Do we need faith?

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His Name Is John
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Do we need faith?

Post #1

Post by His Name Is John »

Do we need faith?

Me and playhavock have agreed to debate around the question 'Do we need faith?' Me holding the view that 'faith' - in the sense that we mean when we talk about religious faith - is needed. playhavock will present a differing view.

Debate format:

Post 1: His Name Is John presents argument for 'faith'
Post 2: playhavock presents rebuttal
Post 3: His Name Is John presents response to rebuttal
Post 4: playhavock presents rebuttal rebuttal
Post 5: His Name Is John closing comments
Post 6: playhavock closing comments


There is no limit on time to reply or word count.
“People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.�
- G.K. Chesterton

“A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.�
- G.K. Chesterton

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Post #2

Post by playhavock »

Ready to go!

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Post #3

Post by His Name Is John »

To kick off this debate, I would like to start by saying how honored I am to be the first person playhavock debates in the head-to-head format. We agreed very early on (a couple of days after he first joined) that we wanted to debate one on one. This is my second debate in this way and I have very fond memories of the first. I hope that playhavock and I can kindle such happy memories once again.

Now onto the topic at hand:


Do we need faith?


I hope to argue - in this post and those which follow - that not only is faith reasonable and rational, but it is also necessary to our every-day existence. Without faith, I will argue, life is un-livable.

But before I get into the reasons why 'faith' is needed, I must first define what I mean when I say the word 'faith'. Like so many words in the English language, the meaning is not always as clear as one might like. It has been said that there are more than 10,000 words in the English language that have more than one meaning. I do not know if that is true, but especially when trying to debate extremely technical philosophical topics, words can easily be misunderstood.

The definition I choose to use is the following:


Belief, trust, that which produces belief, evidence, token, pledge, engagement, trust in its objective aspect, troth, observace of trust, fidelity (based upon the Greek etymological cognate pistes).


This is also backed up by the root word fides which in Latin means:


fides : trust, confidence, reliance, belief.


I think the definition of fides hold the most relevant, and while those words used to define pistes are all correct, I will not be making reference to those which have no relevance.

I think this definition is the one that best suits the word.

There is another definition of 'faith' that is becoming more and more popular. The idea that the word 'faith' means:


Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.


Or even:


Belief that is held despite going against logic and material evidence.


This definition (something I would like to call 'blind faith') has been popularized by the New Atheism movement. This form of equivocation has become very popular among the internet, with many claiming all 'faith' is detrimental and anti-intellectual.

I reject this definition.

The idea that all faith is blind-faith is simply not correct.

Some people (including Richard Dawkins) believes that once you have evidence to back up a belief, faith is no longer required. This is a common mistake. In fact, I would argue that such a definition of faith is in-fact impossible.

I can't think of one view or belief which would come under this category of blind-faith. Every view or opinion we hold is based upon something. Now that something, may be illogical, or irrational, but to us it - for what ever reason - holds weight. Thus to us, it indeed counts as 'evidence'. Perhaps not of the kind someone like Richard Dawkins would like, but evidence the the individual at least. And so, how - if this person has a basis and a reason for this view (no matter how poor a reason it may be) - we cannot accuse them of having blind-faith.

As Oxford Mathematician and Christian Apologist John C Lennox says:


"Faith is not a leap in the dark; it’s the exact opposite. It’s a commitment based on evidence… It is irrational to reduce all faith to blind faith and then subject it to ridicule. That provides a very anti-intellectual and convenient way of avoiding intelligent discussion.�


It is a classic example of the New Atheists using straw-men against Christian theists, this time about what we mean when we say it is good to have 'faith' in God.

Now back to my definition:


Belief, trust, evidence, observace of trust, fidelity, trust, confidence, and reliance.


When I say I have faith in God, I do not mean I have no evidence (empirical or otherwise) or logical argument to believe he exists. What I mean is that I can't prove his existence 100%, but inspite of that, I still believe.

It is my view that when ever we admit the possibility of being wrong (or at least, but having certainty), but still hold onto said belief, we are exercising faith.

But then where does faith differ from hope?

I can hope something will happen or be truth. But I can also have faith that something will happen or be truth. Hope is a state of wishing/longing. Faith is a state of believing/acting.

What things do we believe in without having conclusive proof?

Let me make a short list:


That we have free-will.
That our experiences are real.
That the laws of nature are consistent.
That there is order in the universe.
That cause and effect exists.
That we can access absolute truths.



