Convert Me Challenge

[adogablog]

Hi everyone!

This is my first time in this community so I hope my post is acceptable. My question must have been asked before but hopefully not in quite the same way. Anyway, I'm really excited to see what kind of answers I get since this is a subject that has really been bugging me lately, since I moved from a not-very-religious city to a town full

Comments

[adogablog]

What I am getting from this is (1) Belief is whatever you want to believe and (2) Nothing we know is absolute truth. An analogy comes to mind. Eternity is eternity, but some eternities are longer than other eternities. Maybe all we know is a projection of our own mind, but some of those projections may be more real than others. Maybe there was a big bang, for example. Since we are our minds, the best we can do is use our intellect to contemplate the most plausible reality for ourselves. Otherwise, what is the point of belief at all? I would love to believe there is a god that loves me and I am going to heaven when I die to fly around with angels. But it's not enough for me to want to believe it. When you believe something, the implication is you believe it to be true. Richard Dawkins says something is true or not true. Something can't be true to you and not true to everyone else. This is debatable given your points, but if this line of reasoning is to be discarded, belief itself would lose much of its meaning anyway.

Oh and what I love about science is that almost nothing is considered completely true, and new evidence can sway long-held theories. I'm sure I have my stubborn beliefs like any other, but I honestly consider myself to be a fairly open-minded person; given a good argument, I find it fascinating to wear the shoes of one with a previously opposing viewpoint. And atheism itself is not a doctrine, it is a rejection of unsupported assumptions. Most atheists will admit that they cannot disprove God, and there may in fact be a god, the chances are just slim enough for us to reject it. But the possibility is still there.

Are you also saying that if a belief fills some void, then it is good enough to be true to you? This is fine, but not a convincing argument for an atheist to have reason to accept a god. I would appreciate a more direct argument to convince me, but otherwise, I sincerely thank you for the discussion. And sorry if this comes across as incoherent rambling.

[meus_ovatio]

What I am getting from this is (1) Belief is whatever you want to believe and (2) Nothing we know is absolute truth.
How could you possibly be getting this?

This is debatable given your points, but if this line of reasoning is to be discarded, belief itself would lose much of its meaning anyway.
I believe that the melting point of ice is 34 degrees celsius. This belief is wrong. This belief is not knowledge.

Are you also saying that if a belief fills some void, then it is good enough to be true to you?
What? look, I can't have a conversation with someone who just makes up entire paragraphs that have nothing to do with what I said.

[adogablog]

"These beliefs do not serve strictly some idea of "knowledge"....Beliefs... are formative acts combining hope and desire, limited by what one knows, and expressing meaning beyond facts. So the question is not what you know, but what you want. So I would ask you, what do you want?"

"I have no interest in simply knowing things so that I can die knowing that I was right and others were wrong. Who cares. What a waste. What a stupid way to go about life as far as I'm concerned. Whoopie-do, someone dedicated their life to knowing things and then... they're dead. Well who gives a goddamn about that. Let's talk about shit that matters."

From these paragraphs I assumed you meant belief fills a void and is good enough for that reason. My apologies for apparently misinterpreting everything you said. This is frustrating for me also, you know.

[meus_ovatio]

Well, the first step in having a conversation is not reinterpreting what someone says.

From these paragraphs I assumed you meant belief fills a void and is good enough for that reason. My apologies for apparently misinterpreting everything you said. This is frustrating for me also, you know.
Sure, it can be quite frustrating when you're trained to have one-sided conversations by the society in general. It's usually what college tries to get out of you in the first year at least.

What I meant was, "Given what you know, what do you believe?" A "worldview", which is what we're talking about here, is not a scientific question.