PHILOSOPHY - Religion: Reason And Faith [HD]

It is common to think that Faith and Reason must be in conflict. Often this view emerges because how we use the term "believe" is ambiguous. In this video Greg Ganssle (Yale University) clarifies how this term is used and how Faith and Reason can be properly related.

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[nathan]

Someone once asked Mark Twain, "Mr. Twain, do you believe in infant baptism?" "Do I believe in it? Hell, I've seen it!" he replied.

[davidclifford]

Uggh. No. Driving to New York is not a 100% commitment just because I'm 100% in the vehicle. At any point along the way I'm willing and capable of stopping or turning around in the face of any number of apparent obstructions or arising conditions.

In the case of me being truly faith-bound, truly 100% committed to traveling to New York, I wouldn't stop for anything. Literally anything. Tires explode? Keep driving. Engine melts? Get out and start running. Road ahead replaced with spikes? Keep running. Legs chopped off? Start crawling.

This is what makes faith divorced from reason. A reasonable person doesn't commit to ANY proposition with 100% certainty, because that way lies madness, and an unwillingness to change in the face of new evidence.

[ubergenie]

An easy to understand piece on epistemic claims about belief. The certainty aspect in the middle needs more development than could occur in a short video. I.E. We aren't certain of the existence of other minds, the reality of the past, or an external world. Yet we operate as if we were certain of these things every day.

So there are classes of beliefs that seem to be foundational and others that build on foundational beliefs.

What is the method for forming true beliefs? How does one KNOW that is the method (the problem of the criterion), is also a self-referentially incoherent statement as the question, "How do you know, " can be asked ad infinitum.

I look forward to the other videos in this series.

[donesitackacom]

People in the comments... the statement "I believe *that* God exists" is making a simple claim. "I believe *in* God is different". A satanist would say "I believe *that* God exists" because he is not committed to God. Although this is a good video about Faith vs Reason in general, it's not a good video about that subject in religion because religious critics don't question if someone is committed to God, they question if he exists.

[benwatkins]

This is probably the weakest video of this series. The criticism of religious belief is not that they must commit themselves with certainty less than 100%. It's that the certainty is very low (<<50%), inscrutable, or non existent for some people. The probability that I'll be in a car wreck or plane crash is relatively low (certainly >>50%) therefore there becomes a pragmatic reason to adopt faith in order to make a commitment to a decision despite 100% certainty. But now turning to the marriage example; what if I had reason to believe (via evidence) that my marriage was more likely to fail than to succeed? It would seem I lose that pragmatic reason to adopt faith as the evidence and the faith I place into something are not in proportion. I think this is what Kierkegaard means by a leap of faith in the face of an absurd reality. To believe by faith when evidence is lacking, inscrutable, or non-existent seems contrary to reason. Most people can't provide any evidence for their belief in God; because it's an existential belief obtained through a leap of faith. That's why belief is continued despite a lack of evidence or even when presented with contrary evidence. Rational attacks on people's faith seem misguided at best as the rational attack could only be aimed at the evidence which has been separated from the faith as per this video. The video baits and switches by baiting situations in which certainty is high but switches it by saying the certainty is less than 100%. Then applies that same metric to the evidence for god's existence- glossing over the fact that the evidence is low, inscrutable, or even nonexistent for some people by casually mentioning "it's less than 100%." This allows for the dis analogy of faith in god being as reasonable as the faith you have when driving your car or marrying a spouse.

[faceshed]

I've looked for years and never herd such a good well presented and sensible explanation of what faith is for a believer. It was worth the wait. Thank you.
That said, I think this video fails to address the much more common problem that faith *IS* in direct conflict with reason because that is how many people define faith. I've been told for example "You can't use logic and reason to understand [and believe in] God, you just have to have faith". Faith is one of those horribly loaded words like "atheist" that is defined depending on how you feel about it and everyone assumes that others have picked the same meaning. Anyway this definition will certainly give me a new tool for pinning down what people I talk to are trying to say.

[AtheosNous]

Mission statement of Rivendell Institute at Yale (from its website):

"To examine and *advance the contribution of a Christian vision* of life to human flourishing and the common good within the academy and contemporary culture." (my emphasis)

I came to watch a philosophy video. This is apologetics, not philosophy.

1. Before committing "believe in", one must fully examine "believe that". What nebulous thing is one committing to otherwise?

