"Faith: The Greatest Impostor" - Gil Shapiro

our next speaker is actually our spokesperson for freethought Arizona he's sort of a silver tongue devil who is is very active in writing guest opinions he's published 35 of them and many of them he's received a lot of comments back both a very threatening in some cases and some right on so he's made an impact and I think we have I think received some other people to come to freethought Arizona due to his intelligent guest opinions he's primarily writing about the intersection of the politics and religion and how those two are creating a problem for us today especially here in Arizona and and throughout the United States for that matter he is the secular believes that we should be actually out there in front of people and letting people know that there is a secular community out here who needs to be represented it needs to be heard from and he is the person that's been doing a lot of that and I'm sure he's wanting us to do more as well and and we should because I think we need to let people know just like Diane was saying earlier we need to be out there in front and to let people know we're we don't eat babies and we do other good things in the community as a matter of fact one of the things I do want to do more of is outreach programs and we have someone who's going to start ramrodding that program in our audience here today it's Patti Patti you want to stand up and if anybody wants to volunteer she's the one you want to see we want to do things like maybe work at the food bank do other things I'm sure you would have creative ideas out there we'd like to get us out in the community so people realize that we are we are people who are interested in furthering people's good rights and freedoms to our speaker today we'll be you know Gil and he's he's basically has a Bachelor of Science Bachelor of BA and an MA he's a graduate from the California College of Podiatric medicine and finished podiatric surgery residency in Chicago he's a board-certified here in town for 30 years there's been no lawsuits or anything pending against him you can look it up so he's basically on our board and very active in our board he's also on the secular Coalition for Arizona board and he has actually I used this each time but he basically has saved more Souls than the Pope and so so his talk today is going to be faith the greatest impostor let's give it up for dr. Gil Shapiro you actually looked up that I don't have any lawsuits against I don't but it's 32 years now I've dodged many bullets now welcome between Richards lecture before and my presentation now this is like being in lecture hall at the U of A I mean you have your first class and now the second class but this presentation this morning I'm doing it without the PowerPoint it's one of those things that I think we'll go over a little bit better sometimes when my wife gets upset with me when I don't listen to her she says Gil right here so I'm telling you I'm gonna go for about 45 minutes or so give or take a little bit and then hopefully we'll be able to have a nice little Q&A after my presentation is a very I mean it's a it's really a nice segue between what Richard was talking about earlier and what I have to talk about you'll see the connection for many my talk will confirm what you have always felt or suspected about faith and therefore it will be reassuring for others it will challenge current beliefs and we'll certainly be provocative and that's what it's intended to be and by necessity it's going to be a bit of an academic type lecture because it's important stuff that has to be done in a certain way I've got to connect the dots and I'm going to be using my notes here so that I don't skip by some things because if I don't do it in a certain way it's not going to make as much sense as it should make this talk is also not meant to be all-inclusive on the subject there's a lot of different areas that can be discussed that aside lights of this but I think you're gonna get a good feel for what I'm trying to get across one of the unfortunate things is right about now at 10:40 on a Sunday the people who should really be listening to Richard and me I'm not here they are exactly in the wrong venue you don't have to take any notes of it at my email address which I will put right over here when I'm done I can send you a copy of the text that I'm working from just email me and I'll get it to you and you put on the web okay all right and big thank you to Jason open chine who has given me some good information that isn't gonna enhance this presentation I do thank you very much also if the rooms too hot too cold let me know if you can't hear me if there's feedback let me know the question well the title of the presentation is faith the greatest impostor that weren't impostor I kind of hijacked from Sam Harris in his book the end of faith he's describing his animosity towards faith and he described it as an imposter and I that resonated with me and the more that I delved into the subject matter in preparation for this talk I said it's not only an imposter it is the greatest impostor and I'm trying to I'll try to make that case but the question that is most basic to most human beings is what is it all about who said the hokey-pokey it's not oh it's not the hokey-pokey as Richard was pointing out these are profound questions why do why does the universe exist why do I exist have you ever thought of the odds of your existing imagine that your parents first of all had a meet and the odds against them meeting is quite large and then somewhere during their marriage hopefully on a romantic or alcohol-fueled evening a little nookie Tech took place and one of your father's sperm emits further - your mother's a and you started to come into existence if that particular sperm had not done that and another one did you wouldn't be you you know we'd be brother or sister and if you were to hold hands with your father and your mother or they held hands with that father going back almost an infinite regress - one could argue the beginning of time and now work - the present time everything had to work out in an extremely specific way for you to be here right now these are questions I know at 3:00 in the morning can stop me in my tracks they've also caused people to hit the horn at Speedway and Country Club when I'm thinking about this and I say let's get going you know other questions is the meaning and purpose in life does my life matter is everything material is it just matter and energy do we have a non-material essence a soul is spirituality a real thing or is it just heightened human awareness is there a supernatural realm and how would we find out about that how would we communicate