Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

[malkie]

Let's take just one of your non-religious examples:

Even among different airlines and aircraft manufacturers there is almost certainly a huge area of overlap in the contents of the checklists. But you would expect that each item has a pass/fail criterion associated with it, and a severity level of some sort. The checklist ensures that an imperfect aircraft (meaning probably almost every single one) is not allowed to be operated below a certain standard level of fitness.

Every checker for a given aircraft/airline uses fundamentally the same checklist, and measures the same levels - e.g., oil pressure. Although human error will inevitably occur, it is not very likely that an aircraft that is passed as fit by one checker will be grounded as hopelessly unfit by another. Except for airlines where proper maintenance and checking is not carried out, I should expect to feel as safe on a Boeing as on an Airbus, a Beechcraft, a Cesna, or even perhaps a Tupolev.

Should I feel equally confident in Christianity vs. Islam vs. Buddhism vs. Hinduism vs. Judaism? And can I trust Scientology as much as I would the major religions?

As we have seen, however, we don't even have to step outside the bounds of one specific sub of Christianity to have different standards applied ('Bishop roulette') and vastly different outcomes. Look at the 'Heartland vs. LGT' dispute, where faithful LDS are openly accusing other faithful LDS of being apostates, and sheep in wolves' clothing, and nobody, including leaders who arguably ought to be able to settle the dispute, seems to be concerned - let them insult each other, who cares? appears to be the attitude.

So I see having faith in the fitness of the aircraft I'm about to get on as fundamentally different, in this respect, from faith that I'm being invited to have in a religion.

What if I'm an investigator and I ask the missionaries where the Book of Mormon events took place, because I've heard about the dispute? What answer should I expect? And how should I feel about prophets who cannot give an unambiguous answer to an apparently straightforward question?

I'd also see QM as on a much higher level of reliability than aircraft maintenance, never mind religion.

I'm happy for you that your struggles were resolved. But that analogy would resolve nothing for me - in fact, it would highlight the vast difference between faith in a religion or a god, on one hand, with faith in a scientific theory on the other, to the extent that I could not use the analogy to help me maintain faith in a god/religion.

Yes, the analogy isn't perfect. It's not like I found the analogy and, poof, I had faith again. It was just enough for me to keep trying, which eventually led to what I consider the real thing.

Having said that, let's push the analogy just a bit further to see exactly where it breaks. I don't think your description is entirely fair. You talk about aircraft safety using various aircraft terminology that shows you know much more about the topic than me. At that point you compare it to highly specific doctrine in religion. Wouldn't that compare more closely with highly specific things on the airplane, like seat back and tray table materials? Airplanes getting you somewhere safely is very different than specific doctrines. I would compare it with the general finding that religions tend to help people deal with the troubles of life. I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of whether being a member of a religion (any religion) helps you better navigate life, but the fact that there are studies that argue both sides means it could possibly be a real thing. That is more like basic aircraft safety. Of course, Latter-day Saint Theology claims to have the fullness of the gospel, so I'm not helping my point there. But I wasn't exactly arguing that point here. I was just saying faith in God/Gods or religion/religions is similar to faith or trust in various other things.

If we place our faith in something worthwhile, it will be helpful to us. This is true of both secular and religious things. What each of us finds worthwhile may be different. That is also fine.

I agree completely that no analogy is likely to be perfect - it just has to be good enough for us to be confident (have faith!) that mapping the knowns in one domain to the knowns in the other domain allows us to map conclusions in one domain to conclusions in the other is valid, to an acceptable degree.

By the way, I think that it's extremely unlikely that I know any more about aircraft safety than you do - mine is just general knowledge not derived from any specific experience.

You could well be right about my attempt to map elements of aircraft safety to elements of religion and elements of QM not being appropriate, but regardless, I find it difficult to accept that faith in measurable, reproduceable, and relatively objective things is very similar to faith in intangible, non-reproduceable, subjective experiences - that was the main thrust of my extending of the analogy you mentioned early on.

