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I agree that in the modern world, many people may find it somewhat "obvious" (or rather, they have a similar belief intuitively), but I think it's very relevant

I agree that in the modern world, many people may find it somewhat "obvious" (or rather, they have a similar belief intuitively), but I think it's very relevant here: of course doubting science requires some kind of faith. So does believing science. Everything requires faith, we can't actually know anything without faith in something. (I personally am very aggressively areligious, so "faith" here does not necessarily refer to a spiritual faith.)

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I think the difficulty with making an equivalence between “faith” and this type of fundamental epistemic limitation is that no matter how well-intentioned you are, religious people are going to take the soundbyte and claim it’s “proof that science can’t explain everything” which will then be “proof that god is possible” which will then mean oppressing people whose beliefs they don’t like. We need a much different concept than faith. Faith means continuing to believe something that is massively contrary to the evidence, to preserve some type of fidelity or loyalty to a previous belief commitment. I think this is massively different than acknowledging the fundamental deductive limitations of reasoning about epistemic metatruths.
- learc83 6y ago
  >Faith means continuing to believe something that is massively contrary to the evidence, to preserve some type of fidelity or loyalty to a previous belief commitment. You've just defined faith in a way that wins your argument, but that is not any kind of consensus definition of faith.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    I don’t agree. I’m saying there exists a difference of kind between the act of belief in inferential integrity of experts despite fundamental epistemic limitations of philosophy, and the separate act of continuing to believe something contrary to the evidence. The ubiquitous notion of religious faith is similar to the second thing, and is not similar to the first thing. It’s not a matter of consensus or definition.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

I think the difficulty with making an equivalence between “faith” and this type of fundamental epistemic limitation is that no matter how well-intentioned you are, religious people are going to take the soundbyte and claim it’s “proof that science can’t explain everything” which will then be “proof that god is possible” which will then mean oppressing people whose beliefs they don’t like. We need a much different concept than faith. Faith means continuing to believe something that is massively contrary to the evidence, to preserve some type of fidelity or loyalty to a previous belief commitment. I think this is massively different than acknowledging the fundamental deductive limitations of reasoning about epistemic metatruths.

learc83 6y ago
>Faith means continuing to believe something that is massively contrary to the evidence, to preserve some type of fidelity or loyalty to a previous belief commitment. You've just defined faith in a way that wins your argument, but that is not any kind of consensus definition of faith.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I don’t agree. I’m saying there exists a difference of kind between the act of belief in inferential integrity of experts despite fundamental epistemic limitations of philosophy, and the separate act of continuing to believe something contrary to the evidence. The ubiquitous notion of religious faith is similar to the second thing, and is not similar to the first thing. It’s not a matter of consensus or definition.