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A question of faith - is faith immoral?
(Philosophers have a duty.)
(Just as the scientist has a duty to report his/her findings with as little bias as possible and as high a degree of accuracy as possible, even when those findings are in contradiction with what they believe; and the cleric has a duty to teach and live the teachings of their god, even when those teachings force him to make choices that challenge his personal desires; the philosopher has a duty to seek truth, even when the pursuit of that truth puts him/her at odds with the beliefs of the society he/she lives in. A philosopher who is afraid to question is no philosopher at all.)
(If you wish to challenge this view of what philosophy is, fine, but make another topic to do it. This topic has a specific purpose, and a specific question to consider. The only reason I mentioned any of this at all is because it is inevitable that someone will construe the idea of questioning faith as a challenge to "their" beliefs/religion, or religion in general. Nonsense. The purpose to questioning faith is simply because it is my philosophical duty to do so. Everything should be questioned. Faith is simply another thing.)
(If your post in this topic is going to be 1.) an objection to the very idea of questioning faith without any rational reason to support that objection, 2.) a retaliation/defence of something that you believe and/or why you believe it and/or should be allowed to believe it or 3.) insults to any person or group or belief, do not post in this topic. You are not welcome. Stay out. If you are willing to discuss the idea of whether or not faith is moral without resorting to insults about anyone or any group or anyone's beliefs, you are welcome. The topic is "is faith moral or immoral". Anything you post that is not directly answering and/or discussing that question is not welcome.)
A question of faith
Knowlege of the universe around you needs a source, and there are three commonly accepted sources for knowledge: evidence, reason and faith. You can know something because you have observed evidence of that thing being true. You can know something because you have reasoned using logic that it must be true. And you can know something because you have faith that it is true. It is faith that is being considered here.
(Most of the examples I have used have been adapted from William Clifford's 1877 essay The Ethics of Belief, because they are such good examples. My thesis is similar to his own, but not quite as broad. Which means that James' objections don't hold, so you're going to have to do a little thinking on your own.)
Can faith be immoral?
Can faith itself be immoral? Consider the following example:
The owner of an airline has a plane that he has had for many years. He knows that it is old and that it has given trouble in the past, and that it has spent a lot of time in the repair bay recently for troubles that the maintennance engineers are not certain have been solved. He knows that its airworthiness is questionable; his engineers have stated that they cannot be certain it is safe.
The plane is scheduled to make a flight with a hundred or so passengers.
Now consider the following three cases:
The owner has absolute and total faith that he is incapable of ignoring
The owner knows about the engineer's objections, but considers the engineer a fool who doesn't know what he's talking about (completely ignoring the engineer's knowledge and experience). He doesn't even believe that it's possible for the plane to crash. Such a thing is beyond conception. He has absolute and total faith in the plane. He is completely and totally convinced by his faith that that plane will fly, no matter what may happen.
Now, clearly this version of the owner is what we would consider insane. A complete submission to faith must mean a complete rejection of any evidence that contradicts the belief held. If evidence happens to agree with faith, then it will be "accepted", but neither the amount of evidence nor its quality is a factor in that decision. Evidence is absolutely meaningless to a person who has total faith.
Unfortunately, what falls under the category of evidence is information about the feelings and well-being of others. And if you never consider the well-being of others when making a decision, you can never make a moral decision - it's just impossible to be moral if you're not concerned about anything or anyone.
Therefore, a person with total faith can never be moral - and, additionally, would be insane. So I don't really see a need to consider such a person any further, so let's just forget about total faith.
(Get that? Let me make it clear. This discussion is not about total and absolute faith. That's not what anyone here should be talking about. If you want to talk about it, go somewhere else.)
The owner has no faith and acts only on evidence
The owner knows the engineer's objections, and he understands the reason for them. He's a little unsure about the airworthiness of the plane himself, because of all the problems its had. So, given no reason not to, he submits to the weight of the evidence and grounds the plane.
This may cause inconvenience to the passengers - perhaps severe inconvenience in some cases. For example, one of the passengers may have been flying for an emergency operation, and the delay could be dangerous or even fatal. But unless it was true for all passengers that it would be better to risk a potentially fatal journey than not (because their chance of death if they don't journey is significantly higher) - and for the pilot and crew too (!) - then it is still more moral to ground the plane than let it fly.
Therefore - except in the extreme case where death for all passengers and crew is very likely if they don't fly(*) - heeding the evidence and grounding the plane is always a moral decision.
(* If one were to follow the logic of the example, where the owner is being described as a person who acts rationally based on evidence alone, then it would follow that if he were aware of the additional information - that the passengers and crew face imminent death if they do not fly - then he would include that factor in their reasoning and act on it appropriately. Thus, even in the extreme case, the owner would still act morally.)
This will be the control case to use for comparisons.
The owner has faith and chooses to act on it, but is not a blind slave to it
Now, this is the case of interest.
In this case, the owner knows the engineer's objections, and he understands the reason for them. He's a little unsure about the airworthiness of the plane himself. But he believes the old bird will fly as true as she always has, because she's never let him down, and he's sure (by his faith) she never will. He has faith in his plane. So he allows the plane to make the scheduled flight.
The plane crashes and kills everyone on board.
Now, were the owner's actions immoral? Most would say yes without hesitation. He knew the airworthiness of the plane was questionable, but he let those concerns be supeseded by an irrational faith in the plane, resulting in the deaths of the passengers and crew.
What if the plane had not crashed? Is the owner now innocent? No, just lucky. The fact of the matter is that he still let the plane fly despite his own uncertainties, and despite the evidence that it was dangerous, and over the objections of those who knew there was a danger.
Whether or not it would inconvenience the passengers is not relevant in this case, because it is not a factor in his decision. Information about whether or not the passengers must fly falls under the heading of evidence, and it was established that in this case, faith is what guides the decision, not evidence.
So no matter the result, whether the plane crashes or not, acting on faith is immoral.
So, to summarize so far
The version of the owner that always considers the evidence and always acts rationally on it will always be moral, whenever it is possible to be moral (a lot of decisions are amoral - they can be neither moral or immoral - I'm not concerned with those). The version of the owner that always acts on faith without even being aware that they are acting on faith will never be moral (and is insane).
The version of interest is the one who is not insane - the one who is aware that they are relying on faith - but acts on it anyway. My argument is that that person is always immoral, too - because even if good comes out of their actions, it was just because they were lucky, not moral. In other words, it is always moral to act on the evidence you have, even if you're missing crucial information (as long as there is no evidential reason to assume you should know you're missing crucial information) and even if it ends badly because you did not have that crucial information (which there is no reason to believe you should have had).
Or to put it another way: when you're trying to determine the morality of a decision, the actual consequences of that decision don't matter. But the anticipated consequences do matter. And just as important is how you anticipate those consequences. It's just not good enough to say "well, i think if i do X, everything will turn out well" if you have no real reason to assume that doing X will turn out well. The point of what i showed above is that faith is not a good enough reason. If the only reason you have for assuming that doing X will turn out well is faith... your reason is bad, and taking action based on that would be immoral.
Other objections
Just to wrap up, i'm going to consider some other possible objections to the argument that faith is immoral, and try to deal with them briefly.
It is the action that is immoral, not the faith
Or in other words, it wasn't having faith in the plane that was immoral, it was letting the plane fly when the evidence suggested that it was unwise to that was immoral.
An interesting argument... but think about what it means if it's correct. It means that faith is off the hook for being immoral... but also rendered completely meaningless. It means you're free to believe whatever felgercarp you want to... as long as those beliefs never affect your actions. If that's your argument, congratulations... you've just wiped all religion off the face of the Earth by stripping it of any meaning it may have had.
Clearly you might want to consider that objection very carefully if that's what your objection is.
But let's take the objection seriously for a moment and see where it leads us. Suppose you have faith that X is true. Pretend first that the evidence also shows that X is true. So when it's time to act... you act as if X is true. Which is the right thing to do. But are you acting on faith... or evidence? Let's find out: now pretend that the evidence shows that X is not true. What do you do? Your faith says that X is true. The evidence says that X is not true. From the example with the plane, i already showed that if you act on faith, you're acting immorally, whether X is true or not. And from the same example, if you act on the evidence, you're acting morally, again whether X is actually true or not. Going back to the first part of this example, it follows that if you acted on faith you were being immoral and if you acted on evidence you were being moral... because even though both actions would have been the same, the reasons for those actions would have been different.
So it is not the action itself that determines whether the action is moral or immoral. It is the reason for that action - which (in this discussion) is either faith... or evidence.
Faith is necessary
Maybe....
When you have no evidential reason to decide something (and no logical reason to), then the only option remaining is to take a leap of faith. You have no choice... literally. The only option is faith, so you might as well take it, or your only remaining choice would be to believe nothing, which is often impossible and frequently unwise, or pick a belief randomly.
For example, from a certain perspective, you cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow. Yes, you have lots of evidence that it has every day in the past, but the problems of induction are well known. Aside from faith, there is no way to know the sun will rise tomorrow.
But to function as a human being - as a living organism even - you have to make that leap of faith. You have to live today as if there will be tomorrow... or you won't last long. You need to take that leap of faith.
In cases where faith in unavoidable in order to exist and function, then it can hardly be immoral. i believe killing is immoral, but i have to kill thousands and thousands of organisms every day just in the process of digestion. It's not a perfect world, and sometimes we have to do things that would normally be immoral in order to contine to exist. In those cases, faith would be acceptable, if only because of pragmatism.
However! Consider this.
Maybe you don't need to know that the sun will rise tomorrow. Maybe you just need to bet that it will. You have a choice today whether to live for today only or make sure you're prepared for tomorrow, too. The odds - given the overwhelming evidence so far - are that the world will still be here tomorrow. So, play the odds. Faith not required.
So, basically, faith may not be necessary... but even if it is, it would only be excusable in cases where it is absolutely necessary, and cannot be avoided.
You have to have faith at some point because no one can learn everything themselves
This is a special case of the previous objection. It goes like this: it is simply impossible to check the evidence for everything you "know", even when evidence exists. You know caffeine isn't good for you... but you're not about to run an experiment with a control group to make sure. You have to trust the scientists who told you that it's bad for you... you have to have faith in them.
