Attacked by a Webbot
By John Taylor; 2009 Jan 08, 09 Sharaf, 165 BE
A while back I had a run-in with a Web centered philosophy program designed to pick a fight based on the faulty presuppositions that it detects in your answers to a long questionnaire. This the "Philosopher Magazine" presents as a teaser to visitors on its website. One contradiction it found among my responses had to do with the question, "What is Faith?"
You disagreed with the proposition that:
"It is quite reasonable to believe in the existence of a thing without even the possibility of evidence for its existence."
But agreed that:
"Atheism is a faith just like any other, because it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God."
The survey points out that of almost 140 thousand people who took the test, 33 thousand, or about a quarter of them, had this "tension" in their beliefs.
I set this argument aside for quite a while, mostly because I misread the first part. That is, I thought that I had agreed that it is reasonable to believe without evidence. That is what I am like, forgetful, absent minded, unreliable. I miss things. Basic things. Now, looking it over a month later I realize that I did give the right answer. It is definitely not reasonable to believe without proof. That is why the Qur'an, for example, is constantly offering proofs, signs, evidences and arguments for the knowledge it presents. It most definitely does not expect believers to just believe blindly.
It is just as well I put it off, however. In the meantime, intrigued by this little virtual confrontation, I looked around for something to help the kids argue better. I ordered an informal logic book I found on the Web designed for home schooled Christian children called "The Fallacy Detective." When it arrived we started to go through it as part of our daily study session. We are about two thirds of the way through. Unfortunately, 14 year old Silvie took a dislike to it at first; it was hard going for the first half of the book. One problem of several was that she resented an example name that they use of a fallacious arguer, a character by the name of Silvia. Not tactful. Only now is her bitter resistance attenuating.
Anyway, during this time I did a little refresher study of informal logic on my own, and I think I can name the fallacy that the philosophy machine commits here, or rather forces the responder to commit. It asks you to answer yes or no to the proposition:
"Atheism is a faith just like any other, because it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God."
This is what is called a complex question. It forces you to accept a presupposition that you do not necessarily agree with. Although I agree that atheism is a faith like any other, I do not necessarily accept that the impossibility of proving a negative is adequate to explain why it is a faith like any other. Forced to answer yes or no, I chose yes. I was begging the question and I knew it, but what are you gonna do? Agree that atheism is true? Here is the rest of the argument the machine spat out at me.
"In disagreeing with the first statement, you are acting consistently with the general principle which states that in the absence of good grounds for believing something, it is not rational to believe it. For example, it is not possible to disprove the possibility that there are invisible pink fairies at this moment circling the planet Pluto, but we do not countenance it as a real possibility because there is no evidence for their planetary activities.
"This is not to be thought of as a matter of faith, but of sound reasoning. But asserting that atheism is a faith just like any other because it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God contradicts this principle. It replaces the principle 'in the absence of good grounds for believing something, it is not rational to believe it' with the principle, 'in the absence of good grounds for believing something, it requires faith not to believe it'. For this reason, atheism is not a matter of faith in the same way as belief in God.
JET: Granted. I agree that this Via Negative, which supports anything and nothing and everything between, hardly does much to uphold belief in God. But disproving that does not do much to support their conclusion either. An equivocation here confounds worldview with "faith." They are not the same thing. A worldview requires a different kind of evidence, evaluation rather than proofs. Faith is a form of reason, and therefore requires its own kind of evidence to uphold it.
"In short, belief without evidence (a form of faith) is not the same as non-belief due to lack of evidence (rational refusal to assent)."
This strange definition of faith as believing without evidence is the result of an interesting misunderstanding, intentional or not, of John 20:29. Here the resurrected Jesus says to doubting Thomas, who had declared that he had to touch His wounds in order to accept that it was really Him. Jesus comes and allows him that, but then declares, "Because you have seen me you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed." (NIV) Clearly, the meaning is not that faith is belief without evidence, but rather that the kind of evidence that grounds faith has nothing to do with what physical eyes see.
Faith is rather what the inner eye sees. But seeing is not enough. Also, faith is what the outer self does to enact what it has seen. Jesus made this clear. "Not everyone that sayeth unto me, Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." (Matt 7:21) And, as the Master is reported to have said in London,
"Know, O thou possessors of insight, that true spirituality is like unto a lake of clear water which reflects the divine. Of such was the spirituality of Jesus Christ. There is another kind which is like a mirage, seeming to be spiritual when it is not. That which is truly spiritual must light the path to God, and must result in deeds. We cannot believe the call to be spiritual when there is no result. Spirit is reality, and when the spirit in each of us seeks to join itself with the Great Reality, it must in turn give life." (ABL, 107)
That is, faith is knowing, acting on that knowledge, and then behaving in such a way that faith replicates itself by teaching others. The Christian theologian Paul Tillich made an excellent point when he pointed out that the creative power love is the glue that empowers faith to span knowledge, action and teaching.
"Faith implies love, love lives in works... The immediate expression of love is action. Theologians have discussed the question of how faith can result in action. The answer is: because it implies love and because the expression of love is action. The mediating link between faith and works is love." (Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 115)
This is what faith is all about, bridging faith, works and teaching with love. A worldview causes a lifestyle and the lifestyle bears the fruits of spirit. That is why, I think, the House of Justice denies that Baha'is are here to push the Baha'i agenda. We are here to do something else entirely.
"It is not our purpose to impose Baha'i teachings upon others by persuading the powers that be to enact laws enforcing Baha'i principles, nor to join movements which have such legislation as their aim. The guidance that Baha'i institutions offer to mankind does not comprise a series of specific answers to current problems, but rather the illumination of an entirely new way of life. Without this way of life the problems are insoluble; with it they will either not arise or, if they arise, can be resolved." (Universal House of Justice, 21 July 1968, letter to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States)
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email: badijet@gmail.com
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