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> believing that religious believers accept 100% of religious belief without reasoning about them is a misunderstanding. I didn't say anything about religions

by pdonis 5y ago

> believing that religious believers accept 100% of religious belief without reasoning about them is a misunderstanding. I didn't say anything about religions and ideologies not using reasoning. Anyone who has read, say, Thomas Aquinas is perfectly aware that religious people can use all kinds of complicated reasoning to justify their beliefs. What I did say is that the set of beliefs in question are "all asserted as justification for each other in what amounts to a logical circle". For example, Thomas Aquinas spent a lot of time building up a huge edifice of interlocking propositions about God, all logically related to each other--but they don't connect to anything else. They're just a free-standing, self-consistent logical structure that can't be justified in any way except by claiming that it justifies itself. It's not that Aquinas didn't use reasoning; as noted above, he did--lots of it.

BackBlast 5y ago
I see the example you related, and by using it as a proxy... It seems that you are saying that religious beliefs aren't really valid because they aren't based in reality.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > It seems that you are saying that religious beliefs aren't really valid because they aren't based in reality. For the specific example I gave (Thomas Aquinas), it's not really a question of the beliefs being "valid" or not; it's just that they have no practical impact at all, which means it doesn't really matter whether you believe them or not, at least not if the beliefs are taken in isolation. However, it is a problem if people then try to use such beliefs to justify actions that do have practical impact. For example, consider the split between different branches of Christianity after the Council of Chalcedon over "homoousios" vs. "homoiousios", which caused several wars over the next few centuries.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > it's just that they have no practical impact at all, That's funny because a system that kept a civilization together for 1000 years is being claimed to have "no value" by someone who has no idea how to keep any society together and is mimicking the conventional wisdom of those overseeing a disintegrating society as a result of this ignorance. Not only does the work of Aquinas have value, it has more value over the long run than anything being produced today, as no ethical system that we hold dear has a chance of keeping anything going for even three generations, let alone 100. Modern society is suffering from collapsing birthrates and social disintegration at an alarming rate, and we are pretending to be smarter than those who set the rules of a civilization that was far more stable and productive than our own, with far more profound accomplishments.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > a system that kept a civilization together for 1000 years The fact that most people in a given civilization were Christians does not mean that the particular religious beliefs I was talking about were the ones that kept the civilization together. In fact, as the example I gave of religious wars over "homoousios" vs. "homoiousios" illustrates, those particular beliefs often caused problems that created huge rifts in the civilization. > someone who has no idea how to keep any society together If you are referring to me, I have no idea what you are talking about. > Not only does the work of Aquinas have value I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that, at least as far as the particular beliefs I was referring to are concerned, since that's the particular work of Aquinas that I was discussing. > no ethical system that we hold dear has a chance of keeping anything going for even three generations, let alone 100 Ethical systems are not the same as the kinds of religious beliefs I was talking about. Ethical systems have practical consequences that can be tested. I agree with you that many people today appear to have ethical systems that don't work well; we know that because they have bad practical consequences. However, when you talk about keeping things going for 100 generations, we don't have any single ethical system that has done that. Ethical systems have changed many times over the course of human history.
      - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
        >The fact that most people in a given civilization were Christians // It's somewhat orthogonal to your argument, but I'd doubt that most people in "Christian countries" (which is a heterodox notion) are/were Christians. Mostly people in the past seem to have followed a societal model, largely imposed as a firm of control. Where I grew up in the UK the village vicar was not a Christian according to most definitions (they didn't believe in central tenets of the faith as espoused in all the main creeds). Catholicism has a lot of things that are contradictory to biblical Christianity from basic things like having "special" people, to indulgences which are so contradictory to biblical teachings the only possibly way they were accepted is because most people were ignorant to Scripture. And of course those in power keenly maintained that ignorance.
        gattilorenz 5y ago
AmericanChopper 5y ago
The munchausen trilemma undermines the concept of “weighing the evidence”. Everything anybody believes to be true is either founded upon circular reasoning, a reasoning of infinite regression, or an arbitrary set of unprovable axioms. The consequence is that any level of belief in any truth can only be based upon faith. People who believe that their world view is based entirely upon facts and universal truths tend to have a very hard time accepting this. They will often say that scrutinizing something to that level is a pointless waste of time for things that are so obviously true, which is perhaps ironically the exact behaviour also exhibited by the most closed minded of the true believers that they often find themselves so frustrated by.
- ink 5y ago
  While your first statement is correct, you may want to acknowledge that "faith" in ideas can be seen as a continuum from completely subjective to mostly objective. For instance: believing in QAnon conspiracies isn't the same as believing in, say, climate change. Yes, both require your definition of "faith", but the former requires you to suspend your belief in reality while the latter is congruent with your observations of reality.
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    This isn’t true at all. I would characterize faith as being a belief in any truth that you cannot prove. There is no such thing as a truth that can be proven (or at least none has been discovered so far). All truths are equally non-probable. Your stance seems to be that a set of unprovable axioms you prefer to have faith are somehow superior to some other set of unprovable axioms that some other people may choose to have faith in. You might have all sorts of perfectly reasonable justifications for the axioms you have faith in, but if you want to claim your beliefs transcend faith then you’ll have to present a logical proof that survives the munchausen trilemma.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
“ They're just a free-standing, self-consistent logical structure that can't be justified in any way except by claiming that it justifies itself. It's not that Aquinas didn't use reasoning; as noted above, he did--lots of it.” Interestingly, this also describes all of math, logic, and philosophy. One of the more interesting axioms or assertions is whether there exists free will, which is, by any interesting definition, a supernatural entity.
- guntars 5y ago
  > Interestingly, this also describes all of math, logic, and philosophy. Which is totally fine, as long as people accept that God exists the same way math exists.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Yes, and ancient Christians asserted that God is love. Many do accept that love exists in the same way math exists.
    - ttfkam 5y ago
      Omnipotent. Omniscient. Omnibenevolent. Like the CAP theorem, you can only have two without substantial compromise.
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        Compromise depends on the understanding of the hierarchy. When ancient texts list God as Love, they note that Love is an act of (free) will (free will being considered a supernatural entity, even today). Free will is placed high on the hierarchy, which has interesting consequences. E.g. humans are free to do horrible things, and are free to choose not to love. If humans had no free will and were all instinct, there would be no love.
        ttfkam 5y ago
agensaequivocum 5y ago
This shows you lack understanding of the fundamental philosophical system by which his arguments are built, espcially Aristotle. Dispute what many think, Aristotle did a lot of experimentation. He was not an arm chair philosopher. St Thomas' arguments are anything but circular.

