None of the examples you give are examples of faith. I don’t have faith my car will start, I have evidence. That evidence being the fact it has started the previous 1000 times I have tried. Which is why I am 99.9% certain my 2019 truck will start and about 50% confident my 1970 nova will start. I have a track record to base my confidence (or lack thereof) on. It also means little that I do not have the technical expertise to understand how an engine works or a plane flies. I know that they were designed and engineered based on the scientific method and have to meet standards of proof. If I was buying a car and noticed it didn’t have a motor, I would ask the salesman how exactly it was going to run. If his answer was “it works in mysterious ways”, I would not believe him. I see no evidence for Gods existence so even if I wanted to believe, I could not. I could choose to hope, but I could not choose to believe.
You almost certainly require explanations for every one of the examples you gave. You want the doctor to explain the reason he is giving you the pill, what the pill will do, and what the possible side effects might be. You also might want a second opinion to check the reasoning of the first doctor. You are aware of the safety records of air flight in general. That it’s safer than driving a car. You also require that the pilot is qualified and know that the airlines are regulated so they have to provide certain levels of maintenance. You don't make these decision based on faith, you make them based on probability.
Life is full of mysteries, I agree. But science routinely takes mysteries that are credited to God and reveals their natural cause. It has been doing this for hundreds of years.
“It's a mystery why we are consumed when our newborn wraps her tiny hand around our finger.”
My friends father was a loving and caring man. He certainly felt the way you described above about his children. At work one day, he fell off the back of a truck and had serious trauma to his head. He recovered, but noticed that he no longer felt the same way about life. He felt no real empathy and was almost entirely emotionally detached from his family and friends. This is a well documented and established effect of certain types of head trauma. If that feeling we get about our children is due to our spirit and connection with our creator, are you saying my friends dad damaged his spirit when he fell off that truck? Or is it more likely that our brains are why we feel that way about our children and my friends dad damaged his frontal lobe when he fell off that truck?
And, of course, there is evidence and then there is evidence.
The fact that our car has started before builds my faith, my conviction, that so it will always be. The fact that the plane has lifted me, mysteriously, before gives me faith it will again. And if in fact we put some Primitive/Pre-Scientific upon that same plane, he too would share that faith (increasing with every trip) absent any scientific understanding at all of the principles of aerodynamic lift. The fact that science can explain -- to a degree -- why the plane lifts does not change the fact that it is faith that allows me to buy a ticket.
Science explains a lot, no question...to a point...but with each explanation we simply reach another question: why is "X" so? Why does a spark ignite? Why is a vapor flammable? Why does steel work in the way it does? And with each question answered we simply push the question that much further:: why matter? why energy? why consciousness? why beauty? why love?
Certainly those transcendent feelings are -- as you say -- filtered through and processed by our brain. And certainly an injury to such an organ can impact that processing. But the fact that a blind person cannot appreciate the Mona Lisa does not make da Vinci's work somehow less transcendent. The fact that your friend no longer felt an empathy he felt before does not mean that his very human feeling was unreal....it only means he was no longer equipped to recognize it as he had.
The lack or the destruction of an ability to perceive does not change the truth of what had been perceived. Your friend was, quite obviously, very much aware of what he had lost...just as the blind man who lost his sight would be aware of what he is missing, even if he can no longer perceive it.
The evidence of God surrounds us .... just as the infinite beauty of the universe surrounds us. That you can't see it...or, perhaps, refuse to see it...even in the grip of a newborn's hand, even in the heart-piercing chords of the 'Nessun dorma', even in the shattering kiss of an eternal love, even in a million other things that fill our days and our dreams. Even if, in some misguided post-modern surety we dismiss it all as "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato"... that doesn't change the truth of what is.
So of course we can choose to Believe...to make that little leap... given the evidence, given the mysteries which always and forever will surround us.
This is a semantic argument. You have changed the accepted meaning of the word “faith”.
You state that evidence builds your faith and then in another response state (correctly) “Faith is belief in the absence of evidence” - How can both of those things be true? In the presence of evidence faith is unnecessary. So evidence doesn’t build faith it supersedes it.
