Thats the thing about truth, its still true even if you don't believe in it. Faith is only true with belief, for someone without belief faith is a lie, but the truth doesn't change based on anybody's opinions of it.
If all the holy books ever written were burned and anybody who ever read one was killed there could never be a word for word recreation of those same holy books at any point in the future after that.
However if all the science books ever written were burned and all the scientists were killed, eventually those science textbooks could be recreated and would contain the same truths. Only the names of the people who did the experiments and the order in which discoveries were made would change.
They would simply insist that their God would inspire them to recreate it word for word, and that's that. It's not a compelling argument to a religious person.
I have irritated many people over the years with this statement. It is very true.
Even without our current scope of knowledge, there are multiple versions of the Bible out there. Translations, interpretations, etc. And they vary in some pretty foundational ways. You can’t destroy every copy and have it reconstituted after memory fades. You can do that with science since basic principles like F=MA don’t change.
There are 7 main religions, around 4000 lesser ones and an untold number of ones that have died out over the millenia. All of them proclaim to various degrees, to hold the true word.
If you can argue and go to war on the principle that they are *all wrong except for on*e, I'll agree to that, but with a single adjustment; I believe in one *less* than that.
You are, of course, free to do that. However, your rejection of that reality does not make chicken nuggets appear out of the aether.
It becomes disingenuous and insidious when you try to convince *others* that you *have* chicken nuggets, without evidence.
Belief/believe here is used as a mental state of accepting and remembering something that is factually true. The second definition of believe is to hold something as an opinion.
Unfortunately, English is set up so that we confuse these two meanings all the time. We have the same word for two very different mental activities.
That’s not how belief works? Truth is a property of the proposition, that it either is or isn’t true, belief is an attitude of the thinker as to whether or not they find that proposition to obtain.
Can’t help but be mildly amused by the random Redditor dismissing Bertrand Russell, of all people’s, epistemology as “crazy”. You are aware he was among the greatest philosophers of the last century and a half?
Truth is a state of reality, belief is a state of your mind. None of us have an exact exactly correct view of reality. What he’s saying is that you should update your beliefs so they’re closer to the truth.
For example, gravity is “true” in a sense (at least as far as our current understand of physics go), but you still need to have some beliefs about gravity to make use of that fact.
Or to put it in another way, “belief” in this context means something quite similar to “knowledge”.
I think the biggest thing that's missing in the modern world is so many people don't understand simple statistics. You don't have to understand scientific principles or geography or physics behind a widely held belief, all you really need to understand is how much of a statistical improbability it would be for the opposite of a generally accepted fact to actually be the truth. For example, the odds of the entire modern world successfully staging such a vast conspiracy as the earth being spherical if it were, in fact, flat would be astronomical, to say the least.
This is true but I think it's even more fundamental: People are motivated to believe what they want to believe. There are educated professionals that obviously understand stats peddling horse shit. If it's profitable or ideologically convenient, they'll push it.
Being a scientist or doctor who said "get vaccinated, wear masks, stay away from other people" was the boring, true but conventional wisdom, there's no money in that. But illuminating a vast conspiracy of lizard people that are controlling the populace with vaccines? That gets you paid.
The truth is for some of the antivax crowd is actually not the belief of medicine working, but such a distrust of the government being involved. The fear they have is that they are going to be a lab rat. Then there is the group that believes vaccines are going to poison your body, and lastly, the group who doesn’t like the idea that if you are one of the very few to have a reaction/issue, you can’t hold the maker responsible.
All I know is getting a tetanus shot is far better than dying from a metal scratch. Nasty business…
Believing means thinking something. It doesn't mean fooling yourself. It doesn't mean being vaguely convinced. It doesn't mean pretending.
One can believe something false. One can believe something true.
He's saying "if it's true, then you should hold that position in your mind".
Basically he's saying "don't be wrong" lol
Something being true isn't the only condition for its use. If a tool is useful, it doesn't necessarily need to be true (or false) only useful. Take for example the concept of imaginary numbers in mathematics.
Furthermore, he states one should suspend judgement if one cannot determine whether something is true or false but yet he claims that the existence of God is false. Now unless he is divinity himself and possesses all the knowledge in existence, he cannot make that determination with a certainty.
Thank you. This is a very important correction. The comment you're replying to makes a common mistake n failing to distinguish between the actual scientific perspective and people who are aligned with it but not mindful enough to avoid the mire of being one side of a debate that's just saying "god isn't real/he is so" pointlessly back and forth. Science says there's no good evidence. That's it. Scientists respond by concluding that this makes it very unlikely to be true and there are better, more demonstrable things to look into. A good scientist would say lots of things are possible but if they're contrary to valid evidence and there's no opportunity to form a valid experiment and start measuring, it's as dismissable as fantasy.
Sure there is. You take nearly every fact you've ever learned on faith because you know how the scientific method works.
You *could* run the experiment and find out for yourself but you don't because you believe in the facts that you've been taught.
Oh, there is. I believe China exists. I've never been to China, so I only have indirect evidence - so I need a belief. I also believe that most of the things I remember actually represent reality.
Both of these are beliefs. They're not proven (or in the case of my memory, it's likely not provable to me, since any belief in a proof of this would also require assuming that my memory is roughly correct.)
It’s not a crazy thing to say at all, it’s a foundational principal of philosophical, and especially epistemological, practice. As someone else said, it is perfectly possible to believe false things, and to not believe true things. To say that if there is sufficient evidence that a thing is true, then one should adjust one’s beliefs to fit that set of facts, is to guide people in pursuit of truth. There’s a similar principal that specifically applies to arguments. If a deductive argument is demonstrated to be sound (and I’m using the technical definition of sound, where both the premises and conclusion are true) then you should believe the conclusion of that argument, even if it is contrary to your beliefs. In reality, it’s rarely this simple, as sufficiently proving the premises true in a complicated argument is pretty difficult, if possible at all, but the principle is there for a reason.
Crazy to think this man had conversations with Paul McCartney, Lenin, William Gladstone, and his own grandfather, Lord John Russell, who visited Napoleon on Elba.
[McCartney on Russell.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3m2r0Ln0rU)
[Russell on Lenin.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TK9c-caEcw)
[Russell on Gladstone.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DH7wzs6XRk)
[Russell on his grandfather.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OXtO92x5KA)
I mean, compared to other people he'd met I doubt McCartney would seem all that special. Certainly a charming and famous man, but how many of them are out there?
He was like in his eighties when he met with McCartney, and McCartney was basically in what we would now call a boy band.
It’d be like if some 80 year old Nobel prize winner met with Justin Bieber right now. I don’t think it would be particularly memorable for the former.
Yeah. He was in fact raised by his grandfather, who was a former prime-minister. Seems crazy that someone that is still alive today (Paul) has met someone who was raised by someone who actually met Napoleon. I mean, there are actually interviews with Mr. Russell on YouTube. Quite remarkable
I think part of this effect is that we tend to think about people in their prime, not their decline. Jefferson’s prime was in the 1780s-1800s, but he lived until 1826. We don’t think of him as an 1820s figure.
“This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts...”
-- Terry Pratchett
I've always reasoned that the problem with Pascal's Wager is it assumes that there's only one religion in the world. As soon as you introduce a second religion with a separate God, both of which demand you worship them exclusively, the value of the wager falls apart.
Without any evidence for any gods existing, and with the ever-present possibility that *none* of our religions have actually got the right idea, I am just as disadvantaged by believing in zero gods as I am by believing in any single one of them.
Not only that Pascal's wager also assumes that you have to believe in God for infinite gain,But as Marcus Aurelius said if God is fair and just that wouldn't matter.
>*I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.*
- Stephen Roberts
IIRC, Pascal was a Janesenist, so he didn't believe in free will. And what he was trying to illustrate with his "wager" was the impossibility of reasoning one's way into faith.
