Submitted by thelivingphilosophy t3_yt6m03 in philosophy
Through out philosophical history there is this competition between Greek tradition of rationality and the Judeo-Christian tradition of faith. Kierkegaard is one such intellectual who unequivocally took one stand point i.e submitting to Judeo-Christian morality.
And I truly believe his is the only ultimately sustainable path towards religion, it seems the rationalist path to Christianity has somewhat slipped its foothold whereas submitting to faith is as strong as ever. Kierkegaard is the only major philosopher so far that paints a favorable path towards religion in my opinion, I was lifelong atheist and converted when I read him. I wouldn’t call myself a christian anymore but he definitely left a permanent impression.
He believed it was wrong to stake your highest passions on speculative reasons and world-historical based or institutional interpretations on the Bible, both of which were prone to revision and cut out the subjectivity of the action in itself. I think those ideas have aged very well in the coming of Christendom
I would agree we shouldn't stake our highest passions on speculative reasons, but Kierkegaard is delusional if he doesn't acknowledge faith is the most speculative reason there is.
> but Kierkegaard is delusional if he doesn't acknowledge faith is the most speculative reason there is.
The term "leap of faith" is usually attributed to him, and he wrote extensively on the topic.
Kierkegaard acknowledges this. He states that faith is simultaneously absurd but also absolutely necessary, kind of a “damned if you, damned if you don’t” situation. It doesn’t make sense to rely on faith but you need to do so, and somehow having faith is the greatest aim one can have even while it seems so irrational and even scary at times. He says the best path is to submit to faith, and embrace its absurdity as part of life. It’s really worth reading his works on this. Very poignant and interesting perspective from a very pained man even if you don’t agree, that’s helped me a lot at several points in my own life.
I just find it hard getting behind a "philosopher" who's answer is essentially "don't think about it and just believe for no reason". To me, you can dress that up in however passionate and flowery language you like, but it's still anti-philosophical.
Have you actually read anything he wrote?
I remember reading some of him in uni, but nothing too serious. I'm at least glad he didn't try to pretend faith in God is somehow rational, I just don't respect an anti-rational approach because it's somehow "the best path" (which I don't even think is demonstrable on the evidence).
Faith is experiential. It isn't about throwing blind hope into the air. It's a two-way process. You do x, you receive y. But you don't know you receive y until you give x.
That’s called post hoc ergo propter hoc. It’s a fallacy, and precisely why you can’t use faith as any form of rational thinking. It is what you want it be, therefore nothing in the end. There’s no way around faith being total bullshit.
I'm not arguing for it being rational. I'm arguing that it works. You believe, you receive. Whatever neurological or cosmological explanation that has, it's still true.
To argue that it works you’d need to show it, logically, with evidence, rather than pull an assertion out of your ass. There is no more reason for anyone to believe this is true than there is for my claim that a unicorn flew out of my ass today.
You can stop your bullshit here.
> you’d need to show it, logically, with evidence
More 🤡
You can give x because you believe it will work based on a rational process of hypothesis development. You don't need faith. The difference is that making a rational prediction will make you more likely to acknowledge if you were wrong and move on to try different things, whereas faith—which is belief in something without evidence—will cause you to falsely attribute your results to your faith-driven actions, will cause you to make up some sort of fake cause that explains the results which you have no reason to believe is true, and will blind you to flaws in your perception that could show you the actual truth. Faith has no genuine use and it causes a litany of problems.
Can I ask you whether you believe this reality is all real, or whether it's a simulation?
It depends on what you mean by "believe". If I hold myself strictly to only making truth claims for that which I have real, objective verification, then no I can't say whether reality is real or a simulation. I don't believe it is on faith, or I wouldn't really consider it faith, more so that I consciously choose to live as though I believe it is true because there's literally nothing else I can do. If I didn't internalize the belief, informally, that the world is real, I would cease to be able to coherently act as an agent. It just wouldn't work. So there's no way I can't even if I wanted to.
Contrast this with belief in God, which is a totally unnecessary belief. People are able to exist as agents totally fine without that belief.
> I consciously choose to live as though I believe it is true because there's literally nothing else I can do
That's how I feel about God. Is that not faith?
You're wrong though. You are either too mentally weak to handle not believing in him, too arrogant to not accept there are things about the universe you can just say "I don't know" to, or too ignorant to understand that he isn't a logically necessary element of the universe. There's a difference between that and the belief that the world is "real", which is something that, if any of us were to truly commit to, would logically undermine our ability to perform actions in the world. If the world isn't treated as real, even on an informal basis, then our entire ability to do things and expect results that we interpret as significant is destroyed.
No, God is as real to me as my wife, and you'd have a difficult time convincing me my wife doesn't exist.
God is a part of my reality, just as tables and chairs are a part of yours. You believe in those tables and chairs, and I believe in God.
>If the world isn't treated as real, even on an informal basis, then our entire ability to do things and expect results that we interpret as significant is destroyed.
That's suspension of disbelief. You know that if you make Mario jump on a Goomba, he'll destroy him. That's doing things and expecting results. That's not destroyed by Mario, the Goombas, and the entire world he exists in being nothing more than transistors firing.
You're obviously lying though. You can see and feel your wife, chairs and tables, etc. You can't literally see and feel God. Any attempt at trying to say otherwise is necessarily metaphorical.
> That's suspension of disbelief. You know that if you make Mario jump on a Goomba, he'll destroy him. That's doing things and expecting results. That's not destroyed by Mario, the Goombas, and the entire world he exists in being nothing more than transistors firing.
