Is science based on faith?

[Sarkus]

However, I object to the attempts of some - other - people to turn the generally positive, term "faith" into some kind of pejorative, implying gullibility or self-deceit. That is just not what the word means.

Agreed.

Asserting "faith" to be a pretence of knowledge seems to me to have 3 issues:

First, asserting it to be a pretence suggests that it is known that either their claim is wrong, or that the claim is unknowable. While this may be the position of the atheist (agnostic or otherwise) it may not be the position of the theist. The theist may not be able to explain to you how they know, let alone convince you, and they may not even be able to articulate it to themselves, but does that mean they are wrong, or that the claim is unknowable to them? How would you know that they don't actually know?

Second, asserting "pretence" seems to imply a deliberate act of dishonesty on their part.

Third, if you pretend to know something, as even an atheist can do, how is that "faith"? Faith is surely far more than any claim of knowledge, is it not? If an atheist "pretends to know" that God exists... is that religious faith? Or does faith actually mean something else, imply something else, go well beyond any such claim of knowledge?

Defining "faith" as a pretence seems to be a way whereby atheists once again tell theists that they are wrong to have faith, that they are being deliberately dishonest in claiming as knowledge that which the atheist doesn't/can't. While an atheist might well think that about theists, I don't find that particularly useful in understanding what "faith" means for an actual theist who might use that term.

So maybe we shouldn't be telling theists what they mean by the term.

 

[exchemist]

Agreed.

Asserting "faith" to be a pretence of knowledge seems to me to have 3 issues:

First, asserting it to be a pretence suggests that it is known that either their claim is wrong, or that the claim is unknowable. While this may be the position of the atheist (agnostic or otherwise) it may not be the position of the theist. The theist may not be able to explain to you how they know, let alone convince you, and they may not even be able to articulate it to themselves, but does that mean they are wrong, or that the claim is unknowable to them? How would you know that they don't actually know?

Second, asserting "pretence" seems to imply a deliberate act of dishonesty on their part.

Third, if you pretend to know something, as even an atheist can do, how is that "faith"? Faith is surely far more than any claim of knowledge, is it not? If an atheist "pretends to know" that God exists... is that religious faith? Or does faith actually mean something else, imply something else, go well beyond any such claim of knowledge?

Defining "faith" as a pretence seems to be a way whereby atheists once again tell theists that they are wrong to have faith, that they are being deliberately dishonest in claiming as knowledge that which the atheist doesn't/can't. While an atheist might well think that about theists, I don't find that particularly useful in understanding what "faith" means for an actual theist who might use that term.

So maybe we shouldn't be telling theists what they mean by the term.

It seems to me the core of this is that faith is not an assertion of knowledge, but about trust. We trust general relativity, even if we do not ourselves understand it and have only read about the tests of it that others have carried out. We can’t say we know something we don’t understand but we can trust it.

 

[exchemist]

Just to be clear: I'm all in favour of placing trust in people (and institutions) that have an established track record of trustworthiness.

I trust that the New York Times is a reliable source of news, for example, based on its track record. If you were to insist on a specific form language, I might even be willing to agree that I have faith in the New York Times.

On the other hand, I'm firmly against the idea of pretending to know things I don't know. I don't admire people who pretend to know things they don't know.

Clearly, I don't have faith in God. I don't know that there's a God. I haven't seen any convincing evidence for a God. So, I'm not going to pretend there's a God.

Do I have faith in Science? I do, in the same sense that I have faith in the New York Times. Science has a proven track record for getting things right (sooner or later). It seems trustworthy to me. I've seen lots of convincing evidence in support of scientific claims.

Does my 'faith' in science extend to pretending that science is infallible or that it can solve all problems? No, it doesn't. The level of 'faith' I have in it is a considered, rational, pragmatic judgment, not "blind faith".

I put 'faith' in inverted commas when referring to Science because it's not the word I would ordinarily use for the kind of confidence I have in it. The reason I don't use the word in that context - in fact, the reason I seldom use the word in any context other than discussions about religion - is precisely because of the way that so many people tend to equivocate between the two usages of the word that I outlined in post #16. If I want to say I trust somebody or that I have confidence in something, I'll most often use those words, rather then the 'f' word. And I try my best to completely avoid pretending to knowledge.

Pretending to knowledge is not faith. It is deception, which is something else entirely.

