Religious Belief is Human Nature?

[Sloth]

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

What do you think pat meant by, “no ultimate culpability”?

I think he meant that there’s no judgment of your actions in an afterlife, and that’s what i was talking about, chris.
[/quote]

I’m talking about what believers believe, you said that they repent and all is good. No…it is not. That is incorrect, that is not what the Catholic Church, which includes pat and me, teaches.

You repent of your sins, you then have a penance to do. Think of it like this you get into a car accident with your neighbor, she’s in the hospital. You go to the hospital and you bring her flowers and ask for forgiveness, you repent. She forgives you and you’re all done you get to go home and watch soccer on TV. Wrong.

You still have to pay for the damage to the vehicles. You still have to pay her medical bills. You still have to pay for time lost. &c.

[/quote]

Ten hail mary’s and your good to go; you’ve repented and can enter heaven once more.

You know, if i wrong a person, even if it’s inadvertently, i’ll apologize and try to make it right.

I don’t get why people have so much trouble with that concept that they need someone else to tell them to make things right.[/quote]

We’re not perfect natured like you. Now stop bashing us and our predisposed nature! You’ve seen the study, so now you’re just being phobic.

[Brother_Chris]

[quote]ephrem wrote:
Nobody has been able to conclusively prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a god exists.

It is impossible to take a brick from a foundation that does not exist.

That is the real glory of the catholic church: that it has been able to con people for 2000 years with a fairytale.
[/quote]

Ah…ad hominem. I’m too old for this shit.

[Brother_Chris]

[quote]ephrem wrote:
Ten hail mary’s and your good to go; you’ve repented and can enter heaven once more.
[/quote]

Except that is not how it works. If you aren’t punished for that sin (on earth) you have to go to purgatory and receive your temporal punishment there, you still receive punishment. See, so you steal a cookie, you ask your father to forgive you, he forgives but you still get a spanking. How unfair

[ephrem]

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
Nobody has been able to conclusively prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a god exists.

It is impossible to take a brick from a foundation that does not exist.

That is the real glory of the catholic church: that it has been able to con people for 2000 years with a fairytale.
[/quote]

Ah…ad hominem. I’m too old for this shit.[/quote]

Wait. Chris. Do you identify so much with the church that a slight against it is a slight against you?

[ephrem]

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
Ten hail mary’s and your good to go; you’ve repented and can enter heaven once more.
[/quote]

Except that is not how it works. If you aren’t punished for that sin (on earth) you have to go to purgatory and receive your temporal punishment there, you still receive punishment. See, so you steal a cookie, you ask your father to forgive you, he forgives but you still get a spanking. How unfair :([/quote]

What if you don’t repent? You’ll still be punished but more severely?

[Tiribulus]

[quote]ephrem wrote:<<< Wait. Chris. Do you identify so much with the church that a slight against it is a slight against you? [/quote]I’ve been tryin to help him with that for like months now. I would literally do anything in my power for him, but I hate that church with everything I am.

[Tiribulus]

[quote]ephrem wrote:<<< Your beliefs and how you think they affect the world are irrelevant.
[/quote]Oh =]

[forlife]

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Yes, but the one strength of science that religion doesn’t have is that science can be demonstrated to be incorrect whereas religion cannot.

People who believe incorrect scientific theories can still learn and revise their understanding. Religion cannot offer that.[/quote]

Where is your proof. [/quote]

Nearly every theory in physics is a revision from previous theory.

Einstein corrected Newton (but Newton still works for earthbound mechanics).[/quote]

…but your premise is that people who believed incorrect scientific theories are proven incorrect, learn and revise. Catholicism has been sitting basically on the top of the hill for 2000 years and has yet to be proven wrong, so why would we need to revise. Sure a few million straw men have been beaten up, burned, &c., but no one has yet taken a single brick out of the foundation.

[/quote]

Because you make claims that are ultimately untestable. Accordingly, your claims are no different than the claims of all the other religions.

[GorillaMon]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]GorillaMon wrote:
Humans basically have too much ego, many people simply can’t handle the idea that the here & now is (probably) all that their is & ever will be. So, quite naturally they find ways to convince themselves that they are special, unique snowflakes, above animals & can settle upon certain morals & values which might grant them eternal life (or perhaps just a certain smugness).

