Question: Faith vs Intelligence

As an atheist, I think the Chris is correct, I lack faith in god(s) as I have zero faith in god(s). I think Alex is wrong as I think Chris does not reject christianity because he is too afraid to.

[quote=Jesus of Nazareth addressing Doubting Thomas, the Apostle]Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.[/quote]

Chris's claim is true, if you accept how faith is described in the NT, but false if you accept a different standard of faith. A Jew or Muslim, for example, does not lack faith but do not accept certain Christian beliefs. Telling them they lack faith would be rude, but telling someone who lacks religious faith that they lack faith is not rude unless it is meant to imply a personal shortcoming.

Alex's claim betrays his/her own ignorance. There are plenty of highly intelligent people who are believers, and so factually wrong. It is rude to tell someone they lack intelligence.

A statement may be a truthful expression of what someone thinks, but that does not mean that they think is not thereby wrong. To think something and to express it are two different things. To think it might not be rude but to express it might be.

You fail to Laugh at "your faith" or "your intelligence" because you lack Courage.

memento mori

"What you find hateful [harmful], [i]do not do to anyone "

"Amor fati!"

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy."[/i]

memento vivire

:fire:

Quoting 180 Proof

Courage

What's courage? I know it's one among the 4 cardinal virtues (fortitudo) - it seems I don't know what I don't have.

Reply to Agent Smith Reread me.

Reply to 180 Proof

1. Be mindful of one's mortality
2. The Golden rule, be good; try at least
3. Accept one's fate
4. Trying and failing is better than not trying at all
5. Rebel, sensu eminenti, against life's indifference
6. Drink life to the lees

:grin:

Reply to Art48

After looking over this and your other threads, I'm starting to get a feeling you're not a strong supporter of religion in general and Christianity specifically. You also seem to feel a lack of respect for people who disagree with you in that regard. You cast doubt on their intelligence.

Quoting T Clark

You also seem to feel a lack of respect for people who disagree with you in that regard. You cast doubt on their intelligence.

Not at all. I'm fully aware there are Nobel laureates who are religious (Francis Collings is a case in point). My point is that the lacking faith accusation (which I've seen often on religious forums) seems to me ad hominem and I wonder why many religious people think that accusation is perfectly OK but would be insulted with Alex's counter-accusation

I'm asking people who believe what Chris says is OK but what Alex says is insulting to explain their reasoning. (I personally don't think there is a good reason but am opening to changing my opinion if I hear a good reason.)

Quoting Art48

I'm asking people who believe what Chris says is OK but what Alex says is insulting to explain their reasoning.

Speaking personally, it is true that I do not accept Christianity because I lack faith. A simple statement of fact. It may be true that I lack intelligence but would find it insulting if someone told me that. Faith is a matter of choice. Intelligence is not.

Quoting Fooloso4

Faith is a matter of choice. Intelligence is not.

:chin:

Quoting Fooloso4

Faith is a matter of choice. Intelligence is not.

I don't accept the idea you can chose what to believe. To use God language, I'd say both faith and intelligence are a gift of God. In my experience, many Christians say faith is a gift of God.

Reply to Art48 :up:

Quoting Art48

I don't accept the idea you can chose what to believe.

Faith and belief are not the same, but related. Faith is also related to trust and acceptance. Since we are talking about Christian faith:

And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith ... (Galatians 2:16 ...)

One who does not believe will not have faith, but one can believe and still not have faith. Many claim to believe in Jesus in one way or another, but not live by faith.

Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and do not doubt ... (Matthew 21:21)

If faith is not a matter of choice then what does this mean? Some might see in this the doctrine of predestination, but if it is not a matter of choice then why does he tell them this?

Edit: Quoting Art48

... many Christians say faith is a gift of God.

That it is a gift need not mean it is something given to you without you having a choice in the matter. A gift can either be accepted or rejected.

Quoting Fooloso4

Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and do not doubt ... (Matthew 21:21)
If faith is not a matter of choice then what does this mean?

It means that we shouldn't take the Bible too seriously.
I don't accept "the Bible says" or "Jesus says" as a valid argument.

Quoting Art48

I don't accept the idea you can chose what to believe.

If you deny doxastic voluntarism (the belief you can decide your beliefs) outright, then what triggers your belief other than a deterministic force, and why should I think that force has anything to do with it meeting criteria that suggests it's true? Do you reject free will outright?

Directly on this issue is William James "The Will to Believe," which agrees with you insofar as he doesn't believe you can will to believe that which you already don't believe, but to where you've not decided, you can choose to believe as a matter of preference. Such provides a basis to will to believe in a religious faith.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Believe

Quoting Fooloso4

Faith is a matter of choice. Intelligence is not.

Yup! Within the current zeitgeist intelligence means being rational i.e. to submit oneself to logical rules & principles - slavery!

Faith on the other hand is to reject logical authority and go one's own way, believing whatever one wants - freedom!

