= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Eugine_Nier comments on Self-Congratulatory Rationalism - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (395)
To the contrary, lots of groups make a big point of being anti-rational. Many groups (religious, new-age, political, etc.) align themselves in anti-scientific or anti-evidential ways. Most Christians, to make an example, assign supreme importance to (blind) faith that triumphs over evidence.
But more generally, humans are a-rational by default. Few individuals or groups are willing to question their most cherished beliefs, to explicitly provide reasons for beliefs, or to update on new evidence. Epistemic rationality is not the human default and needs to be deliberately researched, taught and trained.
And people, in general, don't think of themselves as being rational because they don't have a well-defined, salient concept of rationality. They think of themselves as being right.
That's not what most Christians mean by faith.
The comment you link to gives a very interesting description of faith:
I like that analysis! And I would add: obligation to your social superiors, and to your actual legal superiors (in a traditional society), is a very strong requirement and to deny faith is not merely to be rude, but to rebel against the social structure which is inseparable from institutionalized religion.
However, I think this is more of an explanation of how faith operates, not what it feels like or how faithful people describe it. It's a good analysis of the social phenomenon of faith from the outside, but it's not a good description of how it feels from the inside to be faithful.
This is because the faith actually required of religious people is faith in the existence of God and other non-evident truths claimed by their religion. As a faithful person, you can't feel faith is "duty, trust, obligation" - you feel that is is belief. You can't feel that to be unfaithful would be to wrong someone or to rebel; you feel that it would be to be wrong about how the world really is.
However, I've now read Wikipedia on Faith in Christianity and I see there are a lot of complex opinions about the meaning of this word. So now I'm less sure of my opinion. I'm still not convinced that most Christians mean "duty, trust, deference" when they say "faith", because WP quotes many who disagree and think it means "belief".