Yeah? That's the point, just like we're able to pretend that Mario's world is real, we can "pretend" that we have "justifiable reason" to believe that our world is real, such that we can act in it. That's not faith, that's an intentional decision to suspend our lack of real justification for believing in the world because to do otherwise would render our ability to act impossible.
> You're obviously lying though. You can see and feel your wife, chairs and tables, etc. You can't literally see and feel God.
That's where you're wrong, because I do. Religious experience is common among our species!
> an intentional decision to suspend our lack of real justification for believing in the world because to do otherwise would render our ability to act impossible
Given that simulation could exist, and therefore multiple simulations could exist, the odds on this being the original reality is slim. You believe with zero evidence that this is real.
>an intentional decision to suspend our lack of real justification for believing in the world because to do otherwise would render our ability to act impossible.
That says more about you than about the nature of reality. Why is it axiomatic that function breaks down if the possibility that this is all not real is accepted, and/or believed? Plenty of people have concluded that it's not real and still manage to function. Are you so weak that you need this belief as a crutch?
In fact, could it not be that believing it's not real could free you up to try things you may have been scared to try? To lighten up in stressful situations?
You have faith in a materialistic universe because that's what you're experiencing, even though you know it could all be a dream you're having.
So it is with believers of God.
No, you can't literally see and feel God. You experience stimulus that you attribute to God, but it is not literally equivalent to the experience of seeing a physical object with your own eyes. You are presuming that the cause of your religious experience is God, but you lack the ability to verify through repeated consistent observation that this is the case the way you do for your wife.
Assuming without cause the world is real is axiomatic because something being "real" to you is a necessary quality in something having a "real" result that affects your life. If you believe that a banana is not "real", then you also believe that its ability to satiate your hunger is not "real". If you believe that is not "real", then logically there is no reason to eat the banana because it has no actual tangible impact on your life, so you won't do it. Exploding this to its extreme means that, if you refuse to live assuming the world is real, you won't ever take any actions.
You have to grant the reality of the world, even if you know you're doing it arbitrarily, because unreal things do not have any tangibility, real qualities, or real impact. You can understand you don't REALLY know the world is real, but you can't COMMIT to this authentically and purely. It would result in you basically taking a seat and starving to death.
> You experience stimulus that you attribute to God, but it is not literally equivalent to the experience of seeing a physical object with your own eyes.
You experience stimulus that you attribute to eyes, photons, and a materialistic universe.
>If you believe that is not "real", then logically there is no reason to eat the banana because it has no actual tangible impact on your life, so you won't do it.
Mario is not real. Goombas are not real. Millions of people are making Mario jump on Goombas worldwide. Logically there is no reason to jump on Goombas. Yet millions do. So that argument is a bit weak, isn't it?
>You have to grant the reality of the world, even if you know you're doing it arbitrarily
That's no difference to faith in God.
> You experience stimulus that you attribute to eyes, photons, and a materialistic universe.
Yes, and I am axiomatically bound to assuming at least some of those things are real in certain circumstances, otherwise the implications of not doing so would literally render me incapable of living as an acting being. The same is not true of God, as evidenced by the many atheists who are able to live without psychological contradiction.
> Mario is not real. Goombas are not real. Millions of people are making Mario jump on Goombas worldwide. Logically there is no reason to jump on Goombas. Yet millions do. So that argument is a bit weak, isn't it?
No, because while Mario and Goombas are not real, the screen that is displaying the images of Mario and Goombas is real, and based on the way it is programmed pressing certain inputs will objectively cause the images on the screen to behave in a predictable way. Treating Mario and Goombas as actual people is a mental delusion we engage in because it makes the experience more interesting, but from a logical sense it is silly to argue that the act of playing a video game is not grounded in something we can take to be real.
> That's no difference to faith in God.
No, you don't have to grant the reality of God. It is not a requirement to be rationally coherent, and in fact having faith in God is irrational.
> otherwise the implications of not doing so would literally render me incapable of living as an acting being.
Again, not believing it's real doesn't have to be so destructive! It's a simple belief. So what if it's not real. Why does that change anything at all? Lots of people believe in simulation theory, or that it's just a dream, or a samsaran illusion without starving to death! Playing the game is not an admission that it's real.
>No, you don't have to grant the reality of God. It is not a requirement to be rationally coherent
I suffered huge anxiety, PTSD, depression, etc from a childhood of sustained abuse. I met God. Now it's all gone. So for me, the exact opposite is my reality. God gives me coherence. Lifts me above anxiety, above fear, above all my thoughts. Cuts right through them.
God is with me, and it's as real as anything else in reality. And while I'm experiencing God, it's rational to believe. Just as it's rational for you to believe in a materialistic universe while that is your experience of reality.
> Again, not believing it's real doesn't have to be so destructive! It's a simple belief. So what if it's not real. Why does that change anything at all?
You act according to belief. It is a necessary component of logical chains of action. You have to have certain facts you're committed to that explain why you do what you do. Again: you eat a banana believing that it will satiate your hunger. You don't eat drywall, in part, because you don't believe it's going to satiate your hunger (at least as much drywall as you can stomach eating). That is what beliefs are for.
> Lots of people believe in simulation theory, or that it's just a dream, or a samsaran illusion without starving to death!
No, they really don't. They talk as if they believe in simulation theory, or that it's a dream, but they don't truly and authentically commit to it. They can't. To truly and authentically commit to the idea that the world is not real would require you, for consistency, to remove any meaning from the idea that things need to be real to motivate action. You would need to treat the delusions of all hallucinatory schizophrenics as equally real as anything else you see, not just for them but for you. You would have to believe in all gods, fairytales, and supernatural entities, and live as though they exist.
