atheism, philosophy and emotional immaturity

[jstrodel]

Atheists not only trust authorities like Theists do, they trust their own reasoning capabilities. For example, they believe so and so is using fallacious reasoning, but they trust they themselves have used proper reasoning in rejecting "proofs" or "evidence" in favor of God. They realize others are in error but they will have faith they are not in error.

They also have to have faith in free-will to function. They also have to have faith in praise and value.

Perhaps it's not all about "thinking for yourself". Perhaps we need to discuss with experts, debate with one another, get feed back to our own thoughts....

I think a little distrust in one own's reasoning capabilities is also healthy and there needs to be balanced approach with regards to learning from authority and thinking for yourself.

I think distrust in ones reasoning capacity is very healthy. Too much reasoning and taking oneself too seriously leads to pride, and it is authoritarian, because people always act on their beliefs and they affect others.

The will does not belong to the individual, it belongs to the whole community that it effects, knowledge is not individualistic, it is collectivistic, people can question and learn but they have to rely on others and listen to others and learn from people that are different from them.

This is what love requires, pride says I can make up my own standard and impose it on others. Love says that what others believe is important because I don't always know everything, and I don't know how to care about others.

Trust and humility are characteristics of intellectual virtues just as rigor and clarity are. If someone only has rigor and clarity in perceiving their first principles with respect to the things they care about, they build systems and impose them on others without concern for the very likely possibility that their systems will be based on ideas that are not shared by others, though they must accept them.


Life is complicated. Love requires people to trust in established means of understanding the world so that the weakness of each can be offset by the strength of the whole.