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Jan. 29th, 2006 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookofmirrorsI finally got around to reading this article, which I *think* I got from thinkmonkey.
For the most part, I agree with the article. Faith isn't based on reason, and actions based on faith aren't based on reason, either. (They might ALSO follow the basis of reason, but if faith is your primary motivation for an action, then it's merely a happy coincidence that reason agrees. A faithful person, in my experience, will often discard reason in favor of faith.) I can even agree that acting on faith, in the end, allows one to act without justification. (Or, at least, any justification other than the faith itself, and whatever belief system goes with it, whether personal or canon.)
But faith as a moral failing? I can't see that. I mean... there's no justification for morality, either, in my book. Morality is as ambiguous as faith. Doing something (or not doing something) because it's moral or immoral is as flimsy as doing something on faith. I'm thinking one's morals are based on one's faith, anyway. I would think that if you were to take an atheist, who doesn't ascribe to any particular faith, and ask him/her about morals, they couldn't give you a reason why one particular thing was amoral and another wasn't. Even in the absence of faith, morals are arbitrary. We just decide what sets off our "wrong" meters (conscience, if you will), and what doesn't, and act accordingly. I'm guessing that's a form of faith in itself. Faith in one's self to be able to discern "right" and "wrong", using something as "arbitrary" as gut feelings.
Unless you do the kinesiology thing. Then you're into a whole different ballgame, which is possibly scientifically validatable.
Anyway, just pondering. Feel free to jump in.
thinkmonkey.For the most part, I agree with the article. Faith isn't based on reason, and actions based on faith aren't based on reason, either. (They might ALSO follow the basis of reason, but if faith is your primary motivation for an action, then it's merely a happy coincidence that reason agrees. A faithful person, in my experience, will often discard reason in favor of faith.) I can even agree that acting on faith, in the end, allows one to act without justification. (Or, at least, any justification other than the faith itself, and whatever belief system goes with it, whether personal or canon.)
But faith as a moral failing? I can't see that. I mean... there's no justification for morality, either, in my book. Morality is as ambiguous as faith. Doing something (or not doing something) because it's moral or immoral is as flimsy as doing something on faith. I'm thinking one's morals are based on one's faith, anyway. I would think that if you were to take an atheist, who doesn't ascribe to any particular faith, and ask him/her about morals, they couldn't give you a reason why one particular thing was amoral and another wasn't. Even in the absence of faith, morals are arbitrary. We just decide what sets off our "wrong" meters (conscience, if you will), and what doesn't, and act accordingly. I'm guessing that's a form of faith in itself. Faith in one's self to be able to discern "right" and "wrong", using something as "arbitrary" as gut feelings.
Unless you do the kinesiology thing. Then you're into a whole different ballgame, which is possibly scientifically validatable.
Anyway, just pondering. Feel free to jump in.
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Date: 2006-01-30 06:08 pm (UTC)George M. Felis is a bipedal primate with ill-adapted feet and an over- developed neocortex. He is also a Ph.D. student in philosophy at The University of Georgia and a philosophy instructor at Georgia Perimeter College. Religion and himself are two of the many things he doesn't take all that seriously.
--I can't really work myself up to taking him that seriously if he's not expecting other people to. But in answer to *this* post, I'll put in my two cents on this coffee-shop topic:
I imagine that it must be pretty frustrating for an atheist to share the world with so many people who seem deluded, insane, or willfully prejudiced. When one thinks of the millions and millions of people practicing some form of worship all over the world, one wonders how atheists get by without running off to the hills somewhere.
Faith is a doorway to a state of consciousness that makes us feel larger than who and what we are, but it is rooted in feeling, emotion and intuition, rather than empirical evidence, so sometimes the behavior of the devout can be baffling to one who doesn't share, as its practice is often occupies the realm of the irrational...and the irrational, to the pure scientist's predictable and logical world is anathema, and therefore guilty of a moral degeneracy.
My personal worldview is that in spite of all the terrible things that have been done in the name of religious fervor, I can't help but think past and present civilizations have evolved an awareness of morality in humanity's exploration of transpersonal relationships with God, higher powers, et al., even if we as individuals choose to reject that relationship and adhere to the practice of nonbelief...and I can't see that man could have done known what to accept or reject about right or wrong without the presence and codification of faith.
I don't see the author attacking faith so much as the people who use it to justify amoral or immoral acts, or, at the very least, acts that are questionable in their logic or rational. You can't argue the kind of experiences he's had with devout religiouses (sp?), so defending the existence of faith would be like trying to defend one's concept of beauty, or art. Either someone gets that the experience varies from individual to individual and how they act on it is their choice, or they don't.