True belief is not a mere fancy that you entertain mentally without integrating it into your chain of action. Belief is BELIEF, an earnest commitment to the reality of something such that you factor it into the decisions you make. If you make any decisions that are contrary to your supposed "belief", that's an indicator that you are not truly and authentically committed to it and therefore it doesn't comprise an actual belief.
> I suffered huge anxiety, PTSD, depression, etc from a childhood of sustained abuse. I met God. Now it's all gone.
It's very nice that you were able to delude your brain into thinking it healed by slapping a cure-everything placebo over it, but that has no place in philosophical discussions of what exists, or whether or not faith is a valid path to truth.
> God is with me, and it's as real as anything else in reality.
It's not, you're twisting and warping the definition of "real" because you aren't committed to coherency. You're arguing the topic in bad faith.
> I suffered huge anxiety, PTSD, depression, etc from a childhood of sustained abuse. I met God.
That explains quite a bit actually. You’re incapable of being objective due to this.
Well if you're only going to cherry-pick my quotes for self-confirmation, you can believe anything you want about me.
The next bit, I said
>Now it's all gone
That's been logged with my doctor. I had mental illness, now I have none. I'm happy, productive, clear-thinking, and have fun in life.
That's a real change.
How can a real change be caused by something that isn't real?
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Please, for everyone's benefit, learn basic logic and skepticism. Basic. Even if you jump past causality, that in no way proves anything supernatural was involved. You can't just jump from "I found God belief and now feel better, therefore a God exists."
>"I found God belief and now feel better, therefore a God exists."
That's not my position exactly. God happened to me, so I believe in God as much as anything else in my reality.
If you say "I found a banana, and it cured my hunger" can you jump from that to say that bananas exist and objective reality is definitely real and not just an experience you're having? You can describe your experience with labels like "banana" and "hunger" but there's no way to prove to yourself that bananas and hunger are actually real and not part of the dream you're currently having.
I describe my experience with labels like "God" and "consciousness" but it is just the labels on the experience. I experience tables and chairs, I call them tables and chairs. I experience God, I call it God.
> Please, for everyone's benefit, learn basic logic and skepticism
Sure. Prove that your belief in objective reality is justified logically and rationally. Prove it's real, and not just a materialist dogma you're applying to your experience of reality. Prove that things can even be provable, and it isn't a circular argument that relies on reality being provably real when it isn't.
I'll be sitting here reading Sextus Empiricus until you do...
You’re a clueless clown
An erudite argument with many good points. Sadly, it hasn't convinced me. Sorry. :)
🤡
> You believe with zero evidence that this is real.
Wow so your God exists based on…solipsism being possible. Good grief you’re a moron
No, I believe God exists based on personal experience and acceptance of that experience.
You believe objective reality exists based on personal experience and acceptance of that experience.
In fact, everything you've asserted relies on objective reality. Can you prove this is real? Using logic and evidence? Because if you can't, all other arguments based on predictable objective reality fall apart...
🤡
> No, God is as real to me as my wife
Unicorns are real to me, boss. What now?
Well then, compare your experience of unicorns to others to see if they corroborate.
🤡
How the fuck is it relevant to bring solipsism into a conversation where you’ve made claims about a supernatural beings existence? Gish gallop gallop gallop
We're talking about belief in our experience. You believe in yours. You have faith in yours. I believe in mine. I have faith in mine.
You can't argue that your position is more logical than mine.
You don’t understand the basics here enough to understand why your response makes no logical sense. You don’t understand logic at all. I would avoid using the word if I were you
🤡
No sense arguing with a buffoon
You can think I'm wrong, but thinking I'm a buffoon is pretty silly. I deal with these abstract philosophical ideas at a decent enough level of proficiency.
Edit: Unless you mean the other guy is a buffoon lol.
I’m taking about mr. theist
Ah ok
Now kiss :)
🤡
Eh... we'll oppose.
We don't see faith as a matter of speculation; we consider faith a matter of trusting what is felt rather than granting the premise of what one fears.
More precisely, faith must be based on subjective experience; knowledge is based on what other people experienced... and since people practice lying when they feel afraid, what they communicate has to be verified to be trusted.
Faith is understood internally, not verified (edit: decided) externally.To a process that can only occur through one path, the other may look like madness.
Just want to point out human memory is notoriously inaccurate, and its completely possible to decieve yourself. Kinda puts a hole in the subjective experience bedrock from my perspective. (Also that definition of knowledge is rather suspect)
Faith appears to me as a tautology. Somthing you need inorder to maintain.
You are 100% accurate but many here don’t seem to understand basic logic as much as they love the mental masturbation of philosophical pondering
||Just want to point out human memory is notoriously inaccurate,||
Most are. Some people are afflicted with videographic memory. Don't assume your experience is universal.
|| its completely possible to decieve yourself. ||
You say this as if people don't lie to each other all the time. If "filtering the conclusions against reasonable considerations" is a factor when listening to others, then it may be presumed to be a factor when listening to the self.
As such, the observation about deceit is not relevant, is it?
||Faith appears to me as a tautology.||
Faith in your subjective experience has been this way. Ours approach differs. ~shrug~ Until you understand how we see it, your perspective is based off of just one way of looking at things, innit?
Since you could be deceiving yourself... might make sense to check.
> You say this as if people don't lie to each other all the time.
