Help a Harmless Drudge out, won't you?

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I am going to humiliate [base sense] myself and pretend I am not the supreme arbiter on all things linguistic.

I shall pretend that people who use distorted definitions have the right to tell others to shut up and swallow the definitions Big Brother gives them.

So:

The SpraPo - that is the Spraakpolitie, those into politics and able in Nederlands may enjoy parts of this: http://www.vkblog.nl/blog/3247 - has announced the decree:

Big Brother says FAITH is to mean ALL AND ONLY "belief not derived from any evidence and maintained in spite of COUNTEREVIDENCE and an ABSENCE of supporting evidence"

As in the case of a child who believes there are monsters under the bed even when shown that there are none, or an adult who believes Mr Obama is a great statesman even after watching the news.

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Now Big Brother must know what he is doing or he would not be in charge.

But that leaves us with a problem - if THAT is what faith is, we have two concepts for which there is no word, until Big Brother gives us one.

The first orphan meaning:

We need a word for authority based belief. What must we call it when a person believes something because he has been told by an authority he considers reliable? Such beliefs can be negated by an opposing statement from a more reliable authority.

Examples:

A child believes Santa Clause will bring goodies at the Holidays, BECAUSE his parents told him so.

This belief may be negated if his older brother contradicts it and sees to have greater authority than the parents.

A student believes that Ulysses is a great work because his professor and textbook tell him so.

This belief may be negated if he later takes a course from a different professor.

A voter believes that the Orange candidate will bankrupt the country and force every one to wear plaid polyester, because the media and the Mauve candidate tell him so.

This belief may be negated if he attends an Orange Party rally and reads a different paper.

What will we call this? It can't be FAITH by Big Brother's defnition, because the belief rests on the authorities testimony, and the belief can be changed if a greater authority intervenes.

WE NEED A WORD!

And finally [for now, I don't do ABSOLUTE final:

There is the type of belief that rests upon a stack of observations or other evidence perceived as strong and consistent enough that a datum that SEEMS to contradict it may be set aside.

Such a belief may be changed if the contrary data outweigh the basis for belief.

Here we have the child who believes Tommy is his friend because they play happily together every time Tommy and his moher come to visit.

This belief may be changed when the child notices that if Roderick is around Tomy and Roderick play and tell him to go away, he's bothering them.

AND the researcher who believes that Paw-Dong and Hlafaa are related because sections of their vocabulary - numbers, kinship terms - show similar shapes.

This belief may be negated if the researcher finds that the Paw-Dong verbal system is totally unlike that of Hlafaa but quite similar to that of Strg, and discovers the source for his Hlafaa data is actually a Paq-Ding who became an outlaw and lived 20 years in Hlaaph.

AND, of course, the person who believes in the god Zom because every time he has gone to Zom's woods to pray and offer a squirrel tail he has heard a voice like thunder saying words too great to understand.

this belief may be negated if he walks to the other side of Zom's woods and sees the sharpnoses racing up and down hill on ATVs [the sharpnoses do that out where we are and the noise is very annoying]

All of these beliefs [and a very large proportion of mine, because I do not do "Big Brother faith" at all and I do not trust many authorities unchecked] rest on evidence, are stable, but can be changed if enough conterevidencve is accumulates.

So this cannot be what Big Brother allows us to call faith. And it is different from trusting authority.

So, Big Brother, what do you want us to call this? Or would you rather we ignored it, because Big Brother and belief founded on evidence are not compatible.

Hmmmm.
Many beliefs based primarily or partly on evidence are also influenced by faith.
That's what I get from that.

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What I would like understood is that using faith to refer to ungrounded belief is wrong and lacking thought.

There is a strong tendency to say:

What I believe is based on evidence - I saw it with my own eyes or I heard it from a person I think I can believe, like it was in Scientific American last month. But YOU believe something based on evidence I have not seen or on things you have been told by people I don't trust, like the International Institute for Qi Research. THEREFORE I am reasonable and YOU operate on blind faith."

And the other can - and will - say the same thing back.

Stupidly, in the present day, one side has stopped saying "my evidence is better than yours" and started saying "faith is what the other guys do" - and the fools on the other side, who ALSO look at words and not realities, let them get away with it.

