Challenge to ALL to prove belief.

You may think you use logic in your argument, but unfortunately you are arguing against the illogical and therefore your statement is invalid.
There is NOTHING that you can be absolutely certain of. Unless you can state with absolute surety and prove exactly what and who you are, EVERYTHING is a belief.

Logic may hold force in a world of science but to some degree even that is a belief.
For example, you cannot prove that the world in front of you is not merely a creation of your imagination. You might see it, feel it and think that you comprehend it, but you cannot prove 100% that it exists exactly as you understand it to.
Therefore you HAVE to hold a belief. True, knowledge is the ultimate, but not one person who has ever lived has managed to convince the whole of humanity that he has achieved that ultimate. Belief does not necessarily stand in the way of truth - it could even be used as a stepping stone.

And unfortunately you are incorrect in your statement. Not believing is still believing in something.

Belief is defined in the dictionary as:

"Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons."

Are you able to tell 100% when something is a lie? Unless you can, you hold a belief.

How's that?

You just proven yourself wrong with your statement.

You said my argument is invalid. Let's see if I can offer a comment to that..

You say there's nothing I can be absolutely certain of. Ok, but why does that mean I have to make things up to put in place of stuff I am NOT certain of? You say if I'm not 100% sure about something then I have a belief about that something. I'd have to disagree. If I am not 100% sure about something, I wouldn't say that I know what it is, and I'll say that based on my observations/data, it appears to be "whatever it is" but I can be wrong. I never said I believe it is. I simply offered a logical deduction based on what I do know. Do I believe I am right? No.

I cannot prove that the world is NOT an illusion. Fine. But why do I have to believe that it's not? Why can I just say "I see this and that in this thing that appears to be a planet" but honestly I have no idea, we could be inside The Matrix for all I know. So I won't BELIEVE people who say it's NOT an illusion, because I dunno. I don't assume one way or another. I just say I don't know.

You said belief can be a stepping stone for truth... only in trial and error. "I believe this car can pass the intersection without crashing into another one" ... and then it does pass without harm and you claim "See, believing helped me in figuring out the truth!". How is belief a stepping stone? Science and invention are based on ideas and then experimentation. Before people invented stuff like electricity, they had an idea and possibly mathematical data that shows the idea could work. But they didn't tell you they KNEW it was gonna work before they tested it. They didn't NEED to believe anything. They had data, and they did tests, and it worked. Bam! Imagination is not belief. Only the conviction that what you imagine is TRUE, that's belief.

Not believing is still believing in something? Well I can KNOW something, and then it means I don't believe in it if I know it 100% as you said. Well what if I know 100% that belief is illogical/foolish/ignorant/gullible?

Also, you didn't argue with me in your post. You just said that belief always existed and always will exist. That does NOTHING to show if belief is needed or not.
Lilblam....
I offered minor argument. Other than that, 'argument' is pointless. Your contention was based on 'belief'. In such, arguing 'belief' is pointless and moot. Here is what you commented:

"I'm not arguing whether humans will lose belief, because I understand their need for satisfying their minds with illusions and conceptions of some God who watches over them like babies. It is sometimes a scary thought of being completely alone and having no God around to bathe you in love and light. Not many people can handle it, I admit. BUT...."

You see, the problem of your argument is based on "God". You fail to take into account that 'belief' goes beyond "God". Are you assuming that everyone that is responding to your topic is a believer in "God"? Again, the principles of 'belief' transcend "gods and God". 'Belief' embodies everything and "all". Again, arguing on 'belief' is fruitless and pointless. You are arguing one aspect and in such, not taking into account the other facets or faculties that make up or constitute 'belief'.

"Again, you offer no reason for why belief is at all necessary at any time for anyone on this planet."


You are correct. I did not need to. I gave fact. 'Belief' requires no nescessity, thats the point; thats one of the beautiful facets of 'belief'....it is based on individual and again, requires no such necessity. You are the one that assumes and decrees that it is 'necessary'. I provided and stated to the contrary. It simply is apart of 'man'.....necessity is not required nor needed.



regards
seekerof

No I didn't. How? Because I said both, belief and truth can be equally dangerous? So you think that means NEITHER is more important than the other one? I beg to differ. Truth only kills those who are so deeply enshrouded in belief that they cannot handle it. Also, some people WANT you to be deceived in your beliefs and if you find truth, THEY will kill you. Does that mean one should avoid truth knowing that there's truth-hunters around?

Would you prefer everlasting life based on lies, or brief life but based on ONLY truth and nothing BUT the truth?

If belief is so vital, why don't courts just say "Tell us what happened. Or just tell us what you believe happened, your observations and knowledge of what happened are not more relavant than what your imagination tells you."

If you would 100% know that belief is illogical, then logic would make it 100% sure that you are not right because of calculations with factors of probability.

You said it never works, while you said sometimes truth kills, so believe then works. End of story.

lilblam,

Why are you trying so hard to sway people away from God? These are your own personal views and yes, YOUR OWN BELIEFS. Whether or not you want to admit it, YOU BELIEVE there is no God. I really don't care that you don't believe in him; my point is that belief is important to all humans. If there was no belief in life, we wouldn't posses an imagination and wouldn’t have airplanes, cars and all the technological wonders we all marvel at today. Yes, to me, if you don't believe in something you have nothing.

