3d ago

What do you believe in?

139 comments

Believing in something seems to imply thinking something to be true without having evidence for it - otherwise it would be knowledge, a justified true belief. So I know a couple things, like that I exist as a conscious being, and have practical empirical knowledge of the rest of the sensory world too.
- Believe means to accept as true or real, and does not define the precondition to the belief.
  How can you prove that you exist as a conscious being?
  How can you prove that your senses can be trusted?
  
  I am thinking about whether I exist as a conscious being. Therefore there must be an 'I' to be thinking that.
  I can't prove that my senses can be trusted with 100% certainty to tell me truth - in fact I can prove the opposite with things like optical illusions. However, when interacting with the world that I only know is real through my senses, basing my behaviour on those same senses that let me know the world exists seems reasonable to me. That's what I call practical knowledge, rather than true knowledge.
  
  How do you define "I"?
  In other words you believe what your senses tell you to be real even though you cannot objectively prove your senses to be trustworthy?
  
  'I' is the thing that is thinking it
  I don't 'believe' that my senses are real, but that it's good enough to act as though they are real, regarding the sensory world.
- What you just uttered is a totally valid belief in my eyes :)
  Beliefs don't always have to be based on mere intuition alone. It's totally fine to be able to back up what one believes with arguments.
- have practical empirical knowledge of the rest of the sensory world too.
  Oho, that's a pretty bold statement of belief for someone who can't prove they're not a brain in a vat!
  More seriously though, there are tons of things that have conflicting evidence or are simply too big or complex to have enough evidence to have definitive proof for, yet we still have to make decisions about them. Like believing that X vs Y is a better governing system (eg democracy vs republic). Or what about questions that aren't related to proof, like defining and living by ethical standards? Yet most people still find value in "moral" things, and believe that people should do "good" instead of "bad".
- A theory I’ve been working on lately is that our worldview rests on certain foundational beliefs - beliefs that can’t be objectively proven or disproven. We don’t arrive at them through reason alone but end up adopting the one that feels intuitively true to us, almost as if it chooses us rather than the other way around. One example is the belief in whether or not a god exists. That question sits at the root of a person’s worldview, and everything else tends to flow logically from it. You can’t meaningfully claim to believe in God and then live as if He doesn’t exist - the structure has to be internally consistent.
  That’s why I find it mostly futile to argue about downstream issues like abortion with someone whose core belief system is fundamentally different. It’s like chipping away at the chimney when the foundation is what really holds everything up. If the foundation shifts, the rest tends to collapse on its own.
  So in other words: even if we agree on the facts, we may still arrive at different conclusions because of our beliefs. When it comes to knowledge, there’s only one thing I see as undeniably true - and you probably agree with me on this: my consciousness, the fact of subjective experience. Everything else is up for debate - and I truly mean everything.
  
  Maybe a god's existence is a core belief for some people, but it shouldn't be. There shouldn't be anything you believe without a logical reason to.
  
  “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is a valid question - and the idea that something created it isn’t entirely unthinkable. The point is that you can’t prove or disprove it. Not believing in God is just as much a foundational belief as believing in one. Much of what you think about the world is built on these core beliefs - the kind that, if proven wrong, would effectively collapse your entire worldview.
  
  What i don't get here is what the existence of a "creator" would have to do with abortion. Just as an example, what if there is a god. What does that tell us about everyday life, or about abortion?
  It would be very well conceivable to me that there is a god, but they have no opinion about whether we do abortions or not. How are these things connected?
  
  In the case of being anti-abortion, we’re talking about people who believe in the biblical God - and they often point to chapters in the Bible to justify their stance. In most cases, it boils down to the belief that life begins at the moment of conception and that all life is sacred. There are also passages in the Bible that speak about God having plans for unborn children.
  
  Ok, let's take a step backwards. How are you defining 'god'?
  
  Personally, I consider it synonymous with “creator,” but even if someone believes in a biblical God, that’s beside the point. While the idea of a biblical God is an entirely unconvincing concept to me, I still give it - or something like it - a greater-than-zero chance of actually existing. I can’t prove otherwise.
  Another example of a belief like that would be belief in the physical world around you. You could be dreaming - or in a simulation.
  
  So can I clarify that when you're saying
  Some people take the existence of god as a brute fact
  That you mean
  Some people assume that universe was created by something
  ?
  
  Well, that’s not a direct quote from me, but yes - some people assume the universe was created by something. For some, that’s the person running the simulation; for others, it’s the biblical God as described in the Bible, or atleast their interpretation of it.
  
  So if I'm understanding you correctly it's not just that people believe the universe was created by something, but they have a specific idea of what that thing is - eg a conscious, powerful, morally good, knowledgeable being
  
  I don't see how this is relevant to my theory but yeah, sure.
  
  Ok, now I've clarified what beliefs you think some people assume without evidence, I would still say that believing those things isn't right. You should still have a good reason for believing what you believe, and taking the existence of a conscious creator as given is invalid.

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