Maybe it takes someone who works with words and has been on both sides to see the insanity.

Or, after he tries to read the first few pages.

I've always had trouble with beleifs that require ad-hoc aparsimonious arguments to justify.

Too true for me - I thought od saying about that but some people are inexplicably into it.

Relevance?

Most such beliefs I suspect are going to be category 2 - authority based, where the holder of the belief has not examined any evidence beyond the authoritative claim.

But what would you call that?

If I believe something is true because someone told me so, is my opinion based on evidence or faith?
Is "Einstein said so" my evidence, or is it an example of faith in Einstein?

christianity. a perfect example is, jesus' birthday.

maybe they should call it traditionality. because thats all it is

Random aside:

These constant snipes at Obama (they are peppered all throughout your posts), especially in the absence of any comparable hostility or resentment toward right-wing political figures who are far worse, are why no one finds you credible when you claim not to fall into any political ideology. You like to be different purely for the sake of being different, and if you're in academia you must think the best way to break stereotypes is to reflexively support the right (or at least oppose the left).

I think we are right there with you, and can agree that you are not the supreme arbiter.



I suggest that the word 'belief' suffices. I 'believe' that a bridge is engineered to correctly and to acceptable standards because the engineers have stamped the plans, submitted the plans to review, and because the experts have approved (and additional inspections were carried out when building the bridge). I don't 'know' that any bridge is well designed and properly built, because I lack the education needed to make such determinations, and even if had such education, I would not have the resources to investigate every bridge before driving over it. So I rely on the belief that the authority provides an infrastructure to build and maintain safe bridges. This infrastructure is not infallible, but seems to be self-correcting -- after the collapse of the Minnesota freeway bridge, lessons were learned, inspections and preventive maintenance were increased.

Also, it's not as if the majority of lefties here are Obama-bots. If anything it seems to me there is always a popular stigma against supporting any sitting president, and it comes from all sides and persuasions. I remember Clinton getting attacked from all sides. Negativity towards politicians seems to be the current meme in US public discourse. Yet I can't fully blame politicians who are just doing their job to represent the idiots who vote for them. In the end, the biggest problem comes down to the voters themselves. Politicians are just easy public scapegoats used to avoid facing the true endemic ills of our society. Dissent and blame is always popular because it's easy. Looking for actual solutions is hard.

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Do we have permission to use faith in other than the [I am at least entitled to say it" dumbed down meaning?

If Big Brother would allow me to speak without censorship, I would say - same as I have been saying but slightly different emphases:

The assertion blinkering out counterevidence is not faith, it is Unsinn - nonsense - thoughtlessness.

Evidence can - does - include

my observations
observations reported by others
conclusions communicated by others.
my evaluations of sources of observations and conclusions
others' evaluations of sources of observations and conclusions

On almost any question [let's say determining the speed of sound]

there are apparently irrelevant data [the color of the bird which generated the sound measured]

there are data which agree [my measurements on January 4th and Ludwig's from December 5th]

there are data which do not fit the pattern [the third measurement from January 2nd, where my measurement and Ludwig's differ by 15%]

there are data viewed as more reliable [my measurements with the Px-45 are more precise than Ludwig's using the S and W Sharpear; my measurements are less consistent than those in the Handbook of Audiology]

And we have to work these into an analysis we can trust / rely on / believe/ have faith in.

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Einstein?

Einstein said "E=mc2" Einstein said "Pipe tobacco has more flavor than that in cigarettes"

If you heard him say those things, the statements are evidence. If a third party told you he said those things, they are still evidence.

Let us assume you have no other data on the subjects. I really don't.

If you believe E=mc2, you likely are basing that on your evaluation of Einstein as person and physicist, undoubtedly influence by other assessments of Einstein.

Me, I put E=mc2 on the pile of things I "take on faith" - I have not done any relevant research nor personally observed anything relevant, but I have confidence in Einstein's qualificatins and in those who have assessed his work positively.

I won't put you on the spot about tobacco. Me, I do not "take on faith" the tobacco claim. It goes on the large pile of low priority hypotheses not yet evaluated. The statement of one smoker who has no established status as a connoisseur or tobacco researcher has relatively little weight.

Einstein's theories have earned their place by virtue of empirical verification and lack of empirical falsification.

ruveyn