Hello Mr. Murray,
(16 years of Catholic school and that’s the only way I can address high school teachers. And it was because of my senior year English class, where we read the Allegory of the Cave from the Republic, that I became a philosophy major in college.)

Welcome to the forum.

is this not simply a question of whether or not moral relativism is inevitable? — Jeremy Murray

Many people deep in the weeds of moral philosophy might disagree, but I see that as THE question.

Can a morality of universal, objective rules be built using logic? And by using logic, do we avoid the inevitable descent into relativity that being a mind itself seems to promulgate?

Personally, I don’t think so. If one doesn’t see objective truth in experience, morality discussions are always reducible to something like sentiment, or habit, or psychology, or a bit of bad beef - or some combination thereof.

But I also don’t see why it is so hard to see objectivity in our experience. Logic itself is objective. Only one universal reasoning could inquire into whether ‘logic is objective or not’, and any conclusion from that inquiry would be built using only logic; basically, you can only use logic to prove whether logic is objective or not, and so you prove ‘you can only use logic to prove’ as an objective experience of things. Some things we experience are universal, and that is an objective truth.

And human beings deliberate some of their actions. That’s demonstrable to myself about myself (as I edit and revise this post, deliberating my choice of words), and clearly the case when you observe, or better, ask, other people about their actions. We think, using logic, about what we do using our bodies. More objective truth.

To skip to the end, to play the game of morality at all, I think you need the following playing pieces, and if any one of them are missing, morality is no longer the discussion:

1. more than one personal subject (people/society)(if you are on a desert island, you either have to treat yourself in the third-person to care about morality, or interact with God, otherwise how could anything be immoral);

2. Reason. We have to know things. We have to be able to deliberate about what we know. We have to be able to express it, so language and logic and reasoning are just as essential as multiple people are to the discussion;

3. Responsibility. There is no point to moral judgement without subjects who take responsibility for their actions - the moon pulling the tides is not a moral act because the moon can’t admit it is responsible for that - and if the subjects on the game board of morality discussion are like the moon, then nothing they can do or say or be, or have done to them, is a moral act. There must be a deliberative subject with agency (even if this agency can be questioned) before we can talk morality;

4. Objectivity. If you take this piece off of the game board, then there is no means to distinguish between any of the other pieces. And further, because our logic and deliberations are only captured in language, objectivity becomes the ground to codify things as Law. If a law isn’t objective, to be applied and enforced universally, it’s not a law. And what would be the point of the whole discussion if we could not distill how to act and how not to act towards each other in some form that we can all share and look to - there must be law, law with the goal of it being universal/objective.

So yeah, maybe we are wasting our time thinking about all of this because we don’t believe in or experience some of those game pieces. Maybe we’re resisting the inevitable conclusion that all conclusions are temporary (so not conclusive), and relative (so not conclusive), and all objectivity awaits its implosion into the same stormy seas objectivity sought to fix as knowledge and morality seeks to make calm. I currently hope not.

Despite successive attempts to resolve this paradox, it seems as if the tortoise still edges-out Achilles. — Nemo2124

Achilles takes one step. That’s a physical event.

You need to add concepts to this picture to say whether he has moved a fraction of some other step, approached some other limit infinitely, or already won the race. You can not add other physical steps (like infinitely smaller fractional actual steps) to the step that was already the subject of inquiry without denying the existence of the step in the first place. So is there a step, a motion to discuss, or not?

If Achilles can’t catch the tortoise, the tortoise can’t move either, and there is no paradox, because there is no race.

There’s something like a category issue going on here to fabricate the paradox, and mess with the betting odds at the racetrack.

Measured distances, fractions thereof, and infinity, are concepts. Mental things. We grasp physical things with our hands. We don’t grasp infinity like that, ever. Achilles’ stride and the tortoises’ pace need have nothing to do with any of those concepts. Strides and pacing are physical things.

If I move ten centimeters, I can be said to have moved one-tenth of a meter. Or I can be said to have moved one whole decimeter. So was this a fraction or whole motion? Does that motion have infinite parts or no parts?

These are concepts, mental constructs, we can only assert apply to physical things. Only by first positing a conceptual scheme in which one meter is equal to ten decimeters can I then name something “one tenth of a meter.” And only by positing a whole meter (or going the whole distance conceptually) do I fix the denominator that names the decimeter 1/10th meter (“10” here meaning “whole one”). You don’t get fractions before wholes; you take wholes and divide them, to conceptualize fractions.

So the race had to be over before anyone could tell you at what point Achilles moved one tenth of a distance, or any fractional distance.

There is no fraction of a physical thing - it is only made a fraction conceptually by relating that whole thing to some other whole thing and seeing the relation is fractional according to your conceptual relational scheme.

You cut an apple in half. You can say you only have a fraction of a whole apple. But let’s say you never saw fruit before, and someone hands you a single “half-apple” - you would have one whole thing in your hand and no means to determine it relates to some other “half”. You would have a whole thing. And physically, that’s all there ever is. The determination of whole versus half of that whole requires concepts, not physical steps or physical processes.

So to reasses who conceptually wins and loses a non-conceptual physical race, one would have to wait until it is physically over before one could properly conceptualize the fractions and partial movements that can be said to make up that whole race.

All of these measurements are post-hoc measurements asserted of some external thing. And for this paradox, they are post-hoc concepts turning a physical thing into a conundrum for those concepts, not for the spectators of the race.

No one ever actually moves one-tenth of any distance. They move an actual, finite, whole distances. In every move.

So, unless Achilles brakes his heel and drops out, the tortoise always loses the physical race. That has nothing to do with any math nor provides any more information about the paradox.

The paradox is really just the irony that it is impossible for the smartest people in the universe to explain a simple motion )which it truly is). Or, it takes sheer genius to prove through concepts, that motion right before your eyes can’t happen.

A guy chooses to eat vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate.

Instead of asking the question “was that choice free” which looks at the situation before any ice cream was eaten, I see it all from a different angle. I ask “why is the vanilla ice cream now gone”. If the guy answers “I did it - I’m the cause of the missing ice cream” then I have the starting point for digging deeper into whether there was a free choice involved - I have to ask him more questions to see if he really was the cause or if some subconscious forces or some tyrant, or other cause determined him to eat the ice cream.

In the end, it is solely up to the guy whether we find free choice was involved. At any point in the investigation into underlying causes of the missing ice cream, he can either cut it off and say “that’s enough - it’s all my fault, I are the ice cream, I am responsible.” Or we need to keep digging into the behaviorists/material causes.

That moment is the moment freedom is inserted into any otherwise completely deterministic system.

We don’t choose to want what we want. We want it, and are determined to want it by whatever we are. We choose to call what we want “my choice” - we create the character of “me” as what is known by the rest of the world by consent and by staking a claim - “that’s me - the ice cream eater.”

So my choice and my will and me in the first place are all made one and the same by simple assertion - “that’s my will”. The forces that carry us to the ice cream and force us to see vanilla as best and allow us to eat it - will isn’t found there. Will is found when one steps outside at any of these moments and says “that’s my will - I am walking myself to the refrigerator”. Or “Vanilla is better than chocolate”.

We are our wills.

This is only true when we are willing.

It’s not a complete picture.

And the only way we preserve the feeling of freedom as normally seen as free from or free to, is to see the process described above as happening instantaneously on everything we do. If I am free in each moment, I am consenting to each moment.

