Why I believe in God

Deidre32 said:

If believing in a god makes you feel fulfilled, I wouldn't talk anyone out of that. I was once a Christian, and my faith made me feel fulfilled in many ways. I sometimes miss that level of fulfillment, that I haven't yet found since deconverting.

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So long as your fulfillment doesn't harm another person, I agree completely.

I'm so bewildered by this tendency to put all emphasis on objective evidence, which presupposes that we're not creatures with needs that we desire to satisfy rationally or irrationally, and totally misses just how much of life we engage in that has no evidence or is incommensurate with evidence. Putting reason on a pedestal like this just doesn't understand human psychology, in that nobody believes something "just because" without some potentially very significant emotional connection with his belief, regardless of your religious belief. Reason should be balanced with needs and pragmatism, with what gives us something good or meaningful in our lives.

We should always aim for both, but I think it's incredibly suspect to say we should prefer reason over meaning or goodness, and would actually argue for it being the other way around: choosing what's good when we're not able to determine the veracity of something -- something infinitely different than choosing something we know to be false, but we still do this anyways any time someone beats down our beliefs and we still hold to what they've destroyed virtually every single time. Why is this? Because we're emotionally connected with every single belief we have, which doesn't mean at all that we're determined by our emotions. Each idea we have, no matter the idea, is packaged with warm fuzzies.

Received said:

So long as your fulfillment doesn't harm another person, I agree completely.

I'm so bewildered by this tendency to put all emphasis on objective evidence, which presupposes that we're not creatures with needs that we desire to satisfy rationally or irrationally, and totally misses just how much of life we engage in that has no evidence or is incommensurate with evidence. Putting reason on a pedestal like this just doesn't understand human psychology, in that nobody believes something "just because" without some potentially very significant emotional connection with his belief, regardless of your religious belief. Reason should be balanced with needs and pragmatism, with what gives us something good or meaningful in our lives.

We should always aim for both, but I think it's incredibly suspect to say we should prefer reason over meaning or goodness, and would actually argue for it being the other way around: choosing what's good when we're not able to determine the veracity of something -- something infinitely different than choosing something we know to be false, but we still do this anyways any time someone beats down our beliefs and we still hold to what they've destroyed virtually every single time. Why is this? Because we're emotionally connected with every single belief we have, which doesn't mean at all that we're determined by our emotions. Each idea we have, no matter the idea, is packaged with warm fuzzies.

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Would you apply the same reasoning for "fuzzies over reason" to santa clause?

Nithavela said:

Would you apply the same reasoning for "fuzzies over reason" to santa clause?

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I never said fuzzies over reason.

Received said:

I never said fuzzies over reason.

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Post #41: "I think it's incredibly suspect to say we should prefer reason over meaning or goodness, and would actually argue for it being the other way around: choosing what's good when we're not able to determine the veracity of something"

Looks like you did.

Davian said:

Post #41: "I think it's incredibly suspect to say we should prefer reason over meaning or goodness, and would actually argue for it being the other way around: choosing what's good when we're not able to determine the veracity of something"

Looks like you did.

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That's fuzzies when reason isn't applicable, i.e., when reason doesn't forbid it because what you're fuzzying about is wrong. Infinite difference.

Percivale said:

The cosmic egg theory, , contains a contradiction I believe. 'at time t=0 means before time began: the cosmic egg existed timelessly. To exist timelessly is to exist changelessly. So the sentence quoted can be rephrased, 'A changeless object existed, whose nature was to change. So the object had the properties of changelessness and change. A logical contradiction, thus the statement is false and there could not have been a 'cosmic egg.'

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Wouldn't the same objection apply to a timeless (therefore changeless) intelligent agent? How can God "decide" to create anything if God exists timelessly?

Received said:

That's fuzzies when reason isn't applicable, i.e., when reason doesn't forbid it because what you're fuzzying about is wrong. Infinite difference.

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Nice moving of the goalposts.

You said "not able to determine the veracity of something", which does not equate to "reason isn't applicable".

If we are "not able to determine the veracity of something", reason would have us take the neutral position, wait for or gather further information, etc, on the subject of gods, pixies, fairies, or extraterrestrial aliens visiting Earth.

Now if you think reason is not applicable to those subjects, I would ask, what have you done to prepare for your new alien overlords?

Received said:

I'm so bewildered by this tendency to put all emphasis on objective evidence, which presupposes that we're not creatures with needs that we desire to satisfy rationally or irrationally, and totally misses just how much of life we engage in that has no evidence or is incommensurate with evidence.

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I understand what you are saying, and even agree that some people are not cut out for scientific objectivity, but hopefully the following will reduce your bewilderment at least a little:

If we all have our callings in life, atheists (the scientific sort) may have callings for reason, honesty, truth, and critical thinking. The emphasis on objective evidence is not only instrumentally useful for understanding reality, it is a strong constituent virtue in the flourishing of those atheistic individuals. To ask such atheists to not care about objectivity is like asking Christians to sell their souls to Satan.

