Knowledge vs. Belief

[xman]

I'm embroiled in the classic debate with creationists at the time, but I need to put something to rest for them.

We (the rational) are being accused of having belief whether we accept it or not. The failure here is of course that some beliefs are based on facts. The sun has risen every day for 4 billion years so I believe it will rise again tomorrow. This is not the same thing as believing in a fairy tale book like the Quran or the Bible.

Can somebody provide me some layman's links regarding induction, deduction, abduction and the like that will help me show to them how they are equivocating please? You'd be a great help rather than having me ignore my son for an hour or two while I research this.

Must go play Lego now,

X

 

[Squawk]

I'm embroiled in the classic debate with creationists at the time, but I need to put something to rest for them.

We (the rational) are being accused of having belief whether we accept it or not. The failure here is of course that some beliefs are based on facts. The sun has risen every day for 4 billion years so I believe it will rise again tomorrow. This is not the same thing as believing in a fairy tale book like the Quran or the Bible.

Can somebody provide me some layman's links regarding induction, deduction, abduction and the like that will help me show to them how they are equivocating please? You'd be a great help rather than having me ignore my son for an hour or two while I research this.

Must go play Lego now,

X

Ok, if you can stand to watch a 8 min video of text online I like my own take on this particular line of thinking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WkGwzaf0D4

I really ought to make a summary of that vid and put it in a text document.

 

[Squawk]

Meh, just watched that vid. Clearly I wasn''t all that good at phrasing the postion.

Ok, before you can even have the argument with them you need to define terms. Define faith, belief, truth and knowledge and the consquences will become obvious.

Truth: That which is, regardless of whether we know it.
Belief. That which you hold to be true, for any reason
Faith. A belief that is held without evidence or reason
Knowledge. Dunno actually, might have to think about that.

You can then discuss the idea that all claims are evaluated on the evidence in support. I contend that a belief is classed as faith if the evidence in support of the postulate is less significant than teh consequences of accepting the postulate, or in other words, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Throw them my way if you want.

 

[Aught3]

A belief is an opinion we have that we generally regard to be the case.
You know something when it is a justified true belief.

In deductive logic true premises always lead to true conclusions 100% of the time but in inductive logic (like the sun rising tomorrow) all you can conclude is that there is a strong likelihood that the sun will rise, you can't be completely sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning

 

[Cyberdraco]

A practical example that even a fundamentalist could understand (but still happily deny):

If I go to a mechanic who has botched my oil change on the previous three visits, I have faith in him.
If I go to a mechanic who has successfully changed my oil the previous three visits, I trust him.
If I go to a mechanic who was recommended to me by my good friend who has yet to encounter problems, I believe the mechanic will be successful because I trust my friend.


Truth is how the world actually works, knowledge is how we think the world works. Sometimes these are in agreement, sometimes disagreement, and often some where between.


Sorry to be so simplicity, but I find giving complicated answers to fundies to be almost useless, generally.

 

[Shapeshifter]

Though in the sun-rising example, I'd say you can in fact be sure and not just believe in a strong likelyhood, because with some work on your own, you can verify for yourself that the earth is spherical (which is then not subject to likelyhood or deduction), and that it turns around the sun (which also isn't a deduction anymore but an observation) and both these things have no reason of suddenly stopping so it is definitive that the "sun will rise" again.

Of course the point of the example is to imply that from past experience (the sun rising many many times) you can not be 100% sure that it will happen again. But in this specific example, you can verify that it absolutely has to happen again.

...Which might actually be a good example of how science can turn beliefs of high probabiliy into known fact (similar to the problem that some of our physical models work extremely well in all the cases we tried them on, yet we cannot be sure if they represent actual reality)!

 

[DeistPaladin]

Knowledge: Science, objective, measurable, demonstrable facts
Belief: Philosophy, subjective, interpretation, value-judgment

Knowledge: The water in the glass is at the halfway mark.
Belief: "The glass is half-full".