with a supernatural realm how would you do that as Richard was pointing out what is consciousness and ultimately why is there something rather than nothing and why is this something exactly the way it is and not something else I've always wondered if there were no observers like us in the universe what would be the point of the universe imagine a universe with zero observers of it just existence of rocks stars you know what happens after we die is there an afterlife a heaven or hell if non-existence and Richard was pointed said if non-existence was not an issue prior to our birth why is it such a big deal now that we've existed so psychologists tell us it's extremely difficult to conceive of your own non-existence it's another thing to keep you up and you know those are just general questions then they're questions that are specifically related to divinity is there a God if so is my god the right one how would I know what happens if I'm wrong why does God seemed to be so indifferent and perilous or silent when he's needed most Christopher Hitchens talks about the fact that human beings have been around and they're somewhat present form for about a hundred years and during that time man has suffered terribly think of childbirth because the maternal deaths think of infection think of people not living past their 20s somewhere 2,000 years ago God said I've had enough I'm coming back coming down and pick on Christianity now it's such low-hanging fruit for me but you know Jesus came 2,000 years ago to save the world he didn't come to the entire world who came to this small little area the Middle East but supposedly to save the world and people who have faith-based thinkers think well now the world should have been say it well did it 13:48 at 1350 we had the bubonic plague in Europe not that about half of Europe that's forwarding to the Spanish flu of 1918 20 to 50 million people died many in the prime of their life it was a flu that attacked people in their 20s 500 million were infected 27 percent of the world's population was affected by the Spanish flu and he had before that I mean you talk about all the religious wars in Europe and our civil war was six hundred thousand people died in World War one with 37 million people died in World War 2 and the Holocaust 70 million on and on and on and on and this is during a time where this God that came to earth was supposed to help us out so you can see where people start thinking about this and saying what what is going on here we mourn terribly the shooting in Connecticut 20 beautiful kids educators slaughter terrible but we also have to understand that 25 to 30 thousand children die every day from treatable illness 25 to 30 thousand die every day so when we're considering the space-based concept of a god and loving God especially God who loves children we have to put that into the mix you know we start to wonder why was anesthesia and surgery only it's only a hundred years old I mean if you had appendicitis 150 years ago you died if you broke your femur 150 years ago how would it be treated how would any infection be treated antibiotics are just here since 1945 so these are the questions that we we have with us on a daily basis and we say you know wouldn't there be it'd be a nice thing if we had a certain mechanism to find the answers out to these questions I'm not talking the questions about how to build a house and how to cook a meal I'm talking about questions that are always considered to be unknowable incomprehensible the meaning and purpose questions and all that it really would be nice to have a mechanism a way an avenue a pathway to find out the answers to these profound questions that we all deal with at some level and at some time it leads to a bigger issue and that is that famous line of how do we know what we know and how do we know what we don't know fair enough well the subject of this lecture is that faith for many people probably the majority of the people on this planet is the answer if you have faith you will get the answers not to how to build a bridge or how to code but to these unknowable questions these incomprehensible questions that faith says no we can know them by this method faith based thinkers claim with absolute certainty that they have knowledge of the unknowable and comprehension of the incomprehensible faith has a specific sphere of influence which is its domain but the purpose of this presentation is to tell you that people who think like that a delusional and to throw out a definition here we're going to be talking about definition so we know what we're talking about it's important to know the difference between delusional and denial delusional is when you believe things that are not true denial is when you don't believe things that are true right delusion is believing what is not true denial is believing is not believing what is true so I'm saying that faith-based thinkers are delusional because they're believing what is not true and I hope to make the case one of the not an aphorism but one of the things that we want to understand here is it's kind of a profound grasp of the obvious but as we will go on we'll know that only the knowable can be known and only the comprehensible can be comprehended one of the questions that comes up is are things that are considered unknowable really unknowable oh we've just not know them yet my point is that faith assumes a certain validity and a certain reliability in giving us the answers that we need and again with definitions validity is if a faith claim provides the knowledge that it claims it's going to give you and reliability is if that faith claim is reproducible so when faith says that I am a valid and reliable way of giving you information it would get our attention for example if all Catholics for example absent all other explanations never got sick never had accidents lived a truly charmed life that would get our attention but no one faith group as we observe does this occur we can say the Seventh day Adventists live very long lives they're very happy people but it's just habits that they have so I'm going to try to provide strong evidence that faith is not what it claims to be and because faith fools and deceives and doesn't deliver what it promises I think the title of the greatest impostor will be sound so if our society were to bestow an award for the most misunderstood misinterpreted and misaligned word I think faith would be in contention for a gold medal the word implies a virtuous aura doesn't it he's a man of deep faith know how they talk about politicians he's a man of faith he's a man of deep faith to me that's yellow flag red flag this is a faith-based institution at its core faith based thinking and I'm