You say this as though Special K didn't assume the burden of explaining why his faith stuff was special. But he did. By pointing out that self-deception can play the same role in his secret sauce as it does in the stuff he's declaring inferior, a relevant challenge is made.
>Faith in your subjective experience has been this way.
And so then Special K is faced with explaining why the subjective experience of someone who's concluded that faith isn't special, and is actually rather stupid and toxic, is somehow wrong and invalid.
He doesn't do that, though. Instead, he runs away from the argument and retreats to the safety of the choir he wants to preach to.
>You say this as though Special K didn't assume
Whups... We're not talking about Soren K. - never read him, wouldn't be able to offer any informed insight.
We were talking about faith not being a matter of speculative reasoning, rather of observed realities, in response to a comment.
The person we responded to was less interested in discussion & more impressed with their own absolute vision of reality. Since we found that incompatible with intelligent conversation, we disengaged.
Discussing faith & observable reality, that we're quite happy to kick around - cooperatively, not competitively.
The problem is that you only know what you feel, you don't know what causes that feeling in actuality or if those feelings are accurate analogues to reality. There are many things we feel that are complete fabrications or distortions of reality. Knowledge may be primarily based on the writings of others, but the power of those writings is that they meticulously document their process and ergo you can analyze that process for accuracy. For things like science experiments, you can see when those experiments have been reliably duplicated and you can duplicate them on your own id you put in the effort. That is the foundation of our science classes in school.
Faith is just feeling a thing and then arbitrarily deciding whatever you want it to be is what it is.
>The problem is that you only know what you feel, you don't know what causes that feeling in actuality or if those feelings are accurate analogues to reality.
Perhaps you only know that. Be careful asserting what others understand - you have no awareness of what they experience.
Since you just went on a paragraph & change about that exact perspective... maybe we ought to apply that approach to your statement, & start over?
||There are many things we feel that are complete fabrications or distortions of reality.||
You say that as if that's the final step. For you, it may be. For others, there may be other approaches... so you may want to slow down a little.
||Knowledge may be primarily based on the writings of others, but the power of those writings is that they meticulously document their process and ergo you can analyze that process for accuracy. ||
You're assuming they aren't lying. Since people practice lying all the time, especially to themselves (as you've just pointed out) should anyone trust what another wrote without verifying it for themselves?
||For things like science experiments, you can see when those experiments have been reliably duplicated and you can duplicate them on your own id you put in the effort. That is the foundation of our science classes in school.||
You've skipped a couple of steps - you are now equating "science" with "knowing" which is has not been established, so your statement is unsupported.
Particularly when science classes are precluded from teaching things that make "average" people emotionally uncomfortable, not because of the accuracy of the science, but because of the feelings of the people who know better.
As such, our perception of the world you describe in practice is that knowledge is dismissed by ignorant people whose feelings are disrupted by new things they are being told... because the average person is mostly disconnected from understanding what their feelings are, due to their lack of practice in managing them.
Are we understanding each other at this stage?
> Perhaps you only know that. Be careful asserting what others understand - you have no awareness of what they experience.
No, it is literally impossible for anybody to know what is causing their own experiences or if their experiences accurately reflect reality, without engaging in suitable external examination. If you're only going by your own internal experiences, by definition you cannot verify your internal experiences. Internal experiences cannot verify themselves. It is a fundamental epistemic limit and anti-philosophical to imply otherwise.
> You say that as if that's the final step. For you, it may be. For others, there may be other approaches
Every person alive is fundamentally the same kind of person and their experiences draw from the same neurological basis, unless your brain is literally broken. There is no experience that is valid for one person that is not valid for another. Either things are windows to reality we can reasonably trust, or they aren't. There is no case-by-case basis on this.
> You're assuming they aren't lying.
Yes, that's what the peer-review and reproducibility elements of the process are about. People can fabricate evidence, or they can simply make mistakes, their bias can blind them to flaws, so that means other people then step in to reproduce the results or critique the method. And, at the end of the day, if you have an issue with somebody else's writing, you can follow their method and see what happens. Nothing is ever perfect, and all "knowledge" has a degree of uncertainty, but that uncertainty is not equal for all methods or all claims.
> You've skipped a couple of steps - you are now equating "science" with "knowing"
I was using science experiments as an example of how to examine the world in predictable ways in order to establish facts about the world, I wasn't equating anything.
> As such, our perception of the world you describe in practice is that knowledge is dismissed by ignorant people whose feelings are disrupted by new things they are being told... because the average person is mostly disconnected from understanding what their feelings are, due to their lack of practice in managing them.
What ignorant people's feelings are has no bearing on whether or not faith is a valid metric for reliable truth.
[removed]
[removed]
[removed]
[removed]
Your comment was removed for violating the following rule:
>Be Respectful
>Comments which consist of personal attacks will be removed. Users with a history of such comments may be banned. Slurs, racism, and bigotry are absolutely not permitted.
Repeated or serious violations of the subreddit rules will result in a ban.
This is a shared account that is only used for notifications. Please do not reply, as your message will go unread.
[removed]
[removed]
Your comment was removed for violating the following rule:
>Be Respectful
>Comments which consist of personal attacks will be removed. Users with a history of such comments may be banned. Slurs, racism, and bigotry are absolutely not permitted.
Repeated or serious violations of the subreddit rules will result in a ban.
This is a shared account that is only used for notifications. Please do not reply, as your message will go unread.
