Lots of people posting on here talk about their beliefs. They are all religious people, including one or two who have developed peculiar personal religions. What strikes me as rather odd is their (apparently unchallenged) idea that to believe something makes it factual. ‘I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, therefore I will be saved and go to heaven’. How does that work? How does the adoption of an idea in this world qualify you for an eternal condition in some other world? I would appreciate an explanation. Preferably non-tautological, i.e not because Jesus or someone else said so. Thanks.
Thanks Robert. I ineptly put this topic where it shouldn’t be but never mind, thanks for checking it anyway. It’s clearly a bit difficult to explain my point or more difficult than I thought so I’ll try and focus better. Let’s try this: I’m an unbeliever so I’m going to be tortured for all eternity in Hell. I’m a believer so I’ll enjoy perpetual bliss in Heaven. How does the fact of a human being believing something make any difference to what happens to them? I can understand that belief may change your internal life and probably your behaviour too (Islamist suicide bombers come to mind) but how does it change your external world? What’s the mechanism? ‘I believe this so nice things are going to happen to me, or some other thing so bad things are going to happen to me?’ It makes no sense. Belief is just plausible opinion, it’s not even a theory, let alone the theory which best explains the evidence. I’d like to know in precise detail, from a believer, how they think the fact of their belief, which as far as we know alters nothing except their own susceptibilities, affects their external fate.
Robert said
DirkCampbell said
… What strikes me as rather odd is their (apparently unchallenged) idea that to believe something makes it factual. …
I do not think this question has anything to do with religion, for example I interact on another site where people actually believe that Mexico is paying for the construction costs of a wall being built on the United States southern border
in fact on that site, there is only 1/2 to 1/3 of the logic, I find here ,
DirkCampbell said
I’d like to know in precise detail, from a believer, how they think the fact of their belief, which as far as we know alters nothing except their own susceptibilities, affects their external fate.
I think what you are presenting is too simplistic of a caricature even of the most fundamentalist in our society
the closest I am familiar with of who i think you are describing as a ‘believer” would be those christians who think that if they “believe and confess that Jesus is lord” then they will be saved. . Though I am not party to that religion I guess they would say it is not just the belief but the confession, and the confession and some payment by a third party, allows the judge (God) to pardon their offense. Anyway that is how I understand their thoughts
I would also point you, or fundamentalist if they were presenting their theory, to ** you do not have permission to see this link ** which clearly says believe is not sufficient.
DirkCampbell said
Lots of people posting on here talk about their beliefs. They are all religious people, including one or two who have developed peculiar personal religions. What strikes me as rather odd is their (apparently unchallenged) idea that to believe something makes it factual. ‘I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, therefore I will be saved and go to heaven’. How does that work? How does the adoption of an idea in this world qualify you for an eternal condition in some other world? I would appreciate an explanation. Preferably non-tautological, i.e not because Jesus or someone else said so. Thanks.
There is an interesting somewhat rambling 2010 article by a Darwinian biologist Lonnie Aarssen that gives some real insight into why people defend an illogical position, ** you do not have permission to see this link **. A more direct answer to your question is that human beings are a small part of the whole universe, at some point all beliefs based on less than omnipotent knowledge must have some degree of “faith” behind them. I am 100% certain the sun will rise tomorrow, not because I can prove it will, but because I have “faith” that the science behind the “fact” is solid. That faith does not prove anything, but given rational consideration of all parameters, it may the best available support for a belief.
DC – having been a believer at one point in my life, I can speak from my once personal experience. According to the strain of Christianity I was part of, the (mental) accepting of Jesus as savior – as philosophers put it, both believing that and believing in – puts one in the proper relationship with God such that He would accept one into eternal heaven. Symmetrically, without holding this belief (both that and in), one is not in the proper relation to God, and thus destined for hell. It boils down to “right“ belief (both propositional and relational) being the acceptance/filtering criterion on which God sorts people in the end. And this right belief is predicated on the exercise of free will.
