Question for religious parents

Barbara Bomberger wrote:

But I'm not talking about *knowing*, I'm talking about *believing*.
Regardless of how things actually are in reality, people hold beliefs
about them. Ideally they'd revise their beliefs in the face of
evidence that such beliefs weren't about reality.

Ideally for whom?

Ideally for someone claiming to know about reality through something
resembling scientific method, which seems to be the objection here that
Circe is getting at. One's personal faith can be Christian, and one's
preferred way of knowing stuff about reality can be scientific method,
with no conflict between the two. Faith is a reason for holding a
belief, right?

Hence the Jesuits, and Chookie, and quite likely you!

--
C, mama to three year old nursling

Circe wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
Circe wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...
But propositions are really either true, false, or indeterminate. The
claim isn't that the proposition, "God exists" is maybe true, but maybe
the proposition "God exists" is true.

Or maybe there is a third proposition that encompasses both "God exists"
and
"God doesn't exist". Just because we haven't thought of it yet doesn't
mean
it isn't possible.

All I'm saying is that in some cases, two apparently contradictory
propositions may be resolved by a third. Sort of like the way in which
string theory *might* encompass both mechanical theories in physics
(which
currently contradict one another in some basic ways).

Sure. That would make the proposition indeterminate, and it would need
to be further clarified, possibly by being broken down into multiple
propositions.

Well, no, the proposition isn't indeterminate. It's just that maybe the
answer isn't Boolean. Maybe asking whether or not God exists is like asking
whether a coin has a heads side or a tails side. Maybe the answer is "both".
Which means that *I* can think God doesn't exist while still believing that
it's possible for those who think God does exist may also be right.
--
Be well, Barbara
---------------------------------
It's more a matter of definition, which no one involved in such ever
seems to get around to. WHAT god? WHICH god? WHAT KIND OF god? Is
there ANY reasonableness to ANY belief that SOME god exists, and if
so WHICH KINDS of god, since god is a catch-all for the UNKNOWN!!

I can state unequivocally that NOBODY CAN BE TRUSTED REASONABLY to
be truthful if they tell you that SOME god of whatever kind has told
THEM and NOT YOU what that god wants of ANYBODY OR EVERYBODY!!

This is because ANYONE who makes such a statement is shown instantly
to have an ulterior motive to manipulate and acquire control of others
illicitly, which invariably denies them credibility. This principle
totally destroys the credibility of every religious book on earth!!!

In fact, the credulity you give to ANY KIND of god tailored for
existing religion is more politeness than belief or even acquiescence,
you privately make fun of other people who are religious, unless you
were brainwashed as children to believe that particular religion,
and then magically you become uncertain, you are unwilling to accept
anyone's parents' religion but yours, and in doing so all you express
is your victimization by adults before you had good sense of your own,
IF you have any now!!

Such things as nutty belief based on childhood browbeating or fables
are NOT amendable to logic proof, and attempting to do so is ignorant.

So saying ANY god exists is looney, WHETHER any god DOES exist OR NOT!

In the final analysis, humans are NOT SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW SUCH THINGS,
NOR EVEN TO PRETEND THEY KNOW WHAT THEY *SHOULD* KNOW OR WHAT FORM IT
WOULD TAKE!!

If some god opened the vault of the sky and spoke to ALL of us RIGHT
NOW, we STILL could NOT be sure WHETHER what we just heard and saw was
some god, or the human race being snookered by a vastly technologically
superior alien with enslavement of us its only motive!!!

Even if we DIED and saw "Heaven" and the rest of the Xtian garbage
associated, we could not be sure we were being snookered by a power
beyond our life and ken but NOT by any kind of god we have ever
conceived!!

We are simply too pitifully insufficient and ignorant to EVEN KNOW
OR CORRECTLY RECOGNIZE any "real god" EVEN IF THERE WERE such a thing!!
Nor do we know the correct demarcations of this life or any "next"
life, or any of the full parameters of existence.

Imagining we know where we are right now is as guaranteedly as stupid
as thinking the stars are on "celestial spheres" with the sun at the
center, and thinking any theism is as ignorant as believing that a
ship might sail off the edge of the earth!