That is just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds (if not millions) of different things just like those above.

Now all those I listed were to do with philosophical / metaphysical questions. One could potentially argue that we could go through life without attempting to answer any of them (something I would disagree with), but lets see many 'real world' examples of where faith is needed:


That our boss is going to pay us.
That our family love us.
That we are not going to die in ten seconds suddenly.
That the doctor I am going to isn't trying to kill me.
That I am not a 'Truman' (being in a totally staged environment).
That my wife wont kill me in my sleep.



All those things we believe (perhaps wrongly sometimes). We hold the view that despite not being able to prove 100% what our spouse is going to do once we are asleep, we have enough reasons (through evidence and logical conclusions) to presume that she isn't going to brutally murder us. We don't know for sure, but we act as if we did. In other words, you have faith.

I can foresee the majority of this argument developing into a debate around the definition of faith I presented, as it is foundational to the question, do we need faith or not. I would argue that we do. That without it not only would we not be able to hold views on some of the most important metaphysical and philosophical questions, but you wouldn't be able to live a normal every-day life. Now on the other hand, I am equally happy to follow this debate if it looks at why 'religious faith' in particular is needed, but I will allow playhavock to deside which direction he wishes to take.

The New-Atheists have been promoting the idea that there is a war between science and faith. There is no such war. Science itself relies very heavily upon faith.

Faith is reasonable and necessary. I want to ask the question that if we accept it so readily in pretty much every other area of life, why has it become a bad word when in the context of religion and God?
“People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.�
- G.K. Chesterton

“A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.�
- G.K. Chesterton

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Post #4

Post by playhavock »

Our question is thus: "Do we need faith?"

My worthy oppenent has defined the word faith to be:
"Belief, trust, evidence, observace of trust, fidelity, trust, confidence, and reliance."
One might ask why "trust" appears more then once- I will try to clarify and make sure that John has no disagremnt with my clarifcation - "observance of trust" would be an emperiacl observation of human (one assumes) behavor that is repeated. However why "trust" appears after fidelity I can not say for sure.

However our question is now:

"Do we need belief, trust, evidence, observace of trust, fidelity, confidence, and reliance."

Belief- I am not sure - it becomes problmatic because of the word belief - are we running the risk that we are refering to an unwarnted belife? Or a belife in something that would or could cause harm to self or others?

What about trust - is trust earned or given? I would matain that it should be earned, and never given without being earned.

Observance of trust - a complex concept to be sure, but I am in favor of observation of anything and everything. You can only give a person trust if you see actions that lead that you should give them trust, for example.

Fidelity - again this is a socal matter - one based upon human interaction, more on this latter.

Confidence - Again, being sure about (X) seems to be based upon obsertaion of (X). However, there are elements of this I will address that can be problematic.

Reliance - again a human/socal issue. More on this in a moment.

Mostly - we have an issue that I see here. We are talking not about a single consept - but a combined concept - one that invovles human interaction - and one that talks about how we best find out if something is true - or not true.

Here lies a problem - when we come to socal issues - does this person love me - like me - etc - we assume "innocence" untill proven guilty (and even then our emotions can and do overide facts at hand) so the person who is thinking about friendships and relationships can not see changing how such things work "But how could I ever find love if I requred proof of love?"

Ah - but we do - actions, always , speak louder then words. "Love" is in essance -a chemical reaction that is trigered in order to ensure the contunation of speices - and studys have shown said chemical lasts just long enough to ensure that the offspring is produced, and able to care for themselfs - and then, typicaly - that emotion is moved from the spouce to the childern (but not always)

However, homosexual persons who love do so purely for the emotional element, and not for any biological need to reproduce, perhaps natures way of population control - I can not say , but emotion is not based upon logic or reasion - it is based upon need and desire, we want to be socal - in fact, we are socal creatures. But should the person you care for treat you badly, you should - logicaly -move away from such a person, again - abusive and codependent relationships exists both for hetrosexual and homosexuals realtionships because , well - some people are just jerks, and our emotion overrides what we SHOULD do in favor of what we want - to be happy.

To love and be loved. To be connected with someone. To not be alone.