going to kind of conflate the words faith-based faith-based thinkers believers theists I might use them together it implies that this particular person has a unique pathway other than through logic reason and rational processes a pathway that requires no further investigation so when a faith-based thinker says I know this because of Revelation conversation stops you can't question that and it's ironic that a person of deep faiths willingness to deny reality has become such a measure of his virtue in our society how does delusion and self-deception of believing the impossible or in the case of the clergy deceiving others become a good thing how did that happen consider how we refer to people in the world people out there we talk about mr. mrs. doctor professor sometimes your honor but think about how we refer to people who are professionals in the business of faith we have a priest who we call Reverend we have a bishop who we call your excellency we have an archbishop we call your grace we call a Cardinal your eminence and we call the Pope your holiness these titles imply some kind of glorious human attainment that that we mortal men will never have so I guess my goal is to make the case that faith should be discredited and an outmoded concept that has no place in the 21st century that's a big task trust me and but I don't want to be like a party pooper I don't want to be a wet blanket and say nope people shouldn't have hope we shouldn't have desire we shouldn't be wishful thinkers at times my talk about faith is in a very confined manner is it an appropriate Avenue for knowledge I want to touch on briefly some ways that faith is used in our common everyday experience that you might not realize these decisions we make have to do with whether the faith-based thinkers so the first one is imagine if two weeks ago a friend or relative said I'm coming into Tucson Sunday night the 20th I'll be here at six o'clock pick me up at the airport by a show of hands how many of you would get me a car and get to the airport at six o'clock and pick them up without any further analysis of the issue okay if if you said you would just get in your car you are a person of faith because person to Vista flight their plans could change it could be mechanical problems interplay they for a number of reasons could not new to get there and they not show up when I have to pick somebody up at the airport they say they're coming at six o'clock I got online flight status I want to see the flights are there I want to make sure there was enough time if there's a connecting flight of the person you know made the connection and then because of trust trust in the airline and trust that this into the I have this right I go to the airport to pick the person up so this is an example of where in our daily lives we deal with faith as opposed to trust there's another way that we deal with faith which is kind of cultural and that is a lotta room about six years ago I wrote against opinion because our Attorney General at the time Brentwood was lamenting in the paper about how all the wrong people are playing the lottery and I read it I said yeah right but you got to show these people what the odds are against winning it can't just say it's 50 million to one people don't know there's a certain time when that certain numbers it just doesn't make sense anyway so I wrote this guest opinion that that's a good play and here's the essence of it and I'll bring it to the current lottery this past lottery was the Powerball and the grand prize was six hundred and fifty million dollars I'm always impressed with people who don't play it when it's 20 million but 650 million that's what I make a change in my life so what were the odds against winning the Powerball lottery it's 175 million to one you take the numbers up to 50 60 and then you I think it's called factorial 50 something like that okay so it's 50 times 49 times 48 to me those are the odds of get 2175 million to one people are so faith derivative that they say you know what this is my time I did a win some people play $2 $5 now it's 2,000 tickets some people take out $100 some people a thousand dollars so I'm gonna show you one hundred and seventy-five million to one is this is a very rational reasoned way of showing it and I want you to see how it conflicts with a faith-based mindset of it's my time I'm gonna be the winner just having blockers Arizona State 50,000 seats if someone flipped a winning ticket under one of those seats and you walked into Arizona State and all around and the person said give me $2 got one shot pick the seat how many of you would do that whether it's 10 million a hundred million a billion one hundred seventy-five million to one five thirty five hundred stadiums so when you pick it a $2.00 for this Powerball lottery you would have to pick the right stadium at 3,500 and if you did on the same two bucks pick the right seed in that state the odds are daunting what person the right line would do that they face people do this because they're not waiting to strike they don't have that saying so faith based thinking occurs things like a lot of faith based thinking occurrence how we see ourselves in the universe faith based thinking says we are a top-down creation God created us so we're about 10,000 years ago reasonable people read people of recently for bottom-up creation evolution we also have a way of of thinking we get that last one here about faith based thinking as it affects human rights public policy the issue of gay rights comes up faith mini-snickers align public policy and voting with what their faiths tells them so for example their faith tells them that homosexuality is a choice it's a bad choice it's not something that is natural they say God doesn't like it that way and they deny people their right research so it's just the opposite research says you know what it's starting to become clear that being gay is genetic there's some environmental factors for sure and some very small instances this choice but overall it's your nature and and here's how faith based thinking impacts on a whole group of people about three to seven percent of the population just happens to be gay and people who stand by faith-based thinking are actually influencing public policy so this is something that really does have some important we're going to need to define some terms because only unless we have some real clarity as to what we're talking about are we going to know where we're going here so the most important thing I can define right now is reason and faith and reason reason is that human faculty that identifies and integrates logically coherently the information that is presented to us I'll say again reason is that human faculty