Only... that's not true. Trusting someone's knowlege and/or experimental findings is not the same as having faith in them. Because if you have no faith in them at all, you can (theoretically) check their results yourself, or rely on others to do so. Furthermore, you have reason to believe the word of an scientist studying something - their knowledge and experience.
Of course, if you press you could start arguing about why you should assume their knowlege and experience means anything, or why you shouldn't assume a global conspiracy to fool you, etc. etc. But then you're just going back to the previous objection.
It may not be possible to not have faith in something (you can't turn faith on and off like a light)
Quite possibly true... but not an excuse.
If it is true that faith is immoral (as i argued with the example above), then if you are a moral person, you have a duty to try and determine what parts of your knowlege rely on faith and which don't... and to replace knowlege that relies on faith with knowlege that doesn't. It's as simple as that.
Maybe it's not possible to determine every bit of your knowlege that relies on faith... but if you're serious about being a moral person, you have to make a serious attempt. There's no excuse not to.
Some things to consider and discuss
These are suggested topics you could consider, but they're not exhaustive. The topic is whether or not faith itself may be immoral, so anything relevant applies.
(Just as the scientist has a duty to report his/her findings with as little bias as possible and as high a degree of accuracy as possible, even when those findings are in contradiction with what they believe; and the cleric has a duty to teach and live the teachings of their god, even when those teachings force him to make choices that challenge his personal desires; the philosopher has a duty to seek truth, even when the pursuit of that truth puts him/her at odds with the beliefs of the society he/she lives in. A philosopher who is afraid to question is no philosopher at all.)
(If you wish to challenge this view of what philosophy is, fine, but make another topic to do it. This topic has a specific purpose, and a specific question to consider. The only reason I mentioned any of this at all is because it is inevitable that someone will construe the idea of questioning faith as a challenge to "their" beliefs/religion, or religion in general. Nonsense. The purpose to questioning faith is simply because it is my philosophical duty to do so. Everything should be questioned. Faith is simply another thing.)
(If your post in this topic is going to be 1.) an objection to the very idea of questioning faith without any rational reason to support that objection, 2.) a retaliation/defence of something that you believe and/or why you believe it and/or should be allowed to believe it or 3.) insults to any person or group or belief, do not post in this topic. You are not welcome. Stay out. If you are willing to discuss the idea of whether or not faith is moral without resorting to insults about anyone or any group or anyone's beliefs, you are welcome. The topic is "is faith moral or immoral". Anything you post that is not directly answering and/or discussing that question is not welcome.)
A question of faith
Knowlege of the universe around you needs a source, and there are three commonly accepted sources for knowledge: evidence, reason and faith. You can know something because you have observed evidence of that thing being true. You can know something because you have reasoned using logic that it must be true. And you can know something because you have faith that it is true. It is faith that is being considered here.
(Most of the examples I have used have been adapted from William Clifford's 1877 essay The Ethics of Belief, because they are such good examples. My thesis is similar to his own, but not quite as broad. Which means that James' objections don't hold, so you're going to have to do a little thinking on your own.)
Can faith be immoral?
Can faith itself be immoral? Consider the following example:
The owner of an airline has a plane that he has had for many years. He knows that it is old and that it has given trouble in the past, and that it has spent a lot of time in the repair bay recently for troubles that the maintennance engineers are not certain have been solved. He knows that its airworthiness is questionable; his engineers have stated that they cannot be certain it is safe.
The plane is scheduled to make a flight with a hundred or so passengers.
Now consider the following three cases:
The owner has absolute and total faith that he is incapable of ignoring
The owner knows about the engineer's objections, but considers the engineer a fool who doesn't know what he's talking about (completely ignoring the engineer's knowledge and experience). He doesn't even believe that it's possible for the plane to crash. Such a thing is beyond conception. He has absolute and total faith in the plane. He is completely and totally convinced by his faith that that plane will fly, no matter what may happen.
Now, clearly this version of the owner is what we would consider insane. A complete submission to faith must mean a complete rejection of any evidence that contradicts the belief held. If evidence happens to agree with faith, then it will be "accepted", but neither the amount of evidence nor its quality is a factor in that decision. Evidence is absolutely meaningless to a person who has total faith.
Unfortunately, what falls under the category of evidence is information about the feelings and well-being of others. And if you never consider the well-being of others when making a decision, you can never make a moral decision - it's just impossible to be moral if you're not concerned about anything or anyone.
Therefore, a person with total faith can never be moral - and, additionally, would be insane. So I don't really see a need to consider such a person any further, so let's just forget about total faith.
(Get that? Let me make it clear. This discussion is not about total and absolute faith. That's not what anyone here should be talking about. If you want to talk about it, go somewhere else.)
The owner has no faith and acts only on evidence
The owner knows the engineer's objections, and he understands the reason for them. He's a little unsure about the airworthiness of the plane himself, because of all the problems its had. So, given no reason not to, he submits to the weight of the evidence and grounds the plane.
This may cause inconvenience to the passengers - perhaps severe inconvenience in some cases. For example, one of the passengers may have been flying for an emergency operation, and the delay could be dangerous or even fatal. But unless it was true for all passengers that it would be better to risk a potentially fatal journey than not (because their chance of death if they don't journey is significantly higher) - and for the pilot and crew too (!) - then it is still more moral to ground the plane than let it fly.
Therefore - except in the extreme case where death for all passengers and crew is very likely if they don't fly(*) - heeding the evidence and grounding the plane is always a moral decision.
(* If one were to follow the logic of the example, where the owner is being described as a person who acts rationally based on evidence alone, then it would follow that if he were aware of the additional information - that the passengers and crew face imminent death if they do not fly - then he would include that factor in their reasoning and act on it appropriately. Thus, even in the extreme case, the owner would still act morally.)
This will be the control case to use for comparisons.
The owner has faith and chooses to act on it, but is not a blind slave to it
Now, this is the case of interest.
In this case, the owner knows the engineer's objections, and he understands the reason for them. He's a little unsure about the airworthiness of the plane himself. But he believes the old bird will fly as true as she always has, because she's never let him down, and he's sure (by his faith) she never will. He has faith in his plane. So he allows the plane to make the scheduled flight.
The plane crashes and kills everyone on board.
Now, were the owner's actions immoral? Most would say yes without hesitation. He knew the airworthiness of the plane was questionable, but he let those concerns be supeseded by an irrational faith in the plane, resulting in the deaths of the passengers and crew.
What if the plane had not crashed? Is the owner now innocent? No, just lucky. The fact of the matter is that he still let the plane fly despite his own uncertainties, and despite the evidence that it was dangerous, and over the objections of those who knew there was a danger.
Whether or not it would inconvenience the passengers is not relevant in this case, because it is not a factor in his decision. Information about whether or not the passengers must fly falls under the heading of evidence, and it was established that in this case, faith is what guides the decision, not evidence.
So no matter the result, whether the plane crashes or not, acting on faith is immoral.
So, to summarize so far
The version of the owner that always considers the evidence and always acts rationally on it will always be moral, whenever it is possible to be moral (a lot of decisions are amoral - they can be neither moral or immoral - I'm not concerned with those). The version of the owner that always acts on faith without even being aware that they are acting on faith will never be moral (and is insane).
The version of interest is the one who is not insane - the one who is aware that they are relying on faith - but acts on it anyway. My argument is that that person is always immoral, too - because even if good comes out of their actions, it was just because they were lucky, not moral. In other words, it is always moral to act on the evidence you have, even if you're missing crucial information (as long as there is no evidential reason to assume you should know you're missing crucial information) and even if it ends badly because you did not have that crucial information (which there is no reason to believe you should have had).
Or to put it another way: when you're trying to determine the morality of a decision, the actual consequences of that decision don't matter. But the anticipated consequences do matter. And just as important is how you anticipate those consequences. It's just not good enough to say "well, i think if i do X, everything will turn out well" if you have no real reason to assume that doing X will turn out well. The point of what i showed above is that faith is not a good enough reason. If the only reason you have for assuming that doing X will turn out well is faith... your reason is bad, and taking action based on that would be immoral.
Other objections
Just to wrap up, i'm going to consider some other possible objections to the argument that faith is immoral, and try to deal with them briefly.
It is the action that is immoral, not the faith
Or in other words, it wasn't having faith in the plane that was immoral, it was letting the plane fly when the evidence suggested that it was unwise to that was immoral.
An interesting argument... but think about what it means if it's correct. It means that faith is off the hook for being immoral... but also rendered completely meaningless. It means you're free to believe whatever felgercarp you want to... as long as those beliefs never affect your actions. If that's your argument, congratulations... you've just wiped all religion off the face of the Earth by stripping it of any meaning it may have had.
Clearly you might want to consider that objection very carefully if that's what your objection is.
But let's take the objection seriously for a moment and see where it leads us. Suppose you have faith that X is true. Pretend first that the evidence also shows that X is true. So when it's time to act... you act as if X is true. Which is the right thing to do. But are you acting on faith... or evidence? Let's find out: now pretend that the evidence shows that X is not true. What do you do? Your faith says that X is true. The evidence says that X is not true. From the example with the plane, i already showed that if you act on faith, you're acting immorally, whether X is true or not. And from the same example, if you act on the evidence, you're acting morally, again whether X is actually true or not. Going back to the first part of this example, it follows that if you acted on faith you were being immoral and if you acted on evidence you were being moral... because even though both actions would have been the same, the reasons for those actions would have been different.
So it is not the action itself that determines whether the action is moral or immoral. It is the reason for that action - which (in this discussion) is either faith... or evidence.
Faith is necessary
Maybe....
When you have no evidential reason to decide something (and no logical reason to), then the only option remaining is to take a leap of faith. You have no choice... literally. The only option is faith, so you might as well take it, or your only remaining choice would be to believe nothing, which is often impossible and frequently unwise, or pick a belief randomly.
For example, from a certain perspective, you cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow. Yes, you have lots of evidence that it has every day in the past, but the problems of induction are well known. Aside from faith, there is no way to know the sun will rise tomorrow.
But to function as a human being - as a living organism even - you have to make that leap of faith. You have to live today as if there will be tomorrow... or you won't last long. You need to take that leap of faith.
