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[Drunken]

But concerning this whole "rationality as moral framework" thing. You said that the question was whether faith has any value. Short answer? No. Quite honestly, if you need to be told what to do by a God or indeed anything that cannot be proved, you don't seem to be as developed as the rest of us. Like Graknorke said, morality is hammered into us at an early age.Our parents are what keep us out of danger, and therefore we feel inclined to listen to them. This, funnily enough, also explains by so many people believe in what is very likely a load of nonsense. Because there parents told them so.

If anything, it seems faith has become detrimental. All these extremists and fundamentalists who support proposition 8 and bomb buildings are have scripture to back them up. They can quote the Bible or Koran in order to justify their acts. So it seems to me that faith is a pretty shitty moral framework.

Bottom line, unless your faith is squeaky-fucking-clean, I don't think it's gonna have much value to any of us.

Ahh the argument from personal feelings of superiority. As I have pointed out repeatedly, the difference between belief systems that justify acts of violence and oppression and what I am proposing are so far apart that they do not even belong in the same discussion. That was even the focus of my first point in this thread: the pollution of all ideas of spirituality based on the actions of the idiotic mainstream religions.

"I don't think it's gonna have much value to any of us" - I said it had value to me, it is my belief system not yours. My argument that faith can have value does not hinge upon it's value to other people in this thread, just that it has value at all. I tried to explain specifically why and how it had value to me.

I realise long posts can be hard to get though, but this is theology answers like "Short answer? No." in a discussion such as this are completely useless. To debate such a complex philosophical issue as this complex discussion is required. I understand that I am the chief culprit of recent giant posts, I will therefore simply keep my opinion to myself as having a theological discussion in the framework of office motivational poster quotes is just stupid. I don't promise to leave, I may still post the occasional point, but I will try to keep my posts down to a few lines, which means I will no longer be discussing what I consider to be the important core aspects of the topic.

[LordExumius]

But concerning this whole "rationality as moral framework" thing. You said that the question was whether faith has any value. Short answer? No. Quite honestly, if you need to be told what to do by a God or indeed anything that cannot be proved, you don't seem to be as developed as the rest of us. Like Graknorke said, morality is hammered into us at an early age.Our parents are what keep us out of danger, and therefore we feel inclined to listen to them. This, funnily enough, also explains by so many people believe in what is very likely a load of nonsense. Because there parents told them so.

If anything, it seems faith has become detrimental. All these extremists and fundamentalists who support proposition 8 and bomb buildings are have scripture to back them up. They can quote the Bible or Koran in order to justify their acts. So it seems to me that faith is a pretty shitty moral framework.

Bottom line, unless your faith is squeaky-fucking-clean, I don't think it's gonna have much value to any of us.

Ahh the argument from personal feelings of superiority. As I have pointed out repeatedly, the difference between belief systems that justify acts of violence and oppression and what I am proposing are so far apart that they do not even belong in the same discussion. That was even the focus of my first point in this thread: the pollution of all ideas of spirituality based on the actions of the idiotic mainstream religions.

"I don't think it's gonna have much value to any of us" - I said it had value to me, it is my belief system not yours. My argument that faith can have value does not hinge upon it's value to other people in this thread, just that it has value at all. I tried to explain specifically why and how it had value to me.

I realise long posts can be hard to get though, but this is theology answers like "Short answer? No." in a discussion such as this are completely useless. To debate such a complex philosophical issue as this complex discussion is required. I understand that I am the chief culprit of recent giant posts, I will therefore simply keep my opinion to myself as having a theological discussion in the framework of office motivational poster quotes is just stupid. I don't promise to leave, I may still post the occasional point, but I will try to keep my posts down to a few lines, which means I will no longer be discussing what I consider to be the important core aspects of the topic.

To be fair, though, nothing you have said here has not been said better elsewhere, so really, we won't be missing much. Now the same could also be said of me, and this why I think discussions like these are circular and pointless. My entire approach to this thread has been cynical, because I realise that nobody on either side is going to change their views.

*Sigh* maybe I'm just bitter from my previous discussions on the topic.

[Siquo]

"Evidence" is not adequately defined.

Alright, let's do this.

Thank you for a really good definition of evidence. Agreement on semantics is important before you can even begin to communicate. So, taking your definition, one of my arguments is already down the drain (as a single experience with a very low prior and posterior probability (Act of God/Divine intervention/etc) is not eligible)

On to belief on/in evidence: Is there evidence of that kind for every little thing one believes in? Is there evidence for "good" or "bad"? I mean, how can one maintain that all he believes in is evidence based, and still use words like "good" and "bad"?