>More precisely, faith must be based on subjective experience; knowledge is based on what other people experienced.
no, knowledge is based on your own experience too unless you are claiming
next people lie to themselves via faith routinely in the millions, just look at how 80%+ of religious believers have faith in things they themselves injected into their holy texts.
faith in no way excludes lying and knowledge can be based on subjective experience.
certainty is the enemy of growth.
>no, knowledge is based on your own experience too unless you are claiming
Please repeat... you faded.
​
>next people lie to themselves via faith routinely in the millions, just look at how 80%+ of religious believers have faith in things they themselves injected into their holy texts.
People lie - to themselves, to each other, constantly. This is not specific to those of faith, it also applies in science.
​
>faith in no way excludes lying and knowledge can be based on subjective experience.
We define 'knowledge' as what one is told; in that context, if what you're told is a lie then it's no more "real" than any article of faith.
​
>certainty is the enemy of growth.
We find your certainty in this conversation so far a bit surprising.
No, that’s nonsense. You may as well start quoting Deepak Chopra. The basic foundations of logic chop your view apart
If you can articulate how these basic foundations of logic refute our observation, that might lead to a discussion.
Right now, all you've done is make an assertion without illustrating your point, the rough equivalent of "Nuh-uh!"
So... care to be a bit more specific?
[removed]
Your comment was removed for violating the following rule:
>Be Respectful
>Comments which consist of personal attacks will be removed. Users with a history of such comments may be banned. Slurs, racism, and bigotry are absolutely not permitted.
Repeated or serious violations of the subreddit rules will result in a ban.
This is a shared account that is only used for notifications. Please do not reply, as your message will go unread.
[removed]
[removed]
[removed]
[removed]
Your comment was removed for violating the following rule:
>Be Respectful
>Comments which consist of personal attacks will be removed. Users with a history of such comments may be banned. Slurs, racism, and bigotry are absolutely not permitted.
Repeated or serious violations of the subreddit rules will result in a ban.
This is a shared account that is only used for notifications. Please do not reply, as your message will go unread.
Your comment was removed for violating the following rule:
>Be Respectful
>Comments which consist of personal attacks will be removed. Users with a history of such comments may be banned. Slurs, racism, and bigotry are absolutely not permitted.
Repeated or serious violations of the subreddit rules will result in a ban.
This is a shared account that is only used for notifications. Please do not reply, as your message will go unread.
Kierkegaard is not so anti-rationalistic as people think. He only says reason has a negative role: it finds problems in what we do. Faith has a positive role. If you ever want to do something and stick to your decision no matter what you need faith.
That's nonsense. Reason finds problems in what we do, but it is also the source of validation of what we do and therefore a source of significant confidence. You don't need faith to stick to your decision, and in fact faith can cause you to stick to a bad decision that hurts people or not switch to a better decision that is more helpful.
What is the source of presuppositions from which we start your reason processes?
I agree that reason provides significant confidence, but I find it to be rather retrospective than prospective, especially when it comes to life decision.
What is a "bad" decision? How do you determine? What makes you think switching to something else will be better over the course of time?
Reason can verify our decisions, but cannot trigger them. Blind faith or pure reason are not the only options. Blind faith entails random decisions which is absurd. Pure reason means no decision.
For example, you find good reasons and bad reasons to get married or not to get married. What makes you actually take a decision and not be stuck forever in the process of thinking? Reasons do not weight the same for everyone. If "existentialistic" decisions are like mathematical formulas our life will lack individuality. 2+2=4 is the same for everyone.
-- In my opinion reason needs faith and faith needs reason. They are complementary.
> What is the source of presuppositions from which we start your reason processes?
Whatever we must logically accept in order to coherently exist in the world and make decisions as intentional agents. These are things like "I exist", "the world exists", "the world is predictable (physically)", and other extremely basic presumptions about the status of reality. If we were to completely shed our belief in any of these things, we would logically destroy our ability to act and expect results we had reason to believe were meaningful. We have to at least accept them on an informal basis, or we can do nothing else. This is entirely different from faith, which is the acceptance of a belief that is not necessary, for no reasons.
> I agree that reason provides significant confidence, but I find it to be rather retrospective than prospective, especially when it comes to life decision.
I mean, that's your problem, but I exercise reason to make life decisions and haven't been steered wrong yet as far as I know.
> What is a "bad" decision? How do you determine? What makes you think switching to something else will be better over the course of time?
A bad decision is something that causes an outcome that people (yourself or others) think is bad. We have seen plenty of instances where faith in God causes bad decisions, in that it causes people to deny medical care that could have saved their lives, it causes people to ostracize their family members, encourages some people to commit acts of violence against others, etc.
> Reason can verify our decisions, but cannot trigger them.
I'm not sure how you figure this. Let's say you engage in the following logical process:
I am hungry and want food > As far as I know, there is food in the fridge > If I get up and go to the fridge I will get the food > I want to get the food > Ergo I should get up and go to the fridge > I get up and go to the fridge > I get the food > I eat the food > I satisfy my desire for food
That is entirely a logical series of steps. It's not one we consciously work through, but it's logical and requires no faith. If you happen to get to the fridge and there is no food, your knowledge of the world was wrong, but at that point you can pivot away from that to something else. There's a difference between having a belief based on exposure to something, and having "faith" in the way people do in God.
> For example, you find good reasons and bad reasons to get married or not to get married. What makes you actually take a decision and not be stuck forever in the process of thinking?
You weigh the good reasons and bad reasons against each other and determine through thinking that the good outweigh the bad because they're more important to you.
> If "existentialistic" decisions are like mathematical formulas our life will lack individuality. 2+2=4 is the same for everyone.