That said, atheists, while more sensible, can't be sure either!
Neither theists nor atheists know or even CAN know.
In fact, ANYONE who isn't absolutely AGNOSTIC is simply a LIAR!
Steve

wrote:

Circe wrote:
So it becomes a question of what it is you mean by "God", exactly...
and what it means to "know" about something.

If that interpretation of my meaning makes my position sensible to you, feel
free to consider it my final answer.

Not entirely, no -- I think the notion of multiple realities is
incoherent,
-------------------
Quite so. They do NOT cohere, that IS why they are multiple!
As a physicist I know that the one Interpretation of QM that makes
sense without contradiction and has never been conflicted, and which
continues to yield more and more provable working principles in QM,
is the MWI or Many Worlds Interpretation. It literally has it that
every "World" (Experienced Lifetime actually) that CAN exist DOES
exist, and that any Life of a Being which CAN exist DOES exist. The
Least Action Principle of physics that grows out of such things says
that every Action is attempted in all possible values and directions,
but that the one that binds the process historically is the path that
requires the least "Action". Even so, this only speaks to the laws
that govern this Lifetime, this particular physics, and that as well,
an Infinity of OTHER physics are indeed possible! Interestingly the
Laws of Newton and many others are derivable from ONLY the Least
Action Principle, which lends it quite substantial credibility.

The one thing we can say from the MWI on the subject of god is that
the Infinite seems to be an Infinite Imagination within Which all
possible Lives have their existence. If you want to call that "god"
then go for it, it isn't specifically aware, nor can it be shown not
to be, and it contains and operates all our infinite number of lives.
We do not know the full nature of the Infinite, but considering it
infinite is saying that anyway, since In-FINITE means Without End.

Now it isn't very demanding, but then the more religion advances
the more it tosses notions of demanding, punitive gods anyway.


although I think you could say that in our one reality, God
can be someone's personal saviour and at the same time utterly
unconcerned with you -- but I think that because I think there are
tautologies. I don't understand how it makes logical sense to reject
them -- but you're welcome to do so.
---------------------------------
You're your own "saviour". And if not you, then who cares? Anything
that causes your nature IS you, that is what "you" means. Pretending
that an idea did it for you, stopped you drinking, beating your wife,
etc., is a statement that no other idea might have persuaded you to
do that, and such a statement is quite specious and fatuous.


I would just argue that then someone claiming to be a critical thinker
about his or her faithis making a factual error, and that Usenet is all
about correcting factual errors. If someone claims that formula is
equivalent to breastmilk, ideally the factual error gets corrected
without anyone implying that he or she *should* be breastfeeding.
-------------------------
Only if they had no breasts or baby.


Similarly, I am trying to correct a factual error without implying that
anyone *should* be a critical thinker about their faith -- Jesuits, for
example, accepted their belief based on faith and then thought
critically from that point on out.
-----------------------------
Jesuits killed millions of people that way.

Problem with tolerance is that you wind up trying to tolerate garbage
that causes some people to try to burn you at the stake. I don't
tolerate tolerance, I see it as one of humankind's biggest crock of
horse****. Tolerance itself is actually intolerant. So be honest
about what you're going to be intolerant of. We need to be intolerant
of Evil, and that will always require quite specific definition from
basic principles. And those priciples will **** off LIARS no end.
LIARS don't like truth, it's ruins their scam.
Steve

In article . com,
" wrote:

You are right. I am talking about MOST religious people then. Those who
take the bible literally, those who reject evolution, those who believe
in a young earth, those who believe that a global flood ever happened,
those who believe that a god protects the innocent and good, those who
use push thier religion on others, those who want to put religious
ideas into school, such as the 10 commandment and Intelligent Design,
those who are religious out of habit or to be part of the majority,
those who are against homosexuality, those who oppose gay marriage...

So, those are the people who I think haven't thought critically, of if
the HAVE thought critically they rejected the obvious conclusions.

I get 3/11. Dunno what that makes me.

BTW, none of these qualify as fundamental doctrines of Christianity, nor of
any other religion that I am aware of.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"... if *I* was buying a baby I'd jolly well make sure it was at
least a two-tooth!"
Mary Grant Bruce, The Houses of the Eagle.