There are few folk as dangerous as those who are certain they know the will of god. — Banno

Really? You’ve conducted this survey and know that’s a fact? I know a bunch of real softies, no danger at all, who would say they know what God wants.

There are few folk as dangerous as those who are certain there is no God. How many of those folks turned up on your survey of people who know the will of God?

There are few folks who have sacrificed their lives to save others who did not believe in God.

We can throw people in the buckets we like and the buckets we don’t like all day.

It takes a good lawyer to explain this away. — Banno

Or change the subject to child abuse lawyering, which has nothing to do with Isaac or the story.

You just won’t give an inch.

I haven’t moved you one tiny bit.

Seems to me you think religion is at best, a waste of time, but more likely, a bad thing, that leads to all kinds of harm; that God certainly does not exist; and that faith, of any sort, is a weakness and the better life would have no faith in anything, because having faith is weakness, and prone to irrationality.

That’s what I see as your basic point. I see only your negative account of faith.

Do you have anything positive to say about faith itself?

Not faith in God, or religion. Just faith in other people - what is left of faith, to you?

...to the extent of performing an abominable act. That the decision was as you suggest "fully informed" only serves to add to the affront. — Banno

What affront? Are Abraham or Isaac complaining? All were safe and sound at the end of the story. Sounds like you just can’t stomach the brutality of human kind. We’re a bitch to wrangle my friend. All we need is to trust God and no one gets hurt. That’s all in the same story that affronts you.

But we are never fully informed. — Banno

Ok, I’ll concede fully informed was imprecise. Abraham knew what he was doing, he wasn’t blind. He didn’t know how God could make good out any of it, but he trusted God would make good.

The oddest thing is why anyone with faith would object to the claim that The Binding of Isaac is essentially about obedience. — praxis

I said the story was about obedience. It was a test of faith that required obedience or it would not play out.

God could have tested obedience many ways. Why did God promise descendants, tell Abraham to kill the first descendent, then save him from death? The story is about more than obedience. It’s about what or who we freely choose to obey. We can’t be blind and discern what or who to obey.

Why did God not let Isaac die? One could say the test could not be over until Isaac was dead.

Abraham was blind to how sacrificing his beloved son was going to work out for him, and his son. He had to obey God’s command to sacrifice his son if he wanted to find out. But Abraham had faith, and fully believed that sacrificing Isaac was good and justified, because God said to do it, and Abraham trusted God, absolutely (obviously absolutely - you don’t get more absolute in your trust than Abraham did). That’s not blind faith - that’s trusting that whatever God gives you to see, or takes away from your sight, in the end, He will justify, and it will be good in your eyes as well.

It’s like denying that it’s about blind obedience is an admission that you don’t really believe. — praxis

Did Abraham have absolutely no evidence that God would make good on his word? Abraham was given Isaac when Isaac was thought to be impossible because Sara was old. God had a proven track record. So Abraham had reason to trust God. That’s not blind either.

It is precisely because Abraham was not blind about his choices that only a dramatic test, like killing your only son, would actually test Abraham’s trust. Anyone willing to trust blindly has no idea what they are trusting or even why they are trusting.

Blind faith, if that is all you think faith is, is not the faith I see, or I have. God, according to the Bible, wants us to know him, not emptiness and blindness.

Blind faith in God is not faith in anything.

Faith is faith in. To know in what, we must be fully informed and see.

thoughtless obedience. This is not admirable. — Banno

On a surface reading, the lesson would simply be obedience, like when teaching this story to a child, because a child is thoughtless or incapable of reasoning and knowing what to do. To an adult, the same lesson is trust, capable of reason and knowing what to do, but able to trust someone else's reasons. So obedience is part of the story, but if one concludes it's the only lesson, then much is missed.

Today's first reading at Catholic Mass is about Abraham and Isaac, and, we hundreds of millions hear this:

The Lord God took Abram outside and said,
“Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can.
Just so,” he added, “shall your descendants be.”
Abram put his faith in the LORD,
who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.
- Genesis 15:5-6

This is essential background to the story of Abraham. He had no child at the time and was promised many descendants by God.

Then, later, Abraham and Sara have a child, a child born when thought impossible, but nevertheless a first of many promised descendants.

So next essential thing is that Isaac was most precious to Abraham. He loved him and did everything a good father would, everyday, to keep him safe and raise him. We know Abraham loved Isaac because he was distressed about Ishmael, his other son, and needed to know he would be cared for as well, so of course we know Abraham was a good father and loved his children. Love is essential.

And it is essential that Abraham was sane and rational throughout the story.

Otherwise, without love of his son, or without his mind and reason, the killing of Isaac could not be a sacrifice for Abraham. If Abraham was nuts and somehow didn't know what he was doing, then he wasn't sacrificing a cherished, beloved son; he was acting out some psychosis. That wouldn't be anything other than a tragic accident, and couldn't yield any lesson we can't learn from looking at much other human behavior. Abraham had to love Isaac and know what he was doing for the killing of Isaac to be a sacrifice made by trusting God. And, indeed, a MASSIVE sacrifice.

But despite his love for Isaac, the precious little boy who asked Abraham such a great question on the way to the deed, Abraham stayed faithful to his trust in God, above his own heart.

He found reason to believe God will make good on all of His promises in some other way.

That was the sacrifice - not the act of a madman; not someone blindly obedient - it was a fully informed decision to, despite all else, trust God.

Abraham in his heart trusted God to care for his descendants, even though he could not possibly understand how anymore, since he was killing his single legitimate descendent.

Last, it is essential to the story that God intercedes and saves Isaac.

Abraham showed what obedience and trust and faith are; God showed what obedience, trust and faith in Him are - salvation from death, progeny that number the stars. And Abraham's progeny are the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims at the very least.

Abraham loved Isaac, but trusted God above all else, and because of who God is, Abraham was given Isaac, and the fatherhood of history.

And for further context besides the father of descendents, the Abram/Isaac story is made a part of the Book of Genesis with Adam and Eve. So it shows us God asking himself, why would I ever trust a man again? Why would God bother to talk to any of us. Trust is two-way. God trusted Adam and Eve with the keys to paradise, with one instruction - don't drive faster than 55 miles per hour or you will die - and Adam and Eve decided to trust some snake and try driving 100 miles an hour for themselves - and then they ran and hid from God and needed clothing to stay hidden when God found them, and they blamed the snake and blamed each other for what was their own choice. It was certainly reasonable for God not to trust Abraham's faith, and reasonable to test Abraham, to see if any one of us people could ever be trusted again.

Abraham had reason to trust God - God made Isaac possible in the first place. Luckily, for all of us, Abraham figured out the most rational thing to do in every case, is trust God.

That's the story to me. Not one hint of blind obedience or irrational murderers.

"Obedience" is an adolescent or a slave's word for what a consenting adult does in every act directed towards some purpose. We make our actions ours, using our reasons and willing them, and then enacting our own law accordingly. Call it obedience, or call it enacting your own will - these are the same thing if your will is the will of another. If you trust another, you can say you are obeying another, or just say you are trusting another and take more responsibility for whatever you are doing.

But I need to clarify one last thing. I still do not think faith is opposed to reason; but faith approaches the same world from a different direction; faith is other than reason, and can confound reason. But reason is always there (allowing one to distinguish whether one can trust someone else to conduct a certain action, or one can't, or shouldn't trust someone else.

And little Isaac turned out to be okay. I have faith that you, Banno, will one day be able to ask him yourself if he holds that day against God or his father.

