Mark Jones at his blog "Good Grief, Linus" has written a reasonable response to Monsignor Roderick Strange's Times article published on the 17th april, with the conclusion that faith is a contradiction and so irrational. If the monsignor is correct then Mark has a point. Here is my response to that.
It seems to me that most Christians don't really know what faith is: they think of it as some mysterious gift of God that magically gives belief, or perhaps think it is a word meaning ‘religious belief’. Some think of it as a movement of will to belief: a decision to believe. Some even think it is possible to have faith and doubt; President Barack Obama among them.
This confusion among Christians is understandable since even the agents of authority based denominations, like Catholics, often don't teach the meaning of faith with any clarity. For example it's no good responding, as a bishop did recently, with Hebrews 11:1 since it doesn't actually define faith.
Lacking a simple definition of faith non-religious definitions have gained currency even among Christians, for example "Belief without knowledge" or Dawkins favoured definition "Belief without evidence". These are simple and appealing definitions and seem to make sense in consideration of the lack of Christian's concrete evidence for the existence of a god. Considering the amount of nonsense ill-educated Christians tell people Dawkins cannot be blamed for his preferred definition of faith even though it's not Christian.
The problem is made worse still by the bible exhortation to “always have a ready answer”, and the ill-educated Christian's response to that. Most Christians ready answer should be “I don’t really know”, with perhaps the offer of a speculation since in the main that is as much as they can do. Instead they give waffly made-up guff as gospel truth and useless bible quotes. I feel sure Mark Jones has noticed. I’ve done it myself in my youth and still find it something of a self-discipline to say “I don’t know”.
And here we come to Monsignor Roderick Strange. Some, who should know better, are propagating these non-christian definitions in direct contradiction of their own Church's : Roderick Strange's Times UK article is a screaming piece of heresy. His own church officially and explicitly teaches the opposite of what he is saying. That fellow is/was in charge of a college teaching future catholic priests. Astonishing really.
Religious faith is properly defined as :
“Assent and adherence to divinely revealed truth” Catholic Catechism Section 1, Article II, para 150.
In direct contradiciton of the Monsignor paragraph 157 adds "Faith is certain", not my emphasis.
In other words it is not an act of belief: rather it is the free-will act of conforming to what has been proven (the proof being the source of certainty). Divinely revealed means proven. The person naturally believes what is proven if the mind and will are healthy and unbiased but conformity to the revelation is left to freewill.
"Divinely revealed truth” doesn’t of itself address the necessity for that proof to be objective. The film The Matrix is a nice illustration of the problem of objective knowledge, and also the atheist’s “Voices in the head” objection to rational religious belief. However, assuming for the sake of argument that there is such a thing as objective proof even in the face of insanity……
The definition of faith assumes that the proof is objective since a god would theoretically have the ability to give objective proof. The ‘faith’ bit is not about belief but about “assent” which is in keeping with the pre-religious meaning of ‘faith’: to be loyal/steadfast (keeping faith with). [One can also speculate that a person might dissent even from a god’s proof, but I won’t go in to that.]
So to summarise: faith is about freewill not belief.
All this nonsense about faith not being required if there is proof, a la Monsignor in that quoted article above, is just that: nonsense. It is a confusion of faith with the word belief and then the use of non-christian definition of faith ‘belief without evidence’ to scramble everyone’s brains, and this direct from an educated Christian?!?!?! Dawkins may as well not bother. Disregarding the issue of whether a god actually exists or not: historically Christian belief is supposed to be based on proof. Even the ancients understood that the god reveals itself.
There is also the confusion caused by the common perception that Christian proof is to be found in the Bible. It is not!!! It is found in the word of God, sometimes delivered through the Bible and sometimes through a person, as witnessed by God himself. It is God's witness to the words that give the proof, not the words themselves. Of course the Bible is unable to prove itself.
A half-baked Christian can blabber on about God all he likes but unless he does it with the help of God's Holy Spirit nothing much will happen. The Bible (or the person) is an instrument for God's power, but it is God that completes the witness. Equally if the bible is read with a view to finding contradictions you can be sure that there won't be much witnessing going on.
So then what about some awkward doubting Christians, for example Mother Theresa, Padre Pio (now Saint Pio), Saint Theresa of Lisieux and Mark Jones's Christian buddies? In the first place there is a distinction between temptation to doubt and actual doubt, a distinction monsignor Roderick Strange doesn’t seem to know about. The experience of temptation to doubt is not dissimilar to actual doubt. In the end, however, the tempted person may say to themselves “yet somehow I know that God exists even despite these seemingly reasonable objections”.
