Chickpea Eater’s Bookblog, commenting on Rauch’s arguments in Gay Marriage (and via the invaluable Marriage Debate), writes:
Sounds great. But there’s a snag. Rauch says that if we believe marriage is ordered towards procreation, then we shouldn’t allow post-menopausal women to marry. We might respond that they’re allowed to marry because prohibiting them from marrying would be too invasive– we don’t want the government administering fertility tests. But this seems like a really lousy answer. We do not want to say that post-menopausal women are only allowed to marry because we don’t know that they’re post-menopausal, because if we did then we’d be saying that post-menopausal women really shouldn’t marry, even though it’s legal, and that we should discourage infertile women from marrying.
At first, this appears absolutely devastating to the anti-gay-marriage case. But on second thought, Rauch’s argument turns out to be an argument against making any distinctions of status, except on the strictest bases of merit. For example, if you say, “We call people ‘professors’ in order to indicate that their work is of a higher dignity than those people we call ‘teachers.’ This is because professors teach more sophisticated concepts and are do research.” But one could reply, “Yes, but there are some teachers who teach higher level classes than some professors. And teachers some teachers do original research. Lack of original research disqualifies all teachers but no professors. So what we have here is blatant anti-teacher bias. To correct this bias, we should allow all teachers to be called professors.” The point is that even though some professors contribute less than some teachers, we are still justified in making a general distinction of rank.
Contrary to Ms. (Mr?) Eater’s analysis, we don’t call professors “professor” to indicate one who does original research; there are obviously many professors who do no original research, and also many non-professors (private-sector research scientists, for example) who do plenty of original research.
We call them “professor” because that is a job title (one of several possible titles) of those who teach at colleges and universities. “Teacher,” in contrast, is a job title for those teaching at other sorts of schools. Calling each person by their correct job title is not, despite Ms. Eater’s claim, any sort of injustice.
Aside from her badly-chosen metaphor, Ms. Eater’s logic – that if we object to any unfair distinction, we are making “an argument against making any distinctions of status” – is nonsense. If I say that a law forbidding Jews from owning property is unjust, I’m not arguing against all distinctions of status. Rather, I’m saying that this particular distinction creates injustice needlessly and should therefore no longer be recognized by law.
To say that teachers are not professors isn’t an injustice; it’s a statement about job categories. On the other hand, to forbid someone by law from teaching because they’re a member of a minority – for instance, to say that homosexuals are not allowed to be teachers – would be an injustice. Straights-only marriage more closely resembles the latter case than the former.
Later in her review, Ms. Eater argues that Rauch is mistaken in his attempt to “pare marriage to its essential core.” I agree with Ms. Eater; marriage is complex and multifaceted, and cannot be sensibly pared down to a single essential core. To any honest observer, it’s obvious that marriage serves many functions simultaneously. As Rauch says, marriage “is two people’s lifelong commitment, recognized by law and society, to care for each other.” But it’s also, as Ms. Eater says, society’s attempt “to encourage biological parents to be committed to taking care of the children they’ve conceived.” And I’d add that “marriage is a family-making bond,” benefiting not only the couple but also any children they’re raising (not only “biological” children).
Years before the gay marriage controversy encouraged many folks in the marriage movement to write op-eds declaring that children conceived through heterosexual intercourse is the sole purpose of marriage, some of those same folks had a more sensible view. Asking “what is marriage,” they said that “marriage is…” a legal contract; a financial partnership; a sacred promise; a sexual union; a personal bond; and a family-making bond. This approach – recognizing the reality that marriage can, does and should serve multiple functions, and can even serve different functions for different people – is far more intelligent and realistic than the “one purpose” analysis most anti-SSM folks have been forced into by their need to exclude homosexuals..
I think her argument is spot-on here:
Traditionalist: “We give special privileges and responsibilities to marriage because we want to encourage child-bearing relationships.”
Pro-SSM person: “Nonsense. It’s true that you can’t have children through homosexual relationships, but that can’t be what marriage is about anyway, as proven by the fact that a few infertile couples get married, as well as post-menopausal women.”
But that is exactly the same as this hypothetical exchange:
Pro-SSM Person: “Marriage is really about recognizing the fact that two people love each other, or that they are committed to each other, or that they take care of each other.”
Opponent: “Nonsense, because I can think of a handful of marriages that are love-less, or where the spouses commit adultery, or where they don’t take care of each other very well. Therefore marriage isn’t about any of those things.”
“We give special privileges and responsibilities to marriage because we want to encourage child-bearing relationships.”
Why don’t we want to encourage same-sex couples to engage in committed, child-bearing relationships?
The response to the ‘spot-on’ view is that the view of marriage primarily for biological childbearing was pruned out of the law long before SSM became a real issue. It seems silly now to say “Okay, we want marriage to be about kids again, but only insofar as it keeps you queers out of the chapel.”
To any honest observer, it’s obvious that marriage serves many functions simultaneously.
Yes!
Joe M.: The difference has to do with the issue of a sufficient but not necessary condition. In the pro-SSM argument, love is a sufficient but not necessary condition for marriage. So if two people love each other they have to be allowed to marry, but people who don’t love each other can marry as well. This criterion applies to all couples (i.e. loveless heterosexual couples and loveless homosexual couples can both marry).
In the anti-SSM argument, the possibility of procreation is a sufficient but not necessary condition for heterosexual couples (all heterosexual couples that could procreate must be allowed to marry, but infertile couples can marry too). But when applied to homosexual couples, the procreation criterion is treated as both sufficient AND necessary — so same-sex couples could marry if they could procreate, but since they can’t do the one, they can’t do the other.
Joe, perhaps my post wasn’t clear enough. As I said, we should “recognize the reality that marriage can, does and should serve multiple functions, and can even serve different functions for different people.” So it doesn’t effect my argument when you point out that not all marriages are _________, because being pro-SSM doesn’t require me to pick out any particular virtue as being present in all marriages.
In contrast, this approach is deadly for the anti-SSM view, because you folks are claiming – in denial of both common sense and the obvious reality of infertile marriages – that all marriages are about fertility.
Trying to determine who can marry by talking abotu what marriage is “about” is a flawed approach, whether you’re pro-SSM or anti-SSM. Fortunately, nothing about being pro-SSM requires me to take that approach.
Carring the thought further, we need to make a distinction between the purposes marriage servies for society (what marriage is “about”) and what marriage does. As we’ve now shown very adequately, there is no one purpose marriage serves that applies to all marriages.
However, there is something marriage does in virtually all cases, which is form a new, legally recognized, close family bond between two consenting people of marriagable age. (This, by the way, is why siblings can’t marry – they’ve already got a close family bond).
Why don’t we want to encourage same-sex couples to engage in committed, child-bearing relationships?
This is just for accuracy’ sake: Homosexual relationships can be “child-REARING,” but never “child-BEARING.”
Again, Biology 101: A homosexual relationship in and of itself CANNOT be “child-bearing.” A couple can ADOPT children that were heterosexually produced elsewhere, but that isn’t the same thing as “child-bearing.” Or one of them could have a child heterosexually; but again, that isn’t the same thing as being “child-bearing.”
Again, Joe, you apply Biology 101 only to heterosexual relationships. Where is biological reality when you talk about two 80-year-olds marrying in the nursing home? If you’re not going to bring back affidavits or bar the elderly from marriage, then why insist legal fictions about child-BEARING are appropriate for heterosexual marriages, yet inappropriate for SSM?
Anyway, surely you’re not saying that marriage is about child-BEARING yet not about child-REARING. The whole point of an ongoing commitment is the latter, not the former–otherwise we’d bar infertile marriages.
And, indeed, it’s the REARING that gets up the nose of the anti-SSM crowd, isn’t it? Y’all don’t really care much that lesbians are adopting or getting pregnant through sperm donors; you care that the children are being reared by a same-sex couple.
The response to Joe M.’s second hypothetical exchange is that, when a marriage fails to be loving or committed (according to whatever definition the participants use of those words, which can be very different from mine), we usually call that marriage a failure.
But a couple – let’s specify a conservative Christian couple, gung ho to raise large broods of children – who discover themselves to be infertile are not going to call their marriage a failure.
By the way, Eater’s use of the term professor is historically incorrect.
Traditionally in England, a professor was a university scholar who gave lectures, but who didn’t otherwise teach students. Others who did teach students but didn’t give lectures were not called professors. Nothing to do with research.
This distinction started to break down over a century ago, but as a general rule that was the difference before then.
Joe, if you’re going to go all semantic on us, you should recognize that “bearing” not only means “to give birth”, but also “to permit the growth of” and “to support the weight of”. The Old High German “beran” means simultaneously “to bring forth” and “to carry”. (This can all be verified on the lovely and talented http://www.m-w.com.)
But, seriously, who CARES? It has been mentioned about 4 zillion times that the ability to have children is not a requirement for marriage, so why bother with the whole “accuracy’s sake” thing? Homosexual couples can most certainly be child-bearing, unless you think “bearing” means only “produced in and then smooshed through the loins of”.
Where is biological reality when you talk about two 80-year-olds marrying in the nursing home?
Well, that would be a relevant response IF I had said, “Why don’t we encourage more 80-year-olds in the nursing home to start child-bearing relationships with each other?” But I didn’t say anything like that. Your comment just proves my point: We don’t normally say that relationships are “child-bearing” where actual “child-bearing” is literally impossible.
Joe M., do not forget that lebians can give birth to children. If this were not so, my recent thread about presumed maternity would be sort of moot, would it not?
This means, we perfectly well couls “encourage same-sex couples to engage in committed, child-bearing relationships?”
I also wanted to add that I previously posted some historical
Roman Catholic views. They also thought child bearing was an end to marriage– but it chief purpose was not procreation:
This mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof.
We don’t normally say that relationships are “child-bearing” where actual “child-bearing” is literally impossible.
Sure we do. That’s the whole point of the post Ampersand quotes: that we will treat the entire category of heterosexual relationships as “child-bearing,” and justify opposition to SSM on the basis that they are not “child-bearing.”
The problem with that is the stigma applied to same-sex couples–they can’t make babies together!–applies to large subcategories of the population currently encouraged to marry. To get around this problem, those opposed to SSM insist that we either shouldn’t (none of our business) or can’t (too much bother) exclude those large subcategories from marrying.
The problem with those excuses is twofold. One is that it’s unfair to apply them stringently to same-sex couples, yet waffle on applying them to heterosexual couples (as many laws used to) and then pretend interfertility is indispensible to marriage. The other is that the biology argument is a blind: marriage is about child-REARING, not child-BEARING, and that’s why the laws tend to prefer legal fictions over biological reality.
So I guess I’m asking why Biology 101 is at all relevant to the issue of SSM.
I think the problem is many people are trying to apply logic to religious reasons. I object to ssm on
the basis of religous grounds; not logic. There are many strong ss/relationships which are stronger than heterosexul relationships (And I know of at least one multiple partnered relationship which has outlasted many two partnered ones.)
And it may or may not surprise you to know that I wish the Torah didn’t speak against it….but it did, and my desire for Torah, and to keep it is stronger than my desire to please people i often really like.
But you can’t really resort to religous reasons in USA…you can cite them, but they won’t hold up in a court of law. And the logic really doesn’t pan out. But people will keep trying.