Faith, understood as belief without or even despite the evidence, is not a virtue. — Banno

Anything anyone thinks without balancing it with their own experience, without reason, is foolish. That’s not good faith.

Faith, understood as trust, might foster commitment or dedication and these are (perhaps) virtues. — Banno

Magnanimous of you to say. Doesn’t go far enough. Perhaps you don’t have to trust anyone for anything. Certainly trust can be broken, so when it is, does that mean we should shoot for a world where we don’t have to trust anyone? Trustworthiness is the virtue; trusting is more like, being vulnerable.

The Binding of Isaac and the Trials of Job speak of acts of cruelty, where unjustified suffering is inflicted in the name of faith. Moreover these are held up as admirable, to be emulated. — Banno

But the story of Abraham does not tell us how to show faith - Jews and Christians don’t need to do any violence ever, based on faith (those who say and do otherwise, like you, misunderstand all of it). Isaac lived. Abraham fathered children who, like him, knew God, as countless as the stars, just as God said he would. The story of Abraham means that God will justify your faith in him. We can trust God no matter what. It’s not about, what crazy murder can someone commit. At all. Abraham was rational, he trusted God, and was right and justified.

I’m not going to defend the prosecution of God with you here.

I will defend faith. Anyone who thinks abandoning your own reason is ever right or good, is a fool, or not a functioning person. Faith is not opposed to reason.

If a person performs some ritual, to praise God and bring blessings, they are using reason throughout, as necessary to complete any task successfully. Just because you don’t see God and don’t see blessings, doesn’t mean they are not there, or that the faithful person is not seeing something you don’t.

So you still haven’t found one good thing about faith. How belief in certain things, like Santa Clause, or justice, or some other person’s faith in you, might actually be an important, even necessary part of improving the world. Not even on a raw, practical, people managing their hard lives level.

Fine, but then, good luck working whatever muscle allows people to trust each other, and good luck building a world where trust between two people is not needed. Good luck building love.

Faith is not opposed to reason. That’s a shallow, essentialist view of “faith”, creating a use function and truth value suited towards insulting other intelligences.

You could just trust me about it, but I hope you use your own reason and figure out a deeper, broader significance to faith than you currently display.

Hence it does not follow that acts done in faith are always good. And so it cannot be that acts are good in virtue of being done in faith. — Banno

I agree. Not all acts done in faith are good. I’m not saying an act is good because it is an act of faith. An act is what it is.

But if some acts done in faith ARE good, then it doesn’t follow that all acts done in faith are bad.

You say you are not arguing that all acts done in faith are bad, but by the way you talk about faith (willfully resistant to reason, used to justify and praise badness), you still seem to be building a case that all faith leads to no good. I’ve seen nothing even neutral, let alone good about faith in your estimation of it.

But that is demonstrably false. Tons of real charity, life giving sacrifice, happiness, comfort, all brought into the world, daily, for thousands of years, directly in the hope and belief in things only known in faith. Tons of goodness because of faith and religion.

All of the pain and suffering and barbarity and lies and badness - it was always already there as it remains. Faith didn’t cause it. Science doesn’t cause it either. Science helps some of it; faith does too.

I’m not even really trying to argue faith is good. Just trying to keep straight what it is from what it is not, and recognize faith as necessary - you really don’t believe in anything that you haven’t already proven? Of course you have some beliefs that are not yet proven. You are interested in philosophy, so I know you don’t know a lot of things for sure, yet you must act anyway like anyone else. You have your beliefs, like everyone else. Beliefs are a necessity, and some of them are a good.

Why say reason is an enemy of faith, when you are a reasonable person who occasionally acts on faith like everyone must? I think you are selling faith short, to your own disillusionment with organized religion.

In short, if you maintain that if you were to set the entire world state back to what it was before a decision (including every aspect of your mental being, your will, your agency), and then something different might happen... well, maybe something different might happen, but you can't attribute that difference to your will. — flannel jesus

I think that’s right. I don’t like using the word “will” as a noun. Willing is the thing, not the will.

There is only one place to find freedom. In consent. Not in some pre-meditated, deliberated choice. I may never get to choose anything, but once the “choice” is made (as once any other deterministic action takes place), I can still give or withhold my consent, and claim that choice as mine, or remain consumed in a world of necessity.

I make the inevitable contingent on me by my consent or my denial, not by my actions.

If I crash my car, I can show all the ways this was determined, or I can just give my consent and say “I am the reason the car crashed, nothing else.”

We take responsibility and only then give birth to free agency. Freedom, for us, first, is an act of defiance. We have to make our will by ourselves, and make it out of necessity that encompasses and drives all else.

We don’t have a will sitting somewhere inside waiting to cause some effect. We see the effects and we claim them after the fact, and in this claim, demonstrate for the first time our will.

Another way to say this is that the “will” used as a noun does not exist until we are willing something. We are not free first - we free ourselves afterwards with our consent or our denial of the pre-determined circumstances always already in front of us.

Or if not, maybe there simply is no freedom. Which seems impossible, just as freedom is impossible to explain.

I have argued that they are not good in virtue of or due to their faith — Banno

You just stated it. You didn't argue it.

rather than to address the arguments presented. — Banno

You haven't addressed mine.

Why fabricate ethics, good, and laws at all? Why do you do that if you can only base your actions on reason and science (which can not tell you what to do)? If science cannot tell you what to do, how are you not uncomfortable with any ethics, any assessment of some platonic "good"?

Curious that some folk have such difficulty with this: that what is good and what is commanded are not the very same thing. But consider: of whatever is commanded, it makes sense to ask "is that good?".

It's pretty naive to suppose, unargued, that the only form ethics can take is that of a series of commandments. — Banno

That is all off topic. Law speak is more akin to science. You need reason to sift through laws and commands, like reason navigates us through physical laws and necessities.

I thought we were talking about faith.

I don't agree that it was faith that delivered us to our present sate of enlightenment; — Banno

How about just one good person, who believes in God, has faith, and is a rational, good, fun, functioning, contributing member of society? Ever met one of those? If you have, go figure, all that despite the plague of faith.

You sound to me like you have no idea what faith is. And no curiosity.

Science describes how things are, it doesn't tell you what to do about how things are. — Banno

That's precisely correct.

So I have to assume nothing tells you what to do, since you are a man of science, and since you can't use faith to build authority behind the law, and since such authority will never come from science. It would be nonsensical to uncover the facade of a faith community making moral law, and then turn around fabricate some other ethical, moral code anyway (and why would anyone care to follow laws they didn't have to make in the first place).

But you seem to think faith justifies praise of barbarity, so you have a moral code where elevating barbarity is bad enough to be useful to denigrate the faithful. And so you think barbarity is immoral, and false praise immoral - where did these laws come from anyway? They sound like the bible just as much as the bible does to me.

If you want to denigrate faith as a pastime, that's fine, but if you want to be consistent, just admit that just like faith, morality and ethics make no sense to you, because they can't be weighed, or measured or proven sound, or logically derived, or tested or falsified. Why ought I not follow an unethical law anyway? Why can't I follow whatever I want?

No-faith may be a blessing in disguise.

Which is pretty much my problem with faith. There is no act so barbaric that it can't be justified by an appeal to faith. As a way of deciding action, it is very poor and entirely unaccountable.
— Tom Storm

Yes; and yet by some it is elevated to such heights that it is seen as the greatest virtue. — Banno

That's all true. Barbarity and false virtue, blessed in the dogmatic mask of some religion, happens.