People can’t see beyond their own emotions.

This isn’t just true of religious belief(s) though, I’d go as far to say it’s true of all sorts of other logically dubioius beliefs/attribution errors etc.
[/quote]

Your post doesn’t make much sense.
I don’t see how ego and the ‘here and no’ being the end all be all of existence go together. Nor the fact that everyone is different from one another mate up to the afore mentioned attributes…Nor how emotions play into it. Nor how you draw the conclusion that it is in ‘error’ along with other belief systems based on the previously mentioned things.[/quote]

Humans are capable of rationalizing the potential puropose(s)/origins of their existence. Rationalizing is massively dependent upon ego. People like to be right, some even go to the extreme of feeling they need to somehow just ‘know’ they are right. Admitting, you aren’t 100% certain whether a higher power exists, certain things are OR aren’t objectively true is more of an emotional challenge than a purely intellectual one IMHO/experience. It’s psychologically uncomfortable.

To put it simply: How can this issue not be laregely dependent upon ego & emotions? Does (for example) morality (at least from an individual’s POV) make any kind of sense/make any great strides in it’s development without the very powerful internal chiding OR reward our emotions can give us? << I think not.

With regards what I said about ‘attribution errors’, consider human consciousness & the notion of function. If a creature is sentient we consider to have certain ‘functions’. Hell, even if something isn’t sentient, you’ll still get a very large proportion of people arguing very stridently that everything OR at least specific things serve a very specific function.

^This is, perhaps is all well & good if you’ve already basically accepted the idea of intelligent design. However, the problem with this thinking is that it tends to collapse into: Weeeell, X,Y, & Z seem to work in perfect harmony, therefore this reinforces the idea of an beneficient creator…it couldn’t possibly be chance!! Cirular logic.

I’d personally, much rather consider humans to be special on the basis of our ability to adapt & co-operate etc than infer ‘magic’ from this rather happy coincidence (ie our existence) the Universe has granted us.

Also, aside from religious debates, specifically, consider the way in which nature is often anthropomorphosized. The overwhelmig urge to attribute a function a purpose isn’t just something something theists do, atheists do this (almost as much)

[forlife]

[quote]GorillaMon wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]GorillaMon wrote:
Humans basically have too much ego, many people simply can’t handle the idea that the here & now is (probably) all that their is & ever will be. So, quite naturally they find ways to convince themselves that they are special, unique snowflakes, above animals & can settle upon certain morals & values which might grant them eternal life (or perhaps just a certain smugness).

People can’t see beyond their own emotions.

This isn’t just true of religious belief(s) though, I’d go as far to say it’s true of all sorts of other logically dubioius beliefs/attribution errors etc.
[/quote]

Your post doesn’t make much sense.
I don’t see how ego and the ‘here and no’ being the end all be all of existence go together. Nor the fact that everyone is different from one another mate up to the afore mentioned attributes…Nor how emotions play into it. Nor how you draw the conclusion that it is in ‘error’ along with other belief systems based on the previously mentioned things.[/quote]

Humans are capable of rationalizing the potential puropose(s)/origins of their existence. Rationalizing is massively dependent upon ego. People like to be right, some even go to the extreme of feeling they need to somehow just ‘know’ they are right. Admitting, you aren’t 100% certain whether a higher power exists, certain things are OR aren’t objectively true is more of an emotional challenge than a purely intellectual one IMHO/experience. It’s psychologically uncomfortable.

To put it simply: How can this issue not be laregely dependent upon ego & emotions? Does (for example) morality (at least from an individual’s POV) make any kind of sense/make any great strides in it’s development without the very powerful internal chiding OR reward our emotions can give us? << I think not.

With regards what I said about ‘attribution errors’, consider human consciousness & the notion of function. If a creature is sentient we consider to have certain ‘functions’. Hell, even if something isn’t sentient, you’ll still get a very large proportion of people arguing very stridently that everything OR at least specific things serve a very specific function.