And, yes, to a large extent I agree with your last para above: that if we place our faith in something worthwhile, it will be helpful to us; and certainly that what each of us finds worthwhile is likely to be different.

That said, I believe it's a very good thing that you see that church doctrine and policy is not the same as quantum physics

[JohnW]

The missionaries had me read Alma 32 this week and as I tried to unpack it, it seemed to be telling me to trust in something in which I had no knowledge, and went on something like if I wasn’t baptized, it would be out of a stubbornness of heart. I saw it as a manipulative text although my brief discussion with my friend raised in the church didn’t seem to think it sounded manipulative.

Ha ha. Yeah, I think scripture in general can sometimes feel a little manipulative. I wonder if that is just because in modern society we are used to the subtle manipulation in ads whereas the scriptures just come right out and say it. Jesus certainly wasn't all that subtle most of the time, although I guess he did have his subtle moments.

Alma 32 is definitely related to this idea of faith and trust. If I had to sum up Alma 32 in one phrase, Alma is saying, "You're not going to know until you do something about it." Lots of people want to know if the church is true before they get baptized. While you can get a little bit of a sense before baptism, there is no way you will fully know before baptism. It just takes too long, like a tree growing. That means if you don't know whether the church is true before baptism, then all that is left is trust. Some people trust in the missionaries. Some people trust in their friends or family. Other people just trust in that inkling of a sense they got when first learning about the gospel. Ultimately, we pick which thing to trust, or we pick to not trust.

I guess it is a little like cooking. You can read the recipe a bunch of times, but at some point you have to jump in and start mixing things up, especially if you ever want to taste anything.

After baptism, you have more experiences with scriptures and more experiences with God and a bunch of experiences with members. If those experiences are good and bring you closer to God, then you keep going, with the understanding that nothing is going to be all good all of the time. A fair amount of people stop coming to church a few months or a few years after their baptism. I think in most cases they gave it an honest try and it just wasn't what they expected. Or maybe they thought they would know everything soon after baptism, which doesn't often happen in reality. Some people's testimony are the fast growing type, like those fast growing trees. Other people's testimonies are slow growing ones, like an oak tree (I think those are slow). One isn't really better than the other. They each have strengths and weaknesses. My testimony was super slow. Sometimes I wondered if it was like a sequoia tree and I would have to wait hundreds or thousands of years before it got very big. Of course, the mistake we make is comparing our testimony's size or speed or intensity. We should probably just internally decide if we are drawing closer to God. That is all that really matters anyway.

Anyway, sorry for the sermon. Enjoy the lessons. Missionaries are fun to talk to.

[JohnW]

I find it difficult to accept that faith in measurable, reproduceable, and relatively objective things is very similar to faith in intangible, non-reproduceable, subjective experiences - that was the main thrust of my extending of the analogy you mentioned early on.

Yes, this is probably the closest thing to a fatal flaw in this whole idea of faith being similar in secular and religious realms. If I were arguing against myself, this is where I would strike. Most things in the secular world just seem in a different category of sensation than the religious world. Reality is firm and religion is a little on the squishy side. I think this is why I used quantum mechanics. That is a little closer to squishy than other things. I think I had a thread some months back on echolocation. That is another thing that is a little squishy.

Frankly, I don't blame you for being uncomfortable with the squishiness of religious experiences. It is uncomfortable at times for me as well. Maybe it is little like a tightrope walker. I look at those folks and say, "No thank you." I just don't see how they do it. Of course, to them, I imagine it is old hat. I guess when it comes to religion, I realized one day I was on a tightrope about to fall. I somehow kept going despite everything. Somehow over the years, I ended up as a tightrope walker. (I have a hard time with that analogy, because I still think tightrope walkers have to be plain crazy. Maybe rock climbers would be a better analogy. Those people are crazy too).

