From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Faith/belief
Date: 6 Sep 92 23:04:27 GMT
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.

In article <BtyuzI.Kto@nntp-sc.Intel.COM> pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey) writes:
>From: pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey)
>Subject: Re: Faith/belief
>Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 19:47:40 GMT

>(Ken Arromdee) writes:
>"Try something to see if it works" is not the same as "believe"....

>(Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR]) writes:
>Good point.

>me writes:
>Yeah, there is some not so subtle weighting in there that is not expressed
>in the words. I might try some new food to see if I like it because I believe
>that most food is good, but I won't start eating plants to see if they are
>poisoness or not. So I believe certain things until proven to be unbelievable
>or not useful and I'll try certain things if I judge trying to be useful. But
>I will not blindly try anything and I will not blindly believe anything. For
>me the key is that I am the judge, not anyone else. I will take your opinion
>and the words of books as input, but I will do as I see fit with them. It
>seems to me that the way we use English is at fault. It's a common grift to
>get someone to believe in something and then once they believe, they must meet
>certain obligations, usually monetary. This is the basis of Madison Avenue and
>the entire advertising industry. I may believe something, but nothing
>else follows from that and the way I believe is probably quite different from
>the way you believe. This is like saying that if you are a Christian and
>believe in Christianity and Christian morality, then you must vote for Bush.
>This doesn't follow, although I avoid all that nonsense by never admiting to
>being a Christian, which I truely am not. That's the trouble with all these 
>isms, once you say you belong, people draw conclusions about you based on 
>their perception of what it means to belong and that is all misguided.


I thought I threw out a perfectly sound analysis of 'faith' a few days ago, 
somewhere on the net. [Egads! I think it was in t.r.m!] I guess nobody read 
it.  Uhmm.  Well, I can only read so much confusing prattle about 
philosophically interesting words and then I go ballistic [of course, in 
that state, what I say bears watching carefully.] 

Faith is a determination of the mind to act or a willingness to act, hope or 
believe. It differs from belief [where that is construed as a 'mere 
intellectual assent to propositions' or 'belief-that'] in having a 
valuational component, and in the strength of the subjective certainty.  I 
may believe that Clinton will win the 92 election, but personally I would 
not say that I had *faith* that he will win, even if I had alot of good 
evidence for my prediction. This is because I don't *want* Clinton to win 
the election.  So with faith you have this wanting or hoping aspect.  We 
have faith in people, meaning in this case that we want them to succeed and 
hope [expect] they will, which implies that we value these people and think 
they have promise.   

Faith I think is therefore an attitude appropriate in the realm of action, 
rather than in that of knowledge. It is projects, ideals and goals, and not 
so much inert things like propositions, that call for faith or calls faith 
into play.  And, when we speak of "declining faith in the US$" or "declining 
faith in our political leaders", etc., what we usually mean or imply is 
that a confidence which should be present is not there any more, or there 
to a perhaps deplorably lesser degree than it once was.  We are saying 
that the future isn't promising.  But we certainly do not suggest by the word
faith that there is anything illegitimate, blind, or unreasonable about the 
faith attitude itself.

Faith is, in part, sort of like the next best thing to knowledge when 
knowledge can't be had.  Where knowledge *can* be had, however, even then 
faith often must be used to acquire or discover it.  This is why people 
can speak of the faith of scientists about finding general laws of nature 
or explaning the universe, or whatever it is they do.  He/she wants to 
discover truth, and is determined to stay at it, even though there is no 
logical guarantee of success.  A scientists' faith is often a kind of 
determination to go on believing that he can get at the truth about 
nature's operations. 

But, of course, once in possession of *knowledge* that p, can there be no 
more faith in or faith that p?  I'm afraid here we've gone beyond a mere  
conceptual analysis of faith and into doctrines or explanations about 
faith.  I may be wrong here.  This may be like the question raised in 
philosophical discussions of the nature of belief and knowledge: If I know, 
do I also then believe?  [The answer to that being, Yes, but you don't 
*merely* believe, and so it would be misleading for you to say flatly that 
you don't believe, etc]

It was Pascal who told us that "Probability is the Guide of Life."  And 
the guidance of one's life on the basis of the probabilities [and not 
blindly or thoughtlessly] is one thing which is often meant by the word 
faith.  The habit of faith, W. James said, is worth acquiring because it 
enables a person to accomplish what he would not otherwise be able to if 
he acted or planned his course of life exclusively by what was operationally 
testable.  That's why he said that through action we can create truth. 
Perhaps this could be expressed in more philosophical terms by saying that  
belief seeks to adjust thought to reality, to get propositions which mirror 
the world or articulate it for thought; whereas faith helps us to bring 
about valuable ends which don't exist yet, but which [by definition of 
'valuable end' we want to exist] and by the actions which spring from that 
faith, one changes reality [rather than mirroring it] and incidentally makes 
certain propositions true in the process.

None of this is intended to suggest that what sometimes goes by the name of 
'faith' is *never* just sheer blind unreason and whistling in the dark. It 
often is just that: a desperate substitute for responsible thought.  But 
oftentimes too, an unhealthy logic-chopping skepticism can spring from the 
same desperation.  My point is only that tendentiously building the "bad"
kind of thing often called "faith" into the very notion of faith itself can 
only result in prejudicing talk about problems of faith and reason.
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Kenny Bell                          *        Welcome to Mind Wars
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