^This is, perhaps is all well & good if you’ve already basically accepted the idea of intelligent design. However, the problem with this thinking is that it tends to collapse into: Weeeell, X,Y, & Z seem to work in perfect harmony, therefore this reinforces the idea of an beneficient creator…it couldn’t possibly be chance!! Cirular logic.

I’d personally, much rather consider humans to be special on the basis of our ability to adapt & co-operate etc than infer ‘magic’ from this rather happy coincidence (ie our existence) the Universe has granted us.

Also, aside from religious debates, specifically, consider the way in which nature is often anthropomorphosized. The overwhelmig urge to attribute a function a purpose isn’t just something something theists do, atheists do this (almost as much)

[/quote]

Good post. I think everyone would benefit from a cognitive psychology class, particularly emphasizing the human capacity for confirmatory bias driven by powerful subconscious needs, and discomfort with cognitive dissonance.

The danger of these biases is that they are so insidious most people don’t even think to question their process for believing as they do. They just assume their beliefs are unbiased and must reflect reality.

Educating yourself on these biases doesn’t immunize you against them. But it does cause you to take everything, even your core beliefs, with a large grain of salt.

The more insistent people are that they know the truth, and the less willing they are to admit they might be mistaken, the more likely it is that their beliefs are muddied by confirmatory bias. Unfortunately, the most biased people are definitionally those who are the least capable of recognizing that bias in themselves. Many go to their graves, 100% convinced that they are right.

[pat]

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

What do you think pat meant by, “no ultimate culpability”?

I think he meant that there’s no judgment of your actions in an afterlife, and that’s what i was talking about, chris.
[/quote]

I’m talking about what believers believe, you said that they repent and all is good. No…it is not. That is incorrect, that is not what the Catholic Church, which includes pat and me, teaches.

You repent of your sins, you then have a penance to do. Think of it like this you get into a car accident with your neighbor, she’s in the hospital. You go to the hospital and you bring her flowers and ask for forgiveness, you repent. She forgives you and you’re all done you get to go home and watch soccer on TV. Wrong.

You still have to pay for the damage to the vehicles. You still have to pay her medical bills. You still have to pay for time lost. &c.

[/quote]

Ten hail mary’s and your good to go; you’ve repented and can enter heaven once more.
[/quote]
Uh, yeah, no…That’s not how it works.

You know, if i wrong a person, even if it’s inadvertently, i’ll apologize and try to make it right.

That’s how it works with God and man. Reconciliation is an apology and a pledge to do better and action taken to do better. I mean reconciliation in the broad sense, not just Catholic sense.

[quote]
I don’t get why people have so much trouble with that concept that they need someone else to tell them to make things right.[/quote]

We don’t, you just don’t know what you are talking about. How you think it works is not how it is, period. I am not sure if you are doing it deliberately for spite, or you really don’t know, but what you espoused here is simply not true in any way. It’s actually so far off, I don’t even know where to begin to address it.

[pat]

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
Our propensity for religious beliefs will be our downfall. Add greed and stupidity to the mix and watch Rome burn.

Pat, i have little to add to the other thread we posted in. I haven’t forgotten about them, but i’m just ignoring it for now.[/quote]

Rome is made of stone, which does not burn.

Atheism hasn’t done much good or been very enlightening by any stretch, so I really don’t see the advantage except there is no ultimate culpability in the belief system. So if you accidentally do tremendousness harm, it’s ok in the end cause nothing really matters.

Don’t care, take your time.[/quote]

Believers have done tremendous harm, but simply repent and all’s good again until they do tremendous harm again. Ad infinitum.
[/quote]

I have never heard that, even if you are ‘forgiven’ you still have a mess to clean up. There is still temporal punishment. So, when a believe repents they don’t get the death penalty, but they instead get the lashings. [/quote]

What do you think pat meant by, “no ultimate culpability”?

I think he meant that there’s no judgment of your actions in an afterlife, and that’s what i was talking about, chris.
[/quote]

That’s precisely what I meant. Leading a good life has no ultimate value if nothing happens when you die or are killed. This true for anybody, theist and atheist alike. Problem is, leading a good life is damned hard, it’s far easier to lead a narcissistic life. I’d like to think in the end, hard work and sacrifice mean something more than “He was a nice fellow, to bad he’s worm food now”
Contrary, I’d like to think assholes like stalin got more than a peaceful death on a comfy bed. There is no real justice in this world, but justice does come in some way or another.