 

[Yazata]

Moving back to the original issue:

Is science based on faith?

Perhaps one could argue that faith arises whenever somebody makes knowledge claims. And science, along with the rest of our cognitive life, produces knowledge claims.

If that's the case, if we are to avoid accusations of faith, then we probably should avoid making claims to knowledge. (Belief is fine, but that returns us to faith.)

(One can also ask why is faith so often an accusation? Is there really anything better than faith?)

There are indeed people who make no claims of possessing knowledge. They are skeptics in the original sense of that word.

1. If we follow the tradition and define 'knowledge' as 'justified-true-belief', then one can (and many have) argued that we don't possess absolutely conclusive justification for any of our beliefs. Regardless of the justification we think that we have for our beliefs, we might always be mistaken. What's more, our justifications will themselves always rest on additional unjustified assumptions. As Swartz wrote in the IEP article, "At some point explanations must come to an end". The same thing seems to be true of justifications if we are to avoid infinite regresses.

2. And just by the nature of our human condition, we can never step outside our own experience to verify that our experience and ideas do in fact truly correspond with some more objective reality. That would require that we adopt the proverbial "God's-eye-view" that would allow us to perceive reality as it is directly, and not just our human experience of whatever reality might be.

Of course the first point doesn't deny that some beliefs are better justified than others. I would happily agree with JamesR that the claims of science are typically better justified within their strictly limited sphere of applicability than most religious claims. (By "limited sphere of applicability" I mean the physical behavior of material objects. Much less so ethical matters or the big metaphysical questions, which seem to me to lie outside of science's scope. Historical understanding and Verstehen. And religion, arguably.)

And the second point can in be partially addressed by social epistemology and the pursuit of objectivity. While none of us can escape our own subjective experience so as to perceive the truth or falsity of our beliefs directly, it does tell us something valuable if our assertions seem true to other observers as well, albeit from the poisition of their own subjectivity. That's what scientific confirmation is all about. Of course the history of ideas illustrate the limitations of that, when scholarly consensus clustered around ideas that seem fundamentally wrong to us today. So again, it isn't perfect, but it helps.

Bottom line: I'm inclined to think that no matter how secure we think we are in knowing something, if we bore deeply into the justificatory and explanatory foundations of that knowledge claim, we will inevitably find that it is based upon assumptions and leaps.

That's probably because as humans, we begin with the common sense experience of our daily lives. And the more intellectual of us then try to explain that experience and extend it into new applications. Despite how religion (and physics) are often taught, we don't start our thinking with fundamental principles, the deepest of which nobody even knows.

 

[Pinball1970]

Pinball, I made a distinction between faith and religious faith. You don't need to believe in God(s) to have faith. It is a sign of a healthy human being that they have faith in themself.

Ok. I jumped in on the title and have still not watched the video.

I think we will be able to go back in time one day, maybe in a DeLorean! But that is not an answer just a thought of mine.... You're right in all your points I think.

I have my issues with religion but I hope I have shown respect to believers on the site, not because of their faith, beliefs or religion as a whole but because they are human.

Having said that, I still think we should ditch it.... another thread perhaps.

Anyway, Sabine. She has made a few enemies in the particle physics community!

She likes controversy lets say that.

 

[foghorn]

Is it something like… You have a belief there is a god, and so have faith that god’s teachings, via prophets, will lead you to a better life?

 

[Pinball1970]

So maybe we shouldn't be telling theists what they mean by the term

We would get a plethora of answers, similar to the question "Who was Jesus?"

 

[Magical Realist]

Interesting thesis that the laws of nature, as posited by science over the centuries, do not really explain anything. This goes to the bedrock issue of how we know the universe is actually behaving rationally or is just conforming to a set of arbitrary and unproveable propositions. It also raises the question of what we really mean by and expect from explanations.

https://mindmatters.ai/2023/08/what-do-the-laws-of-nature-actually-explain/

"At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate. And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear conclusion, whereas in the modern system it should appear as though everything were explained. – Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Edinburgh: The Edinburgh Press, 6.371-2

Kleiven comments,

"Of course, much hinges on what is meant by “explanations” by Wittgenstein above. If we’re satisfied with describing some abstract way to relate a specific phenomenon to more general ones, then we’re most likely fine. If we want more than that, as if we want to say something about the nature of the phenomena we’re investigating or the world’s intelligible character, we’re confronted with the surprising proposition that all throughout history, “a law of nature” has never explained anything like this. Observing “regularities” in nature, even cataloging them to the extent that we can characterize them with mathematical precision, hardly counts as “explaining” those patterns, rather than just restating them using different terminology."
– Daniel Joachim Kleiven, “The laws of nature explain very little,” IAI.TV, June 16, 2023.

