Why Believe????

[Mohsin]

Asalam-u-Alaikum. Regards to all.
Not much to say, please visit the thread in the Islamic section, 'Miracles, The Ultimate Challenge'. You will come to know why I am proud to be a Muslim. You will come to know that believing in Islam is not just blind faith.

[Vajradhara]

Originally Posted by louis

From Louis...
I find your viewpoint very puzzling because ALL my
experience has shown me the opposite - I have never
had even the smallest doubt that "I" exist !
Although I sometimes wonder if anything ELSE exists ....

Namaste louis,

thank you for the post.

Descartian Philosophy? this is, if i recall correctly, the Cartesian Singularity?

from what i've been able to discover, the concept of "I" is a mental imputation and has no bearing on reality. we simply choose to lable this heap of aggregates as "I" for no real good reason.

in the same sense, we choose the lable the heap of parts a "car" or "junk"... depending on how we view those parts. the parts are the same, our mental conception is what is different.

to dig a little deeper in this soil, as it were... where does the "I" stop or begin? is it the physical form? is it the collection of the senses? is it an epiphenomenon of intelligence? is it the molecules that constitute the form?

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by mac1

Wow! That is truly facinating. Would you mind telling me about it here (or on a new post or personal message), or is it too personal? The subject of OOBE's and NDE's has interested me for years, as you know I tryed astral projection (without success) myself for a while. Such an experience as yours would likely convince me too.

How about someone else's near death? In 83, I was sitting on the Jersey shore (place called Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island). Watching the girls, and just veggin' out, when I got this inexplicable desire to go swim!? Not just swim, but swim out far. If you are familiar with the Jersey shore, the rip tide is a killer. But there I was about 1/4 mile off the beach, and thinking "are you nuts!" I turn back, and that is when I felt something grab my leg. Very tenuous, but not marine like (no jelly fish, or shark or eel). Instead of jumping away, I dive down...about 15 feet, and come up with a child (male, approximately 10 years old), not breathing, not moving, but not blue either.

Decide now, swim to shore with the kid, or try to do CPR, floating on the sea...and I hear "talk to him". Oh yeah, that is rich. So I head to shore with the boy. "Talk". So I start talking, "Hey, wake up! I'm so and so, who are you...come on kid give me a break...." Curiously the "tide" wasn't very strong, but it should have been. Even so, after the initial adrenaline rush, fatigue sets in pretty quick, and talking goes out the window. But no, this thought kept blasting in, "TAlk to him!"

So I swim, choke, and talk to this body, all the while pulling a Will Smith with the hands, and screams toward shore, which no body noticed (son of a b'-tch). Then the kid starts yelling, and yelling and pulling and pushing and in full blown panic, and I am dead assed tired, to the point of letting go, and I can't understand a word he was saying because it was spanish or portugeuse or something (close to french but not close enough). And I'm like "ah shut up kid" (the tide was pulling us faster than I could move us). Then there was that thought "Talk to him". So I talk, and he answered, and talked back, and I answered, while we swam...

Only each time he spoke, it became clearer to me what he was saying, and apparently the same was happening to him, when I spoke; but English was not what either of us were speaking.

It took us 20 minutes to get back on to the beach. I knew his mother, father, family, life story, hopes, dreams, even what he thought of God. The second my foot touched sand (in the surf), that kid bolted and rattled off a bunch of sounds while looking back at me, and I could not understand a bit of what he'd said, but I understood the emotions behind the words.

After sitting at the shore's edge for awhile, I walked two miles back to where my family (and I), had our belongings. "Where were you?" Learning to talk...

[I, Brian]

Thanks for relating that, Quahom - and, surprisingly, not as uncommon as you would think.

Btw - I hope someone thanked you for the act - I certainly thank you for relating it to us.

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

Thanks for relating that, Quahom - and, surprisingly, not as uncommon as you would think.

Btw - I hope someone thanked you for the act - I certainly thank you for relating it to us.

Yeah, someone just did.

[louis]

to dig a little deeper in this soil, as it were... where does the "I" stop or begin? is it the physical form? is it the collection of the senses? is it an epiphenomenon of intelligence? is it the molecules that constitute the form

From Louis...
For me, it's simple.
"I" live in my own head - I look out of my eyes, animate
my physical body, invent ideas and sometimes turn them
into physical pictures and object. I am my consciousness -
my "ego" - that which makes me unique and separate
from other egos. I am not a physical thing - maybe I'm
just an illusion that will disappear when my body dies.
Frankly, I don't know WHAT I am - I'm just HERE !

[samabudhi]

Originally Posted by louis

For me, it's simple.
"I" live in my own head - I look out of my eyes, animate
my physical body, invent ideas and sometimes turn them
into physical pictures and object. I am my consciousness -
my "ego" - that which makes me unique and separate
from other egos. I am not a physical thing - maybe I'm
just an illusion that will disappear when my body dies.
Frankly, I don't know WHAT I am - I'm just HERE !

