Board 8 > Great talk designed to tear down faith

(+) Yeah! (+)

What can ANYONE do, in theory to disprove "faith"?

And if there's nothing that can, what EXISTS to 'prove' faith? How do you know that faith exists in the first place then?

Both are impossible. Why would you even ask that question?

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If both are impossible, then why have a concept of faith?

Like you yourself admit that you don't know that it's even coherent.

So let's get rid of it.

What's missing?

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Who cares about any of that stuff. Faith is more important in itself than all the works of reason.

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Congratulations to SuperNiceDog, Guru Winner, who was smart enough to pick
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And how do you know that it's more important than all the works of reason?

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Cause I say so, and I decide what's most important to me. The same way I decide whether anything is important to me.

It's that simple!

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Congratulations to SuperNiceDog, Guru Winner, who was smart enough to pick
your 7 time champion, Link.

tldw.

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What are you deciding is important to you?

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You're messing with me! You're messing with me, aren't you!?
You're making fun of me, aren't you!? Aren't you!? You definitely are! I'll murder you!

This is basically exactly what I'm talking about.

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This is basically exactly what I'm talking about.

Newbie isn't trying to disprove faith, as that's impossible, so I'm not sure why you have a problem with what he's saying.

Faith is a state of mind that you use to reach conclusions (that may or may not be wrong) it's not something you prove or disprove. That's what newbie's getting at.

The point of the guy's lecture wasn't that "faith doesn't exist" as much as "faith is a poor method of making decisions and you should use reasoning and logic whenever possible" from what I gathered from my half assed listen.

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From: ToukaOone | #052
If both are impossible, then why have a concept of faith?

Like you yourself admit that you don't know that it's even coherent.

So let's get rid of it.

What's missing?

You can't be serious

--
_foolmo_
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Newbie isn't trying to disprove faith, as that's impossible, so I'm not sure why you have a problem with what he's saying.


"Disprove" was the wrong word, sorry.

But I mean, when somebody is like "I just have faith. That's all there is to it."

And the other person keeps going "Why, that's dumb."

Just let them think what they want to think, whether you agree with it or not.

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red sox is just being facetious right now, right

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I realize that, but it's still an example of how these things often go on the internet.

Hence why I said it's just as annoying as the reverse.

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Well, when someone is trying to disprove faith you really don't need and can't get an argument better than "because I said so." It's like if someone wants to prove that there are no cookies and cream flavored ice cream cones oribiting a Jupiter-sized planet somewhere in the universe. Why don't you believe that? Because I said so works as well as anything else.

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Congratulations to SuperNiceDog, Guru Winner, who was smart enough to pick
your 7 time champion, Link.

Though to be sure, it actually is perfectly correct to say that something is most important to me because I say so. I choose x because I choose it. There is no other reason you could want for that, or even possible.

--
Congratulations to SuperNiceDog, Guru Winner, who was smart enough to pick
your 7 time champion, Link.

But I mean, when somebody is like "I just have faith. That's all there is to it."

And the other person keeps going "Why, that's dumb."

Just let them think what they want to think, whether you agree with it or not.

Newbie never said "that's dumb," though. And there's nothing wrong with asking a person why they have faith. I wouldn't have a problem with people asking me why I like the philosophical ideas of Socrates and Plato.

From: red sox 777 | #065
It's like if someone wants to prove that there are no cookies and cream flavored ice cream cones oribiting a Jupiter-sized planet somewhere in the universe.

Theoretically, something like this probably exists given the amount of planets in the universe

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Importance is subjective, reasoning and critical thinking is objective.

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And the other person keeps going "Why, that's dumb."

May I point out that I said no such thing, and that if a curious person actually asked what all this "faith" thing is that that IS the answer to their curiosity?

Also in what part did I actually try and disprove it? All I've done is ask what it is. If you consider that enough of a 'threat' to its existence then maybe you should reconsider your level of tolerance for those types of questions.

Because I said so works as well as anything else.

...What? No it doesn't. That increases the minimum message length by too much. And incidentally, even if it works as well as anything else, that doesn't mean that a better system of thinking about epistemology doesn't come out in the future (...or does exist).

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You're messing with me! You're messing with me, aren't you!?
You're making fun of me, aren't you!? Aren't you!? You definitely are! I'll murder you!

ViviffTheMobile posted...
Importance is subjective, reasoning and critical thinking is objective.

...What does that mean and why does that matter?

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You're messing with me! You're messing with me, aren't you!?
You're making fun of me, aren't you!? Aren't you!? You definitely are! I'll murder you!

I didn't say you tried to disprove it. I went as far as to say I used the wrong word.

And I wasn't really trying to single you out, as much as just... At its base, it was an example of the typical argument.

Faith can't be proved or disproved. So if somebody wants to say they "just do" as far as having it, then the other person insistently trying to probe "why" is pointless, especially if they're doing so to try and find something they CAN disprove.

