Question: How can you logically be "99.9% sure" about a religious issue - and not just be honest enough to say 100% sure?
Survey: How Sure are you of Your Beliefs?
by simon17 27 Replies latest jw friends
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00DAD
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell
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00DAD
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue. - Bertrand Russell in Why I Am Not a Christian (1927).
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Twitch
One of my favs from a brilliant and unconventional thinker.
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00DAD
My favorite part @ 0:18 - 3:25
Q: Do you think there's a practical reason for having a religious belief ?
A: Well there can't be a practical reason for believing what isn't true! … Either a thing is true or it isn't. If it is true you should believe it, and if it isn't you shouldn't. And if you can't find out whether it's true or whether isn't you should suspend judgment.
It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.
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brizzzy
For me, the answer to the first 3 questions is 100%, and the fourth is 99%. That last 1% is allowing for the possibility that there is some sort of neutral/removed observer or spiritual/supernatural force who set things in motion and then left them alone for whatever reason. I don't think it is likely at all, but concede it could be a super-remote possibility. How is that intellectual dishonesty?
However, if there WERE such a force, you of course come to the inevitable questions: Where did it come from? "When" did it come to exist or gain consciousness/sentience, and how? If it's just "always been there", what did it do "before"...basically FOREVER, back and back and back? Just hover in nothingness? Why the reticence and utter lack of intervention/communication SINCE setting things in motion and then disappearing off the radar?
And that's where I'm OK with not knowing. I LIKE knowing/learning things, and if science finds rational and explainable answers I will be super-excited to learn about it and will listen with eager ears, but I don't NEED to know enough to make up an answer.
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King Solomon
Brizzy says:
For me, the answer to the first 3 questions is 100%, and the fourth is 99%. That last 1% is allowing for the possibility that there is some sort of neutral/removed observer or spiritual/supernatural force who set things in motion and then left them alone for whatever reason. I don't think it is likely at all, but concede it could be a super-remote possibility. How is that intellectual dishonesty?
It's not, as long as you recognize it's simply adding another layer onto the unanswered question of "who created the Universe?". Intellectually, it's simply kicking the can down the road, not really answering the question, but just stacking another hypothesis log onto the fireplace.
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My vote:
JW's are full of it (as well as any other organized religion): 99.999%
Bible NOT God's Word: 99.999%
Not a deistic/theist God; 99.999%
Hey, there's ALWAYS an extremely slight possibility that any of us could be wrong on EVERYTHING, ANYTHING, right? Gotta reflect that by not indicating ABSOLUTE certainty... HOWEVER, I understand we operate on relative risks; I decide based on the outcome that is MOST likely, not least.
BTW, that need for concrete absolutes is the hallmark of Xian fundamentalists who are trapped in binary "black vs white", absolutist thinking. It's a sign you're dealing with someone who's, how do I say it politely, logically challenged. A sucker falls for "guaranteed investments", Ponzi schemes (and yes, JWs are a form of a Spiritual Ponzi Scheme, where your getting into the New System is based on recruiting others, who recruit others, and so on, and so on).
Most painful example I've seen recently of that need for certainty is a video featuring Thunderf00t (atheist) vs Eric Hovind (a xian fundamentalist), where Eric tries to get TF to admit he's not 100% sure of anything; so why should we trust TF on ANYTHING? Of course, Eric is 100% SURE that he's right. The "Assumption" meter is hilarious, as Eric simply CANNOT wrap his head on why anyone would need to remember that some basic assumptions MUST be made in order to move on in a philosophical debate.
Eric asks such asinine questions that indicate his absolute (pun intended) ignorance of science (quote from Eric: "are chemical reactions TRUE or FALSE?" WTF? I cannot even fathom the ignorance required to even ask that question....)
It's long, it's painful, but here's the full version (WITH the assumption counter):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9BfsHsVGNg&feature=plcp
BTW, it would be so much easier to TRULY believe in a God: I'm almost jealous of those who CAN, in a sense, accepting the premise of a Big Sky Daddy who rights all wrongs, looks out for you, who loves you, etc. It's really seductive, offering a false sense of meaning, security, hope.
Of course, I'd have forget EVERYTHING I've learned over the past 40 years in order to believe, as if suffering massive frontal-lobe brain damage in order to do so. Thanks, but I'll take my reality as it's presented: no imaginary beings needed.
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brizzzy
Scientists basically know that the universe had a beginning, and there are a few different theories on that beginning, but there is ALWAYS going to be that question of: Where did the matter/space/time come from and when, and how?
It's all metaphysics and speculative and nobody knows. Scientists will be the first to tell you, "we don't know yet. We probably never will". They're basically working backwards. But at least they're working on evidence and tests and empirical evidence. But it all boils down to: Humans struggle with the concept of infinity, because we ourselves are finite.
But saying "A magic being did it. That's where it all started. That's enough for me!" ...That doesn't actually answer or solve the concept of infinity. It just adds more questions - the ones I've already stated above. Even my hardcore JW mom, who would probably tell you she is 100% sure there is a god, asked those questions: "I wonder what Jehovah did before he created the universe. I wonder why he waited, well, FOREVER. What did he do before? I can't imagine being so self-contained and just THERE all alone, back and back and back FOREVER. Hm, not for my puny human mind to contemplate his ways, I guess."
Either way, you have to accept INFINITY, whether you're saying "To the best of our current knowledge and understanding of phsyics, matter/particles have just always existed in some form" and saying "A god (whatever that means or however that is defined) has just always existed". Religion/spirituality takes the assumption, on no subsequent evidence, of a conscious force deciding to create the universe (in a not particularly efficient/optimal manner, by the way, and then, according to all observable evidence, buggering off and never interfering or participating again). We know there's a universe, and that we exist. We're here, and conscious, and sentient. We live on a planet, in a galaxy, in a universe, that we can observe and test. Scientists have observable evidence to work backwards from, even if we can't ever completely wrap our heads around infinity. And science is self-correcting - scientists alter and update their perceptions based on the evidence that comes up.
If anything, I find the people that consider "God is magic and has always existed and who are we to even try to understand that?" to be the final answer...utterly mind-boggling. That doesn't answer any questions about infinity or "the beginning of everything", it just loops around and raises the same ones. I have the same questions everybody does, but I'm not going to invent an answer just to make myself feel better. I'm here now, as far as I know it's the only life I'll ever have, that alone means something to me personally and I'll do my best to make the most of it while I've got it. I don't have an obsession with NEEDING to understand infinity so badly that I'll make an unverifiable assumption about a DIFFERENT version of infinity to explain it, which is just absurd.