The problem is trying to push those religious reasons into a court of law. For example, I doubt you’d vote for a law that forbade an adulteress to marry her lover, or a Jew to marry a Gentile, though the Torah forbids both of those things.
Joe M., do not forget that lebians can give birth to children.
OK, maybe it should be Remedial Biology. If a “lebian” gives birth, it is ONLY because she 1) slept with a man, or 2) procured a man’s sperm somehow. She did NOT give birth as a lesbian.
I agree. I wouldn’t push either way. I’m not going to vote for a law banning it, or allowing it–at least when it comes to the USA. The USA is not suppose to support any particular religious view.
Actually it is rather low priority on my list of problems in the world o correct. (i do have a solution, i think i’ve posted it here before so i’m not going to do it again.)
It is odd, i wanted to blog this but couldn’t find a url, and didn’t want to take the email without asking (and didn’t want to offend the person who sent the email by asking) it was a whole list of things that would happen if we took G-d out; off the coins, out of the pledge, etc. Fine it went on but then no christmas off automatically. Good i felt.
I am digressing, as I normally do; but i think that the USA is going to have some heavy battles in the future and it (eventually) will either become free of religion in terms of laws, or it will become another Christian state such as England or Ireland.
She did NOT give birth as a lesbian.
I believe you mean, she did not become pregnant through sex with her life-partner. There’s nothing about a syringe full of donated semen that impugns lesbianism. (If she got pregnant via intercourse, by the way, there’s a legal father in the picture and the law proceeds apace.)
But, again, this is a digression from the real issue: we don’t require interfertility of heterosexual couples who want to marry.
I really like this blog, but I am giving up on the whole marriage argument theme you keep going on at. I’m honestly disappointed that a feminist blog would so whole-heartedly support the institution of marriage even to the extent of tacitly assuming that it is the best way to raise children.
I’m all for SSM on the basis of equality, as a second best to getting rid of government sanctioning and legislating of romantic relationships.
I would like to see a post on the defense of *that*. Good luck.
Hi Tara,
You’ll notice tons of the SSM posts are me.
One of the reasons you are seeing so much discussion of marriage and kids is that the current prevaling arguments against SSM emphasized by opponents of SSM are:
Extending SSM will:
a) Lead to a higher nonMarital birth rate.
b) Cause fewer people to marry (leading to a higher nonMarital birth rate).
Both arguments appear to contradict the data that exist.
I believe it is important to show that the data do not support these theories.
It is true that advocacy of marriage will tend to sound like advocacy of marriage. But, lets face it, letting two lesbians marry isn’t exactly patriarchal marriage!
She did NOT give birth as a lesbian.
…huh? This makes no sense. This hypothetical woman also didn’t give birth “as” a Republican, a Norwegian, or someone who likes toast. She didn’t even give birth “as” a woman, really. She gave birth, and she is a lesbian. The two aren’t related, and it’s a mistake to correlate them, and it’s an even bigger mistake to suggest that the one negates the other, as if births by lesbians don’t count.
As far as “child-bearing” is concerned, I don’t buy the argument that only heterosexual couples bear children. In fact, I don’t buy the notion that a couple can bear children in the first place. “Bearing” children has everything to do with the woman; how her egg got fertilized is irrelevant.
But, again, Joe’s issue about who bears children and why doesn’t matter: It shouldn’t be used to limit marriage to (fertile) heterosexuals. I believe it’s called a strawman argument.
Hestia is right: People don’t give birth “as a Republican,” or “as a Norwegian,” or any of that. Women give birth if they have been impregnated by a man, either directly or indirectly. That’s the only way it is possible.
I’m not saying this as a reason to restrict marriage, at least not here. I’m saying it because some people — amazingly — imply that they actually think lesbians can literally bear children just by being lesbian.
Uh, Joe, I don’t know where you get the idea that anyone here implies that lesbians can bear children just because they’re lesbians. I think everyone’s point has been that lesbians can bear children to contradict your implication that they can’t.
You said: “Or one of them [lesbians] could have a child heterosexually; but again, that isn’t the same thing as being ‘child-bearing.'” Actually, yes, it is, and that’s my point.
I get the impression that Joe is saying if a woman is impregnated by a man, even indirectly, she’s not really a lesbian.
I think that Joe M. is saying that a woman cannot become pregnant via a lesbian sexual experience. That is, a woman cannot impregnate another woman. I don’t see this as relevant to the subject, but Joe M. obviously does.
I think Jake is right; Joe M’s arguement, if I’m understanding it correctly, is based on simple biology; since parentage requires two people of opposite sex, and marriage is the social-evolutionary outgrowth of that factor, then only two, opposite sexed people should marry.
I meant to comment earlier, but with one thing and another….
Anywhichwho, Rachel Ann, my respect for you has increased following your post about logic & religious reasons. That is something that I fervently believe. I would expand “religious reasons” to include any belief that relies on faith (as opposed to objective fact). I respect your reasons for opposing SSM even if I disagree with them.
I suspect that we could have an interesting conversation regarding interpretation of the Torah and selective application of laws/instructions from the Torah. Your knowledge is undoubtedly greater than mine & I’m sure that I can learn something from that.
Again, Biology 101: A homosexual relationship in and of itself CANNOT be “child-bearing.”
Is this the wrong moment to point out that my best friend Sam and his ex-husband Seamus produced two children by the standard biological method?
I think that Joe M. is saying that a woman cannot become pregnant via a lesbian sexual experience.
Right, but a woman can become pregnant without any sexual experience at all. The “indirectly” seemed to suggest that conception itself impugns the woman’s lesbian identity.
since parentage requires two people of opposite sex, and marriage is the social-evolutionary outgrowth of that factor, then only two, opposite sexed people should marry
Which makes sense if you ignore two facts: social-evolutionary history points to polygamy and away from the nuclear family, and marriage law in the US largely severs marriage from the requirement of parenthood.
We no longer follow old traditions that make a marriage voidable if one partner is barren, disfavor marriage by the elderly. Unless Shell et al are proposing we bring back the separate men’s and women’s villages, levirate marriage, putting aside wives for barrenness, and permanent widowhood for women past a given age, they’re contradicting themselves by pointing to “tradition.”
Lucia,
I get what you’re saying – that it’s important to respond to the arguments that are being made by anti SSM people. I agree to an extent, but I also feel that you are, by resonding to their arguments in their terms, allowing/agreeing/even strengthening the assumptions behind their arguments.
One definition of marriage that seems barebones, descriptive and accurate to me is that it is the sanctioning and legislating of romantic relationships by the state, as well as a means of creating different classes of individuals to which the government will relate differently.
Where is the discussion of this (to my mind) CENTRAL aspect of marriage? And is it really less patriarchal when a male dominated government legislates women’s relationships?
Lesbians do actually have an option in producing a child that is, under the legal definition, biologically connected to both of them. One of them donates the egg, the egg is fertilized and placed in the uterus of the other partner. Sure, you need sperm to fertilize the egg (at the moment — parthenogenisis has been achieved in rats already), but that’s no different than the heterosexual couple in which the male partner has a low sperm count or is sterile and they use doner sperm to fertilize the egg which is them placed in the female partner’s uterus.
Historical polygamy ruled; and not just the guys.(There were tribes where women cheated with blessings of the people, as long as it wasn’t too obvious. A good move in this one culture as not having a son meant losing one’s home when dh died; so playing the field kept more widows from homelessness.) That’s why I combined them; going way back there was a woman. Pregnant. Guy not there (I mean if we go way back pre-human or possibl early humanoid) then we move forward in time to guy there till another guy comes along and maybe kills the children. Keep moving and keep progressing till most recently it was guy/girl hopefully staying for life. (obviously this is a very poor historical over-view)
Anyway, Joe M. would like to stop the boat at guy/gal married for life, raising kids, who do the same.
But evolution doesn’t stop because we think it has or should, and yes, the social-evolutionary structure is changing and we would have to ignore not only ss-partnerships but multiple partnerships, serial monogamy etc. etc. to say it has stopped.
I’m not arguing against ssm or multiple partnered marriages based on anything but Torah. Plain simple, Torah says it is wrong, it is wrong, whether I would like it a different way or not. Logical? Not necessarily to me. I can imagine other paths that would be logical; but then I’m not G-d and don’t have all the knowledge in the world.
But again, I think that is the problem with trying to logic morality; at some point it ibecomes “I believe” ie faith. That’s where I stop.
Ms. Eater argues that Rauch is mistaken in his attempt to “pare marriage to its essential core.”
Actually, in his book Rauch says marriage is about many things.
The question always is: if we were to eliminate things from the list, are there any that, in most people’s minde, are always necessary to make marriage valid?
The potential for procreation is not always necessary. I have no uterus; people think my marriage to my husband is valid.
Fidelity, while valued, is not always necessary. If someone cheats, people understand their spouse may take them back. The marriage doesn’t just vanish in a puff of smoke.
Love, while valued even more highly than the other two, is not always necessary.
The one thing people find necessary is the commitment to “be there” for one another. (This is generally impossible to do without love! But, it’s the commitment that matters.)
In a sense, the one thing that everyone recognizes as automatically vitiating marriage is abandonment. You can’t be really married, no matter a law might say, if you just flat out leave, or are left, permanently. Marriage is a promise to always “be there” in a sense for each other. Be there in sickness and in health until death do you part.
Many couples, even some old quibbling bickering ones, with no kids, actually fulfill this promise!
Rauch also talks about why society benefits from the couples promist to always be there! (And children, and the couple.)
I think I’ve said this before, but it’s difficult to argue with SSM opponents on a straightforward basis because built into their construct of marriage is an entire construct of biology and parenthood that rejects anything but naturalism — no assisted reproduction, no adoption, etc. — that most of the rest of us rejected at least 20 years ago. To say that a gay couple shouldn’t get the benefit of marriage because they can’t procreate completely ignores the fact that open to them are the same routes to having children that are commonly utilized by heterosexual couples, even if for the latter it is something of a last resort.
And, of course, you don’t have to go there at all if you, like me and most other people, do not think marriage is “only” or “primarily” about procreation. I don’t think any major western thinker, even a religious one, has made such an assertion in the nearly 2000 years since the “West” has come to be defined by Christianity.
Rachel Ann, I’m not sure the Torah does say it is wrong. Wrong for Jews, yes; but we’re also subject to provisions that don’t apply to Gentiles and that we would never want to be enforced by civil law.
Actually,
I could link you to laws regarding B’nei Noach, which Judaism contends are incumbent upon those who aren’t Jewish, but i’ll only send them to those that ask…ie email me and I promise not to bite.
Exactly what those laws would forbid and accept, I’m not sure. They do include laws regulating sexual behaviour, and I do think homsexual behaviour is on the don’t side, but because i can’t swear it to you, I won’t say IS, just probably is.
And Jake, email me if you want to discuss something, or see if i’ve put it on my blog and comment away..either way. I will get you the answers if I don’t know them. (just tell me who you are or conversations are apt to get funky…espcially if your real name ain’t Jake.)
Rachel Ann:
Why is your faith better than someone else’s faith that leads them to the opposite conclusion about SSM? If your faith isn’t any better than theirs, why should anyone believe that your faith is a more reliable guide to God’s will than someone else’s faith?
I know adultery is prohibited the Noahide laws, but I didn’t think the prohibition against homosexuality was in there (or laws against SSM). But “Rambam” is not my middle name; I’m always willing to learn. :)
But again, I think that is the problem with Rachel Anne:
trying to logic morality; at some point it ibecomes “I believe” ie faith. That’s where I stop.