In the second place perhaps some of these saints did actually doubt, in which case they lost the faith since belief (which has the quality of certainty) and doubt are mutually exclusive, and faith presupposes belief. However since they ended up as declared saints a Catholic assumes that they must have been restored to belief and faith at some point because canonisation is an infallible pronouncement as far as a Catholic is concerned. Mother Theresa is not yet canonised and though being a fan I have doubts about whether she ever will be since it is most unclear that she ‘made it’: that bogus 'miracle' is a bad omen and her diaries are quite disturbing.
Mark Jones's doubting Christian buddies, to whom he refers in his blog, may very well not actually have the faith but it’s difficult to tell in any case. Certainly if they are wilfully breaking Christian laws - fornication etc - then they cannot have objective proof; though they could still have what St Paul refers to as ‘dead faith’ which does not include objective proof only the subjective ‘proof’ of the senses and mind. Since all evidence is dependent on the human purveyor it is a good exercise to examine or test the integrity of the ‘witness’.
As an aside scientific evidence often falls at that hurdle also: there are lots of biased, self-deceiving (often due to pride or pride’s child: avoidance of shame) or fiscally compromised scientists that even peer review and consensus can’t defeat; after all even scientists dabble in political manipulations. Dawkins scientific 'evidence' is as dependent on human witness as the Faiths, which is why it is adequate to point to the existence of religious believers as evidence of a god (but not as proof, of course). Dawkins "not a shred of evidence" is slightly incorrect.
Science as a golden standard of truth is just simple-minded nonsense that ignores a tall heap of philosophical objections not the least of which is the problem of insanity: it's impossible to know that one is sane or even that one isn't hallucinating a whole ‘human’ life while being locked up in a jellyfish loony bin because one is in fact a mad jellyfish (this is to ignore the difficulty that jellyfish don’t have brains).
Excepting the hypothetical existence of a god I think it’s unlikely that there is any such thing as a fact despite the tortured twistings of modern epistemology (philosophy of knowledge for the unwary reader). I reckon a nearer golden standard of truth is personal integrity, but even if Dawkins’ integrity is spotless I still can’t tell that he actually exists and isn’t just a figment of my brainless jellyfish mind.
Anyway, with all that I hope you can see that among the many objections to religion the proper definition of faith is not itself irrational, nor is religious belief defined as something irrational. Kierkegaard's 'Leap to Faith' and Pascal's wager may have confused just about everyone with their silly ideas, but the authentic definition of faith is just fine irrespective of whether or not a god exists.
[A detail I have ommited is the mechanism of objective proof. However since I don't know that the dear reader is a genuine seeker of truth I am not about to cast what I believe to be a pearl before what may be swine. The genuine seeker of truth should study what it means to be baptised if they really want to know.]
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Thanks very much, UI, for a reasoned response. I'm not *completely* sure that the Monsignor is going against what you say, but it's odd that he didn't include his own church's definition of faith. To be charitable, he may be talking about the journey to faith that is *certain*.
ReplyDeleteAs for your definition, backed by objective proof, I'm bound to say that this *certainty* is what has convinced me of the wrongness of faith. If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that I can't be certain of anything! As you point out, we cannot *know* our circumstances absolutely. Of course, I dare say you will counter with your divinely revealed truth, but that is just begging the question, as I'm sure you realise.
Thanks anyway, for an interesting read.
(Cross posted on UI's blog)
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteThe question of how an almighty god can do what is seemingly impossible to us is another matter: I was only justifying faith as rational, and the rational definition has some assumptions, one of which you seem to suggest is impossible. However..
"If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that I can't be certain of anything!"
..except that nothing is certain?!? Hmmm. That's sailing the boat of reason in to rather choppy waters.
What concrete grounds do you have for believing objective proof/knowledge of circumstances is impossible? I don't know of such grounds: epistemology's lack of success is not proof while your conviction is only that and my illustration of the problem of objective knowledge wasn't a positive demonstration of its impossibility while anyway only in respect of a seemingly non-almighty being (myself).
Non-religious epistemology has long history with no untouchable answers. The fact that we might not have established a mechanism of objective proof/knowledge doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So the assumption, while not greatly satisfying, can still be made.
As it happens there is a known mechanism: I alluded to it at the end of my post. I apologise that I can't, in good conscience, add to that allusion. However I don't think it is needed for this discussion. The hypothesis of an almighty god is adequate in the face of the fact that such a being is not disproven (and there is even some evidence for it: believers).
cross posted to GGL
Thanks UI.
ReplyDelete"What concrete grounds do you have for believing objective proof/knowledge of circumstances is impossible?"
