Are there people that are otherwise logical but drop their skepticism when it comes to l religion? How do they consolidate those 2 sides of themselves?
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Not everyone who is deeply religious is a true believer. Some just see it as a community, and the rigid adherance to the rules as the key to that community. One of the rules is to always say you're a true believer, though. My sister in law is like this. She just decided one day to join a religion, researched the ones with the perks that best suited her and joined it.
My aunt joined a humanist church, which is basically "religion" for atheists. It was literally just Sunday mass without the worship.
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Ah I see what the problem is, you think you know me and you've created an entire personality based on things I never said. Then when I give you proof of your false accusations you try to paint me as a villain that is harassing all religious people even though I haven't. Have a good night buddy
Would it help you if we called it anti-theistic rather than atheistic? Regarding your overwhelmingly anti-theistic perspective, there's a difference between belief and proof that you're ignoring - you can't prove your atheism and you disrespect people who believe things without proof, so you deny your atheism.
But you believe lots of things without proof. It's how we go about our daily lives. It's normal. You don't get your spectrometer out so that you don't inadvertently believe without proof that the skirt is blue despite knowing full well that you are vulnerable to optical illusions, and you don't have to have proof that the creepy guy is a creep to avoid him. This is normal. This is how we evolved to learn about the world.
I think the reason that I've upset you is that I've caused you cognitive dissonance, because I assert that you believe atheism without proof and it seriously challenges your self image because the one argument you used against religion all the time was that believing things without proof is illogical, irrational and unintelligent, and whilst you're happy to claim that you mean that in the nicest, most neutral, inoffensive and non-insulting way, you don't half react badly when I put you at the receiving end of your own criticism.
If you really in your heart truly believed that atheism and religious belief both have equal merit and there's no rational way to decide between them, you wouldn't spend the whole day inviting religious folk to explain to you why they're so irrational, illogical and unintelligent when it comes to religion. You have an opinion, and it's very strongly held, but you never admit it, because it's not as logical as claiming there's no answer and you so very strongly want to believe that you're logical and rational. But I want you to accept yourself as you really are, a bunch of flesh and blood, leaping to conclusions every day on everything based on flimsy evidence and little logical deduction, controlled by emotions and flooded with hormones all day long. We all are. It's ok. We evolved to have gut feelings for our own protection. You believe atheism but you assert agnostism intellectually. You dismiss the evidence of your own behaviour and attitudes to keep up the self pretence that you drew beliefs are exclusively deduced logically from cast iron evidence, but that's just not how humans decide things that they care about at all. It's how they solve maths problems, not how they decide how to treat each other on social media.
I think you really need to come to terms with the fact that you're fundamentally human and accept that you have some beliefs you can't prove, like everyone does.
Remember that you believe in the supremacy of science because your parents and teachers taught you to and told you stories of the empirical method's victory over philosophy for making accurate predictions, not because you preformed some grand comparative experimental study of different philosophies yourself. We believe what we believe because it seems right to us, and we so very very very rarely get out the tape measure and national statistics when we think someone is unusually tall. It's ok to have things you believe that you didn't prove, it's not ok to believe that you prove everything that you think is true; you wouldn't even be able to have breakfast before it was too late if you did.
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So after accusing me of everything under the sun in a few comments based on lies, you now claim you don't know me at all. Well if you don't know me at all then stop categorizing me as a democrat and trump-like because you could not be further from the truth. You're not using any logic as evidenced by your random accusations, you're acting purely on emotion because you feel that I am attacking religious people even though you can read the conversations I've had with theists capable of being pleasant.
The words logical, irrational, and unintelligent are used because that is literally the topic of the post. If that bothers you I recommend you move on and reply to some other posts more relatable for you.
Again, ad hominem fallacies all over your comments because you are not arguing with me because you believe I'm wrong, you are arguing with me because you've projected a personality onto me that is not based on truths. You are the type of person to give religion a bad name because you're unable to hold a converation like an adult and prefer to throw a tantrum if someone's beliefs don't align with yours. Don't waste my time
Uh, the politics was an example of similar debating techniques, I made no assertion about your political viewpoint at all, that's entirely opaque to me.
