is God male or female?

[Gribble]

I'm trying to think of something that I blindly follow, but I can't.

There's always some reason behind it. If my mechanic tells me my transmission's bad I take his word for it. Why? Because he's qualified and I've dealt with him in the past. And before I ever dealt with him, someone I trusted (for good reason) recommended him. And, if I really felt like it, I could learn enough about my car's transmission to see for myself.

[Mish]

I'm trying to think of something that I blindly follow, but I can't.

Take an example of the first 1 hour in the morning:

You wake up "Shit it's 7am" You look at the clock and believe it's telling you the right time

You turn on the news and you hear "12 terrorists had been executed". You first feel glad, than you remember you don't know what to believe.

You hear the weather "It will rain tonight", you believe them and take an umbrella with you (the rain never comes).

You step inside the shower, there's no hot water you believe someone in your house used it all up (no one used it).

You look at the bus timetable believing the bus will come on time.
(it doesn't, you are now late for work because of your belief)

You expect a phone call, you look at your mobile and it's on, you believe because it's on it's working (not necessarily)

[IndiReloaded]

Those examples you give, Mish, are still hypotheses. Which can now be revised based on the new data you provide.

You need to define how YOU mean belief. Which version.

BTW, I agree with Gribble. Like him, blind belief is something I avoid, except for esoteric things like music appreciation, but that is something that noone would ever try to rationalize. In that sense, religious belief is basically ‘a sense of taste’ or a personal preference about how to understand one’s existence. A particularly viral one, IMO, b/c of the seductive nature of people needing an answer to the Big Question & its complete lack of testability. Religion basically sets itself up as an untestable paradox.

I try to live my life as rationally as possible & avoid invoking untestable explanations for things. Particularly when there are perfectly good theories to explain the world I live in. And if something doesn’t make sense to me (b/c one can’t know everything) then I look for an explanation or at least a set of reproducible results. Like Gribble's car mechanic example. I don’t ‘believe’ in religion, santa claus, astrology or magic tho—there’s simply no data to support them. I might like to believe in things like alternative medicine, space aliens on earth, and ESP but unfortunately the data we have about these things do not support their existence either. If they ever did (assuming the experiments are solid) then I would reconsider my position.

Your weatherman (or woman, whatever) example is actually a good one for this argument. The difference b/t rational and belief-based living would be this: a weatherman has been predicting it would rain fire & brimstone from the sky for ~5000 years. Except for the odd, unscheduled meteorite, which we understand the physical basis for now (thank you Newton & Greek/Chinese astronomers--not God--oops!), they’ve been pretty awful at predicting the weather. The Weather Channel is a lot more reliable, so my bet is on them & not “The End of the World is Nigh” folks.

[Gribble]

In all of your cases there is some shred of data which supports the conclusions you've drawn.

Blind belief would be like me showing up at the curb dead certain that the bus is going to stop at precisely 8am in this very spot. I don't have a schedule. There's no bus stop sign. I just know it, or maybe some homeless bum on the side of the street told me so and I believed him.

Or at least that's how I define it.

[misombra]

faith is nothing without work.

[boobaa]

A lot of people tell that blind belief is something they don't do, but in the end, they do. Religion is quite blind belief. Here is why:

*Its usually based on some book or a few sentences. Therefore, whole thing is hypothetical only.

*Those religious thesis are drifted towards hope, mans dreams. Always.

*Its the same as believing that Martians live under Earths core (which can be possible, but since the percentage of possibility is so low, most factors drifted towards the hypothesis, hope, it can be considered blind belief). If you read some popular 'science' book, that tells something like that, for example, you will see how the supportive facts are always drifted towards the hypothesis.

*If you now count supportive facts about God (Remember the atheists nightmare!), and then unsupportive, what kind of balance do you get?

Now, if you tell me that God doesn't need proof, it is just there, or something whatever in that direction.. Then I must sadly say you are a blind believer and might as well believe in a Flying Sphagetti Monster.

Yes, we do believe that our clock tells us the right time, bus takes us to work etc. But in fact, these beliefs are based on actual true facts that are physically proven. Because bus usually takes us to the right place. 90% I'd say. Clock usually tells us the right time, unless you are an idiot. Now, if bus would fail at least 50% in taking us to work, then we would begin to doubt in it and wouldn't believe in it anymore.

I don't want to make this thread religious bashing or anything like that, so I need to clarify that this was just explanatory argument and nothing mean. I don't consider myself an atheist, but I am not also a believer. I am babtised but I don't go to church at all. What I do is that I sometimes hope that there is God, when I am in trouble. I haven't seen any real miracle, which can be proven with statistics yet, so if there is God then I guess let him be, maybe we are not meant to worship him either.

Hope, hope is the right word. And hope is dreaming.

[lesa]

Mish, I've had almost all these things happen to me...here is my typical response:

You wake up "Shit it's 7am" You look at the clock and believe it's telling you the right time
The wrong time on my clock occurred for various reasons, such as power goes out, I set it wrong, I think pm rather than am. I am very paranoid about this because I cannot ever afford to be late so I have two and my cell phone as backup. Due to my odd sleeping patterns don't trust the alarm, because I have messed up in past relying on it.

I recall the time when I took an afternoon nap which is rare for me. I woke up at 8 o’clock and thought I was late. I took a shower, got dressed and was getting ready to lock my house door when I looked at my watch. It turned out to me 8pm and not 8am, lol. Even then I did not trust my watch, my clock, my phone, or my computer…I verified the time with my friend and bf before I was able to relax lol.


