Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #90 on: 2009-12-27 12:50:14 »
Well clearly to much time on my hands, but things that make me go "Hmmmm".
Faith has over 700 millions hits on google in 0.16 seconds and Dogma has just under 13 million hits in 0.28 seconds.
In western languages (according to Babelfish anyway) Dogma is inculcated as Dogma; with the exception of the French but 'a' to and 'e' is still an token adjustment. Yet Faith, has taken root and has been reframed for each language to fulfill its names sake..
The definitions meander for Faith, Dogma is Dogma; clearly.
Faith I suspect will cloud the issues since it opens itself to convenient interpretation. The folk currently trapped in glacial hell of winter would seem to appreciate Faith as a useful weapon in the arsenal of discourse, as bodily functions begin to grind to a halt in the bitter cold, but I am confident as the spring thaws them out and happiness returns, Dogma will see the light.
One can only believe it to be: clearly understood, universal, primal, clearly the egg came first, honest to goodness, unequivocal, ... that the right answer is DOGMA.
I'm just say'in , if I knew that is.
Cheers
Fritz
FAITH
Glaube = German
geloof = Dutch
foi = French
πίστη = Greek
fede = Italian
fé = Portugese
fe = Spanish
Results 1 - 10 of about 781,000,000 for Faith [definition]. (0.16 seconds)
Found in dictionary: English > English. faith /fSynonyms: noun: belief, trust, confidence, credence, credit, reliance, creed, religion, loyalty, fidelity, persuasion
faiths plural If you have faith in someone or something, you feel confident about their ability or goodness. N-UNCOUNT Synonym confidence She had placed a great deal of faith in Mr Penleigh. + 'in' People have lost faith in the British Parliament. + 'in' A faith is a particular religion, for example Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam. N-COUNT usu adj N also no det England shifted officially from a Catholic to a Protestant faith in the 16th century. Faith is strong religious belief in a particular God. N-UNCOUNT Umberto Eco's loss of his own religious faith is reflected in his novels. If you break faith with someone you made a promise to or something you believed in, you stop acting in a way that supports them. PHRASE V inflects If we don't, we're breaking faith with our people! If you do something in good faith, you seriously believe that what you are doing is right, honest, or legal, even though this may not be the case. PHRASE PHR after v This report was published in good faith but we regret any confusion which may have been caused. If you keep faith with someone you have made a promise to or something you believe in, you continue to support them even when it is difficult to do so. PHRASE V inflects PHR n He has made one of the most powerful American films of the year by keeping faith with his radical principles. See also article of faith; leap of faith
Results 1 - 10 of about 12,900,000 for Dogma [definition]. (0.28 seconds) Found in dictionary: English > English. dogma US Synonyms: noun: tenet, doctrine
dogmas plural If you refer to a belief or a system of beliefs as a dogma, you disapprove of it because people are expected to accept that it is true, without questioning it. N-VAR usu with supp disapproval Their political dogma has blinded them to the real needs of the country. He stands for freeing the country from the grip of dogma.
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #91 on: 2009-12-28 14:24:12 »
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. [ Wikipedia ]
MoEnzyme continues to do that by projecting my position as being predicated upon weyken which, in this case is not only a straw man but also a red herring irrespective of the merits of the word or its use in any arguments.
My argument here was and is that dogmatism arises out of faith, as it is always material believed to be true through faith which becomes an article of dogma, irrespective of what the particular article in question may be. This is because if faith is not vested in the article (belief in the validity of the article not based in evidence), it can be questioned and thus cannot be said to be held dogmatically.
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 #92 on: 2009-12-28 18:05:30 »
[Blunderov] I still weyken contrarywise. Is it not often the case that persons are convinced that they do have evidence for their belief (however sadly mistaken they may be)? The trenchant "I've seen it work with my own eyes" (or variations thereof) is usually (in my experience anyway) the first line of defence against the assault of reason against whatever bastion of belief may happen to be in contention. Usually (again in my own experience) only when truly cornered does the proponent resort to "Well, I believe it anyway even if you say there is no evidence or logic with which to back it up."
Not all dogma goes unquestioned because the rules (faith for instance) forbid it. Sometimes dogma is held because it seems (however bizzarely) reasonable to do so.