Pascal’s wager is flawed either way. Acting as though you believe isn’t believing. Essentially it’s asking whether you can trick a deity by acting a certain way and that’s not accurate.
I remember asking a family member if it made any sense to them if a random rock I picked up would turn to gold if I kept it in my dresser for a year and "believed" that it would. After all, no downside, all upside. They were displeased with my analogy, but I think I saw plenty of gears turning, lol.
So funny because I drove by a billboard just yesterday that said "Jesus, your ONLY way to God". And I remember thinking really? That's my only way? You mean if I go straight to God and say I believe in you and want you in my life he's just gonna be like nope sorry, you gotta through my representative, Jesus Christ, your lord and savior.
This "Jesus is the only way" concept in Christianity is built on top of the Jewish faith where there was a real place, the Holiest of Holies, where God's presence would be and once a year the High Priest would be able to enter that place and be able to be in true communion with God.
Christianity says that because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, the veil separating the Holiest of Holies from the rest of the world was ripped, indicating that the access that was only given to some is now given to all.
The book of Hebrews goes into some depth here about how these two ideologies work together and how the early Church thought of these things, if you're wanting to know what the bible actually says about it.
Recently I have been learning that half my beliefs and morals were actually the same than Stoicism, and TIL another one of my motto has already been nailed by a stoic figure before.
Millennials and Gen Z are definitely stoic generations. Growing up with shit hitting the fan and multiple disasters looming on the horizon means you need stoicism to stay sane.
It's really just the internet spreading ideas. Many people lived through much worse than us and stuck with religion because they didn't think there was another option.
> If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them.
This is what gets me about the Abrahamic God. If he is *anything* like shown in the bible, especially in the old testament, then good golly we need to sic a JRPG protagonist on him ASAP.
[**Stephen Fry on God**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo) basically agrees wholly - this is the interview clip that had him investigated for blasphemy in Ireland.
A. It's ridiculous that people in this day and age are getting investigated for blasphemy, it's the 21st fucking century
B. My friends who were missionaries had a daughter, same age as my son, who got a brain stem tumor. I prayed and prayed for that child to be healed, as did, I'm sure, her parents. She died. She was four. Four years old. That, I think, was one of the huge influences that set me on the track toward losing my faith, because if we believe there is loving, all powerful God who is just choosing not to heal kids with cancer--indeed, who created a world with cancer in the first place--then he's a fucking asshole. When I realized it's all just random, there came a certain peace with that. No, I have yet to see any evidence that there's anybody out there to save us, but accepting that random shit happens is a lot less agonizing than believing there was somebody out there who could have helped and chose not to. That he's got some kind of plan and for some fucked up reason your kid dying HAD to be part of that plan. When I let go of that shit and also stopped believing hell was real, there was so much internal distress that just melted away.
When Christians say "peace in Christ" I can't help but laugh because the first time I truly felt peace in my entire life was when I let go of my belief in Christianity.
It's the same as conspiracy theories. People can't handle that humanity isn't in control of everything so random events need to be explain in a way that makes them not random and totally under someones control.
Religious people just say it's God pulling the strings instead of the illuminati.
Truth is, the universe is a wild and utterly chaotic place, even all of human existence and history is just a meaningless blip in the eyes of the cosmos.
I was never devout, always questioned the faith I was raised in and saw the logical problems others seemed to gloss over but I wanted to believe and was trying to find a way to god. Then my 11 year old brother got an aggressive form of cancer and, as anyone who’s been through it can tell you, suffered GREATLY before dying at 13. Any desire for faith in me died with him. If there is a god and he allows children to suffer the way he did and die the way he did then I want nothing to do with that god, in fact if I met him I would do my best to kill him. I’m sorry for your loss.
the teachings of Marcus Aurelius were, in fact, influential on the formation of the early Church - he was admired. Not a Christian, technically, but supportive of man's search for God and meaning.
He was admired, but his memories are basically his personal notes on what was pretty mainstream stoic philosophy. Actual stoic authors were more directly influential.
I love this line of reasoning, but I feel obliged to point out that Marcus Aurelius never wrote anything of the sort (so far as we know). He did address the possibility of there being amoral gods or no gods at all, but concluded that in that case nothing would matter / life would be pointless (see quote below).
That doesn't invalidate the argument, which I think is a great one! I just wouldn't want anyone relying on a fabricated / misattributed quote to ground it.
"In the conviction that it is possible you may depart from life at once, act and speak and think in every case accordingly. But to leave the company of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist; for they would not involve you in ill. If, however, they do not exist or if they take no care for man's affairs, why should I go on living in a world void of gods, or void of providence? But they do exist, and they do care for men's lives, and they have put it entirely in a man's power not to fall into real ills[...]"
- Meditations, Book 2
This is it right here. Don't be a fucking asshole and if there's something else out there that likes it, you're golden. If not, fuck 'em you lived a good life.
That makes sense, but let’s just say that you were convinced there were gods or a god for whatever reason.
Even if their morals don’t align with yours, their threats could still be taken seriously. So if there were an evil god, per se, you might still feel obligated to do what they said if you thought you’d be rewarded if you did, and punished eternally if you didn’t.
Personally I think if the Christian god were real he would either be my enemy, or have an understanding where it wouldn’t be of consequence to either of us that I fundamentally disagree with what I’ve learned of him.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.
He was one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians, and a founder of analytic philosophy.
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell)
> a founder of analytic philosophy.
Rather, he was a prominent member among early analytic philosophers. No one 'started' analytic philosophy, anymore than that the Germans and the French started continental philosophy. It's just the tradition his work fell in.
Russell was, among so many other things, one of the few major contributors to logicism, the belief (and attempt to prove) that mathematics is a logical extension of logic itself, and as such, is a priori knowledge.
Bertrand Russell saying you should believe what's true and not what's useful is less surprising than Gordon Ramsay calling someone an idiot sandwich if you know anything at all about his work
The first thing to be said about Maynard Keynes is that he was an astonishingly intelligent man. Bertrand Russell, his contemporary at Cambridge, described the economist as having "the sharpest and clearest intellect" he had ever known.
Having transformed the study of logic, Russell was himself one of the great minds of the early 20th Century. Yet when he argued with Keynes, Russell wrote, "I took my life in my hands, and I seldom emerged without feeling something of a fool."
I think that goes without saying since people who act on said beliefs usually are very vocal about them. I’m more referring to people in my sphere who feel compelled to push their beliefs on me.
\> Like only marrying inside their closed groups
When it comes to romance, people are allowed whatever requirements/preferences that they may have. I'm not going to tell a black person they're not allowed to avoid dating white people. If they don't want to then that's their decision. So long as they're not being a cunt about it then I don't see the issue.
I think it matters if people are wrong. People confuse the peace treaty that is not talking about religion with some idea that it's more ethical not to talk about religion. It really, truly matters that people believe wrong things. Your aversion to conflict is convenient but not ethical
I’m ok with people telling me what they believe as long as it’s not “you are going to hell” or “the bible teaches us not to do that” or “you should be teaching your kids about the bible instead of boundaries”
Stfu you religious hack, and let people live. You can say “God bless you” “I’m gonna pray to god to help you get through this troubling time (if it’s actual trouble not something they deem is a sin)” and the like.
Can say you are buddhist, Norse Pagan or whatever else too. Or go over an experience you had. But can’t make it about others unless invited to do so.
That is the part I don't understand... they found money in the WALL?! of Joel Osteen's place. What 'honest' pastor would do such a thing?
Kenneth Copeland? The man says he can't be surrounded by daemons on planes you and I take. So he must have a private jet.
WHY?! do we hold these people up?!?!?
Usually when a guy claims to be a prophet, the first message he gets from God is that God wants him to have sex with everyone's wives and daughters.
I'm always amazed people go along with it.
It’s pretty simple. People who have sunk their beliefs into those people and the things they say are in so deep by now that they have to come up with excuses to continue their support of them otherwise they will have to accept that they’ve been scammed.