In cases where faith in unavoidable in order to exist and function, then it can hardly be immoral. i believe killing is immoral, but i have to kill thousands and thousands of organisms every day just in the process of digestion. It's not a perfect world, and sometimes we have to do things that would normally be immoral in order to contine to exist. In those cases, faith would be acceptable, if only because of pragmatism.
However! Consider this.
Maybe you don't need to know that the sun will rise tomorrow. Maybe you just need to bet that it will. You have a choice today whether to live for today only or make sure you're prepared for tomorrow, too. The odds - given the overwhelming evidence so far - are that the world will still be here tomorrow. So, play the odds. Faith not required.
So, basically, faith may not be necessary... but even if it is, it would only be excusable in cases where it is absolutely necessary, and cannot be avoided.
You have to have faith at some point because no one can learn everything themselves
This is a special case of the previous objection. It goes like this: it is simply impossible to check the evidence for everything you "know", even when evidence exists. You know caffeine isn't good for you... but you're not about to run an experiment with a control group to make sure. You have to trust the scientists who told you that it's bad for you... you have to have faith in them.
Only... that's not true. Trusting someone's knowlege and/or experimental findings is not the same as having faith in them. Because if you have no faith in them at all, you can (theoretically) check their results yourself, or rely on others to do so. Furthermore, you have reason to believe the word of an scientist studying something - their knowledge and experience.
Of course, if you press you could start arguing about why you should assume their knowlege and experience means anything, or why you shouldn't assume a global conspiracy to fool you, etc. etc. But then you're just going back to the previous objection.
It may not be possible to not have faith in something (you can't turn faith on and off like a light)
Quite possibly true... but not an excuse.
If it is true that faith is immoral (as i argued with the example above), then if you are a moral person, you have a duty to try and determine what parts of your knowlege rely on faith and which don't... and to replace knowlege that relies on faith with knowlege that doesn't. It's as simple as that.
Maybe it's not possible to determine every bit of your knowlege that relies on faith... but if you're serious about being a moral person, you have to make a serious attempt. There's no excuse not to.
Some things to consider and discuss
These are suggested topics you could consider, but they're not exhaustive. The topic is whether or not faith itself may be immoral, so anything relevant applies.
- Are there any other means - other than observation/evidence, reason/logic and faith - to come by knowlege? If there were, would that change the argument presented here?
- The example i gave - the example with the plane (based on Clifford's shipowner example) - makes a pretty damning case for faith, or at least actions based on faith-derived knowlege, being immoral (later i show that it's not just the action but the faith itself that is immoral). Is it possible to come up with an example that shows that faith is moral? Try it, if you think so (but be careful... it's really hard, if it's even possible).
- Is it true (especially considering the example) that using faith as a foundation for knowlege or action is always immoral? Is it true that using evidence as a basis for knowlege or action is always moral (assuming that you're trying to do good)?
- Is it possible to say faith itself can be immoral, or can you go no further than saying using faith to determine action and knowlege is immoral? But if action determined by faith is always immoral, never moral, doesn't that make faith immoral?
Just so we're clear: You're not discussing religious faith, but "trusting" faith. Just as an observation...
There's also a combination of the three, which forms the basis of most teaching: showing the evidence, allowing for experimentation, messing with the logic, and faith that the teacher knows what he's doing. You're also ignoring that a number of scientists and philosophers have debated instinctual knowledge as well as racial memory. Just as a side note...
Actually, the evidence backed the faith, and you described the person as insane, so the example was pretty well stacked. The airplane is either ready to fly or not; if the plane is ready, it flies, if not, it doesn't. The engineer has the final say; the owner may be able to countermand that, but usually won't without good evidence.
Given that we aren't discussing religious faith, deciding that faith is immoral is not applicable here; it is, as you noted, a way to gain knowledge. It's also necessary for day-to-day business; without faith that you will hold up your end of the bargain, then I wouldn't be bargaining with you in the first place. As such, faith in and of itself is not immoral, or moral, any more than air or water.
Again, neither are either moral or immoral.
[/quote]
A gun is neither moral or immoral, even if used in a murder. Faith cannnot be moral or immoral, whereas the person can be.
So, any more high school philosophy questions?
HM
| Indi wrote: |
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These are suggested topics you could consider, but they're not exhaustive. The topic is whether or not faith itself may be immoral, so anything relevant applies.
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There's also a combination of the three, which forms the basis of most teaching: showing the evidence, allowing for experimentation, messing with the logic, and faith that the teacher knows what he's doing. You're also ignoring that a number of scientists and philosophers have debated instinctual knowledge as well as racial memory. Just as a side note...
| Quote: |
Actually, the evidence backed the faith, and you described the person as insane, so the example was pretty well stacked. The airplane is either ready to fly or not; if the plane is ready, it flies, if not, it doesn't. The engineer has the final say; the owner may be able to countermand that, but usually won't without good evidence.
Given that we aren't discussing religious faith, deciding that faith is immoral is not applicable here; it is, as you noted, a way to gain knowledge. It's also necessary for day-to-day business; without faith that you will hold up your end of the bargain, then I wouldn't be bargaining with you in the first place. As such, faith in and of itself is not immoral, or moral, any more than air or water.
| Quote: |
Again, neither are either moral or immoral.
| Quote: |
A gun is neither moral or immoral, even if used in a murder. Faith cannnot be moral or immoral, whereas the person can be.
So, any more high school philosophy questions?
HM
Yes, it is immoral.
Its best to base belief on evidence, if you don't have conclusive evidence its best to base beliefs probability and if you have nothing, ether guess, go with what you like, or take a chance.
But believing something with out or despite evidence, that is foolish and can be very dangerous. And it dose not lead to any grater understanding of the universe, only ignorants.
Its best to base belief on evidence, if you don't have conclusive evidence its best to base beliefs probability and if you have nothing, ether guess, go with what you like, or take a chance.
But believing something with out or despite evidence, that is foolish and can be very dangerous. And it dose not lead to any grater understanding of the universe, only ignorants.
But don't you need faith in the evidence being presented truthfully, as well being appropriate to the situation at hand?
HM
HM
| The Conspirator wrote: |
| Its best to base belief on evidence, if you don't have conclusive evidence its best to base beliefs probability and if you have nothing, ether guess, go with what you like, or take a chance. |
When you get to the point where you have nothing, and you're guessing, why not use faith at that point? Is it still immoral even then?
It should be noted that false understanding can be gained from facts and experiments if in the wrong context. Likewise I disagree with calling the first example "faith", it sounds more like ignorant reasoning. (the plane won't crash becuase it hasn't yet.) In my reading of that example it sounds more like the man has reached his conclusion based on "facts" that are not true. (example: doesn't believe the plane can crash)
So from that example I conclude there is a vast difference between the "total faith" and blind conclusion derived from false facts and perhaps a touch of faith in the trustworthyness of the plane. In truth the use of the word faith in the example might be slightly misleading as it sounds as though he is more attached to the plane than he has faith in it. In the end even if he does blindly think his plane will fly no matter what and no one will get hurt, faith was a contributer, not the cause. The cause was egotistic thought, in that only he can be right. (on a side note i would also like to add that there is also a difference between blind faith and justified faith, likewise single-minded faith is different (which, assuming there is faith in this example, is the kind decribed.))
I agree with example two in that it is most likely more moral to ground the plane than to let it fly.
Your last example is a far better example of faith possibly being immoral. I would agree that in this case it is possible for faith to be immoral, but I think it is more his choice that was immoral. As he could have had faith in the plane, and not said to fly it. He would have still believed in the plane's ability to fly but chose not to take the risk. So in the last case my opinion is it was his choice that was immoral not his faith.
At the moment, unless you were to provide a different example, I'm going to say that faith itself cannot be immoral but some actions that may result from poor conclusions based on faith may very well be wrong.
And no, by stating this arguement I am not removing faith's value. Actualy I do not even fully understand that very sarcastic counter-arguement. I fail to see how having faith but acting against it removes its meaning, it is still there, it is still nagging at you. Choosing to ignore it hardly drains its meaning or its existence.
Last edited by Aredon on Fri Feb 23, 2007 11:21 pm; edited 2 times in total
So from that example I conclude there is a vast difference between the "total faith" and blind conclusion derived from false facts and perhaps a touch of faith in the trustworthyness of the plane. In truth the use of the word faith in the example might be slightly misleading as it sounds as though he is more attached to the plane than he has faith in it. In the end even if he does blindly think his plane will fly no matter what and no one will get hurt, faith was a contributer, not the cause. The cause was egotistic thought, in that only he can be right. (on a side note i would also like to add that there is also a difference between blind faith and justified faith, likewise single-minded faith is different (which, assuming there is faith in this example, is the kind decribed.))
I agree with example two in that it is most likely more moral to ground the plane than to let it fly.
Your last example is a far better example of faith possibly being immoral. I would agree that in this case it is possible for faith to be immoral, but I think it is more his choice that was immoral. As he could have had faith in the plane, and not said to fly it. He would have still believed in the plane's ability to fly but chose not to take the risk. So in the last case my opinion is it was his choice that was immoral not his faith.
At the moment, unless you were to provide a different example, I'm going to say that faith itself cannot be immoral but some actions that may result from poor conclusions based on faith may very well be wrong.
And no, by stating this arguement I am not removing faith's value. Actualy I do not even fully understand that very sarcastic counter-arguement. I fail to see how having faith but acting against it removes its meaning, it is still there, it is still nagging at you. Choosing to ignore it hardly drains its meaning or its existence.
Last edited by Aredon on Fri Feb 23, 2007 11:21 pm; edited 2 times in total
| Indi wrote: | ||
When you get to the point where you have nothing, and you're guessing, why not use faith at that point? Is it still immoral even then? |
Cause if you take it by faith, when/if evidence dose come in it dose not matter what the evidence says you would still fallow choice you made.
You're reading a lot of stuff into the examples (and everything else i wrote) that wasn't actually put there. Don't read between the lines, read the lines.
For example:
In the first example, i didn't say the owner did not believe the plane wouldn't crash because it hadn't yet. i said quite clearly and quite explicitly why the owner believes the plane won't crash: "He doesn't even believe that it's possible for the plane to crash. Such a thing is beyond conception. He has absolute and total faith in the plane. He is completely and totally convinced by his faith that that plane will fly, no matter what may happen." It's all right there. You put that "the plane won't crash because it hasn't yet" thing in there, because it's nowhere in what i wrote. Most damning of all... i didn't even say that the plane had not crashed before (in that example). You made that fact up. Read back and see. Nowhere in the prologue or in the first example do i say the plane has never crashed before.