" Now, you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure: The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor And there's a mighty Judgement comin' but I may be wrong"
I may be wrong but I think you're wonderful I may be wrong but I think you're swell I like your style say, I think it's marvellous I'm always wrong so how can I tell Deuces to me are all aces Life is to me just a bore Faces are all open spaces You might be John Barrymore You came along say I think you're wonderful I think you're grand but I may be wrong
(Orchestral Interlude)
I may be wrong but I think you're wonderful I may be wrong but I think you're swell I like your style say, I really think it's marvellous I'm always wrong so how can I tell Deuces to me are all aces Life is to me just a bore Faces are all open spaces You might be John Barrymore You came along say I think you're wonderful I think you're grand but I may be wrong
You said that Edison would never make that light You laughed at Mr. Franklin with his key and kite The point of the song is I'm always wrong But with you baby I'm oh so right
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #94 on: 2009-12-28 20:58:06 »
Hermit,
I didn't intend any straw-manning, but if I had engaged in it I would assume you've done a good job of pointing it out. Yes, you made some claims about how folk become dogmatic and that if they simply didn't have faith in the first place they would never have the opportunity to be dogmatic about anything. I'm a bit skeptical about that, but regardless its not really my concern.
To me, that seems tantamount to saying dogma is caused by myelinization therefore myelinization is the true sin, and not dogma. Certainly I wouldn't be shocked to learn that dogmatism is facilitated by myelinization - perhaps even requires it, and so we might even eliminate dogmatism by preventing myelinization in human brains, but its not a useful solution - somewhat akin to solving global warming by eliminating the human species. Therefore I assumed that you were talking about something relating to semantics instead, especially since you had a bright shiney new word for us (which you rather than I first brought up on this thread). Perhaps I was mistaken or even misweykened.
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. [ Wikipedia ]
MoEnzyme continues to do that by projecting my position as being predicated upon weyken which, in this case is not only a straw man but also a red herring irrespective of the merits of the word or its use in any arguments.
My argument here was and is that dogmatism arises out of faith, as it is always material believed to be true through faith which becomes an article of dogma, irrespective of what the particular article in question may be. This is because if faith is not vested in the article (belief in the validity of the article not based in evidence), it can be questioned and thus cannot be said to be held dogmatically.
PS - focusing on your last paragraph here, I would distinguish between "faith" as an ad hoc default position - ie. "its a moral I've inherited, and I currently lack the motivation, time and/or resources to contemplate a better rule at the moment" - and "faith" as a virtue - ie. "Its the best rule because authority says so, and I'm a good person because I reinforce authority and reject all other rules". The second is dogmatism, where the first is simply the faith of a child - probably both require some degree or another of myelinization to become operational rather than just some whimsical idea passing through the brainstuff.
[Blunderov] I still weyken contrarywise. Is it not often the case that persons are convinced that they do have evidence for their belief (however sadly mistaken they may be)? The trenchant "I've seen it work with my own eyes" (or variations thereof) is usually (in my experience anyway) the first line of defence against the assault of reason against whatever bastion of belief may happen to be in contention. Usually (again in my own experience) only when truly cornered does the proponent resort to "Well, I believe it anyway even if you say there is no evidence or logic with which to back it up."
Not all dogma goes unquestioned because the rules (faith for instance) forbid it. Sometimes dogma is held because it seems (however bizzarely) reasonable to do so.
" Now, you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure: The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor And there's a mighty Judgement comin' but I may be wrong"
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #96 on: 2009-12-29 00:54:36 »
"We could be in the middle of an intergalactic conversation and we wouldn't even know it" -Michia Kaku
I suppose that may be what we are in the moment of realizing, I just think at least someone curious enough will suspect it even if it takes hundreds of generations for those who actually care to finally know.
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #98 on: 2009-12-29 01:27:36 »
Humans are very, very predictable, even more suggestible and infinitely fallible. The way our minds fail are so well known that generations of shaman have been using much the same techniques for as long has we have left a record of our beliefs in our artefacts.
The fact that a human believes that something is based on evidence, particularly when the supposed evidence was what somebody thought they felt or saw, does not mean that there is anything more substantial behind it. Even, perhaps especially, when thousands of others think they have experienced the same. This applies to everyone, even, perhaps especially, trained observers, such as scientists and policemen - who experience shows, are certainly no less prone to beliefs than others. Especially, because as a class, they tend to consider themselves, at least to some degree, as having relative immunity to such effects. As I have mentioned before, the "Canals of Mars" and "Mass of an electron" issues are classic examples derived from confirmation bias.
Which is why the scientific method requires, inter alia, that there be sustainable evidence necessitating provisional acceptance of a supposed effect, a testable mechanism whereby the effect is achieved by a proposed cause, a predictive hypothesis explaining the connection, and experiments which could falsify the hypothesis. Or, as I tried to explain while discussing this with Lucifer, the burden of proof has to be on the proposer. Weyken, being based on rational evaluation, preferably by the scientific method, takes this into account. Belief, as we have also seen here in examples ranging from "homeopathy" through "astrology", does not. Applying these standards, particularly as explored by Thagard and Laudan, can be helpful in evaluating the boundaries between the rational and irrational (or more narrowly between the scientific and non-scientific, although I see this distinction as being largely artificial).
