Comments on: The Skepticism of Believers http://www.nautis.com/2008/04/29/the-skepticism-of-believers/ Jung, Sheldrake, Campbell, Bergson & Me Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:08:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: Peter http://www.nautis.com/2008/04/29/the-skepticism-of-believers/#comment-12434 Peter Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:00:29 +0000 http://www.nautis.com/?p=1032#comment-12434 In this brief article, Rupert Sheldrake makes a good point about the abuse of skepticism for commercial or poltical self-interest. Happens all the time. But when he says that "Atheists take religious skepticism to its ultimate limits; but they are defending another faith, the faith in science" he commits a common mistake. Using "faith" as he does in two different contexts elevates one point of view (religion), while demeaning another (reason), in what amounts to a verbal shell game. Faith that the sun will rise tomorrow (based on experience of the natural world and reasoning about it's processes, either directly or by way of someone elses reasoning or experience) is not the same faith one employs with respect to believing that you will exist after death in a heavenly state (based on gut feelings, or myths which sprang from some-one else's gut feeling). Clearly two different meanings for the same word, faith. Science as a self-correcting testable process, is just a subset of reasoning applied to understand the natural world (all of existence). So we could just as well say that atheists put their “faith” in reason. But isn’t it odd that one would use reason, even imperfectly as Sheldrake does in that statement, to imply that non-reason or some alleged way of knowing that does not employ reason, is equally valid. Everyone who argues a point to convince someone of something attempts to use reason even when they argue for an irrational position (a paradox that is continuously overlooked). Sheldrake would be much more convincing of his implication that the two "faiths" are equivalent if he could lay out a sentence that has no logical structure and did not employ a reasoned argument yet managed to convince readers of whatever point he is trying to make. But I have faith he can't do that. In this brief article, Rupert Sheldrake makes a good point about the abuse of skepticism for commercial or poltical self-interest. Happens all the time. But when he says that “Atheists take religious skepticism to its ultimate limits; but they are defending another faith, the faith in science” he commits a common mistake.

Using “faith” as he does in two different contexts elevates one point of view (religion), while demeaning another (reason), in what amounts to a verbal shell game. Faith that the sun will rise tomorrow (based on experience of the natural world and reasoning about it’s processes, either directly or by way of someone elses reasoning or experience) is not the same faith one employs with respect to believing that you will exist after death in a heavenly state (based on gut feelings, or myths which sprang from some-one else’s gut feeling). Clearly two different meanings for the same word, faith.

Science as a self-correcting testable process, is just a subset of reasoning applied to understand the natural world (all of existence). So we could just as well say that atheists put their “faith” in reason. But isn’t it odd that one would use reason, even imperfectly as Sheldrake does in that statement, to imply that non-reason or some alleged way of knowing that does not employ reason, is equally valid. Everyone who argues a point to convince someone of something attempts to use reason even when they argue for an irrational position (a paradox that is continuously overlooked). Sheldrake would be much more convincing of his implication that the two “faiths” are equivalent if he could lay out a sentence that has no logical structure and did not employ a reasoned argument yet managed to convince readers of whatever point he is trying to make. But I have faith he can’t do that.

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