sordavie

Presumably, atheists do not behave as if they were religious. Atheism does not require any faith-based adherence.

I think there is much confusion over what "faith-based adherence" means. To say that 'some system of beliefs requires faith-based adherence' means that "necessarily there is a second order belief that the system doesn't work unless it is believed on grounds of faith."

Let me give you two definitions for the terms that appear in the above definition. To say that 'a belief is a second order belief' is just to say that "it is a belief about your other beliefs." To say that 'something is believed on grounds of faith' is to say that "the belief is held intentionally without reliance on, or against, rational evidence."

This definition nicely demarcates a difference between Christianity and atheism. Christianity contains within its system of belief a doctrine that one must have faith in the system. This is a very old and well entrenched doctrine within Christianity.

Atheism does not contain such a doctrine. Atheism is just the view that there is no God. It's not the view that there is no God and you must have faith that there is no God. The definition of 'faith-based adherence' applies to Christianity but not atheism because atheism contains no view about what second order beliefs you must have.

No atheists believe that they believe there is no God based on no, or against all, rational evidence. So, there are no de facto atheists who are believe that their belief that there is no God is based on no, or against all, rational evidence.

Lastly, not all religions contain a faith-based adherence doctrine. So, one can be a theist without insisting that her belief is merely a matter of faith. She might think she has good rational evidence for her belief, and that's why she believes. You seem to confuse the term 'religion' with "system of belief that contains a faith-based adherence doctrine." That's not correct.

Here's the bottom ground. Whether you think theists or atheists have rational evidence for their beliefs has nothing to do with whether their beliefs are faith based. Someone can be mistaken about how much evidence they have for their belief. But, so long as they think they have good reasons for their belief and they believe it because of those reasons, then they don't believe it on faith. I take it many theists and almost all atheists think they have rational evidence for their beliefs. These people would not be holding their beliefs on faith. Thus, they wouldn't be acting like hypocrites (given your confusion of 'religion' with 'system of beliefs containing faith-based adherence').

To assert that atheists are faith based just like Christians because they have the same amount of evidence for their as Christians do is incorrect. This is incorrect even if it's true that atheists have the same amount of evidence as Christians, Christianity contains within it a doctrine of faith while atheism doesn't.

How much evidence each side has for their view is a completely separate issue from faith-based adherence.

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sordavie

Perhaps the best way to show the distinction is with an example.

Consider a really dedicated Christian and a really dedicated atheist. Here's what each would say regarding rational evidence against their beliefs.

Christian: "Even if you gave me admittedly superior evidence that there is no God, I would still believe in God because I have faith that He exists."

(You can even imagine the Christian saying things like "My faith is tested all the time by incidence that appear to provide very strong evidence against the existence of God. Having Christian faith is a matter of having the willpower to belief in God in the face of this evidence.")


Atheist: "If you gave me admittedly superior evidence that atheism is false, then I would stop being an atheist."

(Such an atheist would probably go on to say things like "But, I highly doubt that you could provide me any superior evidence. For example, if you could get God to appear in front of me and tell me in person that he exists, that would be superior evidence; and I would become a theist. But, again, I doubt that you could provide me any such evidence. At best you could only show me that I have no good reason to be an atheist. In that case, I would change my beliefs to agnosticism.")

The crucial difference is that the atheist is willing to change her beliefs if she admits that evidence to the contrary is superior to her old evidence while the Christian is not. Granted, it may be very hard to convince an atheist that some evidence to the contrary is superior. But, that is irrelevant to whether the atheist holds her position based on faith.

In other words, whether someone's evidence for or against a position is actually good is irrelevant to whether that person holds that position on faith. What makes it a faith-based position is that the person believes the position even if they admit that they have no evidence or that there is admittedly superior evidence to the contrary.

People who fail to see this distinction often claim that science is also a religion, or faith-based system of belief. That is wrong; and, the fallacy that leads to that incorrect conclusion is to equivocate between the notions of faith-based adherence and having (what they take to be) no good evidence.

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Steeler

Sordavie continues to amaze me with the quality of his contributions.

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ScratchMonkey

I suspect that if you presented me proof of god, we'd have a Babelfish paradox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babelfish

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ScratchMonkey

I continue to be frustrated at my inability to +rep him.

