Why Are Things Believed ?

@suzianne said
The people in this forum have always misused the word "realize".

realize, verb
1. become fully aware of (something) as a fact; understand clearly.
2. cause (something desired or anticipated) to happen.
3. give actual or physical form to.
4. make (money or a profit) from a transaction.

All of these mean to make (something) real. Real, as opposed to fictional. You ...[text shortened]... is true is not realizing it is true. You can believe a false statement, but you cannot realize it.

I think fmf’s idea is still valid, that some beliefs are implicit, and that for many people, belief in some sort of supernatural causation is one of them. It may dawn on one later that one has this belief and one can articulate it as some kind of religious tenet, or one finds that some particular religion seems broadly to agree with it and support it. This makes an implicit belief into an explicit one. These are beliefs one does not choose, like consciously converting to Islam or Pentecostalism. Some inchoate belief was already there and one comes to recognize what it is.

I think that is what fmf was getting at.

@suzianne said
The people in this forum have always misused the word "realize".

realize, verb
1. become fully aware of (something) as a fact; understand clearly.

On this topic, I use it in this sense.

realize, verb
1. become fully aware of (something) as a fact; understand clearly.

e.g. I cannot just decide that I believe in Hindu deities; I realize that it's a fact that I do believe in them, where as, previously, I did not.

@suzianne said
Believing something is true is not realizing it is true. You can believe a false statement, but you cannot realize it.

EXAMPLE 1. As her husband clung on to life in that hospital room, the supposedly staunch atheist realized that she DID believe in Jesus after all as she spent the entire night in earnest prayer.

EXAMPLE 2. After several years of having increasing doubts about his faith, he finally realized that he had lost his belief in Jesus and the Bible.

@mchill said
I suggest to you it's more than a gut feeling. We believe because this feeling was given to us by a higher power.

I believe the sincerity and personal resonance of the belief that the gut feeling was given to us by a higher power is, in and of itself, an example of a gut feeling.

@moonbus said
Why are things believed?

Proposed answers: not because they are true, but because

a) they seem to someone to be true, or

b) they seem to someone to explain some complex or mysterious phenonemon better than an alternative hypothesis, or

c) they seem to someone to be consistent with or logically implied by something else which seems to be true, or

d) some putative authority figure says they are true.


<>Discuss.

If things are not true, then what are you saying? Is nothing true?

That falls on its face immediately, suggesting there is no such thing as truth,
because of that truth, it is contradictory to admit there is a truth.

Can you say we cannot know the truth?

If that is true and you know it, that also falls on its face.

@kellyjay said
Can you say we cannot know the truth?

When it comes to unknowable or undemonstratable or speculative or aspirational things related to whatever "the truth" may be regarding supernatural causality, we can only offer - and discuss - our subjective perspectives on what "the truth" is.

But let's not get sidetracked from the thread question: why are the things you believe believed by some people [including you] and not believed by others?

@kellyjay said
If things are not true, then what are you saying? Is nothing true?

We can talk about the truth regarding the temperature is in my back yard right now, or the truth about how many states there are in the USA, or the truth about what substances are toxic if consumed by humans, but I doubt that this is the kind of "truth" that moonbus is talking about.

I sincerely hope that you are not going to pretend that you don't understand this and then try to equate things like "the truth" of the "virgin birth" and "talking snakes" with things like the truth about temperatures, toxins and how many states there are in the USA.

@kellyjay said
If things are not true, then what are you saying? Is nothing true?

That falls on its face immediately, suggesting there is no such thing as truth,
because of that truth, it is contradictory to admit there is a truth.

Can you say we cannot know the truth?

If that is true and you know it, that also falls on its face.

You’re missing the point entirely and knocking over straw men. This thread is not about truth. It’s about what makes a person believe something. It’s about psychological processes, not epistemology.

@fmf hit the nail on the head. A person can come to realize (recognize, consciously admit to himself) THAT he believes something (e.g., about supernatural causation), and this is a fact about him (about his psychological state), but this does not mean that WHAT he believes is true or a fact about the world, it does not mean that his believing in supernatural causation was itself supernaturally caused.

@kellyjay said
If things are not true, then what are you saying? Is nothing true?

This thread isn’t about wether “things are true”, it is about “why things are believed”, a topic which, in another thread, you protested that you wanted to talk about.

@divegeester said
This thread isn’t about wether “things are true”, it is about “why things are believed”, a topic which, in another thread, you protested that you wanted to talk about.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Hamlet

@moonbus said
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Hamlet

Stop copying me.

Edit, but yes, indeed.

@moonbus said
You’re missing the point entirely and knocking over straw men. This thread is not about truth. It’s about what makes a person believe something. It’s about psychological processes, not epistemology.

@fmf hit the nail on the head. A person can come to realize (recognize, consciously admit to himself) THAT he believes something (e.g., about supernatural causation), and this ...[text shortened]... rld, it does not mean that his believing in supernatural causation was itself supernaturally caused.

I'm not missing the point; we can believe in anything, true or not, and we can have
many reasons that work for us that do not work for others. Some can come to
faith over a single sentence, one act, others a lifetime of evidence and experiences.

With the supernatural or other things we believe, the only thing that matters is if
it's true or not! What we put our faith in and hope for can be for good things or
bad. Our worldviews help us filter out what we think is false; it is what we use to
make sense of the world. You can believe the one abusing you loves you; you can
believe a particular government has your best interest always in heart; you can
believe you are worthless or the pinnacle of humanity.

When we realize the truth or come to know the truth about something, that would
be seeing it correctly, and we can also suppress knowledge because we want
nothing to do with it, shunning things mainly because of the possible ramifications
of what that might lead to, so in this, coming to faith about things, there is also
avoiding faith about things we may not want to be true.

@kellyjay said
I'm not missing the point; we can believe in anything, true or not, and we can have
many reasons that work for us that do not work for others. Some can come to
faith over a single sentence, one act, others a lifetime of evidence and experiences.

With the supernatural or other things we believe, the only thing that matters is if
it's true or not! What we put our faith ...[text shortened]... coming to faith about things, there is also
avoiding faith about things we may not want to be true.

This thread was started by moonbus presumably because in another thread you insisted that what you wanted to talk about was “why things are believed”.

Now you are claiming that you are “not missing the point” by continuing your unrelated riff that “the only thing that matters is if it’s true or not”.

Why don’t you want to discuss the reasons “why things are believed” anymore?

@divegeester said
This thread was started by moonbus presumably because in another thread you insisted that what you wanted to talk about was “why things are believed”.

Now you are claiming that you are “not missing the point” by continuing your unrelated riff that “the only thing that matters is if it’s true or not”.

Why don’t you want to discuss the reasons “why things are believed” anymore?

Why don't you stay on topic instead of making me the topic? The why we believe is
the topic, I'm assuming everything everyone has to say relates to that, except when
we choose to speak about one another.

@kellyjay said
Why don't you stay on topic instead of making me the topic? The why we believe is
the topic, I'm assuming everything everyone has to say relates to that, except when
we choose to speak about one another.

Oh dear, here we go again.