Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« on: 2009-12-04 11:26:07 »
I've created a new vote on what to call the first Virian Sin>> Faith or Dogmatism
Old timers may recall it was originally called Faith but was renamed to Dogmatism as a concession during the Great Faith Wars on the virus list. I'd like to repeal the decision because even though Dogmatism is accurate I think it waters down our message.
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #1 on: 2009-12-14 16:25:35 »
Personally I'm voting for "dogma", 1) because I don't like looking backwards, and 2) because "faith" is a sloppy watered-down word that means too much and is hence much less useful despite (or perhaps even because of . . . ) the strong emotions the word evokes.
Colbert chose the word truthiness just moments before taping the premiere episode of The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005, after deciding that the originally scripted word – "truth" – was not absolutely ridiculous enough. "We're not talking about truth, we're talking about something that seems like truth – the truth we want to exist," he explained.[10] He introduced his definition in the first segment of the episode, saying: "Now I'm sure some of the 'word police,' the 'wordinistas' over at Webster's are gonna say, 'hey, that's not a word'. Well, anybody who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true. Or what did or didn't happen."[4] When asked in an out-of-character interview with The Onion's A.V. Club for his views on "the 'truthiness' imbroglio that's tearing our country apart", Colbert elaborated on the critique he intended to convey with the word:[3] Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word… It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the President because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?… Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #2 on: 2009-12-14 23:45:58 »
[Blunderov] I'm inclined to agree with Mo. The way I see it, we have two words with multiple meanings which overlap in some respects but not others. TMM, faith is nuanced more against religious belief and dogmatism more against unscientific thinking and authoritarianism. (Perhaps this is one of those family resemblance word problems of which Wittgenstein spoke?) The dogma of no dogma, or faith in not-faith; how to choose? Do we have to choose? We could have both!
So, what is our message? I think it is something like "think carefully about received wisdoms and conventional responses." In this spirit, perhaps what we need is not so much a redefined sin but a new and clearer virtue. Perhaps we could replace the virtue of reason with "scepticism" instead? Or we could just let sleeping dogs lie.
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #3 on: 2009-12-15 15:33:25 »
Blunderov,
Interesting thoughts. Earlier today I was engaged in a discussion with Sat and Lucifer in #virus on the topic, and here are my conclusions (I hope that both Sat and Lucifer chime in on this topic to represent themselves as necessary).
To my mind, dogmatism presents a kind of thinking as opposed to a necessarily religious or political concept. Since we advertise ourselves as a religious memeset first, it doesn't surprise me that many of us want to more directly challenge religion as dogmatic manifestation of faith.
I'm not entirely in disagreement on that point. However, since these issues tend to turn in politically nasty directions too, I'd like to also introduce "truthiness" as a dogmatic manifestation of politics. Stephen Colbert does it great justice on that point.
However being left with faith as a religious dogma, and truthiness as a political dogma, I cannot help but conclude that dogmatism remains the crucial underlying glue of all of these concepts, which is why I prefer its meaning for the first sin as opposed to the more shallow concepts of faith and truthiness.
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #4 on: 2009-12-15 16:59:05 »
I think we can all agree that dogmatism is a sin and it applies equally well to politics and religion. There were dogmatic communists and Objectivists long before Colbert came along with "truthiness".
The reason I proposed changing the sin back to Faith is because it is more general than Dogmatism. Generally faith means belief without (sufficient) evidence. The people on the religious side generally agree with the definition. That's precisely why they say "you gotta have faith" when they can't explain something. Dogmatism is having faith in a particular doctrine, holding tradition and authority over evidence and observation (as Hermit has said elsewhere).
The question then is whether Faith is too general. In other words, given that Dogmatism is a sin, are there other kinds of Faith that are acceptable? When is it OK to have faith, if ever?
