Before my response to Alex, I would like to say one thing to the leaders of FCA. The absence of morals in “nature” does not indicate an absence of morals in humans (or other species). Atheism is not equivalent to nihilism.
To begin, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Alex for furthering discussion with a constructive response to my article. My intention was to provoke discussion, so I was happy to see a response. His argument, however, does not offer a real definition of faith, and it is contradictory.
As Alex so insightfully thought I would say, “That’s not what I meant by faith.” I necessarily defined faith as I did not because I am narrow-minded, but because I wished to offer a real definition. The definition provided by Alex is, “An act of faith is one in which the consequences of the action are both uncertain (however probable they may be), and there is a difference between the various outcomes.”
This is not a real definition because non-synonymous terms can be inserted in place of the word being defined. For example, the word doubt, which happens to be an antonym to “faith,” can be inserted. His is a better definition for acting with doubt or performing an experiment than acting with faith.
Another statement further illuminates this. “I think Faith completes learning because although we never can know anything will be universally true, we do learn what is true to us and come to pragmatic truths, rather than dogmatic ones.” Once again, the word “doubt” would be more suitable than faith. These statements are indicative of the pervasive idea that faith includes doubt or that doubt is integral to faith. Certainly, most people with faith have some doubt. But doubt is precisely what is ignored or rejected by faith. Faith and doubt are antagonistic forces.
The above definition would seem to make sense under the assumption that “all action rests on faith,” except it is quite clear that “all action” does not rest on faith.
His argument seems to be that, since we cannot logically prove the existence of a lightbulb, it is only with faith that we can know of its existence. Since we cannot logically use inductive reasoning to prove the future, we cannot assume that the sun will rise tomorrow. We cannot, without faith, know that “the ground beneath us will not turn into lava.” This is amateur philosophy of the worst sort.
While recognizing that what we perceive is a representation of reality, it is fair to say that it can be known, without faith, that a light bulb exists in every real and practical sense. With our modern understanding of physics, it seems fair to assume that the ground at Gustavus will not transmute into lava anytime soon. The improbability of this occurring is so infinitesimally small that one can safely assume that it will not occur.
To equate this “faith” with religious faith is preposterous. It takes a fundamentally different sort of faith to believe in god(s), heaven, hell, rebirth, angels, demons or the emperor’s new clothes. It is fundamentally different because there is an utter lack of evidence. Combined with the improbability of their existence, these ideas can be dispelled as easily as the existence of dragons, Santa or the flying spaghetti monster. The amount of evidence required for acceptance of a belief should be correlated to the improbability of the truth of that belief. The amount of belief in an idea should be correlated to the amount of evidence.
Faith is doubt. Through faith we reject universal truths and “come to pragmatic truths, rather than dogmatic ones.” These statements are doublespeak.
“In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup. My friend, drop all your preconceived and fixed ideas and be neutral. Do you know why this cup is useful? Because it is empty.”—Bruce Lee
Who said the following things?
“Now, we do not hesitate to profess that we are Christian.” “The fullest possible development of the mind and its dedication to the God that we know in Jesus Christ is the goal of education at Gustavus.” “Unless you want to make yourself a perfect blockhead… you must adopt the Christian system and acknowledge a personal God, who is the creator, the law-giver, the Governor, and the judge of the universe.” “The main purpose [of Gustavus] is to serve the country and the church by training Christian leaders, in accordance with the conservative philosophy of the Lutheran Church.”
Hint: There are buildings at Gustavus named after them.
PS – who are you to assert that there even exists a “real” definition of faith? And criticize others? In doing so, you are assuming an objective reality, one that exists independent of us to which we seek to discover and learn about: The existence of an objective reality and truth is something that a non-theistic worldview cannot account for. Thus, without “Faith” in a non theistic worldview, learning is a preposterous notion simply because the notion of knowledge and a yardstick for progress is torn from beneath us. Clearly, faith and learning are not fundamentally opposed. In fact, you need a theistic worldview in order to have a foundation to stand on. It is faith that inspires people to study and learn about the universe that their God created, and the principles that now govern and guide it.
You provide no reason for us to believe that your definition of faith is any more valid, reliable, or truthful than the person who criticized you. What basis do you even have for believing truth exists, and that your viewpoint is more true than anyone else’s?
** To equate this “faith” with religious faith is preposterous… It is fundamentally different because there is an utter lack of evidence. **
And, you problematically begin with an undefended a priori assumption that certain types of evidence is more valid than others.
You also seem most likely to believe that we can only know that which is detectable by our five senses. To that I must ask, “how much does a thought weigh?” “What does a thought feel/sound/taste/smell like”? Reductionist Materialism precludes from human understanding to ability to perceive anything but that which is concrete … but mere observation tells us that there is more than that…
In academia it seems as though we have an insistence to relegate all theological claims to “the back of the bus” in a similar manner to that with which we treated blacks 40 years ago in culture: That is, without reasonable basis, we simply assume inferiority (this time in epistemological perspective instead of notion of personhood).
Accordingly, I think that it is disingenuous for us to think that faith is fundamentally opposed to learning. It is not.
MUST THEOLOGY ALWAYS SIT IN THE BACK OF THE
SECULAR BUS? http://homepage.mac.com/francis.beckwith/JLR2.pdf
The summary of his argument is as follows:
“…There is no sufficient reason to exclude theologically informed public policy proposals and that the federal courts err in offering a flawed understanding of the epistemological standing of religious belief. To make my case, I first address two questions-(1) What does theological
knowledge look like?; (2) What do the federal courts say about theological claims? I then offer a brief analysis of one issue over which the question of theological knowledge has been raised in both the
literature and the public square; (3) the permissibility and federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. I also use this issue as a point
of departure to briefly discuss what I believe is an unjustified privileging of non-theistic understandings of knowledge.”
It is clearly the case that one can take his argument about not privilaging certain secular epistimologies in the public policy process can apply similarly to academia.