that identifies and integrates logically and coherently the information that's presented to us I don't think anything could be a final example of reason than the scientific method Richard was alluding to it before you have an observation you have a hypothesis as to why that observation occurred and then you go through a testing process what does that testing process involve it involves making predictions about well did my hypothesis is right then this omission happened it also has to do with reproducibility am I getting the same results here in the United States getting in China in India and South America has this hypothesis been falsified meaning scientists love nothing more than to take someone else's idea and try to show them that he's wrong it's a it's a cottage industry among science so observation hypothesis testing prediction and reproducibility falsifiability and if you can't falsify it and you can reproduce it and you can make predictions that whole then come up with a conclusion but even that conclusion is is tentative its provisional something new come down the pike but we go that's the scientific method that's a good example of reason now faith this is the crux faith can be described different ways but for our purposes as a juxtaposition against reason faith is an unquestioning belief of ideas in the absence of evidence or despite evidence to the contrary so for example religious dogma revelation miracles prayer faith is emotional get into a discussion with someone about faith you'll find that they have a very emotional attachment to their beliefs people get worked up about it think of that bumper sticker God said it I believe it that settles it but you out there as critical thinkers you are committed to reason because you're committed to rationality and I'm just going to read a little part here because this is important it means that the critical thinker is committed to the never-ending process of correcting errors in knowledge based solely on the criteria of reality reason people you always finding little errors and things you're trying to correct them adds to our knowledge the critical thinker holds the conviction that man's mind is fully calm to know the facts of reality no aspect is closed to rational scrutiny if you have something that's unknowable its unknowable if it's incomprehensible its incomprehensible the critical thinker does not accept any doctrine or anything on faith because faith is not critical thinking again it is neither a valid or reliable way of knowing so if reason is asserted to be the only pathway to knowledge then faith is just excluded from consideration as a pathway to knowledge man should have no use of faith this is a bold claim because if God believed for example is faith based then God believe cannot be accepted as rational but the big but the believer or the faith based thinker he contends that faith transcends reason it does have a sphere of influence to have access to what we consider the unknowable and the incomprehensible it has the key to unlock that that door Faith's the believer says provides answers to the ultimate questions knowledge of the unknowable and comprehension of the incomprehensible it's quite a claim that faith based thinkers have but remember faith based thinkers are not offering knowledge that builds bridges and makes planes fly there they have a very specific sphere of influence so I'm gonna discredit that claim right now but we got to make some definitions here what's a belief give you a couple of seconds think of what is a belief it's a mental acceptance of something as true even though absolute certainty may be absent an acceptance of something that's true even though absolute certainty is absent in common usage you know I might say well I I believe the wild cats going to be tops in their division this year I believe we all can work together these are honest beliefs but in religious jargon listen to this belief and it's a belief that most they face thinkers have I believe my Bible is the inerrant meaning without error infallible it can't be wrong and literal actual Word of God that's quite a belief it's always interesting when they say I believe this as opposed to saying I know this in that sense they're a little honest there okay what's a fact what is a fact a fact interestingly it's something that has really occurred or something that is really the case like today is Sunday it's really the case today is Sunday here in Tucson how do I know that well I can verify it or I can say to you try to falsify it try your best to prove to me everybody here that today is not Sunday that's a fact which leads us to a definition of the word knowledge what is knowledge well putting those things together knowledge is the ability to use facts to accurately identify reality knowledge is the ability to use those facts to accurately identify reality this means an explanation which so far has survived our best criticisms so when you have knowledge it's been criticized it's been something that's been criticized left and right it's withstood those criticisms there are no errors in it it rises to the level of knowledge one of the important points in this presentation is that to know something is much more valuable than to just believe something don't get so hung up when people say I believe no it's I know much better and the word science is going to be thrown around a lot science has two definitions one is it's a body of knowledge the second definition of science is it is a process to get that knowledge so it's a body of knowledge and in the process the scientific method the last one we're going to define right now brings it all together and that is reality think for a second how you would define reality reality is the state of things as they actually exist rather than as they may appear or might be imagined in a wider definition in reality includes everything that is and has been whether or not it is directly or intimately observable think along the lines of subatomic particles neutrinos thing alone think along the lines of massive things black holes reality is all so even if you can't comprehend it like quantum mechanics very counterintuitive things popping in and out of existence things where you can measure them but if you do measure them they don't exist in that spot anymore very counterintuitive a still more broad definition includes everything that has existed exists or will exist okay it's my opinion a lot of other people's opinions who think like I and you do that faith based thinkers have to get their heads around this the presence of an idea or belief and once once consciousness does not constitute knowledge so as Richard was pointing out in his presentation just because you have