[ExI] Beliefs (was: , Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 199, Issue 86)

[William Flynn Wallace]

 And, to become something good and useful, religion would have to transform
so radically that to continue to use the word 'religion' for it would be
misleading to say the least.  Ben

I am going to stay out of this one except for this quote from you:  there
are plenty of religions that do good in observable ways.  One of them is
the Salvation ARmy.  They often beat the Red Cross to disasters.  They are
a good example of people putting their faith into actions.  They do not try
to gain supporters from the people they are helping - they just help with
food, shelter, linens etc.

Granted:  they are exceptions, but I do know of local churches that serve
food to the homeless.    bill w

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 5:39 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 26/04/2020 08:42, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> The above seems to equate belief with blind faith (a belief based on no
> evidence). I disagree with that equivalence.
>
>
> Do you not think it's important (if not essential) to be able to
> distinguish between the meanings of "I believe in God" and "I believe it
> will rain this afternoon"? Nobody expects that someone who's said the
> latter will insist that it really is raining when no rain appears in the
> afternoon, that the rain is invisible, undetectable, but nevertheless
> really there, etc.
>
> Personally, I try to avoid the word 'believe' unless it clearly means
> 'think' from the context (as in the rain example above), and even then I
> prefer not to use it, because it's far too easy to confuse the two
> meanings. The classic example is the arguments people get into about
> atheism. Atheists do not believe in the existence of gods. But if you're
> not careful, and use the word belief in the 'weak' sense, the statement
> 'Atheists think that gods don't exist' (which is generally true) can become
> 'Atheists believe that gods don't exist', which is not the case, at least
> for most atheists, as previously discussed on this list.
>
> If I think something, that's just my opinion, which is subject to
> revision. If I use the word 'believe', its far too easily (in many cases),
> interpreted as the 'strong' version of the word, the blind faith version.
> This is why I'm so insistent on challenging people when they say 'Atheists
> believe there are no gods'. They may *mean* 'Atheists think there are no
> gods', but that's not what they're saying. Especially as we're talking
> about gods, the word 'believe' is almost certain to be taken the same way
> as religious people mean it when they say they do believe, rather than the
> way someone means it when they say 'I don't believe it will rain this
> aftenoon'.
>
> I think that magic is not real. I do not *believe* that magic is not
> real. It's not that I think there's a likelihood that it is, but if
> sufficient good evidence was presented that it is, I would change my mind.
>
> You say you disagree with the equivalence of 'belief' with 'blind faith'.
> Then you need to persuade religous believers to stop using the word, and
> refer to their blind faith in gods, etc., instead of belief.
> Otherwise, the equivalence is a fact.
>
> When you say "we all have beliefs", you are saying "we all have blind
> faiths", unless you qualify it to mean "we all think certain things are
> true".
>
>
> Jason: "Why are you a transhumanist (forgive me if this assumption is
> incorrect, I am assuming you are as you are active on this list)?
>
> Does transhumanism not for some of us provide hope of a brighter future?
> Perhaps in the past this role was served by such promises found in
> religious texts--especially if you consider living in an era where people
> saw little to no technological or cultural progress in their lifetime."
>
> Indeed I am a transhumanist. Yes, it does provide hope of a brighter
> future. Whether or not the same hope has anything to do with religion, I
> don't care. If it's true, that doesn't have any bearing at all on the
> validity or truth of religious texts, or any religious opinions.
>
> The reason I am a transhumanist is because it specifies that the
> improvement in the human condition is to be achieved via the rational
> application of science and technology, which in my experience, works, and
> not via superstitious means (magic, religion, wishful thinking, etc.),
> which in my experience, doesn't work.
>
>
> Jason: "Perhaps you can only see religion as it is and not for what it
> can be"
>
> I can certainly imagine religion transforming into something that it isn't
> today. People can imagine all sorts of things. I don't think that confusing
> what something could potentially be for what it actually is in the present,
> is very helpful, though. And, to become something good and useful, religion
> would have to transform so radically that to continue to use the word
> 'religion' for it would be misleading to say the least.
>
>
> Jason: "is it possible to apply science to ideas normally considered the
> exclusive domain of religion?"
>
> You have to be careful here. Science can only be applied to things that
> are falsifiable. Many things that are the domain of religion are not. But
