Belief is not fact,but more of a desire. If it is a natural thing, it can be proven at some time, then is no longer belief but knowledge. Your beliefs like any others is a personal thing, but not necessarily fact!! You choose what you believe, and some people do not want to choose anything opposite of what they wish,that is their right.There are still people in this world that do not believe the world is round, and years ago most people believed it was flat! The fact is they were wrong.We all have to realize we are not always right!
Why is Wikipedia any different to you than the Bible, all are the word of humans,nothing spiritual about either!
Wikipedia has many citations back to original research. It is a starting point to investigation. The Bible simply asserts truth that must be taken at face value without further research or investigation.
Wikipedia has a detailed page on Batman. The bible thinks bats are birds.
For useful information, my money’s on wiki.
I didn’t say you couldn’t find useful information in the Bible (I think you can), just not much in the ‘factual’ arena..
Many or most religious believers, especially followers of monotheistic religions, appear to believe that their particular faith is a universal and obvious Truth. The only way that someone can NOT believe as they do is if they are either ignorant of the Truth (hence witnessing, proselytizing, missionaries, and Jack Chick comics) or are deliberately rejecting the Truth as a God-hating Enemy of Truth. You should be glad that they are putting you into the “just ignorant” slot instead of the “God-hater” slot. :rolleyes:
I don’t see how this makes them any different from non-believes, truth be told. Humans are naturally distrustful of those who believe other than they do. It’s hard-wired in. That isn’t something religions do to people.
In general, I agree with this… I only hesitate at a minor dissent: do we choose what we believe?
Can we choose what we believe? Is it something open to our volition, or is it something less-than-voluntary?
The famous (and flawed) Pascal’s Wager urges us to believe, for reasons of cost-benefit analysis. But…suppose someone offered me a few million dollars to become a believer – specifically, to believe that Jesus Christ was God, the Saviour, Resurrected, etc. I want the money… But could I make myself believe?
The best I think I could do is twist my mind around into some self-hypnotized double-think… Scarcely worthy of the word “belief.”
Do we choose what we believe? Or is it something that rather comes over us, developmentally. Politically, does anyone deliberately or consciously choose to be liberal or conservative? Constitutionally, do we choose to be grouchy, or tender, or jolly? (And, despite what some people say, I’m pretty sure I never “chose” my sexual orientation!)
How much of our intellectual development is pure reaction? I read Asimov at a tender age, instead of Heinlein, so I’m a liberal. A gang of Christians beat me up in grade school, so I’m an atheist…
Trinopus (believes seven impossible things before breakfast?)
No, but it’s something that seems to me to be more common with religion than with other belief systems. Not just thinking that you are right, but that everyone including your enemies knows that you are right; or will, the moment the Truth is shown to them. It seems to be a common feature of extreme beliefs, and religion by nature is an extreme belief.
I disagree. We all begin by interacting with omnipotent, omniscient beings, who feed us when we’re hungry, protect us, transport us in mysterious ways to strange places, and come when we call.
But then we realize our parents are human. Some of us get over it, and don’t see the need to substitute something else for them.
What’s the best example of a biblical “life lesson”? Offhand, I can only think of examples along the lines of:
He was bad, so God punished him; and
He was good, and God punished him to test his goodness.
I admit that my knowledge of the text is limited, but I get the impression Dr. Seuss has a better record of imparting moral training.
When one considers the Bible it is the words of human beings…nothing supernatural about that, so one can take Wikipedia as the word of God just as much as the Bible!
There are people,(just as in religions) that desire to believe things are true, like a spouse doesn’t want to know their spouse is unfaithful. One will choose to believe the spouse because it may hurt too much to know the truth.
One is comforted in believing that if a loved one dies they will see them again, or that someone is looking over them and giving them protection, belief can be a self preserving thing. I once read that someone said not to doubt your faith or you would lose it.It was like looking inside a rattle, once the Mystery was gone it was no longer fun.
One can choose to believe either the Bible or some other writing is the word of God, but there is no proof of that ,but one can prove the writings were of humans. Because the author said God inspired him/her to write it that is a human believing a human and cannot be proven to be of God, that is a personal decision.
Until you learn to look beyond known science, you will never grasp the wonders that the universe has to offer. Did you ever wonder what would happen if your senses weren’t limited to touch, smell, sight, taste, and hearing? Take away just one of those and your world changes dramatically! Add just one more (other than sense of time and direction) and what might you be able to perceive?) Some people who have a complete hearing loss don’t even want to hear. Yet then never hear Ode to Joy. Skeptics should have open minds. Not gullible. Just open.
It is irrelevant to many atheists, but not to many at the Dope. Look at the number of posts in Great Debates currently that are hostile about just Christianity as a whole. And you are aware of intelligent Christians on the board. Why have so many quit speaking up? Why haven’t I ever seen one liberal Christian thread that wasn’t interrupted by hostile atheists in my nine years here? I don’t understand that kind of “indifference.” And some of the Mods especially enjoy the ridicule and what I would call hate speech. I wouldn’t dream of doing that to another religious faith or culture. And I never put atheists down for not believing – only for attacking. Not unless you consider the kind of thing that I had to say to The Hampster King as a put down. (It wasn’t intended as one.)
What is an example of a “liberal Christian” thread?
True skeptics have the most open minds in the world. No unquestioning dogma ties us down, and we are not afraid to question others or ourselves for fear of hurting feelings. We are always ready to change our minds as new evidence presents itself, and we never claim to have a divine answer from on high. We don’t fill in the gaps in our knowledge with magic-we are willing to say “I don’t know…yet”, leaving our minds open for new answers as they present themselves.
edited to add: I’m open minded enough to believe there is a god if evidence presents itself. What would it take to convince you there isn’t one?
Who is more open-minded?
I disagree. Distrust of difference may be the default (I’m not convinced, but it may be) but it is certainly not uncommon for people to celebrate differences, or to be indifferent to them, as opposed to finding them threatening. So “hard-wired” is overstating the case, since it is at least possible to learn to be otherwise.
An underlying theme to many threads like this seems to be to question why people have the beliefs they do, and why other people don’t. For those who are religious, I can think of lots of potential reasons why people have belief, some relatively benign and others much less so; but that is not the case for atheism. Some might “lose their faith” and call themselves atheists because of some negative event in their life (death of a child, for example). Aside from that, it seems to me that most atheists come to that view through the path of skepticism, of asking questions and considering all answers.
As one of these skeptical atheists, it is hard for me to accept as reasonable the claim of some people of faith that I am just as dogmatic as they are. As Czarcasm expressed so well just above here, there is open-mindedness on one side, and dogma and belief on the other.
Roddy
Absolutely! Science lets me see in radio waves and gamma rays, perceive magnetic fields and quantum fluctuations. It gives me deep insights into non-human senses and non-human cognition. It allows me to perform calculations that are beyond the range of my limited ape brain. Theology and spiritualism are far too narrow and parochial to grasp the mysteries that lie beyond us. They are merely an inconvenient quirk of human cognition, an odd evolutionary tic that encourages false positives in our pattern recognition capabilities. Aside from the slight survival advantage they granted in our natural savannah habitat, they largely useless.
“Look beyond science” is a contradiction in terms. Science is looking. If you’re looking, it’s science. Looking and science are the same thing.
Since when is extending our sense beyond known science? Have you never looked at an image from a radio telescope? Seen pictures of microscopic creatures or even atoms? Seen what we could see if our vision extended to the infrared?
I read Ved Mehta’s multi-part autobiography, and remember his facial vision which let him walk safely in cities using only a cane. How any of this is beyond science is beyond me.