22 responses so far ↓

• 1 C. L. Hanson // Feb 19, 2007 at 6:00 am

  LOL!!!

  It’s a bit of an oversimplification, but I think that the diagram on the left is at least the reasoning strategy that the scientifically-minded aspire to be using.

• 2 John // Feb 19, 2007 at 8:02 am

  That’s a good point, chanson. Science at its worst has a few of those arrows and boxes removed. By the same token, religious searching at its best has more boxes and arrows added in. In particular, I respect the approach used by the believers who frequently comment on this blog. You all seem to be willing to closely examine even assumptions cherished by many in your traditions when you encounter strong critiques or evidence against them.

  Overall, however, the scientific method has institutionalized critical inquiry, whereas religion tends to discourage it.

• 3 Elaine Frei // Feb 19, 2007 at 8:31 am

  I think you are absolutely correct about the relative stances of science and (some) religion in connection to critical inquiry. However, I think it is a mistake to buy into the impression made by televangelists and widely reported by the media that all religion is frozen into that “don’t confuse me with the facts” mentality. I attended a Christian university for my upper division work and, while my major was not in the religious studies division (although I did concentrate my Intercultural Studies work on the anthropology and sociology of religion), I was required to take a few religion classes and I found that even in those courses critical inquiry was encourage and even required. Scared some of the younger students out of their very wits, but it was good for them in the long run.

  Of course there are the “Jesus Camp” types (I just watched that documentary over the weekend, and I sort of felt like I was watching a resurgence of the Hitler Youth) and other Bibilcal literalists and groups like the Mormons that actively discourage any sort of questioning of anything. So apparently, do some traditions in some non-Christian religons. But in my experience, this allergy to critical inquiry isn’t a universal attribute of religion.

• 4 Elaine Frei // Feb 19, 2007 at 8:33 am

  Oops. That was supposed to be “encouraged”, there at the end of the first paragraph.

  What can I say? It’s early.

• 5 Johnny // Feb 19, 2007 at 10:10 am

  On the science side-

  I agree with Chanson that this is what science aspires to. I think I am more skeptical than others here of how often it reaches it that goal.

  On the faith side-

  I am sure this is how religion works for some people. However, my critique of this model is not that it is oversimplistic, but that it is not normative. On the left we have a model that is normative and on the right one that isn’t.

  All the religious believers that I know (my dept. has an unusual number of theists for a philosophy dept.) have differing, but complex views about the formation of justified religious beliefs.

  The one thing I see over and over again in our cultural debates between science and religion is the straw man fallacy. Isn’t it odd that those who claim to be the models of rationality cannot engage in a sophisticated enough debate to refute the best reasoned arguments of the opposition?

• 6 Elise // Feb 19, 2007 at 10:30 am

  I think the faith one on the right forgets that the “idea” someone gets usually must serve some purpose, in order for someone to keep the idea going (especially in the face of contrary evidence). The idea may be comforting, may explain something science hasn’t yet, or may create a sense of community. While this doesn’t make keeping said idea going even if it’s wrong, it does remind us that faith is not always as simplistic as the model seems to suggest.

  That aside, thanks for the link - not only funny but also a good reminder at the subjectivity of faith! LOL.

• 7 Bored in Vernal // Feb 19, 2007 at 12:00 pm

  OK, I’m going to defend the “faith” model, so be nice to me! (Before I do, I’ll just say that my conversion to Mormonism has represented the “science” model–I was introduced to some new ideas, I experimented on them, some worked, some didn’t, etc.). But the faith model is probably more indicative of my belief in a Divine Being. I tend to ignore evidence that may conflict with my belief in God, because the originating “idea” is not just an idea or an hypothesis comparable to the “idea” a scientist gets. It’s a genuine, powerful, “other-generated” encounter that is so overwhelming that it’s influence can change the course of an entire life! And it can bring such joy, peace, goodness, to the soul that one is just not interested in considering other evidence. Not to mention that those who present such evidence are suspect because they haven’t experienced the reality of an encounter with God.

  So, while I can chuckle at the graphic, I still completely understand and side with the model on the right. _Even_ when it doesn’t have any other boxes added in.

• 8 amelia // Feb 19, 2007 at 6:56 pm

  frankly, the illustration of how faith works doesn’t merit a response. it’s not only simplistic, it’s offensive to those who allow faith to play a role in their lives.

  perhaps if both people of faith and people of science (false categories, since many people are both) would stop thinking in such totalizing ways, there would be less bigotry and prejudice in the world. i have to agree with johnny that our culture debates far too often involve each side engaging with straw man representations of the other side which results in a whole hell of a lot of self-congratulatory back-patting and dismissing of those (obviously) irrational/irreligious morons on the other side while doing nothing to foster communication, understanding, and community.