I also made no assertion about your personality, just that your viewpoint is atheist, and I made no ad hominem about you unless you have contempt for atheists and you consider that me asserting that you believe in atheism is offensive.
I did assert that calling people “illogical”, “irrational” and “unintelligent” is condescending and dismissive and that if you don't believe that, you need to improve your social awareness, and I absolutely stand by that.
The words logical, irrational, and unintelligent are used because that is literally the topic of the post.
You say that as if it's an external environment that didn't come from your own beliefs about religion. You're the OP! You set the topic yourself! You yourself framed it this way! The self dissociation and lack of awareness of your own beliefs is even more striking than normal here.
I don't believe that you're wrong about lack of scientific evidence on the issue of theism vs atheism at all. I do think you're wrong about whether you're at all neutral on the subject.
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The way i think about it:
The brain has two halves (hemispheres)
The left hemisphere does rational thinking
the right hemisphere does magical thinking (which probably also covers religion)
Both of these hemispheres developed through evolution, because both of them are useful and beneficial to your life. That is why you should employ both.
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The way i think about it:
The brain has two halves (hemispheres)
The left hemisphere does rational thinking
the right hemisphere does magical thinking (which probably also covers religion)
Both of these hemispheres developed through evolution, because both of them are useful and beneficial to your life. That is why you should employ both.
Would that not require hypocrisy in a lot of areas?
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Tbh I think a lot of people bury that logical side deep down and compartmentalize. The narrative we tell ourselves can be quite powerful.
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The end scares most people so much that logic gets thrown out the window.
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Compartmentalise. It's a trait of Homo sapien to convice themselves things are true, so they can believe any bullshit, try not to fall for it yourself in otjer areas.
The problem for me arises when they speak from authority on another subject they are expert in, if they're so naive and easily misled on that, how can i trust their opinion on anything substantive?
A superb example of this is Katherine Hayhoe. I get around it by just reading nothing she writes on climate change because her evangelical christianisim just muddies the waters too much to take her at all seriously. On a side note, my goto is Professor Kevin Andersin.
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Every time you're challenged on your beliefs, you claim to not know, but when you're challenging other people's beliefs you use words like "irrational" and "illogical".
You don't behave like someone who is calmly on the fence at all.
I worry that your debating position and your actual beliefs are out of alignment and I'm not sure whether you're misleading us or yourself.
They are just trying to align everything that's being said to their previously held beliefs. People aren't typically all that aware of what their core beliefs are because an alternative, challenging core belief would have to breach all the way into it for it them to realize they have one. Without the salient contrast, they just don't notice it's there. It's just blue against a blue background, and unless a yellow comes along, they're not going to realize there's anything there. The materialistic worldview is so prevalent that a random online conversation isn't likely to get through, no matter how well argued. I've had similar discussions many times and sooner or later people just kind of "reset" and I find myself having to say the same things again and again because there's just this impenetrable thought loop going on. Logic doesn't breach it, it's just that they keep asking for all the different ways we can reach the number 42. If I tell them 41+1=42, they ask again and I have to try to explain how 40+2 is also 42, and so on ad nauseum. "Hahaa, but there's a 33-4347+132562+767368, I bet you can't do anything to get that to 42". That can be done all day. If the person isn't truly open for new ways to think (and few people in these type of settings are), as in they aren't actively looking for it with an open curiosity, it's not likely they'll realize much during that convo.
It's really, really, natural and normal. I just thought it was funny because OP is behaving the exact same way they're asking about in their initial post. They'll probably eventually figure it out.
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Why is it good that it makes you uncomfortable? And I’ll go a step further and ask whether all discomfort regarding religion is good. For example, was your chaplain saying you should be uncomfortable because you’re not sure if it’s rooted in truth, or were they saying you should be going out of your comfort zone and challenging yourself to do more and/or expressing your faith in new ways? If so, are the two equivalent?
I’m asking in genuine curiosity: I grew up Catholic, and never felt much of a community motivation for my religion. Once I got to college, I mostly stopped going to church, with occasional bursts where I’d decide to go for a month or so. So going to church dried up before my faith did for me, and I don’t really understand going in the absence of faith.
I hung on as an agnostic theist for years, though lately I think I’ve been more of an agnostic atheist. I agree with your sentiment on God existence not being predicated on belief, but have also reached the conclusion that if I need belief to accept something as true, it probably isn’t.