[honorentheos]

I'm curious what falling off the tightrope would look like here? Where was the "risk" in misjudging located?

[malkie]

I find it difficult to accept that faith in measurable, reproduceable, and relatively objective things is very similar to faith in intangible, non-reproduceable, subjective experiences - that was the main thrust of my extending of the analogy you mentioned early on.

Yes, this is probably the closest thing to a fatal flaw in this whole idea of faith being similar in secular and religious realms. If I were arguing against myself, this is where I would strike. Most things in the secular world just seem in a different category of sensation than the religious world. Reality is firm and religion is a little on the squishy side. I think this is why I used quantum mechanics. That is a little closer to squishy than other things. I think I had a thread some months back on echolocation. That is another thing that is a little squishy.

Frankly, I don't blame you for being uncomfortable with the squishiness of religious experiences. It is uncomfortable at times for me as well. Maybe it is little like a tightrope walker. I look at those folks and say, "No thank you." I just don't see how they do it. Of course, to them, I imagine it is old hat. I guess when it comes to religion, I realized one day I was on a tightrope about to fall. I somehow kept going despite everything. Somehow over the years, I ended up as a tightrope walker. (I have a hard time with that analogy, because I still think tightrope walkers have to be plain crazy. Maybe rock climbers would be a better analogy. Those people are crazy too).

Thanks for your thoughtful answer, John. I've watched rock climbers in the Utah canyons - yep, too crazy for me!

I would say (from my very limited knowledge) that QM's squishiness is largely on the side of its counterintuitive feel when we try to imagine how it "really" works, and try to think about how it could possibly underlie everyday phenomena. There's a huge disconnect for me.

But where it is not squishy is in the math: sure, it's tied up in uncertainties, but even the uncertainties can be calculated down to many decimal places and still agree with experimentation. In that respect (I believe - please correct me if I'm wrong) it's rock solid.

(by the way, I really don't know any more about QM than the average interested layman, so I hope you'll be gentle with me if I'm mischaracterizing QM in any way. )

From your current (post QM) position, how strongly do you think you ought to resist if you were to be approached by someone of another religion who assured you that they had good reasons (better than the LDS) for you to investigate their religion, and put it to a test at least as strong as Moroni's Promise? Although, to my mind, Moroni 10:4–5 comes pretty close to begging the question, in the original sense of the logical fallacy.

And then, having thought about how strongly you ought to resist, how strongly do you think that you would actually resist?

It seems to me that, having fought for your faith and used an analogy with the characteristics of QM to hold on, you might feel that you owed the other religion a lot of serious study, and a lot of leeway, before you decided to embrace or discard it.

[Physics Guy]

Quantum mechanics might be an interesting example of faith. I think that learning quantum mechanics probably does require some faith, because it's so weird that few people would make the effort required to understand it if they didn't trust the teachers who tell them it's true. No doubt one could instead follow the bootstrapping, inductive procedure by which QM was first constructed, but this would be a lot harder and slower than just taking a course.

For many people there might even be an element of "credo ut intelligam"—the principle of believing first, before understanding, because it makes sense once you believe it, and only then. Suspending disbelief for a while, and going through the mental motions of following a quantum mechanical description of a real experiment right through to the end, may itself be the mental experiment that makes you begin to see how QM makes sense.

And you don't have to believe QM is perfect to understand it and use it. A lot of people including me suspect that QM must be significantly incomplete in some way, but we still believe that its calculations will be right in most circumstances, even if they seem weird. This willingness to trust a theory while admitting its flaws may be another aspect of faith.

So, okay, if somebody thinks they can stand on unassailably high epistemological ground by declaring that one should always trust science rather than faith, then maybe quantum mechanics can be a counterexample inasmuch as it's a case in which science itself is usually supported by faith.

The one case of quantum mechanics by no means establishes a universal counter-principle that one should always accept things on faith, however. Using QM as a counterexample for science-versus-faith is a bit like using Bill Gates as a counterexample to the statement that Silicon Valley real estate is unaffordable.