But why have that faith rather than a different faith? Is it just a random choice, like tossing a coin? Is it a matter of taste or aesthetics, like preferring Beethoven to Bach? Is it a matter of upbringing and social conditioning? Or what?
I don’t think that you’ll get anywhere questioning why somebody has the faith that they have. In large part faith has to do with upbringing, but there are many more factors in both faith and depth of faith and degree of orthodoxy. But what’s the point of asking? Especially since Rachel Ann said that she was not going to force her beliefs on others.
I believe that the bit in the Torah about not spilling one’s seed in the dust (paraphrase from long ago memories) is what is being interpreted as a prohibition against homosexuality, but Rachel Ann will know much better than I do. I have to admit that I’m curious.
Jake Squid:
I don’t think that you’ll get anywhere questioning why somebody has the faith that they have. In large part faith has to do with upbringing, but there are many more factors in both faith and depth of faith and degree of orthodoxy.
What other factors?
But what’s the point of asking?
To find out the answer. I think it’s an interesting question, and the answer may have practical consequences.
Jake Squid:
In large part faith has to do with upbringing…
Then, to that large extent, how is it a basis for claims of objective truth, such as “gay sex is wrong?”
Ah, I see. I asked “why question,” because when you wrote, “Why is your faith better than someone else’s faith…” it seemed like an attack as part of the debate rather than curiousity.
“What other factors?”
Personal experience, epiphany, education……
“Then, to that large extent, how is it a basis for claims of objective truth, such as “gay sex is wrong?””
Faith is not (and cannot be) the basis for claims of objective truth. Rachel Ann said as much. Faith means believing things without objective verifiable facts. We all hold some faiths, something that we just believe without being able to prove it.
I don’t find that to be important. I find it more important whether or not a person tries to force their faith (or morals or beliefs or style of living) on others.
I came here to get away but it really isn’t working…just found out my mom has cancer. They removed a mass from her, but it was encapsalated (which is the good news, since thet means it hasn’t spread) anyway, i’ll answer your questions later, but if it takes a few days you’ll know why because i’m really not very good for a debate now.
Rachel Ann, I’m so sorry to hear about your mother… but it’s good news that it’s encapsalated. My father has been very ill in the past couple of years, so I think I understand a bit of how you must feel. I’ll be hoping for the best for you and your mom.
Jake Squid:
Personal experience, epiphany, education……
But another person’s personal experience, epiphany, education, etc., may lead them to a different faith that contradicts yours.
Faith is not (and cannot be) the basis for claims of objective truth. Rachel Ann said as much.
Then she shouldn’t appeal to faith in support of the objective claim that gay sex is wrong (or the objective claim that there is a God, or any other objective claim).
Faith means believing things without objective verifiable facts.
But why should you believe that thing when a different faith says that your belief is wrong, and neither faith is better than the other? Why not just accept that you don’t know, and leave it at that?
We all hold some faiths, something that we just believe without being able to prove it.
Such as?
Rachel Ann–I’m so sorry to hear about your mother. You’re in my thoughts.
Don P.,
I don’t know why a person would choose one faith over another. I am not a person of faith. My experience leads me to believe that the vast majority of people feel a great need for a faith of one sort or another.
I don’t believe that Rachel Ann, “…appeal[ed] to faith in support of the objective claim that gay sex is wrong.” She stated that she is against it because her religion says that it is wrong. That is a very different thing than you are accusing her of.
“But another person’s personal experience, epiphany, education, etc., may lead them to a different faith that contradicts yours.”
Absolutely. There is an objective and verifiable fact.
Some faiths that people hold onto:
Santa Claus.
There is a perfect mate out there for me.
The Atkins diet is 100% correct.
Ghosts.
My dog is the smartest dog in the world.
My life would be perfect if only…
There is no way I would ever (blank) if I was in situation X.
Kobe Bryant would never rape anybody.
Tinkywinky is gay.
Rachel Ann, sorry to hear about your bad news. I wish your mother and your family the best.
Jake Squid:
I don’t know why a person would choose one faith over another. I am not a person of faith. My experience leads me to believe that the vast majority of people feel a great need for a faith of one sort or another.
The fact that a belief is consoling is not a reason to think it is true. A Jehovah’s Witness may be consoled by the belief that he will heal his child of AIDS through prayer, but it would be foolish to believe that he is correct.
I don’t believe that Rachel Ann, “…appeal[ed] to faith in support of the objective claim that gay sex is wrong.” She stated that she is against it because her religion says that it is wrong. That is a very different thing than you are accusing her of.
She said:
“But again, I think that is the problem with trying to logic morality; at some point it becomes ‘I believe’ ie faith.”
That’s an explicit appeal to FAITH to justify a moral claim. I have no idea why you think I falsely “accused” her of something.
Some faiths that people hold onto:
Santa Claus.
There is a perfect mate out there for me.
The Atkins diet is 100% correct.
Ghosts.
My dog is the smartest dog in the world.
My life would be perfect if only…
There is no way I would ever (blank) if I was in situation X.
Kobe Bryant would never rape anybody.
Tinkywinky is gay.
You said:
“We all hold some faiths, something that we just believe without being able to prove it.”
The fact that some people believe some things through faith obviously does not demonstrate that “we all hold some faiths,” which is the claim of yours I am challenging. So your list above is irrelevant. It’s a rather silly list, anyway. Who seriously believes, through faith, that “Tinkywinky is gay,” for example?
Who seriously believes, through faith, that “Tinkywinky is gay,” for example?
I would think that any person who believes Tinkywinkyis gay believes it on faith. They certainly haven’t witnessed Tinkywinky in flagrante delicto
I also understoo Rachel Ann to be explaining why she thinks SSM is wrong, rather than persuading us we must agree. Obviously, it may seem odd to some that she might tell us her opinion without thinking her opinion proves her case, but I’ve met many people who do that. I don’t find it odd.
Lucia:
I would think that any person who believes Tinkywinkyis gay believes it on faith. They certainly haven’t witnessed Tinkywinky in flagrante delicto…
Well, that doesn’t make much sense. It is not necessary to see someone having gay sex to conclude through means other than faith that they are gay. But I really doubt that anyone really believes that Tinky Winky is gay, anyway. Even Jerry Falwell.
I also understood Rachel Ann to be explaining why she thinks SSM is wrong, rather than persuading us we must agree.
I didn’t think she was trying to persude us that we “must” agree (or even merely that we ought to agree). My point is that faith is not a legitimate basis for belief, period. That includes her own belief about the morality of gay sex.
faith is not a legitimate basis for belief
My dictionary uses the word “belief” in the second and third senses of the definition of faith; they would appear to be somewhere close to synonyms.
We all take some of our beliefs on trust. You believe, for instance, that faith is not a legitimate basis for belief. If I challenged you to prove it, I imagine you’d be stuck.
When Rachel Ann says she believes SSM is wrong, she’s describing her personal moral system. There are many things I believe to be wrong that others appear to have no problem with: I refrain from doing these things because that’s how my personal moral system works.
Nick Kiddle:
My dictionary uses the word “belief” in the second and third senses of the definition of faith; they would appear to be somewhere close to synonyms.
Then the question, again, is why have that faith rather than a different faith? Why have faith that X is true rather than have faith that X is false? Random choice? Aesthetics? Because your parents told you to? Or what?
We all take some of our beliefs on trust. You believe, for instance, that faith is not a legitimate basis for belief. If I challenged you to prove it, I imagine you’d be stuck.
But trust, as I would use the word, is not the same thing as faith. If I trust someone because I have found them to be reliable in the past, that’s a reasoned conclusion from evidence. If someone claims to believe that gay sex is immoral based on trust, I would ask them what evidence justifies that trust (and what it is, exactly, that they are trusting).
When Rachel Ann says she believes SSM is wrong, she’s describing her personal moral system.
When anyone says anything is wrong they’re describing their personal moral system. “I believe X is wrong” is a statement of personal moral belief.
There are many things I believe to be wrong that others appear to have no problem with: I refrain from doing these things because that’s how my personal moral system works.
But you believe others should refrain from doing those things too, yes? Because that’s what it means to believe that something is (morally) wrong. The statement “Eating ice cream is wrong” does not mean merely “I choose to refrain from eating ice cream,” it expresses the belief that others ought to refrain from eating ice cream, too.
Don P: “My point is that faith is not a legitimate basis for belief, period.”
That is seriously one of the oddest sentences I’ve ever read. Faith is the *only* basis for belief! I’m not talking about religious faith here: I don’t think there are any beliefs that any of us have that don’t have some grain of faith in them, somewhere.
I am a baker. I have faith that heat will melt the butter on my stove, faith that the yeast and the starches and the water will combine to make a lovely crusty loaf. I have no way of knowing this to be true — I don’t know at a molecular level how the yeast breaks out the starches into sugars, and even if I did, there’s no guarantee it would happen today the same way. The 101st flip of the coin still has a 50/50 chance of being tails.
I am not a religious or even particularly spiritual person, but believe me when I say that baking bread is a strictly faith-based practice. I also have beliefs like “you really probably shouldn’t eat those chemicals” and “that black diesel smoke is bad for the planet”, but I have no *proof* for these. People who know (the scientists, and whatnot), I have faith that they are not making global warming up. I have faith in their studies. It does not seem like that much of a difference from Rachel Ann having faith in the Torah and its teachings.
I said: My dictionary uses the word “belief” in the second and third senses of the definition of faith; they would appear to be somewhere close to synonyms.
Don P said: Then the question, again, is why have that faith rather than a different faith? Why have faith that X is true rather than have faith that X is false? Random choice? Aesthetics? Because your parents told you to? Or what?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I believe the things I believe because they seem to me to be true.
I said: We all take some of our beliefs on trust. You believe, for instance, that faith is not a legitimate basis for belief. If I challenged you to prove it, I imagine you’d be stuck.
Don P said: But trust, as I would use the word, is not the same thing as faith. If I trust someone because I have found them to be reliable in the past, that’s a reasoned conclusion from evidence.
That’s not what I meant when I said we take things on trust. If something is an axiom of your philosophical system, you assume it to be true without necessarily demanding proof. For example, your belief that faith is not a legitimate basis for belief.
When anyone says anything is wrong they’re describing their personal moral system. “I believe X is wrong” is a statement of personal moral belief.
Exactly. Which makes it a factual statement about oneself, not an appeal to faith to support an objective claim about morality.
But you believe others should refrain from doing those things too, yes? Because that’s what it means to believe that something is (morally) wrong. The statement “Eating ice cream is wrong” does not mean merely “I choose to refrain from eating ice cream,” it expresses the belief that others ought to refrain from eating ice cream, too.
There is a distinction between the statement “X is wrong” and the statement “I believe that X is wrong”. The former is, as you say, an attempt to dictate morality to the world. The latter can simply be a definition of the rules by which one tries to live ones own life.
leen
I am a baker. I have faith that heat will melt the butter on my stove, faith that the yeast and the starches and the water will combine to make a lovely crusty loaf. I have no way of knowing this to be true — I don’t know at a molecular level how the yeast breaks out the starches into sugars, and even if I did, there’s no guarantee it would happen today the same way. The 101st flip of the coin still has a 50/50 chance of being tails.