(Of course, if the plane has crashed before and the owner still has absolute faith that it won't crash (again), then he's even crazier than i described him. That's just stacking the deck though, so you're free to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that it hasn't crashed yet. Doesn't really matter either way though, because the owner is clearly described in that example as basing his decision on 100% pure faith - no facts, true or false, required... which would include the fact of whether or not the plane has crashed before.)
In that example, the owner is not basing his conclusion on any "facts", true or false. In fact, he isn't even considering them - he's ignoring them completely. The only factor in his decision is his faith in the plane... nothing else.
Is it an unrealistic example? Yes... anyone who relies only on faith to the total exclusion of any evidence or reasoning is (as i showed) insane. They wouldn't be able to function in reality, and even if they did, they would be totally and absolutely immoral. But it was never intended to be the main example of interest - it was just a set up for the other examples (and eliminating one more possibility).
And another example of you inserting your own facts into the example:
Nowhere in any example did i say that the owner was "attached" to the plane. You put that there yourself. There's no reason the owner can't hate the plane. Maybe he even wants it to break down permanently just to get rid of it, collect the insurance and buy a new one, but it's been very dependable and lasted much longer than it was supposed to. All i said was that he has faith that it will not crash. i didn't say he liked it.
In the first two examples, i said the owner had faith that the plane would fly. That's all. There's nothing in there about whether he likes it or not, whether it's crashed before or not, or whether it was one of the first planes he ever owned and now he's attached to it, etc. etc. Don't put nonsense into the examples that isn't already there - yes, technically it can all be accounted for without changing the conclusions... but that just overcomplicates the examples and the discussion. Keep it simple, keep it clear.
It was noted. Read the second and third paragraph in the section under "So, to summarize so far".
All of that was already mentioned in the section called "It is the action that is immoral, not the faith". But to answer your specific objection:
"As he could have had faith in the plane, and not said to fly it. He would have still believed in the plane's ability to fly but chose not to take the risk."... if faith told him it was ok to fly, and something else told him it was not, then faith was not the source of his decision.
In other words, here is a guy with a simple yes/no choice to make (i made it a simple yes/no choice in order to keep the analysis simple). He has two things guiding his decision, faith and evidence, and each overwhelmingly supports a certain conclusion (again, i made this so black and white in order to make the comparison between faith and evidence crystal clear... if the evidence were not clear cut, then this would not be a discussion about faith, it would be a discussion about the proper way to weigh evidence). Faith says yes, evidence says no (once again, if they both said the same thing, we would learn nothing). The guy has to choose.
If he chooses faith, then he answers yes. If he chooses evidence, then he answers no. The example is designed that way to remove the grey areas that come up in fuzzy logic when you start assigning weights and probabilities to decision factors.
So, your objection does not fly. If he lets faith guide his decision, he makes an immoral decision... regardless of whether the plane crashes or not. If he lets evidence guide his decision, he may make a mistake, but it will always be a moral decision. And there's no way he can compromise. He must choose, faith and fly, or evidence and ground. If he chooses "not to take the risk", then he is abandoning faith in favour of evidence.
It was not a sarcastic counter-argument - if you saw sarcasm there you put it there yourself. To strip faith of it's power to guide knowlege and action is to pull the rug out from under anything - any knowlege or any action - that has ever used faith as justification. You would be saying that everyone that has ever died for faith was a fool. You would be saying that every bit of human knowlege held by faith is meaningless - which writes off almost all religion. i put it that way because saying that faith is good but action based on faith is wrong seems at first a very tempting politically correct safe way out of the dilemma... but it's not. And i wanted a schockingly clear statement to point that out - and to make it clear that it is no compromise, even though it looks like one. You'll notice i then went on to point out exactly why this is the case in more detail. There was no sarcasm unless you put it there yourself.
The examples were designed to create a clear case of when faith and evidence contradict, and a choice must be made between them. In most cases in reality, it's not so clear because faith and evidence don't usually contradict so obviously, and evidence is usually not so clear-cut - but those factors just raise the level of complexity of the decision, they don't change the fundamental problem.
So forget those more complex situations - are they're doing is clouding the issue. i showed that when it really comes down to it, acting on faith is always immoral and acting on evidence is always moral.
If you accept that and then say "but it's ok to have faith, as long as you don't act on it", how have you not stripped faith of all meaning? You're saying "you can have faith... just don't use it". If you can't use it to decide action, what do you have left? Nothing. Faith is a motivator of action. Whenever faith doesn't motivate action, it serves no purpose at all and might as well not exist. If i have total and absolute faith without any question at all that cheese will kill me if i eat it... but then don't let that faith guide my actions at all and eat cheese whenever it gets offered to me... what really does my faith mean? Nothing at all. It's less meaningful than even mild superstition in that case.
You can't separate faith from action. Action is what gives faith meaning. And since all action based on faith is immoral... and faith is the cause of all that action... doesn't that make faith immoral, too?
But as long as there is no evidence, isn't it ok to believe something on faith? i mean, assuming you abandon that faith when/if the evidence turns up.
i mean, obviously i agree that faith is immoral when evidence exists... but if, like you said, you have a case where you have no evidence at all - nothing to base your decision on, to the point where you're just flipping a coin or making blind guesses - is it still immoral to have faith then?
And obviously, sticking to faith after evidence comes in is immoral... but what about until it comes in?
For example:
| Aredon wrote: |
| Likewise I disagree with calling the first example "faith", it sounds more like ignorant reasoning. (the plane won't crash becuase it hasn't yet.) In my reading of that example it sounds more like the man has reached his conclusion based on "facts" that are not true. (example: doesn't believe the plane can crash) |
In the first example, i didn't say the owner did not believe the plane wouldn't crash because it hadn't yet. i said quite clearly and quite explicitly why the owner believes the plane won't crash: "He doesn't even believe that it's possible for the plane to crash. Such a thing is beyond conception. He has absolute and total faith in the plane. He is completely and totally convinced by his faith that that plane will fly, no matter what may happen." It's all right there. You put that "the plane won't crash because it hasn't yet" thing in there, because it's nowhere in what i wrote. Most damning of all... i didn't even say that the plane had not crashed before (in that example). You made that fact up. Read back and see. Nowhere in the prologue or in the first example do i say the plane has never crashed before.
(Of course, if the plane has crashed before and the owner still has absolute faith that it won't crash (again), then he's even crazier than i described him. That's just stacking the deck though, so you're free to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that it hasn't crashed yet. Doesn't really matter either way though, because the owner is clearly described in that example as basing his decision on 100% pure faith - no facts, true or false, required... which would include the fact of whether or not the plane has crashed before.)
In that example, the owner is not basing his conclusion on any "facts", true or false. In fact, he isn't even considering them - he's ignoring them completely. The only factor in his decision is his faith in the plane... nothing else.
Is it an unrealistic example? Yes... anyone who relies only on faith to the total exclusion of any evidence or reasoning is (as i showed) insane. They wouldn't be able to function in reality, and even if they did, they would be totally and absolutely immoral. But it was never intended to be the main example of interest - it was just a set up for the other examples (and eliminating one more possibility).
And another example of you inserting your own facts into the example:
| Aredon wrote: |
| So from that example I conclude there is a vast difference between the "total faith" and blind conclusion derived from false facts and perhaps a touch of faith in the trustworthyness of the plane. In truth the use of the word faith in the example might be slightly misleading as it sounds as though he is more attached to the plane than he has faith in it. In the end even if he does blindly think his plane will fly no matter what and no one will get hurt, faith was a contributer, not the cause. The cause was egotistic thought, in that only he can be right. (on a side note i would also like to add that there is also a difference between blind faith and justified faith, likewise single-minded faith is different (which, assuming there is faith in this example, is the kind decribed.)) |
Nowhere in any example did i say that the owner was "attached" to the plane. You put that there yourself. There's no reason the owner can't hate the plane. Maybe he even wants it to break down permanently just to get rid of it, collect the insurance and buy a new one, but it's been very dependable and lasted much longer than it was supposed to. All i said was that he has faith that it will not crash. i didn't say he liked it.
In the first two examples, i said the owner had faith that the plane would fly. That's all. There's nothing in there about whether he likes it or not, whether it's crashed before or not, or whether it was one of the first planes he ever owned and now he's attached to it, etc. etc. Don't put nonsense into the examples that isn't already there - yes, technically it can all be accounted for without changing the conclusions... but that just overcomplicates the examples and the discussion. Keep it simple, keep it clear.
| Aredon wrote: |
| It should be noted that false understanding can be gained from facts and experiments if in the wrong context. |
It was noted. Read the second and third paragraph in the section under "So, to summarize so far".
| Aredon wrote: |
| Your last example is a far better example of faith possibly being immoral. I would agree that in this case it is possible for faith to be immoral, but I think it is more his choice that was immoral. As he could have had faith in the plane, and not said to fly it. He would have still believed in the plane's ability to fly but chose not to take the risk. So in the last case my opinion is it was his choice that was immoral not his faith. |
All of that was already mentioned in the section called "It is the action that is immoral, not the faith". But to answer your specific objection:
"As he could have had faith in the plane, and not said to fly it. He would have still believed in the plane's ability to fly but chose not to take the risk."... if faith told him it was ok to fly, and something else told him it was not, then faith was not the source of his decision.
In other words, here is a guy with a simple yes/no choice to make (i made it a simple yes/no choice in order to keep the analysis simple). He has two things guiding his decision, faith and evidence, and each overwhelmingly supports a certain conclusion (again, i made this so black and white in order to make the comparison between faith and evidence crystal clear... if the evidence were not clear cut, then this would not be a discussion about faith, it would be a discussion about the proper way to weigh evidence). Faith says yes, evidence says no (once again, if they both said the same thing, we would learn nothing). The guy has to choose.
If he chooses faith, then he answers yes. If he chooses evidence, then he answers no. The example is designed that way to remove the grey areas that come up in fuzzy logic when you start assigning weights and probabilities to decision factors.