You also keep calling well understood and proven processes “mysterious”. Flight is not mysterious. Electricity getting to your coffee grinder is not mysterious. Medicine curing ailments is not mysterious. Just because you don’t understand the process does not mean it is mysterious. I understand you have to establish their mysterious nature in order for them to make any sense in an analogy to faith in God, but they just aren’t. Those things are in an entirely different category.
—“The fact that science can explain -- to a degree -- why the plane lifts does not change the fact that it is faith that allows me to buy a ticket.”
If there is evidence that planes reliably fly then it is simply false to say “it is faith that allows me to buy a ticket.” Let’s replace the word faith with the correct definition (that you provided) of the word faith. — I have decades worth of evidence that planes fly, but “it is (belief in the absence of evidence) that allows me to buy a ticket. Does that make sense?
—“Certainly those transcendent feelings are -- as you say -- filtered through and processed by our brain.”
I didn’t say any of that. This description makes no sense to me. You believe “transcendent feelings” exist independent of us and they are somehow filtered through our brains? What form do these transcendent feelings take when they are outside of our brains, before they are “filtered”? It makes far more sense to me that our brains are the originators of these feelings.
The last argument is more sermon than rational claim, and would be better received by a congregation. I have heard it countless times and the fact still remains, the beauty of nature or vastness of space is not evidence of God. It is beautiful and vast. It inspires awe and can even bring a person to tears. The jump from there to “god did it” is not a “little leap”. It is a gargantuan and unnecessary one.
And lastly you say “And, of course, there is evidence and then there is evidence”
Of course it's a semantic argument. But it's an accurate semantic argument. You also confuse evidence & proof.
'Faith' is complete trust, a strong conviction. The fact of faith has nothing to do with proof, per se, but accumulated evidence may reinforce "strong conviction". I have faith my wife loves me...and every loving act she performs does indeed reinforce that trust with the evidence of her act, but I have faith in her love even in the absence of that evidential act...and utterly in the absence of proof, for love itself is unprovable. There is no litmus test for Love.
Equally we can say that faith in the existence of God is buoyed, or reinforced by all kinds of evidence -- the glory of the universe, the shock of beauty, the transcendence of love, your child's first smile -- but none of those 'clues' proves God. Evidence may reinforce faith but evidence, per se, proves nothing, it simply nudges.
You say 'electricity getting to your coffee grinder' is not mysterious. But in fact it is mysterious to any of us who have no knowledge or insight or 'proof' of the process. Instead, in the absence of that proof, we have 'complete trust' that the coffee grinder grinds when we plug it into an outlet.
The fact that I can't prove electricity does not alter my faith in electricity. The fact that I can't prove God does not alter my faith in God. And just as we might say, an Electrical Engineer or Physicist can prove electricity....so too might some insist that Aquinas or some learned Theologian can equally prove God. In either case, I don't really care. The arcana of such exercises are beyond me. In either case, my Faith remains.
Let me see if I can clarify my meaning, re: "transcendent feelings'...because you're right, that construction was sloppy.
Consider: a newborn reaches out and curls his hand around his father's finger. At the most mundane of levels it's just a simple touch, 'perceived' by the skin, the nerves and transmitted to the brain where the pressure and warmth of that touch are combined with the visual data processed through the eyes, and the olfactory data processed through the nose (that fresh-baked scent of babies) to arrive at 'brain central' where our various knowledge references interpret all that raw data to tell us: it's a baby's grasp. Tears come to our eyes....the same tears, chemically speaking, which are generated when just that afternoon we heard Pavarotti sing the 'Nessun dorma'. That is the transcendent feeling and it is, indeed, processed by the brain.