Definitely the "go out of your comfort zone" take. Christ loves us as we are, but you can't stay the same, act the same, and have the true repentance required for salvation. Striving to be better is not comfortable. Confronting your own sins is not comfortable. Empathizing with the downtrodden is not comfortable. Going out and getting your hands dirty and your bank account emptier to help the poor, the sick, the widowed and orphaned, the homeless, the hurting is not comfortable. But that's what the example of Christ requires us to do.
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Definitely the "go out of your comfort zone" take. Christ loves us as we are, but you can't stay the same, act the same, and have the true repentance required for salvation. Striving to be better is not comfortable. Confronting your own sins is not comfortable. Empathizing with the downtrodden is not comfortable. Going out and getting your hands dirty and your bank account emptier to help the poor, the sick, the widowed and orphaned, the homeless, the hurting is not comfortable. But that's what the example of Christ requires us to do.
How do you reconcile that with your discomfort about much of your connection to religion being circumstantial? Isn’t that very different than what you just told me?
After all, the post you just gave me is the practiced rhetoric of a firm believer. You were able to fall back into it quite easily, but does it accurately reflect how you really feel? Do you still feel this tie to Christ and that you are being held to this divine mandate given that you were saying you (your faith?) was at a low point a couple posts earlier?
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How do you reconcile that with your discomfort about much of your connection to religion being circumstantial? Isn’t that very different than what you just told me?
After all, the post you just gave me is the practiced rhetoric of a firm believer. You were able to fall back into it quite easily, but does it accurately reflect how you really feel? Do you still feel this tie to Christ and that you are being held to this divine mandate given that you were saying you (your faith?) was at a low point a couple posts earlier?
How do you reconcile that with your discomfort about much of your connection to religion being circumstantial? Isn’t that very different than what you just told me?
So, just now, I was explaining what she meant. How it relates to my answer above being uncomfortable is that I can't grow in my faith unless I'm honest with myself about the shortcomings of my faith, including any shaky foundations.
After all, the post you just gave me is the practiced rhetoric of a firm believer. You were able to fall back into it quite easily, but does it accurately reflect how you really feel?
Cutting right to the quick of it, aren't you? As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I am a cradle Episcopalian and it shouldn't be surprising that I have the official ready to drop, but what I wrote above is, yes, something I fully believe even after poking at it with my skeptical mind.
Do you still feel this tie to Christ and that you are being held to this divine mandate given that you were saying you (your faith?) was at a low point a couple posts earlier?
I don't always feel as tied to Christ as I would prefer, or maybe better to say as much as Zi think I should be. But yes, I still feel the impetus to follow the example of Christ even in these low times, because I genuinely think a path of radical love, forgiveness, charity, and empathy is ideal. On that, I can hope at least I've been consistent.
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You’re saying I could be thinking twice as fast
Read "doublethink" from dictionary.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/doublethink
a situation in which someone seems to believe two opposite things, or claims to believe something but does the opposite
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How do you reconcile that with your discomfort about much of your connection to religion being circumstantial? Isn’t that very different than what you just told me?
So, just now, I was explaining what she meant. How it relates to my answer above being uncomfortable is that I can't grow in my faith unless I'm honest with myself about the shortcomings of my faith, including any shaky foundations.
After all, the post you just gave me is the practiced rhetoric of a firm believer. You were able to fall back into it quite easily, but does it accurately reflect how you really feel?
Cutting right to the quick of it, aren't you? As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I am a cradle Episcopalian and it shouldn't be surprising that I have the official ready to drop, but what I wrote above is, yes, something I fully believe even after poking at it with my skeptical mind.
Do you still feel this tie to Christ and that you are being held to this divine mandate given that you were saying you (your faith?) was at a low point a couple posts earlier?
I don't always feel as tied to Christ as I would prefer, or maybe better to say as much as Zi think I should be. But yes, I still feel the impetus to follow the example of Christ even in these low times, because I genuinely think a path of radical love, forgiveness, charity, and empathy is ideal. On that, I can hope at least I've been consistent.
Thank you so much for responding. I sincerely hope you find what you are searching for.
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