Alister McGrath explains the concept of faith for the New Atheists:
As William James pointed out many years ago, religious faith is basically “faith in the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found and explained.” Faith is based on reason, yet not limited to the somewhat meagre truths that reason can actually prove.
So is this irrational, as the New Atheist orthodoxy declares? Christianity holds that faith is basically warranted belief. Faith goes beyond what is logically demonstrable, yet is nevertheless capable of rational motivation and foundation.
It is not a blind leap into the dark, but a joyful discovery of a bigger picture of things, of which we are part. It is complex and rich idea, which goes far beyond simply asserting or holding that certain things are true.
(Via: TitusOneNine)
February 16th, 2011 | 10:22 am
Atheists have just as much faith.
Ask them to explain something like consciousness or where we come from, and see how much they rely on faith to sustain both the criticisms of – and the gaps in – what is actually knowable.
To hear them say it, of course, science has either proved or is going to prove pretty much everything.
But much of what has been proven by science is pretty much in the form of “if it is true that __assumptions here_____, then it must be true that….”
February 16th, 2011 | 10:59 am
Blake, you’re exactly correct in pointing out atheists go through life “taking things on faith”. No human could function without doing so. Every time I meet an atheist who claims to have no faith I ask them if they’ve ever experienced an atom for themselves. No? You take it on faith (and the testimony of “experts”) that such a thing exists? Interesting…
February 16th, 2011 | 11:17 am
Blake:
To hear them say it, of course, science has either proved or is going to prove pretty much everything.
What you’re witnessing is someone trading “God of the gaps” for “Science of the gaps” without the acknowledgment that for both faith and science, every question answered leads to a dozen new questions.
February 16th, 2011 | 12:05 pm
Ah, but in practice “religious faith” always winds up ending in something not merely ‘unknown yet‘ but rather, ‘unknowable‘ to humans. (Isaiah 55:8-9, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10662a.htm , etc. etc.)
Of course, believing in something beyond your ability to ever understand is the intellectual equivalent of dividing by zero. Once you accept that, you can ‘prove’ – or, at least, believe – anything. Run into a problem? No worries, it’s just a ‘mystery’…
On another note, having relative degrees of confidence in things experienced, testified to, demonstrated, or hypothesized is not the same thing as (religious) “faith”.
When McGrath says there that “To judge by his comments in The God Delusion, Dawkins himself clearly believes in the “multiverse” theory. But the evidence for it just isn’t good enough to compel him – or anyone else – to accept it (or its alternatives).” he’s essentially redefining ‘belief’.
Dawkins hasn’t stated he ‘believes’ the multiverse idea is true – he’s simply noted that it is a live option consistent with what we’ve seen so far. Saying ‘that might be true’ is simply not the same thing as saying ‘I believe that’s true’.
February 16th, 2011 | 12:19 pm
Joe,
This same point is explained extraordinarily well in Msgr. Luigi Giussani’s “The Religious Sense.” Specifically, in chapter 2, Reasonableness, he tackles what he calls the reductive use of reason. He states that reason, to be reasonable, must take into account the totality of reality including all of its factors, including the longing, desire, questioning, etc at the heart of human existence.
He does a much better job than I can at explaining the point — it really is an incredible book — but it has always struck me as an important point: a person who posits a purely materialistic worldview is being unreasonable because of that worldview’s inability to account for all of the factors of reality.
February 16th, 2011 | 1:41 pm
Ah, but in practice “religious faith” always winds up ending in something not merely ‘unknown yet‘ but rather, ‘unknowable‘ to humans.
I think you’re confusing ‘unknowable’ with ‘not fully knowable’.
On another note, having relative degrees of confidence in things experienced, testified to, demonstrated, or hypothesized is not the same thing as (religious) “faith”.
Really? Why not?
February 16th, 2011 | 1:51 pm
What’s always fascinated me is how so many people who glibly dismiss traditional religion, with its panoply of mentally demanding texts, discourses, rites, and history, are often likely to accept other things that have none of those intellectual components–things like the paranormal, New Age mysticism, global warming, socialism, etc.
February 16th, 2011 | 5:20 pm
JB in CA –
How is “not fully knowable” different from “at least partially unknowable”?
The sheep finds a lot of the behavior of the shepherd knowable. It’s still generally surprised when the knife comes down…
February 17th, 2011 | 12:42 am
Ray,
I take it you are mostly joking around, because your comments make no rational sense.