• 9 nee // Feb 19, 2007 at 8:20 pm

  My response, well, it is a slam on people of faith. It’s hardly that simplistic on either side. I’d add several more chicken feet to the faith model. Also, most people don’t just “get an idea” about faith that they feel they need to test. Religion is usually taught just as many things are which we don’t personally go out and test.

• 10 Bonny // Feb 19, 2007 at 9:23 pm

  Where I do think that the faith model is a little bit too simplistic, and would have been offended by it very much a few years ago, I think that it hits home with me at the moment because lately I have been struggling with the statement in faith that basically states “I just know, because I know.”

  When I think about the reasons for my belief I tend to think that I believe what I believe because I have felt really strongly that something was true in a kind of metaphysical/emotional kind of way. At this point in my ‘faith journey’ I have a much harder time with the stating that I just know because I have felt it. Now I am willing to question the things that have influenced my faith in the past, whether it was my circle of friends or my current family situation etc.

  There is a part of me that thinks that in ways faith is not something that is like the diagram because we do form our faith based on certain things that we take as evidence, even if they don’t seem as well laid out or empirical as science and sometimes the evidence we use is pretty laughable in the face of cold hard fact.

  One of my theology teachers would always explain to us that faith is formed on things and that everyone in the world has faith. He would say “If you didn’t have faith in something, you wouldn’t sit down in that chair because you wouldn’t BELIEVE that it would keep you from falling to the ground.” I always found that to be an interesting line of thought.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have gone on and on as I don’t know where my faith exists at the moment. Haha. Oh well. I guess this is just a little bit more to think about. = )

• 11 John // Feb 19, 2007 at 9:47 pm

  I’m glad that most of you found some humor in the diagram. Johnny’s right–this is created by someone on the “side” of science. Most people mix their truth-approaches.

  I agree with everyone who said that this is simplistic and that science and faith aren’t always in binary opposition, but I disagree that this does not reflect how many people approach their faith. I know too many people who refuse to accept even the possibility that reality can contradict their fundamental faith assumptions. I was there.

  I think that for those of you who find this offensive or denigrating, it says more about how you choose to approach your faith. There are many believers who would see only one problem with the diagram: they would replace “get an idea” with “receive a witness,” and they would be happy with the diagram. I don’t say this to denigrate their faith, but to acknowledge that there is a huge spectrum for how people approach faith, and that the diagram represents no small number of the faithful.

  BiV, I can understand your approach, and I’m glad that it works for you. My story is different–I suffered and struggled when the right-side was more representative of my approach. My problem was that I tried the experiments (think Alma 32) and my results kept coming up different from everyone else, and I was continually told I was the one in the wrong. My results had to match the predetermined one. Over time I moved from the right side of the diagram, which continually affirmed my wrongness, to the left side, which allowed me to consider that maybe the theory I was presented with (in this case, the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, the prophethood of Joseph Smith, and the divine foundation of the LDS church) needed to be modified, revolutionized, or rejected altogether. Moving to the left-side relieved me of considerable cognitive dissonance.

• 12 amelia // Feb 19, 2007 at 10:00 pm

  there are many people who approach faith in the way depicted on that diagram. there are just as many who approach science in the way faith is depicted on that diagram; or perhaps i should say that there are just as many who approach the absence of god or truths/realities premised upon anything other than science in the way faith is depicted on that diagram. they would argue there is no evidence to contradict their assertion of god’s non-existence or the non-existence of faith/spirit-based realities. and that’s fine; they can argue that. but they are, in essence, doing precisely what the kind of faith-driven person described in that diagram does.

• 13 John // Feb 19, 2007 at 11:48 pm

  Amy, I agree that there are a number of dogmatic atheists, but I will also say that most atheists I know are not dogmatic in their unbelief–they simply don’t see the evidence of the Judeo-Christian god.

  Furthermore, I hold that science is built on a foundation of critical inquiry; religion for the most part is not. Although it’s difficult to topple a long established scientific theory, the institution (as it is) welcomes all challengers. It is always open, as a whole, to the possibility that its most cherished perceptions are wrong.

  What I will attack remorselessly is the tendency of many believers (I have young earth creationists in mind at the moment) to deny the validity of all possible evidence because they contradict their initial assumption.

  Keep in mind that I’m not talking about how you experience faith–you are critical and rigorous in your faith.

• 14 Joe // Feb 20, 2007 at 6:56 am

  I didn’t really think too much on it. I just thought the thing was rather funny. “Haha! Lolz!”

