Why Faith is Important

If you don't have faith, you're going to be putting your fear in the wrong place, and that's going to affect how you live your life.

Reality is we all have "faith" but we put that faith in different things, things we shouldn't really be relying on so much. One of the little metaphysical rules in the universe, when you go after these things it inevitably leads one into doing evil things.
This isn't necessarily a logically self-inherent conclusion but it's one of the religious truths.

 

Right, what you are trying to infer is that we all make assumptions about reality at some level which I will not dispute however, that does not mean that all assumptions are equally valid?

Many people assume that reality exists, that we can learn about it and that we can model it to make predictions. Considering the huge benefits that we obtain from applying these assumptions it would be absurd to deny their usefulness and up to the current point, I don't think that we have ever shown that they do not work. Similarly, as a skeptic I use these kinds of assumptions to aspire to knowing as many 'true' things as possible. As far as I can know anything, I find it a compelling argument that things that I can demonstrate to be so in reality as it is, are things that I know.

You can stumble across 'truth' by assuming things without being able to demonstrate them but, you will not know that they are 'true'.

Can making assumptions that cannot be demonstrated be useful, well yes, it can make people toe the line, it can get quick decisions for survival etc but, without context there is a huge gulf between the extremes of the two positions and plenty of grey areas between.

Note - I have attempted to avoid as many trigger words as I can in order to get a reasoned response.

 

In my opinion realism is better than faith because it allows you to make more rational choices based on available facts.

 

I don't think faith is in conflict with that.

But faith is still different from a science. You can't demonstrate it anytime you want on demand. (Perhaps because faith is not a universal law of nature, but a response of divine sentience)

 

Actually history shows the opposite. Societies in the last century that professed this philosophy ended up being totalitarian atheist regimes that murdered its own people. That does not seem rational to me.

 

Faith is the belief in things unseen without proper evidence. The lack of evidence in faith means that its often in conflict with science which requires rigorous evidence when those things fall under the domain of science. You have no evidence for faith being a response of divine sentience or that divine sentience even exists.

 

That's kind of misleading. Faith is based on things that were seen, but can not now be seen at present.

There's all sorts of examples of non-religious faith in our daily lives. If you hand over a large amount of your money for someone else to manage it for you, that's faith.

People seldom have faith without any evidence whatsoever. But there are situations in our life where we have to have faith without evidence.

 

You are right, faith is not in conflict with it until people assert faith as having anything other than the most trivial justification.

I believe that faith/belief without evidence is an evolutionary advantage for humans but, it is not a means of knowing anything approximating to truth about reality.

 

What evidence do you have before you "know" for a fact that black holes exist?

Basically you don't know what you are talking about! Faith is what humans in majority are using intensively in order to reach a truth. Such that 99% humans don't actually have the evidence before they all know for a fact that black holes exist.

That's how this very reality works!

 

I'm sure our ancestors uses reasoning over faith, say you found a new plant when traveling in the ancient times and didn't know if it was safe to eat would you just eat some or would you see if other things ate the red fruit and then see if it killed them and sorry I'm sure they did the sensible thing the latter over the former. Look at chimpanzees they use tools and use these tools to do things like crack nuts and probe into trees to get termites to eat did they use faith or trial and error and then some of them found out how to get the termites and others learned from them. And here is one I did as a child I came across a snake it was bright red and black, and my father said black and red in animals means bad since in rare exceptions the animal so endowed is likely from others experience poisonous or dangerous. Now did this happen due to faith well it was my father, he was older, loved me and gave me good advice before so it was evidence based that I should trust what he told me on things. In the end our species survived not due to faith but by our reason giving us the means to adapt and survive and prosper.

 

I think you equate "faith" with "blind faith". "Faith" is trust based on a rational assessment of the evidence and experience. "Blind faith" is believing something for no reason, and its just stupid.

There is no universal, objective proof of God. That does not mean that God does not exist. That does not mean there is no evidence. It just means that the evidence is inconclusive, there is room for interpretation and extrapolation, and people will come to various conclusions.

