Firanai said:
RatGouf said:
Firanai said:
How do you define yourself if the questions of faith, religion and the existence of god are completely irrelevant for you? In other words, you don´t care?
Easy as I'm defined by other things. And those things don't have to rely on Faith, Religion, or God.
For example I can be defined by my Love for Cheetahs, Video Games, etcetera. And I don't need anything else in order to express that Love.
I think that I have been misunderstood, I mean is there an specific word to define people like that? because I fall in that category.
Is there a specific word for people who simply don't care about those questions? Not that I'm aware of. Areligious apathetic maybe?
OT: The problem with the "usefulness" argument for belief in god is that it is presumptuous. Saying that belief in god is useful for say, bringing people together assumes that those people could or would not form a similar social group based around something else. Saying that belief in god causes people to give charitably presumes that people would not act charitably regardless. But, presuming you could prove that a belief in god did directly result in a good act, it still wouldn't matter because you could also prove that bad acts also occur as a direct result in the belief of a god.
What I think it is safe to say is that the better we understand reality, the better chance we have to make good decisions based on accurate information. I don't think one can argue successfully that we are more prone to make good decisions based on false information then we are to make good decisions based on accurate information.
As for belief being a choice, I do take some umbrage with that as well. We do not choose what we believe. Rather, what we believe is an automatic reaction to what we think we understand. The phrase, "You can believe what you want," is a lie. If anyone is in doubt of this, try a little experiment with yourself. I want you to stop believing your computer exists. You can't possibly make yourself believe this because the evidence before you trumps any desire you might have to disbelieve.
Take the moon landing as an example. Moon landing deniers aren't simply choosing to disbelieve in the truth, they are driven to their conclusion based on the quirks of who they are and what they believe they've experienced. We may think that we, and others, believe things based on choice, but that is simply an illusion. No matter how well founded a set of facts might be, it is still possible for someone to have a set of experiences that cause them to question and even disbelieve those facts. This disbelief will always be a reaction to those experiences though, not a consequence of what a person wants.
That is not to say that our ego doesn't have an effect on what we do or do not believe. Our ego acts as reinforcement for what we believe, it does not determine what we believe. People often think that the ego effect is what turns belief into choice, but this is simply an error of attribution. Ego can influence how strongly one believes but it does not determine the "what."