For the socal matters - I do not know how socity would change if we did base things on a more logicalistic manner "Execuse me, I find that you are attractive and according to this data our offspring would be very healthy, phyiscaly fit and have the compasity for intelegence and great compasson towards others." I might be in favor of such a thing, but I think it would ruin romance books - perhaps that might not be such a bad thing! :)

However, when one thinks "But, I cant change myslef to that degree - no one will agree with that!" or such thoughts, the idea turns them off - they can not see themselfs changing , they can not immagen that there would be someone that thinks this way "out there" but - we are creatures of our socity. I know that if I goto Japan, that a woman there will want me (typicaly) if I would make a good husband for her, rather then for emotional reasions - again , this is not ALWAYS the case, but it seems more offen so - there culture has indeed been shaped towards this, and ours is a mixed bag.

So, for the socal matters - the only thing I can say is that - observation of how a person acts should be viewed first, as well as carefull observation and lissioning skills to see if they say one thing, yet do something else- gettting to know them, how they are, and so on - be as logical as you can, then alow your emotions to enter the picture - but - although I can say we should do this, and want to do it myself, I know that - in the end , my emotions, and yours as well might indeed get the better of me, and so I run the risk of being emotionaly hurt in said relationship in the end. All because if in that event I choose emotion over logic - humm, perhaps a lession there.

On the other side, we are looking at not human relationships, but on "how do I best deside if (X) is true?" And for this question it seems clear that we can NOT use emotion or hope for it, we can only use objective data. We need data, we must have emperical evedance and/or a repatable test (better if we have both) to conferm that (X) is real. We can simply not be sure about (X) otherwise.

So, for human conserns - we should - and let me make SHOULD bold and sharp - use observation for our interactions and choices.

As a youtuber named "Captain Disillusion" says "Love with your heart, but use your head for everything else." (http://www.youtube.com/user/CaptainDisillusion)

Now, we come to the matter at hand when my oppenent says this:
When I say I have faith in God, I do not mean I have no evidence (empirical or otherwise) or logical argument to believe he exists.
Intreging. My oppenent did not want to debate with me the topic "Is God real" if my oppenent has emperical evidance that shows "God" I would love to know what this is - also of course, I do not know what "God" is - the word itself is questonable. Why not simply show me the evedance that such a thing exists if there is evedance? Hummm. Now, logical augments - well, I'm not sure about that, every augment I've seen thus far for "God" has some flaw in it- mostly question begging or other problems.

But again, I find myself preplexed on why we are not debating "Is God real?" if my oppenent thinks he has such good augments for God and indeed- if there is emperical evedance for it. Of course "God" will be (G) and we would subject (G) to critical questions and scientific enquiry, and I think, we would find that soon (G) would be shown to be an idea in the brain, but not something that we can varify in the real world. However, this is not that debate, still - I must wonder, why choose a topic such as "faith" rather then (G)?

My conclusion is thus - "faith" is easyer to defend, as a consept - then (G) is - for my oppenents consept of faith holds socal issues and impacts persons on a emotional level. Because of this, the word becomes a thing that almost seems tangalbe to us, and so - we defend it because it is as if part of ourselfs is being attacked, our very core - yet, my oppenent has allready changed what "faith" is - as my oppenent states - it is not blind faith that we are talking about.

And so, I find little objection to my oppenents view of the word and concept. Should we then end our talk here?

I supose, I could bring out the bible and point to several passages in there that sugest that faith is indeed blind faith - and since my oppenent is themselfs a proclamed christan they would find themselfs in the very tricky position to defend blind faith - something that they object to.

I am not sure how my oppenent would dodge this problem, other then by redifining faith to meen the faith that we seem to agree upon. In fact, I submit that although my oppenet gives lip service that the "new athests" are the ones who are redifining faith - that it is indeed the point made by (old and new) athests (and others) that blind faith has always been bad. And that there IS no emperical evedance for any relgion - not at all.

The problem is- what I've seen in my studys of my own prevous faith (christanity) that the evedance is agenst the bible, and there is no evedance for (G) , and in fact -thats the point - the whole point is blind faith, in the end.

William Lane Craig said: - "My knowledge of Christianity’s truth, while supported by strong arguments, is not ultimately based on those arguments but on the witness of God Himself."

(http://www.reasonablefaith.org/counterf ... the-spirit)

Again , the point here - in fact rereading what the question was, and what the answer is - is missed by Craig. There is NO way to test "Holy Sprit" there is no way to say, put a needle into someone and extract the experance, the chemcical - to test it[to vairfy that it is real. His FALSE analigy of one container holding H2O (water) and the rest posion - is just that , a false one. He belives oh so much - that he is drinking water, but has ZERO WAY TO TEST IT.