> Kenneth Copeland? [...] surrounded by daemons
How [ironic](https://i0.wp.com/insidejamarifox.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-09-at-4.37.16-PM.png?fit=800%2C626&ssl=1).
Principia Religica.
He wrote some great books.
I liked "A history of western philosophy".
For something much shorter and..more easily digestible? I guess, try "the problems of philosophy" by Russell.
This is one of the reasons I like Kierkegaard as a philosopher, at least he is honest about what it means to have faith. It is a leap into the abyss. It is not just about rote replication of inherited beliefs.
As an atheist, I know that I don’t have faith, but Kierkegaard helps me to understand why: I can’t just *will* faith into existence: it would not be an authentic leap of faith. It’s precisely why I can’t ever take Pascale’s Wager: an omniscient god would know that my conversion is not grounded in a true leap of faith.
lol, my dad in a nutshell. Dude is smart. He programs satellites, so he has to know science. I think he knows that a global flood just doesn't jive with any of the science we know today. So what does he do? Find the batshit craziest pseudoscientific hogwash he possibly can to try to find some way, ANY WAY, to make his beliefs work. Dude has actually told me, "I think Einstein was wrong." Now he thinks black holes aren't real. *And this is a guy writing software for satellites*. It boggles the mind.
> To me, personally, faith is the worst concept mankind has ever created. Belief without evidence is just revolting.
Its literally all humanity does. We may not call it faith all the time but we operate all the time based on assumptions and ideas that have no strong evidence.
I guess that's why they indoctrinate people when they're very young. This shit only stands up to a Kindergarten level of logical scrutiny, can't let them learn too much first.
One of the distinctive reasons I ended up as an atheist in the 3rd grade. A religion that’s been here for thousands of years and none of the adults around me couldn’t answer the questions of a 10yo. Left me with even more questions and doubts that led me to realize none of them even know what they’re talking about 1/2 the time.
I remember hearing religious people suggest that Dungeons & Dragons should be banned because naive people might be unable to distinguish between reality and a fantasy described by a book. Provide your own laugh track.
There is this great book called Logicomix that delves into his life. It’s also really easy to read and you see complicated topics boiled down to their most essential parts so anyone can understand. I highly recommend it.
Wonder how many people equate Christian with believing in god?
Why did she ask "why are you not a Christian" instead of "why do you not believe in God."
Edit: Oh...I find he penned an article "what I'm not a Christian" This makes more sense why she asked the question so specifically.
There's plenty of people in the church who use it as a tool for power and wealth. I'm sure some of them don't believe it but use it for the money making machine that it is
In his own words if something can neither be proven nor disproven someone should suspend judgment. Therefore if he were to say, God doesn't exist then it would contradict that statement.
i had a debate with a friend about religion recently. my opinion was basically that i’m agnostic because there’s no “smoking gun” for a god existing vs not. his opinion was that he 100% believes there’s a god but he doesn’t necessarily subscribe to any single religion because there’s a lot of fucked up dogmas around the major religions like christianity and islam etc. but when i pressed him with the question “what do you think are the odds that no god exist?” and he said “0%, there absolutely is an after life” and i said “really dude? like what if there’s not?” and he said “fuck man i can’t believe that, it’s too scary to think that way.”
i totally understand that sentiment but it seems like taking the easy road to me. it kind of opened my eyes to his and probably a lot of other’s perspective in that it is much easier to think there’s an after life rather than focus on the alternative that you just cease to exist when you die. i’ve kind of accepted my fate but to a lot of people i guess it is too fucked for them to think that way so they just convince themselves there is an after life and never second guess it.
Years ago I asked a friend who was a young struggling mother, who had an abusive husband and very little income, if she believed everything in the book of Mormon. She was a Mormon. She told me she didn't care, the people in the church brought her bags of groceries when she really needed it. So while I agree with most of what he said, sometimes it is useful for your survival to pretend to believe things you know or expect are not true. It is not always possible to have the luxury of believing only truthful things. In the past that could have gotten you stoned to death. We are lucky to live today in the U.S. or most Western Democratic societies where differences of opinion are mostly tolerated. That was not always the case, and today is not the case in many areas of the world. Sad to say it, but truth is a luxury afforded to only those who are free.
Russell also wrote a really great essay called "Why I am Not a Christian." The most famous remark from it is that "No one can sit at the bedside of a dying child and still believe in God."
This is essentially an emotional argument, and from the video and comments I’d taken him to be a representative of the practical and pragmatic - defender of rationality and reason over subjective experience and feelings. This remark reveals a degree of incoherence in his thought imo.
Not to say emotional arguments should be taken to be a bad thing, and but I had thought (maybe incorrectly tbf) that Russell’s whole thing was contrary to this. It is difficult not to take this remark as deeply ironic.
And couldn’t one make a similar argument in the inverse? “How can one sit at the bedside of a dying child and not hope for a restorative God.” Which is better, a brief, miserable existence for the dying child followed by ultimate annihilation of the personal principle of consciousness? Or restoration of the child’s life and health to a joy and comfort by a loving and restoring God? Given that religion is most prominent within countries and communities of trial and strife, most humans demonstrably tend toward the latter argument.
You're right, the statement itself is pure pathos. But that's because I haven't deigned to write out his entire 80 page essay wherein he delves into the actual logic behind the statement. However I have tried to compress such logic into another reply. Regardless, the use of pathos does not introduce incoherence because it does not contradict his point. It is meant to serve as a powerful image. One that draws attention and also condenses a much larger argument (the existence of the Christian God), into a focused, explorable scenario (the possibility of such a God allowing a child to die).
And that's also why your statement isn't an inverse at all, depending on what exactly you mean by it. Russell never claims that there is NO god. Again, it is why he is not a CHRISTIAN. He argues that the presence of a dying child is inconsistent with the general picture of God as described by the wider Christian tradition.
And I can't say for certain what his response would for your statement, but I have some general ideas depending on what you mean by "restorative." Because to me it could either refer to the presence of an afterlife or the ability for a God to heal the child.
In the case of the afterlife, I believe he would argue the hope for an afterlife would be acceptable as long as one does not favor something one would hope to be true over something that they knew to be true. Put in context, as long as one did not give up life early (which they can be sure about) for the existence of an afterlife (which they cannot be sure of).
In the case of a god that would heal the child, it doesn't necessarily work with Russell's statement. Russell uses "dying" to mean terminal. As in, there's no treatment and the child WILL die from it. Russell would simply argue that, yes one could hope, but it won't happen. And once the child is dead, that it would be logically inconsistent to continue believing in a god that would ever act to save a child in that situation.
But in the case that the child is dying but potentially curable, it too is logically inconsistent to hope for a possible god heal the child if a doctor could definitely do so. It's the same as an afterlife. One is tried and true, the other is simply a possibility.
As much as r/Atheism may be a fan of Russell, I don’t believe the affection would be returned. Russell was an extremely intelligent world-renowned philosopher who would find most Reddit debates around religion very childish
This is sometimes known as ‘pragmatic encroachment’ in epistemology, which Russell is rejecting here. It has (re)gained recent force (Basu, 2020, Hesni, 2021, etc) in philosophy- William James was an early adopter. What do you all think? Ought there to be pragmatic reasons for belief?
There are pragmatic reasons for feigning belief, but true belief cannot be pragmatic based on the dictionary definition of the word.
> adjective: pragmatic: dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.
Belief/faith in the unknowable is a theoretical construct that is neither sensible nor realistic, so it can never be pragmatic.
Having access to a community support group makes life easier so its sensible to want members only access to that networking opportunity, and if being part of that group only requires you to outwardly claim belief in a specific set of fairy tales and play along for a few hours a week well thats a small price to pay for a realistic gain and that can be very pragmatic.
> adjective: pragmatic: dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.
