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Do you believe what you claim to believe?

devolved

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That first point is only true of fundamentalist religions. Most churches and other religions expect a certain degree of latitude in terms of the personal opinions of their members. Fewer churches police peoples opinions of what their members believe.

My question isn't merely directed towards the freedom to claim different beliefs. For example, you've talked about Eastern Orthodox, which is not far from the culturally-upheld collective belief that's a part of identity... like Judaism or Islam. Modern form of Judaism is more in line with ideals that permeate certain culture rather than the reality of narrative behind these ideals. Nearly half of Israel as a nation defines itself as secular, yet there isn't a single car on the street on Shabbat, because it's a cultural holiday... just like Thanksgiving in the US.

In Eastern Orthodox countries, where I grew up, religious experience is not congregational, hence it's rather paradoxical when you consider the implications. People generally come in "church" where there are no pews to sit. They light candles. They pray and listen to priests sing and recite some psalms. They leave some "intervention cash", and that tends to be the extend of the religious involvement. The rest tends to be very much cultural.

But that's NOT what I'm talking about. All of us participate in culture is some way or another without actually to the "original reality" behind any given claim. But, there's option to reject virtually all of the cultural claims and merely adopt these against a different and more modern narrative. Very few people would make arguments against the ideas behind the reality of Santa or Halloween evil spirits. We intuitively understand the BS factor, and see it as a fun cultural engagement.

Generally, that's not the state of Christianity today. Especially in the US. If one is to voice an opinion such as "Yeah, I don't think that Moses or Abraham were the historical figures, but rather a storytelling vehicles that compiled certain cultural ideals... and it seems to be similar for Jesus as historical figure too"... one is likely to land on the fringe side of even more liberal churches. There's simply very little place for vocalizing such belief, although in practice it becomes the most culturally-relevant expression of every day life of any given Christian in the US.
 
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devolved

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What idea are you wanting to contribute that churches aren't listening to?

I don't think it matters when it comes to the overarching concept of how the structural and operational means of integrating various ideas and concepts set up in vast majority of the churches today... which generally loosely follow the Catholic model of the past... which separates between the "priesthood" or "clergy" class and the "Laity". It's not a egalitarian community where "best ideas" make it to the top. It's more of a dictatorial set-up where people are free to voice their disagreements, BUT if these disagreements don't loosely align with predominant views of the clergy... then these are set aside on the fringe and are treated as such.
 
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devolved

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It comes down to whether or not you're willing to accept that certain claims are actually true. Even if you don't believe a claim, it could still be true. The claim itself becomes the evidence for the subject of the claim.

For example: It's true that my house is brown.

Are you willing to accept that my house is brown based on my claim alone? I'd hope so because it's actually true. If you're not willing to accept that my house is brown based on my claim alone, this does not change the fact that my house is actually brown.

I think that amount of believably we allocate to any given claim would be proportional to how unique such claim would be. "A brown house" isn't really that unusual of a claim to suspend one's belief. It makes very little existential difference whether your house is brown or yellow, and I've actually experienced brown houses... especially since I live in one. Thus your claim isn't a big deal.

Now, if you would have claimed that your house is made of cheese... that's an entirely different claim that I would withhold my belief and demand some evidence, because it's not my general experience to see that houses are made of cheese.

I hope you understand the difference... although seemingly you don't so far.

This demonstrates a certain amount of trust in truth that we all must have in order to accept claims that are not supported by additional evidence. This could also be labelled as faith in truth.

This also explains the logic behind what it means to believe something.

Again, the amount of trust is generally allotted by how common is the claim to our experience. There are plentiful brown houses. I don't know any that are made of cheese. Perhaps they are, but it's not the same type of claim.

A claim about resurrecting people and supernatural beings... in light of our general everyday experience would be like claiming to live in a house made out of cheese, as opposed to a claim of living in a brown house.


Right now, you either believe that my house is brown because I said it is, or you don't trust my word and therefore require supporting evidence in order to believe me. I can provide supporting evidence, but that would be beside the point. The point is that my claim is evidence of truth. Now if it turns out that my house is not brown, then you can call me a liar.

NO. NO. AND NO. A claim is NEVER an evidence of truth :), and that's where the majority of confusion resides, because most of Christians in my experience end up confusing the claim and the evidence.

An example for evidence for a brown house would be a photo, or a piece of the siding. In context of a court we may accept the testimony of impartial witnesses to confirm the claim, especially if they are experts in some field that they specialize in.

All of these are not the same as you merely saying "my house is brown and that's the truth". Yes, the claim may reflect the truth, but we are talking about methods that lead to most accurate representation of reality that guards against various fallacies inherent in our human experience, whether these are intentional or not.