That said, many people may be comfortable being "pragmatic" about sacrificing reason and reality for comforting beliefs (in principle, even atheists can do this for non-religious beliefs), but this is not a virtue as seen by many atheists. Rather, it is a defeat.

Reason should be balanced with needs and pragmatism, with what gives us something good or meaningful in our lives.

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Only to the minimal extent necessary, and it is a stunted condition. (Exactly, how is this "balance" be achieved, anyway? Do you use reason? Or what? What is the meta-process of determining the degree of balance?)

Ideally, reason and one's needs overlap completely, at least in terms of one's intent and commitment towards life. In that way, one is not at war with oneself, and that is what that "balance" threatens to be. When there is that overlap, one finds the most consistent form of flourishing, since flourishing is at root a rational life, and I do agree that meaning is a constituent of flourishing as well. (I guess that goes back to the difference between seeing rationality as a constituent value, not a purely instrumental value, for the good life.)

What I get from you is that this "balance" is actually a desirable condition. But just because something may be necessary for some people, that doesn't mean that it is a human excellence. It is "pragmatic" precisely because one can't achieve one's good in the most perfect way, and one must settle for something incomplete and potentially conflicting.

Edited to add:

BTW, I'm not insisting that only atheists can flourish to the utmost. A theist may be sincerely rational, even if atheists may argue that there are errors of reasoning present in the theist's thought.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Percivale said:

This explanation says that time has a beginning but not a cause. Something beginning is an event, and that every event has a cause is the most proven scientific fact we know, as well as being intuitively obvious.

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Whatever science has found out, it can´t be stretched to conditions absent time and space. Because these findings are based on observations made within time and space.
Likewise, there´s nothing "intuitively obvious" absent conditions absent of time and space. Because your intuition doesn´t reach that far. Intuitions are based on your experiences, after all.
If we postulate a state without time and space I fail to see why we would postulate this state to be subjected to causality.

Bottom line: I find it mildly funny (and heavily inconsistent) when people postulate the absence of time and space, and at the same time insist on causality governing this state.
Plus: referring to "intuition" when talking about their completely counterintuitive claims is...well...let´s say entertaining.

Percivale said:

This explanation says that time has a beginning but not a cause. Something beginning is an event, and that every event has a cause is the most proven scientific fact we know, as well as being intuitively obvious.

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Events are bound in spacetime. That's how we define 'events'. See quatona's excellent response above.

If God is eternal, he is unchanging, but can have eternally chosen to create earth. Matter, on the other hand, does not have the ability to start a chain of causation, only to continue it.

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This means that God could not have chosen otherwise. He had to create the universe, in which case the existence of the universe is necessary, and not contingent.

Received said:

So long as your fulfillment doesn't harm another person, I agree completely.

I'm so bewildered by this tendency to put all emphasis on objective evidence, which presupposes that we're not creatures with needs that we desire to satisfy rationally or irrationally, and totally misses just how much of life we engage in that has no evidence or is incommensurate with evidence. Putting reason on a pedestal like this just doesn't understand human psychology, in that nobody believes something "just because" without some potentially very significant emotional connection with his belief, regardless of your religious belief. Reason should be balanced with needs and pragmatism, with what gives us something good or meaningful in our lives.

We should always aim for both, but I think it's incredibly suspect to say we should prefer reason over meaning or goodness, and would actually argue for it being the other way around: choosing what's good when we're not able to determine the veracity of something -- something infinitely different than choosing something we know to be false, but we still do this anyways any time someone beats down our beliefs and we still hold to what they've destroyed virtually every single time. Why is this? Because we're emotionally connected with every single belief we have, which doesn't mean at all that we're determined by our emotions. Each idea we have, no matter the idea, is packaged with warm fuzzies.

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I see life itself as super-natural with consciousness being a transcendent reality yet we have people who insist we are entirely the product electrochemical phenomenon, that all can be weighed in a balance, measured on a scale, worked out in the math lab, that so called science is inching us closer to the disclosure that life ultimately means nothing and is going nowhere.

Colter said:

I see life itself as super-natural with consciousness being a transcendent reality

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Cool. What does that even mean?

Colter said:

yet we have people who insist we are entirely the product electrochemical phenomenon, that all can be weighed in a balance, measured on a scale,

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To paraphrase Winston Churchill, science is the worst way to investigate reality, but all the others have been tried.

Colter said:

worked out in the math lab,

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Right - science can be used to make illicit drugs, so science is BAD! Bad bad bad!

Colter said:

that so called science

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As opposed to science that does not make your beliefs appear to be wishful thinking?

Colter said:

is inching us closer to the disclosure that life ultimately means nothing and is going nowhere.

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And that cannot be an accurate description of reality, because that would make you sad. Amirite?

Received said:

So long as your fulfillment doesn't harm another person, I agree completely.