• 15 Elaine Frei // Feb 20, 2007 at 8:56 am

  John, you said:

  “My problem was that I tried the experiments (think Alma 32) and my results kept coming up different from everyone else, and I was continually told I was the one in the wrong. My results had to match the predetermined one.”

  I had the same experience. I did that particular experiment for years and years, and I never had the “right” results either. For a long time I bought into what I kept hearing - that I wasn’t doing something right, because if I was I’d get that warm/fuzzy feeling and “know” the church was true. I finally realized that it wasn’t me at all, and that began my journey out of the church. I had been getting a result that whole time; it just wasn’t the one that everyone (including me, then) wanted me to get.

• 16 Grey // Feb 20, 2007 at 9:41 am

  Thank you for using my image, but would you mind providing a link to either the page it came from (http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2007-01-15%20–%20science%20vs%20faith.html) or the main site (http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/) instead of just linking to the image directly?

  Thank you,

  -Grey

• 17 John // Feb 20, 2007 at 9:58 am

  Apologies, Grey. I fixed the link and added explicit attribution. Thanks for the great visual commentary, and thanks for keeping me honest.

• 18 Johnny // Feb 20, 2007 at 10:22 am

  I don’t usually link to my blog, but I wrote a type of response to this here,

  http://thefiresermon.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/why-philosophical-thinking-matters/

  It doesn’t mention “faith” specifically, but in more general terms it is my approach to faith, politics, etc.

• 19 amelia // Feb 20, 2007 at 11:50 am

  john–

  i know you are not addressing me and my own faith here. and i appreciate where you are coming from. i, too, am responding from some personal experience–namely an emotionally abusive relationship with a man who most people would not consider dogmatic in his non-theism (i would call him an atheist based on our conversations; he would not; he’d probably go with agnostic). he would explain his knowledge about the non-existence of god (he would not call it belief; he argued he believed nothing that he could not know; a position i continue to find untenable) arose out of a lack of evidence of god’s existence, just as you describe the majority of (non-dogmatic) atheists. he would never have described himself as a dogmatic atheist. but ultimately his belief in the non-existence of god was every bit as unquestioned as a faithful believer’s existence in god.

  this was a thoughtful, considerate man. but he simply could not reconcile the coexistence of critical inquiry and faith in one human being, no matter how much he gave the idea lip service. it is this tendency to turn the opposite side into an all-or-nothing straw man that bothers me.

• 20 Miko // Feb 20, 2007 at 3:11 pm

  so, what if I said the left hand side coincides with my approach to faith…?

  I think that, on the right, “get an idea” can be substituted with “are given an idea”. It seems to me that those who are most dogmatic are not those who have come to their faith through trials and error, but from birth. The Truth we are fed as children can be very difficult to put to the test, in the manner of the scientific method.

  To those who got the wrong results in science class: I did, too, but since we were all doing the same experiment, it turned into a “what variables are unaccounted for” lesson, which was fun. Plus, my chemistry teacher (which, after grade school was the only place I did experiments as such, biology was more socratic) allowed me to burn everything I ever found in his lab, which endeared him to me forever (I’ll never forget burning iodine crystals: fun & educational!). Ah, Dear Mr. Campbell.

• 21 Jonathan // Feb 21, 2007 at 9:04 am

  I love it!
  Actually, I was thinking of making the same diagram a month or so ago to describe how a Christian should find new truth.

  I guess I approach my faith scientifically. That diagram is exactly how I come to believe new truth (either 3-dimensionally or spiritually). The difference is what tools I use for observation. Where is the litmus test or microscope to better and more clearly observe the spiritual? Seeing things in the spiritual life seems to me similar to our current understanding of sub-atomic particles: a little shaky and uncertain. Our tools for observing the latter or the former are both lacking. It appears to me that the spiritual life and its observation will always be this way, and so will the observation of ever-smaller sub-sub-sub atomic particles

• 22 AJ // Mar 30, 2007 at 7:33 am

  I found the diagrams humorous, but I think they are both very misleading and could be dangerous to those who don’t know any better than to base their conceptions of people on more than this.

  I find science to often be much more about faith than many are willing to admit. And it’s because my Christian faith does not fit into the “faith” diagram that I can say that. I study a lot. I question a lot. In studying the science, I’ve found their faith apparent also.

  To use an extreme example, look at the seventy scientific societies, institutions and other professional groups that are trying to block ANY education that would point out problems in the evolution theory. Does this sound like the model in the left diagram?

  Sure, there are those on both sides who fall into both models. But the very use of the straw-men shows that the actual author of the diagrams doen’t fall into the science model.

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