What you've just described is the false ego. This is not the truth. You are not separate from your environment. You are a puppet and are bound by the circumstances which brought you into this world, the circumstances you will find yourself in, and the inevitable coming of death. Essentially, there is no free will and you do not exist. Once you have accepted this, the truth, then you can work at, paradoxically, free will.

You say you live in your head and that you are consciousness. Buddhists divide the self into 5 aggregates of which consciousness is one. The others are form, perception, volition, sensation. But these boundaries are once again merely designated for practical reasons. The truth is that you are inseparably one with everything, and the cause of your suffering is the false ego which deludes you that you are otherwise.

You are an illusion, just like everything else. We call it a dependently originated phenomena. This is not Nihilism. It is not nothingness, it is relativity. Nothing is inherently real and nothing is void of any reality. All phenomena arise and decay according to this concept which is named 'emptiness.'

These concepts have helped me a lot. You might want to take a look at them.

[louis]

Am I the only person who visits this site, that does not believe in God? It certainly seems that way - Why all the definate belief from you guys?

From Louis, an impartial obsever...
No, you're not the only such person.
I have never understood the "religeous" kind of belief.
The only kind of belief I do understand is the kind which
depends on proof or objective confirmation.
For example : before I retired, I worked with research
engineers - designing things that had never been tried
before. We could not KNOW those things woud function until they were actually built and tested, but we always
BELIEVED a good design would function as planned.
Our "belief" was based on confidence in our own ability -
we were SATISFIED in our own minds.
But of course, there was always the risk that a mistake
had been made in our calculations, so we could not
claim to be CERTAIN until we TESTED everything.

[mcedgy]

Why Believe?

Those of you who've heard this theory 1000 times before please forgive me for posting it. I'm sure some have not and I'm going to add a twist!

The most well known philosophical religious argument is probably the Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Wager Theory. It mathematically attempts to prove the logic of “betting” on the existence of God through formulation of wagers based on mathematically logical odds. Without getting into the math or the scholarly agreements and disagreements or rationalizations, I will attempt to explain the “Wager” with yet another paraphrase. ‘Even if you believe that God does not exist you should wager that He does because if He does, you have everything to gain and if He does not, you have nothing to loose.’ Accordingly, you have hedged your bet. You can win everything and loose nothing. Pascal was a Catholic and thus referring to a Christian God.

However, I’m going to use a horse race as an analogous argument against Pascal’s theory. If there is a race between seven horses of unknown quality and unknown skill and five horses are red in color one beige and one black, what is the logical bet? If we could wager only on color the logical bet is red to win. Unfortunately we must bet on which red horse will win. That’s where Pascal’s Wager fails. Which red horse should receive the ante? Which God should receive the favorable odds? McEdgy

[I, Brian]

I'm not sure that Pascal's Wager applies to many people here - it tends to illustrate a more fundamentalist aspect of belief, IMO.

I know that many people here have undergone various religious and spiritual experiences that - to some degree or other - have found it impossible to explain those experiences without reference to a Higher Power. In fact, often a part of the experience can involve a very real sense of presence and awareness of Divinity in the first place.

When you undergo such a life-changing event - or series of events - knowledge that there is God seems so totally rational and logical - and disbelief becomes so irrational and illogical.

However, we each have our own personal experiences and formative paths - and what each of us may class as rational or logical may change from person to person.

To not have this sort of experience - why, then Agnosticism is the most logical and rational belief, as without definite proof or disproof, how can any definite judgement be made on the matter?

But with something fo the spiritual experience, it becomes an extremely rational and logical act to believe that, indeed, something beyond our sense of understanding exists behind reality, and "God" is the most meaningful concept for describing this.

Of course, I am not entirely sure how people believe entirely through faith alone without experience of such things - perhaps it is due to an innate sense of there being "something else", and a particular religious or philosophical path provides the most adequate justification and rationalisation for such a belief.

[mcedgy]

My own arguement explains why I do not agree with the Pascal Theory. I offered it as one explanation to the original question "why believe".

More observation: Saint Anselm (? -1109 A.D.) described God with his definition, “God is that which nothing greater can be conceived”. Saint Anselm gave this definition as part of a metaphysical argument that states: “The real objective existence of God is necessarily involved in the existence of the very idea of God.”

I disagree with that statement as well but only because I believe man’s idea and interpretation of God is conceptual and inadequate and that human limitation place God and Creation outside man’s ability to comprehend. Therefore I label myself Agnostic but being agnostic doesn't mean that I don't believe in a greater force.

In my opinion the ONLY irrational belief is Atheism but I defend one's right to not believe. However, I've experienced too wonders to ever be able to defend the atheist doctrine.