I'm not arguing for the existence of a God here, nor that a God is necessary for morality (I'm a deist, and believe in a primal-mover kind of god I guess, but make my own morality), merely that it cannot be found in "evidence". Taken with LordExumius' statement, that means that anyone who has even the slightest belief in that things can be good or bad, has faith. It's not such a dirty word.

[MonkeyHead]

Is religious faith (God will save us...) different to more general faith (my team will win...)?

If so, what makes it different? If it is the same, then what is it about it that makes people who hold it take the view that it can not be challenged?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Religious faith is more of a factual assumption of things one has no evidence for, while general faith is closer to hope for a certain outcome.

[Reudh]

You guys will probably find this quite interesting. While it largely deals with alternative medicine and pseudoscience, it provides a few good arguments about religion.

Tim Minchin's Storm: The Animated Movie

[MonkeyHead]

No doubt people would object to my personal understandings then.

Religious faith: Considering true things that can not be proven to be true. Whilst they can not directly be proven to be untrue, this is often due to the nature of the postulation. Often alternative testable explanations are given that are at times rejected by those holding certain religious faiths.

General faith: Choosing to believe that an outcome/event is probable to occur, with or without consideration of all relevant information that could be used to inform such a choice. Often the faith will be directed towards situations which the outcome is uncertain.

Having reread those, they dont seem too different to me... 

Whilst anyone is capable of holding generalized faith (and to be hurt or elated when things do or dont go thier way for whatever reason), I think religious fiath is something that many people (myself included) find hard to understand - especially those of us that have been trained (for whatever reason) to think in a particular way. Dont get me wrong - I respect those who can have faith, even if I do not agree with thier views, apart from in extreme circumstances. Possibly the lack of an obvious outcome on an individual level, discounting any aspects that have an influence on an individuals personality or behaviour, which faith of any form clearly has no monopoly on.

Edit: nice quote from Hawking:

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

[Grek]

On to belief on/in evidence: Is there evidence of that kind for every little thing one believes in? Is there evidence for "good" or "bad"? I mean, how can one maintain that all he believes in is evidence based, and still use words like "good" and "bad"?

Evidence only has to do with the state of the world and the things in it. There is evidence for and against every single physical fact of the universe, including facts like "what does X think about Y?", since that's really just a question about what X's brain is up to. Alot of the things we have "beliefs" about are abstract concepts - things that don't actually exist anywhere in the physical world. Our brains behave like they do, because we didn't evolve originally to handle abstract questions like that. Instead, our brains co-opt the original answering-questions-of-fact-about-the-world-in-time-to-not-get-eaten-by-lions brain circuitry to consider abstract questions. And the brain does so by treating abtractions like they were physical things in the universe that we could get evidence about and form proper beliefs on.

So, to answer the main question: It depends on what exactly you mean by good and bad. Without a perspective to define good vs. bad from (and a defintion of whether you mean "right vs. wrong" or "preferable vs. not preferable" or something else entirely), there's no way to say whether something is good or bad or neither. There's no objective Good that exists outside of someone's mind for us to examine and get evidence about. Instead, you have to look at people's mind and their thoughts (as inferred by the things they say and do or by introspection if you're just concerned about your own thoughts) in order to get a grasp on what they think good and bad are. Since there isn't an objective Good or objective Bad anywhere to look at, those mental perspectives are the only things that the words 'good' and 'bad' could be talking about.

If you mean it in terms of preference, ie. "good" is whatever is preferable to "bad", then, you can only have evidence for what is good and what is bad respective to a given person's preferences, or toward any set of average preferences you want, subject to constraints like Arrow's Theorem and so forth. At least assuming all the preferences involved are well defined and not self-contradicting. And if you mean it in terms of "right" and "wrong", then you can have evidence about "right according to X" and "wrong according to X" where X is a person's morals, or a moral code of some sort, but those are really just fancy special cases of preference. I wouldn't really qualify either one as a proper belief, at least not in the sense used in "is there evidence for belief X?". It's certainly something that people think, and something they profess, but it's not something they think about the world, so much as something they think about their own minds and whatever else it is that defines their morality.

