Friday, November 02, 2012

The Stanford Encyclopedia on what beliefs are

Here.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Did you cc John Loftus?

Victor Reppert said...

No.

B. Prokop said...

Wow. Reading that, I'm glad I'm not a philosopher! It makes my head hurt!

unkleE said...

Hey, I like it!! : )

Papalinton said...

One should also look up the Stanford entry on 'Faith' particularly as it is applied to 'religious faith'.

It is HERE

A most interesting point made, "(In relation to Swinburne's Bayesian natural theology, in particular, this objection surfaces in criticism of assumptions about how to set the prior probabilities implicated in calculations of, for example, theism's probability on the evidence of the ‘fine-tuning’ of the Universe's basic physical constants, or of the probability, on all our evidence, of the truth of the Resurrection.) If the ambiguity thesis is correct, then—assuming evidentialism—firmly held theistic belief will fail to be reasonable." Religious faith is quite a dog's breakfast, a mix of of personal, introspective, intuitive, instinctual, unguided and primitive emotional responses to existential insecurities, mostly unrealized.

The entry also efficiently and economically reviews, without the theological and Apologetical baggage, Aquinas's perspective on 'faith' and quickly focusses on its fundamental deficiencies, relying exclusively and solely as it does on a priori theological content.

It seems John Loftus's position on the value of probabilities bears out as the correct interpretation.

Unknown said...

Papalinton must've stopped reading when he found a point that was convenient for his purposes. What paps should have gleaned from the SEP entry is that John Loftus' understanding of faith is one among many, meaning that a 'correction interpretation' of faith has yet win out over others.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

When you argue with someone it is a good idea to learn about what they believe.

I'm very simple. I hold the Catholic Church's definition of Faith(which BTW doesn't even remotely resemble Loftus' definition).

So any Atheist who wishes to argue "Faith" with me must assume my definition or he/she can go screw themselves.

That is a perfectly reasonable standard.

After all if you are let's say a "Platonic Atheist" I must acknowledge most if not nearly all anti-materialist polemics I might bring up have no meaning to your version of Atheism.

Loftus definition of "faith" is not shared by most Christian confessions and is equally meaningless.