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"I just do" seems like a rather superficial reason for something as fundamental as having faith, though. The only reason you have faith is "just because"? Really?

Well, these arguments have a history. Your method is to try to force other people into standing on positions, so that you can attack them. Meanwhile you just "ask questions." And if we're not going to try to prove/disprove faith, then questions about it are pretty irrelevant.

--
Congratulations to SuperNiceDog, Guru Winner, who was smart enough to pick
your 7 time champion, Link.

red sox 777 posted...
Well, these arguments have a history. Your method is to try to force other people into standing on positions, so that you can attack them. Meanwhile you just "ask questions." And if we're not going to try to prove/disprove faith, then questions about it are pretty irrelevant.


This is what I'm getting at, basically. It's pointless to try and force somebody to take a stance that you can attack when it's a stance on something you can't prove/disprove to begin with.

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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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The thing about talking to someone with a tightly held conviction is... they're never going to admit in the middle of a discussion about it that they're wrong, and you're right, and they're changing their mind. It's usually too heated for that.

But that doesn't mean no one has ever changed their mind after an idea was brought up to them.

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Meanwhile you just "ask questions."

A position on what? My position is pretty clear: Theism is so transparently vapid and contentless that theists don't have a position. How is that not a position?

I'm literally saying there's nothing to disprove.

And no, before you act like a wise ass and say "a ha! Didn't you say you weren't trying to disprove it?"

I wasn't trying to disprove it. I was trying to prove that it's so nonsensical that it can't be proven.

Seriously, you keep acting as if I have no position, when I've been an adamant defender of the fully reductionist / materialist / Logical positivist (?) point of view. If you want to challenge my position on, let's say, the reliability of science or the virtue of empiricism you have always been more than welcome to.

Yet you don't.

Look, I don't know how much more strongly I can phrase the point "This is anti-epistemological nonsense with no possible relevance to anything whatsoever." without calling people names. But to you apparently that's only "asking questions".

I have held many positions in this so called "history" with you, from the reliability and usefulness of science as a method, to a mathematical construction of Occam's razor and how induction relates to Bayes, your lack of curiosity, courage or attempted refutation of those positions has absolutely no bearing with whether or not I hold those positions.

And if that was really my attitude, why haven't you, you know, tried ASKING for my position?

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You're messing with me! You're messing with me, aren't you!?
You're making fun of me, aren't you!? Aren't you!? You definitely are! I'll murder you!

Mr Lasastryke posted...
If you're actively bashing religion (or the absence of it), you're really dumb.

Not nessecarily. I wouldn't say actively bashing religion in the context of the Crusades is really dumb, for instance.

Not what I was talking about. Yes, what the church did was wrong, but it was the church, not the religion, that did that.

Bash the church all you want.

And if that was really my attitude, why haven't you, you know, tried ASKING for my position?

Because I am not trying to attack all those positions? For one thing, I agree with many of them, and for another, disagreements tend to boil down to "because I believe these principles because I choose to."

If your position is that faith can neither be proven nor disproven, then we agree. How important you then think faith is, is a subjective matter and also cannot be proven or disproven.

--
Congratulations to SuperNiceDog, Guru Winner, who was smart enough to pick
your 7 time champion, Link.

As is, I might add, the value of empiricism.

--
Congratulations to SuperNiceDog, Guru Winner, who was smart enough to pick
your 7 time champion, Link.

very good talk, questions afterward were kind of painful to listen to

Faith is a weakness.

--
Geologists will date anything.

From: OmarsComin | #005
let me predict how this thread will go:

the atheists will talk about how god isn't real

a few theists will talk about how this talk doesn't convince them

sess will troll the atheists, doing it low key at first, then moving eventually to telling people they're done talking while maintaining an air of nonchalance with phrases like "it really isnt a big deal at all tho"

Ulti may come in with an "LOL Atheists, (an unrelated paragraph here about spanking or the fed or something)." that one's kind of 50/50.

SmartMuffin might reply but that's kind of unlikely, and he doesn't traditionally impact religion talks, only political talks. so that one shouldn't have too big an impact.

it's possible that meisnewbie will discuss things with large blocks of text, red sox is sometimes a good counterpart for these but not always.

and I will sit here gloating knowing that I predicted it all and congratulating myself for my substantial gift to this topic

(oh for serious though I'll probably watch this later)

this pretty much

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I have faith that there are fairies that bow to my every whim and grant me my every desire; whenever anything good happens to me, I will congratulate a fairy.

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Geologists will date anything.

Master Epyon posted...
Faith is a weakness.

How would it be? Religious people tend to be happier, live longer and have more secure social networks in the form of churches.

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You're messing with me! You're messing with me, aren't you!?
You're making fun of me, aren't you!? Aren't you!? You definitely are! I'll murder you!