I did not think that my belief made this a reality. It was the reverse – I believed that this was reality, and that my belief needed to accord with that reality. I later came to think otherwise – not exactly willingly but the philosophical and empirical searching led me to where I find myself now (what most would call hard agnosticism).
Belief is a propositional/relational action, but it also has a strong attitudinal component. It is this last part that militates against accepting contrary evidence. It often takes sustained, compelling argumentation (delivered politely and sympathetically) to chew through a resistant attitude, and sometimes even then that’s insufficient. To an outsider looking in, it appears obstinacy to the facts. From the inside it feels like correct resistance to something factually wrong.
The feeling of certainty about a belief does not necessarily correlate with the underlying probabilities/truth, however. We can feel certain 2 + 2 = 4, but we can unfortunately also feel just as certain that the forest spirits just protected us from a bear attack. Feeling certain and being certain are but a hair’s breadth apart psychologically.
It’s my experience that belief changes only when compelling reasons meet (modest) willingness to consider contrary evidence/arguments. Neither of these components are voluntary – belief is a threshold mental action: when the balance of compelling reason connects with the right emotional/attitudinal state, belief then clicks into place involuntarily. It may feel like we choose what we believe, but that feeling of authorship/control in my opinion (and of many philosophers and neuroscientists) is a mirage.
Not sure if any of this is on point, but I tried to track the questions you asked. Sorry that I’m off base, and if on base, to not be a current believer when doing so.
DirkCampbell said
I’d like to know in precise detail, from a believer, how they think the fact of their belief, which as far as we know alters nothing except their own susceptibilities, affects their external fate.
Dirk, I am a strong woman of faith and perhaps can offer one example for how my belief affects my external fate.
Married to a man who was not a believer, I prevailed in rearing both of our sons as I thought God would want. It turned out good. My older son died after twenty years with an inoperable brain tumor (oligodendroglioma – God’s in it:-). Faith that God was with us made all the difference during those years. Then, in the last moments as he was dying, we were reminding him of what to tell our loved ones who had passed on. The next morning at the kitchen window a yellow butterfly paused at eye level before rising straight upward and away. It was just a butterfly but not to me.
Faith enables us to see everything differently. What had to be endured through that long illness was made possible by faith. My son’s moments before dying had me anticipating him being with my late husband soon. Faith had me believing the butterfly was the most beautiful message (butterfliies being one of my all-time favorite things; yellow my favorite color).
Having written all this, it dawns on me what you want to know may be entirely something else! Instead of deleting, I’ll send just in case.
To me a “belief” is an idea that we’ve internalized to the degree that we are willing to act upon it. It makes a difference in how we conduct our lives. We often consider ideas that we don’t act on. Lots of folks would say they believe in god but they never really ever think about it and it never affects their conduct. Beliefs require commitments it seems to me. When I say I don’t believe in god I mean I don’t live as if it’s true.
Of course beliefs can be both rational and irrational and are often a mixture of the two. This is where skepticism comes in. Every system of thought should contain it’s own internal critique. How will I know if I’m wrong? What would disconfirm my belief? A big ole red flag should drop when we encounter beliefs that contain no internal critique.
The problem is that once we make commitments, change our behavior, invest our lives in a certain course of action, it is very difficult to change. And the tendency when we encounter external critiques is not reevaluation but to double down on our beliefs.
Of course this is all predicated on the idea that we want our beliefs to mirror reality as closely as possible. Everyone claims this is what they want but in my experience systems of thought that contain no internal critique are being used to protect us from reality.
Stephen, what you’ve just said makes me realize I should have added the dilemma of faith for me: doing what is impossible to do. At the moment I am involved in a political endeavor – trying to introduce an idea for getting eighteen-year-old seniors to register to vote. This is because of my intense feelings about the situation we have in our country at the moment. I am compelled to try to do something! Because of faith, I have to guard against thinking of *anyone* with hatred. (Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight.) As Tolstoy had Anna Karenina’s husband say, “How do you love someone you hate?” You must if you believe God is with you.
