Submitted by thelivingphilosophy t3_yt6m03 in philosophy
Reply to comment by logicalmaniak in A cross between an Existentialist and an Old Testament prophet, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard urged his "single individual" reader to follow the "highest passion" of faith rather than becoming one of the stereotyped pseudo-individuals of "The Crowd" by thelivingphilosophy
> You experience stimulus that you attribute to eyes, photons, and a materialistic universe.
Yes, and I am axiomatically bound to assuming at least some of those things are real in certain circumstances, otherwise the implications of not doing so would literally render me incapable of living as an acting being. The same is not true of God, as evidenced by the many atheists who are able to live without psychological contradiction.
> Mario is not real. Goombas are not real. Millions of people are making Mario jump on Goombas worldwide. Logically there is no reason to jump on Goombas. Yet millions do. So that argument is a bit weak, isn't it?
No, because while Mario and Goombas are not real, the screen that is displaying the images of Mario and Goombas is real, and based on the way it is programmed pressing certain inputs will objectively cause the images on the screen to behave in a predictable way. Treating Mario and Goombas as actual people is a mental delusion we engage in because it makes the experience more interesting, but from a logical sense it is silly to argue that the act of playing a video game is not grounded in something we can take to be real.
> That's no difference to faith in God.
No, you don't have to grant the reality of God. It is not a requirement to be rationally coherent, and in fact having faith in God is irrational.
> otherwise the implications of not doing so would literally render me incapable of living as an acting being.
Again, not believing it's real doesn't have to be so destructive! It's a simple belief. So what if it's not real. Why does that change anything at all? Lots of people believe in simulation theory, or that it's just a dream, or a samsaran illusion without starving to death! Playing the game is not an admission that it's real.
>No, you don't have to grant the reality of God. It is not a requirement to be rationally coherent
I suffered huge anxiety, PTSD, depression, etc from a childhood of sustained abuse. I met God. Now it's all gone. So for me, the exact opposite is my reality. God gives me coherence. Lifts me above anxiety, above fear, above all my thoughts. Cuts right through them.
God is with me, and it's as real as anything else in reality. And while I'm experiencing God, it's rational to believe. Just as it's rational for you to believe in a materialistic universe while that is your experience of reality.
> Again, not believing it's real doesn't have to be so destructive! It's a simple belief. So what if it's not real. Why does that change anything at all?
You act according to belief. It is a necessary component of logical chains of action. You have to have certain facts you're committed to that explain why you do what you do. Again: you eat a banana believing that it will satiate your hunger. You don't eat drywall, in part, because you don't believe it's going to satiate your hunger (at least as much drywall as you can stomach eating). That is what beliefs are for.
> Lots of people believe in simulation theory, or that it's just a dream, or a samsaran illusion without starving to death!
No, they really don't. They talk as if they believe in simulation theory, or that it's a dream, but they don't truly and authentically commit to it. They can't. To truly and authentically commit to the idea that the world is not real would require you, for consistency, to remove any meaning from the idea that things need to be real to motivate action. You would need to treat the delusions of all hallucinatory schizophrenics as equally real as anything else you see, not just for them but for you. You would have to believe in all gods, fairytales, and supernatural entities, and live as though they exist.
True belief is not a mere fancy that you entertain mentally without integrating it into your chain of action. Belief is BELIEF, an earnest commitment to the reality of something such that you factor it into the decisions you make. If you make any decisions that are contrary to your supposed "belief", that's an indicator that you are not truly and authentically committed to it and therefore it doesn't comprise an actual belief.
> I suffered huge anxiety, PTSD, depression, etc from a childhood of sustained abuse. I met God. Now it's all gone.
It's very nice that you were able to delude your brain into thinking it healed by slapping a cure-everything placebo over it, but that has no place in philosophical discussions of what exists, or whether or not faith is a valid path to truth.
> God is with me, and it's as real as anything else in reality.
It's not, you're twisting and warping the definition of "real" because you aren't committed to coherency. You're arguing the topic in bad faith.
> I suffered huge anxiety, PTSD, depression, etc from a childhood of sustained abuse. I met God.
That explains quite a bit actually. You’re incapable of being objective due to this.
Well if you're only going to cherry-pick my quotes for self-confirmation, you can believe anything you want about me.
The next bit, I said
>Now it's all gone
That's been logged with my doctor. I had mental illness, now I have none. I'm happy, productive, clear-thinking, and have fun in life.
That's a real change.
How can a real change be caused by something that isn't real?
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Please, for everyone's benefit, learn basic logic and skepticism. Basic. Even if you jump past causality, that in no way proves anything supernatural was involved. You can't just jump from "I found God belief and now feel better, therefore a God exists."
>"I found God belief and now feel better, therefore a God exists."
That's not my position exactly. God happened to me, so I believe in God as much as anything else in my reality.
If you say "I found a banana, and it cured my hunger" can you jump from that to say that bananas exist and objective reality is definitely real and not just an experience you're having? You can describe your experience with labels like "banana" and "hunger" but there's no way to prove to yourself that bananas and hunger are actually real and not part of the dream you're currently having.
I describe my experience with labels like "God" and "consciousness" but it is just the labels on the experience. I experience tables and chairs, I call them tables and chairs. I experience God, I call it God.
> Please, for everyone's benefit, learn basic logic and skepticism
Sure. Prove that your belief in objective reality is justified logically and rationally. Prove it's real, and not just a materialist dogma you're applying to your experience of reality. Prove that things can even be provable, and it isn't a circular argument that relies on reality being provably real when it isn't.
I'll be sitting here reading Sextus Empiricus until you do...
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