Cognitive dissonance

[robvalue]

Cognitive dissonance is defined as:

The state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change.

I thought it would be interest to collect some examples of this. It's an extremely common trait among theists, in fact I'm not sure I've ever talked to one who doesn't display it in at least some areas.

The human brain seems extremely good at this, and I've heard before the explanation is to be found in evolution. I won't go into that right now, but of course feel free to discuss.

Here are some of the most common examples of contradictory beliefs one person holds at the same time. They do so because one side of the belief cannot account for everything, and so they sometimes need the opposite to be true when questioned. Do they realize they do this? Do they care? It would drive me stark raving mad.

I'm not suggesting every (or indeed any) theist holds all of these contradictory pairs in their head. But they probably hold at least one, if not several. What others can you come up with?

1A) God is all powerful. God can do whatever he likes, whenever he likes, however he likes.
1B) God has arbitrary restrictions. These depend on the situation, and they explain why he had to do something in what seems like a sub-optimal way.

2A) God has a plan, and the plan doesn't change.
2B) God answers prayers, thus changing his plan.

3A) God knows everything we're going do to, before we do it, because he knows everything.
3B) We are free to make genuine choices.

4A) God is all good.
4B) God allows Satan to do evil things, even though he could easily stop him.

5A) Morality is about being a good person.
5B) Morality is about doing what god wants.

6A) Faith means my religion is correct.
6B) Faith does not mean other religions are correct.

7A) The bible is the perfect word of god.
7B) The bible has translation errors/has been corrupted/can be taken metaphorically whenever you feel like it.

8A) Evolution is true.
8B) Creationism is true.

9A) We are totally free to decide whether or not we follow god.
9B) We are offered a massive incentive for following god, and threatened with terrible punishment if we do not.

10A) It is important to god that we all have free will.
10B) It is OK for god not to step in when someone's free will is being violated by being raped or imprisoned; the free will of the offender must be preserved, but not the victim.

11A) We can know god's plan is good.
11B) We can't understand god's plan.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

12A)  God loves me unconditionally
12B)  God has announced that he has provided for my eternal torment if I don't meet certain conditions.

Boru

[Bob Kelso]

10C) It was ok for god to step into human events in the past, including actually changing the literal will of a particular Egyptian ruler.
10D) Evidently it's still ok for god to step in in the present time, at least according to every Christian that tries to sell some "My aunt almost got Hot Cosby'd but Jebus stepped in and made the rapist piss himself." story in an attempt to grant credence to supernatural claims.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

13A) There are angels, cherubim and seraphim, non-human Beings who intervene in human affairs.
13B) The are no banshees, pucas or clurachans, because these are non-human Beings who intervene in human affairs.

Boru

[SteelCurtain]

Hot Cosby'd is now part of my repertoire.

[bennyboy]

Sorry, I think you are misunderstanding the term-- talking about simply ontradictory ideas is not why the term "cognitive dissonance" was coined. It's more about the psychological state of conflict, which results in potentially harmful levels of projection, neurosis, psychosis, etc. and possibly even a nervous breakdown.

Another way to look at it is the stress that is caused when evidence contradicts deeply-seated beliefs, causing an increasingly taxing workload on the brain as it attempts to reconcile a more-and-more complicated narrative with the real world. Eventually, the energy required to maintain the broken world view becomes such a huge drain that the person will either have a nervous breakdown or at least a moment of revelation, in which they necessarily give up their views.

In short, the things you listed aren't cognitive dissonance. If a person struggles with them deeply and becomes troubled and stressed by that conflict, then that's cognitive dissonance. But we all know many Christians who are capable of holding obviously contrary positions and sleeping like fucking babies.


By the way, I think one of the most common ideas with regard to cognitive dissonance is the idea of immortality of the self or a loved one. And in a sense, I'd say that the Christian idea of heaven actually REDUCES the cognitive dissonance, by letting one imagine a virtual loved one living on in heaven, thereby removing the need to re-work one's world view when a parent, sibling, or child dies. Atheists often overlook this fact-- that faith can facilitate one's ability to keep getting up and showing up to work in the morning, even when something horrible has happened.

[robvalue]

OK cool, point taken Thank you. I wasn't aware that further effects had to be caused by it.

This can just be about contradictory beliefs then, which is what I was aiming for.

14A) God is in control of nature and acts through it.
14B) When bad things happen in nature, it's "just how nature works".

[bennyboy]

Wait, I want to talk about cognitive dissonance.

What do you think about the idea that the Christian (or other faith-based) world view is more efficient than reality-based views?

[robvalue]

Sure, we can talk about that.

More efficient... well, that depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you just want answers to big questions, believing a bunch of pre-packaged garbage is a lot quicker than putting in the effort to learn things.

It's also an efficient way to get killed or jailed if you actually take it seriously.

And while the majority of people in your country favour theists over atheists, it's efficient in that sense I suppose. But you could fake it and get the same result.

[bennyboy]

By "more efficient," I mean avoiding cognitive dissonance, and thereby keeping the brain functioning normally. It seems to me that in some cases, ignorance really is bliss.