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Philosophical Questions: Beliefs

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Which of your beliefs are justified and which ones aren’t?

I like facts a lot. When I have gathered enough evidence to feel confident about setting a stance, then I do that. Until then, I may have a tentative hypothesis, but the stance is not set. And it's not really set in stone. My belief is more like a set of scales, with evidence in the pans, so even if it's quite firmly tilted at the moment, in theory more evidence could rain down and shift the balance. The more beans in a pan, the harder it is to shift. So, a scientific approach to belief, and justification as beans.

I don't like believing things where I can't cite reasons for believing them. There are, of course, things I believe based on evidence that isn't in the world where I'm currently standing. I try to sort out which came from where. But I've become very reluctant to believe that anything is really "impossible" because I've just had too many experiences where even things I had a proof for turned out to be doable if you knew how to manipulate materials or laws of reality.

This is not typically how humans deal in belief, which is often a point of contention. But well, when you can tinker with reality, and do things like "I told the energy it was a wall and it believed me," then it's very important to know not only what you believe but why and to make sure your beliefs are as accurate as you can make them.

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Supporting evidence isn't the same as justification. A belief may be true, but still unjustified. Granted it's more a matter of semantics than anything else, but there is a quantifiable difference between believing that the earth is round (in which case, yes justified=supporting evidence) and believing that all people should be equal. (in which case justification = convincing philosophical arguments as to why it should be so are necessary)

Belief is a slippery thing without observable reality.

Edited 2023-03-25 08:36 (UTC)

That's why I prefer facts. Without those, mostly what you're left with are circular arguments or simple opinions. Justification simply becomes a matter of being able to recite a systems base premise(s). Once you've practiced using multiple systems to resolve dilemmas or current events, it gets hard to "believe" any of them absolutely. I do like being familiar enough to use them, but that's about it.

Probably the closest I come is considering something bad if it has bad outcomes, because outcomes are measurable facts. But you do have to make sure the outcomes are bad because of the thing itself, not some warped aspect of context, and that's hard too.

My first thought was to ask what it means for a belief to be "justified". Plenty of people justify beliefs by the good consequences they believe will result from people accepting them; a classic example of this is that people should keep to their proper places for the good of society. (Yes, this is circular.)

The problem with justification, when you get away from factual aspects, is that you pretty much do wind up with circular arguments ("Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.") or simple opinions.

All it really means is being able to recite a given system's base premise(s). And the problem with that is, it's easy to go down a list of religious or philosophical systems, using each one to resolve a particular dilemma or current event. After you've done that a dozen or so times, it gets hard to "believe" in any of them absolutely, or justifications based on them. Hence my preference for facts, although I do like being able to riff along multiple schools of thought.

For what this is worth, one of many reasons I'm an atheist is because no one has ever really proven that god exists.

It's a challenging thing to prove. One can collect all sorts of interesting evidence, especially if one researches higher powers in general instead of focusing on just one. Some of it has quite hard evidence -- while Christians are typically squishy on science, they are downright rigorous about verifying miracles submitted for qualifying a soul as a saint. And of course, some religions have ways for followers to meet their higher powers in person. However, those aren't usually atheist-friendly events. Some of the lwa think it's hilarious to mount an outsider, ride them up a tree, and leave them there.

In the absence of concrete evidence or personal experience, atheism and agnosticism are reasonable stances.

An interesting topic to ponder: If no higher powers exist, then:
-- Why do all human societies have spiritual beliefs and practices?
-- Why does religion swiftly respawn after someone tries to stamp it out?
-- Why do religious beliefs and practices repeat so many of the same motifs and actions, around the world, in cultures with no contact?

Either there are higher powers of some sort that humanity can, somewhat vaguely, perceive and interact with; or something else is hardwired into humans and/or the world which causes a similar pattern to appear. So if there are no higher powers, then what else could that be, and how did it arise, and why is it still there? This makes for intriguing debates, because not all atheist / agnostic folks agree on explanations.

Violence exists in all cultures but it shouldn't.

That depends on the culture and on the violence. Most modern societies are a mess, but not all societies always have been.

A few cultures have extremely low rates of violence, almost zero. Many have way too much of it. The nonzero effect is because the world is sometimes dangerous, and some people have innate biological issues that make them behave violently even in healthy circumstances. The exaggerated effect comes in cultures that like and admire violence.

Then look at the types. Things like domestic violence or unprovoked murder are just plain bad. But things like spearing a sabertooth so it doesn't eat you, or an assailant so he doesn't kill you, are sometimes necessary. This is why the emotions of fear and anger, and the ability to commit violence, are passed down. They're survival traits.

So when we're looking at violence in society, we have to consider how much of it there is and why it's there. Is it at an appropriate level for the context? Is it an occasional error? Or have they gone hog-wild glorifying it and turning a necessary survival trait into something very counter-survival?

This interests me because I enjoy studying humans and history, how they work, how they go wrong, and how to fix things afterwards.

I also think people believe what they want to believe. A lot of people believe in a religion because they want to think we get what we deserve or that there's some all powerful being that has their back or they just were taught it when they were very young and didn't ever question it. Thousands of years ago people came up with ideas to try to explain things they didn't understand. The rich and powerful believe god approves of them and many oppressed people cling to the idea that they're going to heaven because they don't get what they want (or need) in this world.

>>I also think people believe what they want to believe.<<

This is widely true.