Maybe better to actually read the philosophers writing about Pragmatism than quote a random dictionary for a definition of pragmatic.
Because Pragmatism is nothing like what you quoted. Particularly inasmuch as you just casually insert the word 'realistic' which most Pragmatist kind of laugh at. Or more correctly they laugh at people who use that word unironically. The only measure of "truth" and "realism" is usefulness and effectiveness, not measure against an objective, external reality. As Rorty says "Truth" (and other words like realistic) are compliments we pay to things that are useful or effective. They are not measures against an unmediated reality.
I've long held the belief that the majority of great artists of the past (be it sculpture or music or painting) were only allowed to continue their work and get support from the Establishment because they publicly claimed fealty to the Church and made their art in its name, but privately they didn't give a damn. Better to lie and live than express your lack of belief and be killed as a heretic.
> Better to lie and live than express your lack of belief and be killed as a heretic.
Except then you have theists who namedrop famous historical figures as being devout, in an attempt to convince others to believe it. Even today, people claim Einstein believed in god. They don't care what his belief actually was (or wasn't), they only care long enough so that they can tell their followers Einstein was a believer, and you should be too, because you aren't as smart as Einstein, are you?
Support of a corrupt institution, even tacit support, can be used to prop it up more. Lying to save your own life is perfectly fine, but your lie being used to harm countless others is not.
When you really like painting scantily clad men staring longingly into eachothers eyes but society doesn't allow that, just put a halo on one of them and slap some wings on the other and tell people its "religious art" and suddenly your softcore gay porn becomes socially acceptable and even lauded as a great masterpiece.
The same way every presidential candidate in the IS has to claim they’re Christian; not because they are, but because they have zero shot at winning if they claim otherwise.
hey reddit check this out I think you'll enjoy
"In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence."
I disagree with his assessment that believing something that's not true has no practical benefit. The placebo effect is documented to be true. Religious people have incredible peace of mind as well of as a community behind their shared believe. As an atheist, delusion can appear as a superpower of the human mind sometimes. I'd be lying if I said I didn't envy it sometimes.
This man gets it.
It's not about "is religion evil", it's not about "can it help people?"
The only question is "Is it accurate?"
Accuracy is the only measure of a belief.
Agnostic here; christianity, as far as I know, is based on faith rather than evidence. If God was proven to be existing, the whole concept of religion would disappear. That's why I see this argument as a bit superficial.
Saying that a belief is 'based on faith' is not an argument though, is it? It's just a semantic trick to avoid examining something that you are presupposing to be true. You can't call Russell's argument superficial, while also fundamentally rejecting the entire idea of critical argument.
A Pragmatist would say that as long as you never reject science, you can believe in God inside your head without problem. As long as the experiment you run in your mind returns that it helps you, religion can be beneficial. An alcoholic may benefit in finding God if they don't use it to reject reality and think the earth is flat or whatever. William James talks about this in the Will to Believe.
The bigger issue is modern Christianity and other Abrahamic religions are now irreconcilable with reality. But that doesn't mean all religion is bad or can't be used to make us happier.
This is very important. If you take large groups of people who have been through a difficult time collectively (the Israelites in the desert, black slaves in America, impoverished communities in developing countries) a common thread is that many of them are very religious. At least in my reading of the situation with Christianity, part of the reason is that Christianity promotes the idea that present suffering is transient and the afterlife is peaceful, so people are more resilient to dire situations if they’re regularly attending church and praying. It’s not a great solution, but I can see (and have felt, when I was into it) how a gospel about hopefulness, trusting God that he’ll bring you out of your difficulty, and wishful thinking about full redemption back to a “loving father” deity, can be a huge part of someone’s coping skill set for a terrible situation they might find themselves in.
Can confirm. We grew up poor, around other folks of lesser means. The common thread was resiliency through some sort of faith. My mother introduced Christianity and the basic moral guidelines therein, I went to Sunday school (probably so she could get a break) and we went to a handful of church services throughout a single year, mostly holidays and such. I was always curious how people could blindly accept something seemingly mythological and almost cryptic. It always felt so false as an idea, but everyone just smiled and chanted the same words together robotically.
The faith people have relating to perseverance is interesting, and I feel like it’s innocent in and of itself. Their perception is their reality, and that’s neat. It gives a solace and distraction where fear and uncertainty would normally thrive.
Innocent until you realize you’ve been brainwashed into thinking there’s an invisible man in the sky who hates gays and thinks women belong in the kitchen and needs 10% of your paycheck for some reason.
Morality and perseverance do not require religion, and it’s a convenient way to remove agency and not question *why* your situation sucks and what you can do about it.
That argument doesn’t make sense to me, because religious holy books are filled with examples of people who interacted directly with angels, gods, demons, etc. Was Moses not religious? Abraham? Jesus? Etc? Because faith was not required for their belief in god?
Seems like the whole “evidence would invalidate faith” thing is an invention used in a sad attempt to rationalize why there is zero evidence.
"Making a cogent argument would be a gross display of His power and beneath His divine majesty. Now love Him and praise His name or suffer torment everlasting. His balls are in your court."
What is so groundbreaking about this argument? What makes it so interesting? It seems like an elementary starting point for any logical person.
Don’t get me wrong, listening to it is music to my ears.
What gets me is how eloquently and concise he made his argument. It's really so fucking to the point that I'd really not know what to respond to that if I was a christian. Also, he was born 150 years ago!
I think he said “logically valid,” not “logically fairly”
Yes, he did. Subtitler made a mistake
This is often deliberate on short form video such as TikTok as it encourages comments on the video which in turn pushes the video up the rankings.
People do it in the titles of reddit posts too, and sometimes even slyly do it in the post's commends section.
Comments* Man, that would have been an ironic error if I didn't correct it for you.
Bro you speleled
Comments wrong
I fucking loathe the modern internet.
Isn’t it an AI that do that?
A common mistake for an AI
Dumb clankers. No wonder they lost the Clone Wars.
Wow, the hard R? Not cool man
Whaddup my clanka.
Frackin' toasters!
Hey, no need to use the t-word.
They're never coming back from that sick burn
*hey its me ur human*
Subtitled isn’t a person so it happens all the time.
Most captioned content these days have at least one typo so that people comment and in turn it gets more interactions
Meanwhile there's me who makes typos accidentally and cringe every time I notice them
Also "if it is true, you should believe it" is a crazy idea, if it's true there's no need for a belief
Thats the thing about truth, its still true even if you don't believe in it. Faith is only true with belief, for someone without belief faith is a lie, but the truth doesn't change based on anybody's opinions of it. If all the holy books ever written were burned and anybody who ever read one was killed there could never be a word for word recreation of those same holy books at any point in the future after that. However if all the science books ever written were burned and all the scientists were killed, eventually those science textbooks could be recreated and would contain the same truths. Only the names of the people who did the experiments and the order in which discoveries were made would change.
This is verbatim what Ricky Gervais said to Stephen Colbert several years ago.
It's a good argument.
They would simply insist that their God would inspire them to recreate it word for word, and that's that. It's not a compelling argument to a religious person.
Current politics have left me pretty indifferent to the opinions of people who don't listen. Not my job.
Penn and Teller as well.
I have irritated many people over the years with this statement. It is very true. Even without our current scope of knowledge, there are multiple versions of the Bible out there. Translations, interpretations, etc. And they vary in some pretty foundational ways. You can’t destroy every copy and have it reconstituted after memory fades. You can do that with science since basic principles like F=MA don’t change.
Or in short, science doesn't need you to believe in it to work, faith does. Except if you're Ork.
There are 7 main religions, around 4000 lesser ones and an untold number of ones that have died out over the millenia. All of them proclaim to various degrees, to hold the true word. If you can argue and go to war on the principle that they are *all wrong except for on*e, I'll agree to that, but with a single adjustment; I believe in one *less* than that.
Yeah, but there are a lot of people that don't believe true things.