As my jokey certainty comment indicates, I have no *certainty* about this, but the *probabilities* suggest it. This is not to rule it out completely, I agree. So, as with all such considerations, one must *weigh* the evidence. I don't *know* absolutely, but my weighing of the evidence suggests it to me at the moment. As you say, philosophers have wrestled with the problems of epistemology down the ages (and I'm no philosopher), but I would be keen to hear of a truly reliable 'way of knowing'.
It seems clear in discussion with (some) theists that they weigh the evidence in favour of a god (often the god they were taught about as a youngster); fair enough, and perhaps they are using the mechanism to which you allude to provide this evidence. For a mechanism to supply such objective truth to its users, one might expect a remarkable consistency of belief in its operators, but strangely the opposite is truth. So we have a mechanism that is only available to some of god's creations which, even to those to whom it is available, delivers different versions of the objective truth. No useful predictions are supplied by this mechanism. What you allude to would seem to be an *unreliable* method for uncovering the truth, simply based on reports from its users. After all, weren't you prompted to post on my blog as a result of heretical views from a Monsignor? Or perhaps he's not using the mechanism to which you're privy? In which case, why not? How would I know which theist is? Why should I listen to *you* and not *him*?
By contrast the scientific method is available to all and it does make useful predictions. This is not to describe it as infallible, however, but simply a pretty *reliable* method for uncovering the truth. And theists agree with this conclusion too. It is the best method we've discovered so far for uncovering the truth. Theists might not agree with that :-).
It is a truism that the hypothesis of an almighty god has not been disproven, just as there is an infinite number of *things* that have not been disproven, and I agree there is *some* evidence for this hypothesis; I think the more *reasonable* conclusion, however, is that the evidence is insufficient. Not to say that your position is *unreasonable*; just *less* reasonable than mine. IMO!
All the best.
"a truism that..an almighty god has not been disproven..there is an infinite number of *things* that have not been disproven"
ReplyDeleteI consider it a critical truth: one of the parents of your doctrine of uncertainty and unlike the infinity of arbitrary ideas the concept of a supreme being is not.
Dawkins trick of equating such a being to unicorns and fairies is naughty. A supreme being is an idea much examined because it isn’t silly but rather fits in to the philosophically attractive ideas of zero/nothing,1/ unity, and infinity. It’s also a personification of existence, which undoubtedly exists. The real question is not whether a god exists but is existence self-referential (conscious). See Gregory Chaitin.
The weight of evidence: most religions with a supreme being tend to share fundamentals: personal, loving, just, merciful, and versions of heaven and hell: seemingly the same god. Some religions don't have a supreme being (ie. Zeus isn't one) and are said to be pagan. But those that do are similar, to contradict you (Hinduism does). Only protestants and fanatics are truly exclusivist.
“Why should I listen to *you* and not *him*?”
Authority isn’t a problem if a person goes to the source: “God, if you exist, please reveal yourself”. At least some one should be encouraging you to talk to god but which a genuine (and irrational) belief that such a god does not exist would make impossible (a test of whether you are actually atheist).
Prediction isn’t a test of truth.
crossposted
"Dawkins trick of equating such a being to unicorns and fairies is naughty. A supreme being is an idea much examined because it isn’t silly but rather fits in to the philosophically attractive ideas of zero/nothing,1/ unity, and infinity."
ReplyDeleteThis strikes me as a re-wording of the ontological argument, which is deeply unconvincing to me.
"The real question is not whether a god exists but is existence self-referential (conscious). See Gregory Chaitin."
Well, there are *many* real questions, IMO, consciousness being just one of them. I think the reification of consciousness is a very human reaction to our state of being, and for the religious, a response to the demolition of the teleological argument in recent times. It *is* important and interesting and it *may* be significant in the way you think. At the moment, I think not.
"The weight of evidence: most religions with a supreme being tend to share fundamentals: personal, loving, just, merciful, and versions of heaven and hell: seemingly the same god. Some religions don't have a supreme being (ie. Zeus isn't one) and are said to be pagan. But those that do are similar, to contradict you (Hinduism does). Only protestants and fanatics are truly exclusivist."
I think there are *some* fundamentals religions share; there seems to be a very good *natural* reason for this to be so. They all arise from humanistic thought. In these circumstances nothing could be more understandable than some shared characteristics. It's evident that many religions have *good* things in them. But it's also evident that there are many *differences* in dogma and doctrine. My comment referred to these differences, which you must acknowledge. I have a dream of a utopian world where the inconsistent and incoherent and imagined elements of religions (remember there are atheist religions) are removed to leave us with... humanism, at bottom. Perhaps that's a bit too John Lennon!
