How to Think Rationally

Is Faith Reliable?

     If someone claims that there is a method of knowing truth outside the scientific method, and that thing is not demonstrable, then they are likely inventing somthing that is not reliable. 

The definition of faith is effectively belief in something without good reason. It is an antonym to "understanding" or "knowing." 

For the rest of this book I will be referring to "truth" as far as we can know it, as discussed earlier. 

If you know something to be true, you wouldn't say you have faith in it. You would say you "know" it. Faith is not required for understood knowledge. Faith is reserved for guesswork, unobserved and undemonstrated things that were not shown to be consistent or objective.

So how could faith possibly be reliable?

When asked, many people will result to feelings or subjective emotions. We know subjectivity is just that, and like any experiment can have multiple different causes. Correlation does not equal causation. Especially if you cannot establish that the suspected cause exists. 

That would be the equivalent of our experiment of A and B together always gives us C, except that we have not defined what A is. 

If I roll a dice I can have faith that it will land on a two. I can have faith that it will land on a three. I can have faith in anything or everything. Faith can be wrong and misguided. 

The ability for something to be wrong or misguided means it is not reliable. 

It is okay to have faith in something. But a line is drawn when your faith begins to contradict observable consistency or when it is unfounded on a good reason. 

Unfounded faith with no good reason to justify it is just random chaotic thinking, speculation, conspiracy, or guesswork. 

The only thing wrong with having faith is asserting something is true based on faith alone. 

It is a position that cannot be proven right or wrong, because it does not make a valid claim to test. Essentially you are asserting nothing.