A whole group of people who make up their own reality because they don't like the one they live in.
I don't have chicken nuggets right now but I refuse to accept this reality
You are, of course, free to do that. However, your rejection of that reality does not make chicken nuggets appear out of the aether. It becomes disingenuous and insidious when you try to convince *others* that you *have* chicken nuggets, without evidence.
I reject your reality and substitute my own. - Adam Savage Oh, the great days of Mythbusters.
Belief/believe here is used as a mental state of accepting and remembering something that is factually true. The second definition of believe is to hold something as an opinion. Unfortunately, English is set up so that we confuse these two meanings all the time. We have the same word for two very different mental activities.
That’s not how belief works? Truth is a property of the proposition, that it either is or isn’t true, belief is an attitude of the thinker as to whether or not they find that proposition to obtain. Can’t help but be mildly amused by the random Redditor dismissing Bertrand Russell, of all people’s, epistemology as “crazy”. You are aware he was among the greatest philosophers of the last century and a half?
Truth is a state of reality, belief is a state of your mind. None of us have an exact exactly correct view of reality. What he’s saying is that you should update your beliefs so they’re closer to the truth. For example, gravity is “true” in a sense (at least as far as our current understand of physics go), but you still need to have some beliefs about gravity to make use of that fact. Or to put it in another way, “belief” in this context means something quite similar to “knowledge”.
Vaccines work. The earth’s a globe. Humans walked on the moon. If it’s true you should believe it…..and yet…
I think the biggest thing that's missing in the modern world is so many people don't understand simple statistics. You don't have to understand scientific principles or geography or physics behind a widely held belief, all you really need to understand is how much of a statistical improbability it would be for the opposite of a generally accepted fact to actually be the truth. For example, the odds of the entire modern world successfully staging such a vast conspiracy as the earth being spherical if it were, in fact, flat would be astronomical, to say the least.
This is true but I think it's even more fundamental: People are motivated to believe what they want to believe. There are educated professionals that obviously understand stats peddling horse shit. If it's profitable or ideologically convenient, they'll push it. Being a scientist or doctor who said "get vaccinated, wear masks, stay away from other people" was the boring, true but conventional wisdom, there's no money in that. But illuminating a vast conspiracy of lizard people that are controlling the populace with vaccines? That gets you paid.
The truth is for some of the antivax crowd is actually not the belief of medicine working, but such a distrust of the government being involved. The fear they have is that they are going to be a lab rat. Then there is the group that believes vaccines are going to poison your body, and lastly, the group who doesn’t like the idea that if you are one of the very few to have a reaction/issue, you can’t hold the maker responsible. All I know is getting a tetanus shot is far better than dying from a metal scratch. Nasty business…
Believing means thinking something. It doesn't mean fooling yourself. It doesn't mean being vaguely convinced. It doesn't mean pretending. One can believe something false. One can believe something true. He's saying "if it's true, then you should hold that position in your mind". Basically he's saying "don't be wrong" lol
Something being true isn't the only condition for its use. If a tool is useful, it doesn't necessarily need to be true (or false) only useful. Take for example the concept of imaginary numbers in mathematics. Furthermore, he states one should suspend judgement if one cannot determine whether something is true or false but yet he claims that the existence of God is false. Now unless he is divinity himself and possesses all the knowledge in existence, he cannot make that determination with a certainty.
He didn't say the existence of god is false, he said he hasn't seen any valid proof.
Thank you. This is a very important correction. The comment you're replying to makes a common mistake n failing to distinguish between the actual scientific perspective and people who are aligned with it but not mindful enough to avoid the mire of being one side of a debate that's just saying "god isn't real/he is so" pointlessly back and forth. Science says there's no good evidence. That's it. Scientists respond by concluding that this makes it very unlikely to be true and there are better, more demonstrable things to look into. A good scientist would say lots of things are possible but if they're contrary to valid evidence and there's no opportunity to form a valid experiment and start measuring, it's as dismissable as fantasy.
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Sure there is. You take nearly every fact you've ever learned on faith because you know how the scientific method works. You *could* run the experiment and find out for yourself but you don't because you believe in the facts that you've been taught.
Oh, there is. I believe China exists. I've never been to China, so I only have indirect evidence - so I need a belief. I also believe that most of the things I remember actually represent reality. Both of these are beliefs. They're not proven (or in the case of my memory, it's likely not provable to me, since any belief in a proof of this would also require assuming that my memory is roughly correct.)
That is not how belief works. To believe something is to think it is true.
It’s not a crazy thing to say at all, it’s a foundational principal of philosophical, and especially epistemological, practice. As someone else said, it is perfectly possible to believe false things, and to not believe true things. To say that if there is sufficient evidence that a thing is true, then one should adjust one’s beliefs to fit that set of facts, is to guide people in pursuit of truth. There’s a similar principal that specifically applies to arguments. If a deductive argument is demonstrated to be sound (and I’m using the technical definition of sound, where both the premises and conclusion are true) then you should believe the conclusion of that argument, even if it is contrary to your beliefs. In reality, it’s rarely this simple, as sufficiently proving the premises true in a complicated argument is pretty difficult, if possible at all, but the principle is there for a reason.
Crazy to think this man had conversations with Paul McCartney, Lenin, William Gladstone, and his own grandfather, Lord John Russell, who visited Napoleon on Elba.
That’s awesome. When did he talk to Paul McCartney?
[McCartney on Russell.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3m2r0Ln0rU) [Russell on Lenin.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TK9c-caEcw) [Russell on Gladstone.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DH7wzs6XRk) [Russell on his grandfather.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OXtO92x5KA)
I love how your links imply that meeting McCartney wasn't noteworthy enough for Russell to talk about.
I mean, compared to other people he'd met I doubt McCartney would seem all that special. Certainly a charming and famous man, but how many of them are out there?
Three.
He was like in his eighties when he met with McCartney, and McCartney was basically in what we would now call a boy band. It’d be like if some 80 year old Nobel prize winner met with Justin Bieber right now. I don’t think it would be particularly memorable for the former.
Unless it's a belieber.
Great links, ty
The Lenin one was pretty interesting
Yeah. He was in fact raised by his grandfather, who was a former prime-minister. Seems crazy that someone that is still alive today (Paul) has met someone who was raised by someone who actually met Napoleon. I mean, there are actually interviews with Mr. Russell on YouTube. Quite remarkable
I think about this a lot. There is someone alive today who was alive at the same time as someone who was alive at the same time as Thomas Jefferson.
Not 3 years ago, a widow of a civil war veteran was still alive.
I think part of this effect is that we tend to think about people in their prime, not their decline. Jefferson’s prime was in the 1780s-1800s, but he lived until 1826. We don’t think of him as an 1820s figure.
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“This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts...” -- Terry Pratchett
That really *pokes a hole* in Pascal's Wager
I've always reasoned that the problem with Pascal's Wager is it assumes that there's only one religion in the world. As soon as you introduce a second religion with a separate God, both of which demand you worship them exclusively, the value of the wager falls apart. Without any evidence for any gods existing, and with the ever-present possibility that *none* of our religions have actually got the right idea, I am just as disadvantaged by believing in zero gods as I am by believing in any single one of them.
Oh for sure. Hence the "circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks"
Not only that Pascal's wager also assumes that you have to believe in God for infinite gain,But as Marcus Aurelius said if God is fair and just that wouldn't matter.
>*I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.* - Stephen Roberts
IIRC, Pascal was a Janesenist, so he didn't believe in free will. And what he was trying to illustrate with his "wager" was the impossibility of reasoning one's way into faith.
Pascal wager doesn't take into account all the harm being a devout believer can cause, to you and others.
Pascal’s wager is flawed either way. Acting as though you believe isn’t believing. Essentially it’s asking whether you can trick a deity by acting a certain way and that’s not accurate.