The question then is whether Faith is too general. In other words, given that Dogmatism is a sin, are there other kinds of Faith that are acceptable? When is it OK to have faith, if ever?
when you are too poor to afford a shrink or prozac...and your life is falling to bits around you, a little bit of faith keeps you sane. insanity? depression?
i think the distinction is that some people use faith as something to lean on when they need help...and then there are others who are absolutely nasty/creepy/scary fundies. the former need it as therapy. not a sin.
my heart goes out to people who *need* religion. i cannot judge them. it is society's fault that they cannot help these people in need. its like mocking the inuits for not embracing the bikini in greenland. something like that...
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #6 on: 2009-12-16 01:53:02 »
[Blunderov] Yes I do think that faith is too general. While I entirely sympathise with the objective of more directly challenging religious notions, my difficulty is that faith is a major synonym for "trust". We have all seen how the unscrupulous will exploit the blurring here eg "You need to have more faith in evolution than I need to have in God".
The concept of faith presents us with the rather knotty problem of inference. To take a trite example, most of us have faith (we trust) that the sun will rise tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow). This is an inference based on our past observations. What we are saying is that, all things being equal the sun will rise tomorrow. Rather inconveniently though, we have no evidence whatsoever that all things will indeed remain equal. We are simply saying that, pragmatically if somewhat fallaciously, we have no reason to suppose that they won't and accordingly we set our alarm clocks to wake us in the morning. But every time we do so, we are acting on faith. So it seems to me that some faiths are more reasonable than others - however unsatisfactory that reasoning may ultimately be.
The way I see it, retaining "dogmatism" as a sin would avoid tarring "trust" with the same brush. We need trust sometimes.
(FWIW, The Great Faith War Revisited has raged across the borders into my own little country. The Politburu, a 4th generation atheist, will have no truck with "faith" (or any of my protests on its behalf) whatsoever and would gladly have it shot at dawn tomorrow or even sooner. Words have different emotional loadings for us all I suppose.)
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #7 on: 2009-12-16 11:24:33 »
Reminds Blunderov of weyken. Which obviates the need for faith, and introduces the opportunity to differentiate conclusions based on the application of an error-correcting methodology to observation - and sucking things out of one's thumb. Using a word totally pwned by the opposition to mean the exact opposite of what they assert is very unhelpful Once you get over that hump, classification of dogma as but one manifestation of misplaced trust and hopelessly vested belief then follows as a natural corollary.
Kindest Regards from a hopelessly busy Hermit & Co. Life will be a little less strenuous next week.
PS Lucifer, When you said, "Generally faith means belief without (sufficient) evidence" without the addendum, "or in the face of opposing evidence" I think that your assertion is over broad, as while indubitably true for e.g. preferring one flavour of made-up god thingie over another, many instances of such faith are dogmatically held in the face of an overwhelming mountain of evidence that the vesting of belief in what is held to be true is invalid e.g. creation vs evolution and the big bang or the lunatic concept of "transubstantiation".
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #8 on: 2009-12-16 13:15:52 »
I'm glad to see Hermit weighing in too. If he can convince more people to use "weyken", I'd quickly join that parade. Personally I think the word "reckon" roughly covers most of that, but "weyken" has a bit more of an epistimological bent to it as he's defined it. In any case, Hermit's cause has influenced me to use the word "reckon" a bit more, and caused me to appreciate and understand "weyken" when I see it used even if I have yet to switch to that as my preferred usage terminology. On the other hand "dogmatism" more than covers the sins I'd attribute to instances of "faith", and is well covered in all of the typical English dictionaries.
Here is how I use this constellation of words. We need a short list of ethics which can be counted on ones fingers and hands easily, which is how I view the sins and virtues. Four less than the ten commandments, and one less than the "deadly sins", a constellation which can be easily covered in a short coversation.