“Planets always move in elliptical orbits. I wonder what explains that?” Suppose I answer: “Kepler’s first law explains that.” You then ask: “Oh, how interesting. What is Kepler’s first law?” And I respond by telling you that Kepler’s first law states that planets always move in elliptical orbits. Obviously, we’ve gone around in a circle.” – Feser, E. (2019). Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science. Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae.

 

[C C]

Interesting thesis that the laws of nature, as posited by science over the centuries, do not really explain anything. This goes to the bedrock issue of how we know the universe is actually behaving rationally or is just conforming to a set of arbitrary and unproveable propositions. It also raises the question of what we really mean by and expect from explanations.

https://mindmatters.ai/2023/08/what-do-the-laws-of-nature-actually-explain/

"At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate. And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear conclusion, whereas in the modern system it should appear as though everything were explained. – Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Edinburgh: The Edinburgh Press, 6.371-2

Kleiven comments,

"Of course, much hinges on what is meant by “explanations” by Wittgenstein above. If we’re satisfied with describing some abstract way to relate a specific phenomenon to more general ones, then we’re most likely fine. If we want more than that, as if we want to say something about the nature of the phenomena we’re investigating or the world’s intelligible character, we’re confronted with the surprising proposition that all throughout history, “a law of nature” has never explained anything like this. Observing “regularities” in nature, even cataloging them to the extent that we can characterize them with mathematical precision, hardly counts as “explaining” those patterns, rather than just restating them using different terminology."
– Daniel Joachim Kleiven, “The laws of nature explain very little,” IAI.TV, June 16, 2023. [...]

And one can set aside the agenda of the mindmatters site (i.e., those quotes themselves aren't affected by contingent, second-hand associations).

Since an incremental process or presentism view of time or change seems to be the ultimate source for prodding declarations about laws, gods and whatever other candidates for regulating the differences from one supposed state of the universe to the next...

Such can potentially be remedied by eternalism or identity conceptions like four-dimensionalism. Wherein the various developmental configurations of the universe and the orderly patterns abstracted from them simply co-exist as structure, rather than being nothing more than ephemeral stages of governed and outputted by a speculative metaphysical agency. Not unlike a train being guided by physical railroad tracks rather than immaterial rules (albeit that is not a perfect analogy).

Carlo Rovelli has touted Julian Barbour as being quite an adept historian of physics. Like some others, he contends that quantum physics was cobbled together by fortuitous insights from various contributors for the sake of formulating it to be useful prediction wise. Rather than the formal descriptions waiting to be discovered ready-made and motivation-free under a wild berry bush.

Thus, the adoption of an incompatible view of space and time that was made antiquated by Einstein's work. Both the "flow" issue still surviving today (Paul Davies: "That Mysterious Flow". As well as presentism's specious "now" state being treated as the limited extent of existence -- still lingering or hanging around in the background play of disciplines.

https://www.edge.org/conversation/julian_barbour-the-end-of-time

Barbour: The reason that Schrodinger could create a picture of quantum mechanics like that is because he was using the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time. The framework that they create makes it possible to give probabilities for the triangles formed by three particles to be in different positions and for the probabilities to change in time. There's an independent time which is nothing to do with the contents of the universe.
_

 

[James R]

Asserting "faith" to be a pretence of knowledge seems to me to have 3 issues:

First, asserting it to be a pretence suggests that it is known that either their claim is wrong, or that the claim is unknowable.

It is common for people to believe that certain things are true without being able to explain how they know those things are true. In other words, one can pretend to know things that one doesn't know, even in cases where the relevant facts are, in fact, true.

You are right, of course, that many pretences to knowledge concern things that are either not known (by anybody) to be true, or which are known (by other people) to be false. Then there are the cases of pretending to know something when you actually know that you don't know the thing (i.e. you recognise that you cannot justify the claim you are making about your supposed knowledge).

And yes, there can be claims to knowledge about things that are unknowable.

I don't think you've pointed out any kind of problem, so far.