this belief in whatever religion that doesn't mean that that has risen to the level of knowledge it's just a belief knowledge requires surviving our best criticisms we can certainly have false beliefs the earth is flat astrology is credible these people have these beliefs so it's much better to say I believe it's a I it's not as good to say I believe it's a fact as opposed to saying I know its effect and if man is to acquire knowledge this correct identification of reality he's got to have a method to do it this is what I talked about before that corresponds to reality that to distinguish beliefs that correspond to reality and from those which do not so how do we do this well we take the belief and we say if that belief is justified then it rises to the level of knowledge a little bit what justified means and this is all for you to when you deal with friends who and family who you know you get to these religious arguments or arguments about faith these are things that you can pull out right now and use there are three minimum requirements that all must be fulfilled before a belief can claim the status of knowledge and I'm going to use evolution and creationism a little bit for comparison purposes number one a belief must be based on rational evidence it must explain the available evidence or facts better than the competing explanations because we have a lot of explanations for things you want something that is the best explanation watch what happens with creationism God said he did it therefore he did it it's as simple as that for faith based thinkers but remember if a person is making a positive claim they have to be able to provide the evidence for it evolution we have carbon dating ready radiometric dating we have the fossil record we have everything we need if you get into an argument with a creationist here's an approach that you might want to use ask them if God in the Bible we're not employed what would be your criticism it'll stop them in their tracks a belief must be internally consistent not self contradictory a very famous Russian biologist once said without evolution nothing in biology makes sense and if you pursue that you'll see that he's right in creationism talk about internally consistent we can go back to Genesis the to Genesis stories of how the world came into being there's a big problem in the order of how things came into being you can't have this before you have that that kind of thing Noah's are really polar bears kangaroos how did they get to the Middle East there's no internal consistency starting right in the beginning of the Bible and it just gets worse the last thing about a justified belief the first is rational evidence second internally consistent the third is that the belief cannot contradict previously validated knowledge meaning knowledge is a kind of a building block you you build on it you've built on it you build on it you can't have something up here that all of a sudden goes against what has been established and evolution is consistent with all past scientific discoveries creationism obviously is not and they don't have any good explanations for those inconsistencies creationists will say I see the same facts as you do but I have a different interpretation and they just a very smug about that and you should look at that and say oh no you don't you don't have that ability to just willy-nilly have some interpretations I'm gonna get into that a little bit later so and this is very important because what I think you're getting the drift of is that unless a belief is very strange that it's not worth being in the case of reaching the level of knowledge but not every dot not every eye has to be dotted not every team has to be crossed for beliefs to have some import so for example you can believe something as knowledge provisionally based on all the current information we have so for example when there was a tsunami off the coast of Alaska about a month ago there was an earthquake off the coast of Alaska in Hawaii they prepared for tsunami because that information that they got from that earthquake led them to believe in Hawaii that they very well could be an earth to be a tsunami so they cleared the beaches well it never happened but when those people in Hawaii wrong to believe that they could have been in trouble no no they were taking information that they had and using it properly so how are faith and reason different huh Faith's claim to fame is that man needs knowledge of ultimate truth it needs to know how to get access to the unknowable and the incomprehensible reason cannot fill this only faith can accomplish this but the believer is now obligated to demonstrate that faith is capable of being a tool to acquire knowledge and he can't he can't because faith based beliefs have no mechanism as I said before to separate justified from unjustified beliefs if you're going to defend reason as the only way of knowing something that's your best argument against faith you don't have to get into an argument about the pitfalls of faith all you have to say is for what we can no reason provides us with the only tool in the toolbox we need so when you're talking to a person of faith and they get you into a little bit of a discussion on this you say to them unless your faith can show it can separate fact from fiction and correct errors in your belief so as to form justified beliefs in the same way reason does your faith cannot be considered a valid and reliable pathway to knowledge additionally because faith based people claim to have this key to the unknowable and the incomprehensible you have to say to them how do you have access to that what is the way that you can unlock the door to the unknowable and incomprehensible meaning and purpose in life why we here and all that that will stop them in their tracks so let's review a little bit about the pitfalls of why faith doesn't work it's not based on based on rational evidence if it were it would be called reason or science faith has no way to self check itself it has no way to police itself ask a faith-based person what's the mechanism in your belief system that would make you understand that your beliefs are wrong I bet someone that it he was giving a presentation on stage on creationism literally stopped him in his tracks Richard I think you were there with me that night as Richard pointed out also in his presentation the scientific method we talked about goes from observation hypothesis testing to conclusion the faith based method is conclusion and then observation there is no as Richard pointed out hypothesis and testing because it's not necessary the conclusion is God did it the observation is nature the universe this is an interesting thing this group that we