Religious believers like to say that agnosticism or atheism also is founded on faith – faith that there's no evidence for God. So skeptics are as filled with faith as the faithful.
That's ridiculous. It's the sort of word play that led Donald Rumsfeld, the incompetent Secretary of Defense, to say "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" in reference to Iraq's unfound weapons of mass destruction.
Well, I see no evidence of a unicorn in our living room right now. There's just my wife and our dog, neither of whom looks like a horse with a horn coming out of its head.
But gosh, I guess you could say that this lack of evidence doesn't conclusively prove that there's no unicorn in my house. The creature could be so small, it's hiding under the couch. Or it could be invisible.
The thing is, there's an obvious difference between: (1) surmising that something exists, and (2) surmising that something doesn't exist.
It's the difference between one and zero, presence and absence.
This is why I reacted with a What the heck? when I read a Newsweek article, "Moderates Storm the Religious Battlefield," that included this quote from Rev. Timothy Keller.
I urge skeptics to wrestle with the unexamined "blind faith" on which skepticism is based, and to see how hard it is to justify those beliefs to those who do not share them.
Rev. Keller, skepticism is not a belief. It's a reasonable response to absence of evidence.
I don't have blind faith that there's no unicorn in my living room. It's an open-eyed conclusion that anyone is welcome to refute, if they can show me where the unicorn is hiding.
Similarly, religious skeptics like me are very much open to evidence of God's existence. Problem is, there isn't any.
In a recent issue of New Scientist, A.C. Grayling addressed a related subject in "No, science does not 'rest on faith.'" He was responding to the notion that science's assumption of an orderly and intelligible universe is an act of faith.
It isn't, because the universe obviously is orderly and intelligible, or there wouldn't be notions, magazines, debates over faith, or anything else. It'd all just be misty chaos.
I agree with Grayling:
Making well-motivated evidence-based assumptions that are in turn supported by their efficacy in testing predictions is the very opposite of faith. Faith is commitment to belief in something either in the absence of evidence or in the face of countervailing evidence.
It is seen as a theological virtue, as the story of Doubting Thomas is designed to illustrate. In everyday speech we use the phrase "he took it on faith" to mean "without question, without examining the grounds"; this captures its essence.
So faith isn't a virtue. It's a vice. When we have eyes to see, it's wrong for someone to go about blindly. You cause lots of other problems for other people, and sow unnecessary confusion.
There's a unicorn! And God!
Where? Show me. I'm a skeptic with eyes.
You are not even a ''sceptic'',only when other people tell ''some'' things
By nature one is not a sceptic,only because...
Posted by: Sita | January 15, 2008 at 01:40 AM
Faith is vice? Thats far from the truth. How can faith be immoral? Please don't ask me what Moral is... Morality just is... we all know it and feel it.
Take Mother Teresa for example, she had faith right? Of course she questioned her faith, i think Brian once wrote an amazing blog about that, but her questioning of her faith was still an attribute to her what? Faith! or at least to her desire for real faith, true faith, REALITY, whatever you want to call it... Her relationship with God is what she desired to cultivate, as all spiritual people. Doesn't Taoism teach us to let go of worry? how can you let go of worry unless you have faith that everything is happening by the will of the Tao (enter your choice of word for Tao, Shabad, energy, logos, God)
The only way i can see how "faith" can be a vice is if you kill people based on your "faith" or beliefs... But the fault doesn't lie in having faith. Faith has done a lot of good for a lot of people. And at the end of the day, how are we to know what level of faith someone else actually has? Sure its easy to criticize another person and say they are deluding themselves, maybe they are, how do we know? I concern myself with me and my faith. I dont care if other people delude themselves or not, i just hope my faith in God and my relationship with Him grows and grows every day until i die. And at then end of the day, the more we love the Lord, the more we should love each other, what if he doesn't exist, or doesn't reveal himself to me during my life, sure those are viable options to me now... at least i loved, and Inshallah i love more and more and have more and more faith... To all the rebuttal's that are sure to come, we can probably find common ground that one mans trash is another mans treasure... we all will find out one day right? Just enjoy the ride.. And Brian, its amazing to me that you come across as a pessimist in your writing- yet i know your not... You can actually do good to advise people how they too can find a balance, how being open minded, not having faith in only way of thinking, doesn't have to correlate to a negative outlook towards those that do have faith... unless i'm wrong and you do feel that way... thoughts?
Posted by: Aviv | January 15, 2008 at 08:43 AM
Nice try at obfucation Brian. Rehash the same old shit. That works on liberals and the uneducated people who stupid enough to vote for them.
You explain absolutely nothing. Explain to us what created the world, why there is existence, why is there something instead of nothing ?
You have faith and believe that whatever it is, is dead,unconious and infinitely ignorant.
Others believe the opposite.
One thing is observable. We are products of our environment. We are sensitive, living, consious beings with apparently infinite orderlyness. What does that say about our environment? In chemistry, all the components are found in the product.