While this may be the position of the atheist (agnostic or otherwise) it may not be the position of the theist. The theist may not be able to explain to you how they know, let alone convince you, and they may not even be able to articulate it to themselves, but does that mean they are wrong, or that the claim is unknowable to them? How would you know that they don't actually know?

People who actually know things can explain how they know the things they know. They can provide justification for their beliefs. ("Knowledge", as Yazata keeps reminding us, is justified true belief.)

People can't just magically know that things are true (or false). If they know something, they should be able to give reasons or explanations of their knowledge. Capacity to articulate is a separate matter.

You ask: how can we tell when somebody doesn't actually know something? We can ask them to justify their claim. If they are unable to give an adequate account of how they came to knowledge, that certainly suggests to me that they might be pretending to know when they don't really know. Doesn't it suggest that to you?

At this point in the discussion, I should probably also distinguish between beliefs and knowledge, because people tend to confuse those two things as well.

When a person believes X to be true, it just means they have become convinced that X is true, for whatever reason. If that reason amounts to a valid justification for the belief, then we can reasonably conclude, in addition, that the person knows X to be true. On the other hand, if the reason is not a valid justification for the belief, there is no knowledge, but the belief remains nonetheless. This is regardless of whether X is, in fact, true or false. Thus, people can believe in true things and they can believe in false things. They cannnot, however, know false things, because they are no valid justifications for false things.

Second, asserting "pretence" seems to imply a deliberate act of dishonesty on their part.

One can lie to other people and/or one can lie to oneself. Either way, one is pretending.

Third, if you pretend to know something, as even an atheist can do, how is that "faith"?

It has to do with the attempt to justify the claim to others (or to yourself).

Consider statements like "I believe in God because I have faith in God" or "I believe that God is real because I have faith [that God is real]."

Here, 'faith' is used as the explanation for holding the belief. As I said, people can become convinced of things for all kinds of reasons.

In the first example, I would say that the statement is mostly likely better explained the other way around: "I have faith in God because I believe in God". That is "I became convinced that God is real - somehow - and since I can't give good reasons for why I became convinced I'm going to use 'faith' as my excuse."

In the second example, 'faith' is a placeholder that is supposed to stand in for justification. It's essentially pretending that the speaker has a valid justification for believing that God is real, while making no attempt to give any actual justification.

Suppose that, as a athiest, I were to come to believe that 2+2=5, for some reason (to pick a somewhat silly illustrative example). If you were to ask me why I believe that, I might be able to give you a reason for my belief ("My grade 1 teacher told me that 2+2=5 and I believe she was right.") But, clearly, I can't give you a valid justification for why 2+2=5.

If pressed hard, maybe I'd resort to "I have faith that 2+2=5." If I was feeling especially defensive, I might add "I can't explain to you exactly how I know that 2+2=5, let alone convince you that it's true, but does that mean I'm wrong? Maybe that claim is simply unknowable? My answer is therefore just as good as yours. Who are you to claim that I don't actually know?"

If pressed even harder, I might settle with "Look, we're just going to have to agree to differ on the whole question of whether 2+2=5 or 2+2=4. You have your view; I have mine. I have strong faith that 2+2=5. You're really being quite rude in pushing this matter. My faith is deeply personal and it's quite inappropriate you to even question me about this. What are you - some kind of stickler for science and proof? Nobody can actually know anything for sure, you know!"

Now, you might be content to leave me to my delusions and move on with your life. But what if I insist on preaching my faith? Suppose I go to some "science forum" somewhere and start a thread asserting "2+2=5! Skeptics be damned!" I stop merely saying that "I believe that 2+2=5" and start saying, instead, that "I know for sure that 2+2=5". The first reply to my thread is "How do you know?" and my reply to that question is "You've just got to have faith, man! Maybe you just don't have the innate number sense that God gave me. Maybe you'll never get it. But it's true, regardless of what you believe. My faith tells me so!"

Does this sound at all familiar?

Faith is surely far more than any claim of knowledge, is it not?

It's an attempt to justify a claim to knowledge, in the circumstance in which one cannot provide any valid justification based on evidence or reasoning.

The assertion that "2+2=5" is a knowledge claim. Faith is an excuse one might give for being unable to provide adequate justification for that claim. When one pretends to have the knowledge and one does not actually have the knowledge, you have a faith. It can be a faith that you honestly believe in yourself, or just a faith you use to pull the wool over other people's eyes. Either way, the key is the pretence to knowledge that you don't actually have.