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Kerostasis

@Sordavie: Your examples work perfectly well in theory. In practice, I think you're overlooking the human tendancy to ignore evidence of things they don't want to be true. It is this powerful mental filter, when applied to religion or the absence thereof, that leads Christians to label atheists as having "faith" in their disbelief of God.

I would not argue that all atheists fit this description, as it is certainly possible for someone to freely examine all evidence without preconceived bias and still reach the atheistic conclusion -- but it is equally possible for a person's faith in the nonexistence of God to cloud all conceivable counterevidence. A friend of mine from some time ago is a perfect example -- he was raised Buddhist, and had converted to atheism at some later point in his life. I was talking to him about religion, and asked him this question: Suppose you called out to God, and said "If you really exist, prove it by shutting off the power to this building". And suppose at that moment, the power went out, and it turned out that a colony of termites living in a telephone pole that carried the power lines to this building had finally eaten away enough to knock down the pole at just the right moment. Would that be evidence to you? And he told me quite frankly, no it wouldn't. He didn't want to see God in anything around him, and so he wasn't going to, and nothing could convince him otherwise.

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Steeler

Well, it's hard to deduce divine intervention from synchronicity. It's hard to disprove the possibility of it as well. I like George Carlin's line, "If there is a God, and I'm wrong, let him strike this audience dead."

In Sunday school we were directly taught not to test God, for precisely this reason (although I suspect it's also because God usually fails the test).

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sordavie

Whether a person is ignoring evidence has nothing to do with whether their belief is faith-based or not. Someone ignoring evidence to the contrary of their belief may just be irrational. It does not follow that they therefore hold their belief on faith. A Christian, who holds his belief in God on faith and admits that there's good evidence against the existence of God, does not ignore the evidence. She accepts the evidence and believes "in the face of it."

An atheist who ignores evidence to the contrary doesn't accept the evidence. (By hypothesis he ignores it.) It would be wrong to say that he has faith in his atheism, unless it was also the case that if the atheist recognized the superior evidence against his position and believed "in the face of it" anyway.

So, while it may be true that lots of people ignore evidence for things they don't want to believe, it has little to do with whether a system of belief is a faith-based system or not. If Christians label atheism as faith-based for this reason, then they are wrong to do so.

I'm not exactly sure what your point is here.

Your conclusion about your friend based on your question about asking God to prove that he exists by doing something is faulty. Nobody would take that as sufficient evidence to believe in God. Why should your friend? It doesn't follow from your friend not taking it as sufficient evidence that it must be the case that he wouldn't consider anything sufficient evidence.

Your argument is that since he wouldn't take this as sufficient evidence, he wouldn't take anything as sufficient evidence. That's a specialized case of hasty generalization.

In any case, even if you're right that he thinks there can't be sufficient evidence for the existence of God, it doesn't show that he holds his belief on faith. Consider an atheist who thinks that the very conception of God is incoherent, and by his own lights thinks he has superior evidence. Such an atheist would also think that there couldn't be any evidence for the existence of God. Why? Because we know that it is impossible for an incoherent concept to denote anything in the world. Such an atheist would be someone who think that there cannot be any good evidence for the existence of God, and would not be someone who holds that belief based on faith.

But, maybe I've missed your point. Maybe your point is just that some atheists don't consider all of the evidence. Or that an atheist who holds her belief on faith will ignore contrary evidence. So? Nothing about whether atheism requires faith-based adherence follows from this. Very few people have the ability to consider all of their evidence. So, it's no strike against the typical atheist that she doesn't or can't.

It's certainly possible for an atheist to hold his belief based on faith. I have never met any atheist who holds his belief based on faith. I don't know why someone would. Your example doesn't show that your friend does. But, even if there were, that doesn't mean atheism is a faith-based belief system. Just like it's possible that a scientist believes in fideism (the view that all religious beliefs must be held on faith); but it doesn't follow that science is based on or comes with fideism. It just so happens that some scientist holds two views. It just so happens that the atheist holds two views. One is that atheism is true. The other is that she admits she has superior evidence against, or no evidence at all for, her view. But, again, this shows nothing about atheism or atheists in general.

