

Can faith ever be rational? - jdmitch
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/09/16/222907684/can-faith-ever-be-rational

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Millennium
Faith cannot be rational, but this does not matter. Many things inherent in
and/or vital to the human experience cannot be rational. If faith is to be
simply dismissed, you need a better reason for doing so than "lack of
rationality".

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JonSkeptic
I agree with all of your post except the first sentence.

I do not think this will be a popular post, but still I will try to articulate
my disagreement in a readable manner.

People seem to confuse 'rationality' with 'scientifically verifiable' or at
least 'based on scientific data'. Maybe this comes from the vantage point that
beliefs and opinions not based in science are not rational.

From the standpoint of a logician, I disagree.

Can faith be scientifically tested, proven, or known without doubt: no. But I
do not see how that precludes it from being rational. In general, many faiths
and forms of belief are exceptionally rational if you accept their base
assumptions.

Now that's a big IF. If you do not accept the basic assumptions of the
specific faith, it will be forever in your mind 'irrational'. So can faith as
a consensus be rational: no, not ever. Can faith be almost perfectly rational
from a logic standpoint: absolutely, as long as you accept the base
assumptions.

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jwatte
You seem to equate rational with internally consistent. I think the latter is
necessary but not sufficient for the former.

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jdmitch
Perhaps 'rational' is too broad, as it seems the author means rationally
probable, rather than rationally definite - we have "faith" in a large number
of things that we don't actually see or know personally, but we have rational
reason to believe or more likely to be true than not. If I rationally believe
it is probable that a knife is holding will cut the bread I want to eat, this
requires little faith because if it doesn't I can just grab another knife.
When it comes to believing in something intangible like a religion, rational
probability may take an individual to one level of certainty based on their
experiences which deny or confirm the implications of that belief. However
their faith to act further on those implications may be a matter of faith
based on the potential risks. the author writes in the full paper:

 _A person might have faith in God when it comes to giving weekly donations to
the poor but lack faith in God when it comes to allowing himself to be
martyred._

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kaa2102
Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet
seen. Even scientific inquiry requires at least a scintilla of faith. One
forms a hypothesis with the hopes (but not the certainty) of finding something
meaningful at the end of the journey.

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alan_cx
For clarity, I am what religious people call an atheist. Personally I reject
that word because I dint see why we need words to describe people who don't
believe in thing that doesn't have any basis in reality. For example, there is
no word for people who don't believe in fairies, ghosts, or such like. I find
the word "atheist" patronizing and insulting. That said...

If faith is a conscious choice, yes it can be rational.

So, if a person says; "yes that book is full of stuff I want to follow because
they believe that it will be a good guiding light for me and I chose to
believe that the supernatural being the book insists is real such that it
helps to keep me following the rules in the book out of the fear that the
super being will judge me", then to me it makes rational sense. Its a rational
choice. They do know that in reality is is not real, but they chose to live
that way. The choose to engage in faith. Very useful for example for
recovering addicts, or people who have faced some trauma.

What I will never understand is people who literally believe a given god and
there for religion is absolutely true or real. Worse still is when children
are brain washed from birth to believe in such gods.

So, if its a conscious informed choice to have faith, then yes, it can be
perfectly rational.

I am reminded of a conversation between the Arch Bishop Of Canterbury and
Ricky Gervais. After not long, the Arch Bishop essentially conceded that god,
heaven, hell, and so on are really metaphors. Needless to say I, saw the
light. Twice actually. I understood the nature of religion, and how damn smart
and intelligent comedians are.

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dthunt
My advice, stop using the word faith, and carve the word up into something
that means more precisely what you are trying to say.

I'm not sure that choosing to believe arbitrary things due to the consequences
of believing those things can be rational. An active choice to believe
something without evidence due to the consequences of belief has no effect on
the odds that the proposition is true. It's the difference between "I have
belief in Thor" and "I believe that belief in Thor is good." Very, very
different things, and they are not remotely interchangeable.

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DavidWanjiru
When I fall ill and go to the doctor, as opposed to going to medical school,
is it rational? Off course it's rational. But that act of leaving my health at
the hands of this dude whom the world tells me will get me back to good is
essentially faith. I'm not a very philosophical/bright type, so I may come up
shot if someone wanted to take this up philosophically, but at basic level I
do think faith is rational. A lot of the inputs for what we consider rational
may very well be acts of faith.

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MisterBastahrd
There's a huge difference between the colloquial use of the word "faith" and
what we know to be an educated guess. Scientific hypotheses are educated
guesses. Going to a doctor to treat a medical condition over going to the
witchdoctor is also an educated guess.

In both cases, the person making the decision has knowledge about the subject
matter and makes it congruent to what he knows. When your doctor makes a
decision, it is because of not only his past experience, but the accumulated
knowledge of other physicians.

This is entirely different from "I believe that a perfect, omnipotent,
omniscient, benevolent creator-god sent his perfect son to die for our sins,"
because there's no evidence that any of that ever happened.

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dthunt
A belief that can be demonstrated and tested, because it is inherently an
objective phenomenon is better known as a hypothesis.

A belief which has your confidence because of subjective experience that
cannot be shared (i.e. if you tried to, everyone would think you were crazy)
can be rationally held, though it would be irrational to think you could
successfully spread this belief.

A belief which you are terrified of testing against the crucible of reality by
making excuses for why there is no evidence (e.g. epiphenomenal dualism,
wherein the material plane is observed by the metaphysical plane, but the
metaphysical plane never acts at all with the physical plane, and the
metaphysical plane not existing would look exactly the same as the
metaphysical plane existing) is by definition, fucking nuts. When you are
making excuses for a belief about why it should be immune to testing, you are
in a very, very deep error state.

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chrstnwarrior
I have to agree that faith can be rational. My biggest argument for this how
the human psyche works. A person can say they have faith (in some cases even a
gut feeling) but what they are experiencing in reality is a sum of what they
subconsciously know. The example having faith that your wife is not cheating
on you stands behind this point in that subconsciously you know that you know
certain things about her day or you knew where she was at certain points. Even
religion is in reality just a sum of what collective knowledge you have and
whether or not I'm your mind it is collectively enough proof for you to
believe.

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inkaudio
Faith has and should always means trust in someone or something based on some
form of evidence. It is the con men that sells irrational belief as faith.
Irrational belief is extremely dangerous. We have hundreds of years of futile
wars fought in the name of religion, many conflict today are "faith" based.
Reason is the only way we can decided if something is right or wrong,
irrational belief as law can only create chaos and/or despotism.

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zebra
I don't think that there is a religion on the world that will pass a skeptic
mind's scrutiny. So the answer for me is no.

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memla
No one who has commented so far seems to have read the article, let alone the
more technical ones the author talks about.