You’re confusing events of vastly different probabilities. Yes, the 101st flip of a coin has a 50/50 chance of being tails. But the chance of creating a lovely crusty loaf when going through your bread-making process is presumably much greater than that. I’m not sure how much greater. I assume sometimes the bread doesn’t come out very well. But overall, the evidence is presumably that when you go through the process, good bread is the likely result. You are therefore justified in believing that you are likely to end up with good bread. You’re not guaranteed to do so, because something might go wrong. But you’re likely to.
Where is the faith in that? Reasoning from evidence is not faith. It’s the opposite of faith. Faith is belief unsupported by evidence, right?
Nick Kiddle:
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I believe the things I believe because they seem to me to be true.
But Rachel Ann already said that the reason it seems to her to be true that gay sex (or gay marriage) is wrong is her faith that it is wrong. So we’re just back to the original question of why have faith that it’s wrong rather than faith that it’s not wrong. If you’re suggesting that Rachel Ann is saying that it is self-evidently true that gay sex is wrong, then I invite her to confirm or deny that. If she was saying that, I’d ask her why this supposed self-evident truth isn’t evident to everyone else.
That’s not what I meant when I said we take things on trust. If something is an axiom of your philosophical system, you assume it to be true without necessarily demanding proof.
Then I would ask Rachel Ann what axiom supports her belief that gay sex is wrong, and why she has that axiom rather than a different one that leads to the belief that gay sex is not wrong.
Exactly. Which makes it a factual statement about oneself, not an appeal to faith to support an objective claim about morality.
I didn’t say that a statement of moral belief is necessarily an appeal to faith. Rachel Ann explicitly appealed to faith when she said: “But again, I think that is the problem with trying to logic morality; at some point it ibecomes ‘I believe’ ie faith.”
And a moral claim is an objective claim. It’s a claim about objective truth. The statement “X is immoral” is either true or false.
There is a distinction between the statement “X is wrong” and the statement “I believe that X is wrong”. The former is, as you say, an attempt to dictate morality to the world. The latter can simply be a definition of the rules by which one tries to live ones own life.
The only difference is emphasis, or the degree of confidence in one’s conviction. Both statements are assertions of the objective truth that “X is wrong.” And again, moral claims are not simply claims about one’s own chosen conduct, they’re claims about how other people ought to behave, too.
If Rachel Ann meant to say that she believes only that she personally ought not to have gay sex, rather than that other people also ought not to have gay sex, then I invite her to say so. I really don’t think that that’s what she meant, and it’s certainly not what the vast majority of people mean when they say that they believe that gay sex is wrong (or that anything else is wrong).
Nick Kiddle:
For example, your belief that faith is not a legitimate basis for belief.
Okay, explain how you think faith is a legitimate basis for belief when it can support two or more different and mutually contradictory beliefs. Let’s say that you believe through faith that Jesus is the Messiah. A Jewish friend of yours believes through faith that Jesus is not the Messiah. How is faith a legitimate basis for either belief when it can equally well (equally poorly) support the other one?
But Rachel Ann already said that the reason it seems to her to be true that gay sex (or gay marriage) is wrong is her faith that it is wrong. So we’re just back to the original question of why have faith that it’s wrong rather than faith that it’s not wrong.
If you want to know why Rachel Ann specifically believes what she believes, you’ll have to ask her. Faith is a matter of belief in things that cannot be proved, and therefore will sometimes have just one answer: “I believe it because I believe it.”
If you’re suggesting that Rachel Ann is saying that it is self-evidently true that gay sex is wrong, then I invite her to confirm or deny that.
I’m not saying that. I’m saying she’s saying it’s an article of her faith.
Then I would ask Rachel Ann what axiom supports her belief that gay sex is wrong, and why she has that axiom rather than a different one that leads to the belief that gay sex is not wrong.
That’s a reasonable question to ask, but unfortunately in many cases doesn’t have a reasonable answer. Even if someone can identify their axioms in words – no simple thing since they’re on the edge of the domain of reasoning – explaining why they hold one rather than a different one is rather like explaining why I’m attracted to men rather than women. (To choose a random example.)
I didn’t say that a statement of moral belief is necessarily an appeal to faith. Rachel Ann explicitly appealed to faith when she said: “But again, I think that is the problem with trying to logic morality; at some point it ibecomes ‘I believe’ ie faith.”
Rachel Ann was correct in pointing out that morality doesn’t have a logical basis. It can only arise out of faith. (I think I’m using the term more expansively than you are: by faith I understand any belief that can’t be put to a test of proof.)
The only difference is emphasis, or the degree of confidence in one’s conviction. Both statements are assertions of the objective truth that “X is wrong.” And again, moral claims are not simply claims about one’s own chosen conduct, they’re claims about how other people ought to behave, too.
We’ll have to agree to differ. I will continue to understand “X is wrong” as a statement about the world and “I believe X is wrong” as a statement about one person’s moral position.
If Rachel Ann meant to say that she believes only that she personally ought not to have gay sex, rather than that other people also ought not to have gay sex, then I invite her to say so.
I believe wasting four years by going to university and not bothering to do any of the work your course demands is wrong. If other people want to do it, that’s their choice as members of a free society, but I would advise them not to since I feel it has adverse consequences.
Okay, explain how you think faith is a legitimate basis for belief when it can support two or more different and mutually contradictory beliefs. Let’s say that you believe through faith that Jesus is the Messiah. A Jewish friend of yours believes through faith that Jesus is not the Messiah. How is faith a legitimate basis for either belief when it can equally well (equally poorly) support the other one?
OK. So you found your belief that faith is not a legitimate basis for belief on the faith that something which leads to internal contradiction is not a legitimate basis for belief.
On what basis do you believe this?
DonP: “Reasoning from evidence is not faith. It’s the opposite of faith. Faith is belief unsupported by evidence, right? ”
I dunno; one could argue that reasoning itself is based on a faith in logic. Actually, I think I would argue that: The idea that my bread is *likely* to come out well because it usually does is totally based on faith in the Normal Working Order of the world. I have no evidence that anything *will* work out, because I can’t see in the future.
I used to live in Zimbabwe and came to understand that western logic (I’m thinking of the kind made popular by the Greeks) is certainly a taught philosophical system; I don’t think there is anything inherent in our brains that makes the “a=b, b=c, therefore a=c” kind of statement make sense. The trick is that our logical belief system, just like any other religion, teaches that it is The Way and that you were intended, even *built*, to think that way.
I used to have conversations where people would *directly* contradict themselves, and if it was pointed out to them, they didn’t even understand what you were confused about. These people were not stupid, they just didn’t grow up in a world where western logic was true and absolute. Two opposite statements can both be true, you can be sick and healthy at the same time, and a rock can both be floating in air and resting on the ground. (Those are close to direct quotations.)
Perhaps that doesn’t make sense in your belief system, but ours is a faith like any other. We all just use “evidence” and “proof” where others might say “God”.
Nick Kiddle:
If you want to know why Rachel Ann specifically believes what she believes, you’ll have to ask her.
We’ve been over this. She already said why she believes gay sex is wrong — faith.
Faith is a matter of belief in things that cannot be proved, and therefore will sometimes have just one answer: “I believe it because I believe it.”
That is not an answer to the question I am asking, which is, why have that faith rather than a different faith? Random choice? Social conditioning? Or what?
That’s a reasonable question to ask, but unfortunately in many cases doesn’t have a reasonable answer.
Fine. Then we agree that Rachel Ann’s position is unreasonable.
Rachel Ann was correct in pointing out that morality doesn’t have a logical basis. It can only arise out of faith.
But why that faith rather than a different faith? Why believe through faith that gay sex is wrong rather than believe through faith that gay sex is not wrong? Statements of the form “I believe because I believe” or “I have faith because I have faith” do not address that question. Those statements are tautologies. They are logically incoherent.
We’ll have to agree to differ. I will continue to understand “X is wrong” as a statement about the world and “I believe X is wrong” as a statement about one person’s moral position.
Then you’re going to find communication with other people rather difficult. If someone says, for example, “I believe gay sex is wrong,” they mean in almost all cases that it is wrong for people in general (or for all people) to have gay sex, not just wrong for them personally to have gay sex. Ditto for statements like “Murder is wrong” or “abortion is wrong” or “stealing is wrong.” Surely you realize this.
Hands up everyone who thinks Rachel Ann’s position is that it’s wrong only for her, personally, to have gay sex, and that it’s not wrong for other people to have gay sex.
Nick Kiddle:
OK. So you found your belief that faith is not a legitimate basis for belief on the faith that something which leads to internal contradiction is not a legitimate basis for belief. On what basis do you believe this?
This question is not answer to the question I asked. Here’s that question again.
Explain how you think faith is a legitimate basis for belief when it can support two or more different and mutually contradictory beliefs. Let’s say that you believe through faith that Jesus is the Messiah. A Jewish friend of yours believes through faith that Jesus is not the Messiah. How is faith a legitimate basis for either belief when it can equally well (equally poorly) support the other one?
What is your answer to this question?
To answer your question, logic claims are held to be self-evidently true through rational reflection and common agreement.
leen:
I dunno; one could argue that reasoning itself is based on a faith in logic. Actually, I think I would argue that: The idea that my bread is *likely* to come out well because it usually does is totally based on faith in the Normal Working Order of the world. I have no evidence that anything *will* work out, because I can’t see in the future.
Of course you have evidence of it: your previous experience. If every time you have done X the result has been Y, it is likely that the next time you do X the result will also be Y. Not absolutely guaranteed. Not 100% certain. But likely. And the longer the record of your previous experience establishing this relationship between X and Y, the greater the probability that the relationship will continue to hold in the future.
I used to live in Zimbabwe and came to understand that western logic (I’m thinking of the kind made popular by the Greeks) is certainly a taught philosophical system; I don’t think there is anything inherent in our brains that makes the “a=b, b=c, therefore a=c” kind of statement make sense. The trick is that our logical belief system, just like any other religion, teaches that it is The Way and that you were intended, even *built*, to think that way.
We are “built” to think that way. That is why science and reason (unlike, say, religion) operate under the same rules independently of culture.
I really doubt that you believe your own claim. If science and reason are merely an accident of culture, and not superior to alternative “ways of knowing” from other cultures, or superior to alternatives from our own culture (e.g., christianity), why accept the claims of science over those alternatives? Why not believe the fundamentalist Christian account of the origin of species over darwinian evolution? Why not accept a native American creation myth over the account from cosmology? The fact that you do trust science over these alternatives demonstrates that you consider it to be superior to them.
I said: If you want to know why Rachel Ann specifically believes what she believes, you’ll have to ask her.
Don P said: We’ve been over this. She already said why she believes gay sex is wrong — faith.
We seem to be at something of an impasse. According to my dictionary, faith and belief are near-synonyms. I can only assume from what you say here that you have a different understanding of one or other concept.
I said: Faith is a matter of belief in things that cannot be proved, and therefore will sometimes have just one answer: “I believe it because I believe it.”
Don P said: That is not an answer to the question I am asking, which is, why have that faith rather than a different faith? Random choice? Social conditioning? Or what?
Possibly for the same reason I prefer certain kinds of music to others, and certain books to others. Some of it may be down to conditioning, some might be explicable in pseudo-logical terms, some might be a matter of complex neurochemistry that scientists haven’t yet understood.