"Authority isn’t a problem if a person goes to the source: “God, if you exist, please reveal yourself”. At least some one should be encouraging you to talk to god but which a genuine (and irrational) belief that such a god does not exist would make impossible (a test of whether you are actually atheist)."
I have had people encouraging me to talk to god(s), all my life. Many have searched, in good faith, without success; that is my first point. So then, as one who hasn't had the benefit of the mechanism (despite a lifetime of searching) one looks at the testimony of those who say they *do* have access to it; that testimony does not point to an objective truth generator, otherwise all the many differences in dogma and doctrine wouldn't exist. And these are not trivial differences, otherwise you could quite easily abandon Catholic doctrine and follow Buddhism, and the Pope would still consider you a good Catholic. The penalty for apostasy in Islam would be a pat on the back, not death. These things are undeniable, I think, and don't recommend your mechanism to the searcher for 'truth'.
I don't think *incoherent* gods exist, but for other types, I see insufficient evidence for them. I cannot say they don't exist. 'Atheist' is a rather broad brush word semantically for these nuances. After all, I can call *you* an atheist for all but one of the gods humans have worshipped down the ages.
"Prediction isn’t a test of truth."
Unlike you, I'm not sure we can get at *absolute* truth, so I'm not sure I would put it like this, but accurate prediction does indicate we have *something* right. Scientists accept that scientific theories are most likely wrong in some detail, but that doesn't mean they aren't right in some detail, and the predictions provide *comfort* to that view. (By contrast, the religiously minded don't like to entertain the chance that their beliefs could be wrong in some detail.) No doubt you appreciate the value of predictability? How could anyone not? Why do some theists value biblical predictions, if not because they think it provides some 'truth' test?
If the religions share fundamentals then its the same god: and that's the point. Your non-trivial differences would have to be more significant than the fundamentals which I reckon would create a logical difficulty. Most faiths seem to think that membership of other faiths does not preclude admittance to a heaven. The multi-gods objection is shaky at best.
ReplyDeleteIn any case differences, non-trivial or otherwise, are an obvious consequence of a free-will, which is possible if there were a personal god. A god might have a manifestation, in his mercy, in each religion, even if it were to reserve the fullness of truth to only one. Catholics believe this as do Hindus.
An example: Hinduism has a trinity, the 2nd person incarnates, justice/mercy, god is love, a version of original sin, similar sexual codes to other faiths, the need for cleansing from wrongdoing and purification, mastery of the body and passions, angels and demons (the demi-gods).
"otherwise you could quite easily abandon Catholic doctrine and follow Buddhism"
Not if god had told you that the Catholic Church was the fullness of truth and Buddhism wasn’t, but many Catholics don’t (either due to no revelation or rejection of it) and they are defacto non-catholics.
"This strikes means a re-wording of the ontological argument..deeply unconvincing to me."
That there must be a god if we can conceive of one: I can’t see that I have suggested it. In any case point was that the idea of a supreme being is not as fanciful as Dawkins would suggest by his sleight of logic (logical fallacy as ‘reason’ worshipper like to say).
Dawkins plays dirty and has no integrity: most of Christianity has never had a dogma of biblical literalism.
Suffering innocents as unjust (also hell): depends on a sentimental idea of love and ignores justice: the innocent must suffer in place of the guilty to give them time to repent: not a reason palatable to the western mind. Material evidence: my uncle was a nuclear physicist and said “In my work I see the finger-prints of God everywhere”, so it depends who you talk to. Logical proofs (ie. limits on power) against a god, Bertrand Russel: “..describe myself as an Agnostic..I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God.”
Nature and logic strikingly reflect the Trinity, even to feed-back mechanisms. The anthropomorphic objection means that the evidence is not compelling but it also means that Dawkins’ “not a shred of evidence” is incorrect since that depends on no significant signs of a deity in nature anthropomorphic or otherwise.
Reason as supreme: even reason requires knowledge first: human reason can’t examine and understand it’s own axioms: like the axioms of maths thay are just a given: not good is it?. Faiths put knowledge before reason, which is the correct order.
“..a response to the demolition of the teleological argument in recent times.”
..I was not aware of this but I am aware of irreligious modern philosophies so complex they aren’t verifiable. Demolish is a strong word for someone so uncertain.
“consciousness..*may* be significant..At the moment, I think not.”
Its relevant to creation as intention, otherwise why should anything but the non-personal deity exist so while not critical it’s certainly significant before even considering that science has no answer as to why anything exists at all.
Anyway, you conceded my point that faith as defined correctly is rational so its time to wrap up. Also it seems to me that you may be a closed-minded agnostic if not a true atheist (to believe that god does not exist, which is irrational,as defined by the OED not wikipedia, rather than to lack belief which is really a form of agnostic), so I don’t want to expend more time on this.