But is that all faith is to you both, or just some misuse of faith that corrupts only some people?

Does absolute faith corrupt absolutely? If that is what you think, I wonder if I could change your mind?

Because I see the opposite in what springs from faith. Equating barbarity and false virtue with faith is a much more, let's say, particular view of faith than I've generally experienced. Looks like the TV version, or maybe from a sociology class, or anthropology class. Not from an actual church, or most actual churches and mosques and synagogues. Lot's of good, rational, faith-going people, exist and do things because of their faith everyday. For centuries, since people started writing, maybe because of words themselves - faith driving the discussions among people. Delivered us all to our currently enlightened state. Are you saying they all, because they would base their actions and justifications on some religious faith, they've all just strayed so far from the same reality you and I experience today that all faith is about is justifying things like barbarity and false virtue in the name of their religious beliefs?

Or is that just one small point in a broader understanding of "faith"?

You can't pull some lemonade out of "faith in God" at all? Even on a psychological or social level?

Do all opiates of the masses lead only to wife and child abuse, barbarity and praise of barbarity?

I think that misses everything about faith.

People wrote the law, whether they thought they were writing the will of god or not.

But, and over, that, if the law is unethical, you ought not do what the law says.

Hence, the law does not tell you what you ought do. — Banno

This is all confused to me. It sounds like you are overthrowing the law, but using the law to do it, so I don't know the function of "law" for you.

You talk about the writing of the laws by whatever means codified, then pose an unethical law, and from this conclude "you ought not do what the law says."
And this was in response to Frank saying

The law tells you what to do. — frank

But your determination of "unethical" can only come by appealing to some other law. So the law is still telling you what to do.

The determination of "unethical" is done here by seeing that one law (which tells you what to do) is in conflict with another law (which also tells you what to do). You replaced ought with another ought, not a refutation of ought.

If you said the law was just silly, or the law was impossible to understand so there is nothing to follow, you could say "hence the law does not tell you what you ought to do." But you said "the law is unethical" - so you are still looking to some law, some ethic, to tell you what to do.

The law always tells you what to do. That's what a law is, what it does.

The question is only "what is the law", and separate from whatever answer you get, there is what you actually do, following the law or not, or some other law. But if there is a law, it tells you what to do.

Isn't believing in impossibility faith? — Corvus

It would take faith to believe in something one’s own reason found to be impossible. I only mentioned my belief because there’s an open wound right now, talking about life after death with a bunch of sad folks recently.

But on a philosophy forum, life after death seems like pure conjecture. We can’t even say what a mind is, let alone how it could exist absent a body.

Where is the place for the religious belief or faith in life after death? — Corvus

Seems like there would be a different answer to that question for every believer.

The same place for a belief that a miracle ever happens.

Just last week was Ash Wednesday when Christians are reminded from dust they came and to dust they will return.

No reason to believe otherwise, unless willing to believe in the impossible.

Yes; like when an orchestra disbands, their music stops. — 180 Proof

If you make an orchestra playing music a metaphor for a human body living and conscious, then yes, I guess an orchestra disbanding would be like a human body breaking down and dying…into eternal oblivion, to round out all the poetry.

Who did the paying? Investigate that.

So some idiot pays a claimant too much money and before proving enough suspicion to obtain a warrant, that idiot gets to grab the money without the claimant’s consent? Terrible idea.

what awaits us when we die — Zebeden

As far as I can tell, all life is inseparable from the physical body. Life is a function of a certain physical arrangement. Why would my life be different?

If the body stops functioning, the body stops living; why would I think there is anything left to live on after this body stops functioning, or why would I think some function of my body (my mind for instance), would be able to persist or be sustained, when the other functioning of my body (my breathing for instance, or my brain activity) stops functioning?

Eternal oblivion is a poetic way of simply saying “not here anymore.”

I am a body. When the body dies and decays, everything about me, everything particular to “me”, is gone.

Life after death would be a miracle.
Because it is by definition physically impossible.

I personally believe in miracles. My cousin just died last week and I hope God saved him from his death as I hope for all of you. But this is a belief in the impossible.

Can you tell me two useful things Nietzsche has contributed to your thinking and life? In simple dot points. — Tom Storm

His approach to science - the gay science. Meaning, each step towards "knowledge" must be made with an awareness that we are likely fooling ourselves. Seek the truth, but never claim truth is the only, highest goal, and never assume the truth you find may not one day be made false.

He flipped the Reality-Appearance divide for me. I saw appearance as the world of changing things, more material in nature, and the world of reality as hidden, only seen in ideas and truth. Nietzsche reminded me that we only claim to see "reality" and formal ideas at all because by unmasking material appearances, and that really, these appearances are as formal as ideas ever get to be. The appearances, the Apollonian, the rational-knowing-truth seeking, are all aligned; but reality, the Dionysian, the tumultuous world of instinct and power, this is the hidden reality. He toppled the age-old distrust or hatred of the body that favored only things of the mind. He reminded us of the body, of man's absurd place opposed to this body. And he didn't deny the absurdity or the opposition, just that we have been looking at it from one side, and of the two sides, the less real side.

But what I did was take Nietzsche's equation for man (a rope over an abyss) and said faith is very much the same. I find it an interesting parallel — DifferentiatingEgg

We ARE the presence of faith, the existence of faith, in life.

The bridge threw me off (ironically) your point.

I like the tightrope over an abyss, because even though it’s a tightrope, you don’t really care much about what’s holding the rope up on each side, there’s just a tightrope and the abyss.

To me, the rope itself creates the distance below it, so we are, simultaneously, the rope that creates the distance and so we are the abyss (we manufacture our own isolation by just being). We build our own need for a bridge or a path, that is never just there, (unless something reaches out of the abyss and grabs us). Nothing grabbed Nietzsche from the abyss. He only had himself. If he wanted a path or a faith or a bridge, he alone had to construct it whole-cloth, like an artist does. Which is why I respect his philosophy above most others. He saw that we build both the abyss and if we want a bridge, we build that too.

I only differ from him (and it’s a huge difference) in that I don’t associate faith in the church with laws and hell and hierarchies and priests and self-denial. There’s nothing special at all about the pope because he’s a pope. He might be special, but I’d have to know him personally like anyone else might be special. But “pope” is just a game.

But just because a law is given doesn’t mean I can’t make it my own. I can conquer whatever I want. Even Nietzsche had to learn to speak German once before he could build his art. Anyone claiming they know another honest man’s faith is deceiving themselves. No one can know anyone, not even themselves. And post-modern social construction theories, that’s all today’s over-rated reified masking, and today’s slave morality. Layers upon layers of lies and more self-defeating, self anesthetizing, opiates to cover the abyss. Own your own shit, whatever that shit may be, and celebrate when you want to celebrate.

Faith is essential to being a person. The question is not “do you believe?” Because we all do. The question is “what do you believe?” Reason is essential too but reason is more like the rope, having form (logic and language), and believing is more like the abyss. Some people won’t let go of the rope. Others think they can see things in the abyss and are delusional (possibly me). But the existentialists, Nietzsche, just called it what it was - absurd, nauseating, solitary - meaning standing in the face of absolute meaninglessness, the abyss.

We stand on the edge of everything. We are the first limit in the limitless. We are the first fleeting form, and as soon as we grasp that, we must lose it all and start over.