It obviously does not exist outside us...not in the same way the baby's little fist does, or the scent, or the warmth -- those are all independent phenomena. But the combination of all those things upon a dog, though perceived by the dog as the child's touch, are not transcendent. Why? Why would our brains attach some kind of extraordinary meaning, to that mundane combination of stimuli such that we cry, and our heart yearns? Why, to your point, would we see nature as 'beautiful' or the universe as 'awesome'? Dog's don't. Why do we? Why & how would the human's mammalian brain create such perceptions when they serve absolutely no utilitarian purpose? Why do we feel this sense of wonder, dread, and veneration ... how can the universe seem 'sublime'?
But never mind. The answer matters little. Faith requires, actually, that it matters not at all. Belief, always, is a matter of choice. And it is a choice exercised with eyes wide open. Either we have faith in God, in Truth, in an absolute Morality, a transcendent & eternal justice, in Love, in Beauty, in Awe....or.... as I said.... we dismiss it all as that 'fragment of an underdone potato' and say God is an unnecessary leap.
I'm reminded of a passage from De Lubac...just encountered it a few days ago, in fact: "So, in the matter of God, whatever certain people may be tempted to think, it is never the proof that is lacking. What is lacking is taste for God. The most distressing diagnosis that can be made of the present age, and the most alarming, is to all appearances at least, it has lost the taste for God. Man prefers himself to God. And so he deflects the movement which leads to God; or since he is unable to alter its direction, he persists in interpreting it falsely. He imagines he has liquidated the proofs. He concentrates on the critique of the proofs and never gets beyond them. He turns away from that which convinces him. If the taste returned, we may be sure that the proofs would soon be restored in everybody’s eyes, and would seem—what they really are if one considers the kernal of them—clearer than day."
Best wishes going forward.
Sorry for the long response...too much time on this already.
(which actually is a fascinating question all by itself: is our reaction to Nessun dorma an intellectual one? Can we even verbalize why it happens or what, actually, is happening? (the universality of the response itself is telling -- there's a whole subgenre of 'Nessun dorma Reaction Videos' on YouTube. Bizarre.)
None of the examples you give are examples of faith. I don’t have faith my car will start, I have evidence. That evidence being the fact it has started the previous 1000 times I have tried. Which is why I am 99.9% certain my 2019 truck will start and about 50% confident my 1970 nova will start. I have a track record to base my confidence (or lack thereof) on. It also means little that I do not have the technical expertise to understand how an engine works or a plane flies. I know that they were designed and engineered based on the scientific method and have to meet standards of proof. If I was buying a car and noticed it didn’t have a motor, I would ask the salesman how exactly it was going to run. If his answer was “it works in mysterious ways”, I would not believe him. I see no evidence for Gods existence so even if I wanted to believe, I could not. I could choose to hope, but I could not choose to believe.
You almost certainly require explanations for every one of the examples you gave. You want the doctor to explain the reason he is giving you the pill, what the pill will do, and what the possible side effects might be. You also might want a second opinion to check the reasoning of the first doctor. You are aware of the safety records of air flight in general. That it’s safer than driving a car. You also require that the pilot is qualified and know that the airlines are regulated so they have to provide certain levels of maintenance. You don't make these decision based on faith, you make them based on probability.
Life is full of mysteries, I agree. But science routinely takes mysteries that are credited to God and reveals their natural cause. It has been doing this for hundreds of years.
“It's a mystery why we are consumed when our newborn wraps her tiny hand around our finger.”
My friends father was a loving and caring man. He certainly felt the way you described above about his children. At work one day, he fell off the back of a truck and had serious trauma to his head. He recovered, but noticed that he no longer felt the same way about life. He felt no real empathy and was almost entirely emotionally detached from his family and friends. This is a well documented and established effect of certain types of head trauma. If that feeling we get about our children is due to our spirit and connection with our creator, are you saying my friends dad damaged his spirit when he fell off that truck? Or is it more likely that our brains are why we feel that way about our children and my friends dad damaged his frontal lobe when he fell off that truck?
Sure they are.
And, of course, there is evidence and then there is evidence.