I’ll leave you the last word (unless you request an answer) and this quote:
“A man is more often right in what he affirms than in what he rejects”
Thanks for your input, Useful, and thank you for granting me the last word, but feel free to post again, if you feel the urge; I'll try to refrain from responding!
ReplyDeleteYour attempt to show the compatibility of the religions of the world is a little fruitless here; my view is they all stem from the same root (humanity), so these compatibilities are to be expected. Furthermore the *incompatibilities* are to be expected too, because we humans are a feckless lot with curious notions, despite our common biology. So a natural history of religious belief *can* be understood. However, I repeat, the incompatibilities, whilst understandable naturally, *don't* conform to your idea of a divinely revealed truth. Your appeal to free will simply suggests that exposure to the divinely revealed truth does not guarantee transmission of that truth; in which case, it's worthless, because we are back to square one - what is true? If the people who use your mechanism cannot agree (through free will) the truth, it is genuinely of no use.
Apologies if I misunderstood your point as the ontological argument; my comprehension sometimes fails and this is one of those occasions. But I don't think that Dawkins is playing dirty, as you say. Many mythical creatures crop up throughout human cultures and a god or gods are part of that pantheon, if I can use that word. This doesn't talk to its truthfulness, and Dawkins is well within his rights to point out the lack of good evidence for the proposition. Perhaps he is too hyperbolic about this for my taste, but people often say there isn't a shred of evidence when what they mean is, there isn't a shred of *good* evidence. Which seems to be the case to me (constantly weighing).
"most of Christianity has never had a dogma of biblical literalism."
The lengths to which some Christians will go to fit the bible to their own ideas just seems to point once again to a natural history of religion.
"Material evidence: my uncle was a nuclear physicist and said “In my work I see the finger-prints of God everywhere”, so it depends who you talk to."
Frankly, what another person *believes*, however eminent, tells me nothing for or against the proposition per se; I would need to understand *why* that person believed it, and then weigh the evidence again. I would defer to your uncle on matters of *nuclear physics*, however, as long as it wasn't against the expert consensus. The 'fingerprints of God everywhere' thought seems to be against the expert consensus currently; I'm unaware of any peer-reviewed papers confirming such fingerprints.
"Reason as supreme: even reason requires knowledge first: human reason can’t examine and understand it’s own axioms: like the axioms of maths thay are just a given: not good is it?. Faiths put knowledge before reason, which is the correct order."
I've never understood the attraction of this sort of post modernism to theists. I honestly do not see how positing a god explains why 'reason' works. It simply replaces one inscrutable, perhaps non-existent, problem (brute fact) with a bigger, but definitely existent, problem (an uncaused cause as the source of reason and, er, everything).
"I was not aware of this but I am aware of irreligious modern philosophies so complex they aren’t verifiable. Demolish is a strong word for someone so uncertain."
I'm not aware of any modern theist philosophers who defend the traditional teleological argument, but I'm always willing to read any offered. Just because a person isn't *certain* about his ontology and epistemology doesn't mean that he cannot see when a particular argument fails. That is a simple non sequitur.
"Its relevant to creation as intention, otherwise why should anything but the non-personal deity exist so while not critical it’s certainly significant before even considering that science has no answer as to why anything exists at all."
Again, I'm familiar with this argument from theists, and find it deeply unconvincing, but I'm happy if you find it satisfying. Asking these sorts of 'why' questions are natural to our make-up, but there is no reason to believe they are valid questions, even. Shocking as it might seem, there may be no 'why'. My advice is not to look for *your* answers in the *lack* of answers that science offers. That is really, literally, founding one's views on a void.
"Anyway, you conceded my point that faith as defined correctly is rational so its time to wrap up. Also it seems to me that you may be a closed-minded agnostic if not a true atheist (to believe that god does not exist, which is irrational,as defined by the OED not wikipedia, rather than to lack belief which is really a form of agnostic), so I don’t want to expend more time on this."
In my view most agnostics should call themselves atheists, if they are being honest, but this word carries a lot of baggage. Your definition is incorrect; you are describing an *anti-theist*, a subset of atheism. Certainly your (and the Catholic Church's) definition of faith ("Assent and adherence to divinely revealed truth") is rational, in the sense that if "divinely revealed truth" existed one could assent and adhere to it. I think I've demonstrated there is *significant* doubt over the existence of "divinely revealed truth". Well done for having found it though. But a more reasonable explanation might be that it's just your mind playing one of the clever tricks that humans have picked up down the ages.
And a quote to leave you with?
"Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them."
All the best.