Hypothetically, we have the most dignified, charismatic, seemingly intelligent man in the world with us today. This man dedicates his life to the greater good with no selfish ulterior motives (for the sake of argument, we assume this to be true). You would be foolish to question his position on most anything, until one day he tells you, “I know God; I have been in his presence and I have seen how He works,” and proceeds to elaborate on his position ad nauseum, making statements that are only logical based the assumption that God exists. Is his character and wisdom reason enough to second guess yourself, or does the irrationality of it all render it moot?
I’ve seen very intelligent, good people become very, very stupid whenever the topic of religion comes up; so no. But intelligent, good people often make me rethink some of my other beliefs, even if they don’t ultimately succeed in changing them.
His character and wisdom are not enough to turn any kind of nonsense into wisdom.
Then why? Why would a perfectly rational, sane, intelligent human being suspend all reason when religion comes up? Can it really be pinned solely on delusion and wishful thinking, or is there something more to it?
By definition, a perfectly rational human wouldn’t suspend reason when religion (or any other topic) comes up. But nobody is or has ever been perfectly rational.
Church is like baseball. Many attend, few understand.
Every human is flawed, we all have blindspots.
Character and wisdom doesn’t really in and of itself make me second guess; or, at least, it shouldn’t. Rather, if the person in question has impressive, effective, and rational arguments, which you may well argue would arise from wisdom phrased intelligently and honest debating methods, then I suspect I would second-guess my disagreements, yes. I’ve certainly done so when approached in such ways by such posters on these boards.
To the extent there’s a problem with the hypothetical, beyond the point **BlackKnight **brings up, is that I doubt there’s any such thing as a person who is intelligent and wise on all issues. Everyone has particular areas of expertise. So a good showing of wisdom on one subject doesn’t necessarily mean that such a person is wise on all issues. I might listen to Stephen Hawking when he talks about astrophysics, but that doesn’t mean I have to treat his advice on who’s likely to win the premiership this year with much respect. He’d have to show his wisdom and intelligence extend to that area first, and that he’s as willing to honestly debate the subject.
Because his parents told him to.
I’m not really sure what it would take for me to believe in a god, but I know that isn’t enough.
Being a nice person doesn’t make you knowledgeable. These things have no relation to one another. If anything, anyone who seems to be doing things selflessly is either stupid or an attention whore. The world didn’t get to where it was based on hugs and praise. In that world, we’d still all be eating bark.
Anyone who seems selfless and genuinely benevolent has fairly well proven himself to have no direct link to wisdom.
There is no singular reason.
Some people feel like there must be more to life than what we see.
Some people believe things because they have believed them since before they can remember (belief most often passed on from parents), for them god is truth because it always has been and nothing has disproved it yet.
Some people want to delude themselves to make the world more interesting.
Some people think it gives them mystique.
Some pretend to believe as rational people in order to make money from gullible people (Not common in my opinion).
Some people feel that religion has greatly benefited their lives thus far, the hope of an afterlife, the strength it gives them to pull through tough situations, and in order to keep this up they will convince themselves it is true.
The list probably goes on and on.
Cite, please.
(And it had better not be Wikipedia.)
Or what? Your God will punish him?
Cite for what? I’ve pointed out before that modern freedoms, wealth, charity, and equality are thanks to the output of the age of reason–and none of that had anything to do with selflessness.
Ideal humans living in some sort of Agrarian wonderland was preached as an ideal for thousands of years, starting before Jesus, all over the world. In no case did this sort of outlook create happier and kinder people than anywhere else in the world. The USSR tried to force the issue and tell people to live the selfless life, and it was a disaster, as were all the Utopianist communities of the 19th century. Confucianist China developed the caste system. Mahatma Gandhi’s India would have suffered massive famine if enterprising Westerners hadn’t developed new strains of rice to support all the children that good religious people are supposed to have. The whole nation would still be people living in huts and barely eeking by if it wasn’t for the whole nation turning to business and high-tech industry (greedy buggers).