The sins and virtues as we have them now also make a nice mnemonic on two hands. Take your favorite/dominant hand - pull in the thumb and pinky finger together and choose your favorite three left-to-right remaining fingers (facing you or facing away, your choice) and those are the virtues (Reason, Empathy, and Vision = REV). The REV or "Reverend" of the CoV follows these virtues. The other hand are your sins (Hypocrisy, Apathy, and Dogmatism=HAD). If you find yourself acting out these, then you've been had, or pwned or whatever your favorite synonym to being used by memetic forces which have no concern for your humane well being.
As for our expanded explanations and arguments regarding those simpler 6 ethics, I think we have plenty of room to discuss various issues regarding faith, truthiness, weyken, and probably many other things which could easily follow from this shorter list. Indeed if we wish to construct some explanatory text on the 6, I'd be among the first to appreciate things like, "faith", "weyken", and "truthiness" within those explanations. However I think from a memetic point of view we need a root list to start from and the shorter, the clearer, and the more fundamental the better for begining our train of ethical thought. Indeed given our history on these conversations, I'd think things like "faith", "weyken", and possibly even "truthiness" to follow naturally in our extended conversations. However, starting with these other words would likely feel either confusing or unfamiliar without the framing of the virtues and sins we've already resolved ourselves to. "Faith" (as well as "truthiness") is a sin best understood within the framing of dogmatism, and "weyken" is a newer and shinier word for virtue best understood within the framework of reason and vision.
The problematic part in dealing with all these possibilities, lies not in actually arguing for or against any of them as virtues or sins - so far I think we all mostly agree on their merits and demerits - but in keeping our lists as memetically short and memorable as possible and yet easily expandable into greater vocabularies as our moment to moment conversational circumstances may require. I would certainly expect to see "faith" to quickly become a part of many of these discussions, but as a starting memetic framework, it seems a lot sloppier than dogmatism. Faith as sin framed by dogmatism makes a lot more sense to me than trying to frame dogmatism a sin through faith. Without being dogmatic about it, the latter sounds a lot noisier than the former. If the argument gets more complicated as they inevitably do, I'd rather fall back on dogmatism than faith in the end. Better to end the coversation (if it must) on a clearer rather than a sloppier note. I don't think our arguments here on these ethics fall into a for or against paradigm - regarding dogmatism and faith in this case - but rather a good or better framework.
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #9 on: 2009-12-16 18:14:03 »
[Fritz]I'm going into simplistic mode, so bare with me; and sort me out if required.
In the Beginning there was the WORD
Dogmatism is the WORD Faith is to accept and follow the WORD
Because the WORD is rooted in Dogmatism it requires no proofs and examination. To have Faith in the WORD it is believed to be irrefutable and infallible as stated .
Now at CoV there is no WORD There are MEMEs to be presented and tested and discussed ?
My thought is, are these words (Dogmatism and Faith) of note beyond defining them ? or; Do they themselves become a Dogma of CoV if used as discussed so far ?
Weyken is certainly interesting, but from a brief snoop on the Net, it would be a word we are going to create and use as Hermit has defined it; which is great and has the real advantage of not being prejudiced by successive uses by others.
Weyken: from Middle English weyken, wayken. woken. wokien, wakien, from Anglo-Saxon wācian, become weak, languish, vacillate (= Ml), weecken, become soft, Dutch weeken, soak, = Old High German weichan, Middle High German G. weiclien, become weak), wæmacr;can, make weak, weaken, soften, afflict, from wāc, weak: see weak, a.
Weyken: Etymology: Old English weye, weigh or measure: Old English cennan, to declare. Perception; understanding, Middle English kennen (influenced by Old Norse kenna, to know).
Denotation: 1: Data internalized as supportable knowledge with a sustainable provisional truth value ascribed to it through the medium of critical rationalism and reasoning based on evidence (for example - and ideally, through the scientific method. 2: My weyken (based on experience and non-falsification) is that the sun will most probably appear to rise tomorrow.
