<p>My only point is that it is important to be capable of going into a doubting frame sometimes to remind us that the constructs on which we rely need not be universally sound, and might in fact turn harmful now and then. It takes some subtlety to be able to benefit from the positive support that faith provides without falling prey to a much more harmful kind of dogmatism."</p>
<p>Firstly, thanks for the compliment. Secondly…</p>
<p>“I guess slightly more ontologically tentative minds would refer to the faith whose importance you emphasize as a set of important working assumptions without which it is hard to find fulfillment. In this sense, we are all in a “faithful” frame most of the time.”</p>
<p>Yep, I agree. I think most people are well-adjusted and reasonably happy, and this is one of the reasons why. It is painfully obvious when someone lacks this essential faith, and the few people I know who do are miserable.</p>
<p>“My only point is that it is important to be capable of going into a doubting frame sometimes…”</p>
<p>I also agree here. To take the example of faith in yourself, you generally want to have faith in only some of the aspects of your abilities. To use an extreme example, I have faith in my ability to spell the word “the” correctly but I don’t have faith in my “ability” to perform open heart surgery. </p>
<p>Most of the things I have faith in are very personal. Confidence, love, loyalty, etc. Scientific ideas and such don’t generally fall under my defintion of faith because in my opinion there is no such thing as a “scientific fact”. Our ideas about science are changing every day… </p>
<p>In conclusion, I guess the easiest way to say what I attempted to say in the previous two paragraphs is that the faith I am talking about is more important emotionally than intellectually. Of course this is because we are talking about happiness, an emotion. We can discuss all day long the effects of faith on truth and intelligence, but at the end of the day there are many dumb happy people and few happy intelligent people.</p>
<p>“Ignorance is bliss” and “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know”. Hemingway said the latter… I’ve never actually looked up a source for the former, heh.</p>