Originally posted by elliotfc
I'd quibble by saying you get the "lake of fire" if you reject, as oppose to the whole belief thing. At that point belief is out the window, all the cards will be on the table.
Huh?
Taking the card analogy from above, if you're playing a card game, like spades, you can go from believing you'll make your bid to believing you'll be set.
Like most words in the language, 'belief' has more than one possible meaning. The one you are using here is not the one most relevant to this discussion.
Is that what you believe?
Yes. What is important is that I don't have any choice about believing this.
I think there are a whole bunch of variables.
Yes, that's pretty much what I was saying.
How exactly do you know this?
I'd say that is a relatively trivial observation about human nature.
I could also say that you stating your beliefs gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling.
You could. This is in fact precisely the erroneous assumption Christians so often make that atheists reach their conclusions by the same methods they themselves use (i.e., trying to make the facts fit the pre-drawn conclusions). I do not doubt that for many atheists, this is in fact the case.
How do you know what feelings people have?
I think that regardless of perspective -- religious, political, emotional, philosophical, whatever -- a reasonable (even indispensible) assumption is that there is more commonality than variation between individuals with regard to certain fundamental qualities of experience.
See, you tried the wrong methods (in my opinion).
We are speaking across a vast gulf it seems. You assume
a priori that reaching a particular conclusion is a valid objective.
I see excessive enthusiasm for belief systems all over this forum. What's so bad about that?
Well, there's nothing
bad about it. It is simply part of a struggle. I take excessive enthusiasm as evidence of doubt, no matter what direction it's pointing in. It may be that, like those who claim to be sincere believers, not all who call themselves atheists are secure in that either (or they might be less inclined to spend so much energy defending it -- unless they're just bored).
It is always good to be compassionate. That includes not assuming what is going on inside other peoples heads
Sorry, but you simply can't not do that. It runs on automatic. A huge amount of your cognitive wiring is devoted specifically to that task. It's not about perfect accuracy, it's about fast, reasonable guesses. I wasn't actually making any broad claims about being able to do any more than that, but I do feel that my personal experience is a valid (if imperfect) model in trying to understand others. Without such a model, I have nothing on which to base compassion, or anything else.
I don't know what this red pill stuff is about
You never saw The Matrix?