by pdonis 5y ago

BackBlast 5y ago

I see the example you related, and by using it as a proxy... It seems that you are saying that religious beliefs aren't really valid because they aren't based in reality.

pdonis 5y ago
> It seems that you are saying that religious beliefs aren't really valid because they aren't based in reality. For the specific example I gave (Thomas Aquinas), it's not really a question of the beliefs being "valid" or not; it's just that they have no practical impact at all, which means it doesn't really matter whether you believe them or not, at least not if the beliefs are taken in isolation. However, it is a problem if people then try to use such beliefs to justify actions that do have practical impact. For example, consider the split between different branches of Christianity after the Council of Chalcedon over "homoousios" vs. "homoiousios", which caused several wars over the next few centuries.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > it's just that they have no practical impact at all, That's funny because a system that kept a civilization together for 1000 years is being claimed to have "no value" by someone who has no idea how to keep any society together and is mimicking the conventional wisdom of those overseeing a disintegrating society as a result of this ignorance. Not only does the work of Aquinas have value, it has more value over the long run than anything being produced today, as no ethical system that we hold dear has a chance of keeping anything going for even three generations, let alone 100. Modern society is suffering from collapsing birthrates and social disintegration at an alarming rate, and we are pretending to be smarter than those who set the rules of a civilization that was far more stable and productive than our own, with far more profound accomplishments.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > a system that kept a civilization together for 1000 years The fact that most people in a given civilization were Christians does not mean that the particular religious beliefs I was talking about were the ones that kept the civilization together. In fact, as the example I gave of religious wars over "homoousios" vs. "homoiousios" illustrates, those particular beliefs often caused problems that created huge rifts in the civilization. > someone who has no idea how to keep any society together If you are referring to me, I have no idea what you are talking about. > Not only does the work of Aquinas have value I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that, at least as far as the particular beliefs I was referring to are concerned, since that's the particular work of Aquinas that I was discussing. > no ethical system that we hold dear has a chance of keeping anything going for even three generations, let alone 100 Ethical systems are not the same as the kinds of religious beliefs I was talking about. Ethical systems have practical consequences that can be tested. I agree with you that many people today appear to have ethical systems that don't work well; we know that because they have bad practical consequences. However, when you talk about keeping things going for 100 generations, we don't have any single ethical system that has done that. Ethical systems have changed many times over the course of human history.
    - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
      >The fact that most people in a given civilization were Christians // It's somewhat orthogonal to your argument, but I'd doubt that most people in "Christian countries" (which is a heterodox notion) are/were Christians. Mostly people in the past seem to have followed a societal model, largely imposed as a firm of control. Where I grew up in the UK the village vicar was not a Christian according to most definitions (they didn't believe in central tenets of the faith as espoused in all the main creeds). Catholicism has a lot of things that are contradictory to biblical Christianity from basic things like having "special" people, to indulgences which are so contradictory to biblical teachings the only possibly way they were accepted is because most people were ignorant to Scripture. And of course those in power keenly maintained that ignorance.
      - gattilorenz 5y ago