[pat]

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:<<< Wait. Chris. Do you identify so much with the church that a slight against it is a slight against you? [/quote]I’ve been tryin to help him with that for like months now. I would literally do anything in my power for him, but I hate that church with everything I am.
[/quote]

That’s really sad tirib.

[forlife]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
Our propensity for religious beliefs will be our downfall. Add greed and stupidity to the mix and watch Rome burn.

Pat, i have little to add to the other thread we posted in. I haven’t forgotten about them, but i’m just ignoring it for now.[/quote]

Rome is made of stone, which does not burn.

Atheism hasn’t done much good or been very enlightening by any stretch, so I really don’t see the advantage except there is no ultimate culpability in the belief system. So if you accidentally do tremendousness harm, it’s ok in the end cause nothing really matters.

Don’t care, take your time.[/quote]

Believers have done tremendous harm, but simply repent and all’s good again until they do tremendous harm again. Ad infinitum.
[/quote]

I have never heard that, even if you are ‘forgiven’ you still have a mess to clean up. There is still temporal punishment. So, when a believe repents they don’t get the death penalty, but they instead get the lashings. [/quote]

What do you think pat meant by, “no ultimate culpability”?

I think he meant that there’s no judgment of your actions in an afterlife, and that’s what i was talking about, chris.
[/quote]

That’s precisely what I meant. Leading a good life has no ultimate value if nothing happens when you die or are killed. This true for anybody, theist and atheist alike. Problem is, leading a good life is damned hard, it’s far easier to lead a narcissistic life. I’d like to think in the end, hard work and sacrifice mean something more than “He was a nice fellow, to bad he’s worm food now”
Contrary, I’d like to think assholes like stalin got more than a peaceful death on a comfy bed. There is no real justice in this world, but justice does come in some way or another.[/quote]

Interesting post, I’m gonna make another thread on it if you don’t mind.

[pat]

[quote]GorillaMon wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]GorillaMon wrote:
Humans basically have too much ego, many people simply can’t handle the idea that the here & now is (probably) all that their is & ever will be. So, quite naturally they find ways to convince themselves that they are special, unique snowflakes, above animals & can settle upon certain morals & values which might grant them eternal life (or perhaps just a certain smugness).

People can’t see beyond their own emotions.

This isn’t just true of religious belief(s) though, I’d go as far to say it’s true of all sorts of other logically dubioius beliefs/attribution errors etc.
[/quote]

Your post doesn’t make much sense.
I don’t see how ego and the ‘here and no’ being the end all be all of existence go together. Nor the fact that everyone is different from one another mate up to the afore mentioned attributes…Nor how emotions play into it. Nor how you draw the conclusion that it is in ‘error’ along with other belief systems based on the previously mentioned things.[/quote]

Humans are capable of rationalizing the potential puropose(s)/origins of their existence. Rationalizing is massively dependent upon ego. People like to be right, some even go to the extreme of feeling they need to somehow just ‘know’ they are right. Admitting, you aren’t 100% certain whether a higher power exists, certain things are OR aren’t objectively true is more of an emotional challenge than a purely intellectual one IMHO/experience. It’s psychologically uncomfortable.

To put it simply: How can this issue not be laregely dependent upon ego & emotions? Does (for example) morality (at least from an individual’s POV) make any kind of sense/make any great strides in it’s development without the very powerful internal chiding OR reward our emotions can give us? << I think not.
[/quote]
Just because the issue is emotive, does not mean that logic and reason cannot succeed. Further, being emotional about something isn’t the same as being wrong.

With regards what I said about ‘attribution errors’, consider human consciousness & the notion of function. If a creature is sentient we consider to have certain ‘functions’. Hell, even if something isn’t sentient, you’ll still get a very large proportion of people arguing very stridently that everything OR at least specific things serve a very specific function.

