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Faith is Axiomatic

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Shylock

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I hope that everyone believes I have behaved myself acceptably, respected the rules of the forum, and shown adequate courtesy for the other users. If I have offended anyone, I should like to apologize. I have recently received a private message from one of the administrative staff. This message has had a Chilling Effect on me and I have decided to discontinue frequenting this forum.

My personal e-mail is a matter of public record. Should any of you wish to contact me, you should feel free to do so.

?????? Well if you would like you can PM me any time.

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"Rational theologian"

Sorry there, Plas. That's my term. He was just following up. It's a proper name. It's from my OAC Intro to Phil class as one of the schools of thought regarding the existence of God.

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I don't know you, but I'm assuming you don't believe in demons. While I'm open to the idea that they exist, without having hard evidence one way or another, I don't see the point.

Funny how you need 'hard evidence' in order to believe in demons, but accept the existence of God on faith.

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I hope that everyone believes I have behaved myself acceptably, respected the rules of the forum, and shown adequate courtesy for the other users. If I have offended anyone, I should like to apologize. I have recently received a private message from one of the administrative staff. This message has had a Chilling Effect on me and I have decided to discontinue frequenting this forum.

My personal e-mail is a matter of public record. Should any of you wish to contact me, you should feel free to do so.

This intrigues me. So far as I can tell, you have not broken forum rules nor attacked anyone. What could the Admins have said that would cause such a chilling effect? Or was it merely that your "argument" had run its course, and this allows you a convenient/face-saving way out?

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There's an important aspect of faith which is relevant to this thread.

Faith involves belief in the arbitrary whereas reason involves belief in facts and values. Facts can be perceived (e.g. one sees a tree) or inferred (e.g. a scientist detects photons) by Man, and values, if they are derived from facts, can be considered as a type of fact. For more information, please refer to Dr. Peikoff's essay Fact And Value.

So expecting one's legs to support oneself when one gets out of bed (in the absence of specific evidence that they cannot) is a rational belief based on facts.

Whereas seeing something on a mantle used to transport roses which seems to resemble an image of the Virgin Mary and holding it as absolute proof of a miraculous vision, is an arbitrary belief based on nothing but a desire to believe whatever one wants to believe. In other words, what motivates a belief in the arbitrary is the primacy of consciousness or the futile attempt to view existence as a product of one's consciousness.

To paraphrase from Dr. Peikoff's OPAR, the arbitrary:

1. has no referent(s) in reality and hence cannot be reduced to the perceptual level,

2. has no place in a conceptual hierarchy and hence cannot be integrated with the rest of Man’s knowledge.

Since the arbitrary has no relation to both physical evidence and mental content, none of the concepts formed to describe human knowledge: true, false, possible, probable, certain, etc. can be applied to it.

Furthermore, an arbitrary belief does not even qualify as a hypothesis since a hypothesis, to quote Dr. Peikoff, should have at least some evidence to support it and no evidence which contradicts it.

Since the arbitrary cannot be reduced to percepts, in practice, it leads to the mind-body dichotomy, or thinking in one way and acting in a diametrically opposite way, e.g. an altruist who arbitrarily believes it's wrong to pursue one's self-interest, contradicts his belief by pursuing it anyway to remain alive, feels guilty for doing so, and atones for it by sacrificing the values which further his life.

Likewise, since the arbitrary cannot be integrated with the rational concepts that make up one's knowledge, in practice, it leads to a fragmented mind which compartmentalizes its content, e.g. a religious conservative who arbitrarily believes an embryo is a human being and is unable to reconcile his views on abortion with his views on property rights.

Edited by rameshkaimal
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I read the first few pages but admittedly not all of the thread. As many replies pointed out, the OP repeatedly misused the word 'faith' in ways that lead me to call it if it hasn't been called already. Troll

Don't feed the troll

Edited by Halsey17
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The first principle of all action is faith. Before someone can get up out of bed in the morning he must first hope and believe that his legs will support him. A person who honestly doubts that his legs will support him will not attempt to get out of bed.