 

[xman]

Thanks for the replies so far everyone. Little Man is asleep now so I can pursue this for a little while.

I suppose I should have titled this thread Faith vs Trust or something like that (thanks DeistPaladin) because the difference between knowledge and belief is something I understand. Even the difference between determined knowledge and personal knowledge. Where I'm hazy is the difference between Belief without real evidence and belief based on evidence. Maybe that's the trust? Anyhow we, the sceptics are not being charges with believing there is no god so much as having belief in something, anything and therefore unable to claim the higher ground of reason.

I also need a determinitive link to dispel the gospels and those who write about them like Foxe's book of martyrs as evidence. I've got a preacher who just keeps blasting us wit scripture and claiming that he's providing evidence.

I go now to Wikipedia, thanks Aught3.

 

[Aught3]

I'm not entirely clear on what you are asking then. It seems to me that you could hold a particular belief about anything but as you accumulate evidence you start to have justification for believing it and your belief becomes closer to knowledge. Perhaps you are looking for something like Bayesian inference (at the bottom of the wiki page on inductive reasoning)?

 

[xman]

... Bayesian inference ...

ZOOOOOOOM! *sound of concept flying right over xman's head*

I guess what I'm trying to provide my opponents with is an understanding (futile with the religious?) that believing in gods or having spiritual faith is not at all the same thing as say trusting or believing that people can solve big problems like an impending energy crisis at peak oil, or that we can effectively combat global warming and should whether or not it is man made or natural. Heck simply that scientists should be trusted on such issues rather than the right wing media hype. That "believing in evolution, "believing" in the big bang not having scanned the data personally, is not the same as believing in Sky Daddy not having gotten the call. There is a certain disconnect there and I'm trying to get a handle on it.

 

[Aught3]

Perhaps something like this will help: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html

It goes into nice detail but it doesn't make clear that an appeal to authority is always fallacious in deductive logic, otherwise it's very good.

 

[borrofburi]

First, I do believe in things; I have to take two assumptions: that reality exists, and that cause and effect exists in some form most of the time (you don't even need 100% cause and effect, though anything more than something like 0.1% would probably have been noticeable by us; you also don't need cause and effect to be universal, it could be a localized phenomena). From there I get induction, and evidence, which is pretty much everything I need for "my world view" as the religious would call it.

Second, believing the scientists is not faith, for there is evidence that science works (e.g. cars, computers, monitors, refrigerators, satellites, internet, other communications systems). Are scientists always right? No, but if you're not going to take the time to learn it all yourself to come up with an informed opinion (and we can't, at least not with *everything*) then it is rational to trust the scientists based on the large amounts of evidence we have that science works.

 

[DeistPaladin]

I suppose I should have titled this thread Faith vs Trust or something like that (thanks DeistPaladin) because the difference between knowledge and belief is something I understand. Even the difference between determined knowledge and personal knowledge. Where I'm hazy is the difference between Belief without real evidence and belief based on evidence. Maybe that's the trust? Anyhow we, the sceptics are not being charges with believing there is no god so much as having belief in something, anything and therefore unable to claim the higher ground of reason.

Since atheism is the lack of any belief in a god or gods, I don't think that problem exists except for the "strong atheist" position.

This is a topic I've given much thought to as a deist. I make a strong distinction in my own mind between "this I know" and "this I believe". The former is a matter of objetive reality (the domain, as I've said, of science) and the latter is a collection of subjective interpretations of that objective reality (personal philosophy). "We exist" is knowledge. "We have moral obligations to one another as fellow sentient beings" is a belief. I can't prove the latter but that's nonetheless a statement I'm willing to make.

In my interpretation (and here's a belief), the rules for what can be considered "rational beliefs" is a bit looser than the standards of proof we should demand for claims to knowledge. Here, personal experiences in life, subjective interpretations and even gut instincts play a role. When we wrestle with questions like how we gain a sense of purpose in life, what are our moral obligations to one another or whether we evaluate things as "good" or "bad", we're venturing outside the field of hard science and things that can be studied or proven. Here we fill in the pieces of the puzzle with our own personality and experience.

