why do you believe what you believe

[gooduser07]

hello all,

in effort to know truth, and to understand how humanity has ended up with the myriad of beliefs extant today, I thought a poll would be in order.
feel free.

abie

[dauer]

If we use this paragraph from wikipedia:

"Idea, in is some forms of philosophy, is excepted as the opposite of belief. Often a belief is some thing excepted as, by the believer, a truth, and therefore resists change. Idea is a thought that, while still being excepted by the thinker, is not held to such truth as belief, and can be changed, molded, or added onto with improvements or suggestions."

Belief - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't hold many beliefs at all, just a lot of ideas that I may or may not feel strongly about. I believe that all of our experiences of the world contain some degree of subjectivity and that, because of this, we have no way to verify anything as Truth. I believe that what we all generally agree is objectively True is more likely to contain at least a hint of Truth but that this isn't necessarily the case. I believe that all experiences, if not True, are at the very least real for the individual. Those beliefs, much like many other people's, I hold because of my life experiences. A lot of my ideas about the world spring from them.

I probably feel most strongly about my central idea regarding ethics, that the guiding principle for how we ought to act is probably contained within the many permutations of the golden rule but that the best way to act in a given moment is dependant on the time and place, both the individual event and the people involved as well as the larger society. It is, however, something I would willingly modify or change given the evidence.

Dauer

[wil]

I think I believe what I believe because it works, its comfortable...not to say it doesn't challenge me at times...but I am often at peace and in other systems I felt out of sorts...not challenged out of sorts but befuddled uncomfortable out of sorts...

I believe that is why we have so many....we are told this is the road to whatever and we don't see whatever and don't appear to be getting close to whatever so we either try another path or someone tells us about another path...and it appears to be getting us closer to wherever whatever is...so we stay...now some of us have other comfort zones....ie social implications, the family is here, the party is good, so we don't take another path despite we aren't getting where we wanna go...because we stay for the accouterments or the family who doesn't want to go on...

[Tao_Equus]

I believe nothing. So according to Cyberpi I have infinite beliefs!! Cool!

[China Cat Sunflower]

I'm with Dauer. I have a lot of ideas, but no solid beliefs. It's important to me to entertain and hold a lot of different and differing ideas; to try to see things from as many different sides as possible. The more information I can amass without short circuiting the process by forming beliefs the better hypothesis I can construct and reconstruct from that information.

Chris

[17th Angel]

To keep myself busy.

[Eudaimonist]

Originally Posted by gooduser07

in effort to know truth, and to understand how humanity has ended up with the myriad of beliefs extant today, I thought a poll would be in order.

Reason, observation, discussion, study, life experience, and being true to myself.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[Tao_Equus]

Because I'm told to. And you better do too if you know what's good for you!!

[Vajradhara]

Namaste all,

i always think this is a good question.. to be followed by the equally important question "Are you sure?"

in any event, i believe what i do due to my life experiences, my personal outlook upon life and my religious paradigm.

metta,

~v

[greymare]

I dont exactly have a belief, I dont think. I used to be indecisive, now I'm not sure (haha). I do believe that you should live until you die.
And, if today was a bad one, the sun will rise tomorrow and you can start all over again. love the grey

[Neemai]

I would say:

1) Personal experience,
2) Logical reasoning,
and 3) Other people's personal testimonies.

i.e - I don't know the earth is a sphere, but when I look from the top of a high mountain the horizon does look kind of spherical in the distance. It makes logical sense (what other shape would work?); and there are people who have travelled round it, or taken photos from space and brought them back.

Same goes for the soul, reincarnation and existence of God, only without the photos.


... Neemai

[Operacast]

Hi --

I suppose I've been kind of in penance for a while for having lost my temper with a fellow poster, and so I've not felt like posting here, having been rather upset with myself. I'm delighted, though, to see that the poster I fought with is still posting here constructively, so that's perhaps one up side in all this.

The OP in this thread is well worth addressing, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to give my two cents on this. It may be that I've already spelled out elswehere on this forum(?) my reasons for believing what I believe today. If so, I'll understand if the moderators choose to delete this posting; but it does seem relevant here, and I also look forward to reading additional answers from others in the coming days. Anyhow, here goes:

I suppose I’d describe myself as a “provisional theist”, which may scandalize all camps!...

By way of explanation, let me start by suggesting that humanity is a species that partly depends for its evolution upon socialization. Granted, there are individual drives related to each autonomous organism, but there are also group patterns of behavior that are selected for as well. Hence, socialization. Through the millennia, those group patterns have yielded such things as villages, then towns, then states, then nations, then international alliances, etc. Each of these structures are geared to interdependent living, ultimately. And as the structures grow in complexity, the portion of the human family being mutually cared for should theoretically grow simultaneously. If that doesn’t happen, growing resentment and social upheavals eventually topple a unit (whether a culture, a state, or whatever) into anarchy, and the evolution of the unit is stunted and eventually dies. If this process happens on a huge enough basis, the species itself is in jeopardy.

Since, frankly, I view the urges for growing social cohesiveness as being fully as biological and as intrinsic to evolution as the urge to sleep, or have sex, or eat, that means that I find the ways in which those innovative and altruistic urges (leading to more and more successfully inclusive socialization) manifest themselves critical to understanding how the biological evolution of our species proceeds in the first place. This is why the dynamics of social reform and altruism seem essential in understanding the evolution of the human species as a whole, not just the survival of individual humans.