So, your objection does not fly. If he lets faith guide his decision, he makes an immoral decision... regardless of whether the plane crashes or not. If he lets evidence guide his decision, he may make a mistake, but it will always be a moral decision. And there's no way he can compromise. He must choose, faith and fly, or evidence and ground. If he chooses "not to take the risk", then he is abandoning faith in favour of evidence.
| Aredon wrote: |
| At the moment, unless you were to provide a different example, I'm going to say that faith itself cannot be immoral but some actions that may result from poor conclusions based on faith may very well be wrong.
And no, by stating this arguement I am not removing faith's value. Actualy I do not even fully understand that very sarcastic counter-arguement. I fail to see how having faith but acting against it removes its meaning, it is still there, it is still nagging at you. Choosing to ignore it hardly drains its meaning or its existence. |
It was not a sarcastic counter-argument - if you saw sarcasm there you put it there yourself. To strip faith of it's power to guide knowlege and action is to pull the rug out from under anything - any knowlege or any action - that has ever used faith as justification. You would be saying that everyone that has ever died for faith was a fool. You would be saying that every bit of human knowlege held by faith is meaningless - which writes off almost all religion. i put it that way because saying that faith is good but action based on faith is wrong seems at first a very tempting politically correct safe way out of the dilemma... but it's not. And i wanted a schockingly clear statement to point that out - and to make it clear that it is no compromise, even though it looks like one. You'll notice i then went on to point out exactly why this is the case in more detail. There was no sarcasm unless you put it there yourself.
The examples were designed to create a clear case of when faith and evidence contradict, and a choice must be made between them. In most cases in reality, it's not so clear because faith and evidence don't usually contradict so obviously, and evidence is usually not so clear-cut - but those factors just raise the level of complexity of the decision, they don't change the fundamental problem.
So forget those more complex situations - are they're doing is clouding the issue. i showed that when it really comes down to it, acting on faith is always immoral and acting on evidence is always moral.
If you accept that and then say "but it's ok to have faith, as long as you don't act on it", how have you not stripped faith of all meaning? You're saying "you can have faith... just don't use it". If you can't use it to decide action, what do you have left? Nothing. Faith is a motivator of action. Whenever faith doesn't motivate action, it serves no purpose at all and might as well not exist. If i have total and absolute faith without any question at all that cheese will kill me if i eat it... but then don't let that faith guide my actions at all and eat cheese whenever it gets offered to me... what really does my faith mean? Nothing at all. It's less meaningful than even mild superstition in that case.
You can't separate faith from action. Action is what gives faith meaning. And since all action based on faith is immoral... and faith is the cause of all that action... doesn't that make faith immoral, too?
| The Conspirator wrote: |
| Cause if you take it by faith, when/if evidence dose come in it dose not matter what the evidence says you would still fallow choice you made. |
But as long as there is no evidence, isn't it ok to believe something on faith? i mean, assuming you abandon that faith when/if the evidence turns up.
i mean, obviously i agree that faith is immoral when evidence exists... but if, like you said, you have a case where you have no evidence at all - nothing to base your decision on, to the point where you're just flipping a coin or making blind guesses - is it still immoral to have faith then?
And obviously, sticking to faith after evidence comes in is immoral... but what about until it comes in?
Here's the deal: You are saying that the plane has been debatable for a while, and the engineers have been over the ship recently. The plane has had a record of problems, and that the engineers are not certain that it will be safe to fly.
The evidence:
1) It has been flown without incident. There have been problems, but it has still flown.
2) The engineers are not certain that it will be safe. They haven't signed off on it one way or the other.
Now, the owner has two options here:
A) He can junk it, possibly getting a new plane.
B) He can let it fly, possibly getting sued by the relatives of the people that died.
Now, Option A is the safer option, as well as the cheaper one, and the better PR one. At the same time, Option B may be riskier, but a positive result (the plane works okay) means that there is a cheaper option still.
All this means is that either option is acceptable from a purely business sense. The engineers haven't presented a strong case either way; they have a problem, but the problem isn't big enough to just scrap the plane, so they're asking their supervisor how to proceed.
Based on the evidence, I would continue to allow the plane to fly. The evidence shows that it has been flying with problems and has made it to where it is supposed to go every time. Ironically, faith would say that you're going to stop being lucky some time (after all, faith allows for hunches that logic doesn't).
HM
The evidence:
1) It has been flown without incident. There have been problems, but it has still flown.
2) The engineers are not certain that it will be safe. They haven't signed off on it one way or the other.
Now, the owner has two options here:
A) He can junk it, possibly getting a new plane.
B) He can let it fly, possibly getting sued by the relatives of the people that died.
Now, Option A is the safer option, as well as the cheaper one, and the better PR one. At the same time, Option B may be riskier, but a positive result (the plane works okay) means that there is a cheaper option still.
All this means is that either option is acceptable from a purely business sense. The engineers haven't presented a strong case either way; they have a problem, but the problem isn't big enough to just scrap the plane, so they're asking their supervisor how to proceed.
Based on the evidence, I would continue to allow the plane to fly. The evidence shows that it has been flying with problems and has made it to where it is supposed to go every time. Ironically, faith would say that you're going to stop being lucky some time (after all, faith allows for hunches that logic doesn't).
HM
| Indi wrote: | ||
But as long as there is no evidence, isn't it ok to believe something on faith? i mean, assuming you abandon that faith when/if the evidence turns up. i mean, obviously i agree that faith is immoral when evidence exists... but if, like you said, you have a case where you have no evidence at all - nothing to base your decision on, to the point where you're just flipping a coin or making blind guesses - is it still immoral to have faith then? And obviously, sticking to faith after evidence comes in is immoral... but what about until it comes in? |
But the problem with the very nature of faith, when that evidence comes in people would be reluctant except it too completely dismissing it no matter how strong it is.
| The Conspirator wrote: | ||||
But the problem with the very nature of faith, when that evidence comes in people would be reluctant except it too completely dismissing it no matter how strong it is. |
That's not a problem with faith, that's a problem with some people. There's no reason you can't have faith in somethin until you have evidence against. Like if you had a brother who was a pilot, and he crashed in the middle of the Amazon, you have no reason to believe he's alive or dead. You got no evidence either way. So... you can have faith that he's alive - and I'm not talkin about gambling that he's alive, I'm talkin about really believing, even knowing, that he's alive without any evidence to back that up. Is that immoral? I don't think so.
But when the evidence comes in that starts to suggest that he's dead, it would be immoral to go on keeping up the faith that he's still alive. Oh, sure, you can hope that he's still alive, but once you got evidence that he's not, you gotta start takin the real life steps you gotta take - closing down his affairs and so on.
If you wanna say that it's just the nature of faith that once you have it you can never let it go, I say alright, prove it. "That's just the way it is" is not proof. Lots of people have abandoned their faith when evidence against came up, and if you want a name, I can say either Bill Clifford (who wrote the essay that Indi based this on), or hell, Darwin.
Dunno... will we ever?
What's the point of asking this, aside from being an interesting subject when you're bored?
xD
Live on.
What's the point of asking this, aside from being an interesting subject when you're bored?
xD
Live on.
wait wait wait, if
isn't a sarcastic bash on a possible arguement to your point, I do not know what is.
I very much doubt that the man in example one would "hate" the plane he had total faith in. On a side note, yes, I did insert some things that can be concluded from the example. The fact of the matter is "faith" of that kind (non-religious) is typicaly based on reasoning. I'm saying that his reasoning was flawed in that he assumed that the plane was not going to crash based on the evidence presented (that it had flown with problems and reached its destination every time). So I provided what would have been a summary of his flawed thought process, it was in no way a quote from your paragraph.
Even if you are using the word faith to mean belief that the plane will fly true his belief is still based on knowledge, which is effectively, not faith. Becuase faith is believing something without proof.
Yeah... which means faith is a contributer to a possible choice, making the choice the final result to be judged as immoral or moral... not the faith.
If the evidence used to make a choice is flawed. Which is deemed wrong, the choice or the evidence?
Please prove to me how all action based on faith is immoral. (if i give a homeless man a dollar becuase i have faith he will buy food with it... is that immoral?)
Correct, but faith was present none the less.
In conclusion you have not yet shown me a way that faith can be deemed "immoral", but I can provide you with one:
Becuase morality is relative to the society that holds it, if a person were to believe sacrificing a child to the sun will "power it" becuase their faith told them it does. In their society this would be moral, in ours far from it.
Note that this is a reference to the belief that sacrificing is immoral, it is in no way addressing the action, which in our society is also immoral.
In this way faith can be immoral based on perspective, as morality and immorality are relative.
However, in the examples you provided, as i have said, you have not convinced me that faith can be immoral within the confines of your examples' frame of reference.
Last edited by Aredon on Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:03 pm; edited 4 times in total
| Quote: |
| If that's your argument, congratulations... you've just wiped all religion off the face of the Earth by stripping it of any meaning it may have had. |
I very much doubt that the man in example one would "hate" the plane he had total faith in. On a side note, yes, I did insert some things that can be concluded from the example. The fact of the matter is "faith" of that kind (non-religious) is typicaly based on reasoning. I'm saying that his reasoning was flawed in that he assumed that the plane was not going to crash based on the evidence presented (that it had flown with problems and reached its destination every time). So I provided what would have been a summary of his flawed thought process, it was in no way a quote from your paragraph.
Even if you are using the word faith to mean belief that the plane will fly true his belief is still based on knowledge, which is effectively, not faith. Becuase faith is believing something without proof.
| Quote: |
| Faith is a motivator of action |
Yeah... which means faith is a contributer to a possible choice, making the choice the final result to be judged as immoral or moral... not the faith.
If the evidence used to make a choice is flawed. Which is deemed wrong, the choice or the evidence?
| Quote: |
| You can't separate faith from action. Action is what gives faith meaning. And since all action based on faith is immoral... and faith is the cause of all that action... doesn't that make faith immoral, too? |
Please prove to me how all action based on faith is immoral. (if i give a homeless man a dollar becuase i have faith he will buy food with it... is that immoral?)
| Quote: |
| ... if faith told him it was ok to fly, and something else told him it was not, then faith was not the source of his decision. |
In conclusion you have not yet shown me a way that faith can be deemed "immoral", but I can provide you with one:
Becuase morality is relative to the society that holds it, if a person were to believe sacrificing a child to the sun will "power it" becuase their faith told them it does. In their society this would be moral, in ours far from it.