Faith is a style of guiding principle, a phenomenological structure that paves a path forward, a bridge over an abyss... — DifferentiatingEgg

Basically I like it, especially recognizing the abyss, but I’d chop down a bit.

Faith is a self-structured principle, that paves a path forward in the abyss.

“Bridge” implies you might see the other side just needing a bridge you don’t see to get there. I see the abyss all around with no other side to bridge towards in sight. So the faith we build is solely in the face of the unknown, of emptiness, of nothing else but our choice.

Because I happen to have faith, I see its structure as a gift, not so much because of me. When I said “self-structured” I’m recognizing that I have to gather all of the inputs to build the output here called faith. But because of the particular faith I have, I don’t take as much credit for my own gathering - I give more credit to structure than my structuring. But it’s all by my choice, so it all collapses back to me in the abyss. The faith, the path, is a gift (for me) or it is a “style” or “phenomenological structure” in terms of someone else’s faith.

"faith" is the same thing as what I call "intuition." — T Clark

I never responded to you on the other thread. I think we are on the same page but I’d name the moving parts a bit differently.

Believing is found in a moment of consent, and your actions are based on what you consented to. Once you believe something, it’s as deep as it gets and you are willing to act on it.

We can KNOW it is safe to cross the street by looking both ways, but the moment we step off the curb it’s because we ARE BELIEVING what we know; we gather the knowledge, CONSENT OR BELIEVE, and only then act.

Intuition is like a parallel process to reasoning, to gathering the knowledge. Intuition is like when you can’t explain your reasoning, but you know it is reasonable. Believing is more of an act of consenting to whatever you know, be it known from reasoning or from intuition.

That said, I can see why you place intuition more closely to believing. Both are distinct from knowing and reasoning (qua knowing and reasoning).

It’s like anything we do - we get all the knowledge, we train, we check our equipment and then it comes time to act. If we didn’t believe we were ready, we wouldn’t act. Believing gathers what we know, what is reasonable, where the holes in the reasoning are, where the questions still exist, and then, we decide, we consent, we either believe or not - so belief is the springboard for action.

So religious faith and religious beliefs are a particular subset of this otherwise human process of knowing, reasoning, believing and acting.

Religious faith is about the same process, just the objects of knowledge are fantastical, impossible, non-empirical.

People who mock religious people, think believing is just skipping the reasoning part. Which it can be, so I don’t blame them for the mockery (most religious people should expect mockery cause there are some whacky beliefs in most religions). A religious belief is just another type of belief, similar to a belief we might have that it is safe to cross the street, that my own eyes are not deceiving me and there are no unaccounted demons in the sewer!

faith: it's is incorrigible belief. — Relativist

Sounds like a person with the ability to reason who won’t use reason when it comes to belief. It sounds like a mental problem.

So if a person of faith is reasonable in every other conversation besides faith (because faith isn’t reasonable), wouldn’t that person be at odds with their own faith? How is that tenable? What kind of inner life regarding their own beliefs would that be? How does one preach that, if one was so inclined to preach? Sounds terrible.

You are certainly accurately describing a lot of religious kooks and cult members. Incorrigible believing. Probably some mental problems. But does that accurately describe all people who believe anything that hasn’t been empirically/experientially verified yet? Are all such believers refusing to be reasonable?

I take the view points, let them all rattle around in my head in a hurricane of different thoughts, not all are left standing. — DifferentiatingEgg

I call it all part of the gay science.

What I was trying to say is like instead of absolute faith, you're now in the realm of educated guess... which is a combination of faith and knowledge, and knowledge isn't faith — DifferentiatingEgg

Again, the picture that creates is the picture I see, but the words you use to paint it I wouldn’t use that way.

I see the educated guess as in between the realm of absolute knowledge, and zero knowledge (like unconscious or subconscious). All of that is separate from will, from believing. You can be 50% sure or 60%. But when you are asked what you believe, given what you know, belief works at either 100% or 0. When you take the guess, at the moment of actually guessing based on the little you know, you are 100% believing that is what you believe.

Like if you were only going to leap once you were fifty percent sure and your at forty, then forty two, then you hit fifty and you say, that’s enough, I believe the leap will happen and just as I am about to leap I get more info and now I’m at 75%. I know more, the guess is better educated, but I already believed and was ready to leap. I know more, but I don’t believe more.

Belief, will, drives the moment of action. It’s not the moment of knowing or the moment of reasoning.

That’s my take. Think there are overlaps in the two pictures.

no, he would assume he was being deceived because he "knows" Jesus was resurrected. — Relativist

shows the unfalsifiabilty of objects of faith, …. evidence to the contrary are rejected ….. ad hoc hypothesising. This is part of the irrationality of faith. — Banno

That is what faith does, for a 'believer'. — AmadeusD

Oh my God. Faith sounds terrible!
Those people must be insufferable, just real douchers.

Am I really a doucher and I just never applied my reasoning to the situation? Banno thinks I can’t even reason - now I’ll have nothing left!!

But DiffEgg, although I wouldn’t say it how he says it, sees belief as more of a presence on the game board, which I agree(d) with:

educated guess... which is a combination of faith and knowledge, and knowledge isn't faith. — DifferentiatingEgg

if they converted faith into knowledge would it be a decrease of faith. But gaining knowledge about about something doesn't necessarily mean a decrease in faith. — DifferentiatingEgg

Is believing vital to the mix?

Now I’m not so sure.

But wait. What about when you don’t know? And you have to act on what little you do know?

Are we still acting on knowledge alone?

What about taking risk? Do we need anything like faith to take risk?

Risk involves a lack of knowledge, an act despite the lack of knowledge, like belief despite any reasoning or evidence.

Personally, a lot is not being said. I think belief, reasoning, knowledge are simultaneously at work in many of our actions, and a ‘faith’ is just another ‘science’ which is just another ‘story’, because it’s just another wording, which relies on beliefs, reasoning and knowledge to happen. You choose your beliefs, but we are all slaves to believing something.

Don’t believe me if you want, but then believe only yourself if you want.

Certainly we need faith to get to know other people. You don’t trust me yet do you? I’m being sarcastic at times here, so maybe I’m a liar. What do you believe, because you certainly don’t know?

Religious faith is just the ugliest form, right? or is that the purest form of faith?

Everyone is so biased against “faith” as organized religion, they overlook how important their own beliefs have been, despite being yet unproven, untested, even unfalsifiable in any practical sense.

So if believing and beliefs and having faith are just the way for us, do we really need to place science and above art and above faith and all else, or might that just be a sort of faith in itself?

Where did that nonsense come from? — Banno

The most faithful will be seeking to disprove that god exists.
— Banno — Fire Ologist

So for faithful Pat to believe God exists, he will seeking to prove the belief that God does not exist.

I’m sure you are confused again. It’s ok.

Two beliefs:
Pat believes that "god exists" is true
Pat believes that "god does not exist" is true.

In both cases, Pat holds a certain proposition to be the case.

I am not responsible for your own confusion. — Banno

So the same Pat can hold both beliefs at the same time. Got it. According to non-confusing Banno.

Sounds like someone else is confused. Probably Pat. :sweat:

And others compete for my attention. — Banno

Or you don’t have an explanation as to why it makes sense to you to say “a belief is holding a proposition to be true, but when that proposition is ‘God exists’ then a belief is holding that a proposition is not true.”

That’s what you said.

Oh, I can see the problem.

Cheers — Banno

Another almost conversation, about talking, your favorite subject, that you won’t talk about with me.