The fact that our car has started before builds my faith, my conviction, that so it will always be. The fact that the plane has lifted me, mysteriously, before gives me faith it will again. And if in fact we put some Primitive/Pre-Scientific upon that same plane, he too would share that faith (increasing with every trip) absent any scientific understanding at all of the principles of aerodynamic lift. The fact that science can explain -- to a degree -- why the plane lifts does not change the fact that it is faith that allows me to buy a ticket.
Science explains a lot, no question...to a point...but with each explanation we simply reach another question: why is "X" so? Why does a spark ignite? Why is a vapor flammable? Why does steel work in the way it does? And with each question answered we simply push the question that much further:: why matter? why energy? why consciousness? why beauty? why love?
Certainly those transcendent feelings are -- as you say -- filtered through and processed by our brain. And certainly an injury to such an organ can impact that processing. But the fact that a blind person cannot appreciate the Mona Lisa does not make da Vinci's work somehow less transcendent. The fact that your friend no longer felt an empathy he felt before does not mean that his very human feeling was unreal....it only means he was no longer equipped to recognize it as he had.
The lack or the destruction of an ability to perceive does not change the truth of what had been perceived. Your friend was, quite obviously, very much aware of what he had lost...just as the blind man who lost his sight would be aware of what he is missing, even if he can no longer perceive it.
The evidence of God surrounds us .... just as the infinite beauty of the universe surrounds us. That you can't see it...or, perhaps, refuse to see it...even in the grip of a newborn's hand, even in the heart-piercing chords of the 'Nessun dorma', even in the shattering kiss of an eternal love, even in a million other things that fill our days and our dreams. Even if, in some misguided post-modern surety we dismiss it all as "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato"... that doesn't change the truth of what is.
So of course we can choose to Believe...to make that little leap... given the evidence, given the mysteries which always and forever will surround us.
This is a semantic argument. You have changed the accepted meaning of the word “faith”.
You state that evidence builds your faith and then in another response state (correctly) “Faith is belief in the absence of evidence” - How can both of those things be true? In the presence of evidence faith is unnecessary. So evidence doesn’t build faith it supersedes it.
You also keep calling well understood and proven processes “mysterious”. Flight is not mysterious. Electricity getting to your coffee grinder is not mysterious. Medicine curing ailments is not mysterious. Just because you don’t understand the process does not mean it is mysterious. I understand you have to establish their mysterious nature in order for them to make any sense in an analogy to faith in God, but they just aren’t. Those things are in an entirely different category.
—“The fact that science can explain -- to a degree -- why the plane lifts does not change the fact that it is faith that allows me to buy a ticket.”
If there is evidence that planes reliably fly then it is simply false to say “it is faith that allows me to buy a ticket.” Let’s replace the word faith with the correct definition (that you provided) of the word faith. — I have decades worth of evidence that planes fly, but “it is (belief in the absence of evidence) that allows me to buy a ticket. Does that make sense?
—“Certainly those transcendent feelings are -- as you say -- filtered through and processed by our brain.”
I didn’t say any of that. This description makes no sense to me. You believe “transcendent feelings” exist independent of us and they are somehow filtered through our brains? What form do these transcendent feelings take when they are outside of our brains, before they are “filtered”? It makes far more sense to me that our brains are the originators of these feelings.
The last argument is more sermon than rational claim, and would be better received by a congregation. I have heard it countless times and the fact still remains, the beauty of nature or vastness of space is not evidence of God. It is beautiful and vast. It inspires awe and can even bring a person to tears. The jump from there to “god did it” is not a “little leap”. It is a gargantuan and unnecessary one.
And lastly you say “And, of course, there is evidence and then there is evidence”
I have no idea what this means
Of course it's a semantic argument. But it's an accurate semantic argument. You also confuse evidence & proof.
'Faith' is complete trust, a strong conviction. The fact of faith has nothing to do with proof, per se, but accumulated evidence may reinforce "strong conviction". I have faith my wife loves me...and every loving act she performs does indeed reinforce that trust with the evidence of her act, but I have faith in her love even in the absence of that evidential act...and utterly in the absence of proof, for love itself is unprovable. There is no litmus test for Love.