Before someone works for another person he must first believe that the person will pay him for his labors. If he doesn't believe that the person will pay him, he won't work for that person. On what does he base his faith in his employer? Perhaps he sees other employees there working and figures that they would not continue to work for an employer that did not pay. Perhaps he is thinking about his past life and he reasons that since his previous employers all paid him that this employer will be no different. If his last employer failed to pay him, and he greets a disgruntled employee leaving just as he arrives and that employee says, "I quit. This guy doesn't pay his workers." then he will (justifiably) lack faith in the potential employer and will be unable to work for him.

Ayn Rand was wrong to reject faith. Perhaps she had a different definition of faith, but faith is axiomatic. Before you can post against faith, you must first believe that your fingers will carry out your commands. You must believe that your computer will record them. You must believe that your ISP will forward the message across various servers to the one this forum rests on. You must believe in the software of the forum. You must also believe that your brain can formulate reasons and arguments sufficient to persuade me of the rightness of your perspective. All of this requires faith in many different objects.

I read the first few pages but admittedly not all of the thread. As many replies pointed out, the OP repeatedly misused the word 'faith' in ways that lead me to call it if it hasn't been called already. Troll

Don't feed the troll

I have read through this thread, and a lot of the argument has been over the definition of the word Faith. So before I present an argument I want to clarify the confusion. It is easy to get into long debates over the meanings of words, because words often have many meanings. These meanings can depend on the context in which the word is spoken, or the locality of the speaker. Often there is a blurred line between possible meanings. See the quote below, this are the definitions that the original poster Shylock refers to.

Faith

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

This dictionary lists 7 more definitions of the word Faith, and lists the Random House dictionary as its source.

It is safe to say that these are acceptable definitions of the word faith. However, Shylock seems to use definitions 1 and 2 interchangeably. I propose that these definitions are mutually exclusive, and therefore we are not really arguing about the word Faith, but about either or both of these concepts. So I will no longer use the word faith by itself.

Here are my terms for the purpose of this argument.

Faith1 = confidence or trust in a person or thing

Faith2 = belief that is not based on proof:

Now I can speak about the concepts, avoiding the confusion over definitions.

First I think that Faith2 is certainly not axiomatic. However Skylock seems to suggest this with his examples of "faith" in learning to walk. His argument relies on a concept of proof that is so strict as to be impossible to fulfill. You can argue that there is no proof the sun will rise tomorrow, but only if you ignore that it has succeeded in rising to millions of previous days. It is true that there is no absolute proof that the sun will rise tomorrow, there is a miniscule probability that a major solar catastrophy, such as the expenditure of the suns fuel, or it's expansion into a super-nova, or it's collision with a large extra-solar object such as a theoretical dark matter planet, could ensure that the sun does not "rise". However we are not ignorant of these probabilities, we can enumerate them, estimate them, and calculate a probability of disaster so low that by any scientific standard we conclude that the sun will rise tomorrow (with a .00000000000000000000000000000001 (estimated) percent margin of error). This is not Faith2.

Faith1 does not specify the source of "confidence or trust", therefore Faith1 must rely on one of two other concepts.

1. Faith2 (confidence or trust in person or thing, that is not based on proof)

2. Reason (confidence or trust in a person or thing, that IS based on proof being a preponderance of rational argument)

Option 1 refers back to the above argument against Faith2, while option 2, be it or be it not axiomatic, is certainly not what Shylock is referring to when he uses the word Faith. I predict that a nationwide gallup poll would also show that the Reason concept of Faith1 is NOT the generally accepted definition of faith.

So my conclusion, Faith is not a necessary prerequisite of life, and therefore not axiomatic.

Finally Shylock, I hope that no admin on that site has discouraged you from engaging in a debate on the "Debate" forum. I have not found your arguments to be malicious, just wrong. I encourage you to continue engaging people in debate whenever you can, because not only might you change their minds, but they just might change yours. Would you care to name the admin who chastised you and post his communication?

-RR

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-snip-

You do realize that the original poster has publicly abandoned this forum for nearly a month now, right? Or that I and many others have gone over these self-same points? It is good that you tried, but try to actually read the entire thread first and check for dates on posts.

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Look, I have seen this pattern come up again and again.

Some thread that's really old (a lot older than this one) gets bumped and people jump on the person who bumped it.

On the other hand when someone starts a new thread, they get jumped on for failing to use the search feature and not finding some thread that's a couple of months old, to bump.

