(May 23, 2013 at 2:47 pm)apophenia Wrote:Only someone not knowledgeable about the position of others might contend that because they don't have the same view as oneself, that they are immoral or whatnot for not sharing ones own views.
My view may be an exaggeration, or, at least, not describe all the believers that exist, but I think it's likely closer to the mark. The view advocated here seems to suggest that there is a significant discrepancy between what the person believes, what they represent themselves to believe, and what they are capable of realizing is true, if they'd only let themselves accept and acknowledge that truth. This is the view that religious belief involves cognitive dissonance, a lot of it, and that strong forces must be deployed to maintain that dissonance without reconciling it by acknowledging "The Real Truth[tm]." It is basically the view that all believers are either liars, mentally ill, stupid, or willful dupes, because any "normal" person would recognize the problems with their religion as problems and do something about it. I don't think this is accurate. I don't think being a religious believer requires significantly more cognitive dissonance than any other belief, from libertarianism to vegetarianism. This is a part of the warp and woof of the way humans and reality are, and attempting to explain it by inventing contorted positions to explain it just because it seems strange and inexplicable to you suggests to me that you are simply naive and ignorant. (Do you need to go to great lengths to remain ignorant on these points?) I think perhaps a more neutral example might clarify. As most here are likely to left of center, politically, most people will identify with this. Many times you will hear people maligning Republicans as liars and cheats, and suggesting that they are evil people because it's obvious (to the observer) that what they are doing is wrong; there's no way that someone could be stupid enough to do what that Republican is doing without knowing it's wrong. Are there likely Republicans who do fit this profile? I wouldn't be surprised to find that there are, but we tend to generalize about the whole class, not just those few exemplars. I think it would be unreasonable to believe that Republicans are somehow different than liberals (in meaningfully significant ways) such that Republicanism requires a special explanation for why the typical Republican continues to believe and act as they do (in spite of what "any normal person" would know is true). In the end, this appears to be a way of normalizing your own in-group, and explaining away the existence of people that disagree with you as flawed and defective. (Is it possible that these people, Republicans and believers do the same, and look at you and your beliefs as the abnormal ones?) In the final analysis, we no more need to have a "5 levels of belief" than we need a 5 levels of Republicanism or a 5 levels of Libertarianism or 5 levels of Liberalism; these are all just attempts to explain what you don't understand in terms of things you do understand, and I think they are all fundamentally flawed because they are infected by faulty assumptions and gross ignorance about human psychology, the psychology of religion, and social psychology.
That's not what the five # are about. The way I interpreted them, they are about what sort of believers there are, as outlined in the 5 categories.
Cognitive dissonance is exactly what believers (or anyone for that matter) are confronted with when someone or something proves they are wrong in a particular position but continue to profess their original position and not align their beliefs to what we understand to be reality.
No more is this true in the pointing out internal inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible, compared to pointing out inconsistencies in science. People froth at the mouth for pointing these out, yet scientists welcome it, because it means we have advanced and refined our knowledge of reality as far as we can detect and observe it. This is also the reason why phlogiston or flat-earthism or the Aether or geocentrism isn't touted as champions of truth regardless of what we want to believe. Reality doesn't care what you think, it just is.
However, everyone has some model of reality and from that a set of values that align with that model, some might think that Republicanism is better or Democratic Party is better - this aren't faiths, but difference in opinion on methodology and values.
Cognitive dissonance is invisible to the one that has them (except from the willfully ignorant), which is why I, personally, discuss matters because I want differing views and reasoning to challenge views that I might have cognitive dissonance in. That and for entertainment value.
I'm an apostate, so I have a good understanding of what a believing mind-set consists of as I held it once myself - up until a point where I became painfully honest with myself and jumped all the hoops and faith entrapments that it consisted of. Do other believers do the same? I don't know, that's why I ask them.
