Life is about what you want. This is not going to happen by sitting back and simply watching. You have to believe in what you want and make an effort to accomplish it.
Indeed. And who fools himself the most? The one who believe in what he wants enough to make an effort or the person who simply waits for life to happen believing in nothing?
If you want to do science then whether the test is positive or negative it comes to a conclusion which advances science.
To do science you follow procedures which give the same result no matter what you want or believe. If it depends on what you want then you are not doing science. But most of the activities in life are not science and very much depend on what you want or believe. Try to live your life as an objective observer then it will pass you by and your life will be wasted.
Not really. There are many actually real things people believed in, for good reasons, when there was no evidence. For example, the Higgs Boson, gravitational radiation, “missing link” fossils, a material basis of heredity, etc.
What is odd is bringing up the procedure of science in response to my explanation that wanting to believe something is not just the first step to self deception but also the first step to victory and great accomplishments. The false presumption in doing such a thing is that everything is science – which is not true.
But even in that case you got it wrong. If want to do science then you have to want to follow the method of science which tests your hypothesis. Neither positive nor negative is a failure. It is accepting the result which is doing science correctly and successfully.
Indeed. And what do coaches teach those in sports and many other activities? They teach them to believe that what they want is possible to accomplish. Like you said, the easiest person to fool is yourself. BUT often you cannot know if you are fooling yourself unless you make the effort. The same is true of inventers, artists, writers and so many other who seek to accomplish great things. They cannot know if they will accomplish what they want unless they try.
Well the idea that religion is an opiate peddled on the masses for nefarious purposes does seem a little conspiratorial to me. That idea -which I’ve heard a lot - is glib and hand waving at best. Surely there is a real reason that God belief has been so popular for so long that doesn’t depend on deception. (And no, I’m not suggesting the real reason is that any particular origin story literally happened. Stories are not generally about what literally happens.)
But it is neither entirely false nor entirely true. Human nature does have a bad side where we twist things to serve ourselves. And I think there is little doubt that this has happened in religion. Jesus was particularly outspoken about this and thus the awareness of this problem in religion is quite well spoken of in Christianity. So… yes religion has been used to con people as a tool of power and manipulation. But it is also true that this is not the whole story. There is also very clearly a great deal more to religion than this – a lot of very sincere people who are trying to do what is right and good.
Like with Mark, I am just trying to show both sides in order to make things clear.
It simply isn’t true that believing what we want is always about self-deception and getting yourself conned. But, yes, absolutely it CAN be exactly that! I certainly think creationism is rife with both fraudulence and self-deception.
True but that can’t answer the question of how God belief arises, only how it can be corrupted once it becomes institutionslized. I do think there is more to it than it’s political potential … as you go on to say.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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So, you’re a scientific or at least academic researcher and you could not have done that as an Abrahamic? Because it involved a taboo? Or your intellect would have been impaired?
I have done research of the kind you might acknowledge. I had a career in astronomy. Nothing from that career compelled me to be an atheist. On the contrary.
The latest BioLogos podcast is worthwhile on that front.
Good enuf, tho unnecessary. I kind of assumed everyone
knows theres two sides, but as i recall i was responding
to some wishful thinking of a sort that seems to me wide open to self deception.