2+2=4 is the same for everyone, but it's every person's individual preferences and desires that determine the numbers you slot into the equation. For me, getting married might be 2+2+4+12-8-1=11, whereas for somebody else the same question might be 2+2+4-12+2-5=(-7).
> In my opinion reason needs faith and faith needs reason. They are complementary.
They really are not.
>Whatever we must logically accept in order to coherently exist in the world and make decisions as intentional agents. These are things like "I exist", "the world exists", "the world is predictable (physically)", and other extremely basic presumptions about the status of reality. If we were to completely shed our belief in any of these things, we would logically destroy our ability to act and expect results we had reason to believe were meaningful. We have to at least accept them on an informal basis, or we can do nothing else. This is entirely different from faith, which is the acceptance of a belief that is not necessary, for no reasons.
You postulate "logic" before using "logic". You postulate "reality" before using "reality" in your logic. How can you know 100% that reality is as it appears to you? All your above statements are meta-physical statements because you are implying things about reality. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't get your certainty.
I'm not using faith in the sense that you defined as "acceptance of a belief that is not necessary, for no reasons". For me "faith" is about "appropriation/devotion/commitment" (I don't have a better word for now). e.g. we dovote our life to a way of seeing the world in which we see ourselves as intentional agents, we postulate the reality-mind correspondence, etc.
​
>I mean, that's your problem, but I exercise reason to make life decisions and haven't been steered wrong yet as far as I know.
Again, neither Kierkegaard not I is saying that you can't use reason for your life decisions. Of course you use reason. However, after you have reason for sufficient time, you need to take a decision. I'm sure you had take bad life decisions in your life. You developed your "reason", you learned, you acquired more experience. If as a child every decision you take was based on "reason", you would probably be dead by now.
Of course, use reason at its highest, but your reason will always be limited by your pressupositions (your commitment to a way of seeing the world). Of course, we can examine and change our pressupositions, but that also tells us something about the infirmities of reason. We reason within our understanding of the world ("faith", as I use it).
​
>A bad decision is something that causes an outcome that people (yourself or others) think is bad. We have seen plenty of instances where faith in God causes bad decisions, in that it causes people to deny medical care that could have saved their lives, it causes people to ostracize their family members, encourages some people to commit acts of violence against others, etc.
What if the Nazis conqured the world and brainwash everyone to think The Holocaust was good? Does that changed that it was actually bad? (But nevermind, it is not very relevant for the discussion). I'm not saying the feedback we receive from others it is not valueable. It is. I also agree that for some people there is a correspondence between beliving in God and bad things. However, Christians believe that God has revealed Himself by living a life of a normal man and dying for the salvation of the world. If you have faith in that i.e. appropriate the message that as God loved the world (dying sacrificially) you should also love others, you shouldn't commit acts of violance. If through careful reason we find that the Christian story is untrue (i.e. resurrection did not happened) then we should definetely not believe in it (i.e. live in the world as if God revelealed Himself in Christ's sacrifice).
​
>I'm not sure how you figure this. Let's say you engage in the following logical process:I am hungry and want food > As far as I know, there is food in the fridge > If I get up and go to the fridge I will get the food > I want to get the food > Ergo I should get up and go to the fridge > I get up and go to the fridge > I get the food > I eat the food > I satisfy my desire for foodThat is entirely a logical series of steps. It's not one we consciously work through, but it's logical and requires no faith. If you happen to get to the fridge and there is no food, your knowledge of the world was wrong, but at that point you can pivot away from that to something else. There's a difference between having a belief based on exposure to something, and having "faith" in the way people do in God.
I have no problem using reason as in this example because I accept every premise and I think almost everyone will do.
However, I cannot ignore your appropriation for a world where hunger exists and is not an illusion, food is in fridges, food satisfies hunger, food does not fall from the sky, someone will not bring you food in bed, etc. It is way way more complicated when you consider complex decisions that are further away from our more "animalic" life. Things like meaning, significance, values, etc.
On the other hand, I don't see how you make the transition from logic to action. There are many valid logical statements, but none is producing the action. It only makes the action reasonable, but I can act against reason. So, action is not always produced by reason. It is produced by the commitment I have to the world. When I see someone is in danger I can produce in my mind reasons to ignore, to call for help or to actually intervene personally. What is producing these reasons? I might even believe I should ignore feared reasons based on my devotion to the good and intervene. It might get bad and die, but I might also save a life. I don't know.
​
>You weigh the good reasons and bad reasons against each other and determine through thinking that the good outweigh the bad because they're more important to you. 2+2=4 is the same for everyone, but it's every person's individual preferences and desires that determine the numbers you slot into the equation. For me, getting married might be 2+2+4+12-8-1=11, whereas for somebody else the same question might be 2+2+4-12+2-5=(-7).
Absolutely. However, what makes someone think it will be happier doing A while someone else thinks it will be happier doing the opposite of A? Do you have an absolute splitter in this situation? I think the answer to the Q is faith i.e. the devotion to a way of seeing the world e.g. where being married is a value or being single is a desiderate. You call that "individual preferences and desires". I think faith might include these, but it is not limited to that.
​
>They really are not.
Yes, if you use a different definition of "faith" that the one I'm using. I'm not sure if it is a strawman or not because it could be the case that many people of "faith" (although I think everyone is manifesting faith in a way or another) are using it as equivalence to blind faith (blind commitment to a way of seeing the world). I would advocate for an informed faith (an informated commitment to a way of seeing the world).
[deleted]
That is not what faith is, that's you massively twisting concepts through metaphor to appear profound.
