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jhameiaOuch ouch ouch.
Amanda Marcotte makes me REALLY uncomfortable sometimes, and I don't always agree with her, but other times, what she says makes SO MUCH GOD DAMN SENSE. This is her responding to someone else's post on holding beliefs and the validity of beliefs (original post in underline, Amanda's respose in bold):
Amanda, one doesn’t have to think their beliefs are superior in order to hold them.
Then you don’t really hold your belief. To believe something is to believe it, i.e. to think it is righter or truer than alternatives. That’s the definition.
I think there’s a lot of validity in other belief systems.
But you think there’s more validity to yours, or you would have no beliefs or would switch to one you find more valid. Again, if you don’t believe in your beliefs, they aren’t beliefs. You’re arguing against tautology here.
I don’t think all pagans are inherently better (smarter, saner, whatever) than any other group.
But again, you’re conflating the people who hold beliefs with the belief. If you are a pagan, you may not think pagans are better than everyone else, but you think paganism is a superior belief to every other.
I don’t truck with the notion that people should not believe their beliefs, so we can all get along. I think it actually makes tensions worse, because people dither and are basically lying when we say that we just happened to fall into our beliefs. A foundational belief is not like saying, oh, sometimes I’m in the mood for pesto sometimes for marinara. If you belief in your beliefs is so shallow that you can’t even say you believe your beliefs more than other beliefs, then you don’t really hold a belief.
Again, this is tautological.
I don’t think a person with false beliefs is better or worse automatically than another person, because we all hold false beliefs. But rest assured, I will argue with you. Only in arguing do we have a hope of sharpening our beliefs and getting them closer to reality, which I believe, with very good reason, does not actually involve a big man or men in the sky that created everything.
I've done the whole "well, it's like how some people like some things, and other people like other things" schtick before, in order to explain how not all experiences are universal.
That'll teach me to use trivial, superficial analogies to explain fundamentals.
Amanda Marcotte makes me REALLY uncomfortable sometimes, and I don't always agree with her, but other times, what she says makes SO MUCH GOD DAMN SENSE. This is her responding to someone else's post on holding beliefs and the validity of beliefs (original post in underline, Amanda's respose in bold):
Amanda, one doesn’t have to think their beliefs are superior in order to hold them.
Then you don’t really hold your belief. To believe something is to believe it, i.e. to think it is righter or truer than alternatives. That’s the definition.
I think there’s a lot of validity in other belief systems.
But you think there’s more validity to yours, or you would have no beliefs or would switch to one you find more valid. Again, if you don’t believe in your beliefs, they aren’t beliefs. You’re arguing against tautology here.
I don’t think all pagans are inherently better (smarter, saner, whatever) than any other group.
But again, you’re conflating the people who hold beliefs with the belief. If you are a pagan, you may not think pagans are better than everyone else, but you think paganism is a superior belief to every other.
I don’t truck with the notion that people should not believe their beliefs, so we can all get along. I think it actually makes tensions worse, because people dither and are basically lying when we say that we just happened to fall into our beliefs. A foundational belief is not like saying, oh, sometimes I’m in the mood for pesto sometimes for marinara. If you belief in your beliefs is so shallow that you can’t even say you believe your beliefs more than other beliefs, then you don’t really hold a belief.
Again, this is tautological.
I don’t think a person with false beliefs is better or worse automatically than another person, because we all hold false beliefs. But rest assured, I will argue with you. Only in arguing do we have a hope of sharpening our beliefs and getting them closer to reality, which I believe, with very good reason, does not actually involve a big man or men in the sky that created everything.
I've done the whole "well, it's like how some people like some things, and other people like other things" schtick before, in order to explain how not all experiences are universal.
That'll teach me to use trivial, superficial analogies to explain fundamentals.