Is keeping one's beliefs to oneself a viable option?

neither did the crusaders

 

Wow, referencing the Crusades, that's new and poignant and not at all lazy

All I mean is that reason is traditionally used to argue things based on known facts. You can't learn anything from it other than how to argue in a similar way.

 

excuse me for being careless and sloppy with context

i meant rationality

and contrary to what you might think, the crusades are very relevant

 

I don't doubt that they are sometimes relevant, but the frequency with which they are referenced, to the exclusion of a great deal of other historical religious references, tends to suggest received wisdom.

 

i guess what im trying to get at is that the "good" of religion can, and has been replicated through a rational means.

what we see as the "bad" of religion is among a list of things that can subjugate through irrationality.....

instead of just replacing subjugation with rational though....we create laws with corresponding punishment.

and then we teach it to our children.

 

If this is the case it's news to me.

Meh, if you say so.

 

this "news" has been around since 322 BC

pick up a history book

 

I love when you tell me to "read a book". It's like liquid enlightenment.

I am unaware of any rational reasoning for being good and not being bad that doesn't depend on consequences for its justification.

So no, seriously, instead of saying "pick up a history book", how about you just present a rational argument for why a person should be good (by whatever moral code we're talking about; I don't think it actually matters which, although you may disagree)? I mean, from what you're saying, this was established two thousand years ago and is still relevant and really obvious, so I'd imagine it's well within your power to sum it up. Just don't just post a link; that shit is lame.

 

that is because "right" and "wrong" are not derived from rational thought.

 

and now irrationality is competing against consequence and nothing else as motivation for "goodness"

please correct me if i misunderstand

 

I agree, but what you said was:

When I asked, you said something about 322 BC. I'm guessing a lot of things happened in that year. Having picked up a history book, you'll be aware that they are very rarely a list of Things What Happened In 322 BC, so maybe perhaps you could sort of narrow it down for me?

I'm unclear on what you're referencing, but on a more basic level, my understanding of the "rational" incentive to be a nice person, to not be a **** to people, to perform acts of charity etc., is that the alternatives are more likely to negatively impact upon oneself. We are nice people because not being nice people is likely to lead to social isolation. We are nice to others because we hope that others will feel obligated to be nice to us in return. We perform acts of charity because a) they demonstrate how nice we are to others and how nice they should be to us in return, or b) they assuage our sense of guilt at having a comfortable life when we know, at least subconsciously, that such a life is only possible at the expense of others. And so on.

Being hated by everyone would normally make us, as social animals, feel isolated and lead to cognitive dissonance, which would in turn have a negative impact on our health and well-being. There's hard evidence for that. The reason this is relevant is that, if sensations of guilt and fear of consequences are the primary motivation not doing whatever we want, a rational person need not stop doing bad things purely because of these motivators - they'd just have to make sure that they didn't care and/or nobody found out!

I believe that religion, or at least some belief in something unprovable, is central to morality - i.e. that which transcends the simple cost-benefit analysis attitude to doing "right" or "wrong". A moral is "a rule you obey even when no-one's around", to quote the great Travis Morrison, and I do see some evidence the people do refrain from certain behaviours, even when reason alone would tell them that there's absolutely no reason for them not to do them, when not doing them may actually be detrimental to their own survival, etc. We all hear about those who resort to cannibalism to survive and think of it as evidence of the imperative to survive, but do we ever hear about those who refuse to resort to cannibalism and thus die? I guess to some extent we can only speculate about their existence, but we can deduce their existence from the fact that, well, these cannibals had to be eating someone!

That's just one extreme example that I don't want to get bogged down in. But I do tend to believe that reason and logic alone will not keep us from killing each other, stealing from each other, lying to each other, and so on. Obviously people do those things now, and it's fun to speculate as to why, but I'm far more interested in why the average man in the street doesn't do those things - why he tends to do as he is told even when there is every reason for him to refuse and no reason for him not to, for example.

 

its when Aristotle died

logic and method

but the thing about rationality is that it does not need to be socially acceptable as why it should be socially acceptable can be rationally derived. in this day and age, their is a reason for selfishness, and their is also reasons for selflessness, but wich of these actually hold rationality?

well, if i am nice to someone in hope that they will feel obligated to be nice in return, what reason do i have for wanting them to be nice in return? personal gain in emotion or social status? the reason we as social creatures have to reguard personal gain and social status in any action is because of irattional institution.

by "irrational institution", i mean, institution that is not designed to serve the well being of people.

why would anyone disagree with anything derived from rationality in the first place?

if a person does something through a rational means and it is seen as performing a "bad" action. their is descrepancy to be evaluated. and possibly policy that is to be changed.

survival is our basic human reason.

if they had to eat someone to survive, i hope they drew straws before they did it.

the most fundamental characteristic of our social institutions is the necessity for self preservation.

their is always a reason to act.

their is also always a reason not to act.

whether that reason is rational or not is usually an unregistered interest for the "average man in the street", or it conflicts and is overridden by institution

 

i didn't really understand this one......