Note that this is a reference to the belief that sacrificing is immoral, it is in no way addressing the action, which in our society is also immoral.
In this way faith can be immoral based on perspective, as morality and immorality are relative.
However, in the examples you provided, as i have said, you have not convinced me that faith can be immoral within the confines of your examples' frame of reference.
Last edited by Aredon on Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:03 pm; edited 4 times in total
| Indi wrote: | ||||||
That's not a problem with faith, that's a problem with some people. There's no reason you can't have faith in somethin until you have evidence against. Like if you had a brother who was a pilot, and he crashed in the middle of the Amazon, you have no reason to believe he's alive or dead. You got no evidence either way. So... you can have faith that he's alive - and I'm not talkin about gambling that he's alive, I'm talkin about really believing, even knowing, that he's alive without any evidence to back that up. Is that immoral? I don't think so. But when the evidence comes in that starts to suggest that he's dead, it would be immoral to go on keeping up the faith that he's still alive. Oh, sure, you can hope that he's still alive, but once you got evidence that he's not, you gotta start takin the real life steps you gotta take - closing down his affairs and so on. If you wanna say that it's just the nature of faith that once you have it you can never let it go, I say alright, prove it. "That's just the way it is" is not proof. Lots of people have abandoned their faith when evidence against came up, and if you want a name, I can say either Bill Clifford (who wrote the essay that Indi based this on), or hell, Darwin. |
You have a point.
But how is having faith in "this" when there is no evidence any different than choosing what feels the best or randomly?
| Aredon wrote: | ||
wait wait wait, if
|
Most people don't bother to read through a long post carefully, they skim it. Example: you didn't see stuff that was there, and you saw stuff that wasn't.
The first and most obvious objection to the plane owner example is that his faith wasn't immoral, but his action was. It's also the standard objection fielded by all religions - usually as a way demonizing extremists while still retaining the moral right for the more moderate members of the congregation. How many times have you heard Christians saying Jim Kopp is evil because of his actions, but Christianity is off the hook despite being the motivator of those actions? Or Muslims saying that Ibn Laden is evil because of his actions, but Islam is off the hook despite being his primary motivator? It's just the rote objection that gets rolled off the tongue without thinkin anymore.
Because of those two facts, we pretty much expected that we were gonna have a ton of people poppin in, makin that objection, then poofing. Basically just spam in the discussion. And even those that did stick around, we would have to repeat the same answer over and over, even though it's right in the opening post.
So we took steps to stop that before it even started. We put that little bit right under the title of the objection - just one quick paragraph to clarify the claim, and then another short paragraph designed to make you stop and go "whoa... hang on". In that first paragraph, we didn't even bother to say why, we just said, basically, "if you claim that, it means this, congralations, you've destroyed religion", and then under that a sentence on its own sayin "ya, that didn't work"... and then the actual discussion begins. It was designed to make the skimmer stop abruptly and say, "what just happened?", and then actually read the response in depth.
And it worked. ^_^; You missed a bunch of other stuff in the text, but you didn't miss that. In fact, that's like the only challenge you addressed directly. You didn't buy it, but at least you acknowleged it.
If you're determined to read that as sarcastic, carry on, dude. I can't stop ya. But you gotta figure that since we're the ones that actually wrote it, we'd have a better idea of what the intended tone was. It was intended to control the responses of the people reading it, and so far, looks like it's workin.
| Aredon wrote: |
| I very much doubt that the man in example one would "hate" the plane he had total faith in. |
Ya? Why so? Faith doesn't require love. A lot of people have faith that the devil exists... they certainly don't love him.
I had a piece of shit car once, and I hated that damn thing. I remember one summer, I was sure it would make it to winter but not through winter, even though it never really gave any trouble. I had no evidence, just faith that the friggin thing would finally choke when it got cold enough, but not before. If my faith had been misplaced and it finally died in the fall, then unlike the plane owner, no real harm would have been done.
But other than that, what's the difference? I had a vehicle that I had faith would last (until winter). The plane owner had a vehicle that he had faith would last (never really specified until when - judgement day? - you could assume all time if you wanted). I totally hated my car... so why do you say it's so unlikely the plane owner hated his plane?
| Aredon wrote: |
| The fact of the matter is "faith" of that kind (non-religious) is typicaly based on reasoning. |
WHOA! Stop right there.
No. Just no.
If it is based on reasoning, it can't be faith. By definition.
Faith is faith is faith, whether you have faith in a religious belief or a secular one. It doesn't matter what you have faith in... what we're talkin about here is the faith itself.
If you have reason for believing the plane will fly, then... why do you need faith? You don't. Just go with the evidence.
The example was designed to draw a clear, bright line between evidence/reason and faith. If you turn around and now say that the faith in question has a reason, you're just changing the example to take away that line. Yes, sometimes faith coincides with reason. That was already mentioned. But faith does not need to coincide with reason, and it sure isn't based on it.
| Aredon wrote: |
| I'm saying that his reasoning was flawed in that he assumed that the plane was not going to crash based on the evidence presented (that it had flown with problems and reached its destination every time). So I provided what would have been a summary of his flawed thought process, it was in no way a quote from your paragraph. |
Ya, what you're doin is changing the example to make it more suitable to your argument. The first example, the man was just nuts. He didn't use reason at all, he used faith only - faith that had no overlap with evidence or logic. He totally ignored all reason and evidence - he just used his faith to determine his action. You're just asserting he did use reason - despite the fact that in the example it was made clear that he didn't - and then saying his reasoning was flawed.
Nope, no go. In the first example, the plane owner based all of his knowlege and actions on faith and faith only. If you ask "well why did he think..." the answer is "faith". If you ask "what reason did he have to believe..." the answer is "faith". Faith, pure faith, nothing else - and then in the third example we contrasted it with reason, pure reason, and nothing else (and the second example, the guy could go either way).
| Aredon wrote: |
| Even if you are using the word faith to mean belief that the plane will fly true his belief is still based on knowledge, which is effectively, not faith. Becuase faith is believing something without proof. |
Ya, it's based on knowlege acquired by faith. He has no proof that the plane will fly. In fact, he has lots of evidence that it won't. I don't get where your objection's comin from at all, unless you've redefined the word faith to mean "not faith, but reason" like you tried to above.
| Aredon wrote: | ||
Yeah... which means faith is a contributer to a possible choice, making the choice the final result to be judged as immoral or moral... not the faith. |
Greed is also a contributor to a possible choice. Isn't greed immoral? Hate is a contributor to a possible choice. You're sayin hate is guiltless?
Well, let's not stop there - concern for my fellow humans is a motivator of action. That means nothing now?
| Aredon wrote: |
| If the evidence used to make a choice is flawed, which is deemed wrong. The choice or the evidence? |
It doesn't matter whether evidence is true or false, just like it doesn't matter whether what you have faith in is true or false. If you have evidence, and you use that evidence to make a choice, that choice is always moral (assuming you use that evidence morally - see the original post). Was the evidence flawed? Doesn't matter. The results not so good? Doesn't matter. You made the absolute best decision you could have made by using the evidence you had.
Same for faith. If you have faith and you use that faith to make a choice, that choice is always immoral (assuming you have any other options, which I'll talk about in a minute). Was the faith correct? Doesn't matter. Results good/bad? Doesn't matter. You based the decision on faith rather than on evidence, and thus it was an immoral decision.
| Aredon wrote: | ||
Please prove to me how all action based on faith is immoral. (if i give a homeless man a dollar becuase i have faith he will buy food with it... is that immoral?) |
Excellent question, and it ties in with what The Conspirator has been talkin about:
| The Conspirator wrote: |
| But how is having faith in "this" when there is no evidence any different than choosing what feels the best or randomly? |
Both questions are related.
First, I gotta make some things clear. In this case, we're talkin about an instance where you have no evidence. None at all. You have no idea of what this guy is gonna do with the money - not even statistically speaking. You have absolutely no reason to believe this guy is gonna buy food (or not buy food) except for faith.
Now, if you got absolutely no reason to believe any one outcome over any others, that means that, so far as you know, all outcomes have equal probabilities. The guy could use the money to:
- Buy food.
- Buy crack.
- Donate to charity.
- Buy a handgun to rob a liquor store.
- Wipe his ass with it.
- To roll up and smoke in a money cigar made up of the cash poor suckers have given him after he's got up and walked around the corner and got in his limousine to drive back to his mansion.
- ... or anything else....
So, to summarize, you have a choice to make. You don't have any reason to believe that it will benefit the man... or anyone... or even that it won't do great harm. You have nothing - you could flip a coin to make the choice if you wanted to, just assume a random outcome and make your choice based on that - wouldn't make a difference. But you have faith that he will be benefit from the donation, and you're going to act on that.
For a moment, let's take a sidetrack. Let's imagine that I have faith that sticking people with a poison pin will purify their soul and send them to heaven, where they will have boundless joy. I have no evidence for or against this belief, and no evidence at all that it harms anyone - they're dead before I pull the pin out, so they don't even have a chance to register pain. However, I have faith that doing this will give them great happiness.
Now compare the two cases - the donation case in blue and the poison pin case in red:
- The choice is whether to give a dollar or not.
- The choice is whether to prick with a poison pin or not.
- There is no evidence that it will benefit the person it is given to.
- There is no evidence that it will benefit the person it is given to.
- There is no evidence that it will harm the person it is given to.
- There is no evidence that it will harm the person it is given to.
- But I have faith it will help them.
- But I have faith it will help them.
So... if it's moral to give a dollar based on faith alone that it will do them good... wouldn't it also be moral to prick with a poison pin based on faith alone that it will do them good?
No? Why not?
What makes the dollar case different from the poison prick case?
You say that it's because you know that giving money is usually not harmful while poison usually is? What do you base this knowlege on? Evidence, non? ^_^
A decision based on faith alone can never, ever be moral. At best it is amoral. At worst (when there is evidence available), immoral.
Indi: Go back and re-read your example. You'll find that the owner had some evidence to base his decision on. Yet, you argue that:
a) Faith requires no evidence at all.
b) The owner acted solely on faith.