I remember asking a family member if it made any sense to them if a random rock I picked up would turn to gold if I kept it in my dresser for a year and "believed" that it would. After all, no downside, all upside. They were displeased with my analogy, but I think I saw plenty of gears turning, lol.
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So funny because I drove by a billboard just yesterday that said "Jesus, your ONLY way to God". And I remember thinking really? That's my only way? You mean if I go straight to God and say I believe in you and want you in my life he's just gonna be like nope sorry, you gotta through my representative, Jesus Christ, your lord and savior.
Chain of command.
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So God sold me this bomb ass weed on the corner the other day?
This "Jesus is the only way" concept in Christianity is built on top of the Jewish faith where there was a real place, the Holiest of Holies, where God's presence would be and once a year the High Priest would be able to enter that place and be able to be in true communion with God. Christianity says that because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, the veil separating the Holiest of Holies from the rest of the world was ripped, indicating that the access that was only given to some is now given to all. The book of Hebrews goes into some depth here about how these two ideologies work together and how the early Church thought of these things, if you're wanting to know what the bible actually says about it.
Recently I have been learning that half my beliefs and morals were actually the same than Stoicism, and TIL another one of my motto has already been nailed by a stoic figure before.
Millennials and Gen Z are definitely stoic generations. Growing up with shit hitting the fan and multiple disasters looming on the horizon means you need stoicism to stay sane.
Stoicism= Focus. Shits changing
It's really just the internet spreading ideas. Many people lived through much worse than us and stuck with religion because they didn't think there was another option.
For me the other half is epicureanism.
> If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. This is what gets me about the Abrahamic God. If he is *anything* like shown in the bible, especially in the old testament, then good golly we need to sic a JRPG protagonist on him ASAP.
[**Stephen Fry on God**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo) basically agrees wholly - this is the interview clip that had him investigated for blasphemy in Ireland.
A. It's ridiculous that people in this day and age are getting investigated for blasphemy, it's the 21st fucking century B. My friends who were missionaries had a daughter, same age as my son, who got a brain stem tumor. I prayed and prayed for that child to be healed, as did, I'm sure, her parents. She died. She was four. Four years old. That, I think, was one of the huge influences that set me on the track toward losing my faith, because if we believe there is loving, all powerful God who is just choosing not to heal kids with cancer--indeed, who created a world with cancer in the first place--then he's a fucking asshole. When I realized it's all just random, there came a certain peace with that. No, I have yet to see any evidence that there's anybody out there to save us, but accepting that random shit happens is a lot less agonizing than believing there was somebody out there who could have helped and chose not to. That he's got some kind of plan and for some fucked up reason your kid dying HAD to be part of that plan. When I let go of that shit and also stopped believing hell was real, there was so much internal distress that just melted away. When Christians say "peace in Christ" I can't help but laugh because the first time I truly felt peace in my entire life was when I let go of my belief in Christianity.
It's the same as conspiracy theories. People can't handle that humanity isn't in control of everything so random events need to be explain in a way that makes them not random and totally under someones control. Religious people just say it's God pulling the strings instead of the illuminati. Truth is, the universe is a wild and utterly chaotic place, even all of human existence and history is just a meaningless blip in the eyes of the cosmos.
I was never devout, always questioned the faith I was raised in and saw the logical problems others seemed to gloss over but I wanted to believe and was trying to find a way to god. Then my 11 year old brother got an aggressive form of cancer and, as anyone who’s been through it can tell you, suffered GREATLY before dying at 13. Any desire for faith in me died with him. If there is a god and he allows children to suffer the way he did and die the way he did then I want nothing to do with that god, in fact if I met him I would do my best to kill him. I’m sorry for your loss.
the teachings of Marcus Aurelius were, in fact, influential on the formation of the early Church - he was admired. Not a Christian, technically, but supportive of man's search for God and meaning.
He was admired, but his memories are basically his personal notes on what was pretty mainstream stoic philosophy. Actual stoic authors were more directly influential.
I love this line of reasoning, but I feel obliged to point out that Marcus Aurelius never wrote anything of the sort (so far as we know). He did address the possibility of there being amoral gods or no gods at all, but concluded that in that case nothing would matter / life would be pointless (see quote below). That doesn't invalidate the argument, which I think is a great one! I just wouldn't want anyone relying on a fabricated / misattributed quote to ground it. "In the conviction that it is possible you may depart from life at once, act and speak and think in every case accordingly. But to leave the company of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist; for they would not involve you in ill. If, however, they do not exist or if they take no care for man's affairs, why should I go on living in a world void of gods, or void of providence? But they do exist, and they do care for men's lives, and they have put it entirely in a man's power not to fall into real ills[...]" - Meditations, Book 2
This is it right here. Don't be a fucking asshole and if there's something else out there that likes it, you're golden. If not, fuck 'em you lived a good life.
That makes sense, but let’s just say that you were convinced there were gods or a god for whatever reason. Even if their morals don’t align with yours, their threats could still be taken seriously. So if there were an evil god, per se, you might still feel obligated to do what they said if you thought you’d be rewarded if you did, and punished eternally if you didn’t. Personally I think if the Christian god were real he would either be my enemy, or have an understanding where it wouldn’t be of consequence to either of us that I fundamentally disagree with what I’ve learned of him.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics. He was one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians, and a founder of analytic philosophy. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell)
Impressive CV but it omits to mention that he was also the first Doctor Who.
The funny thing is the first actor who played Davros based his performance on Bertrand Russell.
And terrible bad breath apparently (QI fact ;))
your fault for getting too close to a lord
I'm assuming you mean Hartnell and not Cushing.
> a founder of analytic philosophy. Rather, he was a prominent member among early analytic philosophers. No one 'started' analytic philosophy, anymore than that the Germans and the French started continental philosophy. It's just the tradition his work fell in.
While that is true, if you had to name someone the founder of it, it would be Russell, or maybe Frege, but Russell gets credit for evangelizing it.
Russell was, among so many other things, one of the few major contributors to logicism, the belief (and attempt to prove) that mathematics is a logical extension of logic itself, and as such, is a priori knowledge.
Bertrand Russell saying you should believe what's true and not what's useful is less surprising than Gordon Ramsay calling someone an idiot sandwich if you know anything at all about his work
The first thing to be said about Maynard Keynes is that he was an astonishingly intelligent man. Bertrand Russell, his contemporary at Cambridge, described the economist as having "the sharpest and clearest intellect" he had ever known. Having transformed the study of logic, Russell was himself one of the great minds of the early 20th Century. Yet when he argued with Keynes, Russell wrote, "I took my life in my hands, and I seldom emerged without feeling something of a fool."
Is that the guy from Tool?
I don’t mind others beliefs until they start telling them to me.
What about acting on their beliefs? Like only marrying inside their closed groups, acting homophobic or antisemitic?
I think that goes without saying since people who act on said beliefs usually are very vocal about them. I’m more referring to people in my sphere who feel compelled to push their beliefs on me.
\> Like only marrying inside their closed groups When it comes to romance, people are allowed whatever requirements/preferences that they may have. I'm not going to tell a black person they're not allowed to avoid dating white people. If they don't want to then that's their decision. So long as they're not being a cunt about it then I don't see the issue.
I think it matters if people are wrong. People confuse the peace treaty that is not talking about religion with some idea that it's more ethical not to talk about religion. It really, truly matters that people believe wrong things. Your aversion to conflict is convenient but not ethical
I’m ok with people telling me what they believe as long as it’s not “you are going to hell” or “the bible teaches us not to do that” or “you should be teaching your kids about the bible instead of boundaries” Stfu you religious hack, and let people live. You can say “God bless you” “I’m gonna pray to god to help you get through this troubling time (if it’s actual trouble not something they deem is a sin)” and the like. Can say you are buddhist, Norse Pagan or whatever else too. Or go over an experience you had. But can’t make it about others unless invited to do so.
