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I agree with cookiecaper. I've never seen mars. I believe (blindly) that the books, pictures and lectures I've seen are real, and that other people's pronounc

I agree with cookiecaper. I've never seen mars. I believe (blindly) that the books, pictures and lectures I've seen are real, and that other people's pronouncements (from NASA, etc) are real too, so I believe (ie have blind faith) that mars is real. I _assume_ (ie have faith) that I could do some research and become a little more sure. Heck, that goes for atoms, electricity, just about everything. All I KNOW (without getting existential, etc) are things I've personally experienced. Everything else is pure belief (and blindly at that) based on trusting the sources.

javert 16y ago
Please see my response to cookiecaper. You don't "blindly believe" the scientific facts/phenomena to which you refer. First, you have ample evidence to suggest that they exist. Second, they do not contradict anything else in reality that you are aware of. Third, you have reason to trust the process of cognition that led to those conclusions, i.e, the thought process and work of scientists that reference reality in their work and seek to prove things objectively. Faith---which in common use (properly so) is equivalent to "religious faith" unless otherwise specified---breaks all of those rules.
- anon_for_this_1 16y ago
  I, personally, have no _evidence_ that the big bang really happened. I have heard people tell me it's so. I've read books claiming it's so. I have to have faith in these books and these people. That's the essence of my argument -- very, very few of us have actual evidence. What we have is the words of others. In other words, there are only a small handful of people that have built a device that can measure background microwave radiation and devices to measure red-shift, etc. Those few people know what they have observed and can interpret that information. Everything else that is built on those observations (many more theories, etc) is based on a belief in those original few peoples' work. And we, the masses, then have to believe those secondary interpretations. Heck, I haven't even gotten the information from the data interpreters, but rather from other writers who have interpretted it further and written text books, blog posts, etc. So yeah, it's pretty close to blind faith since I'm so many steps away from the truth, and don't have the ability (currently, with my existing education) to truely know it anyway even if I could speak directly to one of those scientists that built the space probe. I'd STILL have to trust him when he showed me the raw data.
WingForward 16y ago
You haven't seen Mars? Really? It's often visible in the sky at night.
- anon_for_this_1 16y ago
  ... says the "astronomy priest" to me :) I have to take your word for it. I know there is what appears to be a star that looks brighter than most others. I, personally, don't have a means at my disposal to know it's mars. I just have to believe you.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - gbog 16y ago
    This is not faith. We agree on the name we give to that spot in the sky, which happen to be "Mars". Then we agree to name "planets" the spots that behave in a given manner, "stars" the other spots, etc. That's just how languages are built. "Believing" that the language work "well enough" is necessary for normal life and intellectual exchanges. To dig deeper, the faith leap is more done when we agree that every night, the spot of light we see at roughly the same place in the sky is the emanation of a unique object, that deserves a unique name. This is related to the identity problem.
    - anon_for_this_1 16y ago
      It is faith for _me_ since I've never looked through a telescope and seen that it is indeed a nearer-mass/rock, and not a star as it appears in the sky. Unless you have seen it with your own eyes, you too are believing based on the words of others. My point isn't that we can't verify some of the things we think are true, but my point is that we usually don't. Instead, we believe what we're taught because everyeone else around us believes. We're not so different from the people at the time of Columbus that were taught the world was flat. They didn't (most couldn't verify it), but everyone 'knew' it was true. That had been taught it, they had books describing it, and maps showing it. They had as much evidence as I do about mars. Many people really have seen mars through telescopes, and a number of rocket scientists have built devices to go and look at it indirectly. THOSE people KNOW mars exists. The rest of us believe, blindly, what we are told about it. I don't doubt mars exists in the least, only because I _choose_ to believe it exists.
pjscott 16y ago
Belief should not be absolute, but a matter of degree. If I flip a coin ten times, I believe that it'll land heads at least once. How strongly do I believe it? As a matter of fact, I'm a little more than 99.9% sure. The probability of getting at least one head is 1023/1024. On more complex things, it's harder (and sometimes uncomputable) to come up with such precise probability estimates, but that doesn't change the principle. I believe with greater than 99% certainty that evolution happened. I believe with less certainty that Moore's law will continue for another two or three process nodes. I have very little belief that "psychics" can talk with the dead; equivalently, I have a very high degree of belief that they can not talk with the dead. The degrees of belief we have about things should be revised upward or downward based on evidence, and should be based on the evidence we have available to us. Your belief that mars is real is supported by a lot of evidence, and therefore should have a high degree of confidence. But if I told you that there's a planet, unknown until now, called Uldune, and that this planet has space pirates using it as a supply base, then believing me with non-negligible certainty would be an act of blind faith. (Disbelieving me, with high certainty, would not be. My story about the planet Uldune contradicts a lot of evidence about the current state of the art in space travel, and the laws of physics, and so on.)
- anon_for_this_1 16y ago
  Evolution is a good example. Why do you believe it happened? Because someone told you. You read someone else's words. It sort of makes sense. You saw what you assume are dinosaur bones in a museum. All of that is faith, and perhaps blind faith. I'm assuming you're not a geneticist, so you probably didn't verify that the bones that were stacked nicely into a skeleton actually came from the same being. You likely weren't part of the dig team that found them. You don't know where they came from, or even if they are actual bone. And I'm not even talking about people purposely misleading us, but rather the fact that we have to take at face value what we are told. That's blind faith. We both _assume_ we could dig and verify the facts (with enough time, money and education), but we don't -- we just believe. My argument is the 'evidence' we think we have, is nothing more than blind faith in 99% of the time, simply because we don't have the time and resources to follow up on everything. We simply believe because everyone else does.