Atheists and even nihilists can't escape this. For whatever reason, unlike animals, we don't accept the idea of survival for its own sake. Call it a defect in our mental makeup if you will but as beings of higher reasoning capacity (compared to simplier life forms that we know of), we seem compelled to wrestle with these ancient questions. Richard Dawkins once said that his motivation to go into biology was to find answers about where we came from. What makes him different from one who enters the priesthood is he sought real data and a rational approach to find these answers.

There's where I draw the distinction. There are rational ways to engage these questions. As Sam Harris has noted, religion has too long claimed a monopoly on legitimate "spiritual" pursuits (by this word, I mean addressing these questions about the nature of consciousness, purpose, morality and other issues that pertain to the ancient questions we've asked since we first looked up at the stars). There's no need to think that without an ancient book written by primitive superstitious people that we'll somehow be at sea either morally or emotionally. We can engage these questions within a more sober context.

As Sen. Franken recently remarked, we're not entitled to our own facts. Evolution is a fact. It's not a "belief". Creationism runs contrary to known facts and therefore can't be considered a "rational belief". Other aspects of the Bible run contrary to the way the universe is known to work, so Christianity can be debunked as a rational belief for that reason.

So what of my own beliefs as a deist? There was a point of creation of the universe as we now know it, where the four forces split and space and time as we understand it came to be. It's what I learned in science classes, about the laws of the universe, the process of our evolution and the formation of the human mind, that feeds my sense of spirituality. As atheist scientists from Sagan to Dawkins have noted, the natural universe is wonderful enough.

As Einstein put it, and I mean this not as a cheap appeal to authority but because he put it so well (and so honestly), "that deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power which is revealed in the incomprehensible whole forms my idea of God". The honesty here is the part about "emotional conviction".

This is the part that I've wrestled with as a deist. I can't (and won't) argue that an atheist should be a deist instead. This is a matter of personal philosophy and what's important is that they pursue their own answers. I can't prove my beliefs about God any more than I can prove my beliefs about morality.

The teleological, cosmological and fine-tuning arguments aren't decisive proofs in the "knowledge" sense. The atheist can counter with the Law of Infinate Probability, a variation of ThisWasATriumph's arguments regarding probability. And yet I seem to remain incurably convinced with every fiber of my being that this universe and the human mind are not the products of good fortune but that there is some mysterious intention behind it. I didn't convert to deism through argument. I discovered that's what I am. I even went through a two-week phase trying to be an "normal" atheist. Whether I'm deluded or my instincts are on to something, it seems just a part of my nature.

Deism is the method I use to make sense of these spiritual questions while keeping it firmly grounded in the natural universe, "this I believe" distinguished from and subordinate to "this I know".

 

[obsidianavenger]

I'm embroiled in the classic debate with creationists at the time, but I need to put something to rest for them.

We (the rational) are being accused of having belief whether we accept it or not. The failure here is of course that some beliefs are based on facts. The sun has risen every day for 4 billion years so I believe it will rise again tomorrow. This is not the same thing as believing in a fairy tale book like the Quran or the Bible.

Can somebody provide me some layman's links regarding induction, deduction, abduction and the like that will help me show to them how they are equivocating please? You'd be a great help rather than having me ignore my son for an hour or two while I research this.

Must go play Lego now,

X

if faith is defined as belief based on insufficient evidence, then it follows that faith should be minimized if it cannot be eliminated. one could argue that all induction requires a "leap of faith". fine. but its obvious that some leaps (god) are bigger than others (belief that our senses tell us something about reality). in the goal of minimizing faith, you have to realize that all the daily things atheists have faith in religious folks have faith in too, and other things like "faith" in evolution aren't based on insufficient evidence and thus aren't really faith at all.