had gone to over on Cole Pro do is doing a presentation on creationism and the group was called the Arizona Origin Science Association it's a it's a fundamentalist Christian group and to son whose presentations hi and some other people here have attended they are a science organization the purpose of what I'm about to tell you is to show you how misinterpreting these people are of what science is this I'm going to read to you verbatim their statement of beliefs this is their like what is to the United States the Constitution this is their Constitution as a scientific organization one the universe and everything in it was created by God rather than by spontaneous generation and development from one kind to another it sounds like a conclusion to number two all creation was accomplished in six consecutive literal days not over millions of years and the earth is relatively young thousands not billions of years this is a scientific organization there was a divine design of purpose in nature as opposed to an unorganized random and chance development and before a worldwide historical flood caused by God occurred at the time of Noah it was not just a local flood number five the Bible is the inspired revealed Word of God to man and is accurate in all areas six Jesus Christ is God and is the only substitute and Savior through whom man is redeemed from sin imagine a group that considers itself a scientifically based group this is what I meant that either your faith-based or your reason based there is no connection between the two the thing that gets me is the willful ignorance here we have the University of Arizona very acclaimed Department of geosciences why don't these people take their presuppositions these beliefs make an appointment with the Department of geosciences and sit down across a table and say this is what we believe show me where we're wrong this is called willful ignorance willful regnant willful ignorance is a very important term because it means the answers are out there they just don't want to know the answers would be very unpleasant to them another reason that faith doesn't work what people trot out when they talk about faith is what's called a self proclaimed Authority I'll give you a little synopsis of what that means you're having a discussion with a faith-based thinker he says I have faith the Bible is correct because it's God's Word you say how do you know it's God's Word he says because God says so you say where does he say that he says in the Bible you know I'm not making this up what what's the name of that fallacy by the way fallacy of circular reasoning right a faith-based belief system leaves no avenue for questioning or doubt faith beliefs are fixed and non-negotiable faith based thinkers have an emotional attachment to certainty I think it's a lazy and irresponsible way of thinking you know the more I delve into this the more I'm getting angry and as you should to because it is so preposterous that faith based thinking has risen to such a level of reverence in this country and in politics Olivia you must go crazy up there that it guides public policy when I'm pointing out point by point why it should have no value ask a faith-based person have you ever considered that your faith claim may be wrong the answer is always no the honesty and science if you ask a scientist have you ever thought that your scientific conclusion may be wrong of course I have I'm just waiting for someone to show me you know for me it's not so much the object of the faith-based commitment such as the religion that's unacceptable what is offensive to me and should be to you is the degree of the commitment to the beliefs that are so unjustifiable and so demonstrably false I mean people dig in their heels on stuff that is is so provably false you know my mother I wish I have these arguments with her all the time I mean it was getting tedious with her but she was a very religious person and sometimes when we'd get to a point where I had it was checkmate but it was like checkmate she looked at me and said yo sometimes things just don't have to make sense I still think in those little moments that my name Gil was short for guilt she knew where she was going with this kid faith-based thinkers to them their faith is irrevocable you know once you're in it it's like you can't get out of it because of faith that's tentatively held is not really a faith at all so when someone is a faith-based thinker they they drank the kool-aid they dived into the swimming pool they have fully committed themselves it's so nice to be a person of reason or science because we just go along like where the evidence is leading me the evidence leads me in another direction hey I'll go there you're all just doing fine the other thing you know with faith-based thinking is their assertion to just flat-out wrong the earth is not ten thousand years old with ia they're also wrong that they they say there is a supernatural realm remember faith based thinking involves a supernatural there's an assumption that there's a supernatural realm there's never been any investigation that has shown that there is a supernatural realm super natural that means everything that's out there you know like Sagan said the universe is everything that is what will be they're saying there's something else that we haven't even discovered and I am devoting my life to principles that emanate from this supernatural realm well you know back in biblical times miracles were flying off the shelves well of a sudden we get to modern time so we can record things we can watch things that hasn't been a recording of a verification of the miracle ever ever think think of all the times where a miracle could have happened you know when Sully Sullenberger lost his engines over the Bronx and was coming down into the Hudson wouldn't it have been a wonderful time back to the didn't do that think of all the times where you know you know Santa - a parent is going to back over her child in her SUV and it's it wouldn't that be a wonderful time for a miracle - there are millions of events every day where bad things happen to good really when a miracle would be expected there has never been one why doesn't that get their attention the other thing is that you know for example faith-based thinkers say well you know they get to the moral question how can you have morality without a faith and Christopher Hitchens had a great comeback to that he said to a faith to the faithful he said okay I'll take you on he said tell me what moral statements or actions can be done or said by a believer that can't be done by a non-believer and he died never having received a coherent answer to that faith-based people have a God that says he loves his creation