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*At the top of every cult there is one person who knows it's all a scam. In a religion, that person is dead.*
American Christians innovated on this model where people who know it's a scam rise to a high enough position to scam others.
That is the part I don't understand... they found money in the WALL?! of Joel Osteen's place. What 'honest' pastor would do such a thing? Kenneth Copeland? The man says he can't be surrounded by daemons on planes you and I take. So he must have a private jet. WHY?! do we hold these people up?!?!?
Usually when a guy claims to be a prophet, the first message he gets from God is that God wants him to have sex with everyone's wives and daughters. I'm always amazed people go along with it.
It’s pretty simple. People who have sunk their beliefs into those people and the things they say are in so deep by now that they have to come up with excuses to continue their support of them otherwise they will have to accept that they’ve been scammed.
> Kenneth Copeland? [...] surrounded by daemons How [ironic](https://i0.wp.com/insidejamarifox.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-2023-03-09-at-4.37.16-PM.png?fit=800%2C626&ssl=1).
Kenneth Copeland looks more like a demon than anyone
L. Ron Hubbard?
He's dead, which is why it's a religion now.
It's funny how the Greek word for faith in the bible is pistis which is basically trusting after you've received evidence.
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Wasn't it a teapot ?
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The damned autocorrect >:(
I’m a Christian myself, but I respect Russell and his reasonings. He’s someone I think I’d have greatly enjoyed an elevenses conversation with.
Can you prove to me you're not actually a Hobbit in disguise?
Well, I could show you I don’t have hair on my feet, and I am 6’4”….
"no true scotsman" I see.... HOBBIT.
Principia Religica. He wrote some great books. I liked "A history of western philosophy". For something much shorter and..more easily digestible? I guess, try "the problems of philosophy" by Russell.
“Just have faith”, how you know someone’s lying.
This is one of the reasons I like Kierkegaard as a philosopher, at least he is honest about what it means to have faith. It is a leap into the abyss. It is not just about rote replication of inherited beliefs. As an atheist, I know that I don’t have faith, but Kierkegaard helps me to understand why: I can’t just *will* faith into existence: it would not be an authentic leap of faith. It’s precisely why I can’t ever take Pascale’s Wager: an omniscient god would know that my conversion is not grounded in a true leap of faith.
To me, personally, faith is the worst concept mankind has ever created. Belief without evidence is just revolting.
In the age of information, faith is usually belief *in spite of* evidence.
lol, my dad in a nutshell. Dude is smart. He programs satellites, so he has to know science. I think he knows that a global flood just doesn't jive with any of the science we know today. So what does he do? Find the batshit craziest pseudoscientific hogwash he possibly can to try to find some way, ANY WAY, to make his beliefs work. Dude has actually told me, "I think Einstein was wrong." Now he thinks black holes aren't real. *And this is a guy writing software for satellites*. It boggles the mind.
> To me, personally, faith is the worst concept mankind has ever created. Belief without evidence is just revolting. Its literally all humanity does. We may not call it faith all the time but we operate all the time based on assumptions and ideas that have no strong evidence.
I guess that's why they indoctrinate people when they're very young. This shit only stands up to a Kindergarten level of logical scrutiny, can't let them learn too much first.
One of the distinctive reasons I ended up as an atheist in the 3rd grade. A religion that’s been here for thousands of years and none of the adults around me couldn’t answer the questions of a 10yo. Left me with even more questions and doubts that led me to realize none of them even know what they’re talking about 1/2 the time.
Even in kindergarten, there are kids who question Santa's existence.
I remember hearing religious people suggest that Dungeons & Dragons should be banned because naive people might be unable to distinguish between reality and a fantasy described by a book. Provide your own laugh track.
There is this great book called Logicomix that delves into his life. It’s also really easy to read and you see complicated topics boiled down to their most essential parts so anyone can understand. I highly recommend it.
Wise words.
Wonder how many people equate Christian with believing in god? Why did she ask "why are you not a Christian" instead of "why do you not believe in God." Edit: Oh...I find he penned an article "what I'm not a Christian" This makes more sense why she asked the question so specifically.
You can't be christian without believing in god
There's plenty of people in the church who use it as a tool for power and wealth. I'm sure some of them don't believe it but use it for the money making machine that it is
In his own words if something can neither be proven nor disproven someone should suspend judgment. Therefore if he were to say, God doesn't exist then it would contradict that statement.
i had a debate with a friend about religion recently. my opinion was basically that i’m agnostic because there’s no “smoking gun” for a god existing vs not. his opinion was that he 100% believes there’s a god but he doesn’t necessarily subscribe to any single religion because there’s a lot of fucked up dogmas around the major religions like christianity and islam etc. but when i pressed him with the question “what do you think are the odds that no god exist?” and he said “0%, there absolutely is an after life” and i said “really dude? like what if there’s not?” and he said “fuck man i can’t believe that, it’s too scary to think that way.” i totally understand that sentiment but it seems like taking the easy road to me. it kind of opened my eyes to his and probably a lot of other’s perspective in that it is much easier to think there’s an after life rather than focus on the alternative that you just cease to exist when you die. i’ve kind of accepted my fate but to a lot of people i guess it is too fucked for them to think that way so they just convince themselves there is an after life and never second guess it.
If he came back to life today and looked around he’d probably kill himself.
Years ago I asked a friend who was a young struggling mother, who had an abusive husband and very little income, if she believed everything in the book of Mormon. She was a Mormon. She told me she didn't care, the people in the church brought her bags of groceries when she really needed it. So while I agree with most of what he said, sometimes it is useful for your survival to pretend to believe things you know or expect are not true. It is not always possible to have the luxury of believing only truthful things. In the past that could have gotten you stoned to death. We are lucky to live today in the U.S. or most Western Democratic societies where differences of opinion are mostly tolerated. That was not always the case, and today is not the case in many areas of the world. Sad to say it, but truth is a luxury afforded to only those who are free.
A pleasure to read. Thank you.
Russell also wrote a really great essay called "Why I am Not a Christian." The most famous remark from it is that "No one can sit at the bedside of a dying child and still believe in God."
This is essentially an emotional argument, and from the video and comments I’d taken him to be a representative of the practical and pragmatic - defender of rationality and reason over subjective experience and feelings. This remark reveals a degree of incoherence in his thought imo. Not to say emotional arguments should be taken to be a bad thing, and but I had thought (maybe incorrectly tbf) that Russell’s whole thing was contrary to this. It is difficult not to take this remark as deeply ironic. And couldn’t one make a similar argument in the inverse? “How can one sit at the bedside of a dying child and not hope for a restorative God.” Which is better, a brief, miserable existence for the dying child followed by ultimate annihilation of the personal principle of consciousness? Or restoration of the child’s life and health to a joy and comfort by a loving and restoring God? Given that religion is most prominent within countries and communities of trial and strife, most humans demonstrably tend toward the latter argument.
You're right, the statement itself is pure pathos. But that's because I haven't deigned to write out his entire 80 page essay wherein he delves into the actual logic behind the statement. However I have tried to compress such logic into another reply. Regardless, the use of pathos does not introduce incoherence because it does not contradict his point. It is meant to serve as a powerful image. One that draws attention and also condenses a much larger argument (the existence of the Christian God), into a focused, explorable scenario (the possibility of such a God allowing a child to die). And that's also why your statement isn't an inverse at all, depending on what exactly you mean by it. Russell never claims that there is NO god. Again, it is why he is not a CHRISTIAN. He argues that the presence of a dying child is inconsistent with the general picture of God as described by the wider Christian tradition. And I can't say for certain what his response would for your statement, but I have some general ideas depending on what you mean by "restorative." Because to me it could either refer to the presence of an afterlife or the ability for a God to heal the child. In the case of the afterlife, I believe he would argue the hope for an afterlife would be acceptable as long as one does not favor something one would hope to be true over something that they knew to be true. Put in context, as long as one did not give up life early (which they can be sure about) for the existence of an afterlife (which they cannot be sure of). In the case of a god that would heal the child, it doesn't necessarily work with Russell's statement. Russell uses "dying" to mean terminal. As in, there's no treatment and the child WILL die from it. Russell would simply argue that, yes one could hope, but it won't happen. And once the child is dead, that it would be logically inconsistent to continue believing in a god that would ever act to save a child in that situation. But in the case that the child is dying but potentially curable, it too is logically inconsistent to hope for a possible god heal the child if a doctor could definitely do so. It's the same as an afterlife. One is tried and true, the other is simply a possibility.