I said: That’s a reasonable question to ask, but unfortunately in many cases doesn’t have a reasonable answer.
Don P said: Fine. Then we agree that Rachel Ann’s position is unreasonable.
I don’t know how you got there from here.
I said: Rachel Ann was correct in pointing out that morality doesn’t have a logical basis. It can only arise out of faith.
Don P said: But why that faith rather than a different faith? Why believe through faith that gay sex is wrong rather than believe through faith that gay sex is not wrong?
That is possibly the central question of ethics. Better minds than I have groped towards an answer. I’m not sure quite how relevant it is to a discussion about marriage equality though.
Statements of the form “I believe because I believe” or “I have faith because I have faith” do not address that question. Those statements are tautologies. They are logically incoherent.
That’s possibly because the question is beyond the reach of logic. Sometimes the only way forward is to appreciate that.
I said: We’ll have to agree to differ. I will continue to understand “X is wrong” as a statement about the world and “I believe X is wrong” as a statement about one person’s moral position.
Don P said: Then you’re going to find communication with other people rather difficult. If someone says, for example, “I believe gay sex is wrong,” they mean in almost all cases that it is wrong for people in general (or for all people) to have gay sex, not just wrong for them personally to have gay sex. Ditto for statements like “Murder is wrong” or “abortion is wrong” or “stealing is wrong.” Surely you realize this.
Do you see a distinction between the statement “The Dharma Bums is a better book than The Western Lands” and the statement “I consider The Dharma Bums to be a better book than The Western Lands”?
This question is not answer to the question I asked. Here’s that question again.
I’m sorry, I assumed your question was rhetorical and an attempt to show by example what you meant. Since I didn’t argue that you were wrong but asked how you prove what you believe is true, I think that was a reasonable enough assumption.
Explain how you think faith is a legitimate basis for belief when it can support two or more different and mutually contradictory beliefs.
I don’t think faith is a legitimate basis for belief because I see faith and belief as near-synonyms and it’s rather hard for something to be a legitimate basis for itself. However, by your reasoning, scientific observation is also not a legitimate basis for belief, since it too often generates different and contradictory beliefs.
To answer your question, logic claims are held to be self-evidently true through rational reflection and common agreement.
And how does that differ from taking something on trust? If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that logic is the highest court of appeal – can you justify this logically?
Nick Kiddle:
We seem to be at something of an impasse. According to my dictionary, faith and belief are near-synonyms.
Then, as I said before, if that’s the definition of faith you are using the question is, why that hold faith rather than a different faith? Why one rather than the other?
Possibly for the same reason I prefer certain kinds of music to others, and certain books to others.
Maybe we’re finally getting somewhere. This is faith-as-taste, faith-as-aesthetics. How is that a basis for claims of objective truth? I prefer chocolate to vanilla. You prefer vanilla to chocolate. Why is my taste more likely to reflect objective truth than yours? If it isn’t, how does faith provide a basis for claims about objective truth?
Some of it may be down to conditioning,
Then again, how is that a basis for claims of objective truth? Why does the fact that you’ve been conditioned to believe something imply that that belief is true?
I don’t know how you got there from here.
Okay, explain to me why you think Rachel Ann’s position is reasonable.
That’s possibly because the question is beyond the reach of logic. Sometimes the only way forward is to appreciate that.
What question? The question of why Rachel Ann has the faith that she does rather than a different faith? What reason is there to think that that question is beyond the reach of logic? You yourself just suggested some answers to that question that follow logically from certain plausible premises.
It sounds like this thread is turning into, “How is it possible to ever believe you’re right about something?” It’s a good question, and I’m enjoying the discussion about it.
I think that’s secondary to, “Should we ever force behavior for which faith is the only argument on others?” the answer to which must be no. I guess I expect even the most fervently religious individuals to acknowledge that no one’s opinion is more or less valid than their own–that is, “Gay sex is wrong, but I won’t stop everyone else from having it.” Maybe this is an unreasonable (illogical?) expectation, but I don’t know how else to conduct a society that’s fair to the largest number of people.
Nick Kiddle:
Do you see a distinction between the statement “The Dharma Bums is a better book than The Western Lands” and the statement “I consider The Dharma Bums to be a better book than The Western Lands”?
Yes, I see a distinction. But both statements are assertions of objective truth. Both statements assert that the Dharma Bums is a better book than the The Western Lands. “I believe that X is better than Y” means the same thing as “I believe THAT IT IS TRUE that X is better than Y.”
Perhaps what you meant to say is “I prefer X to Y” or “I like X more than Y.” Those are assertions of subjective taste, not objective truth. Do you see the difference? Rachel Ann is not making the subjective claim that she dislikes gay sex, she’s making the objective claim that gay sex is wrong.
I’m sorry, I assumed your question was rhetorical and an attempt to show by example what you meant.
It isn’t rhetorical. What is your answer? Here’s the question, yet again: Let’s say that you believe through faith that Jesus is the Messiah. A Jewish friend of yours believes through faith that Jesus is not the Messiah. How is faith a legitimate basis for either belief when it can equally well (equally poorly) support the other one?
I don’t think faith is a legitimate basis for belief because I see faith and belief as near-synonyms and it’s rather hard for something to be a legitimate basis for itself.
Then we’re back to: why one faith rather than another? Why have faith that gay sex is wrong rather than have faith that gay sex is not wrong? How does faith provide any guidance to the question of whether gay sex is wrong when it can equally well support both the answer that gay sex is wrong and the answer that gay sex is not wrong?
However, by your reasoning, scientific observation is also not a legitimate basis for belief, since it too often generates different and contradictory beliefs.
Huh? In cases in which a scientific observation equally supports two or more different and contradictory beliefs, THERE IS NO REASON to favor one of those beliefs over the others on the basis of that observation. Scientific knowledge advances through observations in which such conflicts are absent or in which they are resolved by other evidence.
And how does that differ from taking something on trust?
I already told you. Trust is an attitude that may be supported by evidence. I am more justified in trusting someone with a record of reliability than in trusting someone with a record of unreliability.
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that logic is the highest court of appeal – can you justify this logically?
As I already told you, logical claims are held to be self-evidently true through rational reflection and common assent.
Maybe we’re finally getting somewhere. This is faith-as-taste, faith-as-aesthetics. How is that a basis for claims of objective truth? I prefer chocolate to vanilla. You prefer vanilla to chocolate. Why is my taste more likely to reflect objective truth than yours? If it isn’t, how does faith provide a basis for claims about objective truth?
It doesn’t. It does provide a basis for life choices. If you prefer vanilla, take it and tell me you chose it because you liked it better. I won’t argue.
Okay, explain to me why you think Rachel Ann’s position is reasonable.
Rachel Ann’s position, as I understand it, is that whenever we attempt to use logic to argue moral questions, we fall down on the basic fact that moral positions are matters of faith and not logically supportable. This agrees with my own experience of the world and my philosophical system, therefore I am inclined to find it reasonable.
Now would you like to explain why you think it’s not reasonable?
What question? The question of why Rachel Ann has the faith that she does rather than a different faith? What reason is there to think that that question is beyond the reach of logic? You yourself just suggested some answers to that question that follow logically from certain plausible premises.
The more general question of why anyone believes one thing rather than another, but yes.
I think it’s beyond the reach of logic because even if I could find a logically supportable answer, it wouldn’t be a very meaningful one. Emotions can be understood very logically in terms of hormones – do you think that’s the best way to consider emotional issues?
I said: Do you see a distinction between the statement “The Dharma Bums is a better book than The Western Lands” and the statement “I consider The Dharma Bums to be a better book than The Western Lands”?
Don P said: Yes, I see a distinction. But both statements are assertions of objective truth. Both statements assert that the Dharma Bums is a better book than the The Western Lands. Perhaps what you meant to say is “I prefer X to Y” or “I like X more than Y.” Those are assertions of subjective taste, not objective truth. Do you see the difference?
I’m surprised you don’t have more difficulty communicating with people.
And preference is not the same as a subjective impression that something is better. I think Manchester United are a better football team than Scunthorpe United; I still prefer to watch Scunthorpe.
I said: I’m sorry, I assumed your question was rhetorical and an attempt to show by example what you meant.
Don P said: It isn’t rhetorical. What is your answer? Here’s the question, yet again: Let’s say that you believe through faith that Jesus is the Messiah. A Jewish friend of yours believes through faith that Jesus is not the Messiah. How is faith a legitimate basis for either belief when it can equally well (equally poorly) support the other one?
Perhaps when you’ve quite finished snarking you could read down a couple of lines to my answer?
I said: I don’t think faith is a legitimate basis for belief because I see faith and belief as near-synonyms and it’s rather hard for something to be a legitimate basis for itself.
Don P said: Then we’re back to: why one faith rather than another?
Are you asking why one would choose one belief over another, or why, given that you see no distinctions between beliefs, one should choose any belief at all? I’ve tried to answer the first question, but it occurs rather belatedly that you may be asking the second.
I said: However, by your reasoning, scientific observation is also not a legitimate basis for belief, since it too often generates different and contradictory beliefs.
Don P: Huh? In cases in which a scientific observation equally supports two or more different and contradictory beliefs, THERE IS NO REASON to favor one of those beliefs over the others on the basis of that observation.
So faith is disqualified by the fact that practitioners of different faiths can come to different conclusions, but science is not disqualified by the fact that different scientists can come to different conclusions? Please understand that I don’t want to start a debate about science versus religion, I simply believe that some consistency in what qualifies something as a basis for belief would be helpful.
I said: And how does that differ from taking something on trust?
Don P said: I already told you. Trust is an attitude that may be supported by evidence. I am more justified in trusting someone with a record of reliability than in trusting someone with a record of unreliability.
And I already told you that taking something on trust means assuming something to be true without demanding proof.
I said: If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that logic is the highest court of appeal – can you justify this logically?
Don P: As I already told you, logical claims are held to be self-evidently true through rational reflection and common assent.
So logic is correct because it’s logical?
You have faith in the value of logic. I’m not attempting to suggest that this faith is unfounded, just that it is every bit as much a matter of faith as Rachel Ann’s religious faith.
I think that’s secondary to, “Should we ever force behavior for which faith is the only argument on others?” the answer to which must be no.
That’s a very important point. One of the favourite straw men of the anti-SSM faction is “They want to make any criticism of homosexuality illegal!” – we shouldn’t play into their hands.
Nick Kiddle:
[Faith] doesn’t [provide a basis for claims about objective truth]
Right. Then you’re agreeing with me. Faith is worthless as support for any claim of objective truth, whether that claim is “There is a God,” or “Jesus is the Messiah,” or “Gay sex is immoral,” or whatever else it may be. That’s my fundamental point. Faith is worthless as support for Rachel Ann’s claim about the morality of gay sex.
Rachel Ann’s position, as I understand it, is that whenever we attempt to use logic to argue moral questions, we fall down on the basic fact that moral positions are matters of faith and not logically supportable.
But moral claims are not supportable by faith, either. That’s my point. Faith doesn’t support the claim “X is wrong,” because faith can equally support the claim “X is not wrong.”
Now would you like to explain why you think it’s not reasonable?
I just did. It’s not reasonable because faith tells us nothing about objective truth.
I think it’s beyond the reach of logic because even if I could find a logically supportable answer, it wouldn’t be a very meaningful one.