both men and man and animal we talk about the man before have you ever seen a wildebeest taken down by a private line it's not a pretty sight a pack or a pride of lions will come up on it this sentient creature that has feelings and we'll leave the Grand Rapids necklace leg and pull it down and while the animal is still alive its limbs of being torn from its body I don't mean to get gross but you would think that at least animals that don't have original sin should be spared from that of cruelty God can arrange it that way he didn't matter of fact Christians have to say well God did create the food chain didn't he and North create food chain how to give lions big fangs and claws to do what to inflict cruelty on animals down the food chain he gave snake's venom to kill and sometimes the most unpleasant way it's creatures God couldn't make all creatures vegetarians you know there are some common-sense things when you look at it on the world the way it is and you say ok I'll accept your hypothesis so to speak but then explain to me this these are the kind of things that you can discuss so what I'd like to do is kind of open it up to some questions and comments there's more that I can say but we're kind of running out of time and I think I've made my my point here so okay let's give Gill a big hand and then in the face of questions more morris couple statements you've talked about killing an animal what's the difference between killing an animal and killing a plan you got to eat either way another and you know the animal rights people don't want you to kill something anyway which wasn't true many centuries ago nobody cared about the animal whatsoever and on your other some of the other statements about well i have noticed the christians say a surgeon's hands are guided by God or it would not be a successful operation and where you mention the the flood the flood occurred on a flat earth not a round one I don't know where to start it floods easier that way hello okay yeah I really enjoyed your talk today I think it's one of the better ones in a while but here comes the bus but I'm one of the guys that raised his hand okay I think I've gone to airports maybe 30 40 times to pick up people and they always showed up so that's evidence that that it is not faith-based that it is that so what 40 times my god I hear those phone believers religious believers and people that call themselves agnostic Gnostics and are trying to tell me that I shouldn't call myself an atheist and that is that it takes as much faith to be an atheist as it does to be a believer and the first thought that comes to my mind is to suggest that they go have sex with themselves but is it true we've also we all start out as atheists and it's during our childhood where we are where religion is indoctrinated into us one of the interesting things is imagine if someone like Billy Graham was taken in childhood and brought to Ira Iran he probably would have been an Ayatollah given his propensity for religion it's very subjective but it is you know you can attack this into what if one is a theist or atheist because they've never been convinced based on the evidence that religious people give them that they should adopt a certain religion atheist oftentimes it's not that we have faith in science because sometimes people can play science as another type of religion like sciencism but it's often that we have trust and it's the difference between trust and faith like I showed it trust is something where we believe in something and it's always been that way we trust the laws of physics we trust the scientific method we trust the power of reason that's why I'm an atheist so I'm not really with that particular way of thinking hi Hilda enjoyed your talk besides religion and faith being used as mechanisms of social and political control which seems you know self-evident if you look at our own state legislature for example it it also I think religion and faith also for many people act as a primary psychological buffer against the inevitability of our own mortality so my question will diverge is a little bit into that realm as a moral imperative should we not as atheists be in the forefront of an immortal aesthetics to increase scientific research for the actual extension of the human lifespan thinkers such as Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil I mean there are of course a lot of social and political you know ramifications to to all of that but since we as atheist atheists know that when we're gone were gone would it not be logical for us to want to extend the natural lifespan I mean if not indefinitely even another 10 20 50 years a healthy lifespan thanks for a good talk but him must have been dozens of times when you use the phrase faith-based thinkers it's an oxymoron you might want to say faith faith-based feelers or following Richards thoughts faith-based encounters or something of that nature but they're not faith-based thinkers thank you sir oh you mentioned miracles most of my family is religious and most of my girlfriend's family is religious too and Christians will tell you right away that there are miracles every day any time somebody falls out of a building and survives or their house burns down and no one died it will call this a miracle and they will testify to it in church so how would you address this a miracle to make any sense is a supernatural event one that defies natural law what you're describing our events that would be under the category but somewhat falls out of our house and that's not killed and all that this event is remarkable it's awesome it's quite unusual stunning it's all of these work but it's not a miracle you would have this to explain how that person's surviving defied natural law you see we're getting we tend to depreciate a lot of vocabulary these days I have fun talking about when I'm gone to a drive-thru and I'm getting a hamburger something like that down there exact change and she looks at me awesome so I think when I met his dad it's a remarkable of other question right here it seems to me that some of the arguments for and against faith based thinking is in part a problem with language because you used faith in certain categories that work that for the common person doesn't have two definitions the faith that you're at the airplanes going to arrive well people are people have faith that that plane is going to arrive because there's some empirical evidence of the plane continually arriving normally on time okay it's trust but you used it as faith and then there is faith that's based upon nothing and hang a hat on like I trust that they'll be there really how would you possibly have any trust that the person's going to be there you don't