Cheers!

All I'm saying is I don't care if others learn from this or not, I have. Ultimately, I came here to develop my evaluations by having others help fill gaps in my knowledge. Some people have, some people haven't. People came here to express a multiplicity of view points, I don't care who is necessarily saying what, I take the view points, let them all rattle around in my head in a hurricane of different thoughts, not all are left standing. — DifferentiatingEgg

That’s cool.

Once Anselm attempted to use logic to prove God exists, he was not being faithful to what faith is anymore. I’ve said it fifty different ways by now to try to shake hands here a bit.

But that’s not all you said, and the picture you create of what a person is doing when they believe something absent logical proof behind it (faith), makes it sound like, in order to believe anything without absolute proof behind it, one has to resist or be in a state of resisting all reason.

A lot of people just say stuff because they want their faith to be knowledge... I really don't care. Faith isn't knowledge. And attempting to prove faith via knowledge turns faith into knowledge. Thus now it's not faith. Faith is an absence of knowing. Just as knowing is an absence of faith. Perspective, our world view, etc etc arises from knowledge and faith. — DifferentiatingEgg

So because of things you’ve said to me, I have to hope you won’t think I’m being too dialectic in my argument form. By dialectic, I mean placing things as polar opposites. I think you are doing that just as much as me, but for some reason you’ve told me a few times that is due to my limited way of thinking. So I’m going to ignore those accusations now because I see you thinking in the same dialectical format - which in itself is useful here so I’m glad you are. And it shows why we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Just like Anselm would be wrong to say his conclusions at the end of his logical syllogisms are articles of faith (in which we agree, he was wrong), concluding from that mistaken path towards Anselm “faith” that all faith and believing is the anti-thesis of reason and knowing is wrong as well.

The main reason I think it’s wrong to make faith merely the opposite of reason is, even if that were the case, we can’t ever hold one above the other - we need both to act (will) and to speak about our actions (reason), to be a person at all. I like acting - willing, believing, reasoning - I don’t want to declare winners and losers among them. Anselm was just as reasonable and faithful as the next guy, just not in his one little syllogism he hoped (I’m sure) might change the world.

The whole picture you create of the twisting rope between faith and reason (maybe you mean willing and knowing), should be saved. I never said that picture wasn’t a useful image of things. We ARE twisting, between things, and opposites, and twisting among many more sources of tensions -including our selves as instinct versus social norms versus will versus wits. The overall picture should be saved, and I often describe things that way.

But if you put reason all on the one side of those tensions, irrationality or unreasonableness is on the other.

If faith is on one side of the pulling and twisting, and we need an opposite, indifference or maybe deterministic necessity are on the other.

Reason is not the antithesis of faith. That’s a T-shirt version of this that is actually useless once we get beyond a fear of being religious.

So I am not disagreeing with things so much as I think it’s worth clarifying things a bit to avoid saying things that can be misconstrued, casting doubt on the soundness of the whole picture of the twisting, torn, creative and tearing man.

We don’t want to mock the man of faith, the man of will, the man willing to believe and act despite knowledge, despite any mere proposition. That’s the spice in the otherwise formulaic soup.

(Paradoxically, in a way, according to a picture pitting reason against faith, because Anselm’s argument ultimately fails, he should be seen by you as one of the greatest saints among the faithful - because his arguments and conclusions are not reasonable, yet he believes them to be, and became a saint about it all, you should think he is the brilliant evil genius who gathered more and more believers to his presentation of bad reasoning! Total digression that probably confuses you. :razz: )

If you want to say fuck off to the faithful idiot, don’t do it for sake of the steadfast empirical logician. Shit on both of those guys if you need to shit on anyone. Nietzsche did all of the appropriate shitting. Very few were spared.

But don’t mock “willing”, don’t mock the process of believing itself.

I’ve said all of this 20 times. I think you have an opportunity here to say “huh, I see what you mean, never thought about that” and maybe even admit, that no really useful point about a person of faith who is also a person of reason has been made. We all trade in both reasons and beliefs, both the religious and the empirical. This post need not be focused on all religious people whenever they ever form syllogisms.

You said “Faith is an absence of knowing. Just as knowing is an absence of faith.”
I think you can tell where I agree with what you are saying in this mix.

But we can’t say faith has no knowing in it. And we can’t saying knowing has no believing in it.

Your basic point here is that, because of the difference between believing an article of faith, and knowing a conclusion of reason, Anselm and church-lovers like him, should not waste their time seeking conclusions of reason if they are satisfied with believing an article of faith. And further, if they stumble upon a conclusion of reason, that used to be held as an article of faith, then that article, that conclusion is no longer a “faith” thing, it’s a “reason” thing now, sitting at the end of a syllogism. That’s great.

But if Anselm is tearing down his own faith by building up his own reasonable arguments, isn’t he just doing science? And doesn’t that mean that science requires faith as an engine to get started - we move from faith in something that appears may be, using reason, to knowledge of something that is proven to be. This is just science, just thinking, just juggling believing/reasoning/knowing, twisting used here for religion bashing and throwing all of us who bother to think and speak at all under the bus in the process.

The real juggling, as I see it, standing on the tightrope, is acting, believing, reasoning, knowing, believing your own knowledge, and then acting again. Huge, soupy mess that easily goes off the rails, off-rope, all of the time. But I can’t see any of it without all of it.

So we don’t want to stand up the reasonable man against his enemy the faithful man, because we need both men to be reasonable, as we need both to willingly act on what they believe.

Sometimes it's best to leave an argument ambiguous — DifferentiatingEgg

I don't care how obstinate others are... — DifferentiatingEgg

Sort of an impasse between the pot and the kettle.

That’s fine too, but that’s the end of the conversation again. You dont have to keep at it. But I don’t think I’m being obstinate.

I’m just saying it seems contradictory to hold that faith simply means no reason, because it allows silly statements that propositions proving something doesn’t exist provide the best support to having faith that it does exist. Seems like an abuse of reason, or faith, or “exist”. Seems like an abuse of language.

Seems the conversation you started need not end yet to me.

Are you just saying you are being obstinate and so it’s a warning that there is no use seeking further clarity from you, you are done with all the analysis and interpretation? If so, thanks for the tip. Will catch you on the next one.

The other two of your three bolded sentences are indecipherable. — Banno

The second sentence you refer to as “indecipherable” is a quote from you. It’s now in 3 below.

1. Believing is holding that something is true.
2. In the case of a person who believes God exists, (ie, “the faithful”) believing is holding that “God exists” is true.
3.

The most faithful will be seeking to disprove that god exists. — Banno

4. Therefore, what are you talking about Banno?

Really? I was fairly clear. I even used your words as much as possible.

You need to explain how you are saying something decipherable, when you tell a religious belief holder they should be arguing something they believe does not exist if they want to continue believing that same thing exists.

What is believed is expressed by a proposition, rather than a "thing", an object. — Banno

You are skipping categories too, like Anselm and Descartes.

What is believed “is expressed by a proposition not an object”?? That doesn’t move the ball at all.

We all get that a string of words, a proposition, isn’t the same thing or object as say, what those words are talking about.

Proposition: “God exists.”
It’s Talking about: X over there existing, having a cheese sandwich while walking on water or sorting the reasoning folks from the faithful folks according to you. An object, a “thing.”

We all get that.

