abalonehx
Well-Known Member
Agnosticism isn't the answer to anything, friend.
Jesus is the answer.
Just kidding.
Atheist or Religious
- Thread starter BamaBoyBeRolling
- Start date
Jesus is the answer.
Just kidding.
SirMexiTheGreat
New Member
I too am an ordained Reverend. I was in ministry for 7 and a half years and am now an Anti-theist. *spark* praise jebus
Michael Huntherz
Well-Known Member
@Heisenberg : Dude! Way to pass epistemology, or intro to Philosophy, at least. Glad someone knows his shit.
That was a solid analysis. To wit; I'm an {[evangelical agnostic] atheist}
(I don't know, and you don't either)
Assuming we have to make a decision is dumb. Or perhaps merely unwise.
Last edited:
schnooby
Well-Known Member
im not sure i agree knowledge is a subset of belief, at least in the conventional sense.
i could say "i know im standing on the ground" and most people would agree im telling the truth and testifying to a commonly understood reality.....something that we collectively KNOW.....that there is earth and we are standing on it. Its not something we have to wonder or think long and hard about. I can fall down and the earth smacks me in the face 10 times out of 10. Is that belief? I personally dont see how it could be.
Many other things are a bit more involved philosophically speaking......but i think its important to not confuse belief and knowledge and be able to provide reasons why they are very different.
i could say "i know im standing on the ground" and most people would agree im telling the truth and testifying to a commonly understood reality.....something that we collectively KNOW.....that there is earth and we are standing on it. Its not something we have to wonder or think long and hard about. I can fall down and the earth smacks me in the face 10 times out of 10. Is that belief? I personally dont see how it could be.
Many other things are a bit more involved philosophically speaking......but i think its important to not confuse belief and knowledge and be able to provide reasons why they are very different.
Michael Huntherz
Well-Known Member
This will keep you busy, this end of the discussion goes deep, yo. Spend a week or so reading the articles this page links to, really great stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Epistemology
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
Beliefs are representations of what we think is accurate about the world. If I believe a statement or proposition, it's a signal that I think the statement is accurate to a high degree. So, If I believe a statement that says I will fall if I walk off a cliff, it means I think the statement fairly represents a truth about reality. Beliefs can be justified by knowledge, which is objectively demonstrable, but they can also be justified by other things like faith, inductive reasoning, and intuition, which are often subjective. Often, belief actually comes from a mixture of these things.
So, I can believe that I will die some day, which is justified by the knowledge that everything that has ever lived has died. I can also believe that I will have an afterlife, which is not justified by any knowledge, but rather is based on faith.
There is, of course, room for debate on the proper definitions of these terms. That is actually an important part of philosophy. However, for the purpose of discussions such as these, it's okay to offer an operational definition so that we can all agree that we are talking about the same concepts. That doesn't necessarily mean we are insisting that these definitions apply to all situations.
What one has to be careful of is that the definitions serve to facilitate clear communication rather than to merely serve to bolster our arguments. IOW, it isn't fair or productive to switch among definitions in the middle of a conversation.
Here is an example: New-agers will often say something like "science tells us that we are all made of energy, and crystals can influence this energy." When you point out that science also says energy is a measurable phenomenon and ask how they quantify "life energy", they will tell you that they are not using "energy" in a scientific way, but rather in a metaphorical sense. They'll say that the term "energy" is a sort of place-holder term to describe a concept different from what science means. Yet, they will then switch back and say something like "Einstein said that energy cannot be created or destroyed, so our life energy survives when our bodies die." So, they are happy to switch between definitions as it suits their arguments. This is known as equivocation.
Gregor Eisenhorn
Well-Known Member
60% atheist, 40% religious, it's complicated.
Michael Huntherz
Well-Known Member
This is almost exactly what I didn't want to type out when I posted the Wikipedia link, hahaha. Thanks for being less lazy than I in this regard.
Bulletproof_Love
Well-Known Member
I know exactly what you mean. You are but you aren't at the same time. Like you know it's illogical but it justifies the unfathomable. It feels like nothing random. Everything has a pattern.
