Is Unbelief Possible?

[Hezekiah]

Beliefs can be true and false. The message you are looking at exists and if you believe it you're right.
If I say that I own a spaceship and you believe it that belief is false.

Yea! Exactly, I guess that's the direction of the idea I'm looking for. If belief is unreliable, why believe in anything at all? Why not choose to surpress your belief or suspend it?

[tor]

Beliefs can be true and false. The message you are looking at exists and if you believe it you're right.
If I say that I own a spaceship and you believe it that belief is false.

Yea! Exactly, I guess that's the direction of the idea I'm looking for. If belief is unreliable, why believe in anything at all? Why not choose to surpress your belief or suspend it?

I believe I have a monitor in front of me because I can see it and I see message at it which I type with my hands. Why would I want to suspend it?

[Hezekiah]

I have Hitchens' Razor stropped and ready, Min.

For the record and those who may not know, the Razor is usually rendered as: "That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

Again, I'm not trying to argue for or against the existence of God. But I would be happy with continuing this conversation in a more relevant thread.

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Yea! Exactly, I guess that's the direction of the idea I'm looking for. If belief is unreliable, why believe in anything at all? Why not choose to surpress your belief or suspend it?

I believe I have a monitor in front of me because I can see it and I see message at it which I type with my hands. Why would I want to suspend it?

You make a good point. I was presented this question from Buddhism, and it made me think. That which is imperfect and unreliable, such a beliefs, logic, and desire can't be trusted because they are illusions. I guess the idea is to rid yourself of the illusions of belief, logic, and desire in someway, and I recognized that these ideas seem step on the toes of the atheist as well and instead of hearing from one side, I honestly just wanted to hear thoughts from both.

[Whateverist]

From a very quick scan through this thread I got nothing. What is this talk of abandoning all belief? How exactly would you do that? Do you believe you could?

My suggestion is to submit belief to that which you have reason to think true regardless of where it leads you. Strive to desire the truth above all. Don't play favorites.

But maybe I didn't understand the OP's intent.

[tor]

Hazekiah why don't you abandon all beliefs and tell us how it goes.

[rexbeccarox]

I think the problem here is the either/or thinking. You can believe something without evidence, with evidence, with proof, and all the stages in between. I believe the sun will rise in the morning. The evidence of that has been consistent in the 37 years I've been alive. I believe my roommate will pay her share of the rent on time because the evidence of that has been consistent for the past year and a half. I believe a friend of mine will text me tomorrow around noon because it happens about 80% of the time around noon on Fridays; similarly, I believe if she doesn't text me around that time, my sister will, because that's what happens.

The beliefs you want to suspend are the ones that fall on or below the lower spectrum of amount of evidence, IMO. The ones you want to research, think about, and either promote or demote are in the middle, and the higher end contains the beliefs that are worth cultivating; even if you're wrong, you'll learn something.

[max-greece]

I would have to give up too many of my belief's in order to accept a belief in God.

Having said that I'd just like to quickly touch on belief as there appears to be an inadequacy of language in describing it.

There are belief's which I would call operational beliefs. These are things like: If I get out of bed in the morning I believe the floor will be strong enough to support me. I cannot see the kitchen at this moment in time but I believe it exists and so on.

These belief's are necessary for me to operate. Were I to spend my entire life questioning these beliefs or assumptions I would not be able to function and, as someone else said, I would never get out of bed.

I distinguish these beliefs from non-operational beliefs. I believe (or accept currently might be more accurate) that the universe started with the Big Bang. I believe that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago when a large object struck the Yuckatan peninsula and so on.

These are non-operational beliefs. My day to day existence is not dependent upon them.

They are, however, different from religious beliefs in that were the current theories in science to change and other, better explanations were to arise I would accept the new theories until such time and those were also displaced.

In other words my belief is really one that science steadily increases our knowledge and understanding of things and I will just accept the current theories as the best we have until they are no longer.

Another major difference between these beliefs and religious beliefs is that of worship. I hold no beliefs that require or even recommend worship.

Now I'm kinda winging it here so there may well be other forms of belief in addition to those I have mentioned but what I want to get across as strongly as I can is that religious belief, in my opinion, cannot be put into the same category as other types of belief. To do so is to play a game of semantics with language which is why I talked about its inadequacy at the beginning of this response.

On another subject I want to respond to this:

You make a good point. I agree. I'll elaborate just a bit why I sparked this question: As I'm sure you may already know, Charles Sanders Price coined the phrase, "phaneron" a world filtered through our senses. Which is different from what reality actually is. This struck me because if I were to trust anything, I would have to accept the information through my faulty brain and senses ("faulty" because of optical illusions, tactile illusion, etc. Illusions able to trick the mind). So I immediately began to realize, I can't entirely trust myself in my quest for truth. I won't drone on too much, but long story short, everything is filtered through a three-pound piece of meat called a brain and I began to ask the question, "if I can't trust myself, who or what can I trust" and that's what lead me to the idea of God. Now I'm not trying to convince you of anything but rather just give you a peak into my journey so far, and maybe get some critique (which I have thankfully been getting a great deal of!)

Number of points/questions:

Why are you assuming there is a single reality? If there is a brick wall in front of me I see a solid object. An electron would see something much more porous that it could probably pass through and a neutrino would see nothing at all. Why would one of these be correct and the others wrong? Surely we are merely proving that reality is relative here.

Yes the brain filters and sorts information but that is part and parcel of your mind. The brain isn't filtering things to separately from the mind - lets not assume duality here. The brain does this so you can be operational. Just because there may be other ways of seeing or experiencing something doesn't mean either yours or their's is wrong. Relativity again.

The funny thing is that you get all the way to questioning your brain and then conclude God - which is a product of your brain, or that of others. I say this not as a dig to imply God is purely in your own mind but to point out that the God concept is one that isn't supported by any of your senses or inputs to your brain. You can't see God, touch him, smell him, taste him and so on.

Sorry - went on too long again.

[fr0d0]

I believe in God because it works for me and I can trust that it will continue to do so. I don't see how anyone can believe in anything unreliable. How does that work? First you need to trust that it works.

[tor]

I believe in God because it works for me and I can trust that it will continue to do so. I don't see how anyone can believe in anything unreliable. How does that work? First you need to trust that it works.

Some unreliable people exist. Unreliable cars exist. Unreliable organizations exist. Plenty of unreliable things do exist.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I've been an atheist my entire life. I've never once had a belief in any sort of deity,