know the mechanics of the plane over the weather well you are you accepting faith however if you have gone to the airport numerous times and the airplane has arrived generally on time and and the people have been there then you have some basis on that faith okay and in terms of the terms of the trust Trust is somewhat based on faith if I take this clip and I do that I have trust that when I let go it's going to fall I don't have faith because I have trust because every time I've done it everyone else has done it on this planet do we have a tendency to think in terms of immortality and redemption and is that the propensity that humans have as a way of surviving and passing on our rules and can we equate the Christian or whomever tendency to do that toward a supernatural world and should we equate the propensity for legacy which is a sense of immortality because you're contributing to the human condition as a theist I mean should we tend rather than just declare our atheism as being our statement the end or should we go toward a cause and try to get redeeming value and immortality by affecting the human condition for the future you know we as a penis of nonbelievers Diagnostics we go where the evidence tells us a lot of times reality tells us things we don't want to hear so for example when the question comes up what happens after we die the best that we can say is we don't know probably the right answer is you just don't exist anymore this is very unpalatable to most people because we want to feel that as Richard pointed out our soul our non-material itself somehow transcends our physical body and winds up somewhere somewhere so as non-believers I'm not sure how we would approach that well in relation to the the question of you know faith versus trust one one way to look at that is you have trust in things that you do not have a criticism of whereas if you have faith you have a you know a criticism of something that somebody's saying but you believe it anyway you believe it in the face of that criticism that's that's faith so when you talk about well what happens after you die if you know you say well you go to this magical realm and you sit around on clouds and play harps all day and I mean we have endless criticisms of that endless reasons why that is not the case there's no evidence for that to be the case and then you you say well okay if if I die do I just cease to exist what's the criticism of that right there's no we have no criticism of that particular hypothesis now maybe there's something else we haven't thought of yet but you know until we think of it we got to go with the thing that we don't have a criticism in a faith-based system faith might be immoral because it is a form of gambling that you are right it's a form of gambling that you are right yeah I just have one thought when people talk about this all going somewhere after we die my question is why did this all get them in the field place in the why did this all get here in the first place yeah it's a loaded wait just one little point on on what you're talking about remember there are words in our vocabulary that is strictly religious words sin soul heaven if you went to a South Sea Island and you met the natives there and they said welcome to our Island our God is boo boo boo and we believe in bah bah bah and we feel that our souls are our Samaras go too good not good not a bell you would think the speaking gibberish because it doesn't make any sense don't get sucked into all of the sudden taking words solo seriously it is a religious term really without any meaning well has a meaning but there's no evidence that it really exists sin is something else oh if you don't believe it appears you're committing sin no that's a New York world so basically what I'm saying is don't get caught up and worry about these religious terms they just happen you mentioned quite a few times questions that questions that you asked the believers but they ask you questions sometimes too and I want to distinguish between they the fanatic believers that most of us we cannot reach them they cannot reach us it's there is a partition between us and between other people that you might meet at work there your your colleagues us and there are educated people intelligent people people who are willing to think and they have some questions like one of the questions that they ask is and you didn't touch this at all one of the questions that they ask is so how do you explain all this and actually we don't have an answer to this but my answer is when you when I don't have an answer I think that it's very honest to say I don't know we don't know or this is not knowable this we haven't found a way to know it yet there is no sin in saying this right but when it seems that that this is where we need I I go one step further and I say well when I don't know I say something honest I say I don't know you don't know so you put God there and this is dishonest because actually we're saying the same thing you call day I don't know equals God and that's it so the meaning of the word God in your world in your universe is I don't know if you define belief as the assertion that something is true in the absence of any proof then when you start talking about justifiable beliefs it seems to me to be a contradiction and I'm wondering if the word belief is not applicable in that case and you should say something like an expectation that something might happen for example the tsunami was the people didn't they use the word belief but they did not in fact believe according to the definition they expected or they thought that it might happen they didn't believe believe I think the word belief should be reserved to those who actually believe and assert that things are true in the absence of any proof and that is irrational so they're irrational I went strictly by the definition of belief and can you say what a belief can you ever say that a belief is justifiable that's not a belief it was a well then it it didn't it ceased to be a belief it seems to be elite by belief at that point so it's not a belief anymore well it was something that was believed at the time but it changed it did not become a belief then so you can't say I have justifiable true beliefs that they when they become true they're not beliefs anymore that was a point of his making God is man's default for his own ignorance all gods happen from the beginning to God another big another big oh I think I think we're done right okay another big hand for Gil you you

Channel: Freethought Arizona

Views: 30,175

Rating: 4.4285712 out of 5

Keywords: Faith, Belief, Freethought

Id: VIDlrDTarKg

Length: 78min 24sec (4704 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2013