A Manual for Creating Atheists (page 2)

cofty

What a great analogy for "Old Light" - Satanic verses.

I have no interest in imposing on the future belief system of anyone. If you want to be an atheist - then god bless you. If you want to believe in god through some form of organized religion - god bless you.

I have "my own stinking problems" and am really not interested in what others believe or don't believe.

I spent half my hoped for existance trying to convice people of the rightness of my beliefs. No more. I don't give a rat's arse what people believe.

Hortensia

NY44M -- I get what you are saying. I don't care what other people believe, either. But I have some sort of a perverse little interest in listening to what they have to say, watching their logic or lack of logic. Why do people believe such patent absurdities? It's very interesting.

NewYork44M

Hortensia, I do not disagree with you, it is always fun to find out what other people think. Sometimes they may have some great ideas and I respect even the bad ideas. But my days of trying to convince people that they are wrong is over. The whole concept of the battle over right and wrong is over rated.

I do not presume to think that my ideas even come close to the right answer. I do not trust those who think their answer is the right one.

cofty

I respect even the bad ideas

I don't.

There are many things that are knowable and many things that are demonstrably false. We owe it to ourseves to investigate what can be known.

NewYork44M

I hear what you are saying, Cofty, but the basis of change is always from those people who espouse bad ideas. I always learn when I talk to the fringes of society who do not agree with me. I learn nothing from those that agree with me other than we are all correct, which I do not believe to be true.

Hortensia

Believing is not the same thing as knowing. So, what's a definition for "knowing?" I consider I know something when I'm convinced by evidence, otherwise I'm just guessing. I guess knowing is drawing a conclusion from evidence. My mother used to joke, "don't confuse me with facts, I've made up my mind." The irony is that although she could say that as a joke, it's also how she ran her life.

Hortensia

Bits from chapters three and four:

Certainty is the enemy of truth. If you are certain you have the truth, why would you look for anything else?
Certainty in one's faith robs a person of curiosity and the desire to explore the world and learn more.

The author refers to Amazing Conversions (Altemeyer and Hunsberger) -- the non-religious convert to religion often after some emotional event, such as the death of someone loved or an event like the 9/11 attack in New York. However, the path of someone leaving religion takes years and lots of thinking, reading and discussion.

Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief (Gervais and Norenzyan) the more proficient a person becomes at critical thinking, the more like he/she will disbelieve religion.
(No wonder the wtbts and the Taliban don't like education, eh?)

Five reasons why people embrace faith without any evidence to support it:
1. they never learned critical thinking
2. they base their faith on unreliable evidence (like experiencing the holy spirit)
3. they have never been exposed to competing ideas
4. social/peer pressure
5. they don't value truth or are relativists

"Doxastic Closure"
Doxastic means belief. Doxastic closure is a belief so entrenched or protected it is difficult to change. They are in a bubble that filters out disagreeable or uncomfortable ideas. The author included some interesting thoughts about Google - that google bases search results on your past searches and web sites you've visited, creating a little bubble that leaves out other information. So someone who visits skeptic sites will get different results from a google search than someone who visits religious sites, even though they use the same search key words. So, if you're surrounded by people who believe as you do, and google promotes more of the same kind of thinking, and you never learned to think critically, and if belief affects your social structure, well, it will be pretty hard for you to change your beliefs unless something happens to create a chink in the armor.

Critical thinking is far more work than accepting simple platitudes (like my neighbor's idea about karma.)
Tools of faith: certainty, prejudice, pretending, confirmation bias, irrationality and superstition

http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/08/30/skepticism101/

tec

Dear Tammy, you have probably done this many times before, but could you indulge an old man and post a succinct definition of what you think faith is, and also what is wrong with the definition above, or is it simply too short ?

Simplest definition:

Faith is knowing.

Not doubting, not believing alone, not thinking, not guessing. But knowing.

Faith is certainly knowing the one that you have put your faith IN. Who puts their faith in someone (or something) that they do not know? (I mean, yes, I know people DO that... but it is not necessarily a wise thing to do)

The author of Hebrews defines faith as:

Faith is the confidence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

This is the definition that messes people up the most, because they don't understand what the author is talking about, and do not put into context the exmples he gives. But to break it down some:

Faith is the confidence, the conviction = knowing.

.. of the things hoped for, things not seen = the things we hope for in Christ, that we may not YET see, but know are true because He has spoken them so, and HE is true.

Faith is based upon Christ, and faith follows what is heard, so faith is not based upon nothing; faith has never been based upon nothing. He even showed those who walked with Him that He lived after He died, and His speaking as the Spirit now proves it also, at least to those who hear and listen to Him. Abraham heard God, and believed Him. Noah heard God, and believed Him. Their faith was in God... and their faith was answered as being true, each and every time. They KNEW that God would speak true, and give as He had promised.

There are certainly many who have belief... hope for something to be true, but do not know that it IS true. But that is belief and hope... not the kind of faith that is written as examples of faith.

Snare, the word you might want to consider capitalizing here for emphasis, and for better understanding:

Faith is an assured EXPECTATION for things HOPED for.

... is ASSURED.

Reads a bit different if you emphasise a different word.

Peace to you both,

tammy

zound

That sounds more like TRUST, rather than faith.

I have never had any ASSURANCE when I tried to have faith - nothing, zip, zero. No signs, no feelings that are unoquivically from jesus/god. Where is this assurance you speak of coming from?

What is knowing? Is this a feeling?

A Manual for Creating Atheists

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