Reverting to the topic, dogma is a position held on the basis of faith. (my framing of http://www.google.com/search?&q=define:Dogma supplemented by "Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from. The term derives from Greek δόγμα "that which seems to one, opinion or belief"[1] and that from δοκέω (dokeo), "to think, to suppose, to imagine".[2] The plural is either dogmas or dogmata , from Greek δόγματα." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma.) Working from the etymological source, in the absence of faith (with implications of love, trust, acceptance and belief) dogma cannot originate. Simply put, by definition, something which is not dogmatically held cannot compel dogmatic belief, and thus faith in the truth or efficacy of the thing in which dogmatic belief is vested is always required to instantiate dogma.
Once a dogma is established, then faith may or may not be required to accept it, but faith is always required to ensure that it is no challenge to the dogma. Which is the key identifier to a dogmatic position rather than a merely persistently delusional or just plain incorrect position. Also, not infrequently, demonstrated here.
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 #99 on: 2009-12-29 12:50:14 »
Richard Rorty comes to my mind at this juncture. I have no sense that we are using the same meanings of words and maybe that is the nature of words in the minds eye. Some of us have already done as Rorty suggests and moved to verse to convey our intent.
Is a consensus possible if the understanding of "real" or "right" or "truth" is predisposed in the human mind.
In my simplistic way I was trying to show that Dogma as a word is a clearer touchstone across minds and cultures and that faith which seems to falter to it's own names sake in diverse interpretations has less clear meanings as witnessed in our thread.
<snip>Part I: Contingency 1) The contingency of language
Here, Rorty argues that all language is contingent. Because only descriptions of the world can be true or false, and descriptions are made by humans, humans must make truth or falsity, as opposed to truth or falsity being determined by any innate property of the world being described. For example, green grass is not true or false, but "the grass is green" is. Without the human proposition, truth or falsity is simply irrelevant. Rorty consequently argues that all discussion of language in relation to reality should be abandoned, and that one should instead discuss vocabularies in relation to other vocabularies. Modal logic, or (less commonly) intensional logic is the branch of logic that deals with sentences that are qualified by modalities such as can, could, might, may, must, possibly, and necessarily, and others. ... <snip>
In an essay called "Pragmatism and Romanticism" I tried to restate the argument of Shelley's "Defense of Poetry." At the heart of Romanticism, I said, was the claim that reason can only follow paths that the imagination has first broken. No words, no reasoning. No imagination, no new words. No such words, no moral or intellectual progress.
I ended that essay by contrasting the poet's ability to give us a richer language with the philosopher's attempt to acquire non-linguistic access to the really real. Plato's dream of such access was itself a great poetic achievement. But by Shelley's time, I argued, it had been dreamt out. We are now more able than Plato was to acknowledge our finitude — to admit that we shall never be in touch with something greater than ourselves. We hope instead that human life here on earth will become richer as the centuries go by because the language used by our remote descendants will have more resources than ours did. Our vocabulary will stand to theirs as that of our primitive ancestors stands to ours.
In that essay, as in previous writings, I used "poetry" in an extended sense. I stretched Harold Bloom's term "strong poet" to cover prose writers who had invented new language games for us to play — people like Plato, Newton, Marx, Darwin, and Freud as well as versifiers like Milton and Blake. These games might involve mathematical equations, or inductive arguments, or dramatic narratives, or (in the case of the versifiers) prosodic innovation. But the distinction between prose and verse was irrelevant to my philosophical purposes.
Shortly after finishing "Pragmatism and Romanticism," I was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Some months after I learned the bad news, I was sitting around having coffee with my elder son and a visiting cousin. My cousin (who is a Baptist minister) asked me whether I had found my thoughts turning toward religious topics, and I said no. "Well, what about philosophy?" my son asked. "No," I replied, neither the philosophy I had written nor that which I had read seemed to have any particular bearing on my situation. I had no quarrel with Epicurus's argument that it is irrational to fear death, nor with Heidegger's suggestion that ontotheology originates in an attempt to evade our mortality. But neither ataraxia (freedom from disturbance) nor Sein zum Tode (being toward death) seemed in point.
"Hasn't anything you've read been of any use?" my son persisted. "Yes," I found myself blurting out, "poetry." "Which poems?" he asked. I quoted two old chestnuts that I had recently dredged up from memory and been oddly cheered by, the most quoted lines of Swinburne's "Garden of  Proserpine":
We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.
and Landor's "On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday":
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art; I warmed both hands before the fire of life, It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
I found comfort in those slow meanders and those stuttering embers. I suspect that no comparable effect could have been produced by prose. Not just imagery, but also rhyme and rhythm were needed to do the job. In lines such as these, all three conspire to produce a degree of compression, and thus of  impact, that only verse can achieve. Compared to the shaped charges contrived by versifiers, even the best prose is scattershot.