You just did provide two logically supportable answers: aesthetics and social conditioning. And those reasons, amoung others, are the most likely reasons why Rachel Ann thinks that gay sex is wrong.
Are you asking why one would choose one belief over another, or why, given that you see no distinctions between beliefs, one should choose any belief at all?
No, I asked why one should have faith in one claim of objective truth rather than faith in another. But you have now, finally, answered this question. You agree with me that faith provides no basis for beliefs about objective truth.
So faith is disqualified by the fact that practitioners of different faiths can come to different conclusions,
Yes. You just agreed with this when you said that faith does not provide a basis for claims about objective truth.
… but science is not disqualified by the fact that different scientists can come to different conclusions?
No, of course not. As I just told you, scientific knowledge advances when the evidence is compelling for one conclusion rather than another. In cases in which the evidence is ambiguous or contradictory, the scientific answer is “We don’t know.”
And I already told you that taking something on trust means assuming something to be true without demanding proof.
I don’t know why you keep repeating this. My point is that trust is distinct from faith because it may be (and usually is) supported by evidence. People generally don’t place their trust in someone or something without some kind of evidence that the trust is justified. I would agree that blind trust, trust unsupported by any kind of evidence of trustworthiness, is as useless as faith.
You have faith in the value of logic.
No, I value logic because the evidence demonstrates that it is very good at answering questions about objective truth. No evidence demonstrates any such value for faith. As you already agreed, faith provides no basis for claims of objective truth.
I’m not attempting to suggest that this faith is unfounded, just that it is every bit as much a matter of faith as Rachel Ann’s religious faith.
Then why do you accept the claims of logic over the claims of religion on any question of objective truth? Why do you accept evolution over fundamentalist Christian creationism, for example? If they’re both built on a foundation of faith, which you have agreed provides no basis for claims of objective truth, you have no basis for accepting evolution over creationism. This is the absurd position you have now argued yourself into.
Hestia:
Yes, faith should never be legislated. But that’s a different question. My point is that faith doesn’t even provide any basis for claims of truth or knowledge in the first place. Faith has the same epistemic status as guesses or wishes or hopes. A claim of truth is no more likely to be correct because you have faith that it’s correct than because you hope it’s correct, or guess that it’s correct, or wish it to be correct.
In their less guarded and more lucid moments, religious adherents will even acknowledge this. They sometimes speak of faith as a kind of hope, a kind of wish, a kind of passion. And that kind of gives the store away.
Right. Then you’re agreeing with me. Faith is worthless as support for any claim of objective truth,
Do you enjoy arguing with imaginary people? Because I never put forth any argument for the worth or otherwise of faith as support for any claim of objective truth.
But moral claims are not supportable by faith, either. That’s my point. Faith doesn’t support the claim “X is wrong,” because faith can equally support the claim “X is not wrong.”
You are defining faith as a single monolithic entity. I am defining faith as that which any one of us takes on trust. Faith by your definition is pretty useless, but yours is not the only definition or even the most common.
It’s not reasonable because faith tells us nothing about objective truth.
It’s not reasonable to say that morality is a matter of faith rather than a matter of objective truth because faith tells us nothing about objective truth?
You just did provide two logically supportable answers: aesthetics and social conditioning. And those reasons, amoung others, are the most likely reasons why Rachel Ann thinks that gay sex is wrong.
I’d be interested to see a complete chain of logical reasoning demonstrating why someone believes something. I suggested reasons that might influence someone’s beliefs, but I know of no logical way to demonstrate that this is why they believe it.
I said: And I already told you that taking something on trust means assuming something to be true without demanding proof.
Don P said: I don’t know why you keep repeating this.
I keep repeating it because you appear not to understand the meaning of the idiomatic phrase “to take on trust”. It is only tangentially related to the concept of trust.
People generally don’t place their trust in someone or something without some kind of evidence that the trust is justified. I would agree that blind trust, trust unsupported by any kind of evidence of trustworthiness, is as useless as faith.
This is irrelevant to the question of whether you take certain axioms on trust.
I value logic because the evidence demonstrates that it is very good at answering questions about objective truth.
And how do you demonstrate logically that morality is a question of objective truth?
Why do you accept evolution over fundamentalist Christian creationism, for example? If they’re both built on a foundation of faith, which you have agreed provides no basis for claims of objective truth, you have no basis for accepting evolution over creationism. This is the absurd position you have now argued yourself into.
I have not argued myself into any such position. One of the axioms of my belief system is that the scientific method is the best way to determine questions of objective truth. This rests, among other things, on an assumption of continuity, that there are laws of the universe that aren’t changing when I’m not looking. So far, this assumption has held good, but I can’t conclude from this that it will continue to hold good: that would be invoking the assumption of continuity to prove the assumption of continuity.
So the best that I can say is that evolution has the better claim given the axioms of my philosophical system. These axioms, at bottom, are taken on trust; they are matters of faith. For that matter, I take it on trust that I exist and am not the figment of someone else’s imagination.
Nick Kiddle:
Do you enjoy arguing with imaginary people? Because I never put forth any argument for the worth or otherwise of faith as support for any claim of objective truth.
I didn’t say you had.
You are defining faith as a single monolithic entity. I am defining faith as that which any one of us takes on trust.
Okay, what basis is there to believe, “on trust,” that gay sex is wrong? Why should Rachel Ann “trust” that gay sex is wrong rather than “trust” that it is not wrong? The question is the same regardless of the words used to ask it.
It’s not reasonable to say that morality is a matter of faith rather than a matter of objective truth because faith tells us nothing about objective truth?
Right, if by “morality” you mean moral claims such as “gay sex is wrong.” As you have already agreed, faith is not a basis for claims about objective truth.
I keep repeating it because you appear not to understand the meaning of the idiomatic phrase “to take on trust”. It is only tangentially related to the concept of trust.
Okay, what do you mean by “to take on trust,” then, if you think I am misunderstanding the phrase as you have used it?
And how do you demonstrate logically that morality is a question of objective truth?
If by “morality” you mean moral claims (“Gay sex is wrong,” “murder is wrong,” etc.) then it is true by definition. Either a murder is wrong, or it is not wrong. Ditto for any other moral claim. Ditto for any claim about what “is.” All such claims are either true or false.
I have not argued myself into any such position.
Yes you have.
One of the axioms of my belief system is that the scientific method is the best way to determine questions of objective truth.
You’re contradicting yourself. The scientific method rests on logic. In your last post, you claimed that belief in the value of logic to determine objective truth is “every bit as much a matter of faith as Rachel Ann’s religious faith.” Those are your exact words. And you already agreed with me that faith is not a basis for claims of objective truth. Therefore, according to you, science is no more a basis for claims of objective truth than religion. Both, according to you, rest on a foundation of faith, which you have agreed is useless for determining objective truth.
So the best that I can say is that evolution has the better claim given the axioms of my philosophical system. These axioms, at bottom, are taken on trust; they are matters of faith.
There you go again. If your logical/scientific axioms are a matter of faith, just as Rachel Ann’s religious axioms are a matter of faith, and faith provides no basis for claims of objective truth, how is science a better guide to objective truth than religion? If science is not a better guide to objective truth than religion, why do you believe evolution rather than creationism?
My, but do you have patience. Very impressive.
I said: Do you enjoy arguing with imaginary people? Because I never put forth any argument for the worth or otherwise of faith as support for any claim of objective truth.
Don P said: I didn’t say you had.
Then you do enjoy arguing with imaginary people.
I said: You are defining faith as a single monolithic entity. I am defining faith as that which any one of us takes on trust.
Don P said: Okay, what basis is there to believe, “on trust,” that gay sex is wrong? Why should Rachel Ann “trust” that gay sex is wrong rather than “trust” that it is not wrong? The question is the same regardless of the words used to ask it.
I already answered that. We believe what we believe for a variety of reasons which don’t stand up to analysis.
I said: It’s not reasonable to say that morality is a matter of faith rather than a matter of objective truth because faith tells us nothing about objective truth?
Don P said: Right, if by “morality” you mean moral claims such as “gay sex is wrong.” As you have already agreed, faith is not a basis for claims about objective truth.
In other words you are claiming that it’s not reasonable to say that morality is a matter of faith because you hold morality to be a matter of objective truth. At least we’re getting somewhere. On what basis do you hold this belief?
Okay, what do you mean by “to take on trust,” then, if you think I am misunderstanding the phrase as you have used it?
I’ve told you twice. Third time may be the charm. “To take on trust” means to assume to be true without demanding proof.
If by “morality” you mean moral claims (“Gay sex is wrong,” “murder is wrong,” etc.) then it is true by definition. Either a murder is wrong, or it is not wrong. Ditto for any other moral claim. Ditto for any claim about what “is.” All such claims are either true or false.
And how do you put these claims to the test to determine their truth or falsehood? Presumably a question of objective truth is capable, at least theoretically, of being put to the test.
You’re contradicting yourself. The scientific method rests on logic. In your last post, you claimed that belief in the value of logic to determine objective truth is “every bit as much a matter of faith as Rachel Ann’s religious faith.” Those are your exact words. And you already agreed with me that faith is not a basis for claims of objective truth. Therefore, according to you, science is no more a basis for claims of objective truth than religion. Both, according to you, rest on a foundation of faith, which you have agreed is useless for determining objective truth.
I have stated:
That we take on trust that the scientific method is valid.
That we cannot prove that the scientific method is valid without creating paradoxes.
That faith according to your definitions (which are not the only definitions in current use) is not a basis for objective truth.
This leads logically to no conclusion about the use or otherwise of science. Given those things that I take on trust, science is valid.
There you go again. If your logical/scientific axioms are a matter of faith, just as Rachel Ann’s religious axioms are a matter of faith, and faith provides no basis for claims of objective truth, how is science a better guide to objective truth than religion? If science is not a better guide to objective truth than religion, why do you believe evolution rather than creationism?
I have explained this to you. It is an axiom of my philosophical system that science is a better guide to objective truth than religion. However, I cannot prove this. I take it on trust.
One final thought. You cannot prove logically or scientifically that I exist. That doesn’t prevent you from engaging me in debate.
Nick Kiddle:
Then you do enjoy arguing with imaginary people.
You didn’t say it. I didn’t claim you said it. How is that an argument?
I already answered that. We believe what we believe for a variety of reasons which don’t stand up to analysis.
You haven’t answered it. The observation that human beings often hold irrational beliefs is not an answer.
In other words you are claiming that it’s not reasonable to say that morality is a matter of faith because you hold morality to be a matter of objective truth.
I’ve been over this. Moral claims are by definition claims of objective truth. They are claims about what “is.” “Gay sex is wrong,” for example. All claims of this sort, all ontological claims, are claims of objective truth.
I’ve told you twice. Third time may be the charm. “To take on trust” means to assume to be true without demanding proof.
Okay, why should Rachel Ann “take it on trust” that gay sex is immoral rather than “take it on trust” that gay sex is not immoral? Same question, different formulation. What is your answer?
And how do you put these claims to the test to determine their truth or falsehood?
By applying the methods of science and reason.
Presumably a question of objective truth is capable, at least theoretically, of being put to the test.
Yes.
I have explained this to you. It is an axiom of my philosophical system that science is a better guide to objective truth than religion.