[deleted]
It's not a virtue to live life weaseling out of criticism by warping the meaning of words away from their actual meaning and into something you just made up to suit yourself.
[deleted]
You can't just make words mean whatever you want. Not only is it disingenuous argumentation, it's bad thinking because you will mentally conflate your own definition you made up with the "normal" definition everyone else has, and that will confuse you internally. It's bad.
[deleted]
Because "faith" is an English word and when you use it in an English-speaking context people will engage with you using that definition. You doing what you did is 1) adding confusion to the discussion, and 2) will cause you to operate according to both your personal definition of faith and the common English usage of faith in random ways, because you're human and all humans' brains are flawed.
It's even worse for you because you literally created an amalgamation of a concept between possibly two different ideas, so you will wind up conflating three different ideas, and your own personal definition of faith is functionally useless in all other contexts that aren't you thinking to yourself and feeling all erudite.
Like...it's complete nonsense and has no place here.
[deleted]
Engaging in arbitrary nonsense has no place in a philosophy subreddit.
[deleted]
Faith is practically the opposite of speculative reason, are you aware of what speculative reason actually means? It’s not what you might colloquially infer, if that’s what your argument. Either way I would probably consider his argument before casting judgement.
Faith is being presented with a thing and then deciding what it is based on no evidence. It's literally nothing but speculation.
Yeah, you’re misinterpreting his argument. Speculative reason as in objective reason (Descartes, hegel). I don’t know what the etymology behind that is but it’s not equivalent to colloquial speculation.
Again, I’d read his argument before judging prematurely. His whole point is faith in god shouldn’t be “based on evidence” so you’re not in disagreement.
Yours sounds like an intriguing path. Would you comfortable sharing more about your reasons for first accepting christianity, and then moving away from calling yourself a Christian?
Many years ago was a typical materialist, science and debate bro (half of Reddit lol) who went down the regular path of existential anguish that is pretty normalized in todays youth, failing to deal with the problem of the absurd. Various philosophers grapple with this (Sartre, Camus, nietzsche). I found them to be pretty lackluster and I always much favored epistemology as the real meat-and-bones of philosophy.
I was so opposed to dogmatic thought I was enforcing my own kind of dogma of scientism and materialism that I wasn’t self-aware enough to realize. After my epistemology graduated to a slightly less amateur understanding I started to really appreciate other philosophers such as kierkegaard or William James as truly quite genius. James proposed an epistemology compatible with religion, kierkegaard was the only philosopher so far that made sense of the absurd and I found his subjective method of communication to be extremely captivating.
Tuning in to, and not dismissing my subjective experiences, along with plenty of advice from kierkegaard lead to me developing a relationship with god.
I eventually took that one step further and dismissed the Bible being the necessary word of god as being another speculative notion which kierkegaard also discussed. Kierkegaard always took Christianity as a given, but I never did, so Christianity was less permanent to me. Ultimately I just try to have a lasting relationship with god, and generally consider the dominant features spanning religion without particular attention to detail, I think kierkegaard would condone if not approve.
Anyways, TLDR: the pragmatic dialectic weakened me from arrogant debate bro, kierkegaard (properly) introduced me to Christianity and religion, eventually just became religious over speicifically Christian.
Christianity is, if I had to summarize, associated with Divine Spiritual Awareness. True spiritual awareness of self, will lead you to the ability to be able to judge yourself through the Eyes of God. Although, it seems as if so many self-proclaimed “Christians” skipped the book of Ecclesiastes
People don’t know how to seperate the Spiritual from the Superficial. If we are judging America from that facet, our country may just house some of the most superficial elements/people/leaders in the history of mankind.
Anytime you use the Bible/Religious text to control others or establish your Will for others as the Will of God (Abortion is a PERFECT example), you are doing the same thing that Jesus criticized the Jews for doing! It was so bad that God sent his Son down to essentially spread the Gospel of He/God being the ultimate judge, so you can avoid the Hypocrisy of the Self-Rightous man and woman. You can only interpret what God’s Will is for you, not what it is for the entire state, country, or mankind!
> It was so bad that God sent his Son down to essentially spread the Gospel of He/God being the ultimate judge, so you can avoid the Hypocrisy of the Self-Rightous man and woman. You can only interpret what God’s Will is for you, not what it is for the entire state, country, or mankind!
When Jesus criticizes the self-righteous He means that you should not believe so much in your own goodness or be filled with pride, that you should instead be a humble servant of God. To interpret that as saying you shouldn't help keep others away from sin is very strange considering Jesus Himself gave quite a lot of unwanted advice to the sinners around Him.
“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
This is extremely important in the interpretation what Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection meant for mankind.
I wouldn't want my quote to be misinterpreted as to not "help" people, but "help" is a subjective phrase. It's impossible to properly help someone without knowing some type of context associated with that said person's life. For a person to desire to keep you from sin, is to put a "stumbling block" in the way of the very person they are trying to help in the first place...
That has, can, and will interfere with them achieving a salvation that is unique to their life... And can keep them from accepting Christ whole-heartedly.
You are essentially controlling their life by educating them on YOUR interpretation of sin and keeping them from it, when you could honestly give them the tools and teachings to help them interpret what sin could be within the context of their life/for themselves, and then they can call on God/Christ for the strength in Spirit to keep away from what they consider sin.
