Made uneasy by strong beliefs

ITT: Confusing strong beliefs with stubbornness

edited 5th Jan '11 2:10:18 AM by KCK

There's no justice in the world and there never was~

The two are not unrelated. If your strong beliefs remain equally strong no matter how much contradicting evidence you are presented with, it's the same thing.

edited 5th Jan '11 3:23:32 AM by BobbyG

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Oh, dear. Strong beliefs. I was an athiest growing up in the Bible Belt (Georgia, specifically); I was ridiculed for my "strange beliefs." My own best friends 'knew' I was going to Hell, and one of my best friends will still stop at nothing until I have been converted. No one will ever listen to my arguments, and so I've stopped arguing. Now I just listen to their claims, then offer suggestions on how they're wrong, and let them try to prove themselves.

But I have very bad memories of strong beliefs. ._. As if I didn't talk about him already, my dad has the assuredly strong belief that I am a backwards-thinking moron who only argues for the sake of contradicting him, and that I am not his son but a mere guest in his house/apartment, so I must earn the rights to have dinner and privacy (and anything at all). He is also of the belief that, since he is the father, and I am the son, he will always be right. As discussed in a nearby topic, he really supports this belief of his strongly. ..I try my best to just not talk to him now. Every single conversation I have with him (CONVERSATION, mind you, not arguments) ends with him dismissing me as "just trying to contradict him," or with him scoffing at me and saying "I can't talk to you when you're like this" (when all I do is simply offer my opinion). Needless to say, it makes me feel rather unappreciated and worthless.

..so yeah. I agree with TC. Strong beliefs make me terribly uneasy.

tout est sacré pour un sacreur (Avatar by Rappu!)

D Jay 32: you have my sympathy, if I was in your position I think I would have photocopied large sections of the bible, specifically the ones about love, forgiveness and goodwill to support my arguments or to at least try to highlight the hypocritical nature of what they where saying.

But at the end of the day that kind of strife may not be worth it.

My latest Trope page: Shapeshifting Failure

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IN?

I believe... what doesn't kill us... only makes us... stranger.

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

Hmm, I wonder - what if person holding certain strong beliefs is simply very, very bad at arguing?

When presented with contradicting arguments and unable to defend one's position, a reasonable person is supposed to change their opinion, right? Unless I misunderstand something, which is very possible. But some people simply do not do well in arguments. What if their belief is in fact correct and can (and been) justified perfectly well by other people, but they, themselves, are unable to do the same?

This one is not quite willing to change her position when out-argued (which happens way too often), at least in case of positions that form the core of her current belief and value system. Is that unreasonable?

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

Yes it is. Also, we know some tropers here that are untouchable. Yet they can argue quite well. It's called Supercritical Uncriticality: they use all the tools in the box to spot contradictions and errors in others... but not in themselves.

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

Clearly I have no idea of whom you're referring!

Then you're committing the slippery slope fallacy. But really, the main problem with your statement is just the very definitive, uncompromising tone of the bolded part. It'd be perfectly reasonable OTOH to decide that retreading a familiar discussion yet again isn't worth your time, due to past experience leading you to estimate the probability of said discussion having any utility to you as negligible.

I don't see a problem there. I'm getting the impression that you might have the wrong idea about what it means to question a belief. Questioning a belief is not about getting into arguments with other people. It's about asking yourself if you have good reasons for believing what you do, if there's evidence and logic to back them up(at least, in the case of truth-apt beliefs like evolution). What matters is whether you actually have a rational justification for your position, not whether you promote them. If you have rational justifications, your belief isn't unquestioned.

Then I guess I should change it about 3 times a day(

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

Sure, though that doesn't necessarily entail abandoning one's opinion and converting to that of the other person. One's position might merely be incomplete rather than wholly incorrect, so one would need to adjust it as one would a scientific theory, adding and subtracting bits to bring it more and more in line with reality (or, one might say, to make it less and Less Wrong). It's not reasonable to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Then they need to do more research, as they've apparently arrived at a correct conclusion, but for the wrong reasons.

Value systems don't typically hinge on truth-apt positions, so I'm not sure that the positions that make up your value system are of a type that would need to be defended.

This is by no means limited to religion. Turns out Oregon hippies can quite often be exceedingly obnoxious and virulent, particularly when pushing "green" policies they haven't done any research on.

When I started this topic I deliberately didn't mention religion, as it far from the only kind of belief, I'm pleased to see this has worked.

My latest Trope page: Shapeshifting Failure

Oh those goddamn dirty hippies. Every time I see them I always want to scream YOU'RE NOT HELPING!

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

Are they dirty?

This made me . Viciously indeed... but not like Vicious at all.

edited 5th Jan '11 1:47:16 PM by RawPower

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

The ones around Eugene, yes. Quite dirty. Patchouli oil is not an acceptable substitute for soap >:/

The atheists on campus were occasionally kind of nasty too, though it was always heartwarming to see a crowd gather around the quiet and nice "Jesus ♥ U" sandwich board guy whenever a fundie preacher would start hatemongering in the quad.

Wait, you mean there are preachers hatemongering and Jesus Wuvz U sandwich people, nasty atheists and filthy hippies, simultaneously?

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

The sandwich-board guy is there every day (or at least he was when I was there, from what Rott says he's apparently off doing something else a lot these days). He doesn't leave when a Fred Phelps wannabe shows up, thank God.

Thankfully he doesn't leave when the Happy Atheists stage a public protest against him either.

edited 5th Jan '11 2:23:45 PM by Pykrete

they do? That's not nice...

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

@Bobby G You would be right, of course. Even so, the notions that I'm sensing in this thread—"Strong beliefs are bad"—is rather disturbing to me because I'm not really seeing people state what they mean by strong beliefs.

There's no justice in the world and there never was~

Belief in falsehoods is dangerous. Ergo, strong beliefs in falsehoods are strongly dangerous. Strong beliefs in truths aren't a problem. But who's to say what's truly true?

Woosh.

@Tomu And therein lies the problem.

There's no justice in the world and there never was~

The OP was clear about what they meant, and it seems to me that most of us are on the same page.

Plenty of people, as long as you're not looking for some sort of inherently unknowable absolute metaphysical truth. That's both impossible and largely irrelevant on a practical level. What we can do is strive to maintain the most reliable, consistent, explanatory model possible; one that can be confirmed by multiple people because it generates testable predictions about perceptible reality. This is the highest level of truth that is available to us as humans, and on this level, we can draw justifiable conclusions about what is true and what is false, because false beliefs either fail to generate testable predictions or they generate predictions which are falsified.

It's mainly because there are versions of creationism which try to compete with evolution: i.e. they call themselves scientific theories and/or they make claims about empirical reality that are mutually exclusive with the claims made by the theory of evolution. There wouldn't need to be any competition if creationists stuck to weak claims like "god set up the initial conditions of the universe so that life would eventually evolve the way it has".

"Strong beliefs" in general do not mean "if I drop this apple, it falls", but "democracy is the bestest form of government ever". It means trusting yourself to arrive at the right conclusions. You can't trust yourself. Trusting the method you use is one thing. Trusting whatever you say to be true is another. That's circular logic. It's true because I say so VS It's true because the arguments are sound.

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?