What I brought up in the thread with Wade was critical thinking concepts. It is true that religious "faith" does not employ critical thinking. In fact it is the antithesis of reasoning. All one needs for religious faith is acceptance of whatever one is told to accept by some authority.
This is simply false and deploys several materialist conceits (not that you are conceited, hopfully) of traditonal usage. True faith, in any substantive and actualized sense, involves serious thought and reflection at some level, even if such thought in our relationship to God is not
always appropirate or necessary, Faith is not unreasoned assumption and is not the antithesis of reasoning. Even the best philosophers and scientists muct have faith in their methods and intellectual templates. Truly religious people have faith in God because they've acted upon true or valid princciples and seen the evidence of their truth manifest in their lives and in the real world of which they are apart.
Faith is inextricably linked to action, and hence is an order of magnitude apart from mere belief, which may indeed, just as blind irrational faith may be, antithetical to critical thought. The point is that their different forms of faith, some being indeed destructive and anti-intellectual, and others being productive and which work in harmony with critical thought and and reflection. Indeed, artificially separating faith and reason as generations of worhisppers of human intellect have done would very likely destroy both if taken seriously. Modern agronomy and farming is based on critical thought. However, each and every farmer must still plant with faith, grounded in empirical science
and experience, that his crops will actually grow. Faith, as Paul said, is the evidence of things not seen. It is not preassumptions of or belief in purely abstract doctrines or a ledger of rules. Faith, intellect, and experience are deeply interconnected, as are reason and imagination. The rigid, positivistic separation of them into sealed compartments is the artificial contrivance of an antagonistic philosophical system, not givens.
Further, at least in the church, the presense of continuing revelation to each member obviates the need for blind acceptance of what is taught by authorities.
I appreciate many religious individuals have little to no understanding of the concept of atheism and think it is a belief system. But it is not. If you'd like to discuss that further I will.
You may, but I've been down this road before and it won't wash with me marg, on philosophical principle. And body of belief, in anytihing whatsoever, including bodies of belief that deny other beliefs (such and such
is not the case), and make propositions and statements that are claimed to have truth value, is a system of belief. All that needs to be pointed out here is that Atheism, to the extent it is a system of nonbelief in God and spiritual claims, is therefore by definition a system of belief in the nonexistence of something, or, in other words, a system of belief that makes positive claims to knowledge about the nonexistence of certain phenomena, and hence, is a system of belief that makes positive statements about aspects of the universe but uses negative propostiions to make positive claim of knowledge or truth (i.e., God does not exist, which is the same thing as saying the non-esistence of God exists, or is an existant feature of the universe).
In short atheism is a default position to theism. Critical thinking is also not a belief system...there are thinking tools which can employed which result generally, in better, closer to truth results and/or better decision making than if no thinking tools are employed and only complete reliance of gut feelings or authority.
I agree completely with your assesment here.
Sometimes there is little choice but to rely on authority but then that authority should be critically evaluated and it kept in mind.
This doesn't hold up under all conditions, however. In the military, when survival in the field of combat is the prime directive, critical anlysis of authoritiy could get one and others killed, or provoke much more catastrophic consequences. And this is apropos, because we are, according to gospel doctrine, in a field of battle here, in which the war in heaven has continued from its beginnings in the preexistence. We don't have anything near all the relevant knowledge, wisdom, or ability necessary to defeat our opponents on our own. Therefore, questioning God at every turen could, quite literally get us spiritually killed; many times we just have to listent to his counsel, or that of his authorized servants, and follow him into unknown territory. That's experience and critical thought based faith in a gospel sense: following Christ based on pased experience and testimony into uncharted waters. Its not irrational unless one has no inherant trust in his own perceptions and experiences.
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f you read my posts to Wade, Coggins you will note I mention not just emperical evidence but reasoning as well. The phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"..is shorthand for a logical concept which is a thinking tool, which when employed aids in decision making, improves the quality of critical thinking and probability of conclusion, theory, results, opinion etc. If you have a problem with the logic in that Coggins then argue that issue.
You may be talking past Wade and I here. I don't have any problem with what you've said here as to the importance of logical reasoning employed as a tool aiding in the qualtiy of descision making and the making of choice. The problem seems to be a radical division you've made between faith (as you've very narrowly defined it), and reason and empirics, aspects of human intellectual capacity you refuse to place limitations upon and seem to believe, not only help us explain the universe, but somehow define it and set absolute imitations upon the universe itself as to, not only what can be known about it, but as to whether there is anything at all to know beyond the intellectual limitations of the methodologies themselves. In other words, the philosophy of materialism or scientism conflates methodology and theoretical framework with the the phenomena they were created to conceptualize.
