I can't stand this platitude that there are no atheists in foxholes. I have been inches from death and never questioned my atheist beliefs.
While I disagree with the "worshipping anything other than god will eat you alive" sentiment... in general I agree with the concept.
The idea that you could rid yourself of unexamined, culturally imprinted beliefs is a charged mixture of hubris and absurdity.
Atheists shed some small set of (generally preposterous) beliefs, and then imagine they are free of faith. It's like rich white kids eschewing BMW's and designer clothes and thinking they've escaped privilege.
Don't assume.
you can't avoid worshipping something
Don't assume.
The only people who don't have faith are skeptics, and I'm talking about skeptics who are skeptical about everything here. Like they aren't even sure of their own existence.
Faith is a logical requirement of any personal conclusion whether you like it or not.
Even if you experiment to beyond reasonable doubt, you still risk that you could be wrong. Any true scientist trusts in the scientific method, but the scientific method itself leaves things open to new questions, new evidence, and new experiments. That's what makes the scientific method wonderful. But that's also why any conclusion by the scientific method also in the end has a final requirement of faith for any immediate conclusions.
From a Christian perspective, the Bible defines "faith" as confidence in that which we hope for and that which is unseen. (Hebrews 11:1)
That's pretty simple, and secondly, that pretty much lines up with every "dictionary" definition of faith -- i.e. a confidence (or an assured belief) in that which cannot be presently assured. Everything in this world has differing degrees to which we must use faith.
When I drive my car, I don't need much reassurance of faith (i.e. confidence in a belief) that when I turn the wheel left, the car is going to make the turn. (My belief being in the car's ability to make the turn). However, if you were rationally honest, you would agree that just because the car turned left 1000 times prior, that does not truly give you a reason to be 100% rationally confident that it will continue to do so.
Why? Because the environment and every single factor has changed. The road is different, the car is older, the wheel bearings may be a little less greased, the tires have worn, the gravel lays differently, the weather is different, thousands of tiny different universal factors have changed, which really forms an entirely unique model for the 1001st left turn you are about to make. Not to mention, you aren't God, so you have no possible way of knowing all those factors. The perfect mathematical model exists for determining whether that car will make the turn, but you will never know it, so you can only generalize based on prior experience. So you go on, ignoring that tiny little chance (using faith -- a confidence in a given outcome) that the car will not perform as expected.
Faith is the confidence in an expected (hoped for) outcome, don't make it out to be more than it is. Some things in this world require larger doses of faith, like whether or not God exists. Empiricism helps to make faith easier.
Some things in this world require larger doses of faith, like whether or not God exists.
Exactly. To put an even finer point on it, it would also take a great amount of faith to confidently assert that there are dragons in your basement.
- Where did we come from?
- How did we get here?
- What happened X billion years ago?
- etc, etc.
We can establish mathematical and physical models in the present, but knowing present models does not rationally give us any clue as to whether those models were the same in the past, especially as we go farther back in time. Even knowing present rates of change do not establish whether that delta was the same throughout history. Extrapolating present models into the past functions on several underlying assumptions (oh hey, faith!), and ultimately we realize we truly have no way of empirically validating the past.
So yes, I think it's good we've come to common ground on a definition of "faith". Now apply it to your own models of thinking, and you can see why on existential issues we stand on common ground of faith. I'm all for science, but it's good to recognize the limits of empiricism.
As far as your past versus present comments go, I cannot tell whether your indulging in philosophical navel gazing about the Problem of Induction, or if you actually have a particular scientific theory in mind that you think doesn't stand up to the evidence. In the former case, you can quickly reason that accepting any scientific principle takes as much faith as picking your nose, which renders the conversation meaningless and contradicts your given definition of faith to begin with. After all, you don't know that the universe wasn't created 15 seconds ago with all of our memories intact. If it's the latter case, and you really believe that there are some important underlying assumptions in a specific area of science that scientists have not stated up front, then I think the best thing to do would be to contribute your insights to the scientific community by writing a paper on it. If you can demonstrate previously unknown shortcomings in a widely accepted scientific theory, then you will be listened to and heralded. If you cannot, then your vague accusations that scientists overstate their assumptions and thereby use "faith" to back up their research are baseless.
Regardless, I think we both came to agreement that faith is a necessity.
After all, you don't know that the universe wasn't created 15 seconds ago with all of our memories intact.
You're being absurd. What I was trying to get at is that empiricism has its limits (and that everyone uses those "large doses" of faith). The only valid past that can be legitimately (i.e. rationally) studied is the past which has been subjected to empirical observation.
We cannot rationally establish beliefs about a past which we have not (nor any human) ever empirically observed. The scientific method relies on empiricism to validate its claims. Therefore science which attempts to describe a past that nobody has ever experienced is functioning on faith (origins, existential answers, etc). Pretty simple and really all I was getting at for a typical atheist's worldview.
It is, however, a fallacy to poison the well by suggesting that the person who has presented the correct definition is about to engage in the "typical next step" of making an erroneous claim that the person hasn't actually made.
It's only been about the last 140 years (with the rise of Christian Fundamentalism and the associated mysticism and anti-intellectualism) that "faith" has been used to refer to belief without reason or evidence. The parent poster is moving the goalposts, but he's moving them back toward where they actually belong.
That said, PakG1 is not stretching the definition of faith, he's correcting it. It is appropriate to classify erik's position as incorrect and his definition as lacking, but not to classify Pak's correction as a fallacy.
You can't just pick a word's meaning from hundreds of years ago (worse, a foreign-languag equivalent) and drop it into modern conversation without stating that that's what you're doing.
I like that XKCD gets cited in rhetoric here. =)
I dislike this: Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
To me that says people cannot choose what to do with their own minds. Like the atheists-in-foxholes saying, it denies a freedom that I cherish and denigrates a goal that I aspire to.
This is all very much a sidelight. We're just messing around on the internet, right? No hard feelings.
* I did re-read the speech.
* Not every text relates to the foxholes platitude.
* Even if you don't think there's a connection between what I said and what DFW said, so what? We are on a tangent off a tangent off a tangent in the middle of the internet.
* I feel like you maybe are frustrated at somebody or something else and taking it out on me via the internet. Not nice.
What I took from it personally is that people tend to find meaning in life from something - a deity, a job, money, fame, looks, their own business - and that it doesn't really which of those you choose you're essentially taking a leap of faith that it will deliver happiness.
I find DFW's perspective interesting but overly didactic.
The above was not meant as a takeaway or summary of what he wrote.