith and mere belief. Saying that faith is just a belief in some set of values ignores quite a bit of what has already been said about faith. — Banno

Sure, but then neither is faith in all its meanings always equivalent to unquestioning obedience to some authority or else in some authoritative given - this as per the Abraham example as written.

As remarked early on, in common speech one and one's spouse are said to be faithful - full of faith - toward one another. Or as another example, having faith in humanity, or else one's fellow man. In neither of these contexts is faith taken to be about blind obedience to authority. Nor is it about mere belief.

I'll venture the notion that faith is about a certain form of trust - a trust in X that can neither be empirically nor logically evidenced. Belief (also closely associated to the notion of trust) can and most always should be justifiable in order to be maintained - as is the case in JTB. But faith eludes this possibility in practice.

Form there, the concept or else experience of faith can then bifurcate into authoritarian doctrines and usages, one the one hand, and on the other into a certain sense of hope-as-acted-upon-conviction regarding what is and will be, one for which one cannot find any steady ground to provide justification for.

Here's one extreme but good example: I don't just believe that solipsism is bullshit, I have and have always had a stringent acted-upon-conviction that it is. In sprite of this, I acknowledge that so far no philosophy has managed to demonstrate why solipsism is in fact false. In this sense, then, we all have and life by our faith that we are not solipsists. No blind obedience to anything required to have and uphold this one example of faith.

Or course, loud mouth authoritarians in religious circles are gonna claim sole knowledge about and ownership of what "true faith" is really all about. After all, it can rather fluidly serve authoritarian purposes. But disparaging the very occurrence of faith in all circumstances on this ground is a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I'll add that it is not OK to have faith in things that blatantly contradict reality - to have faith that humans once upon a time walked along side dinosaurs, for example. But when it comes to having faith in one's romantic partner, or one's fellow man, or that one is not a solipsism - and I take it that the list can be much longer - when such faith is not contradicted by any empirical evidence or logic is just common sense (even if one cannot prove that one's spouse has not cheated and will not cheat, or that human nature is not determined to be callous, etc.).

Yea, opinionated of me, but I sand by what I've just said.

Ok then we agree... I haven't read all the posts in the thread, so my apologies if I'm saying something that has been said already.