People might be nice on a small basis, but they don’t go out and do big, world changing stuff unless they’re going to get something out of it. History is proof of this, over and over again. It’s when philosophers began to be able to look at humanity objectively and discuss the human state back and forth with each other that we got answers on how to set up a society that would work consistently to actually make the world a better place and the people in it to be kinder to one another. That answer wasn’t “love your neighbor”, it was the scientific method, capitalism, representative government, freedom of speech, and checks and balances. This is what actually works.
You can either go with the dream, or you can accept the path that actually gets you where you want to go. Personally, I vote that reality trumps all. What sounds nice has no relevance to what works.
Because it’s a matter of the desire to believe trumping rational thought.
It’s very hard to accept the naturalistic view of the world, that the universe is a cold uncaring place where bad things happen to good people and that there’s no greater justice. When you die you cease to exist, in a way that you probably can’t even really comprehend. A skeptical, rational, evidence-based view of the universe is a tough pill to swallow. And people overwhelmingly when choosing beliefs like to go with comfortable and easy over hard to accept and unpleasant.
I am the most skeptical person I know. It’s a big part of how I define myself that I scrutinize the beliefs I hold and discard the irrational or indefensible ones. I understand why people do otherwise, why people believe silly things - and yet I’ve decided that part of who I am is to treat everything rationally. And yet… I have a medical condition that sometimes makes me wonder if I’m going to wake up the next day. And during those times where it seems like, the desire for me to pray or start thinking in religious terms gets pretty strong. “No atheists in a foxhole” and all that. So if my discomfort and fears can tempt me into wanting to accept irrational things, it can happen to anyone. Including the upstanding, intelligent person in this hypothetical.
To understand why a respectable, smart person coming to belief is not evidence, simply swap the idea of religion with something you find irrational and silly. If the most decent, intelligent guy you know started professing sincere belief in the flying speghetti monster, would it make you pause and reconsider your position?
Cultural brain washing.
No, they don’t. If some scientist were to discover, say, a cure for AIDS or some other world changing discovery, do you think he’d see a significant return from it? Highly unlikely. The rich get richer; rewards tend to go to those who are already well off. The important things in life are generally accomplished by people motivated by things like curiosity, or benevolence, or political convictions; people motivated by big profits tend to do little but leech off those who do the actual work.
Selfishness is short sighted, amoral, divisive and destructive. If the selfish were the driving force behind human society like you claim, most of us would be living as illiterate slaves in huts. Or just not around at all; people completely lacking in selflessness aren’t likely to raise children very well, or at all.
Yeah, well, it’s the human condition. You can either accept it and work to harness and mitigate it, or stick your fingers in your ears going “lalalalala”. If you would honestly rather live in 10th century Catholic Europe, you’re free to move to some 3rd world African nation and try it out, chanting around the fire and smoking peace pipes before going and attacking the neighboring clan for pissing off the gods and causing a drought. Personally, I’ll stick with internet porn and Hillary Clinton going around talking Very Sternly to foreign leaders.
For what you said in post 10.
Yes, and other people responded by showing your that you were wrong. Here’s one of the many threads in which that happened, if you’d like to refresh your memory.
I think this statement is false. Please provide a non-Wikipedia cite.
How do you know that?
You’ll get no argument from me about the U.S.S.R. However, by what standard were the Utopian communities of the 19th century of disaster. Some disintegrated rapidly (but that hardly makes them a disaster); others are still here.
India developed the caste system long before Confucius was born.
And how did that happen? It sure didn’t happen as you think it happened. The strains of wheat (not rice) which allowed for the “green revolution” were developed at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, which was not a profit-seeking venture. It was a non-profit, plain and simple. Norman Borlaug, the chief scientist, was a Christian who devoted his life to helping others without seeking profit for himself. So, according to your own words, he was “either stupid or an attention whore”. Please tell us which one of the two Borlaug is.
I just gave an example of one who did. Plenty of other obvious ones could be offered. You’re obviously happy posting fictional “facts” based on subjects that you know nothing about, but facts are stubborn things, as one of those philosophers once said.
I tell my friends all the time that I am a god and they should worship me.
Since I am the smartest, most beautiful and charming person in the world and so far only two of my friends have forgone their prior false religions in favor of worshipping me, I have to declare the original question plausible but unlikely.