Equally we can say that faith in the existence of God is buoyed, or reinforced by all kinds of evidence -- the glory of the universe, the shock of beauty, the transcendence of love, your child's first smile -- but none of those 'clues' proves God. Evidence may reinforce faith but evidence, per se, proves nothing, it simply nudges.
You say 'electricity getting to your coffee grinder' is not mysterious. But in fact it is mysterious to any of us who have no knowledge or insight or 'proof' of the process. Instead, in the absence of that proof, we have 'complete trust' that the coffee grinder grinds when we plug it into an outlet.
The fact that I can't prove electricity does not alter my faith in electricity. The fact that I can't prove God does not alter my faith in God. And just as we might say, an Electrical Engineer or Physicist can prove electricity....so too might some insist that Aquinas or some learned Theologian can equally prove God. In either case, I don't really care. The arcana of such exercises are beyond me. In either case, my Faith remains.
Let me see if I can clarify my meaning, re: "transcendent feelings'...because you're right, that construction was sloppy.
Consider: a newborn reaches out and curls his hand around his father's finger. At the most mundane of levels it's just a simple touch, 'perceived' by the skin, the nerves and transmitted to the brain where the pressure and warmth of that touch are combined with the visual data processed through the eyes, and the olfactory data processed through the nose (that fresh-baked scent of babies) to arrive at 'brain central' where our various knowledge references interpret all that raw data to tell us: it's a baby's grasp. Tears come to our eyes....the same tears, chemically speaking, which are generated when just that afternoon we heard Pavarotti sing the 'Nessun dorma'. That is the transcendent feeling and it is, indeed, processed by the brain.
It obviously does not exist outside us...not in the same way the baby's little fist does, or the scent, or the warmth -- those are all independent phenomena. But the combination of all those things upon a dog, though perceived by the dog as the child's touch, are not transcendent. Why? Why would our brains attach some kind of extraordinary meaning, to that mundane combination of stimuli such that we cry, and our heart yearns? Why, to your point, would we see nature as 'beautiful' or the universe as 'awesome'? Dog's don't. Why do we? Why & how would the human's mammalian brain create such perceptions when they serve absolutely no utilitarian purpose? Why do we feel this sense of wonder, dread, and veneration ... how can the universe seem 'sublime'?
But never mind. The answer matters little. Faith requires, actually, that it matters not at all. Belief, always, is a matter of choice. And it is a choice exercised with eyes wide open. Either we have faith in God, in Truth, in an absolute Morality, a transcendent & eternal justice, in Love, in Beauty, in Awe....or.... as I said.... we dismiss it all as that 'fragment of an underdone potato' and say God is an unnecessary leap.
I'm reminded of a passage from De Lubac...just encountered it a few days ago, in fact: "So, in the matter of God, whatever certain people may be tempted to think, it is never the proof that is lacking. What is lacking is taste for God. The most distressing diagnosis that can be made of the present age, and the most alarming, is to all appearances at least, it has lost the taste for God. Man prefers himself to God. And so he deflects the movement which leads to God; or since he is unable to alter its direction, he persists in interpreting it falsely. He imagines he has liquidated the proofs. He concentrates on the critique of the proofs and never gets beyond them. He turns away from that which convinces him. If the taste returned, we may be sure that the proofs would soon be restored in everybody’s eyes, and would seem—what they really are if one considers the kernal of them—clearer than day."
Best wishes going forward.
Sorry for the long response...too much time on this already.
I would imagine my dog doesn't tear up when he hears 'Nessun dorma' for the same reason he can't do my daughters algebra homework.
I had to get one final snarky remark in
Thanks for your time. It was interesting
Clearly you need a smarter dog!
(which actually is a fascinating question all by itself: is our reaction to Nessun dorma an intellectual one? Can we even verbalize why it happens or what, actually, is happening? (the universality of the response itself is telling -- there's a whole subgenre of 'Nessun dorma Reaction Videos' on YouTube. Bizarre.)
You are so right it is disturbing.