Originally posted by NotAllThere
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That's known as the Great Pumpkin argument . However, the main thrust of what I've written has just passed you by. I'm not arguing that God exists, nor that the idea that God exists should be taken seriously, rather that beliefs may not be amenable to proof and are arrived at through evidence experienced personally (i.e. necessarily subjective), and are not therefore irrational or based on irrational premises.
i.e. it's a matter of choice based on evidence from personal experience for those who've ever actually thought about
That last clause is inserted to remove from the argument people who believe without having thought about it. I.e.. people who've been raised as Catholics or Muslims or Pastafarians (or even atheists) and have just gone along with it. For such people, as William James put it, the choice to believe contrary isn't "live" to them - they've no interest in it.
If all non-provable beliefs were irrational (see sig.) then it would be true that all such beliefs are equal. However, my argument intends to show that belief in non-provable beliefs is not irrational. Given that, it is clear to see that not all beliefs are equal in their power. No-one has ever gone out and done good nor killed anyone because of the invisible unicorn in the sofa, nor is their a complex system of philosophical musings on invisible unicorns. Studying the complexities of a religion like Hinduism takes rather more intellectual effort than studying the mysteries of the Great Pumpkin (or Creationism).
The belief that God doesn't exist is not based on proof or probability. It's an axiom of the atheistic belief system. It may even be right. None of the above has anything to do with whether God exists or not, nor whether it is right for you to believe in God, the Great Pumpkin or invisible unicorns.
Like the t-shirt says. There are words in many languages that don't have an exact equivalent in other languages. I'm fairly sure that reason that generally Germans aren't as courteous as the English is that their language doesn't really have a word that embodies "courtesy" in all its nuances. The word creates the reality of the behaviour.
Words like schadenfreude embody an internal emotional experience. Observable only to individual, and therefore not really part of the shared "objective" reality (which can't be proved to exist anyway - though most of us choose to believe it does, based on personally experienced evidence).
i.e. it's a matter of choice based on evidence from personal experience for those who've ever actually thought about
That last clause is inserted to remove from the argument people who believe without having thought about it. I.e.. people who've been raised as Catholics or Muslims or Pastafarians (or even atheists) and have just gone along with it. For such people, as William James put it, the choice to believe contrary isn't "live" to them - they've no interest in it.
If all non-provable beliefs were irrational (see sig.) then it would be true that all such beliefs are equal. However, my argument intends to show that belief in non-provable beliefs is not irrational. Given that, it is clear to see that not all beliefs are equal in their power. No-one has ever gone out and done good nor killed anyone because of the invisible unicorn in the sofa, nor is their a complex system of philosophical musings on invisible unicorns. Studying the complexities of a religion like Hinduism takes rather more intellectual effort than studying the mysteries of the Great Pumpkin (or Creationism).
The belief that God doesn't exist is not based on proof or probability. It's an axiom of the atheistic belief system. It may even be right. None of the above has anything to do with whether God exists or not, nor whether it is right for you to believe in God, the Great Pumpkin or invisible unicorns.
Like the t-shirt says. There are words in many languages that don't have an exact equivalent in other languages. I'm fairly sure that reason that generally Germans aren't as courteous as the English is that their language doesn't really have a word that embodies "courtesy" in all its nuances. The word creates the reality of the behaviour.
Words like schadenfreude embody an internal emotional experience. Observable only to individual, and therefore not really part of the shared "objective" reality (which can't be proved to exist anyway - though most of us choose to believe it does, based on personally experienced evidence).
But... lets assume, for example, that you've experienced some 'feeling' that you attribute to some kind of supernatural entity. Although it might be rational for you to attribute it to the supernatural, it is rational for me to attribute it to some kind of psychosis, or mis-attribution of some emotional response.
We can't prove who's right, but in reality the vast majority of religious people are more like northernpermtocontractor who just find the alternative displeasing, or have just been raised to believe.
With that being the case, the kinds of subjective experience that you;re describing is such a outlier that given the black of any evidence provided, I can't - as a rational being - view such claims with any credence.
Claims of that kind of subjective experience are no different than claims other people make who are generally considered to be mentally ill. We can't prove that they didn't see what they claim to have seen - but it's sufficiently improbable that we feel content to some that they are ill.
Ideas of God get more leeway due to it's historical place in the culture - but such claims are just as incredible as any other supernatural claim someone might make. I can't disprove leprechauns either, but no one outside of a hospital disagrees that there are no such thing as leprechauns - other than those who might claim some un-demonstrable personal experience of them.
I don't doubt that you've experienced something which makes you think what you think - if that's the case. It just would be irrational of me to believe that you weren't being intellectually dishonest with yourself, or experiencing some kind of hallucination, etc.
Now that he world is as small as it is, it won't be long until the western world is 99.9% atheist. I very much suspect that at that point, people experiencing these feelings that they currently attribute to God, will all but cease to exist, and such feelings will be attributed to something else instead. We'll see.
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