Quantum mechanics isn't just a family tradition. The evidence that supports it is enormously more substantial than personal anecdote. It's not just something that a few million people recite together each Sunday. It's molecules.

Non-believers may not be able to sustain a strict zero-tolerance faith policy, but I think they can put up one of those little clown signs that you see at amusement parks, saying, "You must be this tall to ride this faith train." Quantum mechanics will walk past that sign with its chin comfortably over the little clown's hat. Other beliefs may have to go for ice cream.

[Nimrod]

Probability. Honorentheos and Rivendale have hit upon the critical difference between trust (confidence in something for which one has repeated, positive experience such as the brakes in my car working when I need them to) and faith (confidence in something for which there is no empirical evidence--God and after-life). Trust is putting one's confidence in the probable; faith is putting one's confidence in the improbable.

[Rivendale]

I apologize. I am not following . Direct experience to a person who has never experienced It is something we have all experienced from childhood. The very act of experiencing is a cumulative effect on a persons overall view of the world.

No problem. I'm just agreeing with you that I don't need to have faith or trust in the sun rising. I have experienced that enough that it is just a given (I'm actually not a morning person, so maybe I'm lying just a little bit here). Same thing with chairs that I have sat in a bunch of times. Where I need to have faith or trust is in things that I personally haven't experienced much. I know mostly nothing about aircraft safety. If I saw an aircraft safety checklist, I really would't be able to tell whether the aircraft was safe to fly on. I still fly on aircraft. I still flew on my first aircraft, probably because I trusted my Dad when he said he had flown on an aircraft. I still fly on aircraft even when I see news reports of aircraft accidents, probably because I trust the reports that say it is still one of the safest ways to travel.

Even if you can't understand the checklist you still have cursory evidence to justify your trust in safety. You know almost all flights end safely. You know pilots get extensive training. With religious faith you have stories that tell you about the truth claims. You can visit a training program for pilots or become one yourself to understand the details of the checklist . This can't be done for religious faith claims in any empirical way. It is all emotional and anecdotal claims that are unfalsifiable.

[dastardly stem]

I will state i basically agree with much that has been said.

You see, we all have faith or trust in things.

Yes. Without question, if we define faith as meaning trust in things, then we all have faith. But what's the point of the word faith at all if that's all it is? I think that point has been made, but I find this very unhelpful.

sometimes hear people give a terrible definition of faith. This definition goes something like this: faith is believing in something while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Yes, many of my fellow religionists follow this sort of definition, but it doesn't make it any less wrong.

I got lost on this point here. A "terrible definition" that everyone seems to agree on? Because it's not just "trust" now? When conversing about religion and faith is used, we all know what we mean. Why is that a terrible definition?

When I was struggling with my faith a couple decades ago, my problem was that I had a problematic definition of faith. How could I believe in the church now that I knew all this difficult information? It just happened to be that I was taking my first graduate-level quantum physics class at the same time. I found myself asking the same questions of quantum physics. I know church doctrine and policy is not the same as quantum physics, but there were enough similarities to lead me to the epiphany that faith and trust have to be siblings. In both cases, I found myself able to trust in something that just didn't make complete sense to me at the time.

Or anytime...or anyone...am I right?

The biggest difference I see here is, no one is saying things like believe in quantum mechanics or suffer eternally. And...no one is saying, dogmatically, its right because I think its right, or some other such thing. I mean the vast gulf in difference here, that you seem to ignore, defines religious faith and defines why many find it problematic.

[¥akaSteelhead]

Not sure how apt the oil gauge analogy is. For faith in the plane flying we have actual empirical evidence for slew of topic related to planes. their flying, and reliability.

For religious and god claims, we have anecdote. That is it.

Faith in one vs the other is really quite different. One truly is "evidence of things unseen".