(November 14, 2014 at 10:05 am)Drich Wrote: I think you are disliked because you follow a very well worn and predictiable 'I just lost my faith path, and I have closed my mind to all other inputs excpet the inputs that support what I want to believe.' It gets old even among atheists.That sounds like pretty standard human behavior, to me. Our minds work diligently to reinforce what we already believe, especially if it's something we want to continue to believe. When that belief is shaken, our first response is to dig our heels in and hold on to the belief, not to let it go. Which is why large shifts in belief systems are usually so traumatic. It also leads to the new belief quickly becoming just as entrenched as the old one.
The atheist is probably holding to his beliefs with some degree of close-mindedness and protecting it with biases. But that's no different than what he was doing when he was a theist, and it's no different than what the theist is doing. And it only really "gets old" to the person who hopes for you to change, but doesn't realize that his mind works the same way. I think it's almost impossible for any of us to be truly open-minded, even when we make an effort to be. Our mind wants to be closed. We tell ourselves we are open-minded because it sounds like something good, and we hate to think that we are close-minded, because that would make us like everyone else.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