> science has been applied to several things that are claimed by various
> religions (search for 'Does prayer work?', for instance), and found them to
> be false. Not that this deters any religious people, as they usually just
> squirm their way to an interpretation of their claims that can't be
> falsified.
>
>
> Jason: "Did I cherry pick?"
>
> Yes.
> You selected quotes from the large body of literature available from the
> religion in question that related to the relevant idea. But your claim was
> that these ideas are 'core themes'. I could claim that a core theme of
> entomology is interference patterns, and quote research on the colours of
> butterfly wings. I won't convince anybody, though.
>
>
> I don't know much about Hinduism, and maybe hindus aren't concerned about
> their gods rewards and punishments, perhaps there aren't any, in which
> case, good for them. I can't help wondering, though, where all those taboos
> come from. If someone eats a cow, what will (supposedly) happen? What's so
> bad about feet, or menstruation?
>
>
> Jason: "We all hold fundamental beliefs concerning reality"
>
> If you replace the word 'beliefs' with 'ideas', then I agree. In fact,
> things would be a lot clearer if, everywhere the word 'belief' was used, it
> was replaced with 'idea', and 'believe' was replaced with 'think', with
> appropriate qualifiers to distinguish between blind faith and rational
> thought.
>
> It seems that by 'religious belief', you mean 'world-view'. Use that term,
> and I'd agree that this encompasses atheism. Again, using the term
> 'religious belief' instead just causes confusion and resentment (and gives
> religious apologists ammunition).
>
>
> Jason: "What if we do find evidence for or against any of those
> fundamental concepts which today you call religious? Then, given that we
> now have evidence, such beliefs (under your definition) would no longer be
> religious beliefs"
>
> Correct.
> You've heard of 'the god of the gaps', haven't you?
> As soon as something mysterious is shown to have a rational explanation,
> there's no longer a need for the 'goddiddit' explanation any more. Nobody
> thinks that Thor or Zeus is the cause of lightning bolts anymore, because
> we now know how they really work.
>
> But maybe you mean something different when you say 'fundamental
> concepts'. The key question is: Are they falsifiable? If so, they can be
> disproved, and fall out of the realm of religion (there's no longer any
> need to 'believe' them (blind-faith version), they have been demonstrated
> to be true or false), but if not, science can't address them. Which usually
> means they aren't real, but anyway, they remain in the magical realm of the
> gods.
>
>
> The simulation argument is not a religious concept. It's a
> thought-experiment that, as far as we know, can't be proven. So, while it
> is (probably) unfalsifiable, neither is it a subject of blind faith. The
> people who think it's probably true, just assign a high probability to it,
> those who think it's probably false, don't. And there are plenty of people
> who think it's irrelevant anyway, so don't worry about it at all. The
> difference between a simulator and a god is clear, though. One is logically
> consistent with the laws of physics, the other is supernatural.
>
>
> Jason: "In what category would mathematical beliefs, such as the belief
> that "1 + 1 = 2" fall into? Are true mathematical beliefs falsifiable,
> subject to revision, eternally true?"
>
> I don't know the full answer to that, I'm not  a mathematician. But there
> are no such things as 'mathematical beliefs'. There are Axioms. Things that
> are held to be true because other things depend on them. 1 + 1 = 2 is not a
> belief. You don't have to have blind faith in it, you can prove it. There
> are other systems of mathematics with other axioms, I think. I don't know
> anything about them, so someone who actually knows maths might want to
> comment on that, but my understanding is that maths is an (approximately)
> self-contained logical system. Gödel shows that this is not quite true, of
> course, but I'm way out of my depth there.
> I think you're just asking the wrong question, here, to be honest.
>
>
> Jason: "Given the evidence and examples I provided regarding the
> scientific theory of the mechanistic description of the mind, have you
> changed your own opinion regarding the physical possibility of
> reincarnation, resurrection, and the continuance of a mind beyond the death
> of one of its bodies?"
>
> I think you misunderstand my position. I'm a materialist, and fully accept
> the 'mechanistic description of the mind'. I think that uploading,
> diverging identity, mind backups and possibly even merging of different
> versions of a mind are all theoretically possible, and have done for a long
> time.
> There's one important thing about materialism: It excludes the
> supernatural.
>
> I don't use the terms 'reincarnation', 'resurrection' etc., because these
> are words that come from the world of magical religious thinking (the
> supernatural), and give completely the wrong impression. There's a huge
> difference between saying "I believe in reincarnation" and "I think that
> uploading is theoretically possible".
>
> --
> Ben Zaiboc
>
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