We are all sinners, and what better way to let a person know the compassion, patience, empathy, and unconditional love of God, than to allow them endure on a personalized path in which they understand the power of the flesh (temptation, making mistakes, hurting others, lying etc.) and know that the day they receive the "Good News" of Jesus, they can not only activate their own resurrection (Holy Spirit), they can also whole-heartedly ask for forgiveness, and use their life as a testimony to help others commit to God/Christ and receive that same "Holy Spirit", which is essentially the God/Christ in us. It's the greatest way of disregarding the trauma experienced, accepting the knowledge and wisdom from the mistakes you made, and forgiving the transgressions made against you...
You don't help a person by keeping them from "sin". The word and law of God has been exploited repeatedly, and, there are so many ways in which a person honors God, that the word "sin" becomes subjective. "Sin" can be used in a way to disregard the experiences that lead to that person committing the act in the first place.
This woman is Lesbian, therefore, she is a sinner. Well, she may be a lesbian because of the trauma associated with her being raped (Simplified example).
In Christianity, letting people know the "Good News", in a way that is tailor-made/worded within the context of their life and what they've experienced, is the greatest contribution you can make. But, before you can even do that, you have to ask if they are ready and willing to receive the word in the first place! Then you can sit down, listen to these people, live amongst them, empathize with them, be patient and compassionate. There is a reason why Paul spoke about living amongst the people he desired to help in Corinthians, going from village to village and enduring the same hardships that they did.
If your intentions are to the detriment of others...If your intentions are to control, or impede on the freedoms of anyone? That behavior isn't Christ-like at all. Even in the Bible it is stated that people wouldn't even know sin if it wasn't for the laws being made... In other words, Laws (Like Abortion Laws) don't keep people from sinning. As a matter of fact, it is Laws that tempt the act of sin in the first place!
One way to serve God is to serve and educate those that understand that they need to be served and educated. Teach them what the ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ means for them. Teach them in a way that they will be able to guide themselves on the path of salvation and righteousness. Guide them in the way where they can depend on God, not on Man, to tell them what is right and wrong.
I hope you receive this well.
> there are so many ways in which a person honors God, that the word "sin" becomes subjective.
This says a lot, I think. I would venture to guess that you mean other world religions are equally valid and lead to God. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to strawman you. The idea that sin is subjective is so antithetical to the Bible that I'm surprised to hear someone who knows a few biblical messages even consider it. God is the very source of objective morality, without Him it could not exist. But it does, and it's laid out in plain language often repeated several times in different contexts throughout the Bible. What then is your interpretation of Acts 4:12? "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” If you can't agree with that I daresay I wouldn't call you a Christian. Again, if this is not your view please correct me.
The Holy Sprit is the God within all of us. The "Holy Spirit" is Divine Accountability.
If a person is willing to be baptized in the name of Christ, he/she is willing to receive/activate the Holy Sprit within themselves. If they continue to establish and build their own relationship with God, God will guide them on the path in which they will fulfill the Will that He has for them.
Upon receiving the Holy Spirit (and if they desire to have a personal relationship with God), then what sin is will be established within THEIR Holy Spirit (Which is the God in All of Us). As long as they continue to nurture it within the word and context of their life, then The Spirit will grow and guide them for as long as they continue to honor God and Christ.
Let's say someone decided to honor God by not eating meat. Does that mean that they can tell others that it's sinful to eat meat? Absolutely not.
Does that mean I can shame them for not eating meat because of God saying "Anything that I created is Not Unclean"? Absolutely not.
Now let's talk about Apostle Paul, back when he was Saul. Saul persecuted and executed many Jews, and God used HIM as a vessel to deliver the Gospel. He was made blind, and he along with his companions were told to seek Ananias, one of the Disciples of Christ.
Essentially, what Saul was doing was not "sin" in the eyes of Man... Just like when Jesus was persecuted and sacrificed... No one was jailed, not even Judas.
God eventually handled the fate of Judas... But, God also forgave Saul... Saul changed his name to Paul and became a great and devout Christian/Apostle.
Do you understand the catalyst for God sending his Son here? Jewish Priests had essentially claimed Dominion over God; They created hundreds upon hundreds of Laws... Priest telling people what was sinful and NOT sinful, telling people who to heal and who NOT to heal. Telling Jesus that he's committing a sin by feeding unclean people bread with unclean hands! Jesus called them Hypocrites right to their faces and they became furious. Who could challenge the Jews but the Son of God himself!
When you are trying to keep people from sin/telling people what is sinful, you are doing the same thing that Jesus accused the Jews of doing. Your relationship with God is a unique one, and I seriously doubt if you can (spiritually) convict anyone outside of being a murderer, thief, or adulterous. The most Christian trait you can have is one of forgiveness; I am not a perfect man, but I appreciate his forgiveness and mercy more because of it. The book of Ecclesiastes even tells people not to be too righteous as doing so can be associated with vanity.
No one on this Earth can pass true spiritual judgement, because no one is without Sin. To call something sinful is to pass judgement, and the foolishness of God is greater than the greatest wisdom of mankind... God's Will for someone else is beyond our comprehension. If He is taking someone along a path of salvation, who knows what sins they will commit prior to that moment! But, at that moment, they will be all the more appreciative of God's grace. You can help, but be careful as to not be a stumbling block on their journey. Your intentions don't protect you from wrongdoing. Only offer guidance if God placed in that person's heart to ASK you for it. If they do? You have a divine responsibility to NOT convict them, but comfort and accommodate them.
Barth and Ellul - two unashamed Kierkegaardians - are also my favourites. Natural theology is weak in comparison to revelation. Whether you believe or not, there's something very different about those who talk about revelation first and those who talk about logical* proofs for God. Who's ever been converted by Plantinga's modal ontological argument?
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments