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EffectiveWar t1_iuxqe3f wrote

Reply to comment by coyote-1 in The meaning crisis and language II — We need to ‘believe’ myth and metaphor in order to understand ourselves by Melodic_Antelope6490

Beliefs aren't really filters, if by filters you mean something that obstructs. True reality, or the full picture as you say, is already blocked to us for obvious reasons, such as the eye example I gave you earlier. For us to see true reality, or be free from all filters or beliefs as you said, we would have to be Laplace's demon and such a being doesn't exist.

The point you seem to be making is that people stick to outdated, unuseful, unreliable or inaccurate beliefs and this causes them to have a worse understanding of the full picture. But this is not a fault of belief or having them, beliefs are compulsory and useful, its a fault of poor reasoning causing rejection of new information. People who stick to inefficient beliefs when new ones are being shown to be better, are behaving irrationally because their reasoning is poor and preventing them from adopting better beliefs.

We don't solve this by getting rid of beliefs and we can't anyway. Not ever, because we don't have perfect information about all things, all of the time and therefore every action we take is always founded on some belief or another.

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coyote-1 t1_iuyl2ls wrote

Belief. BeLIEf. BeLIEf. Be^(LIE)f.

It’s right there in the word. A belief belies the reality.

Just because beliefs are inevitable does not mean we ought embrace them. Rats and cockroaches are inevitable - do you embrace them? Let them roam freely in your kitchen? The more we can dispel belief, the better we can function in the modern world.

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EffectiveWar t1_iuyowtc wrote

Not sure how many ways to say this, you cannot operate without belief, not now and not ever. The absolute best we can do is improve our beliefs so that they match reality as closely as possible.

The fact that belief contains the word lie, has no significance. Its etymology is related to a mental acceptance of something as true, along with religious connotations of faith.

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coyote-1 t1_iuywgr5 wrote

Your argument mirrors that of religious believers who claim that atheism is a belief system - and that therefore, their beliefs in deities are as valid as the atheist belief that there are no deities. Once you iterate that it is impossible to transcend belief, then indeed you support their claim.

But atheism is not necessarily a belief that there are no gods. It is simply a lack of belief in gods! There’s a huge difference. The former stipulates that gods are a given, and from there which ones you believe in - while the latter says there’s no evidence of it. Furthermore, what is true remains true regardless of how fervent your belief otherwise… while that which is not true cannot ever be made true by mere belief.

So I will opt to disgree with the conclusion posited by the OP in his title. We do not need to believe anything - least of all fairy tales (myths).

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EffectiveWar t1_iuz1c5d wrote

Many people who consider themselves atheist are actually nontheist. There is only one type of atheist, those who claim there are no gods, as this cannot be proven it constitutes a belief. Everyone else is nontheist and rejects the question of the existence of deities entirely. An absence of belief is nothing, it isn't non-belief, hence nontheism, not atheism because you can't non-believe something, only believe that it isn't true, which is still belief.

I'm not sure how you can repeatedly state that its possible to not believe anything, when you don't even know for certain if you are really alive at this moment and not some brain in a jar. Or a simulation of yourself in a virtual environment. I might be a philosophical zombie for all you know. You have no idea if the sun will rise tomorrow, or the true speed of light because it depends on the sensitivity of the instrument doing the measuring. Everything is belief, or prediction or estimation. All of it.

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coyote-1 t1_iuz8b2o wrote

It goes this way: I can never know for certain what I am not. What I do know for certain is that I am. In whatever medium it may be, I am. You can make the case that it’s a simulation if you’d like; nonetheless, within that simulation IF it is that, I am.

I can tell you with utter certainty that the sun will not rise tomorrow. I’ve made the celestial observations and calculations myself. Our system is not geocentric, it is heliocentric. So the sun will not rise at all. Rather, our planet will continue to rotate for the remainder of my life unless some massive external force acts upon it. Likewise our star. It is not at all belief, therefore, to state that absent some as yet unknown massive external force our planet will continue to rotate as it continues to orbit our star.

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EffectiveWar t1_iuz9lw8 wrote

Cogito ergo sum doesn't mean the certainty of what one is. It just means that whatever is happening, is happening now. Having the thought I think, therefore I am, is a way of repeatedly reaffirming the occurence of real time events, by using a real time event. Not what, who, where or why you are with any certainty.

The sun will rise tomorrow has been a figure of speech for decades.

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SneezyAtheist t1_iuz1002 wrote

I believe taking good care of my kids is good.

Does that belief need to be dispelled?

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coyote-1 t1_iuz2sty wrote

Depends. Are you taking care of your kids in such a way that it is actually damaging them? And/or in such a way as adversely affects scores of other people? Are you so stuck in your belief that you are taking good care of your kids to notice if you are not?

I’m not arguing for or against any particular belief. I am merely stating that an insistence on a need to embrace belief itself is bound to lead to issues. Here’s one for you: virtually every “evil dictator” has been utterly convinced that he’s doing the right/good thing for his nation. Go read Mein Kampf. Hitler believed fervently that his course of action was the right and necessary course of action for Germany. Believed it so fervently and spake it so strongly, so very strongly, that he convinced millions of people to join him.

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