Either you can complain when someone finds an old thread and continues it, or you can complain when someone does NOT find an old thread and starts a new one.

Now I realize it may very well be two different groups complaining here, but it seems like new posters are doomed to fail.

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Look, I have seen this pattern come up again and again.

Some thread that's really old (a lot older than this one) gets bumped and people jump on the person who bumped it.

On the other hand when someone starts a new thread, they get jumped on for failing to use the search feature and not finding some thread that's a couple of months old, to bump.

Either you can complain when someone finds an old thread and continues it, or you can complain when someone does NOT find an old thread and starts a new one.

Now I realize it may very well be two different groups complaining here, but it seems like new posters are doomed to fail.

I did not jump on him. I was simply pointing out that he OP stated, rather plainly, that he was leaving, and that the expressed points had been made before. This thread has been resurrected multiple times in the last month despite multiple admonishments that the discussion was dead. If I seemed to be attacking the poster, that was not my intent. The thread is dead though, and rehashing the same points serves no, well, point. I wasn't been malicious or any such thing, just pointing this out to the poster.

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I did not jump on him. I was simply pointing out that he OP stated, rather plainly, that he was leaving, and that the expressed points had been made before. This thread has been resurrected multiple times in the last month despite multiple admonishments that the discussion was dead. If I seemed to be attacking the poster, that was not my intent. The thread is dead though, and rehashing the same points serves no, well, point. I wasn't been malicious or any such thing, just pointing this out to the poster.

Thank you for your advice, I was aware that this thread was inactive. My post is a carbon copy of an email I sent directly to Shylock, since he specifically invited email contact in his final post. I also realize that my arguments were not completely original, I attempted to restate them all in one place, while eliminating the the confusion caused by the different meanings of the word faith. This confusion led to many posters telling Shylock to "read a dictionary", even though the issue here was not his reading skills, but his logic skills. I expect that we will most likely never hear from Shylock again, but it seemed worth the effort. I have been looking forward to flexing my mind muscles on this forum, if anyone finds fault with my arguments, besides there tardiness, I would appreciate being shown the error of my thinking. Personally I think my arguments were clear and objective. I look forward to getting involved in future debates, I'll have to keep an eye out so I don't miss the boat again.

-RR

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Thank you for your advice, I was aware that this thread was inactive. My post is a carbon copy of an email I sent directly to Shylock, since he specifically invited email contact in his final post. I also realize that my arguments were not completely original, I attempted to restate them all in one place, while eliminating the the confusion caused by the different meanings of the word faith. This confusion led to many posters telling Shylock to "read a dictionary", even though the issue here was not his reading skills, but his logic skills. I expect that we will most likely never hear from Shylock again, but it seemed worth the effort. I have been looking forward to flexing my mind muscles on this forum, if anyone finds fault with my arguments, besides there tardiness, I would appreciate being shown the error of my thinking. Personally I think my arguments were clear and objective. I look forward to getting involved in future debates, I'll have to keep an eye out so I don't miss the boat again.

-RR

As I had previously mentioned, I have abandoned the thread and the forum entirely because of the thinly-veiled threat of censorship by the administrators. As such, I have posted on the Orwellian Nature of Objectivism in a censorship-free zone, which can be found at http://www.nolanchart.com/article5614.html

I would have abandoned it entirely, except that I keep getting e-mails on the subject.

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As I had previously mentioned, I have abandoned the thread and the forum entirely because of the thinly-veiled threat of censorship by the administrators.

Since he is still unwilling to name his "censor", I'm thinking that their isn't one. This is what I was trying to find out, and now I know with minimal doubt.

Thanks Shylock.

-RR

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Since he is still unwilling to name his "censor", I'm thinking that their isn't one. This is what I was trying to find out, and now I know with minimal doubt.
He means the moderators here on our forum, because he was told to read the rules and felt intimidated by that. Maybe I should simply delete this whole thread... gotta think about that. [i still wouldn't consider that "censorship", any more than I'd consider laying down rules about who says what inside any private venue to be "censorship".]

Many people who visit OO.net come with misconception that this is some type of general-purpose philosophy forum where all types of debate are welcome.

Edited by softwareNerd
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