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Subject: Responses Author: Liberal [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 23:52:35 04/13/05 Wed In reply to: Liberal 's message, "Faith is Arbitrary Choice" on 03:26:41 04/13/05 Wed Response 1: I...detect trace of foundationalistic inclination in your thought (which I maybe wrong). You seem to believe that the less faith statements being involved, the more secure a theory will be. Critical realism of course will not object triming off unnecessary faith statements, but the key to approaching reality is to dialogue with it, not by limiting faith statements. Any statement, faith or not, should be put into dialogue with the reality. Congruence and consilience are two important affirmations of a theory. It is true that a statement like "God exists" is not easily verified. So you may put it into a faith statement list. But if you say you will not bother yourself with "vague" faith statements, then you may be still adhering to the positivist tradition. I will not object to the "God exists" statement simply due to its difficulty in verification. If this belief coheres well with other beliefs (faith or not) or theories and it produces good consilience, then the whole package of that nexus of theories is on good ground. ®ü¥§¤Ò Response 2: In "Arbitrary Choice", I'm afraid you conflate the idea of (1) justifiedly believing that p with (2) p being true. Not having enough evidence or justification for a belief does not mean that that belief is not telling you something which may be true. There may be a belief which is accepted with strong justification but false. There may also be a belief which is true but lack justification (with regard to one particular person or with regard to the human race). So, first you need to ask yourself what you count as justified (or proved). Then, why is that so important in your pursuit of truth? You need to ask yourself whether your standard could explain all kind of knowledge, not just religious knowledge. For example, will some kind of truth be precluded by the way you count some beliefs as justified? Then, you may ask what we may make of when a belief does not receive full justification. This point has been made by ®ü¥§¤Ò that it may be too weak to call it Arbitrary Choice. Also, please define "faith statement". ±i°ê´É http://www.christiantimes.org.hk/Common/Reader/News/ShowNews.jsp?Nid=28481&Pid=1&Version=0&Cid=146&Charset=big5_hkscs# [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

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Subject Author Date More questions from ±i°ê´É Liberal 13:06:37 04/16/05 Sat