Of course, none of that is to say that there's no point in studying morality and ethics - people's minds have shockingly large amounts of agreement about what is good and what is bad once you get down to the brass tacks, so to speak. It's just that these are questions of psychology and cognitive science, not of simple and obvious fact like the apparent location of the Sun at dawn is. Minds are confusing, so morality, being a question about the mind, is also confusing.

[Leafsnail]

On to belief on/in evidence: Is there evidence of that kind for every little thing one believes in? Is there evidence for "good" or "bad"? I mean, how can one maintain that all he believes in is evidence based, and still use words like "good" and "bad"?

"Good" and "bad" are social constructs, corresponding loosely to positive and negative emotions respectively.  A "good" thing is broadly speaking something that will cause positive emotions to be felt or prevent negative emotions from being felt, with "bad" being the opposite.  Obviously it gets more complicated than that, but that's pretty much the core of the issue.

As they are defined in this way they're not exactly claims about the universe - rather words we can use to describe objects or actions in terms of the positive or negative emotions they cause or embody (in general).  I'd want evidence of any particular statement involving the word "good" before believing it, but a word on its own is not a statement about how the universe is and does not require any evidence.

I mean, you might as well argue there's no evidence for "hard", "black", "fluffy" or "happy".  It's true because they're not statements and thus cannot make any testable predictions, but it's not a sensible question because they're descriptive words which we understand the meaning of.

[kaijyuu]

I'll hop in and point out that stuff is in the realm of metaphysics (applying logic to concepts similarly to how we apply logic to physical objects). Metaphysics is something I've always thought kinda weird and wonder if it's ever had a shower in its entire existence.

A metaphysics philosopher could probably provide "evidence" for concepts such as "good" "bad" or whatever, provided you give them some premises to build on. I'm definitely not qualified to do that, lacking sufficient armchair philosophy time.

[i2amroy]

trying to apply a definition to good and bad?

do you think dictators that had people killed for speaking out thought they were bad?

good and bad are down to the individual. some will think X is good, others will think it's bad.

If we take good and bad as the way that Leafsnail pointed them out (i.e. "good" as something that will cause positive emotions or prevent negative emotions, and "bad" as something that causes negative emotions or prevents positive ones), then the only difference in that scenario between the dictator and the person being executed for speaking out's world-views is the weight of the self in both of them.

In the case of the person speaking out:
From person's perspective: Possible benefit to others (+10), possibility of harm to self (-5); 0+10-5=5 (good)
From dictator's perspective: Possibility of harm to self (-10), possible benefit to others (+2); 0-10+2=-8 (bad)

The dictator is weighing the potential harm to themselves (through country destabilization, rebellion, or questioning of their power), against the harm that could be done to them by having the other person killed. The person who speaks out is weighing the good of everyone regaining their rights against the chance of themselves being harmed for speaking out.

In both cases they are using the same definition of good and bad, it's just that in the person's view the "other" is more important then the "self", where as in the dictators view the "self" is more important then the "other".

[Leafsnail]

It applies to every word, incidentally, although abstract concepts get it more.  What I regard as a chair may not be regarded as a chair by other people.

[Eagle_eye]

trying to apply a definition to good and bad?

do you think dictators that had people killed for speaking out thought they were bad?

good and bad are down to the individual. some will think X is good, others will think it's bad.

How about doing things that are a net benefit to people is good, doing things that are harmful is bad? It's worked out well enough for me.

[kaijyuu]

So, utilitarianism? Many deontologists would take issue with trying to quantify "net benefit." A virtue ethics supporter would complain about looking at consequences instead of intent.

[Eagle_eye]

Intent doesn't really make sense as a basis for ethics. If I do something that will result in someone's death, and I am aware of that, but I do it because I want some material gain, is that wrong, even though my intent is not for the person to die? Morality should be based on what you expect will happen, as opposed to your reasons for doing something.

As for quantifying benefit, you can absolutely do it in situations where it's lives being compared to one another, with more sentients being more valuable. Since in our society, money can unfortunately be equated into saved lives, wouldn't the value of a human's life simply be the monetary value of the items necessary to keep them alive and productive their entire remaining life(or expected life), plus the amount they will produce over their lifespan? If fifty million dollars will sustain 20 families for their entire lives, then it should be right to kill someone who doesn't produce anything for society for that amount of money.(Assuming that the murderer donates all the money to those families) Ultimately, more productive lives with a decent standard of living is better.