You are confusing the model of reality as it exists in your head and "undeniable truth". In many instances individual perception fails, especially when it comes to recollecting things from memory. Memory is generally representational (not photographic) and our mind tends to fill the gaps with our past or present experiences and beliefs. There are plentiful research done on the subject matter:

http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/eyewitnessmemory.html

So to answer your primary question:

"How can I know that you believe what you believe and not merely adhering to a cultural pattern due to 10% overlap in your personal belief and 90% peer pressure"

The answer is that everything I believe is based on undeniable truth and logic. If you value truth and logic then you will come to the same conclusions that I have and your conclusions will be independent of my conclusions. IOW, you won't believe what I believe just because I believe it, you will believe what I believe because it is the truth and it impacted your life in an undeniable way.

The problem is that you haven't demonstrated a very good grasp or proper understanding of logic and reason so far. You have conflated claim with evidence. You don't seem to understand that there's a difference between common claims and extraordinary ones, and it's essential issue at the core of what I'm referring to.

NONE of the extra-ordinary Christian claims are undeniable, because these exist as a claim. Biblical narrative is a one giant CLAIM. Yes, SOME historical parts of it is in line with contemporary evidence, but when it comes to evidence for extraordinary claims ... it falls short.

YES. It can exist as a possibility that one accepts based on some line of evidence, and as a BELIEF. But you seem to conflate the notion of "undeniable proofs", which tend to exist in mathematics or self-referential framework alone and in scope of self-defined logic... and ontology, of which we can merely built models that are probabilistic in scope of our experience.

For example, we can say that it's undeniable that apple is a fruit. Why? Because it's internally defined proposition. We've defined what an apple is. And we define what a fruit is, and then we classify and equivocate.

You can't do that with external claims that are yet to be validated. I can't say that Barak Obama is an alien from Mars without presenting some evidence other than some conspiracy blog that writes about some story about encountering Obama's true alien from, and thus blowing the lid on this whole thing.

While it may be "possible" in some minutely remote version of some reality that there is a life of Mars, and one of the life-forms decided to infiltrate... it's not an observable reality that's likely in scope of our experience. We've been to Mars and we don't find any intelligent life there. And Obama doesn't seem to demonstrate any extra-ordinary alien tendencies.


The reason why it's prevalent in Christianity today is primarily because we are not trained to distinguish real from imaginary in certain aspects of our lives. For example, sometimes we may imagine certain situations to be much worse than these are, when in reality it's not that bad. Our bodies tend to experience the stress of this imaginary situation as though it's real.

And religion tends to invoke "acts of God" from certain subconscious manifestations of our own mind. Most of the people are simply not educated enough to understand that we always "speak" to ourselves by exchanging information between conscious and unconscious part of our nervous system. Religion tends to conflate it with "presence of God", or "Voice of God", or "Holy Spirit moving", etc. We have dreams about possible realities. We have creative thoughts that we think are coming "not from us", precisely because there's more to "us" than our conscious experience. Much of the religious experience is predicated on training people to think that unconscious part of them is "God-speak", and that's dishonest.

In short, your logic is weak and it has failed so far.
 
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Resha Caner

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I don't think it matters when it comes to the overarching concept of how the structural and operational means of integrating various ideas and concepts set up in vast majority of the churches today... which generally loosely follow the Catholic model of the past... which separates between the "priesthood" or "clergy" class and the "Laity". It's not a egalitarian community where "best ideas" make it to the top. It's more of a dictatorial set-up where people are free to voice their disagreements, BUT if these disagreements don't loosely align with predominant views of the clergy... then these are set aside on the fringe and are treated as such.

Authority and hierarchy are not innately wrong. Maybe the church is not meant to do whatever it is you think it should be doing. However, at this point, all you've shown is a distaste for authority and hierarchy, so I can't make much of a reply.

Maybe you can find what you're looking for elsewhere and reap the benefits of a church. But I don't yet understand your objective. Are you wanting to help people? Are you wanting an open, intellectual discussion? Just bashing authority isn't going to help me understand what it is you really want. All that will happen is I'll end up defending authority in the church, and neither of us will gain anything.
 
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FireDragon76

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Authority and hierarchy are not innately wrong. Maybe the church is not meant to do whatever it is you think it should be doing. However, at this point, all you've shown is a distaste for authority and hierarchy, so I can't make much of a reply.

Yup... it seems immature to me.

