From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Tue Apr 12 2005 - 14:21:41 BST
Hi Sam,
Geez, what did you do to make Marsha mad at you? I can't leave you
alone for a second...
On to the Dawkins stuff...
First, I should say I've never read a word of Dawkins other than
what's been posted here from time to time. However, it's clear that
Ian loves him, you tolerate him, and Platt hates him, so that gives
me a pretty good idea of where he's coming from.
sam:
Whereas I think it is in the caring that the truth is found - and I
think Pirsig makes just this point in ZMM.
msh says:
I'm all for truth. As above, I think faith is more often than not
an impediment to truth. Pirsig makes this point, too.
sam:
Yes, but what is the understanding of 'faith' that is being objected
to?
msh:
Somehow, somewhere, several people have gotten the idea that I'm
against faith. I'm only against faith when people use it to build
bridges or pass laws, or otherwise attempt to affect the lives of
people who prefer a more secular approach. True story: I live on a
secluded chunk of land, at the end of a deliberately rutty pot-holey
well-posted private road. In over 12 years I'd not had a single
uninvited visitor, not even salespeople or trick-or- treaters when,
one morning last summer, I'm sitting on the sofa, naked, as usual,
watching Dialing-For-Dollars and polishing off a quart of Chunky
Monkey, and there's a knock. Two freshly minted young men from a new
church have come to save my soul which, to them, looks like it needs
saving since I'm now wrapped in a ratty blanket and softly banging my
head against the door jam. They talk; I listen. On about the third
iteration of the bliss awaiting them, I ask calmly "How does your
church feel about trespassing?" They say they are only concerned
about my soul, and leave. Two days later, two different but
nevertheless freshly minted young men are at my door, telling me the
apparently boiler-plate story of all that awaits them with God in the
afterlife. This time I hold up my hand and say, "Look guys, unless
you want to get to Heaven within the next couple of minutes you
better get the fuck outta here." So, see, faith makes me rude to
people. It's faith's fault.
sam:
I don't think faith has to mean abandoning rational judgement and
intellectual integrity - rather the reverse -
msh:
But it at least means suspending rational judgement re the belief in
question, unless we're gonna leave the OED completely out of the
picture.
sam:
but there seems to be this more or less explicit assumption about
what sort of thing religious faith is, that, to use standard MoQ
language, religious beliefs are irreducibly social level. Richard
Dawkins, bless his heart, is admirably explicit:
'Another member of the religious meme complex is called faith. It
means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of
evidence. The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall
admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in
comparison. Thomas demanded evidence. Nothing is more lethal for
certain kinds of meme than a tendency to look for evidence. The other
apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence,
are held up to us as worthy of imitation. The meme for blind faith
secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of
discouraging rational enquiry.'
msh says:
Whenever I hear the word "meme" I get a sense that someone is working
too hard to sound intelligent. That said, what's above sounds
right. But I'd have to defer to your expertise in his explication of
the Doubting Thomas story.
sam:
In a footnote to this passage he [Dawkins] expands:
'But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads
people to believe something - it doesn't matter what - in the total
absence of supporting evidence.
msh:
I'd say, "allows" rather than "leads," but OK. Here he's leaving
himself open for the charge that scientific principles are accepted
on faith. And you know I'm too smart to leave that little morsel for
the likes of you and my friend Platt.
dawkins via sam:
If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be
superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to
believe it anyway.
msh:
Yep.
dawkins via sam:
I don't want to argue that the things in which a particular
individual has faith are necessarily daft. They may or may
not be. The point is that there is no way of deciding whether they
are, and no way of preferring one article of faith over another,
because evidence is explicitly eschewed.'
msh:
Sounds right. People may faithfully believe things that are
perfectly true; but as long as people faithfully believe things that
are false... well, you know what follows, faith can't be a
sufficient condition for knowledge.
dawkins via sam:
'...faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness. Faith
is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to
forgiveness, to decent human feelings. What a weapon! Religious faith
deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an
even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the
hydrogen bomb.'
msh says:
Well, this is worth a giggle, though, in this example, his use of
hyperbole borders on bad writing. On the other hand, millions of
people have indeed been and continue to be slaughtered in religious
wars. On the other other hand, millions have been slaughtered for
resources, markets, and cheap labor. What are ya gonna do?
sam via sam:
According to the Dawkins conception, then, faith is 'blind', and not
open to rational debate. Justifiable beliefs must rest upon a
rational account of the world, where there is recourse to publicly
available evidence and harmony with our discoveries and experience.
In other words, they must be scientific answers.
<snip reference to Locke>
sam:
I just think these assumptions are unfounded. Is your position
different to Dawkins'?
msh:
In some ways, some noted above. I'd say Dawson's understanding of
the word is very close to the dictionary definition. A faith-based
belief is not open to rational debate not because we somehow forbid
it, but because if the belief had reasons supporting it, it's not
faith-based, by definition.
As for "Justifiable beliefs" in your sentence above, I'd qualify it
by saying "Scientifically justifiable," which brings us back to my
original, rather straight forward claim that faith-based assumptions
are not made pragmatically, and scientific assumptions are not faith-
based. If I can get you to agree with this, then I'm perfectly
willing to explore the frontier your pushing for, such as whether
there is reason to believe that the historical Christ was the son of
God.
Hope to send more later today.
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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