I remember when I was younger and questioning the legitimacy of mythology, I would sometimes get this embarrassing or foolish feeling that the person I was talking with really didn't believe what they were arguing... that while it seemed that they were sincerely defending their belief in a god, they were in fact using some sort of ultra-dry sarcasm, in which I was the fool.... The joke was on me. I'm wasting my energy trying to boil the argument down in a logical way.. all the while my counterpart is having a laugh at my expense. It was always a brief flitting of self-reflective foolishness, but for a few moments that possibility seemed equally plausible. I was just curious if anyone else had experienced a similar notion
To be honest, sarcasm is the response I would expect for concluding something with common sense. Though, it would be a mistake to call mythology common sense (or would it?). Id call the belief hubris before I called it a delusion because something that doesn't make sense cannot be understood. If someone doesn't understand something, they couldn't possibly believe it because their grasp on the reality of the situation is incoherent. I do feel like that all the time though.
I feel like that whenever im talking online.. but irl, I normaly know the person, and am fully aware that they are at least half insane. Especialy since they often can`t argue my points, this just shows that they won`t make an argument that even they can`t believe. (a sarcastic person would)
Hypocrisy is the subject at hand in the first place. Driving a car, and then saying the earth is 5,000 years old. Rejecting evolution and then going to a hospital....ect everything I want to believe about common sense tells me its all an elaborate joke, but our history tells me otherwise. Our history says "not everyone see's hypocrisy for what it is". The OP is talking about the defence of hypocritical positions in a way that alludes to common sense.
I also sometimes feel like everyone in my life is screwing with me. Their thoughts and actions seem so completely nonsensical. It sometimes doesn't seem possible for people to live and believe as they do and not be acting.
I feel this way 95% of the time when having a conversation with religious content, with religious people. Sometimes it feels as though I'm just waiting for one corner of their mouth to slighty raise and have them say, "Ahh, I'm just fucking with you."
Maybe that's the essence of their religion, and some people get it, others don't. But they can't stop, because it's hilarious to them. And it's so ultra-dry that they can't betray the joke either.
well im glad to see that yall feel the same way.. I've given up being amazed about how some people shield themselves from blatant logical contradictions. God is clearly a component of their world view that is propped up by emotional (familial, cultural, etc,) attachment, not a logical argument. So there is no need to 'argue'.. i got that out of my system for the most part. It will always lead to them conveying that it is so important to them that the self evident problems in logic dont overturn it. Some will be so bold as to claim that you simply dont have the required faculties to understand it, the lack of faith. And that is fine if they believe that, however, it should not be given any weight in a logical context. Thats where I think real dishonesty occurs... Its not my place to badger someone about their deeply held beliefs, nor would I want to waste my energy on something that has so little effect on me (in a non-governmental situation). However, if we are discussing something its common courtesy to present yourself in an honest way. Placing 'faith' on an equal plane is clearly jive.
This thread is useful for Sunday evenings when I return from bible study. Its a feeling of profound loneliness urging me to bridge the gaps in our understanding. It Makes me wonder if our senses are as common as our understandings. How do I help someone else think these thoughts? How would I describe beauty to a flower without sounding like a typical human....
I've been told so often by atheists that life began as a result of chemicals sloshing about over eons of time and suddenly arriving at a winning combination. And that our self awareness by which we become conscious that there are other minds and we can communicate with them, is nothing but neuirons firing. And that the apparent fine tuning of the universe is just the result of the "fact" that there are so many of them order would have to happen somewhere and we got lucky. And what is the evidence? They're basically a naturalistic "just so" stories, or , as you say "jive". Based on what? "The substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen', ie., faith.
The difference is that the narratives have two very different motives and methods. In the scientific narrative there is an honest striving to find out what might have really happened. They base their hypothesises on probabilites in Nature. Creation narratives just say God did it. Or one day in the midst of chaos, for some reason their was Love. A couple of gods bore children and they became the land we live on. Personally I don't find the creation of Life (or more puzzling Reality itself) particularly important in my life. The likelihood is we won't ever know, you have to accept that. Does it really clarify anything in your mind if you believe God said, let there be light, and there was light
I have no problem with science as an enterprise of seeking truths by testing empirically refutable hypotheses and publishing them in peer reviewed journals. I also have no problem with the writings of Sagan, Hawking, etc.--cosmological metaphysics grounded in science and acknolged as such. My problem is with scientism--the belief system invoking science to support a naturalistic view of everything whether there is evidence or not, breezily treating it as fact, and scorning those who think otherwise. I see no quest for honest understaning there--just canned naturalism serving similar functions to the canned spirituality of the churches. The idea is to stop inquiring. We have truth in a can, and can go about our jobs, entertainment, reality shows, etc. without having to think much. Like you, I don't find creation per se particularly important in my life. I'm here. What could be more important than that. I do find it intriguing that such an amazing thing could happen, and my general view of reality does seem to influence my appreciation of life and the things in it. There is no substitute for human judgment in making decisions on what we base our lives on, and I'd certainly be more inclined to go by naturalistic explanations than ancient creation myths, which I still appreciate as metaphors enhancing our understanding of reality and meaning.
It seems that at this point the only defensible position is "I don't know". There are some things that seem to defy logical explanation and I try to avoid filling those gaps with belief. Why is this such an unpopular position? edit, added a space
I agree with you in regards to what is generally considered to be the Numinous. I just don't believe in mythology. Sure, the truth must be that I don't know if Jesus walked on water. How could I know? I wasn't there and I don't just uncritically believe things people say or write down. I think agnosticism is relatively unpopular because it requires a lot of discipline and restraint to accept that you will never know. Knowing your limits is very important, unfortunately humility is not a revered virtue in this culture. At some point it just feels like the burden of being concerned with unknowable things is lifted. I ask myself what was the point of all that thinking again...? I'll just experience the euphoria swelling around my heart when I look at the wind moving through the trees
Dawkins once characterized agnostics as the folks who say that "As for the possibility of an invisible celestial teapot orbiting the planet Neptune, I can't take a position on that one way or another." It might not be of much practical importance to determining whether or not such a teapot exists, but I think it's still important to our sense of reality have views as to whether that and some of the other nonsense put forward by cranks (astrology, tarot cards, "quantum consciousness", the akashic field, etc.) are based on reality or fables. Eventually, inability to distinguish reality from illusion can catch up with us, culturally and politically. And we can't "prove it". But we can nonetheless exercise our informed judgment to discredit it.