AmericanChopper 5y ago

The munchausen trilemma undermines the concept of “weighing the evidence”. Everything anybody believes to be true is either founded upon circular reasoning, a reasoning of infinite regression, or an arbitrary set of unprovable axioms. The consequence is that any level of belief in any truth can only be based upon faith. People who believe that their world view is based entirely upon facts and universal truths tend to have a very hard time accepting this. They will often say that scrutinizing something to that level is a pointless waste of time for things that are so obviously true, which is perhaps ironically the exact behaviour also exhibited by the most closed minded of the true believers that they often find themselves so frustrated by.

ink 5y ago
While your first statement is correct, you may want to acknowledge that "faith" in ideas can be seen as a continuum from completely subjective to mostly objective. For instance: believing in QAnon conspiracies isn't the same as believing in, say, climate change. Yes, both require your definition of "faith", but the former requires you to suspend your belief in reality while the latter is congruent with your observations of reality.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  This isn’t true at all. I would characterize faith as being a belief in any truth that you cannot prove. There is no such thing as a truth that can be proven (or at least none has been discovered so far). All truths are equally non-probable. Your stance seems to be that a set of unprovable axioms you prefer to have faith are somehow superior to some other set of unprovable axioms that some other people may choose to have faith in. You might have all sorts of perfectly reasonable justifications for the axioms you have faith in, but if you want to claim your beliefs transcend faith then you’ll have to present a logical proof that survives the munchausen trilemma.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

“ They're just a free-standing, self-consistent logical structure that can't be justified in any way except by claiming that it justifies itself. It's not that Aquinas didn't use reasoning; as noted above, he did--lots of it.” Interestingly, this also describes all of math, logic, and philosophy. One of the more interesting axioms or assertions is whether there exists free will, which is, by any interesting definition, a supernatural entity.

guntars 5y ago
> Interestingly, this also describes all of math, logic, and philosophy. Which is totally fine, as long as people accept that God exists the same way math exists.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Yes, and ancient Christians asserted that God is love. Many do accept that love exists in the same way math exists.
  - ttfkam 5y ago
    Omnipotent. Omniscient. Omnibenevolent. Like the CAP theorem, you can only have two without substantial compromise.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Compromise depends on the understanding of the hierarchy. When ancient texts list God as Love, they note that Love is an act of (free) will (free will being considered a supernatural entity, even today). Free will is placed high on the hierarchy, which has interesting consequences. E.g. humans are free to do horrible things, and are free to choose not to love. If humans had no free will and were all instinct, there would be no love.
      - ttfkam 5y ago

agensaequivocum 5y ago

This shows you lack understanding of the fundamental philosophical system by which his arguments are built, espcially Aristotle. Dispute what many think, Aristotle did a lot of experimentation. He was not an arm chair philosopher. St Thomas' arguments are anything but circular.