Quoting Hanover

doxastic voluntarism (the belief you can decide your beliefs)

Learned something new today. I owe you one!

Quoting Art48

I don't accept "the Bible says" or "Jesus says" as a valid argument.

Either do I, but I assume Chris does accept what it says, and if not, that may well be a matter of choice, just as is your choice not to accept it.

Quoting Hanover

If you deny doxastic voluntarism (the belief you can decide your beliefs) outright, then what triggers your belief other than a deterministic force,

The facts as I understand them determine my belief.

Quoting Art48

The facts as I understand them determine my belief.

This is a very limited epistemological theory that doesn't take into account anything other than matters of certainty (e.g. Cartesian logical entailment or knowledge of the existence of your phenomenal states). There are many instances of significant doubt, where through deliberation you reach your best guess (which really is a description of science and inductive reasoning generally).

As many things are not certain or are not clear, room is left for choice. How you choose is up to you, which allows for an expression of preference.

If you choose to disbelieve that which lacks sufficient proof, as you deem "sufficient" to be, that is a choice.

Quoting Fooloso4

Faith and belief are not the same

This is true, as one can renounce God while one lost faith in God due to whatever circumstance yet at the same time such implies acknowledging God.

Quoting Art48

If you deny doxastic voluntarism (the belief you can decide your beliefs) outright, then what triggers your belief other than a deterministic force,
— Hanover
The facts as I understand them determine my belief.

James' Will To Believe is pertinent here:

Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed. If I ask you to believe in the Mahdi, the notion makes no electric connection with your nature,—it refuses to scintillate with any credibility at all. As an hypothesis it is completely dead. To an Arab, however (even if he be not one of the Mahdi's followers), the hypothesis is among the mind's possibilities: it is alive. This shows that deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the {3}individual thinker. They are measured by his willingness to act. The maximum of liveness in an hypothesis means willingness to act irrevocably. Practically, that means belief; but there is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all.

Next, let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option. Options may be of several kinds. They may be—1, living or dead; 2, forced or avoidable; 3, momentous or trivial; and for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind.

1. A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you: "Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan," it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: "Be an agnostic or be a Christian," it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.

2. Next, if I say to you: "Choose between going out with your umbrella or without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say, "Either love me or hate me," "Either call my theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory. But if I say, "Either accept this truth or go without it," I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind.

{4}
3. Finally, if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed. Per contra, the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique, when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise. Such trivial options abound in the scientific life. A chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital harm being done.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26659/26659-h/26659-h.htm#P1

What you consider to be relevant facts is not necessarily what someone else considers relevant facts. This principally has to do with the particular circumstances that the person is in, and not with either faith or intelligence. For example, if you were born and raised in a Mormon community and earned your living there, it would be of utmost relevance to you whether Joseph Smith is God's prophet or not. In that particular setting, your entire social life and your earning a living would depend on your membership in the Mormon church, and as such, where you stand on the matter of Joseph Smith would be paramount to your membership (in James' terminology, you'd be facing an option that is living, a complete logical disjunction, and momentuous). If, on the other hand, you wouldn't live in such a community, under such restraints, the matter of Joseph Smith's prophet status would be irrelevant to you (dead, avoidable, and trivial). But in that other setting, some other option would be living, a complete logical disjunction, and momentuous.

Quoting Hanover

As many things are not certain or are not clear, room is left for choice. How you choose is up to you, which allows for an expression of preference.

If you choose to disbelieve that which lacks sufficient proof, as you deem "sufficient" to be, that is a choice.

There is a difference between a post-hoc justification of one's belief and the actual process by which one has arrived at that belief. The search for "sufficient proof" is one such post-hoc justification.

I think James' theory of doxastic voluntarism is the most adequate one and it always applies.

Quoting baker

O think James' theory of doxastic voluntarism is the most adequate one and it always applies.

He acknowledges that not all beliefs are chosen.

I do think it would be hard to argue that logical truths are indubitable. Most famously, Descartes' quote of "We cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt."

James' theory is actually a combination of doxastic determinism and doxastic voluntarism. Absolute doxastic voluntarism would mean that one could choose believe anything, simply by whimsical choice. This is what some ill-informed critics accuse James of, even though this is precisely what he rules out when he posits the three qualifiers that make for a genuine option (namely that a genuine option is one that is experienced by the person as forced, living, and momentous).

The determinism is due to the person having no immediate power over what in particular they consider forced, living, and momentous. The voluntarism is in that they can reflect on their situation and make a choice, given their circumstances.

In contrast, the general trend (among all walks of people, religious or not, scientifically minded or not) is to try to depersonalize issues of epistemology and try to conceive of them as if they are properties of "things outside the person" (hence the quest for "facts" and "truth").