It's been easy to find a number of manifestations of those essentially heterodox urges (for their time and place) toward greater social inclusiveness, but those are often in tandem with equally heterodox understandings of deity (for their time and place) that have frequently aroused the dangerous ire of orthodox religious authorities -- and some secular authorities as well. At the same time, such combined heterodox takes on both deity and social mores always seem to come from theists, however heterodox.

Now, surely, there is nothing more heterodox than a path-breaking atheism or even agnosticism? How come, then, the pioneering atheists down through history (that is, pioneering for their time and place) do not show a similar pattern of concurrent heterodox notions of unprecedented (for their time and place) social inclusiveness? I started out a decade or so back fully expecting to find precisely such figures who would be heterodox in both respects, both nonbelief and social inclusiveness. Instead, it disappointed me (being a skeptic at the time) when I only found atheists who were either original and truly altruistic in their social ethics but never original in their atheism, applying a ready-made philosophy of atheism from some other contemporary thinker or from a thinker of a generation or so earlier; or they would be truly pathbreaking (for their time and place) in their atheism but not innovative, even when extremely ethical, in their social thinking. So they never displayed this symbiotic pattern of concurrently heterodox views in both areas typical of pioneering heterodox theists.

I recognize that plenty of atheists have died horrible deaths and that many, many such figures have had their writings destroyed. So the historical record is probably not complete. But much of the first millennium B.C.E. displays a more tolerant spirit - not throughout, obviously, but still markedly more tolerant than most other eras - in which ultimately a higher frequency of skeptical thinking - even respected skeptical thinking - has survived than from any other era until our own day, which is finally as freewheeling as then, even though it hasn’t lasted as long. The absence of the type of innovative atheist who is heterodox (for the atheist’s time and place) - in both one’s take on the cosmos and one’s social values - from even the relatively inquiring and freewheeling eras remained especially disappointing to me.

Now, theists who are plainly heterodox in both their take on deity and their take on more inclusive social values are self-evidently risking the ire of their communities - and have garnered it all too frequently. So it’s not necessarily a courage gap that we’re dealing with here when we see the absence of such figures among genuinely ground-breaking atheists. Could something else be going on, tied more directly to a heterodox understanding - and visceral awareness - of deity that in turn emboldens the risking of life and limb for innovative/heterodox social reform as well?

Anyway, that is what has occurred to me, and it’s what’s made me conclude that, given the apparent symbiosis between heterodox theist views (for their time and place) and heterodox ethical/social views (for their time and place), these recurring patterns on the ground may point to natural human evolution being inextricably tied to a visceral awareness of deity in an often heterodox context as well that is frequently countercultural -- dangerously so for the pioneer in question.

There is admittedly one essential assumption/presumption that I make here at the outset, and if that is debunked, my whole argument clearly founders: I assume/presume that humanity’s natural evolution is as much tied to the steady expansion of social mores as it is tied to the individual drives for food, sex and sleep, etc. - an entirely natural process in which whatever is symbiotically tied to expanding social mores is just as natural as the evolving mores themselves - making deity just as real a presence in this equation as evolution itself. If I’m wrong in the asumption that the growing expansion of generous social mores is as biologically intrinsic to our species as the drives for food, sex and sleep, then I’m wrong in everything else.

But the main reason why I term myself a “provisional theist” is because, even though I’ve studied the pioneering atheists down the millennia rather extensively, there is still an outside possibility that I may yet come across some pioneering atheist (pioneering for that atheist's time and place) who atypically introduces, at the same time, some new ethical paradigm (new for that time and place) after all. I haven’t found that yet, which is why I’m now a theist. But if I do find it, I guess I’d become an agnostic - which is what I was before embarking on my layman’s study of the history of pioneering atheists.

As I say, my two cents,

Operacast

[Muslimwoman]

It may sound like a silly answer but it is because it feels right. Something inside me says "this feels right, go with it".

[Operacast]

[Regrettably, a posting has somehow disappeared from this page. Since I still have it in my Inbox, I'm taking the opportunity to restore it here without additional comment.]


LeoSalinas22

first off, i don't believe in God.... i know God exists. now on to the question. the reason my hope rests in God is because this world's way has failed time after time after time and again...failed! nothing is working. science and art just isn't cutting it! all i ever hear is who died, why did they die, earthquakes, wars, famines. never any good news. when will the day come when i watch the news and see, " suffering and death have ended! news at 11!" when? when does the war against war begin? i used to believe in man. now i don't. this is why my faith is in God. now and until i return to the dust of the earth.... and even after that! way after that.

[wil]

Originally Posted by leo22??

.... nothing is working.....when will the day come when i watch the news and see, " suffering and death have ended! news at 11!" when? when does the war against war begin?

Namaste Leo,

Last one first...

The war against war has gone on forever and will never work...you can't solve war with war or hate with hate. Peace and love my brother, turn the other cheek, and love your enemy...tis the only way. And I believe that because it works for me.

Suffering and death ended? It is all part of life? Nothing is working? It is all working in my world.

In order for you to have a flower on your table how many critters have to toil, how many have to die for the food on your plate? G!d created it all and said it was good....who are we to say otherwise?

I know that my earthly unknowing self has issues as I cannot see the big picture...I know I tear over lost souls...but I also know it is all part of a plan that is not for me to understand. I know when the tree dies and falls in the forest thousands of animals, millions of insects and billions of microbes will thrive...and then when they die and move on more trees will grow....and it is good.

My life is the same...one day this body will be fertile ground...and it is good...whenever and however it comes.

Why do I believe that way....because I sleep soundly at night, resting in the bosom of my faith.