You turn on the news and you hear "12 terrorists had been executed". You first feel glad, than you remember you don't know what to believe.
I somewhat remember the talk of Saddam Hussein..I was neither glad nor happy, it’s just something you have to do and following laws.

You hear the weather "It will rain tonight", you believe them and take an umbrella with you (the rain never comes).
This too has happen but I am not too paranoid because usually I do not care unless I am going on a road trip and even then I could not do anything else about it. I often forget my umbrella, and I rarely check the weather...in fact I haven't check my weather for months..and it rained yesterday! I'm okay. I only become concern when the meteorologists are predicting a severe storm, or tornado or hurricane, etc.

You step inside the shower, there's no hot water you believe someone in your house used it all up (no one used it).
I don't believe that at all, lol. Something is wrong and I need to check it out.

You look at the bus timetable believing the bus will come on time.
(it doesn't, you are now late for work because of your belief)
Again I don't believe...I HOPE. When I used to go to work and used the bus I would not take the one that got me to work on time I would take the one before that one so that if something goes wrong..which was quite often for me, I had another bus as backup and yes I have had to call in late because even that went wrong but I don't carefree believe it will come on time...I expect and then I hope...that’s why I got a car.

You expect a phone call, you look at your mobile and it's on, you believe because it's on its working (not necessarily)
No, I don't always believe it is working..especially my bf's phone. We have to check it every now and again to make sure everything is set properly. He travels often and he loses his signal often. I have had my phone on and it not work correctly...I try to figure out what is the problem...I have called my service provider on issues like that many times in the past.

That’s just me though, I barely believe my auto mechanics..I always look up every problem they tell me so that I can understand it a little more than I do. I am just a curious person so I rarely just take someone’s word for anything..even my professors..I have to look stuff up…I want to know more about whatever it is someone tells me. I even look up things my doctor tells me. How can anyone just blindly believe 100% that something is true…..I will tell you what I do BELIEVE. I believe nothing is 100% true in every case except for math and that’s why I like math exams because it is rarely subjective.

[Mish]

You need to define how YOU mean belief. Which version.

I define belief as following anything that may not be true and anything we have no way of knowing whether it's true or not. I don't want to go into Religious beliefs with these posts, I want to discuss beliefs as they apply to our day to day interactions.

Those examples you give, Mish, are still hypotheses. Which can now be revised based on the new data you provide.

When you define hypothesis, which version do you use? Because hypothesis can be defined as something that can be verified or it can be defined as a mere assumption or guess (meaning it's virtually identical to my defintion of belief). If the first then I don't belive examples I provided are hypothesis. For example, if a weatherman tells you it will rain tonight, how will you verify if this is right or wrong?

Even the ones you can verify for certain, will not be practicable. For example, you may hire someone to seat on a bus on the daily basis and phone you every two minutes advising you where the bus is at so that you will know exactly how far away it is from your bus stop without needing to believe in the almighty power of the time table, but what are the chances of you doing that? You may become a CEO of your telco and instruct you subordinates to tell you every two minutes the status of the services affecting your mobile phone (whther they are up or down) therefore knowing for certain if you phone is being affected by Telco service downtime or not, but how likely is it that you will do that instead of blindly believing that your mobile is working (if it's on) most of the time?

Girrble's example with the mechanic, how do you know for certain that everything he tells Gribble about his car is 100% certain? How do you know he's not making a few extra dollars on the side? Does Gribble take his car to another mechanic for a second opinion to verify? Does he take it for the third opinion or the fourth?

[Gribble]

Not just a guess. An educated guess. That's the key difference.

In our day to day lives we tend to be a little lax, and for good reason. If I were running a science experiment that somehow incorporated auto mechanics, yes, I would go for a second and a third opinion. I'd also have a control in place. And I'd repeat the experiment several times just to be sure. And in the end, even the most sound theory, the most supported conclusion, could be wrong. It is impossible to be absolutely certain of just about anything. That's why you have to always keep an open mind. The day you provide compelling evidence in favor of your god is the day I consider there may be some validity to what you believe.

[Mish]

In our day to day lives we tend to be a little lax, and for good reason. It is impossible to be absolutely certain of just about anything. That's why you have to always keep an open mind.

That's all I was saying

[IndiReloaded]

Who said anything otherwise^, Mish?

But what Gribble keeps saying (and you keep ignoring) is that NOT ALL GUESSES ARE CREATED EQUAL. So, given our limited ability to think about all things, some concepts based on predictable, testable, verifiable data are more likely to be correct than others. In short, as with bus schedules (vs. Gribble's random curbside wait based on faith), they allow you to more successfully predict events in your life.

For example, if a weatherman tells you it will rain tonight, how will you verify if this is right or wrong?

Are you seriously asking this? You don't know the answer? This seems awfully pedantic, even for you.

[Mish]

Who said anything otherwise^, Mish?

You did

But what Gribble keeps saying (and you keep ignoring) is that NOT ALL GUESSES ARE CREATED EQUAL.

Ofcourse, all guesses are different and no guess is the same. There are small guesses like guessing the bus timetable is right. There are big guesses like guessing it will not rain on your wedding day. The only difference is you call it guessing and I call it believing. (actually "believe" is one definition of the word guess).

Are you seriously asking this? You don't know the answer?

No I don't. The weather bureau is the supreme authority on the weather. What do you do when they are wrong? If the weather bureau tells you it will rain tonight, how will you know whether it will or whether it won't? How do you know they got their data right and made their calculations correctly? And even if they did, how do you know it simply won't "clear up" later on in the day?