Me, I believe in intelligent design. I see the miraculous ways the universe, our Earth and nature work and I do believe that something or someone does posses superior knowledge than we can even contemplate. I also believe in love and my future, for if I don't what do I really have.

Hrm, perhaps we can best answer this by following the hypothesis through.

If we run with the hypothesis that there is no time that belief is necessary. It would infer that it is not necessary to believe anything. Would it be possible for us to function if we never believed anything?

It seems fairly obvious that not believing anything would be a rather impossible way to go about your business. It follows that there must be times when it is necessary to believe.

Of course I don't assume all belief is theological. That was just one example. As to the necessity of it, belief is not only unnecessary, it is destructive. Truth is ONLY destructive when one is already too deep inside a deception of belief. If you always lived in truth, you'd never be destroyed by truth. You may be destroyed by people for KNOWING the truth, but that's their choice, and truth is NOT to blame for their actions.

I can call anything "beautiful" and describe anything with what you said. I can also say this in YOUR OWN words.

thats one of the beautiful facets of 'terrorism'....it is based on individual and again, requires no such necessity. You are the one that assumes and decrees that it is 'necessary'. I provided and stated to the contrary. It simply is apart of 'man'.....necessity is not required nor needed.

Just because something is PART OF MAN doesn't mean it cannot be done away with. Doesn't mean it is NOT destructive and keeps people in "happy" and "beautiful" lies and deceptions. Just like "terrorism", it is THERE and has always been THERE but I question WHY and just like I can prove that terrorism is ignorant/blind/service to self... etc.. same I can prove for belief. It is just a fact.

I believe in nothing, and I function just fine. Why would you attribute belief to our daily functions? Or rather, how do you connect them to each other to make our functions so dependent on belief?

Truth by itself never kills, it is the stuff we associate with it. For example, you one day find out that your religion was a lie, but you believed it SO MUCH ALL YUOR LIFE that you go depressed and kill yourself. Well truth may have killed you, but is that necessary a reason to stay away from knowing the truth?

That's the whole point!!! You don't know. You believe.
You cannot prove 100% that belief is "illogical/foolish/ignorant/gullible". What you have done is taken logic and instinct and come up with a theory. A theory is a belief.
And I restate. There is not one thing that you can be certain of other than your death in this existence. What you perceive as being 100% factual may only be pertinent to your comprehension of your present surroundings. You cannot prove otherwise.

As for your statement "I cannot prove that the world is NOT an illusion. Fine. But why do I have to believe that it's not?" If you cannot prove something you search for that knowledge. But you have to have a basis for your search - especially when you are trying to fathom something that may or may not be logical on this physical and mental plane of existence. That basis is a belief. Without that basis you would have no means of starting out.
You use the example of scientists creating electricity. Until they had actually created that electricity, even with all of the factual evidence before them, all that they had in front of them was a belief that they could create it. It didn't become the truth or knowledge before that first spark was created.

I "believe" that if I jump off a high enough bridge, I will die. There may be many survivors of the same jump, but I defy this logic, and believe that I will die.

Because of this belief, I do not jump off said bridge. Belief has led to safety, whereas logic, may have resulted in my death.

I am not trying hard to sway people away from God, nor am I swaying anyone away from Santa Clause. I am also NEVER going to try to sway anyone away from the Tooth Fairy.

You said they are my own personal beliefs? It's not that I don't want to admit it, I just don't have any. I do NOT believe there is no God. The God that's described by our religions I KNOW FOR FACT does not exist. No belief necessary at all. None. I know the sun is shining in my window right now, and that's also a fact. No belief necessary! We WOULD have cars and all other technology without belief, remember, most scientists are completely anti-religious. They believe nothing. Not believing NEVER impedes my imagination and creativity. Don't get that confused with blind faith in something.

Not entirely true...

many of our brightest scientists did, and do believe in God. Einstein is a quick example that comes to mind.

Though religion did much to repress science at times....it also produced some of history's greatest thinkers, philosophers, and astronomers, as well as scientists. Many of them were monks or priests at one time.

Sorry dude. Wrong again. You PERCEIVE the sun is shining through your window. It's not a fact. You may be able to feel it's warmth and see it's light, but how do you know for 100% that it's really there and that you're not imagining the whole sensation?
I'm afraid that is a belief.

You are not looking deep enough.

Well, you don't believe you will die. You give yourself a low probability of survival based on knowledge of other people's rate of success after jumping the bridge. You also see the height of the bridge, consider the gravity of the planet, and the flimsiness of the human body, and you understand that the probability is very low. It does exist. You do NOT attempt it not because of belief but because of FEAR. You simply don't want to risk seeing if you will fall into the low percentage of survivors because it may end your life. Same example with a coin toss. You don't have to believe that it will land on tails. You can always toss it and find out, but you also do not FEAR tossing the coin because the probability of a coin toss being of harm to you is low based on past observation of people tossing coins. So given your high probability of survival after tossing a coin to see if it does land on tails or not, you do not fear doing so!

Right, but again, just because we had those thinkers produced from religion, does that mean that faith in baseless claims is important?