Belief in Belief

FMF posted: "Belief in belief is the notion that religious belief has positive benefits and should be fostered or tolerated, without the need to subscribe to the belief in question. In western societies this is commonly expressed in cases where people feel that religious belief brings comfort and moral guidance. ~ rationalwiki

What are the strengths and weaknesses of this - to your way of thinking - from a spiritual, religious, or ideological point of view."

Even though I'm a scientist and an atheist, I always thought religion held value for people, on balance. Religion is humanity's earliest self-help book, earliest counseling session, earliest motivational speaker.

But for important questions like, say, the Purpose of Life, I always viewed "belief" as a cop-out or short-cut. Surely, I would say to myself, important questions cannot be settled with something as non-rigorous as "belief."

So I've spent a lot of time trying to work out Life's Purpose in a logical way. Yes, I knew that Bertrand Russell had tried to derive mathematics from pure logic and failed. And that Kurt Godel later proved why it could not be done with his Incompleteness Theorem. I guess I just wasn't seeing it.

The day I realized that Science and Religion BOTH rest on Human Beliefs was actually quite a relief.

Ask 'Why?' enough times, and you eventually arrive at a place where you simply have to take something on faith. This is where you start. These are your axioms. Even Richard Dawkins takes axioms on faith. He can't prove them. We could argue with others about whether they have the right axioms or not - but unless an axiom contradicts an observable fact, there isn't much to assail it with.

What is more interesting is that, starting from remarkably different foundations, the most devout theist and the most hard-core atheist can build edifices that end in similar places.

That's amazing.

@spruce112358

There are two problems with "belief in belief."

One is that one cannot, psychologically cannot, get oneself to believe something simply because one wants to believe it or because one thinks it might be beneficial (despite its being evidently false or unprovable). Try, try real hard, to believe that 2+2=5. Or that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election. Or that a man was born of a virgin and rose from the dead and was the Creator of the universe. What we believe must be at least roughly compatible with what is known about mathematics and the natural world and the way elections work, otherwise it is superstition at best, and at worst pathological, delusional, including self-delusional.

Try, try real hard, to get yourself to believe it would be socially beneficial if people believed that 2+2=5, or that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election, or that a man was born of a virgin and rose from the dead and was the Creator of the universe. People don't believe things because they believe it would be socially beneficial for them to believe it; the process of belief formation doesn't work like that.

Two, quite a lot of people do in fact "believe in belief" and vehemently resist this being pointed out to them. Every theist who believes that his religion or sect and only his religion or sect is "the real deal" actually worships religion, not God, and that is a definition of idolatry. Of course, this is not as simple as trying to get oneself to believe that 2+2=5. Organized religions know this very well, so they develop techniques to indoctrinate people to intuitively implausible and empirically unverifiable ideas (about virgin births, miracles, supernatural causation), gradually, through training, coercive persuasion, isolation from alternative views, making grandiose promises (of eternal life if you believe these things), etc. That is to say, although one cannot get oneself to believe in belief all by oneself, one can be led to it with the 'help' of organized religions and by being surrounded by like-minded people who already believe such things (whatever their own psychological belief-acquisition processes may have been). Give a child to a priest for the first seven years, and he'll have a devil of a time ever growing out of whatever the priest taught him.

https://sourcenews.scot/give-me-a-child-till-he-is-seven-years-old/

So what is the problem here? Thought control, group-think, that's the problem with it. The JWs are a prime example of how it goes horribly wrong, how it harms people, and I don't mean just covering up sexual abuse of children--I mean cramping people's minds into a delusional world-view.

Some time ago, we had a very illuminative discussion here about how people came to believe in God, and one thing became very clear, even to a number of theists here: truth is not causative of belief. The truth of religious beliefs is not part of the psychological process of acquiring religious beliefs.

For a very learned discussion of these topics, I highly recommend "Why Gods Persist" by Robt. Hinde


https://www.routledge.com/Why-Gods-Persist-A-Scientific-Approach-to-Religion/Hinde-Hinde/p/book/9780415497626

Now, finally, believing in science is nothing like believing in God. Science is not another religion which happens to believe in Nobody instead of Yahweh. One does not believe that the Earth goes round the sun, the way one believes that the Son of Man was crucified and rose from the dead. These are not comparable cognitive states, one of which happens to be put in a box marked 'scientific' and the other in a box marked 'religious.'

@moonbus said
@spruce112358

There are two problems with "belief in belief."

One is that one cannot, psychologically cannot, get oneself to believe something simply because one wants to believe it or because one thinks it might be beneficial (despite its being evidently false or unprovable). Try, try real hard, to believe that 2+2=5. Or that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election. ...[text shortened]... e of which happens to be put in a box marked 'scientific' and the other in a box marked 'religious.'

It is really unfortunate that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have been fighting each other for centuries.

Hindus, on the other hand, never had any beef.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
It is really unfortunate that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have been fighting each other for centuries.

Hindus, on the other hand, never had any beef.

@kellyjay said
Unfortunately, we have been fighting with each other, you act like the major religions are the cause, I'll remind you millions were killed off through Atheistic governments and people in power too. It's a corrupt human race that fights each other.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
It was a joke Kelly.

*Hindus never had any beef.

@very-rusty said
When joking always use a smiley. 🙂

-VR

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Some seem to need them to recognise humour.

@kellyjay said
Some need to realize not all humor may be taken as funny.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Are you objecting on behalf of the cow?

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Some seem to need them to recognise humour.

@kellyjay said
Some need to realize not all humor may be taken as funny.

@kellyjay said
Some need to realize not all humor may be taken as funny.

@very-rusty said
Ghost believes if he said it and he thought it was funny, everyone else should see it to, is the impression I get. 🙂

-VR