If an atheist "pretends to know" that God exists... is that religious faith?

Maybe. But your example doesn't really work since, by definition, an atheist who deludes himself that God exists is no longer an atheist.

Or does faith actually mean something else, imply something else, go well beyond any such claim of knowledge?

What do you suggest?

Defining "faith" as a pretence seems to be a way whereby atheists once again tell theists that they are wrong to have faith, that they are being deliberately dishonest in claiming as knowledge that which the atheist doesn't/can't.

Are you saying it isn't wrong to have faith, in the sense of pretending to know things you don't know? Remember, I was careful to distinguish the usage of 'faith' to refer to matters of trust, based on actual evidence.

Let me hear the reasons why you think it's good and right to have faith, then.

As for the dishonesty thing, they are being dishonest. In some cases it is deliberate dishonesty in communication with other people. In other cases, it might merely be self-delusion.

While an atheist might well think that about theists, I don't find that particularly useful in understanding what "faith" means for an actual theist who might use that term.

What do you think actual theists mean? Are you an actual theist with personal experience in this area?

So maybe we shouldn't be telling theists what they mean by the term.

I'm all ears. Theists, please tell me what you mean.

(I might also mention that I've been on this particular merry go round with theists before. I fully expect that somebody will post the bible verse that talks about faith being evidence of things unseen, which just tends to confirm the pretending thing. Faith is the reason you give when you don't have evidence.)

 

[James R]

It seems to me the core of this is that faith is not an assertion of knowledge, but about trust. We trust general relativity, even if we do not ourselves understand it and have only read about the tests of it that others have carried out. We can’t say we know something we don’t understand but we can trust it.

I was careful in post #16 to distinguish two often-conflated usages of the word 'faith'. Here, you seem to be talking about the first usage rather than the second one.

Yes, we all trust in certain "authorities", such as the writers of physics textbooks, to a greater or lesser extent. But that is an evidence-based kind of trust. We have only to look around our technological world to understand that there's something true about all that physics stuff the scientists blather on about. There's a visible track record of successes that justifies a certain level of trust. But we aren't pretending we all understand tensor calculus when we use our phones' GPS to locate ourselves on the map.

This sort of thing is quite different from having religious faith, which involves unjustified beliefs in supernatural powers. We might have faith - in the sense of 'trust' - in religious leaders or texts, certainly. But there's no track record there of religion delivering on any of its core promises. The primary claims that underlie religion are not adequately justified. So, if we claim they are true, we are pretending (to ourselves and/or to others) that there is justification there, when actually there isn't.

 

[Pinball1970]

I suppose it depends on the level of explanation we are looking for, There are alot of phenomena in nature that aren't explained by invoking eternal laws.

I watched the video, finally.

Yes it's faith because I cannot possibly know things will not change.

 

[James R]

Kleiven comments,

"Of course, much hinges on what is meant by “explanations” by Wittgenstein above. If we’re satisfied with describing some abstract way to relate a specific phenomenon to more general ones, then we’re most likely fine. If we want more than that, as if we want to say something about the nature of the phenomena we’re investigating or the world’s intelligible character, we’re confronted with the surprising proposition that all throughout history, “a law of nature” has never explained anything like this. Observing “regularities” in nature, even cataloging them to the extent that we can characterize them with mathematical precision, hardly counts as “explaining” those patterns, rather than just restating them using different terminology."
– Daniel Joachim Kleiven, “The laws of nature explain very little,” IAI.TV, June 16, 2023.

I have no objections to this. I see the role of science as an attempt to model nature, which necessarily involves characterising regularities with mathematical precision. Science isn't in the business of providing the kinds of "ultimate" explanations that philosophers tend to want.

For any scientific question we can come up with, there's always another "But why is it like that?" question lurking just beyond our current best explanation. Maybe, in the end, things just are the way they are, and the "why" questions become unproductive beyond a certain point. But we can do oodles of useful science without having to worry about ultimate whys.

“Planets always move in elliptical orbits. I wonder what explains that?” Suppose I answer: “Kepler’s first law explains that.” You then ask: “Oh, how interesting. What is Kepler’s first law?” And I respond by telling you that Kepler’s first law states that planets always move in elliptical orbits. Obviously, we’ve gone around in a circle.” – Feser, E. (2019). Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science. Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae.