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
Keep in mind that patterns and coincidences are an expected feature of randomness. You've stated this very well when you say it "feels" like nothing is random. The human brain has a tendency to assign agency to the patterns it perceives. IOW, our minds aren't happy to simply notice patterns, they also want to think that something intelligent is behind them, and this notion occurs without conscious thought. That's because evolution has primed us to be this way.
There are two types of errors which can be made when it comes to pattern recognition. We can notice patterns that aren't really there, known as a type one error. Or, we can fail to notice patterns that are really there, known as a type two error. Evolutionary speaking, it's less costly to make a type one error. If we notice a rustling in the grass and assume it's a tiger, we run away. If it were just the wind, and not a tiger, so what? The mistake hasn't cost us anything. If we notice a rustling and fail to recognize that it might be a tiger, the mistake can cost us our lives. So, we have evolved to favor type one errors, meaning our brains instinctively err on the side of caution.
At the same time, our brains have not had much pressure to evolve an instinctive understanding of probability and statistics, which means we tend to over or under estimate the likelihood of events and coincidences, and misunderstand the nature of randomness.
"Not understanding just how much of your life is governed by randomness generates many a fallacious belief about the way that the world works. It should be clearly understood that randomness creates coincidence. That is to say, if there were no coincidences in life, we could speculate that some outside force is controlling the events in our lives. However, with true randomness comes the expectation that coincidences will happen: there will be cancer clusters, your friend will call you just when you were thinking about them, and last night’s dream will have somehow 'predicted' the events of the following day." - Kyle Hill
Last edited:
abalonehx
Well-Known Member
Yes, I know I will die based on countless examples that prove this is the only likely outcome, while considering the zero examples that refute it. Evidence. And that's the problem I have with religious faith. No evidence.
Michael Huntherz
Well-Known Member
There's the evidence of personal experience, and that is neither extraordinary proof of a fantastic claim, nor is it something that can be refuted. If someone says they had a religious experience and a literal conversation with what they call God, then you really can't refute it. It doesn't prove anything, either, external to the experiencer.
Michael Huntherz
Well-Known Member
Speaking of Wikipedia article chains that will eat a week of your life, the List of Cognitive Biases changed my life for the better, I am now more mindful of the way my mind lies to me constantly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
abalonehx
Well-Known Member
Not really that complicated. Evidence from personal experience is based on physical actions of evidence. If your having conversations with a higher power you need to show some evidence.
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
Personal experience is very convincing the the person having the experience, and it's very hard to counter. At the same time, personal experience has no value to anyone not having the experience, because it's subjective.
So, if someone has had acupuncture and found it to be useful, no amount of scientific evidence is likely to convince them that it's bunk. At the same time, what they find extremely convincing has zero value to the rest of us. We can literally have tens of thousands of people saying that they know acupuncture works because of an experience, yet still not have any accurate indication that it is real. IOW, just because a bunch of people say "it worked for me" doesn't mean at all that it works, yet those people will always believe it does.
Religious experiences are the same. We can have millions of people saying they have experienced God, yet that tells us nothing about the likelihood that God exists. Still, you most likely never convince those people of that fact. Personal experience is very hard to refute.
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
Ah but what about the bias bias? Research shows that the more you learn about biases, the more you become biased in thinking that you can avoid them. They are like the Chinese finger trap of the mind. The more you try to break free, the stronger their grip becomes. As you say, it's best to become mindful of them so we can keep from embracing them, but we can never exile them from our thoughts. To do that, we need a process which exists outside the mind, such as the scientific method.
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
Nope, I am saying that personal experience is as convincing as evidence in the mind of the person having the experience. I am speaking of personal experience as opposed to a controlled experience, like a scientific experiment. Personal experience is unreliable because the person having the experience is not capable of considering all of the factors, prejudices and biases they are subject to, and because our experience of the world is limited by our perception. Yet, the default position of our minds is to find personal experience very convincing, sometimes more convincing than facts.