Yet, how can that apply when he had the evidence (the plane's track record, which is mentioned, as well the engineers' statements (which aren't completely condemning)?
HM
a) Faith requires no evidence at all.
b) The owner acted solely on faith.
Yet, how can that apply when he had the evidence (the plane's track record, which is mentioned, as well the engineers' statements (which aren't completely condemning)?
HM
| Indi wrote: |
| What makes the dollar case different from the poison prick case?
You say that it's because you know that giving money is usually not harmful while poison usually is? What do you base this knowlege on? Evidence, non? ^_^ A decision based on faith alone can never, ever be moral. At best it is amoral. At worst (when there is evidence available), immoral. |
The difference, is the resulting action derived from the faith-based thought process. The resulting action is what will be judged as moral or immoral, not its cause.
Example: if those people pricked by the pin do indeed find great happiness. Suddenly that faith becomes moral but the action remains immoral. Aside from that generousity (homeless example) and purification by death are two very different things on the morality spectrum. Reguardless whether or not that list lines up, the fact remains that it is viewed as moral and right to give money to the poor. Which brings us to the point that you sidestepped. Morality is completely and totaly relative to the society that holds it.
Likewise if you base your choices on flawed evidence:
-Lets say that a recent report shows that certain levels of air injected into your bloodstreme can aid quick thinking, or perhaps even blood presure, either way it realy doesn't matter.
Clearly a choice by a doctor to take this evidence and offer it to his clients as a treatment would be completely immoral, reguardless of whether or not it was based on evidence. Your arguement that all choices based on evidence are moral, is fundamentaly flawed. Becuase just as with most everything else there will always be acceptions. The acception here is: He blindly accepted evidence from a untrustworthy sorce, therefore, once again. His action was immoral not the cause of it.
| Quote: |
| So... if it's moral to give a dollar based on faith alone that it will do them good... wouldn't it also be moral to prick with a poison pin based on faith alone that it will do them good? |
That is the approximate equal of saying X + 1 = X + 2 becuase both contain X. Based on the list.
In reguard of faith being compared to hatred and etc:
An interesting comparison, but in practice I think we would find that faith is in a catagory all its own. Though I see where you are going with it, I do not think they can be acurately compaired. Faith has a much larger gray area than those others. (as is clear by the existence of this topic)
From the original post:
| Quote: |
| So it is not the action itself that determines whether the action is moral or immoral. It is the reason for that action - which (in this discussion) is either faith... or evidence. |
This was your statement that you say destroys the idea that the action is immoral and not the faith, but part of your counterarguement contains
| Quote: |
| i already showed that if you act on faith, you're acting immorally |
| Quote: |
| Well, let's not stop there - concern for my fellow humans is a motivator of action. That means nothing now? |
Pretty much. If you have concern for your fellow man lets say this:
A man is sreaming in an dark ally.
You may have concern for him, but if you don't help him you are acting immoraly and if you help him you are acting moraly. Regaurdless of whether or not your concern was "moral" or "immoral", becuase your concern cannot be classified as moral or immoral in fact, the resulting action is what gets the final judgement dumped on it.
| Aredon wrote: |
| Which brings us to the point that you sidestepped. Morality is completely and totaly relative to the society that holds it. |
i didn't sidestep the pont. You never raised it. It didn't come up once. If you want to discuss something, bring it up. Don't say i'm avoiding it out of the blue.
But now that you brought it up: saying at this point that morality is "completely and totaly relative" is... bizarre. You mean all this time you've debated... nothing? That everything you've said so far is "completely and totaly" meaningless? Because if you really do believe that morality is "completely and totaly relative", then why the hell should i or anyone care about what your personal morality is? Why should you care about mine and whether or not i think faith is immoral? If moral and immoral are defined in any way you or your society chooses, then why do you care what my choice is? It's no better or worse than yours - everything's "completely and totaly relative" anyway, right?
If you believe that morality is "completely and totaly relative", you've wasted everyone's time by pretending that it's not so far. i mean, obviously the question of whether or not faith is absolutely immoral is a question of absolute morality. If you believe there is no such thing, you've just been wasting my time, just as surely as if you were debating against a possible mechanism of abiogenesis when you believe in Creationsim. Is that what you're telling me now?
i'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you worded your statement wrong, and you didn't really mean that morality is really "completely and totaly relative". Obviously some aspects of morality are society-dependent - like how much clothing in public is acceptible. But some are not. Slavery is or should be unacceptible in any society, as is murder - neither becomes "ok" just because the majority say so. Thus, there are moral absolutes. Or, to steal from Jefferson (who stole liberally from Locke): "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Unalienable rights = moral absolutes.
The issue of faith is not a social issue. It is an issue of epistemology, within which we can safely call it an absolute issue.
| Aredon wrote: |
| Reguardless whether or not that list lines up, the fact remains that it is viewed as moral and right to give money to the poor. |
1.) You just said morality is "completely and totaly relative to the society that holds it". And now you're throwing moral absolutes at me? Make up your mind.
2.) You are wrong. "The fact" does not remain that giving money to the poor is viewed as moral or right. In fact, the issue is hotly debated in many places. Some believe that giving money to the poor is morally wrong, because they did not earn it, and will not gain anything from the giving but a little temporary comfort (the old "give a man a fish" argument).
Actions are neither moral or immoral. Motive determines morality.
| Aredon wrote: |
| The difference, is the resulting action derived from the faith-based thought process. The resulting action is what will be judged as moral or immoral, not its cause. |
i already showed that that's not true. What determines whether an action is moral or immoral is why the action was done, not what was done.
Ok, try this. There are 3 aspects to everything that you do: motive, action and outcome. Why you do it, what you do, and what results.
i think everyone's agreed that the results do not determine morality. Is there any debate there?
So what about action - what you actually do? Giving someone money is neither moral or immoral - it can be moral if you're giving them money to help them and immoral if you're giving them money to buy guns. Pricking someone with a poison needle is neither moral or immoral - it can be immoral if you do it to an innocent person without their consent and moral if you do it to euthanize someone who is suffering horribly. You see? Action by itself is neither moral or immoral.
Thus the only determinant of morality is why you acted.
Faith is a "why" ("Why did you do X?" Because i believed by my faith that it would lead to good.). Thus it can be moral or immoral.
| Aredon wrote: |
| Example: if those people pricked by the pin do indeed find great happiness. Suddenly that faith becomes moral but the action remains immoral. Aside from that generousity (homeless example) and purification by death are two very different things on the morality spectrum. |
Why? Tell me exactly.
Assume for a moment that you had evidence - not faith - that pricking them would give them infinite joy. Why would it be immoral to prick them? You would be doing them infinite good, thus your action would be perfectly moral.
Now assume that you had evidence - not faith, evidence - that giving money to the man will only result in him going out and buying a gun to knock over a liquor store. Wouldn't it be immoral to give him money then?
Once again: action does not determine right. Motive does.
| Aredon wrote: |
| Likewise if you base your choices on flawed evidence:
-Lets say that a recent report shows that certain levels of air injected into your bloodstreme can aid quick thinking, or perhaps even blood presure, either way it realy doesn't matter. Clearly a choice by a doctor to take this evidence and offer it to his clients as a treatment would be completely immoral, reguardless of whether or not it was based on evidence. Your arguement that all choices based on evidence are moral, is fundamentaly flawed. Becuase just as with most everything else there will always be acceptions. The acception here is: He blindly accepted evidence from a untrustworthy sorce, therefore, once again. His action was immoral not the cause of it. |
Incorrect.
If the doctor really had evidence that injecting air into the patient would do them good, he would be morally bound to offer that option. If he had evidence to suggest it might be dangerous, he would be morally bound to tell them that, too. But your example is absurd because in order to work the doctor would have to not know that injecting air is lethal - because if he did know, then he would have to consider that evidence (and not do it). If he, as you say, blindly accepted evidence from an untrustworthy source he would still have to "forget" the evidence he already knows in order to accept the tainted evidence.
Put it this way. You know that shooting a gun into your face will (probably) kill you. Now some guy stops you on the street and says it won't, it will make you smarter, go try it. What kind of person would you be if you actually went and tried it? A blithering idiot, no? So... how is that example different from your doctor?
Try a more neutral example. Suppose a new drug came out called X, and the doctor had evidence that X would cure warts. He has a patient with warts. What would be the moral choice for that doctor to make? Use X on the patient or not?
Obviously, the answer is use X.
Later it turns out that the evidence was flawed, and the patient died. Has anything changed? Did the doctor suddenly become immoral?
| Aredon wrote: | ||
That is the approximate equal of saying X + 1 = X + 2 becuase both contain X. Based on the list. |
Explain how? What - exactly - is the difference, other than the action? And if the action does not determine morality (as i showed above), and the action is the only difference between the two... how is one moral and the other not?
| Aredon wrote: |
| In reguard of faith being compared to hatred and etc:
An interesting comparison, but in practice I think we would find that faith is in a catagory all its own. Though I see where you are going with it, I do not think they can be acurately compaired. Faith has a much larger gray area than those others. (as is clear by the existence of this topic) |
Then give an example of this grey area. That's one of the challenges i laid down in the original post.
| Aredon wrote: | ||||
From the original post:
This was your statement that you say destroys the idea that the action is immoral and not the faith, but part of your counterarguement contains
|
i honestly don't understand your objection. i showed that action does not determine morality - right in the opening post, a couple times in fact. In one instance i showed how the exact same action can be both moral and immoral depending on whether you take it based on faith or evidence (the plane example). In another i used an imaginary belief X and showed that the morality of action for X is, again, determined only by the motive (because obviously "X" is neither right or wrong - you don't even know what "X" is - and by extension actions in favour of X). If some "counterarguer" comes along and says that that's not true, that doesn't make what they say an argument. You say it's not true? Show it. i already have shown my point.
| Aredon wrote: | ||
Pretty much. If you have concern for your fellow man lets say this: A man is sreaming in an dark ally. You may have concern for him, but if you don't help him you are acting immoraly and if you help him you are acting moraly. Regaurdless of whether or not your concern was "moral" or "immoral", becuase your concern cannot be classified as moral or immoral in fact, the resulting action is what gets the final judgement dumped on it. |
You are fooling yourself by creating two separate actions and trying to judge them as one - claiming that they have the same motivation. Observe:
Action 1:
Motivation: Concern for my fellow humans.