It's not quite right to claim that science is "circular" in the sense that Feser suggests in the quote. Kepler's law is not a prescription for how planets must orbit; it is a description of how they are observed to orbit.

As it happens, Kepler himself couldn't explain the "why" of his First Law. But Newton could, and did. Newton's explanations of gravity raised a number of new questions of their own, however. Some of those were answered in turn by Einstein. And in 2024 we're still working on digging further into the whys, following yet another century of patiently battering away at the problems. No doubt the next theory, whatever it ends up being, will raise its own set of new questions. Nevertheless, there is a sense of progress to the whole thing. Our models of the world are getting demonstrably better over time.

 

[Sarkus]

It is common for people to believe that certain things are true without being able to explain how they know those things are true. In other words, one can pretend to know things that one doesn't know, even in cases where the relevant facts are, in fact, true.

You are implying here that the pretence comes from not being able to explain how one knows. This doesn’t apply to theists, to their belief in God. Their knowledge is justified by their faith, by the teachings they have had, by direct revelation in some instances etc. I am not expecting that this justification convinces you. It doesn’t convince me. But the issue here is the assertion of “pretence”, the deliberate effort to do something that one knows not to be the case. Theists don’t know that it is not the case (do you?) They are not pretending.

Their epistemological system is different to yours; just because they don’t adhere to yours does not mean they are pretending to know. All your “usage 2” is actually stating is that you would have to be pretending to make such claims of knowledge. As would I.

You are right, of course, that many pretences to knowledge concern things that are either not known (by anybody) to be true, or which are known (by other people) to be false.

How would you know that someone either does or does not know, or that it is absolutely beyond knowing? This speaks to the epistemology one adheres to: if one adheres strictly to science then what you deem to be knowable will be defined by what is within the remit of science. But not everyone does adhere strictly to science. When one wants to define or state usages of words for people, one needs to be cognisant and mindful of how they might differ to your way of thinking.

Then there are the cases of pretending to know something when you actually know that you don't know the thing (i.e. you recognise that you cannot justify the claim you are making about your supposed knowledge).

Pretence would only be in those instances that you do not accept whatever justification you provide to yourself. As for what the justification is, this could be revelation, it could be trust, it could be because it’s raining outside. It could be faith itself. Remember, pretence is a deliberate act to deceive. This is not the case with theists. It may seem that way from your perspective, but their’s is not your perspective.

And yes, there can be claims to knowledge about things that are unknowable.

Sure, but how do you know that they are unknowable? They may be unknowable to science, but that would speak only to your empirical-based epistemology.

People who actually know things can explain how they know the things they know. They can provide justification for their beliefs.

The JTB criteria of knowledge are worth exploring, and the issue here seems to be what constitutes justification. Now this is actually a whole debate within philosophy in and of itself, but it’s worth dabbling here.

People can't just magically know that things are true (or false). If they know something, they should be able to give reasons or explanations of their knowledge.

That would depend on what one is referring to by “magic. If you mean something like revelation, for example, you might put this down as a misinterpretation of events, but for others it is the strongest justification there is.
But let me turn that question around: how do you know that people can’t just magically know? Let’s take the example of direct revelation.

Capacity to articulate is a separate matter.

By this I was alluding to when the best they can do is say “I just know”. Their justification for this knowledge may be their certainty of thought, their connection to that belief, all of which they may not be able to articulate, and therefore explain to others.

You ask: how can we tell when somebody doesn't actually know something? We can ask them to justify their claim. If they are unable to give an adequate account of how they came to knowledge, that certainly suggests to me that they might be pretending to know when they don't really know. Doesn't it suggest that to you?

Not necessarily. “Adequate account” is more about what is adequate for you to be able to utilise their justification for establishing it as knowledge for yourself. This may not always be the case. So, how would one know that they don't know, when all you can say is that they can't explain how they know to your satisfaction? It's your perspective v theirs.

… They cannnot, however, know false things, because they are no valid justifications for false things.

I would be wary of using terms such as “valid” when referring to justification for knowledge. Being “valid” can certainly help provide justification, but let me offer this:

All dogs have 3 legs.
Buster is a dog.
Buster has 3 legs.
The conclusion is valid. Is it justification for believing that Buster has 3 legs? Valid, but, alas, not sound.