In article ,
dragonlady wrote:

I simply decline to find someone else's beliefs false. The distinction
may not matter to you -- but it matters a great deal to me.

I attempt to hold my own beliefs with humility, acknowleging that I
can't know everything -- and since I might be wrong, someone else might
be right.

I still think you are missing C's point.

Your two paragraphs here suggest you believe that:

[declining to call belief ~P false] = humility

Is this correct?


Because C is not looking at this at all.

She is looking entirely at the logic of it.

We are not looking at whether P actually IS true.
We are not looking at whether your beliefs would change if more information
came along.
We are not looking at the likelihood of religious beliefs to change over time.
We are not looking at whether you are trying to impose your beliefs on others.
We are looking at what you believe RIGHT NOW.

I (and, I assume, C) find it difficult to believe that you could possibly hold
two contradictory points of view at once, but that is what you have been
asserting, even though my suspicion is that you really mean that humility
forbids you from jumping all over someone who has a different religious belief
to your own.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"... if *I* was buying a baby I'd jolly well make sure it was at
least a two-tooth!"
Mary Grant Bruce, The Houses of the Eagle.

In article ,
dragonlady wrote:

And I'm saying that insisting that if two people hold contradictory
beliefs about God, thinking one of them must be wrong is a failure of
imagination.

Weren't we talking about logic?

I am not saying that I hold two contradtory beliefs at the same time --
that's not the paradox -- it is that I attempt to hold my own beliefs
both firmly enough to take action based on them, and with the humility
of knowing that I could be wrong, and therefore someone else could be
right.

Do you think this is unusual? Because I believe I am doing that too.

But you have spend a great deal of time asserting that you DO hold
contradictory beliefs simultaneously.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"... if *I* was buying a baby I'd jolly well make sure it was at
least a two-tooth!"
Mary Grant Bruce, The Houses of the Eagle.

"Chookie" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dragonlady wrote:

And I'm saying that insisting that if two people hold contradictory
beliefs about God, thinking one of them must be wrong is a failure of
imagination.

Weren't we talking about logic?

lol -- no. You and c may have been, but I think you
were the only two.

Bizby

In article .com,
" wrote:


One's personal faith can be Christian, and one's
preferred way of knowing stuff about reality can be scientific method,
with no conflict between the two. Faith is a reason for holding a
belief, right?

No. Faith just means trust. It's the state of believing, not the reasons for
it.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"... if *I* was buying a baby I'd jolly well make sure it was at
least a two-tooth!"
Mary Grant Bruce, The Houses of the Eagle.

In article . net,
Clisby wrote:

That is a most unusual thing for a human, IME! Why aren't you interested
in
getting others to share your beliefs? Most people I know are very keen to
share their ideas/thoughts/experiences, particularly if they believe they
could be helpful to others.


Aren't you using "share" to mean two different things here? I'm very
interested in having people share their beliefs about religion, meaning
that I like to hear what they have to say. I have no interest
whatsoever in persuading people to adopt my beliefs, which seems to be
what you mean by your first use of "share".

Sorry -- that was careless. I shall rephrase:

That is a most unusual thing for a human, IME! Why aren't you interested
in getting others to adopt your beliefs? Most people I know are very keen to
talk about their ideas/thoughts/experiences, particularly if they believe they
could be helpful to others.

THat is: if holding belief P has helped me through experience X, it might
also help someone else currently going through experience X. For example,
after a short period believing that I was "wasting time" BFing DS1, I came to
my senses and realised that providing a meal for someone IS work. Ever since,
I've happily taken Bfing time to be Me Time. I think this is a useful belief
to pass on!

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"... if *I* was buying a baby I'd jolly well make sure it was at
least a two-tooth!"
Mary Grant Bruce, The Houses of the Eagle.

Chookie wrote:
In article .com,
" wrote:


One's personal faith can be Christian, and one's
preferred way of knowing stuff about reality can be scientific method,
with no conflict between the two. Faith is a reason for holding a
belief, right?

No. Faith just means trust. It's the state of believing, not the reasons for
it.

Works for me.

--
C, mama to three year old nursling