“Not fully knowable” is obviously different from “at least partially unknowable”, just as “not such that every element can be individually identified” is not the same as “such that some elements can never be individually identified,” just as “this series is not finite” is not the same as “this series has numbers that are not finite”. In fact, the connection is a close one: The claim that a divine mystery is not fully knowable is the claim that no matter how much is known there is still more that could be known. It does not follow from this at all that there are relevant truths that cannot be known.
Likewise, it would be a sign of stupidity for anyone really to believe that “believing in something beyond your ability to ever understand is the intellectual equivalent of dividing by zero. Once you accept that, you can ‘prove’ – or, at least, believe – anything.” There are people who believe that a full physical account of the universe is beyond the ability of any human being — we after all have very finite animal brains — to grasp even though they think there is good reason to think that such an account in principle exists. (For instance, mysterians about the mind-body problem like Colin McGinn; or nonreductive physicalists who are less optimistic than Nagel about our prospects of eventually solving such problems.) There is nothing about this position that commits them to “the intellectual equivalent of dividing by zero” or that implies that they “can ‘prove’ – or, at least believe – anything,” and anyone suggesting otherwise is obviously either joking or just throwing out non sequiturs. Whatever problems the position has, it is extraordinarily obvious that this is not one of them — saying that we cannot fully understand everything is not the same as saying we cannot understand anything, and confusing the two is a pretty serious sophism.
February 17th, 2011 | 7:27 am
“Not fully knowable” indicates a rudimentary understanding. It does not mean that the thing is unknowable; it means that it is known as a first grader knows how to read.
February 17th, 2011 | 9:00 am
JB in CA-
Well, it does depend on your definition somewhat. For example, C.S. Lewis said, “Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.” To a first approximation, this resembles ‘confidence’ or ‘certitude’.
But that can’t be what McGrath is talking about. He says faith is “not limited to the somewhat meagre truths that reason can actually prove.”
So, McGrath is talking about stuff ‘beyond reason’. (Well, I did talk about ‘unknowable’ above…) Of course, I think he’s wrong about what exactly is beyond reason. For example, he cites ‘morality’, and I disagree rather strongly.
February 17th, 2011 | 11:26 am
Mark –
I think you’re confusing “not fully knowable” with “not fully known“.
February 17th, 2011 | 12:39 pm
Brandon –
So, divine mysteries are recursively enumerable?
I know, and it’s even possible that’s true. But even if it’s true, it’s only of philosophical interest. It has no practical consequences whatsoever.
Consider. How do you determine what things are ‘beyond the ability of any human being… to grasp’ and which aren’t? The only way to tell is by trying to understand it. If you succeed, then it was knowable.
The problem is, if you fail, you can’t conclude that it’s unknowable. It might be… but it also might be the case that you just didn’t happen to figure out something knowable, and you or someone else might have better luck on a subsequent attempt.
All you can ever say is, “we don’t understand that yet.” Think about all the things that have been confidently declared to be unknowable that have turned out to be perfectly explainable and comprehensible.
I honestly disagree.
A whole lot of answers to ‘the problem of evil’, for example, boil down to ‘God has a good reason for allowing evil, but it’s beyond us poor humans to grasp’. It’s very much like this classic cartoon: http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery/math/math07.gif
February 17th, 2011 | 1:07 pm
JB on CA;
“On another note, having relative degrees of confidence in things experienced, testified to, demonstrated, or hypothesized is not the same thing as (religious) “faith”.
Really? Why not?”
I am courious. So are you saying you have a “relative degree of confidence” on your belief in a deity (I assume you are a theist, correct me if your right)?
February 17th, 2011 | 4:34 pm
“Faith in the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found and explained” is a perfect explanation for the god of the gaps.
Unfortunately for the god of the gaps, it has run out of hiding places.
darwinkilledgod dot blogspot dot com
February 21st, 2011 | 3:35 am
Newman has a rather good example in his “Grammar of Assent”
A child hears her mother say, “Lucerne is good for cattle.”
The child does not know what lucerne is. Can the child believe that lucerne is good for cattle? Well, no, but she can believe (unconditionally assent to) the statement, “That lucerne is good for cattle is true.”
Then, there is the question of implicit faith, e.g. I believe that the information contained in the Nautical Almanac is true, even though I have not read that useful volume for cover to cover.
Religious faith consists of such complex assents: “It is true that…” for all are agreed that the motive of faith is the veracity of God revealing.
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