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Kerostasis

@point 1 -- It is not necessary for a Christian to believe "in the face of evidence" for him to also have faith. A man may very well believe that the evidence supports him on a particular question, but still have faith that his conclusion is right independant of the evidence. Likewise for atheists -- the fact that most atheists doubtless believe the evidence is on their side does not exclude them from also having faith in their conclusion independant of the evidence. Further, the pre-existence of faith in a given conclusion tends to color an observers view of the available evidence, no matter what it is, so that he will nearly always eventually conclude the evidence matches his own faith. Therefore I hold that it is a poor description of faith to say that "faith" is only "believing against the evidence".

@point 2 -- You inserted the word "sufficient" in there. I did not say "sufficient evidence", but merely "evidence". He would not even consider the event in his decision making. For reference, if I recall correcly his original conversion to atheism was based on the "there is too much Evil in the world for a Good God to exist" line of logic.


My "point", I guess, would not be a criticism of any of the logic used to reach the conclusion of atheism, but the psychological thought processes that drive a man to choose that particular line of logic instead of some other equally plausible one. It is my contention that this original decision is most often driven by faith. Actually I think this line of yours should clarify this:
I am not trying to classify a belief system as faith-based, I am trying to classify humanity as faith-based, which is an entirely different endeavor.

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sordavie

Whether someone beliefs on faith is not a matter of whether they actually have good or bad evidence or whether they are or are not ignoring evidence. Whether they believe something on faith is a matter of what they would do if presented with evidence to the contrary. That's what my example is supposed to show. I did not say that someone who believes something on faith must actually believe in the face of superior evidence. Rather, it's that they would do so. If you read my definition of faith-based adherence in the earlier post, you would realize that I'm not describing "having faith" as what you say I am.

The example is just an example meant to show a particular distinction.

Again, whether something is believed on faith is not a matter of whether the evidence is "colored" or there are preconcieved notions or anything like that. Whether something is believed on faith is a matter of what the believer would do if presented with, what they admit is, good evidence to the contrary.


Why should he consider asking God to shut the power off and the power going off at that moment because of termites evidence, however little, for God's existence?

That's not what it means for a belief to be faith-based. Again, what it means for a belief to be faith-based has to do with a second order belief about your beliefs. The easiest way I have of explaining that is in terms of what someone with the faith-based belief would do, if presented with, what the believer admits to be, superior evidence to the contrary.

It has nothing to do with the origin of the belief. It has to do with how the belief is held.

I don't know what the heck it means to try and classify humanity as faith-based. You're using the term 'faith-based' in some way that isn't relevant to the discussion of whether atheistic beliefs are faith-based like religious beliefs. So, what does that discussion have to do with the one in this thread? The topic here is how certain religious or atheist beliefs are held. You're talking about something else completely if you're talking about a certain way "humanity" is. Maybe there's something interesting about that; but, what does it have to do with whether atheism is a faith-based system of belief or not, and whether atheists are hypocrites?

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Kerostasis

To everyone who understood what I was talking about here, I'm going to hold this up as validation of my point about "faith" in atheism, and how it changes your view of evidence. I'm clearly not going to get any further with Sordavie.

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sordavie

Whether you consider something to be good or bad evidence, or whether you think some people's beliefs "color" their evidence, has nothing to do with whether they hold their evidence on faith. To find out if someone holds their beliefs on faith, you should ask them what they would do if they were given superior evidence to the contrary. That someone thinks, justly or not, that there is no superior evidence to the contrary does not show that they hold their belief by faith.

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Gillespie

Because, Sordavie, a... "typical" (for lack of a better description) atheist would see the termites chewing through the power line for what it was: termites chewing through a power line.

A "typical" theist would see "God's hand" in making the termites chew through the power line. It would be an indirect answer to the challenge of shutting the building's power off.

In this case, it is a wonderful illustration of how such evidence regarding the absence or presence of God can be extremely subjective.

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Gillespie

Perhaps it all depends on which way you're coming at this discussion from. I hold that God could very well exist... but there'll never be proof. I'm beginning to believe that most atheists here are simply starting from the standpoint that "there is no God because there isn't any proof". In regards to that, if my sweeping comments offended you, I apologize.

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sordavie