2. Car and airplane travel are terrible analogies for the god concept. You have a 99.9999% chance of arriving alive on commercial flights in the US, and only 1 in 100 million VMT (vehicle miles traveled) chance of dying in a car. Who would get into a car or plane if the chance of survival is 50/50?

Faith and reason are opposites.

[napolianmyhand]

I don't think it's even remotely legitimate to directly compare the evidence one would have for lasting marriage with a significant other or the safety of plane travel with Supernatural memes existing and their alleged Wheels being adhere to

[dauntul]

What was the point of this video? He does assume that there is evidence that god exists but we just can't be 100% sure. He make it sound like we have evidence to be something like 99% sure. In this case I would agree that it is reasonable to believe in god. But were are in the reversed case where we can be 99% sure that there is no god. So it is reasonable to believe that there is no god.

This is what I dislike in Wireless Philosophy videos. They present opinions but try to make them sound as objective neutral statements. Not cool at all.

[MaoRuiqi]

"Meet a fork in the road, don't pick it up, you don't know who last used it!" Yogi

[ibadi]

Excellent presentation. Thank you very much Professor for your time, and nice explanation about this complex subject.

[korona]

It's funny, I was waiting for the analysis of the ice cream example but it never came. "Ice cream tastes good" is closer to "I believe in God" and "I believe in Recycling" is closer to "I believe Washington existed".

Recycling can be shown to be objectively good* (*for most items) so adopting the practice is something you can say is reasonable.
On the other hand what evidence can you show for ice cream being tasty for me? Other than whether or not I find it tasty? You can say lots of other people like it, but maybe they have poor taste. People like lots of things I find horrible (like Kim Kardashian). Whether or not ice cream is tasty for me is something I can only find out through direct experience. Reason is a tool for making objectively true statements. "Ice cream is tasty" rests on this totally subjective base. That's not to say I won't want to eat ice cream but my like or dislike for it isn't rational. And that's fine. It's totally fine to do things that aren't rational. Rationality is overrated.

[itsjustameme]

So by which of these standards do you believe that god exist? There sure as hell does not appear to be any evidence to back up his existence so I don't see how you can believe THAT god exist. But you seem to have been arguing that the detractors of the Christian faith are misapplying the term when we understand it to mean believe IN god.

[Bridge]

No, no, no. Just realise that 50% is the pivot point at which God's existence becomes likely, and then realise that when religious people say that they have faith, they mean that they have below 50% certainty (thus making the belief in a god irrational) but they believe anyway. This is the problem people have with faith. Once you're past 50%, that is once you have determined that the existence of god is more likely than the non-existence of god, then nobody has a problem with you believing. It is just that nobody has demonstrated that the existence of god is more likely.

Also, you don't base your relationships on evidence? Of course you do. Not basing your relationship on evidence would be proposing to a girl as the first thing you say to her. Once you start dating, you are gathering evidence all the time.

[nuclearcarnie]

Wow... What a stretch. You are trying to compare taking a calculated risk to attain a desired result, like car/plane crashes to faith. How on earth are these things even remotely related to each other?! Do you think that cute illustrations while you speak will make it somehow more believable? There was not a single point made here. This is just another attempt to justify your belief in something that hasn't a single shred of proof to support it.

[FreestateofOkondor]

I have to disagree strongly with you here. It's true that the sentence "I believe in god" presupposes reasoning to a certain degree and that we can never be 100% sure of stuff but still commit to them. The problem with god is that the evidence against him is so overwhelming that belief in him becomes what any critical person would call unreasonable. Also your last bit about the idea that you wouldn't go into a marriage with only facts about the other person doesn't work. The moment god becomes a scientific question there cannot be any other consideration but hard facts.

[francismausley]

"Every religion which does not concern itself with Science is mere tradition, and that is not the essential. Therefore science, education and civilization are most important necessities for the full religious life." ~ Abdu'l-Baha in London. Baha'i Faith

[LucaHulot]

well, now there's the problem that all religion/beliefs can't be true at the same time, yet all belief are 100% committed to it.
so....

[Daruqe]

...So, in a video that's intended to look at the relationship between reason and faith from a philosophical linguistic perspective, the word "faith" is not used once.

[skeptorr]

only there's zero evidence of God, so no reason to believe he exist, and no need for faith in him.