 

I've been thinking about this for a while now and I still can't figure out what you mean.

Good question, potentially. Humans are simply not equipped for that kind of absolute rationality. The kind of rationality you're talking about, with which no-one could possibly disagree, would require us to receive all factual information up until a given point simultaneously and from every perspective, in order to prevent the bias that would inevitably arise otherwise. We're just not capable of that. Even if we are consciously aware that we will be biased as a result of the order in which we receive information, or by the absence of some piece of information, it's no substitute.

Were we capable of that, then yes, it would be irrational for someone to disagree. Since we are not, and are never likely to be, I don't think what you're describing is ever going to come up.

Of course, there are always going to be irrational people who think that their actions are rational (and that those that conflict with them are by definition irrational) just because they maybe read a few science books at some stage. There's a real danger in someone believing that their own actions are rational to the point where to act otherwise would be irrational. Such a person, totally devoid of doubt, could be incredibly dangerous, far more so than any religious follower.

I would argue, in other words, that it is irrational for anyone to imagine that they are rational. A rational person, lacking objective data to the extent that all humans as a function of their biology inevitably do, could barely act. One might argue that it's rational to "fill in the blanks", so to speak - to make suppositions and creative leaps around absent facts. But that assumes that what they want to do is rationally justified.

 

Essentially, it is irrational to censor one's own actions when there are unlikely to be any negative consequences of those actions. Morality - the notion that some things are "just wrong" or "just right" - would justify (irrationally) that self-censorship to the individual.

Unless I'm very wrong about rationality, I don't think it makes a lot of the claims that are attributed to it. Look at something like the Constitution: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." What's the rational reason not to kill, really? You've effectively argued that a lot of the social pressures that would stop one from doing so are products of irrationality; what's left?

So? It might be rational to accept that these are our drives and we're stuck with them, but I would not say that that in itself makes those drives rational.

Why? That seems like a rather irrational courtesy.

Again, is that rational? We can always make more people. Why is my survival so important.

A small semantic quibble here: deciding not to act is an act in itself.

I would say that there is always a choice to be made between acting on incomplete information and waiting until one is better informed. Rationality would be more of an option if we had all the time in the world but we don't.

At the moment, it seems like you are using "rational" and "irrational" in place of "right" and "wrong" here, however. Acting on incomplete information (which, as I said above, we all have to, even if we act by choosing not to act), I fail to see any value in whether one's actions are considered rational or irrational by one person or many after the fact. It doesn't give them validation and I suspect that rationality would be attributed more according to the desirability of the result of the action, rather than on whether they were rationally or irrationally derived.

 

so what is it that can be considered negative.....witches? gays?

why can those things be considered negative?

the reason behind "just wrong" is irrational, this is why the bible can be misinterpreted.

not doing something does not require reason. and not doing something based on nothing is void.

reason is cause for action.

what makes survival irrational?

well i guess they could have just eaten whoever died first....

i find that something is only irrational if it can be rationally disputed.

what is your reason for disputing human survival?

self preservation itself is not intrinsically irrational but i see no reason in preserving irrelevant institutions.

the term "LET GOD SORT EM OUT" comes to mind.

an action is just a manifestation of something else.

a man can kill in self defense and then kill as apart of his service in the military.

the action is the same. just with different reason.

 

Um... you don't seriously think I was talking about witches and gays, right? It's fairly unlikely that I would be.

I disagree. It at the very least depends heavily on the situation. I don't think there's any such things as mental neutral.

Again, I disagree. The act is the choice whether to do something or not. I would argue that, in any situation where you are aware enough and have enough reaction time, you have acted by not acting. So if you don't get out of the way of an oncoming car because you didn't see it, then you didn't act. But if you did see it coming, had time to get out of the way, and then let it hit you, then you acted in making the decision not to get out of the way. I don't think we should assume that someone is not acting simply because they are not physically acting, for example. Anything we do that is not subconscious can be an act.

What makes it rational?