It must be kept in mind that these are metaphysical assmuptions, not any possible extrapolations from the intellectual framework of the methadologies themselves. Logic, empiricism, and the scientific method are excellent tools for the level of reality with which they deal and within which they were created and to which they have direct reference. Outside of this particular mortal realm, they have little, if any epistemological value. This template has severe limitations balencing their definate strengths, and cannot be used as oracles to tell us anything beyond the perceptive range dictated by their inherant attributes.
Coggins you may believe whatever you wish I'm not arguing against you doing that. But the thread both you and Wade set up ..had to do with applying reasoned judgment to church leaders/J.Smith claims as to whether the claims were likely true and if not why not. We live in a world in which generally reasoning leads to better choices. that isn't guaranteed but generally when one gathers information and then makes decisions, they are in a better position to reason to a good conclusion than if no information was gathered.
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This is the fundamental problem of scientism and metaphysical materialism generally: the attempt to push methdologies and cognitive frameworks beyond their bounds into realms outside their stict delimitations, and then to claim that anything remaining outside those delimitations does not exist. At the same time, we demand that any possible spheres of existence outside what we call the "natural" world conform to both our present understanding of that world and the perameters of the intellectual superstructures we've developed to explain it and the methadologies we've developed to explore and discover its features.
Where did I claim something does not exist? I didn't make any such claim. And I don't need to make any such claim. If anyone presents to me a claim for something existing, for which I am extremely skeptical and have good reason to be extremely skeptical ..then logically, rightfully so, the burden is on them to present their reasoning and evidence. It's not up to me to prove whatever they claim does not exist. Simply expecting me to believe without question or in other words to have faith is irrational. I have nothing against the existence of any strange extraordinary thing.. but I need to be persuaded with good reasoning that the thing in questio
n exists.
Firstly, while an Atheist may relieve him or herself from making any positive claims about the nonexistence of a, b, or c,, the claims are implicit in the Atheist (or an anti UFO position, for an alternative example) position. Just refraining from making them changes nothing philosophically.
Secondly, a core problem between to people such as you and I are that we are coming from two utterly dissonent and incompatible frames of reference as to basic metaphysical assumptions. This cannot be overemphasized. I accept the possibility and, indeed, the reality of alternaive and complimentary avenues to true knowledge. You accept only those those from of knowledge derived from logical reasoning and data or evidence aquired by empirically verifiable experiment and observation. This is not just a problem of methadoloy and or practical theoretical paradgims. Its a difference in fundamental philosophical assumptions about the world and what is possible within it.
I accept the rigors of philosophcal anlysis, and the scientific method, but I do not accept them as
sola scriptora; I don't delimit the universe, or reality, to the appearances created by my own mental sets or templates, despite their practical use in certain specific circumstances among certain classes of phenomena.
The question here is which templates, paragdims, and methods are peculier to and valid for the correct comprehension of which phenomena, and which are not. If one
a priori closes off the possibility of the aquisition of knowledge of aspects of reality not amenable to one set of methodologies or frames of reference, one will never be able to approch such knowledge if it does exist (as one will have obviated any possible verification of its existence).
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The problem is, of course, that the human methadologies and templates cannot be extracted from the very natural world within which they arose to explain that very natural world; their perceptual range, or shall we say, their perceptual depth of field, is embedded within the same empirical world as the phenomena they attempts to study and explain, and are therefore conditioned and limited by the rule, laws, and charactistics of that world.
Like it or not Coggins, people claim's can be evaluated rationally as to whether or not they are likely true and if not true, a determination given the data presented can be made as to the likely reason. In some cases, as in J.Smith's case ...there is good reasoning to conclude with high probability he lied in many of his claims. I don't expect you to believe that given your background.
The above statemnet relies heavily on an unexamined assumption. That assumption is that religious or metaphysical calims, in some very broad sense, can simply be analysed rationally and a determination made based on the claim made (Joseph Smith saw and talked with God) without a substantial background of assumptions or biases about what the world is like and what is possible within it that is quite separate from what any rational analysis might say about it given another set of philosphical or metaphysical preconceptions, or given just what we understand about the "natural" world through our own perceptual filters.
If Joseph did talk with God, the simple fact of the matter is that no rational anslysis will bring anyone to a conclusion one way or the other outside of a set of preesisting philosophical biases. Their are really only two: One is that such things may be possible, and the other is that such things are impossible. A rational critique of Joseph's claims, independent of revelation and the exercise of faith, will yield a determination quite in harmony with what we already believed about the fundametal nature of the universe before we began, and littel else.
Joseph's claims are intended precisely to push us forcfully outside the box and into uncharted territory. Its a paradgim shift when we allow the concepts of faith and revelation to be at least a possibility, but only a continuation of the preesisting format when we attempt to move into a dark room, not with a flashlight, but with a microscope. Quite an instrument for studying certain aspects of nature, but useless for studying anything in a dark room without a source of light.