Action: Going to help the person in the alley.
Result: Irrelevant.
Action 2:
Motivation: Concern for myself.
Action: Walking away without helping.
Result: Irrelevant.
Thus, concern for my fellow humans is always moral, because it always leads to moral actions. Concern for my fellow humans will never motivate me to walk away (unless there were greater concerns, which would still make it moral). Regardless of how i act, concern for my fellow humans is always moral - it is ignoring that concern that is immoral.
The action is not what gets judged. Observe:
Action 1b:
Motivation: Desire to beat up a mugger for fun.
Action: Going to help the person in the alley.
Result: Irrelevant.
Action 2b:
Motivation: In a rush to deliver a medicine that will save dozens at a hospital.
Action: Walking away without helping.
Result: Irrelevant.
See?
Indi: I think you're confusing faith (religious) with faith (proven). All the examples that you've used have rely on a proven thread of behavior with quantifiable results. That is, if someone does Action X when Condition Y applies, then when Condition Y returns, that person should do Action X again.
In essence, you can count on it happening again. You can TRUST the person to do that.
Religious faith is something entirely different, in that it requires a greater degree of trust. There may not always be a definite result, but, in a way, that's not what most people look for. They are looking more a group that believes reasonably similar to them, so that they can feel normal. In essence, it's not purely faith, but more of a security blanket...
HM
In essence, you can count on it happening again. You can TRUST the person to do that.
Religious faith is something entirely different, in that it requires a greater degree of trust. There may not always be a definite result, but, in a way, that's not what most people look for. They are looking more a group that believes reasonably similar to them, so that they can feel normal. In essence, it's not purely faith, but more of a security blanket...
HM
| Indi wrote: | ||
i didn't sidestep the pont. You never raised it. It didn't come up once. If you want to discuss something, bring it up. Don't say i'm avoiding it out of the blue. |
Original post, before your last repsonce that i told you sidestepped an arguement. What I should have said was missed it or skipped over it:
| Aredon wrote: |
| In conclusion you have not yet shown me a way that faith can be deemed "immoral", but I can provide you with one:
Becuase morality is relative to the society that holds it, if a person were to believe sacrificing a child to the sun will "power it" becuase their faith told them it does. In their society this would be moral, in ours far from it. Note that this is a reference to the belief that sacrificing is immoral, it is in no way addressing the action, which in our society is also immoral. In this way faith can be immoral based on perspective, as morality and immorality are relative. However, in the examples you provided, as i have said, you have not convinced me that faith can be immoral within the confines of your examples' frame of reference. |
It was said, please do not continue to say that I am making up stuff.
| Quote: |
|
But now that you brought it up: saying at this point that morality is "completely and totaly relative" is... bizarre. You mean all this time you've debated... nothing? That everything you've said so far is "completely and totaly" meaningless? Because if you really do believe that morality is "completely and totaly relative", then why the hell should i or anyone care about what your personal morality is? Why should you care about mine and whether or not i think faith is immoral? If moral and immoral are defined in any way you or your society chooses, then why do you care what my choice is? It's no better or worse than yours - everything's "completely and totaly relative" anyway, right? |
Wrong, becuase we are in a society that has its own laid-down morals, and therefore in our society they are absolute, in the world they are relative.
| Quote: |
|
If you believe that morality is "completely and totaly relative", you've wasted everyone's time by pretending that it's not so far. i mean, obviously the question of whether or not faith is absolutely immoral is a question of absolute morality. If you believe there is no such thing, you've just been wasting my time, just as surely as if you were debating against a possible mechanism of abiogenesis when you believe in Creationsim. Is that what you're telling me now? |
| Quote: |
| i'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you worded your statement wrong, and you didn't really mean that morality is really "completely and totaly relative". Obviously some aspects of morality are society-dependent - like how much clothing in public is acceptible. But some are not. Slavery is or should be unacceptible in any society, as is murder - neither becomes "ok" just because the majority say so. Thus, there are moral absolutes. Or, to steal from Jefferson (who stole liberally from Locke): "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Unalienable rights = moral absolutes. |
Yes, but take that moral absolute to a society that is about 100 years behind and still living under a cast system of some sort. That morality is no longer absolute, it becomes relative. As each level of the cast could be considered equal among that level, the moral would still be there but in a different kind and meaning, making it a relative moral.
| Quote: |
|
The issue of faith is not a social issue. It is an issue of epistemology, within which we can safely call it an absolute issue. |
I'm saying that Faith cannot be considered moral or immoral within the confines of our social morality system.
| Quote: | ||
1.) You just said morality is "completely and totaly relative to the society that holds it". And now you're throwing moral absolutes at me? Make up your mind. |
| Quote: |
|
2.) You are wrong. "The fact" does not remain that giving money to the poor is viewed as moral or right. In fact, the issue is hotly debated in many places. Some believe that giving money to the poor is morally wrong, because they did not earn it, and will not gain anything from the giving but a little temporary comfort (the old "give a man a fish" argument). |
Well that may be true in other societies, but here we have orginizations dedicated to helping the poor. Which many would call moral. (again, defined it the "general morality" in which we are discussing, the morality you presented seems... selfish at best.)
I could be wrong, but im rather sure that people that make donations don't realy care that its not helping them at all.
| Quote: |
|
Actions are neither moral or immoral. Motive determines morality. |
| Quote: | ||
i already showed that that's not true. What determines whether an action is moral or immoral is why the action was done, not what was done. |
| Quote: |
| i think everyone's agreed that the results do not determine morality. Is there any debate there? |
| Quote: |
| So what about action - what you actually do? Giving someone money is neither moral or immoral - it can be moral if you're giving them money to help them and immoral if you're giving them money to buy guns. Pricking someone with a poison needle is neither moral or immoral - it can be immoral if you do it to an innocent person without their consent and moral if you do it to euthanize someone who is suffering horribly. You see? Action by itself is neither moral or immoral. |
-A friend of yours is suddenly in debt and his family is in trouble, potentialy losing their home, etc.
-You give him money to bail him out, he is your friend, you helped him. The action is moral.
| Quote: | ||
Why? Tell me exactly. |
| Quote: |
| Assume for a moment that you had evidence - not faith - that pricking them would give them infinite joy. Why would it be immoral to prick them? You would be doing them infinite good, thus your action would be perfectly moral. |
| Quote: |
| Now assume that you had evidence - not faith, evidence - that giving money to the man will only result in him going out and buying a gun to knock over a liquor store. Wouldn't it be immoral to give him money then? |
| Quote: |
| Once again: action does not determine right. Motive does. |
| Quote: |
| If the doctor really had evidence that injecting air into the patient would do them good, he would be morally bound to offer that option. If he had evidence to suggest it might be dangerous, he would be morally bound to tell them that, too. But your example is absurd because in order to work the doctor would have to not know that injecting air is lethal - because if he did know, then he would have to consider that evidence (and not do it). If he, as you say, blindly accepted evidence from an untrustworthy source he would still have to "forget" the evidence he already knows in order to accept the tainted evidence. |
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| Try a more neutral example. Suppose a new drug came out called X, and the doctor had evidence that X would cure warts. He has a patient with warts. What would be the moral choice for that doctor to make? Use X on the patient or not?
Obviously, the answer is use X. Later it turns out that the evidence was flawed, and the patient died. Has anything changed? Did the doctor suddenly become immoral? |
In this case no, it would be the company that assumed their drug worked based on flawed evidence, so they launched it, that would be deemed immoral or at fault.
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Explain how? What - exactly - is the difference, other than the action? And if the action does not determine morality (as i showed above), and the action is the only difference between the two... how is one moral and the other not? |
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Then give an example of this grey area. That's one of the challenges i laid down in the original post. |
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i honestly don't understand your objection. i showed that action does not determine morality - right in the opening post, a couple times in fact. In one instance i showed how the exact same action can be both moral and immoral depending on whether you take it based on faith or evidence (the plane example). In another i used an imaginary belief X and showed that the morality of action for X is, again, determined only by the motive (because obviously "X" is neither right or wrong - you don't even know what "X" is - and by extension actions in favour of X). If some "counterarguer" comes along and says that that's not true, that doesn't make what they say an argument. You say it's not true? Show it. i already have shown my point. |
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| But let's take the objection seriously for a moment and see where it leads us. Suppose you have faith that X is true. Pretend first that the evidence also shows that X is true. So when it's time to act... you act as if X is true. Which is the right thing to do. But are you acting on faith... or evidence? Let's find out: now pretend that the evidence shows that X is not true. What do you do? Your faith says that X is true. The evidence says that X is not true. From the example with the plane, i already showed that if you act on faith, you're acting immorally, whether X is true or not. And from the same example, if you act on the evidence, you're acting morally, again whether X is actually true or not. Going back to the first part of this example, it follows that if you acted on faith you were being immoral and if you acted on evidence you were being moral... because even though both actions would have been the same, the reasons for those actions would have been different |
Right there you are basing your entire counterarguement on the "fact" that your original arguement was true, and if that were the case the person would not be argueing against it in the first place. It is not a different example, it is the same example with more explination. The entire thing is based off the original being true. Therefore neither the plane example, nor the X formulation derived from the plane example, are going to acomplish what you wanted them to in your arguement.
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You are fooling yourself by creating two separate actions and trying to judge them as one - claiming that they have the same motivation. |
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| Observe:
Action 1: Motivation: Concern for my fellow humans. Action: Going to help the person in the alley. Result: Irrelevant. Action 2: Motivation: Concern for myself. Action: Walking away without helping. Result: Irrelevant. |
Correction: motivation two was still concern for fellow humans
action was walk away worried, and hope the person is ok.
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| Thus, concern for my fellow humans is always moral, because it always leads to moral actions. Concern for my fellow humans will never motivate me to walk away (unless there were greater concerns, which would still make it moral). Regardless of how i act, concern for my fellow humans is always moral - it is ignoring that concern that is immoral.
The action is not what gets judged. Observe: Action 1b: Motivation: Desire to beat up a mugger for fun. Action: Going to help the person in the alley. Result: Irrelevant. Action 2b: Motivation: In a rush to deliver a medicine that will save dozens at a hospital. Action: Walking away without helping. |