You are proposing we tell someone who says ”God exists” that, if they want to believe that proposition is about an existing thing, they should seek out the most reasonable arguments that conclude with the proposition “God does not exist.”

That seems impossible, let alone stupid. Decipherable? Not really that either, but I’m trying to work with you.

You are moving the goal posts, between propositions and what they are about (expressing things or objects), and saying things and objects who are holding propositions (guys like Anselm), should seek to hold contradictory propositions if they want to be an object /thing called a faithful believer.

And you do so by equivocating on the notion of “belief” or “faith”, which I’ve been saying all along.

You are smarter than “indecipherable.” You can’t see the problem?

My post last night was too long.

See if this is friendlier:

1.

Belief is holding that something is true.
— Banno — Fire Ologist

Right. Without intending to lose any of your meaning here, I would say the same thing:

Believing is holding that some thing is true.

“Believing” is more like a “holding”, both acting, so “beleiving is holding” just flows better to me, annd avoids positing a rigid “belief”, but again, no real sense should be changed here.

“Some thing”, as two words, meaning, something in particular. This is where something.rigid creeps back in a bit, but really, again, is meant to clarify how I say what you said, and not really saying anything new:

Believing is holding that some thing is true.

2.
“Is true”.

The OP is talking about Anselm holding that “God exists” is true. “God exists” is the “something” that the one who is believing “is holding”. The question the OP asks is, Can the sound believer hold “god exists” as a conclusion in a logical syllogism while holding it as a belief? OP says no way, that’s dumb and Anselm was dumb to try faith or reason, or both.

So it seems to me, since we are talking about what to make of “whether ‘God exists’ is true or not,” ‘true’ existence is really just any existence at all. We mean the same thing if we just say:

Believing is holding that some thing is. Believing is holding something truly exists. (Truly is now superfluous).

(We can revisit the rabbit hole epistemological reasons to distinguish between “holding that ‘God exists’” and “holding that ‘God exists’ is true,” with terms like “knowledge” and “justification” also in need of being addressed here later. And we can revisit the issues between the ontological status of concepts/objects like “holding that God exists is true” versus “holding that God exists” versus God actually existing or not. But let’s try to finish one thought.)

All we need to understand really what was meant in your original statement in the context of the case of the unbelieving bad-reasoning Anselm, is this:

Believing is holding that something truly exists, or just, some thing is.

3.

those with the greatest faith would be the ones convinced by logical arguments that god does not exist, and yet who believe despite this.

The most faithful will be seeking to disprove that god exists. — Banno

4.
Therefore, the faithful ones who hold a belief, because believing is holding that something exists, must know that this same thing does not exist in order to believe it exists.

So since I kept re-writing 1, here is a renumbering of my question based in really, only your words:

1. Believing is holding some thing exists.
2. The greatest believers would find the most convincing argument about what they believe would demonstrate that what they hold, does NOT exist, to be the greatest believers.
3. Therefore, they must believe that something does not exist (not-exist is true) in order to believe it does exist (exist is true).

Maybe you still don’t get me, maybe there is a better way to say it, but you get my gist.

Something’s off here.

Added:
What do you mean by “belief” or “believing”, OR, what do you mean by “believing that “God exists” is true”? Because the above argument, basically yours, seems off to me.

they built a bad syllogism. — Fire Ologist

What? — Banno

Willful ignorance maybe? Does that have any place in this thread?

Anselm and Aquinas weren’t doing the faith thing. They weren’t talking about their faith anymore, and instead, they built bad syllogisms.

when it's something I have faith in, I have faith in it. I don't ever have a need to ever justify….. — DifferentiatingEgg

That’s closer to doing the faith thing. It comes pre-justified, or sits supra- or extra-justification.

. I started as a way to shit on people — DifferentiatingEgg

And in the process he, and you, took for granted that believing (faith) had something to do with reason (which it occurs to me Anselm and Aquinas might agree with you about, which is another mistake they made). Namely you keep leaning on faith is the polar opposite of reason, so by making faith non-reasonable, to shit in people, he shit on his very own “when it’s something I have faith in (that I am doing) I don’t ever have a need to ever justify…”

So you are shitting on using the will, on acting, just to say faithful people are contradicting themselves if they try to use reason.

Total mess.

We all act on faith all the time. No one knows anything 100%. That doesn’t mean they are mixing some faith in with their logic. If they wanted to act on their 70% certainty in their logic, when they act, they act because they believe in their action enough to live it 100%, and act.

So according to you, if anyone ever asks about, or someone wants to talk about, something they are doing that they are doing based on faith, they should all be trying to show how unreasonable such acts are, and shouldn’t try to be reasonable, there is nothing to say, so piss off if you want to reason about it.

What? — Banno

So Diff Egg, “when it's something [you] have faith in, … [and] don't ever have a need to ever justify,” and someone asks you anyway “what the hell are you doing that for?” do you feel any compulsion to try to prove how unreasonable you are, because

to review what one takes on faith is to breech that faith — Banno

So my question to you both is, What the hell are you saying faith is anyway?

Banno, that’s how I ask “what” with a bit of respect.

DiffEgg, “just to shit on people?” Come on man.

Belief is holding that something is true. One can believe that something is true for all sorts of reasons, or for no reason at all. Rational folk will try to believe stuff that is true, and so will use arguments and evidence and such, and ground their beliefs.

Faith is more than just holding that something is true. Faith requires that one believe even in the face of adversity. Greater faith is had by those who believe despite the arguments and the evidence.

So those with the greatest faith would be the ones convinced by logical arguments that god does not exist, and yet who believe despite this.

The most faithful will be seeking to disprove that god exists. — Banno

There is one point in the OP, reflected in the above, on which I have agreed from the start. Anselm and Aquinas were trying to be logical and create knowledge; they were NOT doing a lot of other things, like they were not being poetic creating verses (unless we all abuse some tacit definition of poetry), or they were not giving a eulogy for a friend, or providing a news bulletin, or preaching an article of faith.
They were building syllogisms, arguments.

Their arguments, in my logical estimation, failed for various reasons (but that is another conversation, on which we might agree as well). If you asked Anselm "why do you believe God exists?" he should say, "I don't believe God exists, I know God exists and I can prove it to you." He should say this, because he was trying to convince others of, in his estimation, a logical conclusion based on evidence.

So, hopefully recognizing my general spirit of agreement with the basic point of the OP, I think you guys are throwing the baby of belief out with the bathwater of faith, or at least Banno is more expressly. And to all of our detriment.

We have to be more careful to protect "belief" and about where we find reasoning.

Or faith is the antithesis of rationality. — Banno

These polar oppositions are distorting both sides, weakening the perfectly reasonable basic point of the OP.

If I put a square on one pole and circle on the other, and say all things in between are square-circles and circle-squares, depending on how far towards one or the other pole one goes, have I said anything at all? The instant you move off the square towards the circle, you have something other than a square, AND other than a circle, something nothing at all like either one. And in fact, nothing at all, because what the hell is a square-circle?

Pitting faith as a circle and reasoning as the square does the same thing. They aren't opposites. Just two different things. (that you rightly point out Anselm and Aquinas were squarely in on the reason side of things, not talking about faith at all, and therefore failing at both!)

But in the process you say things that make it seem like there is no room in the reasonable world for people to believe in things they do not yet know are true through reason. Action in the real world between the poles of knowledge and ignorance, reason and chaos, is impossible.

