What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne 233 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  EdenOne

  My initial question is what exactly is "belief", especially when used in the context of the definition of atheism - "lack of belief in the existence of God or deities".

  Since the lack of belief is said to be supported on the lack of evidence, my perplexity is this: Lack of evidence leads to lack of knowledge. [You may call this a "major unfounded assertion", but you haven't proven me wrong.] I can only know something because I have evidence about it. If I don't have evidence about it, best I can do is to say that I don't know, or make an educated guess. Ergo, lack of evidence leads to lack of knowledge.

  What is more logically sound, then:

  "There's no evidence, therefore, I don't know"; or

  "There's no evidence, therefore, I lack belief?"

  Eden
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  cofty

  If I thought for one moment that you had the slightest interest in an honest conversation I would join in.

  I don't, so I won't.
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  Ruby456

  hope this is helpful although it may seem off topic for now (but bear with me)

  in cognitive behavioural therapy an xjw may be very bemused to discover that belief=thoughts and or/images and then one is asked to examine the facts (this is seen as evidence) one has that supports the thoughts and images.

  edit: edenOne you might want to consider that an atheist may be basing what they say on secular psychology rather than on a religious leaning to define belief
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  EdenOne

  Cofty: You just did.

  Ruby: I didn't understand what you were trying to say.

  Eden
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  Ruby456

  edenOne, help me out, what didn't you understand?
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  Viviane

  Since the lack of belief is said to be supported on the lack of evidence, my perplexity is this

  For some. For others, they simply don't care, or they think it's ridiculous or they've never been exposed to the idea to believe or not believe.

  Lack of evidence leads to lack of knowledge. [You may call this a "major unfounded assertion", but you haven't proven me wrong.]

  It's a ridiculous assertion. I don't have to prove you wrong, you have to prove you right. Proceeding from the standpoint that others must prove you wrong is exactly backwards.

  In any event, not having evidence for god in no way leads directly to a lack of knowledge of god. Indeed, I could know everything anyone has ever written about god, but if god doesn't exist, there isn't a lack of knowledge to be had. The evidence is commensurate with the knowledge.

  I can only know something because I have evidence about it.

  You are attempting to use a positive, non-corollary statement to prove your negative. It doesn't work like that. It's not either A or !A. For instance, if someone tells me they are sitting on my couch next to me and I look over and they aren't there. I have evidence that they aren't there. They tell me they are invisible, so I reach out and touch nothing but air. I have further evidence they aren't there. They then tell me they are incorporeal but definitely sitting there.

  I have no evidence to disprove that claim, however, I now know they are full of it, no matter how much they believe it (or don't).

  What you are attempting to do is conflate a situation where the people making the claims can't tell you how to get evidence, can't describe in any meaningful terms what the thing they believe in is or what it is made of or where it is or how it exists with actual things we can go figure out how to get evidence for. The two things don't correlate like that.

  Ergo, lack of evidence leads to lack of knowledge.

  Ergo, go build an internally consistent argument so we can have an actual discussion and stop attributing things to people they didn't say.

  What is more logically sound, then:
  "There's no evidence, therefore, I don't know"; or
  "There's no evidence, therefore, I lack belief?"

  It depends on what you are discussing. If it's whether or not to believe in god, then "I don't believe" is more logically sound. If it's asking whether or not something is true or exists as a point of fact, then "I don't know" would be more appropriate.
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  Viviane

  hope this is helpful although it may seem off topic for now (but bear with me)

  It wasn't and and it was.
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  EdenOne

  Ruby:

  edenOne, help me out, what didn't you understand?

  The part about cognitive behavioral therapy of an ex-jw. The phrasing is confusing to me, and I din't get what you were trying to convey.

  Eden
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  Ruby456

  edenOne, If, as I think, in psychology beliefs equals thoughts and images and all religion is considered to be beliefs, then atheists when they say they do not believe in God are saying that they do not have thoughts and images of God that impact their lives in their minds.

  edit: so there is a basic misunderstanding of what beliefs mean.
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  EdenOne

  Viviane:

  Precisely, the claims that most theists make about their deities - and lets now use the most common sense of the word deity - is that they are ultimately immaterial in nature. That makes it impossible to acquire evidence about them. Of course, common sense tells us that it's easy to fabricate "evidence", and built a system of belief based on deception. But in any case, even if we can call BS on these religious systems, and be pretty confident that no god is going to send us to hell for it, it's still a "belief" and not "knowledge". Now most atheists get very offended when theists say that atheism is a "belief" and argue that atheism is simply a lack of belief based on the lack of evidence. But what I see here is that the lack of belief in this case is in itself a form of belief. Because what you get from lack of evidence is lack of knowledge. And those who claim lack of knowledge are agnostics, not atheists.

  Eden