Doubt is essential for true faith.

www.ted.com/talks/lesley_hazleton

Fundamentalists, of any faith, who frown upon religious doubt are fanatics, not true followers, of their faith.

Originally posted by Phranny
www.ted.com/talks/lesley_hazleton

Fundamentalists, of any faith, who frown upon religious doubt are fanatics, not true followers, of their faith.

It always raises my suspicions when I see the word 'true' so often as an adjective: true believer, true faith, true follower, etc.

What it usually means is that I'm in for an unconvincing attempt to sell me on different uses of those words.

Originally posted by Phranny
www.ted.com/talks/lesley_hazleton

Fundamentalists, of any faith, who frown upon religious doubt are fanatics, not true followers, of their faith.

Could you distinguish between doubt and reserving one's opinion?

Originally posted by Phranny
www.ted.com/talks/lesley_hazleton

Fundamentalists, of any faith, who frown upon religious doubt are fanatics, not true followers, of their faith.

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

If I'm not mistaken, Jesus had no doubt. He advocated having the 'faith of the mustard seed'.

Originally posted by Phranny
www.ted.com/talks/lesley_hazleton

Fundamentalists, of any faith, who frown upon religious doubt are fanatics, not true followers, of their faith.

i agree. faith without doubt is simply rigid thinking. someone who struggles with doubt and still holds to his faith is more worthy than someone with horse goggles who simply refuses to think or listen to new ideas. at one point they accepted what their current view on the world is and have not changed since. such people could have easily been smacked over the head with hitler's mein kampf and they would have been incapable of adjusting or changing.

Doubt is the faith-killer. Those who would have you doubt are those to whom your faith is threatening. Doubt is among the first tools used by evil to draw you away from your faith.

"And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away.
And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.
But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary.
And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.
And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.
But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.
And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.
And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.
But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
And immediately Jesus stretched forth [his] hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.
Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God. " -- Matthew 14:22-33, KJV

The opposite of having any doubt (or at least being susceptible to doubt) at all is certainty. Certainty does not require faith.

Originally posted by vistesd
The opposite of having any doubt (or at least being susceptible to doubt) at all is certainty. Certainty does not require faith.

Sounds like a non sequitur. I did not say the opposite of doubt is faith. I said doubt kills faith.

And while certainty does not require faith, faith can create certainty. Except if you also allow doubt.

Originally posted by Suzianne
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

If I'm not mistaken, Jesus had no doubt. He advocated having the 'faith of the mustard seed'.

Unfortunately, we're not all mustard seeds.




I hate mustard 🙂

Originally posted by Suzianne
Sounds like a non sequitur. I did not say the opposite of doubt is faith. I said doubt kills faith.

And while certainty does not require faith, faith can create certainty. Except if you also allow doubt.

You know, sometimes people want to help you to look at things from a fresh perspective, but they can't if you won't let them.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Sounds like a non sequitur. I did not say the opposite of doubt is faith. I said doubt kills faith.

And while certainty does not require faith, faith can create certainty. Except if you also allow doubt.

Sorry, I wasn’t replying directly to your post; it’s just that mine came immediately after. Nevertheless, I wasn’t very precise—which you rightly point out.

There are a number of uses of “certainty”: for instance, psychological versus epistemic certainty. Doubtless conviction (indubitability) may be strictly psychological. Epistemic certainty requires objective evidentiary reasons (and I would strengthen that by adding such terms as repeatable and testable).

A certainty that arises just because one is not permitted (or does not permit him/herself) to doubt (to question) would seem to by only a psychological certainty—an indubitability in which one simply refuses to doubt.

How “faith” plays into this (e.g., can "create certainty" )seems to depend on which usage of “faith” is involved. Here are the definitions from Merriam-Webster online:

1
a : allegiance to duty or a person : LOYALTY
b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions
2
a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust
3
: something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs <the Protestantfaith>

—From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith

I tend to use “faith” more generally as simply “confidence”—the closest above is probably b(2).

I was perhaps also conflating “certainty” with “knowledge”—and I would say that one who knows something with epistemic certainty (based on some objective proof) does not need faith in any of the above senses. Maybe I am still being a bit sloppy; maybe some non-standard usage of the word “faith” is in play—if so, it needs to be defined.

Originally posted by vistesd
Sorry, I wasn’t replying directly to your post; it’s just that mine came immediately after. Nevertheless, I wasn’t very precise—which you rightly point out.

There are a number of uses of “certainty”: for instance, psychological versus epistemic certainty. Doubtless conviction (indubitability) may be strictly psychological. Epistemic ...[text shortened]... maybe some non-standard usage of the word “faith” is in play—if so, it needs to be defined.

If you want to talk about certainty (in an absolute sense) with regards to anything other than the fact of your existence (I think therefore I am) and mathematics (which includes logic) then you are going to run into the problem of hard solipsism.

Basically everything outside of your own existence and mathematics you cannot know anything with 100% epistemic certainty, only probabilistically.

However when the probability of being wrong becomes so low as to be practically equivalent to zero we typically treat it as being epistemically certain.

It's not absolutely certain that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow...

However you would be foolish in the extreme to think it wont.
The probability of it not rising in the east is so tiny as to be irrelevant to pretty much anything other than a philosophical discussion.

Originally posted by googlefudge
If you want to talk about certainty (in an absolute sense) with regards to anything other than the fact of your existence (I think therefore I am) and mathematics (which includes logic) then you are going to run into the problem of hard solipsism.

Basically everything outside of your own existence and mathematics you cannot know anything with 100% epi ...[text shortened]... t is so tiny as to be irrelevant to pretty much anything other than a philosophical discussion.

Agreed. At sufficiently high probabilities, I think we are justified in acting as if the matter were certain in our day-to-day lives (perhaps call that “practical certainty” )—if the evidence changes, we then re-assess matters using practical reason.

Wittgenstein argued that there are facts such that, if we do not accept them as a [practical] certainty, there is no exogenous reference that could shore them up. For example, if I cannot say with certainty that I did not have lunch in Peking yesterday, then I could equally doubt any proffered evidence—e.g., a photo of myself at said lunch (could be doctored), hotel receipts (could be forged), etc.

As a matter of practical reason, the Charbydis to your Scilla of hard solipsism might be a debilitating form of skepticism (of the kind sometimes attributed to Pyrrho of Ellis).

Originally posted by vistesd
Agreed. At sufficiently high probabilities, I think we are justified in acting as if the matter were certain in our day-to-day lives (perhaps call that “practical certainty” )—if the evidence changes, we then re-assess matters using practical reason.

Wittgenstein argued that there are facts such that, if we do not accept them as a [practical] ce ...[text shortened]... ght be a debilitating form of skepticism (of the kind sometimes attributed to Pyrrho of Ellis).

Indeed.

Although I would add that mathematics (in the form of Bayesian probability theory) allows you to asses the probability of those facts which allows you to use them axiomatically without needing to simply assert that they are true.
You can say that they are probably true to x% certainty.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Doubt is the faith-killer. Those who would have you doubt are those to whom your faith is threatening. Doubt is among the first tools used by evil to draw you away from your faith.

"And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away.
And when he had sent the m ...[text shortened]... ame and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God. " -- Matthew 14:22-33, KJV

Sounds to me those wanting to dash out doubt is in the same league as wanting you to shut down your own thinking ability, the very thinking ability supposedly given to us by your god. That then would be going against the very god that gave you intelligence in the first place. Why would your god give us the intelligence to rule over the Earth if we are not supposed to use it to doubt fairy tale stories like the flood or genesis?