Does not truth matter to you, Bradski?
They are in fact futile for the one who will not see.I think we’ve asnwered the OP’s question. The disscussions here so that discussions about morality are not, in fact, futile.
Thou doth?
That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Something is either true or it’s not. You either believe it or not depending on the amount of information you have. Apart from children and the very gullible, no-one believes something just because someone tells them it’s true (unless it’s inconsequential like ‘my dog’s name is Spot’).
Do you believe in love?
Actually, this is absolutely NOT TRUE at all, Bradski.
I think you misunderstand my point. I am not proposing that a thinking person says, “I better believe this because it’s true.”
I’m talking about the information in life that’s important to us that we personally act on. Where it would be reasonable to doubt the first person who thinks that they have the answer. There’s a difference between accepting something as being true in the ordinary sense of the term and believing it to be so in the stronger sense that we are discussing. So your dog’s name is Spot? OK, I’ll believe that. And God is the creator of everything? Well, hang on, I might need to look into that a little more.
Not if it’s inconsequential. If a guy in a bar tells me the capitol of Uzbekistan is Karakalpak, then I’ll have no reason to disbelieve him because it’s inconsequential to me. But if I have to go there on business, I’m not going to believe him just because he says so. I’d need more information (which would show me that he was wrong - it’s Tashkent).
There’s that word again: ‘should’. You say I should believe in God if it’s true that he exists. The construction of that sentence makes no sense to me. If the existence or non-existence of God is important to me then, then depending on the amount of evidence I have, I will believe or not. I cannot decide it’s true and then go on to decide if I ‘should’ believe. That’s already happened.
Because it’s true? No, because as I have illustrated, that’s logically impossible. There may be reasons why you should believe in God – perhaps it makes you a better person, but saying that the reason is because it’s true is nonsensical.
I might pass on Santa. But I think that belief in God does make some people more moral, happier, more satisfied with life. So if it was within my power to flick a switch and make everyone’s belief disappear, I wouldn’t do it. I think people are believing in something that’s not true. But that doesn’t make their belief wrong for them. I wish it wasn’t the case, but that’s the way the world turns.
You’ll have to explain why you would pass on Santa while not wishing to “flick a switch” and make everyone’s belief in God disappear.
Do you think trusting your life to a perfect stranger is inconsequential? She’s piloting you miles above the earth in a flimsy steel container, and you’ve examined not a shred of evidence that she’s gone to flight school, gotten good grades, passed the exam…not to mention her mental, physical, emotional fitness at the moment that she’s flying the aircraft to your potential death…
If you know something is false then it’s not logical to say that it’s wrong to believe it. You have already decided it’s false so, ipso facto, you cannot believe it. Similarly, if you know something is true you literally do not have a choice as to whether you believe it or not.
That old saw? OK, the let’s fine tune the criteria. If something is inconsequential or if, in the normal scheme of things, you would generally accept that what the person telling you is backed up by past experience or the situation is such that you have reasonable expectations that the person has no real reason to lie.
I had inferred that as the interactivity diminished. All the same, I enjoyed the discussion.
Take this conversation back a step. Put it in the context of “Why believe in God if we can be moral without God?”
Right.
Yes. Your experience is something that is quite reasonable to place your trust in.
Ah, so here’s where it gets good.
It turns out that you, and all atheists in fact, do believe something--lots of things. Lots of consequential things–simply because someone told you it’s true.
You keep phrasing this in a way that makes no sense. You either believe in God or you don’t. Nobody goes through the process of deciding if they can be moral without God and then go on to make a decision as to whether they should therefore believe in Him or not. Does is make sense for you to say: I can’t be moral without a belief in God, therefore I should believe in Him. Or conversely for me to say: I can be moral without a belief in God, therefore I don’t need to believe in Him.
It’s not faith. I don’t sit there as the plane is rolling down the runway thinking that I have faith in the ability of the guy at the controls to get it in the air. I have a very reasonable expectation that the whole process that everyone has gone through up to this point has resulted in a competent pilot at the controls. There’s a huge difference.
After having gotten a person with a fear of flying to get on a plane going from Atlanta to Barcelona I can tell you that the expectation that you will get there okay isn’t necessary to actually get on the plane (though it certainly does make the ride much more comfortable). While there’s the possibility of death with each flight it also seems that some people have a limited capacity for a concern. After being presented with it enough the person may become desensitized to the concerns to the point of being quite comfortable with them (ex: does the knowledge of the possibility that one could die in a vehicular accident keep most people from getting in a car or other vehicle?).
You are correct.
As for the bolded part, that’s exactly the argument I am trying to head off at the pass.
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