^This is, perhaps is all well & good if you’ve already basically accepted the idea of intelligent design. However, the problem with this thinking is that it tends to collapse into: Weeeell, X,Y, & Z seem to work in perfect harmony, therefore this reinforces the idea of an beneficient creator…it couldn’t possibly be chance!! Cirular logic.

Intelligent design is a weaker form of deism which is a weaker form of Cosmology. I subscribe to the school of though of cosmology. From which I then I infer the Necessary being or existence is God, because they share the same attributes. Not only they share the same attributes, but there can only be one thing that has said attributes.
I am hopelessly predictable in this sense. I am pretty sure there are folks here who can lay out my arguments for me by now, but they are rock-ass solid. 2000 years unrefuted is a pretty good track record.

I’d personally, much rather consider humans to be special on the basis of our ability to adapt & co-operate etc than infer ‘magic’ from this rather happy coincidence (ie our existence) the Universe has granted us.

Also, aside from religious debates, specifically, consider the way in which nature is often anthropomorphosized. The overwhelmig urge to attribute a function a purpose isn’t just something something theists do, atheists do this (almost as much)

That’s the old ‘God of gaps’ argument, which is an action that many atheists accuse theists of doing. I.E, if anything is weird or unknown, God rode his chariot out of heaven and did it…That’s most certainly not how I think, and while there are theist who still argue such things, they are few in number.

Thanks for clarifying, I understand what you are saying now, even though I disagree with most of it.

[pat]

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]GorillaMon wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]GorillaMon wrote:
Humans basically have too much ego, many people simply can’t handle the idea that the here & now is (probably) all that their is & ever will be. So, quite naturally they find ways to convince themselves that they are special, unique snowflakes, above animals & can settle upon certain morals & values which might grant them eternal life (or perhaps just a certain smugness).

People can’t see beyond their own emotions.

This isn’t just true of religious belief(s) though, I’d go as far to say it’s true of all sorts of other logically dubioius beliefs/attribution errors etc.
[/quote]

Your post doesn’t make much sense.
I don’t see how ego and the ‘here and no’ being the end all be all of existence go together. Nor the fact that everyone is different from one another mate up to the afore mentioned attributes…Nor how emotions play into it. Nor how you draw the conclusion that it is in ‘error’ along with other belief systems based on the previously mentioned things.[/quote]

Humans are capable of rationalizing the potential puropose(s)/origins of their existence. Rationalizing is massively dependent upon ego. People like to be right, some even go to the extreme of feeling they need to somehow just ‘know’ they are right. Admitting, you aren’t 100% certain whether a higher power exists, certain things are OR aren’t objectively true is more of an emotional challenge than a purely intellectual one IMHO/experience. It’s psychologically uncomfortable.

To put it simply: How can this issue not be laregely dependent upon ego & emotions? Does (for example) morality (at least from an individual’s POV) make any kind of sense/make any great strides in it’s development without the very powerful internal chiding OR reward our emotions can give us? << I think not.

With regards what I said about ‘attribution errors’, consider human consciousness & the notion of function. If a creature is sentient we consider to have certain ‘functions’. Hell, even if something isn’t sentient, you’ll still get a very large proportion of people arguing very stridently that everything OR at least specific things serve a very specific function.

^This is, perhaps is all well & good if you’ve already basically accepted the idea of intelligent design. However, the problem with this thinking is that it tends to collapse into: Weeeell, X,Y, & Z seem to work in perfect harmony, therefore this reinforces the idea of an beneficient creator…it couldn’t possibly be chance!! Cirular logic.

I’d personally, much rather consider humans to be special on the basis of our ability to adapt & co-operate etc than infer ‘magic’ from this rather happy coincidence (ie our existence) the Universe has granted us.

Also, aside from religious debates, specifically, consider the way in which nature is often anthropomorphosized. The overwhelmig urge to attribute a function a purpose isn’t just something something theists do, atheists do this (almost as much)

[/quote]

Good post. I think everyone would benefit from a cognitive psychology class, particularly emphasizing the human capacity for confirmatory bias driven by powerful subconscious needs, and discomfort with cognitive dissonance.