As mentioned previously, the notion of justification as a criterion for knowledge is a topic all in its own right, beginning with Plato, and with new and more sophisticated criteria appearing regularly.
The issue with religion, however, is that the core belief of many (i.e. that God exists) is unknowable to many means of investigation (e.g. science), and thus the “true” element of the JTB is similarly unknowable to those that adhere to them.

One can lie to other people and/or one can lie to oneself. Either way, one is pretending.

Question: why would theists use "faith" as implying "a deliberate effort to decieve"?

It has to do with the attempt to justify the claim to others (or to yourself).

I think you have misunderstood. I am referring to the “pretend” part. For example, let’s say I pretend to know that my neighbour secretly liked Taylor Swift. (I know he doesn’t but I’m now going to pretend that he did). He kept it secret from everyone but me, and now he is dead. How is my pretence “faith”?

Recall, you said that faith is pretending to know something that you can’t justify using evidence. I can’t justify through evidence that my deceased friend secretly liked Taylor Swift. I am pretending to know that he did, though. So how is this “faith”?

Please can you explain?

 

[Sarkus]

... cont'd...

Consider statements like "I believe in God because I have faith in God" or "I believe that God is real because I have faith [that God is real]."

Here, 'faith' is used as the explanation for holding the belief. As I said, people can become convinced of things for all kinds of reasons.

Faith as justification, yes. Using the JTB criteria, if God does exist (i.e. the belief is true), then since they have justified it they can claim knowledge, right?

Sure, you don’t actually know whether God exists or not, but either that proposition is true or it is false. If True then knowledge, if False then it is not. They won’t be able to convince you (or me) with their justification, but why do they need to?

In the first example,…

In the second example,…

Apologies, I’m not going to get drawn into this as I feel they suffer from the same thing as your initial usage 2 – i.e. they are inherently atheistic, asserting pretence, and defining a usage as seen from the atheist point of view, not as used by those who are using the term.

Suppose that, as a athiest, I were to come to believe that 2+2=5, for some reason (to pick a somewhat silly illustrative example). If you were to ask me why I believe that, I might be able to give you a reason for my belief ("My grade 1 teacher told me that 2+2=5 and I believe she was right.") But, clearly, I can't give you a valid justification for why 2+2=5.

Yes you can, you just can’t give a sound reason. Please be mindful of the difference.

If pressed hard…

Does this sound at all familiar?

I’m not here to discuss your past battles with theists.

It's an attempt to justify a claim to knowledge, in the circumstance in which one cannot provide any valid justification based on evidence or reasoning.

It is not an attempt. It is justification. It may not be justification that you (or I) accept for us to be able to consider their claim as knowledge, but it is justification nonetheless. It satisfies the basic JTB criterion, and maybe much more than that.

Faith is an excuse one might give for being unable to provide adequate justification for that claim. When one pretends to have the knowledge and one does not actually have the knowledge, you have a faith. It can be a faith that you honestly believe in yourself, or just a faith you use to pull the wool over other people's eyes. Either way, the key is the pretence to knowledge that you don't actually have.

This is all from the perspective of one without faith, declaring the pre-eminence of science, and defining all from within that perspective, insisting that everyone should use terms as defined from this perspective. It is, however, unhelpful in establishing how a theist uses the term faith.

Maybe. But your example doesn't really work since, by definition, an atheist who deludes himself that God exists is no longer an atheist.

It does work, precisely because of that definition, and precisely because of what you have given as a usage. The point is that at no point do they actually believe, they are pretending to know. Is that faith? You have asserted as a usage of the term: “Faith' is pretending to know something that you can't justify using evidence.” And I am offering you a very clear example of where someone is obviously pretending such. So, does this atheist have faith?

If not, do you acknowledge that your “usage 2” is flawed, and is not actually one that theists use?

What do you suggest?

You have touched upon one: faith is the justification for claiming knowledge. Note I am not asserting pretence, I am not asserting that the one with faith is deceitful (as pretence does), or that they are even wrong.

Then there is faith as not just what they believe but the way in which they let that belief filter into their life. It is a theological virtue. It is a personal and communal relationship with God. It is the commitment of the entire self to God. It is far more, and far deeper, than just “trust”, and it is far more than just a claim of knowledge. There are other ideas of what faith is and means, but these are a few.

Again, there is nothing asserting the one with faith is somehow pretending, somehow knowing that what they belief is wrong or at best unknowable.

