Is the emotional response to a musical arrangement also an opinion? Let's explore that one a little bit deeper.a belief is still an opinion... just not from the perspective of the believer
Is the emotional response to a musical arrangement also an opinion? Let's explore that one a little bit deeper.a belief is still an opinion... just not from the perspective of the believer
Call it whatever you want, but you're talking about two very different things here.Is the emotional response to a musical arrangement also an opinion? Let's explore that one a little bit deeper.
Call it whatever you want, but you're talking about two very different things here.
Yes, people throughout history have had a tendency for religious belief. That does not mean that whatever they believed in was true though, as evidenced by all the other long-held beliefs that we've since discovered to be false.
"There is a god" and "I believe there is a god" are two different statements that can have two different truth values.
the majority of religious people were raised to be religious by their families and their communities. children don't just decide they're going to believe in god, their faith is something they learned from their parents.
most of the devout christians here would likely be devout muslims if they were born and raised in a different region of the world.
religion gives an easy out for some of life's harder philosophical questions. why are we here? god made us. why did this terrible thing happen? don't worry it's part of god's plan. what is the meaning of life? just follow our religious teachings and you'll get to live next to god in eternity. etc.
Your experiences with music or art are subjective and confined to your consciousness. Religious faith usually posits the existence of something in reality outside that, something that affects the real physical universe that we all share and experience. Therefore, such claims are in fact subject to independent investigation.My point was that your asking for a logical and reasoned explanation for why someone believes in god is an impossible request. I'm likening religious faith to the same type of experience one has with art or music or love or any other number of experiences which can't be explained logically, let alone in a casual forum post.
So if a lot of people tell you something that you know to be wrong, and you still don't believe it, that makes you close-minded?
If you make a tour of indigenous hut-dwelling tribes, and listen to hundreds of people telling you that illnesses are caused by bad spirits that need to be chased away with drums and incense, are you close-minded for not believing them?
Not when it comes to religious belief, as evidenced by the fact that the methods we know to be reliable for determining truth consistently fail to confirm such beliefs.
Feel free to put yours to the test though.
I care about truth. If you have some to share, I'd love to hear it.
Prove that I was wrong to call GG by engaging in an intellectually honest conversation about what your religious beliefs are and why you hold them.
The truth has nothing to fear from investigation, but anyone can make up a false claim and be all "nah man you're just close-minded" when people challenge it.
Because it could lead to behaviour that survives natural selection. See my example with the lion and the bush earlier.The question of faith then becomes why your consciousness is so open to the idea in the first place.
The mainstream conversation is always around origins, but that's hardly the point of faith. It serves me no purpose as an individual to know the exact origins of life. But it does serve me purpose to model my being after a higher ideal, which is what faith is in its essence.
Your experiences with music or art are subjective and confined to your consciousness. Religious faith usually posits the existence of something in reality outside that, something that affects the real physical universe that we all share and experience. Therefore, such claims are in fact subject to independent investigation.
On a side note, you're doing that thing again where you say that music and love "cannot be explained logically", when I think what you mean is we currently cannot fully explain them. Not the same thing.
Because it could lead to behaviour that survives natural selection. See my example with the lion and the bush earlier.
Give me one good reason to be a theist please.Nope. That's not my argument.
My argument is that saying "people don't have good reasons to believe there is no God" or vice versa is a close-minded statement.
There are many good reasons to be an Atheist or a Theist.
Ok, so tell me what your "spirit in the cage" is, then provide me with hard evidence for its existence.Premises like this are highly problematic for many reasons, however if I entertain this, my answer would be:
That completely depends on your response.
An open-minded individual might ask for hard evidence to consider before deciding. If those people were then able to provide a spirit in a cage that could be experienced, the individual would then begin to believe.
A closed-minded individual would dismiss it outright and begin speaking in a condescending manner to people of "inferior" thinking.
One could demonstrate by means of monitoring brainwaves and/or hormone levels when exposed to my family, or observing how my behaviour with them differs from that with strangers. That would already be more hard evidence than I've seen for any god.If only life were so simple, as everything in reality being able to be tested and measured.
Please prove to me right now that you love your family, and if so, by how many "love units"?
Hello god of the gaps. This argument has a terrible history of becoming less and less relevant as human knowledge expands, and every time we actually found an explanation for something, it was never one posited by any religion.Consider going back in time 1000 years and trying to tell people about electricity?
How well equipped are we now in 2020 to measure truth by scientific means? With how vast and mysterious our universe is, it is like using a tooth pick to attempt to slay a dragon. We can't even get off our own planet...
Archeological digs are not evidence of a god's existence.You are incorrect that the methods that we know to be reliable to for determining truth fail to support religion, quite the opposite. Thousands of archeological digs have been performed with the eagerness of disproving the historocity of various religions, and many of them have been woefully disappointed to find out that many people talked about throughout history in religious texts were actually real.
So that you don't look like someone who makes shit up and tries to act smug about being challenged on it.Why would I do that?
There is no change of heart. With every post where you avoid exposing your beliefs to critical review, you're continuing your surrender. Again, anyone can make up a false claim and act like the world just doesn't get it, or that they're too noble to explain it to the plebs. Right now, you look like one of those people, and it's entirely your own fault.Why the change of heart?
Could it be that you recognize that replying to anyone challenging your beliefs with "GG ultimate sacrifice" in the first reply is not such a great sign that you are an open-minded person?
Don't worry about it man. You can change tomorrow if you want.
Perhaps the next time you are challenged your first response will be the above quote, which is a very healthy and beautiful statement.
It wasn't a dismissal, it was a prediction. One that you willingly continue to fulfill.You have already established me as "intellectually dishonest," so why would you ask for truth from a liar? That's like asking for quality merchandise from someone that only sells broken knock-offs. Your behavior makes little sense.
Everyone in the room, you included, all realize that dismissing someone outright before hearing any form of discussion, reasoning, or argument from them is a bad play. I have no need to push that point any further.
No, it's not, because faith in a higher power has different standards of evidence by virtue of being a statement about our shared reality.Well I'm not from the future so my statement remains true. We cannot explain those things in simple logical terms, which is what YOU expect people to do to justify their faith in higher power.
But you don't believe that it's purely a product of natural selection, do you? So how did you rule out that option?It "could" be lots of things. Agreed.
Give me one good reaosn to be a theist please.
No, it's not, because faith in a higher power has different standards of evidence by virtue of being a statement about our shared reality.
Doesn't work, sadly.Orienting oneself towards the highest ideal.
Doesn't work, sadly.
1. Why can you not do that on a secular basis?
2. How do you determine which religion's "highest ideal" to orient yourself to?
Does your god manifest in reality in any way?An individual's faith is not a statement about our shared reality.
An individual's assertion that a physical god created the universe in 6 days is, though. That would be held to a high standard and worthy of scientific dismissal.
There's a difference between these two.
Does your god manifest in reality in any way?
If yes, that's a statement about reality.
If not, what reason would you have to believe that this god really exists?
What I meant was:These things are not mutually exclusive and your statement that it doesn't work is provably and quite obviously false. It has worked for billions of people. It doesn't mean that its the only way, just that its one way.
That's not a good reason.Orienting oneself towards the highest ideal.
What I meant was:
That's not a good reason.
For one thing, why can you not do that on a secular basis? I put it to you that any positive effect of being a theist can also be achieved without religious belief.
Second, how do you determine which religion's "highest ideal" to orient yourself to?