Why Can't others See?

[Ryft]

Very few people believe in God. ... A belief in God would require 100% obsessive devotion, influencing every single waking moment of their lives of this brief life on earth. But none of these billions of people who profess belief in God live their lives in this fashion, save for a very few. The majority believe in the usefulness of their beliefs, an earthly and practical utility, but they have no belief in any underlying reality.

There are a couple of sentences I disagree with in your overall post, but otherwise... <enthusiastic standing ovation>

I had to read it a couple of times to really appreciate the profundity and eloquence of your post. Very well said, and practically spot on. Outstanding thought piece. This one earned a serious rep point. (However, I would have chosen to use the term 'faith' over 'belief' since it is the former you are describing, while the latter is indeed mere intellectual assent.)

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Very few people believe in God. ... A belief in God would require 100% obsessive devotion, influencing every single waking moment of their lives of this brief life on earth. But none of these billions of people who profess belief in God live their lives in this fashion, save for a very few. The majority believe in the usefulness of their beliefs, an earthly and practical utility, but they have no belief in any underlying reality.

There are a couple of sentences I disagree with in your overall post, but otherwise... <enthusiastic standing ovation>

I had to read it a couple of times to really appreciate the profundity and eloquence of your post. Very well said, and practically spot on. Outstanding thought piece. This one earned a serious rep point. (However, I would have chosen to use the term 'faith' over 'belief' since it is the former you are describing, while the latter is indeed mere intellectual assent.)

Agreed.


I apologise;it seems my initial impression of you was mistaken.

Your posts actually reinforce my position;viz; that in context, most religious beliefs are rational with a consistent logic. That doesn't make them right,merely rational.

I think I'll continue to decline to argue with you,just as I would with a Jesuit; you'd hand me my head.

[Ryft]

I apologize. It seems my initial impression of you was mistaken. Your posts actually reinforce my position, viz. that in context, most religious beliefs are rational with a consistent logic. That doesn't make them right, merely rational.

I think I'll continue to decline to argue with you, just as I would with a Jesuit; you'd hand me my head.

I appreciate your candor, padraic. Thank you very much. I'm sorry you don't wish to argue with me, however, because that's one voice that isn't there to challenge or influence my thinking.

Question: If it turned out that your view would not stand up to scrutiny, wouldn't you want to know? It's perplexing to me only because I personally take that very stance.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Question: If it turned out that your view would not stand up to scrutiny, wouldn't you want to know? It's perplexing to me only because I personally take that very stance.

Of course.That's not why I won't argue with you. I don't conflate winning an argument with being right [necessarily]. My respect is for you,not for theology,of which I've read only a little. I did a minor in philosophy at university,but am no philosopher.Nor do I have any training in apologetics which I suspect you have. Plus, as I'm being candid; I'm probably not as open minded as I'd like to think I am.


To put it simply "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still"

My position is God cannot be reasoned into or out of existence. I demand empirical evidence and am UNABLE to accept any thing less.

My atheism is not a choice.It is the result of an often painful journey which took over 20 years.

I look at theology the same way as I look at the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea; I FEEL they're wrong,put can't put my finger on the error. (took me ages just to work out one Zeno's simpler paradoxes; viz"that dog is your father")

So,no I won't argue with you if I can help it.

[Ryft]

I don't conflate winning an argument with being right (necessarily) ...

It's not about winning an argument, in my view. To me that seems like the wrong way to look at it. (That's my own perspective. I'm not suggesting that you should adopt my view of things, of course; this is simply an arena where different points of view have the potential to influence our thinking in one way or another.) When it comes to ideas, beliefs, views, etc., I adopt certain scientific principles in my approach; among other things, it has to be free from fatal errors (e.g., contradiction, self-stultification, invalidation, etc.). Since it is probable that I will adopt ideas or views I like (although not always), I have to acknowledge that self-examination is not enough because favourable bias may blind me to a serious problem that someone else might easily see. For this reason I have subjected my ideas and beliefs to the fires of critical discourse, not for the sake of winning a debate—for I'm not trying to convince anyone—but because I want to be made aware of any errors it has, quantitatively (how many the errors) and qualitatively (how serious the errors). And there is no one more able to do that than someone who is an opponent of the idea or belief. If it has either fatal errors or too many significant errors, I will toss it—because I won't be doing myself any favours holding on to ideas or beliefs that are horribly erroneous.