Are you saying it isn't wrong to have faith, in the sense of pretending to know things you don't know? Remember, I was careful to distinguish the usage of 'faith' to refer to matters of trust, based on actual evidence.

I’m aware of your distinction, and my point throughout has been that your usage 2 is flawed, for all the reasons I have given.

You’re still asserting that they are pretending to know things they don’t actually know. You’re still looking at this from an atheist point of view, and your own particular philosophies (empiricism etc). If you can show that what they are claiming to know is wrong, or at least unknowable – and not just within what you accept for knowledge but what they accept as well – then you can claim they are pretending.

It's not about evidence. That is what you are restricting your usage of the word “faith” to be based around, such that you use the term “pretend” etc. You are looking at faith always with view that science is the only way to know things, that anything science doesn’t know or can’t know is therefore unknown or unknowable. Theists don’t have this limitation. I’m not saying that’s good or bad but it is different.

Let me hear the reasons why you think it's good and right to have faith, then.

Why do you think I’m saying it’s “good and right”? I think it is different, that’s all.

As for the dishonesty thing, they are being dishonest. In some cases it is deliberate dishonesty in communication with other people. In other cases, it might merely be self-delusion.

Show that they are being dishonest, then. Show that God is either not known or is unknowable, not just within the epistemologies you accept (science) but in the ones that the theist accepts, the ones that allow for direct revelation, for example.

What do you think actual theists mean? Are you an actual theist with personal experience in this area?

I have given a few previously. I also don’t need to be an actual theist, or have personal experience in this area, to be able to provide them.

 

[kx000]

Belief in science is knowledge.

 

[davewhite04]

Belief in science is knowledge.

Belief in religion is knowledge.

What is your point?

 

[kx000]

Belief in religion is knowledge.

What is your point?

Religion is belief in God, or faith in love. Religion is the correlation between love and sex. Maybe that is
what Jesus means by sexual morality:

 

[exchemist]

I was careful in post #16 to distinguish two often-conflated usages of the word 'faith'. Here, you seem to be talking about the first usage rather than the second one.

Yes, we all trust in certain "authorities", such as the writers of physics textbooks, to a greater or lesser extent. But that is an evidence-based kind of trust. We have only to look around our technological world to understand that there's something true about all that physics stuff the scientists blather on about. There's a visible track record of successes that justifies a certain level of trust. But we aren't pretending we all understand tensor calculus when we use our phones' GPS to locate ourselves on the map.

This sort of thing is quite different from having religious faith, which involves unjustified beliefs in supernatural powers. We might have faith - in the sense of 'trust' - in religious leaders or texts, certainly. But there's no track record there of religion delivering on any of its core promises. The primary claims that underlie religion are not adequately justified. So, if we claim they are true, we are pretending (to ourselves and/or to others) that there is justification there, when actually there isn't.

I reiterate, the second meaning of "faith" that you mentioned is one made up by you.

Faith is not pretended knowledge, not even religious faith. Religious people, in my experience, do not assert knowledge. They tell you what they think - or hope - is true about their religion, but they rarely if ever say they "know" it.

 

[James R]

exchemist:

I reiterate, the second meaning of "faith" that you mentioned is one made up by you.

Not by me. But it doesn't matter very much who first formulated the idea that way. What matters is whether it is true.

Faith is not pretended knowledge, not even religious faith. Religious people, in my experience, do not assert knowledge. They tell you what they think - or hope - is true about their religion, but they rarely if ever say they "know" it.

I'm sorry, but that's just not true in a lot of a cases. We should be careful about over-generalising or stereotyping, to say "all theists", of course. However, if you ask a theist a question such as "On a scale from zero to 100, how confident are you that God is real?", you'll quickly find that a lot of them will reply "100%", without hesitation. To emphasise: not all theists, but a lot of them. That reply is, in itself, evidence that their belief in God does not rely on evidence. They will happily confirm that, too. If you ask why they are so totally confident that God is real, they will often tell you directly that it's because they "have faith in God".

In other words, faith is used in place of justification. It is pretending to have a valid (or 'sound', in Sarkus's terms) justification when you do not have one.

If you ask a theist to give an example in which they believe that faith provides the necessary justification for some other belief they hold, apart from the God belief, they will usually struggle. Either that, or they will equivocate and give examples of 'faith' in sense #1 - that of evidence-based trust, which is not at all the same as 'faith' in sense #2 - the pretence that one can "just know" stuff.