None, not at all, not a bit. And yet, he - and other bevlivers - always belive they have the "water" and everyone else is drinking posion. All because we have no way to test "spirt".

So, in Craigs case -it might indeed by that a evil god - (devil) is giving him this wonderfull feeling to make him belive in the "wrong" god - the posion god - and the good god (lets say Allha or whatever) is trying to unposion the water, but pour Craig just can not be unposioned (because... umm Allha works in mysterous ways).
With no emperical way to varify who has a "true" experance (if indeed there is such a thing) we must conclude not based upon FEELING AND EMOTION, but by facts.

We have 1 fact - and one only - people can experance things. We can make ourselfs feel wonder and awe, and we can do so quite well- you can do it with, or without (G), and you can do it with ANY (G) you want, not just one (G). Feelings do not prove that (G) exists. Only data would do this, and sadly, we lack such data. We lack any test - at all about (G).

Now, we are asking - not about what Craig says or what "new athests" say or any one else - we have a debate - and the debate must stand, or fall - on its own merrits. My oppenent has allready said:
There is another definition of 'faith' that is becoming more and more popular. The idea that the word 'faith' means:

Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

Or even:

Belief that is held despite going against logic and material evidence.
AND
I reject this definition.
Well, I understand - of course, when we speak of "faith" we have, for our questioned , agreed that it does not meen blind faith - as you reject it. And you have said that you have emperical evedance for God (or sugested it) and we can - I think but am not sure, agree that the socal interaction of the new defention of "faith" that you have layed out are ones we can sertenly ask critical quesitons about, as yet, my answer to the new question:

"Do we need belief, trust, evidence, observace of trust, fidelity, confidence, and reliance."

Is - "No, only if you earn it, yes, yes, a good thing to do in socal interactions, seems it could be probematic, and it is good to earn reliance, and/or demestrate that you are relable"

This seeems then, that I am answering a socal question, rather then the question of how we best deside what is true, and that is fine, I hope I have given light to some , if not all - issues of this quesiton at hand. Before I close for now I will reflect, if I may on the following:
That we have free-will. (unknown)
That our experiences are real. (sometimes)
That the laws of nature are consistent. (testable)
That there is order in the universe. (sort of)
That cause and effect exists. (unless we are in the quantom world)
That we can access absolute truths. (only with emperical evedance and/or repeatable testing or both)
My answers to my oppenents statments of things we "belive in" (or have faith in) are in parentheses. I say "Sometimes" to that our experances are real because there are people who lose there "mind" (there brain malfunctions), but typicaly emperisem - that is, study of and testing of - our world is trustable and it produces results.
I will clarify any other of my answers if need by, although I find them to be tangents, I do not mind. (But to do so we should make clear we are no longer in persuasionary dialogue but have changed to information-seeking dialogue)
That our boss is going to pay us. (based upon laws)
That our family love us. (emotional based upon actions and famularity)
That we are not going to die in ten seconds suddenly. (we do not think this way)
That the doctor I am going to isn't trying to kill me. (reasions to think this)
That I am not a 'Truman' [being in a totally staged environment] (emperisem would dismantal this)
That my wife wont kill me in my sleep. (well...)
Of course, again - some of the examples are socal, and others are based upon observation and data collection - athought I'm not sure about the wife one , most people do not think that this will happen, and rairly - it actualy does! However, the rairity is not really focused upon, because it is the execption to the normal operational mode of things. I love the idea of Truman (based upon the Jim Carry movie) because emperisem would destory such a world. If he asked critical questions he would have learned much earlyer that his world was fake. In the end, the truth was revealed, and he left the fake world for the real one. A good choice. If only we could all make such a choice.

And so, with these reflections - and my answer to the current question and reflections, I await to see where we go from here, if anywhere at all - it might be that we must leave the persuasion type of dialogue and move to information-seeking or inquiry types.

I require emperical evedance for (G) - and so far, I have none. I am glad my oppenent is agenst blind faith, but - it seems meny chistans, and those of other relgions - do not share this view, and thus, we are all in danger of them because what you belive shapes who you are. The question I ask - do I hold truth or fiction - and - how can I know? The answer seems to be with the scientific method and use of logic. I of course, could always be wrong, but must be shown this is so.

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