I also think D is a bit presumptuous. I spent years attending Orthodox services, so it's not like I'm totally naïve. I know exactly how Orthodox Christians, nominal or zealots, think about what they are doing. It's a "cultural thing" in those countries that are predominantly orthodox. But in other contexts, it can be profoundly counter-cultural and you'ld be soon forced to think about why you do what you are doing. It could be one reason so much great Orthodox theology came out of the Russian diaspora tradition.
 
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Resha Caner

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NO. NO. AND NO. A claim is NEVER an evidence of truth, and that's where the majority of confusion resides, because most of Christians in my experience end up confusing the claim and the evidence.

Again, your purpose plays a role here. Are you looking to exploit flaws or are you looking to understand? The example was not well-stated, but it could have been speaking to personal experience. If someone says, "I know my house is brown because I've seen it," there is both a claim and evidence in the statement. Witnesses are considered evidence. It now becomes a matter of the credibility of the witness versus the magnitude of the claim.

So, you can exploit that the example was not well-stated, or you can participate in clarifying the example to achieve common understanding.

And religion tends to invoke "acts of God" from certain subconscious manifestations of our own mind. Most of the people are simply not educated enough to understand that we always "speak" to ourselves by exchanging information between conscious and unconscious part of our nervous system. Religion tends to conflate it with "presence of God", or "Voice of God", or "Holy Spirit moving", etc. We have dreams about possible realities. We have creative thoughts that we think are coming "not from us", precisely because there's more to "us" than our conscious experience. Much of the religious experience is predicated on training people to think that unconscious part of them is "God-speak", and that's dishonest.

You've got quite a list of unfounded claims here.
 
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Chriliman

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I think that amount of believably we allocate to any given claim would be proportional to how unique such claim would be. "A brown house" isn't really that unusual of a claim to suspend one's belief. It makes very little existential difference whether your house is brown or yellow, and I've actually experienced brown houses... especially since I live in one. Thus your claim isn't a big deal.

Now, if you would have claimed that your house is made of cheese... that's an entirely different claim that I would withhold my belief and demand some evidence, because it's not my general experience to see that houses are made of cheese.

I hope you understand the difference... although seemingly you don't so far.



Again, the amount of trust is generally allotted by how common is the claim to our experience. There are plentiful brown houses. I don't know any that are made of cheese. Perhaps they are, but it's not the same type of claim.

A claim about resurrecting people and supernatural beings... in light of our general everyday experience would be like claiming to live in a house made out of cheese, as opposed to a claim of living in a brown house.




NO. NO. AND NO. A claim is NEVER an evidence of truth :), and that's where the majority of confusion resides, because most of Christians in my experience end up confusing the claim and the evidence.

An example for evidence for a brown house would be a photo, or a piece of the siding. In context of a court we may accept the testimony of impartial witnesses to confirm the claim, especially if they are experts in some field that they specialize in.

All of these are not the same as you merely saying "my house is brown and that's the truth". Yes, the claim may reflect the truth, but we are talking about methods that lead to most accurate representation of reality that guards against various fallacies inherent in our human experience, whether these are intentional or not.

You are confusing the model of reality as it exists in your head and "undeniable truth". In many instances individual perception fails, especially when it comes to recollecting things from memory. Memory is generally representational (not photographic) and our mind tends to fill the gaps with our past or present experiences and beliefs. There are plentiful research done on the subject matter:

http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/eyewitnessmemory.html



The problem is that you haven't demonstrated a very good grasp or proper understanding of logic and reason so far. You have conflated claim with evidence. You don't seem to understand that there's a difference between common claims and extraordinary ones, and it's essential issue at the core of what I'm referring to.

NONE of the extra-ordinary Christian claims are undeniable, because these exist as a claim. Biblical narrative is a one giant CLAIM. Yes, SOME historical parts of it is in line with contemporary evidence, but when it comes to evidence for extraordinary claims ... it falls short.

YES. It can exist as a possibility that one accepts based on some line of evidence, and as a BELIEF. But you seem to conflate the notion of "undeniable proofs", which tend to exist in mathematics or self-referential framework alone and in scope of self-defined logic... and ontology, of which we can merely built models that are probabilistic in scope of our experience.

For example, we can say that it's undeniable that apple is a fruit. Why? Because it's internally defined proposition. We've defined what an apple is. And we define what a fruit is, and then we classify and equivocate.

You can't do that with external claims that are yet to be validated. I can't say that Barak Obama is an alien from Mars without presenting some evidence other than some conspiracy blog that writes about some story about encountering Obama's true alien from, and thus blowing the lid on this whole thing.

While it may be "possible" in some minutely remote version of some reality that there is a life of Mars, and one of the life-forms decided to infiltrate... it's not an observable reality that's likely in scope of our experience. We've been to Mars and we don't find any intelligent life there. And Obama doesn't seem to demonstrate any extra-ordinary alien tendencies.