Just when I thought I was out-they pull me back in
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #10 on: 2009-12-17 02:01:43 »
Regardless of the various "dictionary" definitions of the word "faith", as memeticists we should remember that a huge swath of the global population derives their understanding of the word from that damn ol' unholy babble:
Hebrews 11:1 says: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things unseen."
Bullshit! Walter sez:
EVIDENCE is the substance of things seen. Faith is the hope of things unseen.
Those crafty old priest bastards of old fancied themselves as memeticists in their own day.
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #11 on: 2009-12-17 03:20:24 »
And as far as faith and belief are concerned, that war is won.
Consider that a Jesuit will not argue with you unless you accept his axioms, and once you accept his axioms, you have lost. If you use his words, then you have accepted his axioms too, as part and parcel of the package.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
PS Lucifer, When you said, "Generally faith means belief without (sufficient) evidence" without the addendum, "or in the face of opposing evidence" I think that your assertion is over broad, as while indubitably true for e.g. preferring one flavour of made-up god thingie over another, many instances of such faith are dogmatically held in the face of an overwhelming mountain of evidence that the vesting of belief in what is held to be true is invalid e.g. creation vs evolution and the big bang or the lunatic concept of "transubstantiation".
I don't think the addendum adds anything to my definition because it is logically implicit. If there is a mountain of evidence against some assertion, then there is necessarily sufficient evidence to believe the logical inverse of the same assertion. Technically I'm thinking of evidence in terms of bits (or decibels) (logarithm of the Bayesian likelihood-ratio) as described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_factor.
While I'm on the subject I'd like to introduce a technical definition of faith: An epistemological agent has faith in a proposition to the extent that the truth value assigned the proposition differs from that a perfect Bayesian machine would assign given the same evidence. For example if someone is absolutely certain that transubstantiation is true (probability/plausibility/truth value is 1) while the evidence weighs very heavily against it (say 90db of evidence which corresponds to odds of a billion to 1 against and a probability of 9.99e-10) then they have faith of 0.999999999 (or 90db of faith).
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #13 on: 2009-12-17 11:17:23 »
Let's consider two cases in order to tease apart the concepts of faith and dogmatism.
Imagine a dogmatic atheist. Let's say they didn't arrive at their stance through reason but rather because they grew up in communist Russia. They happen to be correct in that the balance of evidence agrees, but they are dogmatic in that they are unwilling to question the party line.
Next imagine an AGW skeptic. Actually you don't have to imagine, professional skeptic James Randi just came out of the closet. Now assuming the balance of evidence supports AGW, Randi is wrong in his views but I'm also assuming as a skeptic he would not be dogmatic about it.
So now given these cases which is the greater sin? Faith (being wrong) or dogmatism (unwilling to adapt).
« Last Edit: 2009-12-17 11:19:19 by David Lucifer »
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #14 on: 2009-12-17 11:42:49 »
[Lucifer] I don't think the addendum adds anything to my definition because it is logically implicit. If there is a mountain of evidence against some assertion, then there is necessarily sufficient evidence to believe the logical inverse of the same assertion.
[Hermit] I don't think it is this simple in logic or in common language usage (which often are at loggerheads suggesting a deliberate effort to prevent logic from being applied). For example, I think you may need to think hard about the paradox of material implication and its impact on your conclusions. For example, "If DNA alteration occurs during transubstantiation then the babble is true" is a logically true statement because DNA change does not occur. Even so, as the if clause is not satisfied, the sentence, though true, does not make a statement about the truth value of the babble because the statement does not assert, "if DNA alteration does not occur during transubstantiation then the babble is false". Remapping the problem domain to a social problem as suggested by "Wason's selection dilemma" might help you think about it further.
[Lucifer] While I'm on the subject I'd like to introduce a technical definition of faith <snip>
[Hermit] Interesting suggestion. Perhaps it might be somewhat challenging to reach agreement on the value of evidence when that might result in your opponent seeing the outcome as a loss. Still I can see it having utility in many situations.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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