[lunamoth]

[I put this first in the thread Is Belief Necessary, but it seems to fit better here]

Being an amateur in religious studies, I was really surprised when I came across Pascal's wager for the first time not too long ago. I had gone through a similar kind of thinking as I grew from an agnostic into a believer, or I should say when I chose to become a believer.

As a child I was a natural believer and I can remember moments of yearning for the day I would pass into the next realm and all the things I did not understand would become clear. My idea of heaven was knowledge and wisdom. But then I was "educated" in religion and this lead me into doubt. Spirituality, it seemed, was some kind of inborn faith in all kinds of fantastic and supernatural things and I was disappointed because I was skeptical of all that. I drifted into agnosticism.

Interestingly, while my early religious training made me skeptical, the more I studied science the more amazed I was at the miracle of life and existence. Now, I don't believe God needed to somehow guide evolution for it to create life as we know it, but at the same time the intricacy and beauty of it all just puts me in awe. The day I learned how some genes in viruses can encode two different proteins, one in a forward-reading and the other in the reverse-reading direction, well, it was nearly a religious experience.

As for Pascal's wager, well, I guess I thought through a very modified form of it. I was not choosing between Catholicism or Atheism, potential heaven or potential hell. First, I just chose to believe in Something More. Some Purpose to give meaning to life, to make the choices I make matter. Something to explain compassion and justice and thankfulness. Realizing that choosing to believe was absolutely as rational as choosing not to believe was the liberating point. Faith is just that and God can not be proven (although as many demonstrate here, God can be experienced!). Just choose. After that journey begins. It's better than just sitting on your thumbs until you die!

I must confess to some envy of those of you who have tasted merging with the Godhead, or Ground of Being, or Ocean, or Nirvana, or whatever metaphor touches you in summing up the experience. Maybe someday I will experience something similar. But until then I will have to be content to stand on the shoulders of giants, giant thinkers, before me. In my very limited brain and heart I can not recreate the wisdom of all the sages and prophets and Messengers of the past. I will try to be content reading and meditating on their legacy, in the Bible, the Quran, the Sutras, the Kitab-i-Iqan, etc., in the light of science, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

"...in every face, he seeketh the beauty of the Friend; in every country he looketh for the Beloved. He joineth every company, and seeketh fellowship with every soul, that haply in some mind he may uncover the secret of the Friend, or in some face he may behold the beauty of the Loved One." (Baha'u'llah, The Seven Valleys)

Sorry for the long self-indulgent post!

lunamoth

"When our souls touch again in the Great What's Next, we'll have a good laugh over how wrong we both were."--me
__________________
lunamoth

--in the dark but attracted to the light

[mcedgy]

Lunamoth: Your post is wonderful. I enjoyed reading it.

In my opinion though we all believe in Something. Even an Atheist believes in Something although that Something is believing in Nothing. Of course, depending upon whose definition you use a state of “Nothingness” is considered the ultimate goal in some religions. Okay, before you or someone else throws down the gauntlet, I know that definition of “Nothingness” is arguable.

You and I have very few differences of opinion yet you profess to be a faithful believer while I concede to be an Agnostic. I have all the faith in the world that Something exists but what that Something is continues to elude me and metaphors get me no closer. Beyond comprehension is Agnosticism and I don’t think in this lifetime I will ever understand that Something. I can only continue to search. Maybe your childhood ideas were more accurate than you know. Maybe only upon my demise will I understand. mcedgy

[lunamoth]

[quote=mcedgy]Lunamoth: Your post is wonderful. I enjoyed reading it.

I'm glad you enjoyed my post.

McE: "I have all the faith in the world that Something exists but what that Something is continues to elude me and metaphors get me no closer."

luna: I guess by my way of thinking then you are a believer.

McE: "Beyond comprehension is Agnosticism and I don’t think in this lifetime I will ever understand that Something."

luna: Or, beyond comprehension is the
Great Purpose/Being/Ocean/Unknowable.


Mc: "I can only continue to search."

luna: That's what we all can do.

Cheers,

[Vajradhara]

Namaste mcedgy,


thank you for your posts...

by the way.. you don't need to refute Pascals wager.. the refutation of the wager is included in the premises stated by Pascal

though... since i do enjoy talking about it... i hope that you, and everyone else, will induldge me

here's Pascal's wager as explained in his Pensees:

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is ... you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.

Popkin, Pascal: p257-258


so.. there it is... philosopher Anthony Flew, quite correctly, points out one of the flaws in this wager in this fashion:

The main but not the only fault of the argument is that Pascal assumes that there are only two alternative bets; become a Roman Catholic or not. But on his own basic premise of total ignorance, the set of conceivable alternative cosmic systems, all of the hypothesis is equally probable, must be infinite, as must be the subset of those promising eternal bliss, and threatening eternal torment, respectively, to reward, and to punish an infinite range of different favored and disfavored way of life. This refutation is, on Pascal's own assumptions, decisive.

Flew, Philosophy: p146