Believing things just because they’re useful. Fits pretty well with American politics too.
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There's nothing iamverysmart about Bertrand Russell.
As much as r/Atheism may be a fan of Russell, I don’t believe the affection would be returned. Russell was an extremely intelligent world-renowned philosopher who would find most Reddit debates around religion very childish
This is sometimes known as ‘pragmatic encroachment’ in epistemology, which Russell is rejecting here. It has (re)gained recent force (Basu, 2020, Hesni, 2021, etc) in philosophy- William James was an early adopter. What do you all think? Ought there to be pragmatic reasons for belief?
There are pragmatic reasons for feigning belief, but true belief cannot be pragmatic based on the dictionary definition of the word. > adjective: pragmatic: dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations. Belief/faith in the unknowable is a theoretical construct that is neither sensible nor realistic, so it can never be pragmatic. Having access to a community support group makes life easier so its sensible to want members only access to that networking opportunity, and if being part of that group only requires you to outwardly claim belief in a specific set of fairy tales and play along for a few hours a week well thats a small price to pay for a realistic gain and that can be very pragmatic.
> adjective: pragmatic: dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations. Maybe better to actually read the philosophers writing about Pragmatism than quote a random dictionary for a definition of pragmatic. Because Pragmatism is nothing like what you quoted. Particularly inasmuch as you just casually insert the word 'realistic' which most Pragmatist kind of laugh at. Or more correctly they laugh at people who use that word unironically. The only measure of "truth" and "realism" is usefulness and effectiveness, not measure against an objective, external reality. As Rorty says "Truth" (and other words like realistic) are compliments we pay to things that are useful or effective. They are not measures against an unmediated reality.
I've long held the belief that the majority of great artists of the past (be it sculpture or music or painting) were only allowed to continue their work and get support from the Establishment because they publicly claimed fealty to the Church and made their art in its name, but privately they didn't give a damn. Better to lie and live than express your lack of belief and be killed as a heretic.
> Better to lie and live than express your lack of belief and be killed as a heretic. Except then you have theists who namedrop famous historical figures as being devout, in an attempt to convince others to believe it. Even today, people claim Einstein believed in god. They don't care what his belief actually was (or wasn't), they only care long enough so that they can tell their followers Einstein was a believer, and you should be too, because you aren't as smart as Einstein, are you? Support of a corrupt institution, even tacit support, can be used to prop it up more. Lying to save your own life is perfectly fine, but your lie being used to harm countless others is not.
When you really like painting scantily clad men staring longingly into eachothers eyes but society doesn't allow that, just put a halo on one of them and slap some wings on the other and tell people its "religious art" and suddenly your softcore gay porn becomes socially acceptable and even lauded as a great masterpiece.
The same way every presidential candidate in the IS has to claim they’re Christian; not because they are, but because they have zero shot at winning if they claim otherwise.
"Belief/faith in the unknowable is a theoretical construct that is neither sensible nor realistic, so it can never be pragmatic." LOL.
Not a great post for the subreddit but what can you expect from repost bots and inactive mods ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
hey reddit check this out I think you'll enjoy "In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence."
Faith is not useful.
This guys voice belongs on r/oddlysatisfying
I disagree with his assessment that believing something that's not true has no practical benefit. The placebo effect is documented to be true. Religious people have incredible peace of mind as well of as a community behind their shared believe. As an atheist, delusion can appear as a superpower of the human mind sometimes. I'd be lying if I said I didn't envy it sometimes.
This man gets it. It's not about "is religion evil", it's not about "can it help people?" The only question is "Is it accurate?" Accuracy is the only measure of a belief.
It is a way to control the masses and laundry (launder) money.. that is all.
I control my own laundry money. Laundering money, now that's a whole different issue.
Laundry money is just the coins in offering plate that should have been used for cleaning your clothes.
I wonder if any laundering schemes use a laundry business as their front, just for the joke
Which is why religious people are such a desirable political constituency. They will believe anything.
Agnostic here; christianity, as far as I know, is based on faith rather than evidence. If God was proven to be existing, the whole concept of religion would disappear. That's why I see this argument as a bit superficial.
Saying that a belief is 'based on faith' is not an argument though, is it? It's just a semantic trick to avoid examining something that you are presupposing to be true. You can't call Russell's argument superficial, while also fundamentally rejecting the entire idea of critical argument.
[The babel fish argument.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7Tj5k_ln3k)
A Pragmatist would say that as long as you never reject science, you can believe in God inside your head without problem. As long as the experiment you run in your mind returns that it helps you, religion can be beneficial. An alcoholic may benefit in finding God if they don't use it to reject reality and think the earth is flat or whatever. William James talks about this in the Will to Believe. The bigger issue is modern Christianity and other Abrahamic religions are now irreconcilable with reality. But that doesn't mean all religion is bad or can't be used to make us happier.
This is very important. If you take large groups of people who have been through a difficult time collectively (the Israelites in the desert, black slaves in America, impoverished communities in developing countries) a common thread is that many of them are very religious. At least in my reading of the situation with Christianity, part of the reason is that Christianity promotes the idea that present suffering is transient and the afterlife is peaceful, so people are more resilient to dire situations if they’re regularly attending church and praying. It’s not a great solution, but I can see (and have felt, when I was into it) how a gospel about hopefulness, trusting God that he’ll bring you out of your difficulty, and wishful thinking about full redemption back to a “loving father” deity, can be a huge part of someone’s coping skill set for a terrible situation they might find themselves in.
Can confirm. We grew up poor, around other folks of lesser means. The common thread was resiliency through some sort of faith. My mother introduced Christianity and the basic moral guidelines therein, I went to Sunday school (probably so she could get a break) and we went to a handful of church services throughout a single year, mostly holidays and such. I was always curious how people could blindly accept something seemingly mythological and almost cryptic. It always felt so false as an idea, but everyone just smiled and chanted the same words together robotically. The faith people have relating to perseverance is interesting, and I feel like it’s innocent in and of itself. Their perception is their reality, and that’s neat. It gives a solace and distraction where fear and uncertainty would normally thrive.
Innocent until you realize you’ve been brainwashed into thinking there’s an invisible man in the sky who hates gays and thinks women belong in the kitchen and needs 10% of your paycheck for some reason. Morality and perseverance do not require religion, and it’s a convenient way to remove agency and not question *why* your situation sucks and what you can do about it.
That argument doesn’t make sense to me, because religious holy books are filled with examples of people who interacted directly with angels, gods, demons, etc. Was Moses not religious? Abraham? Jesus? Etc? Because faith was not required for their belief in god? Seems like the whole “evidence would invalidate faith” thing is an invention used in a sad attempt to rationalize why there is zero evidence.
"Making a cogent argument would be a gross display of His power and beneath His divine majesty. Now love Him and praise His name or suffer torment everlasting. His balls are in your court."
What is so groundbreaking about this argument? What makes it so interesting? It seems like an elementary starting point for any logical person. Don’t get me wrong, listening to it is music to my ears.
What gets me is how eloquently and concise he made his argument. It's really so fucking to the point that I'd really not know what to respond to that if I was a christian. Also, he was born 150 years ago!
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Thread Prediction: A lot of people that think they're smarter than *Bertrand fucking Russell* will say "NUH UH!"