This is the background my question to you came from, when I asked, "If it turned out that your view would not stand up to scrutiny, wouldn't you want to know?" The way I look at the thing, it's not about winning debates or scoring points. It's about finding out if this boat has any holes, because I'm not a fan of sinking.

But like I said, that's my own perspective, and I'm not suggesting that you should adopt it.

[Dotard]

Thread Hijackers.

[Purple Rabbit]

Go with the flow, Dotard. It was a good posting, that last one of Arcanus. Indeed the more interesting question is not why educated people believe in the supernatural, but why so few people are interested at all in basic philosohical questions. My impression is that most (believer or non-believer alike) try to escape any discussion on these topics. Hell, my own children think that I am a nerd with this forum bullshit all the time. They probably are right.

To answer your question Dotard from my POV, it seems odd to me to expect that education alone can totally remove cultural, social and above all typical human traits like thinking in schemes of punishment and reward, agent and object patterns, fear, overactive pattern recognizing and the like. Scientists are human too.

One more thing, the theists here almost all seem to claim authority on the subject of believing, assuming that atheists present here, have no clue. I think a number of atheists present here have been there, have been raised in religious families and found themselves eventually rowing upstream. If it s OK to think that children actually choose to believe in the god of their parents, because they say so when they're young, when you feed them those communion wafers (sic), then it is OK to claim authority on the subject as an atheistic adult who as a child believed in god.

[Beholden]

I think the most interesting cases are as much psychology as philosophy. Free will, rebellion, conflict and conformity... If a child is taught to think a certain way from birth, do they really have any free will to examine and choose when they get older? The deck has already been stacked in one favour, one could say, but the point also can be made that if there truly is free will, the journey will be made, and the belief examined.

From my experience, it seems the Seekers are the vast minority. I was born to a "non-practicing" Catholic family, though apparently I was baptised Catholic. I don't recall, and I don't particularly care. I sought for the better part of two decades, from when I was old enough to question and reason, through thousands of books, inteviews, debates and discussions, to the point when the end of the trail was growing quite near, and the decision made that none of it could be right. My father never made the journey, and has remained undecided on the god question his entire life, as has my brother.

Conversely, there are others that start under very similar circumstances of a "non-practicing" family that walk the paths of religion and find one that suits them just fine. Such was the case of my mother, who now is both Southern Baptist and Messianic Jewish...

To the original question, "why can't others see?" people as a whole can easily hold to internally inconsistant ideas when they are not examined side by side. Compartmentalisation is in many ways a self-defense mechanism, and as life grows increasingly complex, so will 'separate but equal' standings within an individual's mind. Without deep, difficult, and ponderous reflection, there can be no reconcilliation, and the vast majority of people are not willing to dedicate the time and effort, the emotional turmoil, to evaluating who they are, where they stand, and what they stand for.

It's a long, hard road, and a one-way ticket to boot, with no promise of anything at the end. If someone walked up to you in the street with a one-way bus ticket from Boston to San Diego, or from Brussels to Bangkok, how likely would you be to take it? How many out of a thousand, or a hundred thousand would really be willing to risk it all right there on the spot?

[Pippy]

It's not at all that we theists claim to represent all theists.

When you say "all believers believe that the bible is the word of god"I have to say: "I am a believer, I don't hold the bible to be the word of god,". I am not trying to represent all believers, in fact I am trying not to let you do that same thing.

If all believers have to believe in divinity of the bible, and I am a believer, I must believe in the divinity of the bible. It is fallacious as soon as I say that I doubt the bible. I am not speaking for all believers. I am speaking for myself, because you are the ones that bring up all believers. I can than speak for myself as a defense, to show you are incorrect.

[Dotard]

It's not at all that we theists claim to represent all theists.

John Hagee represents all Christians. Jeez... everybody knows that!