Your “explanation” contradicts your previous statements, as I already explained to you. You claimed, in the last sentence of your post of 12:07pm (and again in your post of 3:49pm), that logical/scientific axioms are a matter of faith, just as religious axioms are a matter of faith. You had previously claimed, in the first sentence of your post of 12:07pm, that faith doesn’t provide a basis for claims of objective truth. It necessarily follows from these two premises that logic and science are not a basis for claims of objective truth. That claim contradicts your claim above that “science is a better guide to objective truth than religion.” I’ve explained this three times now.
Your position is logically incoherent. Something has to go. You could, for example, abandon your claim that the axioms of logic and science are a matter of faith. Or you could abandon your claim that faith doesn’t provide a basis for claims of objective truth. Or you could abandon your claim that science is a better guide to objective truth than religion. But you can’t assert all three, because the three claims together form a logical contradiction.
Your false premise, by the way, is your first one–the claim that the axioms of logic and science are a matter of faith. One usually sees this claim in the arguments of fundamentalist Christians who seek to erase the epistemic distinction between science and religion by claiming that science is itself a religion. They’ll typically call it “the religion of atheistic materialism” or “the religion of secular humanism” or somesuch. It’s depressing to see even a non-fundamentalist repeat this science-is-faith nonsense.
One final thought. You cannot prove logically or scientifically that I exist.
Of course I can.
Don P: Before I go any further, I’d like you to do two things for me.
Firstly, offer a logical proof for the truth or falsehood of any moral claim. Your free choice. I’d like to see how it’s done.
Secondly, offer a proof that rest on logic rather than faith or wishful thinking for the assumption of continuity. (Hint: using an assumption to prove itself is not logical.)
Once you’ve done that, I might be able to examine your arguments.
One final thought. You cannot prove logically or scientifically that I exist.
Of course I can.
Go right ahead then.
Wow, this conversation is like 80% italics now. Hard to read, that.
But in a last effort to make any sense:
Don: “We are ‘built’ to think that way. That is why science and reason (unlike, say, religion) operate under the same rules independently of culture. ”
Uh, no, that’s *exactly* what I was pointing out. In traditional Shona culture, in Ndebele culture, in Zulu culture, western logic DOES NOT make any sense. And it doesn’t have to do with it contradicting religion or anything. The traditional philosophies, about what proof is, what evidence can mean, about contradictory facts — they just don’t mesh with the classic greek ways. Apples and oranges. It’s hard for us to understand, but it is Very Much the case.
DonP: “The fact that you do trust science over these alternatives demonstrates that you consider it to be superior to them.”
Not necessarily true. Example: I love swiss chard. Love it. So so good. I like it about a million times more than I like iceberg lettuce. FOR ME, swiss chard is superior to iceberg lettuce. But if you like iceberg lettuce: go for it. Who cares? More chard for me. Yes, I trust science, because it tends (not always: psychology comes to mind as an example of scienctific b.s.) to make sense to me. But I am not so arrogant as to think that it explains everything, or that it somehow proves that some other faith is wrong. No one has ever proven *or* disproven God, as far as I know. Eat your iceberg lettuce, but don’t go telling me that by eating chard I am somehow declaring it to be superior in some grand and cosmic way. That may be how you think, but not me.
leen:
The fact that anthroplogists have found isolated groups of people with anomalous systems of “logic” does not alter the fact that science rests on a set of logical axioms that enjoy universal or near-universal assent. Things like, to use your example: if A=B and B=C, then A=C. If this were not the case, there could be no such thing as modern science, because all science rests on a foundation of shared first principles. Contrast this with religion, for which there isn’t a consensus, let alone unanimity, on even such fundamental questions as how many Gods there are, or even whether there is a God at all.
I don’t really understand the point of your lettuce/chard metaphor. Your liking for chard is an example of a subjective preference. The claims I am discussing are claims of objective truth, not subjective preference. As I said, the fact that you favor the claims of science over the claims of religion on issues of objective truth demonstrates your belief in the superiority of science.
And the fact that science cannot prove or disprove God, as God is generally defined by religious adherents, is just irrelevant. There are an infinite number of possible assertions that science cannot prove or disprove. Science cannot disprove, for example, the claim that volcanos erupt because we haven’t sacrificed enough virgins to the God of Fire. Science cannot disprove the claim that the Tooth Fairy lives at the bottom of your garden. But so what? That is not a reason to believe those claims are true. It’s not a reason to believe any claim is true.
Nick Kiddle:
Firstly, offer a logical proof for the truth or falsehood of any moral claim.
I can’t. All moral claims rest on unprovable premises. My own view is that there is probably no such thing as objective moral truths or facts. There’s no such sense in which anything “is” right or “is” wrong. Our moral sense, our sense of right and wrong, is just a set of subjective preferences, shaped by evolution and elaborated by culture. This article explains this in more detail.
Secondly, offer a proof that rest on logic rather than faith or wishful thinking for the assumption of continuity.
There is no proof of assumptions. That’s why they’re assumptions rather than conclusions. If you’re talking about axioms, about first principles, as I said, we believe them to be true by virtue of rational reflection and common assent. Things like: “It cannot be true both that X is true and that X is false.” If by “continuity” you mean the regularity of natural processes over time, that’s not an assumption, it’s an observed characteristic of the universe. What we call the “laws of nature” or the “laws of physics/chemistry/biology/etc.” is just the codification of these observations.
One final thought. You cannot prove logically or scientifically that I exist.
Of course I can.
Go right ahead then.
No.
Still waiting for you to resolve the contradiction in your claims.
Still waiting for you to resolve the contradiction in your claims.
I’m still waiting for you to demonstrate a basic understanding of the English language, the principles of the philosophy of science and some civility. I think we’ll both have a rather long wait.
Nick Kiddle:
Your first premise:
Premise 1: faith is not a basis for claims of objective truth
combined with your second premise:
Premise 2: logical/scientific axioms are a matter of faith
Leads to the conclusion:
Conclusion: logic and science are not a basis for claims of objective truth
This contradicts your third premise:
Premise 3: Science is a better guide to objective truth than religion
How you do propose to resolve this contradiction?
Oh, I finally figured out where we’re not meshing on this. “Objective truth” : I don’t believe in it. I think that’s one of the great fallacies of the scientific method, that it somehow results in objective truths. (I wrote an entire thesis on this! I can’t believe it took me so long to recognize our split here!)
Damn liberal arts college. Ruined me for all sorts of silly debates.
One of my favorite quotations, which I think applies equally well to thoughts about both religion and science (and is thwarted only by personal experience, which is sometimes proof-y and sometimes faith-y), was by Buckminster Fuller:
“Truth is completely spontaneous. Lies have to be taught.”
Oh, I finally figured out where we’re not meshing on this. “Objective truth” : I don’t believe in it.
Then how do you account for your own existence? Your existence is an objective truth. Cogito ergo sum
Ah, but how do you know that you think. Maybe it is an illusion that you think. There certainly have been and are philosophies that everything is just an illusion. You can never know 100%, but you can believe (have faith) that you know for sure.
Precisely, Mr Squid! (Crap, that is a great sentence right there.) Objective: “expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations”. [m-w.com]
And of all things, my thoughts about my existence are certinly distorted by my personal feelings.
Premise 2: logical/scientific axioms are a matter of faith
This was not my premise. Your belief that this was my premise arises out of a misunderstanding based on your refusal to interpret words in any way other than the one which best suits your argument and your woeful ignorance of the philosophy of science.
At the heart of the scientific method, there is an assumption which may be called the assumption of continuity. This assumption cannot be proven; its existence must be taken on trust. Therefore, acceptance of the scientific method requires faith, as I define it. Whether it requires faith as you define it is another matter.
Now will you please resolve for me the contradiction between “This is a matter of objective truth” “Claims of objective truth can be put to the test” and “This cannot be put to the test”?
Jake Squid:
Ah, but how do you know that you think. Maybe it is an illusion that you think.
I’m not sure how one could experience an illusion of thinking.
But assuming that is possible, leen must exist to experience an illusion, anyway. How can leen suffer from an illusion if he doesn’t exist?
Nick Kiddle:
Premise 2: logical/scientific axioms are a matter of faith
This was not my premise.
Yes, it was. Here are your exact words:
“You have faith in the value of logic. I’m not attempting to suggest that this faith is unfounded, just that it is every bit as much a matter of faith as Rachel Ann’s religious faith.”
And again:
“So the best that I can say is that evolution has the better claim given the axioms of my philosophical system. These axioms, at bottom, are taken on trust; they are matters of faith.”
And again, just now:
“Therefore, acceptance of the scientific method requires faith, as I define it.”
That’s at least three times that you have said that science rests on a foundation of faith. You also said that faith is not a basis for claims of objective truth. It necessarily follows from those premises that science is not a basis for claims of objective truth. But you explicitly contradicted that conclusion.
Nick Kiddle:
Now will you please resolve for me the contradiction between “This is a matter of objective truth” “Claims of objective truth can be put to the test” and “This cannot be put to the test”?
Assuming “this” in the first and last sentences refers to the same claim, I can’t. Those three statements do form a contradiction. And your point is…?
Don P,
We are all just a dream that god X (I don’t know my Hinduism well enough to name the god. Vishnu?) is having. That is just one of the philosophies to which I am referring.
Then there is, “You are just a figment of my imagination. You just claim to think and exist, but you don’t.”
One cannot objectively prove existence of anything without taking on faith a basic premise (such as, “I think therefore I am,” for example). Arguing existence is as futile (and fun) as arguing the location of the center of the universe.
Using western logic & scientific method requires taking the most basic principles of those methods on faith. For myself, I find the basis of the scientific method to be more reasonable & reliable than faith in a god. I find that the conclusions of the scientific method sync up with the real world much better & provide more useful info than faith in a god. But I am unable to use the scientific method to prove that the scientific method is objectively true. I’m not sure (as we spiral into a philosophical discussion) that an objective truth can ever be proven nor, for that matter, that objective truth even exists.
You have answered the question you asked of me earlier. You have faith that the scientific method and western logic are true.
Gosh I love discussions of philosophy and the reality of existence & reality.
Jake Squid:
We are all just a dream that god X (I don’t know my Hinduism well enough to name the god. Vishnu?) is having.
Then the existence of God is an objective truth. But leen says he doesn’t believe in objective truth.
Then there is, “You are just a figment of my imagination. You just claim to think and exist, but you don’t.”
Then the existence of the thing that is doing the imagining is an objective truth.
One cannot objectively prove existence of anything without taking on faith a basic premise (such as, “I think therefore I am,” for example).
As I said, first principles are not a matter of faith, they are self-evidently true through rational reflection and common assent.
If science and religion both rest on a foundation of faith, why should we accept the claims of science over the claims of religion? Why should we accept evolution over creationism? Why should we believe the universe is billions of years old (as science claims) rather than only about 6,000 years old (as creationism claims)? Don’t you see the problem?
I find that the conclusions of the scientific method sync up with the real world much better & provide more useful info than faith in a god.
But you just claimed that those scientific conclusions rest on faith just as the conclusions of religious creationists rest on faith. So why is your faith better than their faith? Why is your faith more likely to reflect objective truth than their faith? Why is your faith that the world is billions of years old more likely to be correct than their faith that it is only thousands of years old?
Don P,
You are just flat out wrong when you say:
Then the existence of God is an objective truth.
In that case the existence of the god is a matter of faith. It is the basis for the belief that we are all just being dreamed by the god, sure. But being the basis of a belief system is not, in and of itself an objective truth.