javert 16y ago

Please see my response to cookiecaper. You don't "blindly believe" the scientific facts/phenomena to which you refer. First, you have ample evidence to suggest that they exist. Second, they do not contradict anything else in reality that you are aware of. Third, you have reason to trust the process of cognition that led to those conclusions, i.e, the thought process and work of scientists that reference reality in their work and seek to prove things objectively. Faith---which in common use (properly so) is equivalent to "religious faith" unless otherwise specified---breaks all of those rules.

anon_for_this_1 16y ago
I, personally, have no _evidence_ that the big bang really happened. I have heard people tell me it's so. I've read books claiming it's so. I have to have faith in these books and these people. That's the essence of my argument -- very, very few of us have actual evidence. What we have is the words of others. In other words, there are only a small handful of people that have built a device that can measure background microwave radiation and devices to measure red-shift, etc. Those few people know what they have observed and can interpret that information. Everything else that is built on those observations (many more theories, etc) is based on a belief in those original few peoples' work. And we, the masses, then have to believe those secondary interpretations. Heck, I haven't even gotten the information from the data interpreters, but rather from other writers who have interpretted it further and written text books, blog posts, etc. So yeah, it's pretty close to blind faith since I'm so many steps away from the truth, and don't have the ability (currently, with my existing education) to truely know it anyway even if I could speak directly to one of those scientists that built the space probe. I'd STILL have to trust him when he showed me the raw data.

WingForward 16y ago

You haven't seen Mars? Really? It's often visible in the sky at night.

anon_for_this_1 16y ago
... says the "astronomy priest" to me :) I have to take your word for it. I know there is what appears to be a star that looks brighter than most others. I, personally, don't have a means at my disposal to know it's mars. I just have to believe you.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- gbog 16y ago
  This is not faith. We agree on the name we give to that spot in the sky, which happen to be "Mars". Then we agree to name "planets" the spots that behave in a given manner, "stars" the other spots, etc. That's just how languages are built. "Believing" that the language work "well enough" is necessary for normal life and intellectual exchanges. To dig deeper, the faith leap is more done when we agree that every night, the spot of light we see at roughly the same place in the sky is the emanation of a unique object, that deserves a unique name. This is related to the identity problem.
  - anon_for_this_1 16y ago
    It is faith for _me_ since I've never looked through a telescope and seen that it is indeed a nearer-mass/rock, and not a star as it appears in the sky. Unless you have seen it with your own eyes, you too are believing based on the words of others. My point isn't that we can't verify some of the things we think are true, but my point is that we usually don't. Instead, we believe what we're taught because everyeone else around us believes. We're not so different from the people at the time of Columbus that were taught the world was flat. They didn't (most couldn't verify it), but everyone 'knew' it was true. That had been taught it, they had books describing it, and maps showing it. They had as much evidence as I do about mars. Many people really have seen mars through telescopes, and a number of rocket scientists have built devices to go and look at it indirectly. THOSE people KNOW mars exists. The rest of us believe, blindly, what we are told about it. I don't doubt mars exists in the least, only because I _choose_ to believe it exists.

pjscott 16y ago

Belief should not be absolute, but a matter of degree. If I flip a coin ten times, I believe that it'll land heads at least once. How strongly do I believe it? As a matter of fact, I'm a little more than 99.9% sure. The probability of getting at least one head is 1023/1024. On more complex things, it's harder (and sometimes uncomputable) to come up with such precise probability estimates, but that doesn't change the principle. I believe with greater than 99% certainty that evolution happened. I believe with less certainty that Moore's law will continue for another two or three process nodes. I have very little belief that "psychics" can talk with the dead; equivalently, I have a very high degree of belief that they can not talk with the dead. The degrees of belief we have about things should be revised upward or downward based on evidence, and should be based on the evidence we have available to us. Your belief that mars is real is supported by a lot of evidence, and therefore should have a high degree of confidence. But if I told you that there's a planet, unknown until now, called Uldune, and that this planet has space pirates using it as a supply base, then believing me with non-negligible certainty would be an act of blind faith. (Disbelieving me, with high certainty, would not be. My story about the planet Uldune contradicts a lot of evidence about the current state of the art in space travel, and the laws of physics, and so on.)

anon_for_this_1 16y ago
Evolution is a good example. Why do you believe it happened? Because someone told you. You read someone else's words. It sort of makes sense. You saw what you assume are dinosaur bones in a museum. All of that is faith, and perhaps blind faith. I'm assuming you're not a geneticist, so you probably didn't verify that the bones that were stacked nicely into a skeleton actually came from the same being. You likely weren't part of the dig team that found them. You don't know where they came from, or even if they are actual bone. And I'm not even talking about people purposely misleading us, but rather the fact that we have to take at face value what we are told. That's blind faith. We both _assume_ we could dig and verify the facts (with enough time, money and education), but we don't -- we just believe. My argument is the 'evidence' we think we have, is nothing more than blind faith in 99% of the time, simply because we don't have the time and resources to follow up on everything. We simply believe because everyone else does.