Here we go again, indeed.
"Blind faith" is a redundancy, right? All faith is blind. We do not have
faith in what we doubt. As Peirce would say: Doubt is not a guest. We do
not entertain it. When it moves in, it sleeps in our bed, eats at our
table, goes to work with us, and listens to NPR with us when we drive home
in the car. Ditto belief. Descartes notion that we doubt everything that
we cannot assert with certainty was . to coin a phrase . crap.
So we are talking about faith, full stop. And we are talking about the
claim, made by a single man, Doug Roberts, as it happens, although it could
be any man, that he lives without faith.
I stipulate that I am wrong if it can be shown that Doug Roberts lives
without faith.
How to test such a proposition? I could put the burden on Doug. I could
say, "Doug, show me that every proposition you believe is founded in
explicit premises for which you know the evidence, which evidentiary
premises are themselves founded on explicit premises for which you know the
evidence. Etc. " In other words, prove the null. This seems harsh, but
just, given the boldness of the claim.
I would predict that whatever belief Doug (or any other human) might choose
to hold, if we walk him backward through his premises, we will eventually
find a place where he appeals to stubbornness ("I have always believed
that"), authority ("my orals committee told me it was true"), or consensus
("the guys in the lab all agree it's true"), and these, in my book, are all
forms of faith. We are all capable of thinking scientifically for a bit.
After that, Sahib, it's turtles all the way down.
I think it's fair to say that the sooner such a place is reached in some
person's thinking on a subject, the less interesting that person's thinking
on that subject is.. For that reason, I would assume that Doug shares my
distaste for "short loop" explanations such as "God's will" or "because the
spirit moved me". If this is what he means by faith, then I absolutely
agree with him. But the problem here is not faith, itself, which always
lies somewhere down there amongst the turtles, but the rapidity to which a
shallow thinker appeals to it.
Coming back to Santa Fe in a couple of weeks. Aren't you guys GLAD?! I am
excited.
Nick
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 1:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The
Economist
Well see, here we go again.
To which I come back again with the point of view that any philosophy, or
religion that is human-centric in nature as both Christianity or Islam are,
is inherently bad. A narrow world view, enabled, promoted, and enforced
with even narrower strict fundamentalist practitioners is by definition
destructive.
There can be no greater moral deficiency than having been born with an
intellect and then refusing to use it.
Blind faith is exactly that: blind. "Faith" in religion is defined as
having accepted, unquestioningly, what someone else has told you is the one
true way.
I personally have no respect for religious faith.
I respect people's right to chose to live that way, right up to the point
where they attempt to influence how I live and think. But not their decision
to unquestioningly commit to a dogma.
Religion, because it requires "faith" to become a subscriber, is inherently
bad.
And as long as we're on the subject, if religion is bad for the reasons
described above, then the opposite of religion is cosmology: the science of
trying to understand the universe rather than attempting to explain it away
with fairy tales.
--Doug
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Victoria Hughes <victo...@toryhughes.com>
wrote:
Religion is not inherently bad. It is the use of it for mundane power that
is the problem.
All religious traditions began with a prophet / visionary / mystic who urged
tolerance, peace and self-awareness. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha... In most
cases, that person's initial followers began to leverage their own closeness
and supposed 'superior understanding' to that original figure to justify
behaviour that benefited their mundane activities.
Every religion has gone through this. Every creed of any kind has gone
through this. The challenge is our use of belief.
Nick could speak to this too: there are developmental lines in the
psychology of individuals, groups, nations, tribes, etc: and these will use
powerful innate tools (like the human need to believe in something) for
different purposes, depending on their development.
And there is nothing inherently wrong or flawed in the things in which
people embed their beliefs. Science, truth, the divine, all those have
positive beneficial elements. Again, it is the use of those concepts as
tools to persuade others into actions that destroy that is the problem.
Self-awareness in all this is the key.
Tory
On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:
One semi-final note from me about culture and religion: I lived in Libya
for a year in 1976 when I was a consultant to Occidental Petroleum. I
traveled extensively between Tripoli, Benghazi, and several points about 900
miles southeast of Tripoli in the northern tip of the Sahara during that
year. I quickly learned that the culture of the Arabic half of Libya (as
compared to the Berber Bedouin culture that comprises the eastern half of
the country) is dominated by the Islamic religion. You cannot separate
them. Religion is interwoven into every aspect of their culture. Any
attempt to exclude the impact of religion on their culture will fail.
--Doug
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Douglas Roberts <d...@parrot-farm.net>
wrote:
Let's see if I understand you correctly, Owen.
There are a bunch of fundamentalist Islamists all up in arms shouting
"Allahu Akhbar" whilst burning down our embassies and killing our diplomats
because there is a film out that is derogatory of the Muslim religion.
And this is not about religion?
I don't see it.
Or you don't see it.
What I do see is that there is one very large disconnect on this particular
issue.
--Doug
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Owen Densmore <o...@backspaces.net> wrote:
I do not believe this to be a religious issue at all. The question is of
groups and institutions.
When a faction of a group becomes apparently insane, do we not expect the
entire group, its leaders and majority, to speak up and to mend?
When civil rights were an issue in the south, many of us (I was at Georgia
Tech) spoke up, and indeed many churches of all stripes did so. Many NRA
members also speak up about the extreme position the organization takes.
Examples abound. And yes, I consider this a Complexity domain, much like
Miller's Applause model.
Isn't this possibly a cultural issue? Possibly regional? The largest
Muslim population is not Libya or Egypt or even all of the middle east, its
Indonesia. They do not appear to have this issue.
So my question stands as Kofi stated:
"Where are the leaders? Where is the Majority? Nobody speaks up."
NOT the religious leaders but the leaders of the culture in which the
religion lies.
And Hussein, forgive me, but your inward religious stance has nothing to do
with speaking out against injustice. It is not a religious issue, but a
civic, cultural one.
-- Owen
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Doug Roberts
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drobe...@rti.org
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505-455-7333 - Office
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
--
Doug Roberts
drobe...@rti.org
d...@parrot-farm.net
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