Well, there are various rational ways to look at it. Some that spring to mind are:

• Eat the one least likely to survive
• Eat the one with the most meat on them
• Eat the one least likely to injure others during the struggle

It's quite likely that, rationally speaking, those, and particularly the latter two of the three, would be different people.

I'm just curious. You seem to have found an absolute basis for "yay" and "nay" (to avoid those naughty "right" and "wrong" words) you're happy with; I'm interested to know why survival is considered such an inherently rational goal, given that the planet is rapidly becoming over-populated, for example. Is anything that someone does that harms them physically inherently more irrational than anything they do to ensure their survival?

I'd want to be sure that they were irrelevant before getting rid of them. You seem to be using "irrelevant" and "irrational" interchangeably there. If you're creating institutions for humans, and humans are irrational (which, having a subconscious, we pretty much all are, however much we might kid ourselves), it would be irrational to provide institutions designed purely for rational beings. Rationally speaking, eugenics makes sense, but most people won't go for it.

See above. "Sort em out and kill the shit ones" isn't much better, but it's incredibly rational.

Indeed. My point though was more that we consider killing to be irrational unless someone demonstrates a rational reason to do it. Why do you think this is?

 

i was talking about a few things that are "just right" and "just wrong"

both of these reasons are unsatisfactory at best.

if you are referring to neutral monism im afraid i don't know enough about these terms or positions to make a statement.

yes, if you do not act, for a reason, not acting is the manifestation of your reason.

if you don't get out of the way of an oncoming car because you didn't see it, thus you don't act, the reason (to an observer) for not acting is ignorance, the man that got hit had no reason.

if you did see it coming, had time to get out of the way, and then let it hit you, you had reason to let it hit you (fear, suicidal ect)

but if you do not act and their is no reason for not acting, what is their to be considered past ignorance?

saying "survival is our basic human reason" was my fault, survival is not a reason, it is an action.

survival is neither rational or irrational, only reason can hold such values

ignorance does not = irrationality

that would make all newborns and special people intrinsically irrational....

closed ignorance, that is, an unwillingness to learn, however is a different story

fitness is always dependent on the specific environment, not on some godlike vision of "perfection". And human beings have the remarkable ability to actually change and create our own environment.

"Create an environment by assholes for assholes, and you breed assholes."

i agree (i think)

but murder is not by default irrational

what can be considered a rational reason for taking a life? all instances of discrepancy have a rational and irrational standpoint. and if you create discrepancy, explain your reason.

this is as close to right and wrong we are going to get, because some things are in fact unknowable. and a rational person can admit that.

 

First,

I think world is what it is, regardless of ones likes, preferences, inclinations or wants.

Part of existence is the struggle. Existence of one living creature is the demise of another. That's just how things really work in Nature, can't get away from that. Any claim to the contrary is an illusion.

So, as long as any living organism exists it will live at the cost of another.
Even if you are a vegetarian and pride yourself in not hurting others, you are still existing at the cost of destroying plants which you eat to live, and the only alternative to it is to starve yourself to death.

Now, could it reasonably be expected that any organism would choose to starve itself to death for the sake of not consuming another?
It's a rhetorical question.

Perhaps inadvertent shortcome of Nature is the sense of pain it gave to higher organisms.

Pain by default contradicts the inevitable design of existence.

Sense of pain is what causes suffering.
Stones don't suffer if you break or destroy them. Humans and other higher organisms do.

Yet, shortcoming or not, it is just the way it is ,whether one likes it or not.

Now look at any conflict of ideology ,or any conflict for the matter, and at the core of it you will always find the eternal will to survive and exist, survivor inevitably making its' way through at the cost of causing demise and or pain to what it is using to sustain it's own existence.

In all simplicity that's all there is.

As to the question of OP:

Is keeping one's beliefs to oneself a viable option?

I think it is a viable individual choice for someone whose priorities are set outside of concern what others may or may not believe in.
In the larger scale of things keeping your beliefs to yourself will not change anything for good or worse (see the start of my reply), but it may serve you as a way to avoid getting yourself into conflicts that do not involve your immediate needs, concerns and interests.

 

I feel as though keeping your personal beliefs to yourself is only viable in 3 cases.
1: If you don't truly believe in what you say you believe then there is no problem keeping it to yourself
2: If your belief system doesn't state that you must be outreaching and constantly stating your belief. (ie. Christianity specifically states that Christians should go out and strive to bring others to Christ. Mt 28:16-20, Mark 16: 15-18.)
3: If you feel there is no viable reason to state your beliefs.