>> A lot of people believe in a religion because they want to think we get what we deserve or that there's some all powerful being that has their back or they just were taught it when they were very young and didn't ever question it. Thousands of years ago people came up with ideas to try to explain things they didn't understand. The rich and powerful believe god approves of them and many oppressed people cling to the idea that they're going to heaven because they don't get what they want (or need) in this world.<<

Do you think that kind of thing is widespread enough, hardwired enough, to appear in all cultures the way religion does, barring a few individuals? And then to respawn from a fairly specific pool of options if stamped out temporarily? Does mere wishful thinking seem powerful enough to compel people not only to believe in it, but to go to tremendous lengths in pursuit of it while ignoring other survival imperatives?

Ah, hm, that gives me an idea. Addiction can hijack survival resources to pursue something that is counter-survival. But because it is counter-survival, it is necessarily limited in scope and can't really take over a whole culture for long; it tends to stamp itself out.

So possibly, some other thing causes people to adopt a nonfactual belief and behave in counter-survival ways. But for it to have the total spread that it does through societies, it would have to have benefits that outweigh the costs, and those have to be more than just an individual culture or tradition.

"Do you think that kind of thing is widespread enough, hardwired enough, to appear in all cultures the way religion does, barring a few individuals? And then to respawn from a fairly specific pool of options if stamped out temporarily? Does mere wishful thinking seem powerful enough to compel people not only to believe in it, but to go to tremendous lengths in pursuit of it while ignoring other survival imperatives?"

yes, I do.

To be fair, some species do have certain biological phases that are only triggered in extreme circumstances and they tend not to promote survival in ordinary conditions. (Locust swarms, fearless lemmings, and the human plague/disaster response of 'scatter and abandon your kin.')

Most traditional religions that I know of seem to be animism or ancestor worship. As society gets bigger, you get more organized religion (expected, given high-population civilization needs organization) but you also begin to get pantheons and the occasional monotheistic religion.

I don't know if that counts as a different phase, triggered by population density, food surplus, stressors, or what.

When I became a Wiccan, I had to explain why to everyone I knew. First of all, what appealed most to me was the role of the Goddess, which was missing from every other religion I had ever heard of. And the duality was also appealing. Since everything in the universe from the spin of subatomic particles on up to mammalian sex seems to be dyadic in nature, it makes sense for Deity to be so. And it ultimately turned out to be just that it FELT true to me. After a few vaguely mystical experiences, I became a willing convert :-)

I had discovered at the age of seven that I was technically a Deist - it seemed possible that some Creator or Spiritual Ruler might exist. But I was largely a classsical Agnostic - it just didn't seem logical to me that there was a God. Belief in God - belief in almost anything - is largely unscientific. And as a child, I placed a lot of importance on Logic and Science.

Edited 2023-03-25 22:46 (UTC)

People always want to know why.

Parts of the Bible (in the original language) were originally written with feminine phrasing (or so I have heard).

I'd love to see a version of the Bible that switched all of the gendered-god language to the feminine, and/or one that alternated gendered terms.

"Elohim" is a plural word, meaning "gods" or "pantheon." People forget that a lot.

See also:

https://eewc.com/introducing-divine-feminine-version-dfv-new-testament/

While I couldn't find an alternating Bible, some churches do that.

Also bear in mind, some languages have a nongendered pronoun, or don't gender language at all, and a few even have a special pronoun set for divine figures.

I haven't studied Biblical linguistics, but I have picked up on a few prosocial arguments referencing the bible, and that was one of them. Plus, limiting God to a single gender as if ey were human could be argued as disrespectful - either God's gender is All of the Above, or God is so far beyond human concepts of gender that it would be like assigning a gender to a planet or nebula.

>>https://eewc.com/introducing-divine-feminine-version-dfv-new-testament/<<

Interesting.

As I once said to a conservatively-religious guy I know there are some things I don't want to talk to a guy about, however much I might care about him.

>>Also bear in mind, some languages have a nongendered pronoun, or don't gender language at all, and a few even have a special pronoun set for divine figures.<<

Haitian Creole has one pronoun to cover he/she/they, and I think Finnish has nongendered pronouns too. Burmese has separate pronouns for monks, roughly analogous to English I and You, but I don't know about divine ones..

Most of the annoying religious stuff I hear is in English, and that is my only language where I am patient/fluent enough to sit down and read the Bible.

One of the early Suffragettes wrote a "Women's Bible", with the points of view all switched. I wonder if that's in print or at least on Gutenberg.

What a cool bit of history. :D

It's a historically interesting document. And another useful book is When God Was A Woman by Merlin Stone. Trying to piece together a female-centered spirtuality out of these books from the past was a HUGE job.

... that's why some of us preferred to skip the books and derive from artifacts or other sources. It's a lot easier to pull premises and useful practices from the Venus of Willendorf or Stonehenge.

Of course, I have ulterior resources in farmemory and family practices. But my parents still hunted avidly for multicultural books for me when I was little, so that helped.

There's quite a bit out there if you just ignore the past tense. ;)

Found it, I think:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman%27s_Bible
https://www.sacred-texts.com/wmn/wb/

Yes, that's it! I haven't read it, but I heard a lot about how the Suffragettes tried to find a spiritual path that empowered women, and how threatened all the men in political power felt about the idea. (I got heavily into Women's Spirituality in the 1960s, and that let me to Wicca.)

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