The reason why it's prevalent in Christianity today is primarily because we are not trained to distinguish real from imaginary in certain aspects of our lives. For example, sometimes we may imagine certain situations to be much worse than these are, when in reality it's not that bad. Our bodies tend to experience the stress of this imaginary situation as though it's real.

And religion tends to invoke "acts of God" from certain subconscious manifestations of our own mind. Most of the people are simply not educated enough to understand that we always "speak" to ourselves by exchanging information between conscious and unconscious part of our nervous system. Religion tends to conflate it with "presence of God", or "Voice of God", or "Holy Spirit moving", etc. We have dreams about possible realities. We have creative thoughts that we think are coming "not from us", precisely because there's more to "us" than our conscious experience. Much of the religious experience is predicated on training people to think that unconscious part of them is "God-speak", and that's dishonest.

In short, your logic is weak and it has failed so far.

Do your statements show that you are being logical and that my logic is weak? If so, then how are your statements not evidence of anything?

Remember, the main point of what I said is that statements/claims are evidence that can be used to help determine what's true. I am not saying that we should solely rely on statements/claims to determine what's true, but that they are evidence of truth value.
 
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HitchSlap

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I am not saying that we should solely rely on statements/claims to determine what's true, but that they are evidence of truth value.
You've been schooled on this a thousand times Chili, why do you persist with this 'claims are evidence of truth,' BS?

A claim is merely that. Nothing more, nothing less.

"I have a yellow house," is a claim. Please, pray tell, how do you determine if this it true or not?
 
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Chriliman

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"I have a yellow house," is a claim. Please, pray tell, how do you determine if this it true or not?

True, that is a claim, but is it a true claim? Well, I don't know, you tell me, do you have a yellow house or not?
 
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bhsmte

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You've been schooled on this a thousand times Chili, why do you persist with this 'claims are evidence of truth,' BS?

A claim is merely that. Nothing more, nothing less.

"I have a yellow house," is a claim. Please, pray tell, how do you determine if this it true or not?

Old habits.......................
 
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Chriliman

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No matter what he said; yes or no, how would you know it was true?

On the contrary, it does matter what he says. I could believe him based on his answer to my question, which he hasn't answered yet. You're right though, I wouldn't know it's true until I personally experience his yellow house for myself as he experiences it for himself.

Is it yellow or not? Maybe if you ask him too, he'll actually answer us...
 
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bhsmte

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On the contrary, it does matter what he says. I could believe him based on his answer to my question, which he hasn't answered yet. You're right though, I wouldn't know it's true until I personally experience his yellow house for myself as he experiences it for himself.

Is it yellow or not? Maybe if you ask him too, he'll actually answer us...

You would need then to objectively verify his answer is correct, to know for sure it was true?
 
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Chriliman

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You would need then to objectively verify his answer is correct, to know for sure it was true?

If by objectively verify, you mean experience his yellow house for myself, then yes. However, this does not mean I can't believe him when he claims to have a yellow house.

Our beliefs are formed from what we've been taught/told is true, but knowledge is always gained from personal experience.
 
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bhsmte

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If by objectively verify, you mean experience his yellow house for myself, then yes. However, this does not mean I can't believe him when he claims to have a yellow house.

Our beliefs are formed from what we've been taught/told is true, but knowledge is always gained from personal experience.

And if you are told something that is false?
 
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Chriliman

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And if you are told something that is false?

If Hitchslap lies about the color of his house then I wouldn't know he's lying, but this does not mean his claim is not evidence of truth value.
 
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bhsmte

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If Hitchslap lies about the color of his house then I wouldn't know he's lying, but this does not mean his claim is not evidence of truth value.

If you dont know whether he is lying, how could his claim be evidence of truth?
 
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Chriliman

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If you dont know whether he is lying, how could his claim be evidence of truth?

It would be the fact that he actually answered my question that would be evidence that there is truth to be known about the color of his house. As of now, we still don't know anything about the true color of his house. All we know is that he has not answered the question. There is truth value in the fact that he hasn't answered the question.
 
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HitchSlap

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If Hitchslap lies about the color of his house then I wouldn't know he's lying, but this does not mean his claim is not evidence of truth value.
Right, I could be lying. So how would you determine if my house was yellow, or not?
 
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Chriliman

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Right, I could be lying. So how would you determine if my house was yellow, or not?

You have yet to actually make a real claim about the true color of your house. All you've done is use hypothetical claims. I can't determine truth from something hypothetical. I need real answers about real things.

What's the true color of your house?
 
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