We need to take all of these terms off of the simple polarizing measuring sticks. There are many more things besides faith and reason to hold in tension to see any of them. Faith is not the opposite of reason, any more than poetry is the opposite of reason, or eulogies are the opposite of reason.

So let's quickly redefine our terms a bit.

If X, then Y.
If Y, then Z.
So if X, then Z.

Roll with me, you know what I mean. This is a syllogism.

What should we make of the first "if" in this syllogism? Can we say instead:

Believing X is the case, Y must follow.
Now holding Y to be necessary, Z must follow.
So once believing X, Z must follow.

I'm trying to breath some life into the "if" in the first form of the argument. In order for the possibility of a logical syllogism to begin, when we say "if X..", in a more naive but just as productive way, we can say "in order for you to follow my logic, take as true, X." Or just, "believe X with me and let's see what logically follows."

Belief is holding that something is true. — Banno

100%. Important for my argument. Important to make a first premise.

How about we clarify "holding that something is.." a bit: Let's say that, what is held, the something we are holding when we are holding a belief true, is knowledge. I'm NOT saying all beliefs are knowledge; I'm saying a belief is a bit of knowledge that we also hold true, I'm just clarifying "something" in "holding that something is" part of Banno's perfectly reasonable assessment of belief.

So the board pieces (which we should resist from placing as polar opposites a bit longer), so far, are at least belief and knowledge. Now let's find what we mean by "reason" in the mix.

Reasoning lies within the syllogism, not before its premises or after its conclusions.

Saying "If X" isn't giving an argument, It isn't reasoning. It's right at the start of the syllogism; it's needed to start it, but no reasoning is yet applied. It's just positing "X". "If X..." or "If you believe X exists..."

We need to set that pole "X" to launch into "then...."
"Then", which refers back to X also compels one to "Y" (if soundly referred and validly compelled). This referring back and compelling forward from X to Y is where the reasoning lives. If Anselm and Aquinas had been a little more careful with their reasoning, their logical steps referring and compelling this X (perfection) with that Y (God), they would have seen that the ontological proof makes a category error, and so their conclusion is not compelled, there is no necessity to thinking "God exists", and the argument collapses.

That is reasoning - something like that. The motivating engine of the syllogism. It lives inside the argument.

Then there is faith.

We don't even need to talk about faith or define it for the OP point to be made. Anselm and Aquinas were trying logical reasoning, did it poorly, and so built nothing of the sort. They did NOT build something to believe in (like a faith), or something to recite as poetry or at a funeral - they built a bad syllogism.

So again, that specific point of the OP as regards whether a person trying to prove God exists was refuting the need for faith in God, if the only article of faith was "God exists", then yes, knowledge (not reason, but knowledge as the result of a reasoned argument), is the anti-thesis of faith.But is faith only about the existence of God? If you know for sure God exists, will you never need faith again for anything? No, there is way more to it, like poetry has more to it than a simple antithesis: "not-syllogistic argument".
What is faith?

To simplify this, let's look at faith as believing. Like we can look at reason more clearly as the motivating engine in the argument called "reasoning", we should look at faith more as another type of engine called "believing".

You are standing on the edge of a cliff wearing a newly designed parachute. Someone wearing the same parachute says "look it's safe" and jumps off the cliff and safely floats to the gorge floor below. Then another person says "look, we've done the math, tested this 1,000 times before, and here, I have a parachute, I'll give you some more assurance" and jumps landing safely. You look at all of the calculations and tolerances and wind conditions, etc., and look at all the test results with 1,000 samples, and you can see with your own eyes and common senses the two jumpers and say "understanding that knowledge isn't perfect, I know enough to say 'I know I will be safe when I jump.'"

What does what you know matter anymore in the instant you jump? Do you actually jump because of what you know? Or what you believe?

To jump, in the moment one acts, it is because you believe your own knowledge. Faith is the engine of action. You might make other people jump to demonstrate all that you know from your calculations and test results, and say "I know you will be safe so you should jump" but when it comes your turn to actually jump, when you take that leap, it is only because of what you believe is true that you act; If you don't want to die, only because you believe you will make it safely, would you yourself, jump. Never because you can know the calculations and test results are sound and validly ordered.

We act out of belief in something true. We act out of belief that something we know is true. When knowing, knowing is complete in the knowledge. When believing, the belief is complete in the truth, and the bridge between the belief and the truth is how one acts. We make the bridge to the truth by acting on the belief, and believing is bridging. Believing is holding something over there as true here in me. It's what I believe as is testified to in words and deeds.

When we act, we may be wrong in our knowledge, or we may be right in our knowledge. That occurs during reasoning after positing the "If....then...therefore..." There is where reasoned knowledge sits.

Every time we honestly mean the statement "therefore..x" we are saying "we believe X." We believe the reasoning is done, and we believe we know our conclusion can be called knowledge. If someone believes the argument is false, we would either look to the premises and conclusions to re-support the conclusion, or we could simply say "Prove it then, because I believe my proof is done." We can call upon them to prove our conclusion again, but the act of "concluding" is a judgment that "the argument is over, it needs no more or less" and in that moment we "are knowing" we call this knowledge because we are believing there is no more need for argument.

Once it is time to act, (even the act of knowing) all the reasoning and knowledge is literally placed behind you and you are now believing it is true because you are acting on that belief. Your reasoning and knowledge support and uphold the moment of action, but that act is not taken unless you also believe something to be true. How else could you aim a gun and hit a target unless you believed that what you know was true?

Faith is tied up with that. We all have faith in our beliefs that we all have, and believe some of the things we know are true. If we didn't, every act would either be compelled by necessity, or utterly random (again another can of worms for another conversation.)

Believing isn't just about whether something exists. It most fully arrives in this mix somewhere outside of the reasoning (again, agreement with the OP), but so close, it is tied to the "If X..." at the beginning, and more completely just after the conclusion, when one acts on that conclusion, and in the acting, the believing enough reasons exist to leap into the unknowable (until the experiment is over and the shoot failed and we all get to know his calculations missed a few variables, he should not have believed they were true, and should not have jumped...)

So...

...faith is the antithesis of rationality. — Banno

...is just not the dialectical picture you needed to draw, or should draw, to draw what I agree with in the OP, namely and to paraphrase, "proof God exists precludes the ability to call the phrase "God exists" an article of faith." This is because, as I would add: faith (believing something as an act of consent) has nothing to do with proof (proving, reasoning)."

And besides, do you mean to say anyone who believes in God should try not to use reason and when they talk about God they are unable to be reasoning? That's the gist of some of this. That's silly rubbish.

It doesn’t matter what you think in your head. It's what your body does, your arms and hands, your legs, feet, your face, your eyes your voice, your feelings. — ENOAH

Hey Enoah. So let’s collapse the dualism. Mind IS body. We live inside the illlusion.

If we collapse it all back together, we can call the illusion reality just the same. Now, like our thoughts were the illusion and the feelings were reality, the thoughts are the feelings (bodies) and illusion is reality (or reality is illusion).

This is how I come to see that knowledge has less power than belief. Belief is what we act on, it’s what we do - the verb believe - and when we most deeply believe something we already trust it so completel, saying “we know it’s true” (like some conclusion from syllogism) sounds weak or hallow, like something we don’t have to act on. Faith and belief are where power flows. Knowledge and simple thoughts are in the mix but lose power and solid form when divorced from belief.

- My comment was about fdrake, not you two. — T Clark

I was just trying to show no parental supervision needed here, in case a mod thought they needed to step into Fdrake’s shoes.