I'm so bewildered by this tendency to put all emphasis on objective evidence, which presupposes that we're not creatures with needs that we desire to satisfy rationally or irrationally, and totally misses just how much of life we engage in that has no evidence or is incommensurate with evidence. Putting reason on a pedestal like this just doesn't understand human psychology, in that nobody believes something "just because" without some potentially very significant emotional connection with his belief, regardless of your religious belief. Reason should be balanced with needs and pragmatism, with what gives us something good or meaningful in our lives.

We should always aim for both, but I think it's incredibly suspect to say we should prefer reason over meaning or goodness, and would actually argue for it being the other way around: choosing what's good when we're not able to determine the veracity of something -- something infinitely different than choosing something we know to be false, but we still do this anyways any time someone beats down our beliefs and we still hold to what they've destroyed virtually every single time. Why is this? Because we're emotionally connected with every single belief we have, which doesn't mean at all that we're determined by our emotions. Each idea we have, no matter the idea, is packaged with warm fuzzies.

Click to expand...

You're speaking about beliefs that we don't have any evidence for...not really all beliefs, right?

Received said:

So long as your fulfillment doesn't harm another person, I agree completely.

I'm so bewildered by this tendency to put all emphasis on objective evidence, which presupposes that we're not creatures with needs that we desire to satisfy rationally or irrationally, and totally misses just how much of life we engage in that has no evidence or is incommensurate with evidence. Putting reason on a pedestal like this just doesn't understand human psychology, in that nobody believes something "just because" without some potentially very significant emotional connection with his belief, regardless of your religious belief. Reason should be balanced with needs and pragmatism, with what gives us something good or meaningful in our lives.

We should always aim for both, but I think it's incredibly suspect to say we should prefer reason over meaning or goodness, and would actually argue for it being the other way around: choosing what's good when we're not able to determine the veracity of something -- something infinitely different than choosing something we know to be false, but we still do this anyways any time someone beats down our beliefs and we still hold to what they've destroyed virtually every single time. Why is this? Because we're emotionally connected with every single belief we have, which doesn't mean at all that we're determined by our emotions. Each idea we have, no matter the idea, is packaged with warm fuzzies.

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-_- emotion is what often blocks us from understanding and accepting reality. Yes, humans have irrational tendencies, and as it happens for the most part, these tendencies aren't helpful in regards to evaluating information accurately.

Percivale said:

This explanation says that time has a beginning but not a cause. Something beginning is an event, and that every event has a cause is the most proven scientific fact we know, as well as being intuitively obvious.

If God is eternal, he is unchanging, but can have eternally chosen to create earth. Matter, on the other hand, does not have the ability to start a chain of causation, only to continue it.

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I defer to quatona's response to this in post # 50.

Percivale said:

As to pragmatic and emotional reasons to believe in God, I acknowledge them too, but in finding truth their influence on one's thinking should be avoided as much as possible. In deciding how to live, they are valuable and should be used when the facts are uncertain, but that is a separate matter. I have two basic needs: to know truth and to have meaning.

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How do you arrive a gods when looking for truth?

Percivale said:

If atheism is true

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Atheism is not a truth statement.

Percivale said:

these tend to conflict, making theism more practical,

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Practical, as in theism gives you the meaning you want in life. If there are no gods, you have no meaning. Amirite?

Percivale said:

but that's only a weak argument for its truth.

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There seems to be only weak arguments for religions as accurate descriptions of reality.

Percivale said:

If so, science cannot deal with the origin of the universe at all. Is that really what you are going for?

Perhaps intuition was the wrong word. What do you call your sense that there can be no possible universe in which 1+1=3? That doesn't have to be based on experience, just reason.



Spacetime and causality both assume each other. Time is a sequences of events tied together causally.

But we're not talking about causality apart from spacetime. The origin of the universe is a fact about the universe, and should be related to the laws we discover that the universe operates by.

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Should be? On what do you base that?

Percivale said:

It seems atheism is getting to the point where it's willing to abandon science to avoid God.

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Was it science that convinced you that gods were real?

Ana the Ist said:

You're speaking about beliefs that we don't have any evidence for...not really all beliefs, right?

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Something like that. But with any given belief that has a potential for evidence, we're still limited to some degree by our psychological needs -- for example, our emotional attachment to our current belief, which could be endangered by another bit of evidence or argumentation which could undo this belief. This is exactly why people who are proven wrong in a specific argument incredibly rarely change their views; they hold out instead because of the emotional attachment to their beliefs, as well as the faith (in a very secular sense: trust or confidence) that their argument really does have weight, even though they can't find evidence for it at the moment.

Received said:

Something like that. But with any given belief that has a potential for evidence, we're still limited to some degree by our psychological needs -- for example, our emotional attachment to our current belief, which could be endangered by another bit of evidence or argumentation which could undo this belief. This is exactly why people who are proven wrong in a specific argument incredibly rarely change their views; they hold out instead because of the emotional attachment to their beliefs, as well as the faith (in a very secular sense: trust or confidence) that their argument really does have weight, even though they can't find evidence for it at the moment.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." —Winston Churchill