You also wrote:
As I said, first principles are not a matter of faith, they are self-evidently true through rational reflection and common assent.
That is clearly false. If a person believes in a god as the first principle of their belief system that is not an objective truth. Rachel Ann believes in a single god whose word is presented in the Torah as the first principle of her faith. Yet the existence of that god is not an objective truth. If it was an objective truth we would all have to concede that she is correct in her moral view of homosexuality being wrong. But it isn’t and we don’t. Please explain then why Rachel Ann is not stating an objective truth.
So why is your faith better than their faith? Why is your faith more likely to reflect objective truth than their faith? Why is your faith that the world is billions of years old more likely to be correct than their faith that it is only thousands of years old?
Objectively it isn’t. Subjectively it works for me and is therefore better than other faiths. Subjectively my faith is more likely to be correct because, to me, my faith in the principles and results of science more closely reflects the world around us than does the belief in a deity and creationism.
If you persist in the claim that first principles are objective truths I think you must prove your claim. So far you haven’t. As Nick Kiddle pointed out, you cannot use a first principle to prove its objective truth. I can’t say, “I exist, therefore I exist,” and expect that to be a valid supporting argument. You’ll have to show me how the basis of your belief system is an objective truth in order for me to agree with you.
By the way, I am positioned precisely at the center of the universe. That is an objective truth, no? Therefore you are not at the center of the universe. Another objective truth. However, the universe being infinite you must be at the center of the universe. Another objective truth, yet contradictory. Western logic does not prevail in all situations – quantum level physics is an example of where western logic fails. Since western logic is not always correct, it cannot be said to be objectively true – that is to say that it cannot be considered 100% valid.
Jake Squid:
In that case the existence of the god is a matter of faith.
No, in that case, it’s a matter of fact. I said “THEN the existence of God is an objective truth.” The “then” signifies that I am granting your premise. It means “It follows from that premise that…”
If a person believes in a god as the first principle of their belief system that is not an objective truth.
The belief isn’t, no. It’s a matter of faith. The first principles I was referring to in that sentence are not those of religion, which are a matter of faith, but those of science and reason, which are held to be true through rational assent. Things like: If A=B and B=C then A=C.
Rachel Ann believes in a single god whose word is presented in the Torah as the first principle of her faith. Yet the existence of that god is not an objective truth.
No, it may or may not be an objective truth. It may or may not be true that that God exists. We don’t know. The point is that faith provides no basis for believing that it is an objective truth. It’s like believing that something is true merely because you hope that it’s true or guess that it’s true. Faith, hopes and guesses are not a basis for beliefs about objective truth. “I HOPE that I bought the winning lottery ticket, therefore I am justified in BELIEVING that I bought the winning lottery ticket” is not a valid argument, because your chances of having bought the winning ticket are independent of your hope that you have. Appeals to faith to justify belief suffer from precisely the same problem.
Objectively it isn’t.
Then why believe it? If the creationist claim is just as likely to be correct as the science claim, why believe one rather than the other? Why teach the science claim in our public schools rather than the religious claim? Why not teach children “Science says it’s billions of years, creationism says it’s 6,000 years, and both are equally likely to be true?”
Subjectively it works for me and is therefore better than other faiths. Subjectively my faith is more likely to be correct because, to me, my faith in the principles and results of science more closely reflects the world around us than does the belief in a deity and creationism.
But you just said that your principles are a matter of faith just like religious principles are matter of faith, and that neither is more likely to be correct than the other. So how can your principles “more closely reflect the world around us” when you just said that principles leading to different answers about the nature of the world are just as likely to be correct?
If you persist in the claim that first principles are objective truths I think you must prove your claim.
For the umpteenth time, we hold the axioms, the first principles, of science and logic to be true through rational reflection and common assent. There is no proof other than that. You, not me, are saying that these axioms are a matter of faith rather than self-evident truth, which is why you have no basis for favoring scientific claims of truth over religious claims of truth. You have no basis for favoring evolution over creationism because, according to you, both are founded on faith, and your faith in science isn’t better than someone else’s faith in creationism.
You still don’t seem to understand the corner you’ve painted yourself into. You’re claiming that all claims to knowledge or truth or fact have the same epistemic status, because, according to you, they’re all based on faith. If they’re all based on faith, then we have no reason to favor one over another. We have no reason to favor modern, western science-based medicine over the “medicine” of witchdoctors and shamans. We have no reason to favor evolution over creationism. We have no reason to favor cosmology over a Native American creation myth. Because, according to you they all rest on faith and are thus all equally likely to be correct.
Jake Squid:
By the way, I am positioned precisely at the center of the universe. That is an objective truth, no? Therefore you are not at the center of the universe. Another objective truth. However, the universe being infinite you must be at the center of the universe. Another objective truth, yet contradictory.
It’s not a contradiction. We don’t know, for example, whether the universe is finite or infinite. Your premises are flawed.
Western logic does not prevail in all situations – quantum level physics is an example of where western logic fails.
How does “western logic” fail in quantum level physics? What is the nature of this alleged failure?
I hope your knowledge of quantum mechanics was not acquired from the works of DeepCrap Chopra or some other New Age nitwit.
No, my knowledge of quantum physics does not come from the New Age crowd. A lot of it comes from the works of John Gribbin, perhaps the best at writing about physics for layfolk. I highly recommend In the Beginning and Unveiling the Edge of Time. Although some of the theories are a little bit out of date, the basic physics are still accepted.
I wrote: Subjectively it works for me and is therefore better than other faiths. Subjectively my faith is more likely to be correct because, to me, my faith in the principles and results of science more closely reflects the world around us than does the belief in a deity and creationism.
Don P wrote: But you just said that your principles are a matter of faith just like religious principles are matter of faith, and that neither is more likely to be correct than the other. So how can your principles “more closely reflect the world around us” when you just said that principles leading to different answers about the nature of the world are just as likely to be correct?
Don, the key to what I wrote is in the first word, “subjectively.” Subjectively my principles more closely reflect the world around us. I am sure that subjectively to Rachel Ann her faith more closely reflects the world around her. Please notice that I am using the term “subjective.”
Don P wrote: For the umpteenth time, we hold the axioms, the first principles, of science and logic to be true through rational reflection and common assent.>/i>
For the umpteenth time, just because we hold the axioms and first principles of science and logic to be true through rational reflection and common assent does not make it an objective truth. An objective truth will be seen as true by every person. Are you telling me that something can be an objective truth until more evidence comes to light that disproves it & leads to a newer objective truth? Are you telling me that the theory of spontaneous generation was, at one time, an objective truth? Perhaps your definition of objective truth differs from the common definition. When I use the phrase “objective truth” I mean something that is true now and will be true forever, no matter how much new evidence is discovered.
…then we have no reason to favor one over another.
Don’t be silly. Of course we have reason to favor one over another. That reason is our own subjective view of reality.
Somebody who believes that if you spill salt you must toss a pinch over your left shoulder to avert bad luck has as much reason to favor that belief as those of us who don’t have that belief have reason to believe that no bad luck will befall us if we don’t toss salt. The key is the subjectivity under which each of us lives. You do get the difference between objective and subjective, right? And you do understand that none of us are objective? And you understand that that means that everything we think and believe is subjective?
Jake Squid:
Don, the key to what I wrote is in the first word, “subjectively.” Subjectively my principles more closely reflect the world around us. I am sure that subjectively to Rachel Ann her faith more closely reflects the world around her. Please notice that I am using the term “subjective.”
The word “subjective” adds nothing, since all beliefs are by definition subjective. So, again, why do you believe that your faith-based principles “more closely reflect the world around us,” given your subjective belief that different faith-based principles are just as likely to be correct, and thus just as likely as yours to “more closely reflect the world around us?”
Since you have ignored my questions about evolution vs. creationism, science-based medicine vs. religion-based medicine, cosmology vs. myth and so on, let’s try a more personal tack. Perhaps this will help you to see the problem with your position. Suppose your mother calls you up and says she has faith that her ticket for the lottery next week is the winning ticket. She’s going to sell all her possessions tomorrow because she has faith that she will win the lottery next week and become rich. By your argument, you have no basis on which to challenge her action. You could explain to her that simple logic demonstrates that the chances of her winning are very small, and that it would therefore be foolish for her to sell her possessions in the expectation of winning. But, according to you, that logical argument rests on faith, just as her own belief that she will win rests on faith, and your faith is no better than her faith. Therefore, you have no basis for challenging her action.
Can you really not see the absurdity of this position?
Jake Squid:
Don’t be silly. Of course we have reason to favor one over another. That reason is our own subjective view of reality.
But according to you, that subjective view of reality rests on faith. So why is your faith in evolution more likely to reflect the truth than a creationist’s faith in the literal truth of Genesis? Why aren’t you advocating that evolution and creationism be taught equally in public schools since, according to you, both of them rest on faith? Why should one faith be privileged over the other? Why should scientific claims be privileged over religious claims if both types of claim are the result of faith?
So, again, why do you believe that your faith-based principles “more closely reflect the world around us,” given your subjective belief that different faith-based principles are just as likely to be correct, and thus just as likely as yours to “more closely reflect the world around us?”
Because, from my subjective point of view, the evidence supports my belief system. But surely you can see that your question is nonsense and answers itself?
Objectively, I can’t say that my faith in science and logic is more likely to be correct than any other faith. Subjectively, I can say that my faith is more likely to be correct than any other faith for any number of reasons. I believe that my worldview is correct, however I don’t have any way of proving this as an objective truth. I’m not sure that I can make that any more clear. I promote my beliefs and morals, but I don’t force them on others as I believe that is the best way to live. But I cannot prove objectively that this is the best way to live.
You are correct, philosophically and objectively speaking, I cannot say that evolution is more likely than literal creationism or the Easter Bunny. However, following the tenets of my faith, it is clear that literal creationism and the Easter Bunny are fictions. That is to say that from my subjective point of view the decision is easy to make. I promote my beliefs, therefore I will vote against making creationism a part of the school curriculum because I do not base my actions on philosophical and objective criterea. Rather, I base my actions based on my subjective view.
Let’s start at the beginning so we can make sure that we are using common language and definitions. I think that will make this simpler.
Please define the following terms:
Objective
Subjective
Philosophical
Actual
Jake Squid:
You are correct, philosophically and objectively speaking, I cannot say that evolution is more likely than literal creationism or the Easter Bunny. However, following the tenets of my faith, it is clear that literal creationism and the Easter Bunny are fictions. That is to say that from my subjective point of view the decision is easy to make. I promote my beliefs, therefore I will vote against making creationism a part of the school curriculum because I do not base my actions on philosophical and objective criterea. Rather, I base my actions based on my subjective view.
Look, you can keep saying “subjective” as many times as you like and it still won’t solve your dilemma. Your subjective belief in evolution rests, according to you, on faith. The creationists’ subjective belief in creationism also rests on faith. Why is your faith more likely to be correct than theirs? Why should your faith be taught to public school students rather than the creationists’ faith? Why should our tax dollars fund medicine based on your faith in science rather than, say, medicine based on the faith of Jehovah’s Witnesses or Native American shamans? Why is your faith privileged? Why is your faith better? Why is your faith more likely to be correct? Why is your faith that your mother would be foolish to sell all her belongings in anticipation of winning the lottery more likely to be correct than her faith that she will win it?