I agree with the second statement. Intelligence is a an ideal that trumps faith, whereas faith is an ideal or supposed virtue that shuns intelligence. Intelligence trumps faith because of the critical realization through analysis that faith is part of a set of virtues (+hope and charity) that are meant to supplant intelligent critical thought. Faith shuns skepticism, hope places expectation over reality, and charity denies tough treatment of a poor position. To say that someone fails for not doing any one of these things relies on a transvaluation of what it means to fail.

The Paradox of Skepticism: To want evidence is to reject faith, but Agrippa's trilemma shows that reason itself is unjustified which is just another way of saying reason depends on faith. We've come full circle: Faith [math]\to[/math] Reason [math]\to[/math] Faith. This, I suppose, is one, if not the, key message of fideistic religions.

Reply to Agent Smith Nonsense. "Reason" is not a claim; it's a discursive practice that is "justified" only insofar as it works. "Faith?" Well, nothing fails like prayer ... (Btw, there isn't any "paradox" in Pyrrhonian skepticism (re: undecidable ideas) in contrast to the unwarranted assumption of Academic / global skeptics that "knowledge must be certain, therefore uncertain knowledge is not knowledge.")

Quoting 180 Proof

works

A lot rides on that word, I can tell you that. Predictive power has been a much sought after item since antiquity, I'm not sure though, but still what else could "works" mean in this context?

Is the claim reason is the gold standard when it comes to discovering truths justified. This begs for an argument, but that would be assuming what needs to proven (circulus in probando) and that is a cardinal sin as far as reason goes.

Skepticism is self-refuting, I agree, but Cassius did manage to murder Caesar even if he did suicide later on. If you disagree, please explain why?

Quoting Art48

Chris: You fail to accept Christianity because you lack faith.

Alex: You fail to reject Christianity because you lack intelligence.

What Alex says about Chris has been empirically proven. The IQ of the average Christian is below the IQ of the average non-believer.

What Chis says about Alex is also true (I don't know however, if studies had been conducted to show this to be true with statistics.) Alex does not have faith because he does not need it. He gets along much better with knowledge and intelligence, than Chris does with his faith. Obviously when you want to be prosperous, healthy, happy and successful, being intelligent and smart and knowledgeable is much more helpful to achieve your life's goals than praying and believing in god.

Quoting baker

James' theory is actually a combination of doxastic determinism and doxastic voluntarism. Absolute doxastic voluntarism would mean that one could choose believe anything, simply by whimsical choice.

Can you say this in laymen's terms? I have absolutely no clue what you are talking about.

Quoting Fooloso4

Faith is a matter of choice. Intelligence is not.

I agree that intelligence is not a matter of choice. But faith? I define faith as belief in the supernatural force's conducting changes in the physical world.

I am still out on that. I don't know. Child-age indoctrination certainly plays a huge role in the faith of a person. Yet, people have reversed their faiths. Atheists becoming faithful, and vice versa.

I dunno. It is largely NOT a matter of choice, but with a lot of effort, perseverance, and thinking, it just may be in certain select individuals.

Reply to god must be atheist

Perhaps whether or not it occurs to someone that it is a matter of choice is a matter of intelligence.

Reply to Agent Smith IME, reason works better than any of the alternatives tried so far. Better for what? At least for (1) producing, using, correcting and transmitting (algorithmic) knowledge and, via reflective equilibrium, (2) forming normative beliefs in indeterminate situations or intractably complex domains.

Reply to 180 Proof I like your fallibilism idea better.

Reply to Agent Smith You've lost me.

Quoting 180 Proof

You've lost me.

I'm lost too bruh! :groan:

Quoting Fooloso4

Perhaps whether or not it occurs to someone that it is a matter of choice is a matter of intelligence.

Flattery will get you everywhere. :-)

Quoting baker

James' theory is actually a combination of doxastic determinism and doxastic voluntarism. Absolute doxastic voluntarism would mean that one could choose believe anything, simply by whimsical choice.

Okay, I read it ten times and I think I have a pretty good grip on this. Doxastic - relating to belief, to dogma. It's all clear now.

I see now the OP's point, it's a dilemma.

1. Either you accept Christianity OR you reject Christianity
2. If you accept Christianity, you lack intelligence
3. If you reject Christianity, you lack faith
Ergo
4. You either lack intelligence or you lack faith

Nobody likes to lack anything now do they?

I propose a counterdilemma, Protagorian style.

5. If you accept Christianity, you possess faith
6. If you reject Christianity, you possess intelligence

See?

Now, instead of lacking intelligence or faith, you possess intelligence or faith!

Hats off to the amazing Protagoras! Go sophists, go!

Reply to god must be atheist

By "someone" I did not mean some particular someone.

Quoting Fooloso4

By "someone" I did not mean some particular someone.

Too late. Compliment already taken, even if it had been unintended. No harem done, you only made my day, that's all. Is that so wrong? :-)

Reply to god must be atheist

I think it best to take compliments wherever we find them.