A simple, but broad question.

It doesn't matter to me what you believe, but why do you believe it?

Feel free to answer this in terms of religion, politics, personal philosophy, human interaction, your grand notions of how the world works, or whathaveyou.

But please, if you would typically answer a question like this in one context (say, from a religious perspective), please offer along with that context another one, and share with us how they contrast, dovetail, or maybe influence each other.

Perhaps I've just asked a stupid question, but there it is.

It is definitely not a stupid question.

A complete answer would require a good deal of thought and effort to even get close. I think experience reinforces our beliefs. To be more precise, is the term pattern recognition. That is the repetition of events and behaviors observed, and how that supports or deconstructs the orientation we received from our upbringing (family, religion, education.) We are given beliefs we may accept or reject, and most of us do so after testing them in the laboratory of our years. For example: we hear someone say that they love us and we believe it, but their behavior over time, informs us that they don't. We can believe the words or the actions, but not both. Perhaps we have seen this pattern before, and we can recognize that wanting to believe in something does not make it real or true.

This works for what we can tangibly see, hear and feel. Why do we believe what is beyond our experience; the big questions, the mysteries of existence that are beyond our senses? I think this relates to our psychological needs. To continue on, to be "happy" we need to believe certain things. This relates back to the first example. We might need to believe we are loved, to the point we can disregard the contradictions that we experience, telling us otherwise. I might need to believe in life after death, otherwise the day to day rituals seem too meaningless to continue. Or I might need to fear the consequences of acting selfishly and immorally, to prevent me from doing so, requiring the belief I will be judged to restrain my baser tendencies. Our beliefs evolve to meet our needs, imo.

Okay what do I believe? I believe we are incredibly strong and incredibly frail beings living on a rock. We have the choice to make our rock a very nice one, or a complete shithole. We can be compassionate and sympathetic to the plight of others or grab what we can, let them get their own. We can try to learn more and question what we have already leaned when new information is presented, or stick with a doctrine we are comfortable with, carved in stone (or in the stone age.)

I believe the better choices are A, A and wait for it... A

Yet another post proving miles is much smarter than me. I like what he said there.

I'll have to think more about this question, Drea, to see if I can come up with anything even remotely coherent as a reply.

Excellent answer, miles.


I will, if you will indulge me, talk about politics - in a very broad sense. (I haven't got time, at the moment, to go into great detail because I'm meant to be doing other things.)

I am a socialist because I believe that there are some things that you should not be able to buy. Some things are so basic and fundamental to life and to a just society that no-one should be able to buy 'better ones' - no matter how wealthy they are.

We should all have access to clean water and air - and no-one should have to put up with less good water and air because they are poor.

No-one should be able to buy a better policeman, a more sympathetic judge, extra votes, or a more compliant politician.

No-one (and here is where we stray into socialism) should be able to buy a better doctor, nurse, hospital, school, or tax assessment.

That's rough and incomplete - but you see what I'm getting at?

Spidey, that's not socialist thinking, it's humanist. Period.

It's a shame that socialism has become a dirty word. Because it just means you care.


I have a friend who is right wing and racist, so he says. But I have observed him and he is a beautiful person and does not do what he says. It has been a long journey to understand this, but do not judge people by what they say but rather by their actions.

I just wish we could stop using labels and just care about each other a bit more..

I beleive I posted in this thread and now my posts have vanished. I belive this because its tru. or did Drea start two threads the same in different places?

I believe the children are our are future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be.



sorry

There is an odd conundrum about belief in general. We hold people to be responsible for their beliefs; we judge them badly if their beliefs are racist, misogynist or grossly bigoted. In a sense, however, we are merely the passive recipients of our beliefs. We do not choose them. If something is plain to our senses or our experience, or if we are convinced by an argument, then we form a belief - and we are powerless to resist doing so.

It is true that we do sometimes say things such as, 'I choose to believe X', but, on the whole, this is a figure of speech that usually means something like I prefer not to question this any further. It may be that some people, in some specialised cases, are able to turn their beliefs on and off, but most of us, most of the time, can not do so. Stare at something in front of you, and try to make yourself believe that it is not there - you just can't do it (and if you can, it might be a sign of some psychological disorder).

We also might condemn someone for their beliefs because we think that they have not tried hard enough to seek out the facts, to educate themselves, and to eradicate beliefs that we hold to be false or repellent. Their failure to do these things may, however, be the result of their other firmly held beliefs, and again, if we are the passive recipients of our beliefs, then they cannot be condemned for them.

Alternatively, suppose that the person proves to us that they have made strenuous efforts to verify their beliefs, but points out that they are simply more convinced by the 'pros' than by the 'cons'. Even if their beliefs are of the ugliest and most repugnant kind (that the Holocaust was a good thing, and that it's a shame that it was stopped, for example), how can we condemn the person for these beliefs, when they are not responsible for having them. After all, we either find an argument convincing, or we do not. If we are convinced by an argument, then we cannot help but believe its conclusions.

So here's the addendum to Drea's question: are people responsible for what they believe, or do our beliefs merely 'happen to us' as a result of our experiences and of our being convinced by argument?