Posted by: Cyfer | January 15, 2008 at 09:44 AM
Cyfer,
You write:
You have faith and believe that whatever it is [that/who created the universe], is dead,unconious and infinitely ignorant. (sic)
Brian never stated anything like this. In fact, I have never seen a positive statement (meaning putting forth an idea) from Brian about what God is, nor do I think he sees that as his project. His negativity concerning religious belief, which Aviv reads as pessimism, is not pessimism at all. It's actually closer to idealism, the ideal being experiencing reality without the bullshit of "optimism" based on ignorance. It is a radical point of view, one taken up by many artists throughout history who have come to realize that society's definition of the beautiful is actually its attachment to certain sensations which only feel beautiful because of their familiarity, nostalgia, and perceived safety.
I personally don't have a problem with faith. And neither does Brian. He at the very least has faith in the experience of what he calls "reality." It's clinging to ignorance that I and many others have a problem with. And the fear that lurks behind this ignorance is the most dangerous threat to human survival on the planet today.
Posted by: Komposer | January 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM
http://preaching.krishna.org/Articles/2005/02/God_Appear.html
http://preaching.krishna.org/Articles/2004/12/014.html
http://preaching.krishna.org/Articles/2004/12/023.html
http://preaching.krishna.org/Articles/2003/04/028.html
http://preaching.krishna.org/Articles/2004/12/011.html
http://preaching.krishna.org/Articles/2007/07/Words_From-Bhaktsiddhanta.html
http://introduction.krishna.org/Articles/2000/07/00035.html
“As living spiritual souls we are all originally Krsna conscious entities, but due to our association with matter since time immemorial, our consciousness is now polluted by material atmosphere. In this polluted concept of life, we are all trying to exploit the resources of material nature, but actually we are becoming more and more entangled in our complexities. This illusion is called maya, or hard struggle for existence over the stringent laws of material nature. This illusory struggle against the material nature can at once be stopped by revival of our Krsna consciousness.”
http://introduction.krishna.org/Articles/2000/07/00035.html
Posted by: | January 15, 2008 at 07:56 PM
Dear Komposer,
I do see what you are saying, and i agree, specifically about idealism. It seems you have found a way to incorporate faith into your way of viewing religion/spirituality. I see things similarly, and at the same time I feel encouraged to persevere to a place where idealism evolves into knowing reality. One the road to knowing I feel that whatever faith i have now will grow and grow until it becomes a faith based on experience, which you can say is "pure" faith or knowing something to be true. The pessimism that i mentioned was the pessimism i "felt" from Brian's writing only where he said Faith is a vice... I would also say you would be dogmatic (similar to the dogmatism as hard core religious fundamentalist) if you say that I am deluding myself, or that "i'm clinging to ignorance." How do you know that? You seem like a smart and logical person, so obviously you don't think your way of thinking is right and everyone else is wrong. So I don't mean to say you are as dogmatic as they are, i'm only saying its taking a pessimistic approach.
Posted by: aviv | January 16, 2008 at 07:45 AM
Aviv,
you write,
I feel encouraged to persevere to a place where idealism evolves into knowing reality.
--great, no problems here.
you write,
On the road to knowing I feel that whatever faith i have now will grow and grow until it becomes a faith based on experience, which you can say is "pure" faith or knowing something to be true
--the point is that we have to differentiate between what you mean by faith here, and a Christian means when (s)he says (s)he has faith in Christ. You say you are on the road to knowing. I don't know what that road is, but I will assume that whatever path you are taking, you have some evidence that has allowed you to logically move in a direction. You imply that faith is required because you simply can't know until you know, so until then, you use faith. Fine. But this is a faith that is (I assume) not in direct conflict with your intellect or reasoning faculties. This in science is called a hypothesis (a reasonable guess based on given information). Given that none of us is impartial, we must try to use our reason so that our "faith" does not become equated with our conditioning. This type of faith differs from one who has faith that Jesus will take him/her to heaven, because where is there any evidence at all that this is true? Can we prove Jesus even lived on this earth? Can we prove the apparent quotations in the bible were all said by one man, that being him? Do we really believe his mother was a virgin? Have we ever heard a report from someone who died and was saved by Jesus?
The only "evidence" that this is true comes from cultural tradition, which is strong enough to delude millions and millions of people every generation into clinging to fairy tales and other rubbish, and then hating others who believe in other fairy tales.
Posted by: komposer | January 16, 2008 at 09:48 AM
I agree with komposer that science's "faith," which is akin to everyday common sense faith, is far different from religious faith.
Faith that the sun will come up tomorrow morning is based on probabilities. It's happened every day of my life, so I reasonably expect that it will happen again tomorrow.
It really doesn't make sense to call this "faith," because it isn't a belief in something unknown, but in something known: all the times the sun has come up before.
Religious faith isn't like that. Usually it is faith in a one-time occurrence, like the resurrection of Jesus or a believer's salvation after death. The first happened a long time ago, once; the second hasn't happened yet, and also will occur once.
So, yes, we all have expectations. That's how we live our lives, by expecting a certain effect will follow a certain cause. But to believe that something that has never happened will occur because of X, that's blind faith.
Posted by: Brian | January 16, 2008 at 10:02 AM