[quote]
Oh, I don’t know about that…I have seen some dangerous stupidity come out of that class. Just enough knowledge to mis-classify everybody. Operant conditioning is elusive to people for some reason. There a difference between having knowledge about it, and knowing it. And if you don’t know operant conditioning, you really won’t get cognative psychology.

[quote]
The danger of these biases is that they are so insidious most people don’t even think to question their process for believing as they do. They just assume their beliefs are unbiased and must reflect reality.

Educating yourself on these biases doesn’t immunize you against them. But it does cause you to take everything, even your core beliefs, with a large grain of salt.

The more insistent people are that they know the truth, and the less willing they are to admit they might be mistaken, the more likely it is that their beliefs are muddied by confirmatory bias. Unfortunately, the most biased people are definitionally those who are the least capable of recognizing that bias in themselves. Many go to their graves, 100% convinced that they are right.[/quote]

I agree everybody should know why they believe what they believe. It’s sad that most people really don’t.

[forlife]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]GorillaMon wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]GorillaMon wrote:
Humans basically have too much ego, many people simply can’t handle the idea that the here & now is (probably) all that their is & ever will be. So, quite naturally they find ways to convince themselves that they are special, unique snowflakes, above animals & can settle upon certain morals & values which might grant them eternal life (or perhaps just a certain smugness).

People can’t see beyond their own emotions.

This isn’t just true of religious belief(s) though, I’d go as far to say it’s true of all sorts of other logically dubioius beliefs/attribution errors etc.
[/quote]

Your post doesn’t make much sense.
I don’t see how ego and the ‘here and no’ being the end all be all of existence go together. Nor the fact that everyone is different from one another mate up to the afore mentioned attributes…Nor how emotions play into it. Nor how you draw the conclusion that it is in ‘error’ along with other belief systems based on the previously mentioned things.[/quote]

Humans are capable of rationalizing the potential puropose(s)/origins of their existence. Rationalizing is massively dependent upon ego. People like to be right, some even go to the extreme of feeling they need to somehow just ‘know’ they are right. Admitting, you aren’t 100% certain whether a higher power exists, certain things are OR aren’t objectively true is more of an emotional challenge than a purely intellectual one IMHO/experience. It’s psychologically uncomfortable.

To put it simply: How can this issue not be laregely dependent upon ego & emotions? Does (for example) morality (at least from an individual’s POV) make any kind of sense/make any great strides in it’s development without the very powerful internal chiding OR reward our emotions can give us? << I think not.

With regards what I said about ‘attribution errors’, consider human consciousness & the notion of function. If a creature is sentient we consider to have certain ‘functions’. Hell, even if something isn’t sentient, you’ll still get a very large proportion of people arguing very stridently that everything OR at least specific things serve a very specific function.

^This is, perhaps is all well & good if you’ve already basically accepted the idea of intelligent design. However, the problem with this thinking is that it tends to collapse into: Weeeell, X,Y, & Z seem to work in perfect harmony, therefore this reinforces the idea of an beneficient creator…it couldn’t possibly be chance!! Cirular logic.

I’d personally, much rather consider humans to be special on the basis of our ability to adapt & co-operate etc than infer ‘magic’ from this rather happy coincidence (ie our existence) the Universe has granted us.

Also, aside from religious debates, specifically, consider the way in which nature is often anthropomorphosized. The overwhelmig urge to attribute a function a purpose isn’t just something something theists do, atheists do this (almost as much)

[/quote]

Good post. I think everyone would benefit from a cognitive psychology class, particularly emphasizing the human capacity for confirmatory bias driven by powerful subconscious needs, and discomfort with cognitive dissonance.

[quote]
Oh, I don’t know about that…I have seen some dangerous stupidity come out of that class. Just enough knowledge to mis-classify everybody. Operant conditioning is elusive to people for some reason. There a difference between having knowledge about it, and knowing it. And if you don’t know operant conditioning, you really won’t get cognative psychology.

[quote]
The danger of these biases is that they are so insidious most people don’t even think to question their process for believing as they do. They just assume their beliefs are unbiased and must reflect reality.