Thanks everyone for your comments, wasn’t expecting that! I’d love to respond to your all your various points but I think we would get over-proliferated! Try this: Bart Ehrman is good-natured, realistic, honest, tolerant and sober. But he’s not going to Heaven, because he’s not a Christian. Ted Haggard is manipulative, egotistical, intolerant, self-indulgent and hypocritical. He’s going to Heaven because he believes in Jesus and he’s confessed his sins. Haggard is reprehensible, Ehrman is admirable. The only thing in Haggard’s favour from the divine standpoint is that he’s a confessing Christian so God will overlook his faults. God will, at the same time, overlook Ehrman’s virtues because he’s not a confessing Christian. By any normal criterion this is completely mad, but it’s what Christians think, and it gives them the licence to avoid consulting their own consciences any time they feel like it.
What is it about belief per se that makes you acceptable or unacceptable to God? Has anyone really examined this question? May be no-one has! Believers seem to take it for granted that what you believe determines your fate after death. But really this is a comparatively recent idea. In pagan and early religion it’s all about what you do. In the case of Judaism, obeying God’s commandments to the nth degree, not just believing that there is only one God and Moses is his prophet, that cuts no ice whatsoever! I think Christianity and Islam are the only major religions that say ‘Believe, and you shall be saved’ or some such thing. As a pre-monotheist you could believe what you liked. The Greek gods might favour you if you were an attractive woman or a hero. Odin would accept you in Valhalla if you died with a sword in your hand. Wasn’t particularly concerned about what you thought or how you lived.
I’m interested to know, from a believer, not why they think belief makes the difference between eternal paradise and eternal torment, but how it makes a difference. We all have beliefs. Douglas Adams said he didn’t believe in God, but he believed in inertia-reel seatbelts. We all gotta believe all kinds of things otherwise life would be impossible. Most of our beliefs are ‘shorthand’ for conclusions based on what we think is sufficient evidence. How will one particular belief affect our fate post mortem? It’s just a belief!
William Lane Craig might say something like ‘you can know God in your heart but first you have to believe in him, then he becomes so real for you that when you die, going to God is just like going home.’ Fine. I’d accept that as a plausible hypothesis and we could take that discussion forward, but first he’d have to explain why Christianity in the main doesn’t seem to require it. ‘Whosoever believeth in me shall never die.’
Robert said
DirkCampbell said
… By any normal criterion this is completely mad, but it’s what Christians think, and it gives them the licence to avoid consulting their own consciences any time they feel like it.Maybe some Christians think this, but it’s a ridiculous caricature of the beliefs of Christians I’ve known. My relatively unsophisticated Irish Catholic mother explained things much better than this when I was a little kid.
Alas, there is a strong presence of this kind of thinking in Protestant fundamentalism. Especially the version that tends to dominate in the American south. It’s doctrine doctrine doctrine and not just any doctrine. You have to get it exactly right. Or else. There was a visceral horror of so-called “works based” religion such as the Social Gospel. That was trying to “earn” your way into Heaven (after all, getting to Heaven was the most important thing). The result was inevitable. Only an anemic concept of social justice. (God would eventually set things right.) This helps to explain why evangelical Christians in the south can vote like Social Darwinians.
Hngerhman said
The way people I know who believe the way I used to – again, a particular but popular American strain of protestant Christianity – would explain it is that the belief acts something like the acceptance of an invitation.
Right. You accept the invitation, you get eternal bliss; you ignore the invitation, you get eternal torture. Not your average dinner party then. But thanks, that goes some way towards making sense.
Robert said
My relatively unsophisticated Irish Catholic mother explained things much better than this
Would you consider favouring us with her wisdom? ????
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert