RE: Religious Faith vs. Atheist Conviction
April 9, 2014 at 6:41 pm
(This post was last modified: April 9, 2014 at 6:43 pm by Simon Moon.)
I have several Christian friends that I go surfing with on a weekly basis. They are great people, that are otherwise well grounded. I have no reason to question the conviction of their beliefs.
I wouldn't call my atheism a 'conviction'. My atheism is a provisional position, and open to alteration if presented with evidence.
No. It's called 'compartmentalization'.
She, like my friends mentioned above, have probably set aside a place in their minds where her Christian beliefs will be immune from the same sort of critical analysis that they apply to other claims. My friends have no problems at all evaluating other supernatural claims, and rejecting them for the right reasons (lack of demonstrable evidence), but they are unable or unwilling to use the same level of critical thinking with their own beliefs.
You can almost smell the burning gears their minds are going through from the cognitive dissonance.
Quote: It struck me that her faith seems to be at least as strong as my atheistic conviction.
I wouldn't call my atheism a 'conviction'. My atheism is a provisional position, and open to alteration if presented with evidence.
Quote:Is she really stark raving insane? Is she the world's most convincing liar?
No. It's called 'compartmentalization'.
She, like my friends mentioned above, have probably set aside a place in their minds where her Christian beliefs will be immune from the same sort of critical analysis that they apply to other claims. My friends have no problems at all evaluating other supernatural claims, and rejecting them for the right reasons (lack of demonstrable evidence), but they are unable or unwilling to use the same level of critical thinking with their own beliefs.
You can almost smell the burning gears their minds are going through from the cognitive dissonance.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