Educating yourself on these biases doesn’t immunize you against them. But it does cause you to take everything, even your core beliefs, with a large grain of salt.

The more insistent people are that they know the truth, and the less willing they are to admit they might be mistaken, the more likely it is that their beliefs are muddied by confirmatory bias. Unfortunately, the most biased people are definitionally those who are the least capable of recognizing that bias in themselves. Many go to their graves, 100% convinced that they are right.[/quote]

I agree everybody should know why they believe what they believe. It’s sad that most people really don’t.[/quote]

It’s not just knowing why you believe what you believe. That can be misleading, because you may genuinely think you arrived at your beliefs objectively, with no hint of confirmatory bias. Like I said, most people don’t even know they are operating under a confirmatory bias. They can see it in others, but rarely see it in themselves.

The best defense I’m aware of is the willingness to sincerely doubt your own current beliefs. The more certain you are that you’re right, the more likely you’re operating under a confirmatory bias without even knowing it.

[ephrem]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

What do you think pat meant by, “no ultimate culpability”?

I think he meant that there’s no judgment of your actions in an afterlife, and that’s what i was talking about, chris.
[/quote]

I’m talking about what believers believe, you said that they repent and all is good. No…it is not. That is incorrect, that is not what the Catholic Church, which includes pat and me, teaches.

You repent of your sins, you then have a penance to do. Think of it like this you get into a car accident with your neighbor, she’s in the hospital. You go to the hospital and you bring her flowers and ask for forgiveness, you repent. She forgives you and you’re all done you get to go home and watch soccer on TV. Wrong.

You still have to pay for the damage to the vehicles. You still have to pay her medical bills. You still have to pay for time lost. &c.

[/quote]

Ten hail mary’s and your good to go; you’ve repented and can enter heaven once more.
[/quote]
Uh, yeah, no…That’s not how it works.

You know, if i wrong a person, even if it’s inadvertently, i’ll apologize and try to make it right.

That’s how it works with God and man. Reconciliation is an apology and a pledge to do better and action taken to do better. I mean reconciliation in the broad sense, not just Catholic sense.

[quote]
I don’t get why people have so much trouble with that concept that they need someone else to tell them to make things right.[/quote]

We don’t, you just don’t know what you are talking about. How you think it works is not how it is, period. I am not sure if you are doing it deliberately for spite, or you really don’t know, but what you espoused here is simply not true in any way. It’s actually so far off, I don’t even know where to begin to address it.[/quote]

I have trouble following certain twists and turns in a believer’s mind, and in this case it’s hard for me to understand the what and the why of this concept.

No malice intended.

[ephrem]

[quote]pat wrote:

That’s precisely what I meant. Leading a good life has no ultimate value if nothing happens when you die or are killed. This true for anybody, theist and atheist alike. Problem is, leading a good life is damned hard, it’s far easier to lead a narcissistic life. I’d like to think in the end, hard work and sacrifice mean something more than “He was a nice fellow, to bad he’s worm food now”
Contrary, I’d like to think assholes like stalin got more than a peaceful death on a comfy bed. There is no real justice in this world, but justice does come in some way or another.[/quote]

This is another thing i don’t get pat. It’s not that hard to lead a good life. I’ve found that it’s a lot less stressful to be nice and generally kind to people. Since i loath [bad] stress i avoid behaviour that leads to stress.

What you like to think or prefer is the basis for your beliefs. That’s true for me too.

Life isn’t fair. Bad things happen to good people, and bad people get away with murder.

That’s just the way it is.

[pat]

[quote]forlife wrote:
It’s not just knowing why you believe what you believe. That can be misleading, because you may genuinely think you arrived at your beliefs objectively, with no hint of confirmatory bias. Like I said, most people don’t even know they are operating under a confirmatory bias. They can see it in others, but rarely see it in themselves.

The best defense I’m aware of is the willingness to sincerely doubt your own current beliefs. The more certain you are that you’re right, the more likely you’re operating under a confirmatory bias without even knowing it.[/quote]

It’s all misleading to some degree in that most people don’t know why they believe what they believe…Actually engaging in debates like these and bouncing things off others who believe differently than you is a great way to either galvanize or reject beliefs…