Though various bits of verse have meant a great deal to me at particular moments in my life, I have never been able to write any myself (except for scribbling sonnets during dull faculty meetings — a form of  doodling). Nor do I keep up with the work of contemporary poets. When I do read verse, it is mostly favorites from adolescence. I suspect that my ambivalent relation to poetry, in this narrower sense, is a result of Oedipal complications produced by having had a poet for a father. (See James Rorty, Children of the Sun (Macmillan, 1926).)
However that may be, I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends. Cultures with richer vocabularies are more fully human — farther removed from the beasts — than those with poorer ones; individual men and women are more fully human when their memories are amply stocked with verses.
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #100 on: 2009-12-29 14:49:45 »
Effective communication only occurs when both parties comprehend the words similarly. Like Russell and Huxley, I prefer Latin or Greek if meaning is to be conveyed in an unambiguous way, as their grammar and word assembly methods make statements as unambiguous as possible.
As far as faith and belief are concerned, their international etymology provide overlapping meanings related to love and trust in all the languages with which I am familiar (and I too have researched this extensively). The use of them to convey thought or consideration is a modern aberration established by the faith filled who generally consider them as assets and those who reject them as immoral (I have addressed this fallacy at length in Church of Virus BBS, General, Philosophy & Religion, Virian Ethics: The End of God Referenced Ethics, Hermit, 2002-02-04.
Dogma is a better defined word, generally used by one set of believers to describe the beliefs of others of whom they disapprove. As I have repeatedly shown, one can separate dogma from the faith that establishes and maintains something as dogma.
As far as blaming dogma on myelinization it would just as obviously incorrect to ascribe it to cognition (an intermediate step). Dogma is not a fruit of cognition so this is an example of the fallacy of Ignoratio elenchi (or an irrelevant conclusion).
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 #101 on: 2009-12-29 15:50:40 »
and i prefer sign language which involves my middle finger. seriously..greek and latin...wtf? how can you be anchored down to earth with so much hot air inside you?
Effective communication only occurs when both parties comprehend the words similarly. Like Russell and Huxley, I prefer Latin or Greek if meaning is to be conveyed in an unambiguous way, as their grammar and word assembly methods make statements as unambiguous as possible.
As far as faith and belief are concerned, their international etymology provide overlapping meanings related to love and trust in all the languages with which I am familiar (and I too have researched this) extensively. The use of them to convey thought or consideration is a modern aberration established by the faith filled who generally consider them as assets and those who reject them as immoral (I have addressed this fallacy at length in [url=http://www.churchofvirus.org/bbs/index.php?board=32;action=display;threadid=11557][/url]Church of Virus BBS, General, Philosophy & Religion, Virian Ethics: The End of God Referenced Ethics, Hermit, 2002-02-04].
Dogma is a better defined word, generally used by one set of believers to describe the beliefs of others of whom they disapprove. As I have repeatedly shown, one can separate dogma from the faith that establishes and maintains something as dogma.
As far as blaming dogma on myelinization it would just as obviously incorrect to ascribe it to cognition (an intermediate step). Dogma is not a fruit of cognition so this is an example of the fallacy of Ignoratio elenchi (or an irrelevant conclusion).
Re:Revisiting the Great Faith Wars
« Reply #102 on: 2009-12-30 01:51:35 »
You must be dreadfully lonely, as well as incapacitated by your hand configuration in that harpy hole you have made for yourself.
I hold before you my hand with each finger standing erect and alone, and as long as they are held thus, not one of the tasks that the hand may preform can be accomplished. I cannot lift. I cannot grasp. I cannot hold. I cannot even make an intelligible sign until my fingers organize and work together. In this we should also learn a lesson. [ George Washington Carver 1864 - 1943 ]
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 #103 on: 2009-12-30 10:54:08 »
lovely. see? you didnt need greek or latin to communicate to me exactly how you feel. we are making progress already. baby steps..and you'll get there one day!
You must be dreadfully lonely, as well as incapacitated by your hand configuration in that harpy hole you have made for yourself.
I hold before you my hand with each finger standing erect and alone, and as long as they are held thus, not one of the tasks that the hand may preform can be accomplished. I cannot lift. I cannot grasp. I cannot hold. I cannot even make an intelligible sign until my fingers organize and work together. In this we should also learn a lesson. [ George Washington Carver 1864 - 1943 ]
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