Science is a subset of the universe of human thought, it is limited to what can be tested by people in a repeatable and controlled manner. Because the evidence is inconclusive and the existence of God cannot be tested in a controlled environment, it falls outside the domain of science - as many aspects of human existence do.

If there is a God, then by definition the belief of God must agree with the physical workings of the world. Since human understanding of the universe from the micro to the macro level is woefully incomplete, that's a soft metric for determining the existence of God.

 

How can we differentiate between the things we shouldn’t have faith in and the things we should? What are the key differences?

Exactly what things do you believe inevitably lead to evil? That would mean literally every single individual who has followed those things will have “done evil things” (you might need to define “evil things” here too).

 

Let's admire the effect of faith in war :
_ A bunch of barbaric arabian conquered one of the hugest empire who existed.
_ Europe in a perpetual civil war challenged to create kingdoms in middle east.

Faith is a tool, a powerfull one. Neither bad or good in nature.

 

If faith is based on a rational assessment of the evidence then its not faith anymore its just knowledge based on evidence. Most people don't define faith your way and usually mean faith to be a leap and believing in something highly uncertain or unproven based on the facts. When the certainty based on evidence is high, there is no room for faith, but when there is a lack of certainty that is when you see people having faith. For example, if I went into a boxing match and believed I was going to win even when my opponent was equal to me that is faith. If I was vastly superior to my opponent then its not faith anymore.

When there is a lack of evidence then you should not believe in it because without a scrap of evidence there is no reason to believe. There is no evidence for flying unicorns, fairies, leprechauns, and garden gnomes, but there is also no proof they don't exist but that doesn't mean "there is room for interpretation" and people are totally fine having faith in them. If there is no evidence for them then we shouldn't believe in them until we see evidence. Not believing isn't the same as believing something is false because not believing is more like withholding belief until evidence is presented.

Yes, God is outside the domain of science but it is within the domain of reason, logic, evidence, and philosophy. Being outside science doesn't mean that evidence isn't required for belief.

 

There is an immense amount of scientific evidence for black holes and you are mistaking the unseen with lacking evidence and are mistaking lack of absolute proof with lack of strong evidence. If there was no evidence then we should take the position that black holes shouldn't be believed in like God shouldn't be believed in.

 

Faith is worthless. Trust, however, is arrived at via repeated 'testing'. It has to be earned.

 

If you can't demonstrate it or repeat it, it's just a word and an idea.

 

totalitarianism cannot arise in a genuinely atheist population. in order for a despot to rule, the populace needs to be extremely religious .. and prepared to worship whichever authority/deity they're told to worship.

 

which god?

 

Not all conquerors had faith they would succeed and while some do have faith and succeed many have faith and fail and sometimes being too over-confident results in disaster. Its best to have a rational belief in your chances of winning.

 

Untrue. There is zero evidence of gods, but plenty of people claim to have faith that gods exist.

And no, those 'situations in life' require HOPE, not faith. Totally different thing.

 

There are totalitarian atheist and religious regimes. Regimes that profess a position on religion tend to be a lot less free than neutral ones.

 

Like what things do people have faith in?

 

You left out a very important word - trust. "Faith" is trust based on a rational assessment of the evidence and experience. If you went into a boxing match and believed you were going to win, you have that belief based on your past experience and your knowledge of your skills and your opponent. You do not know you will win, it is not certain, but based on your knowledge you take the next step and believe you will win - you trust you will win, you have faith in yourself.

Now you are talking about "blind faith" - a lack of evidence.

When you were a child and your father drove you someplace, you had faith that he would get you there safely. You did not know he would, you did not know if he was a good driver, but based on his past actions you were willing to take the next step and trust that he would get you there safely. That's faith.

A key component of science is controlled and repeatable experimentation. You cannot do that with many facets of life, including God.

Science follows the evidence. So does religion. People can be wrong, science can be wrong, religious belief can be wrong. Nothing is certain. Each person comes to their own conclusion, sometimes there is a large consensus, something not.

 

No, that's trust. And it has been earned.