Why Should Anyone Believe Anything At All - Part 6Why do people believe in anything? Now, I'm not necessarily talking about 'good' reasons to believe in things, but “What are the different reasons?”
For instance earlier we'd, mentioned an example of belief: We reach in our fridge for a glass of milk. We believe that the milk will be 'good'. Partly because that's what our experience has been. Prior to this we'd reach into the fridge and the drink the milk and it would taste good, it had not 'turned' bad.
Another reason might be that other people have reached in the fridge and drank the milk.
What about the type of music we like. We may choose on the basis of what our friends listen to.
We chose to believe in what type of clothes we choose to wear, at least in the beginning, by what our parents want us to wear.
We may chose whether to play sports or not by what our friends do.
What other reasons, good or poor, do we have for believing in anything at all?
For futher information about this subject please refer to the book that I got my ideas from.Book
Check out the book Why Should Anyone Believe Anything At All by James Sire
5 comments:
It is the nature of God in us that believes...it is the nature of man in us that doubts.
What we BELIEVE is based primarily on what we know to be true through experience. We touched a hot stove and got burned. Or, maybe we recovered from an incurable disease.
There is a SPIRIT and PHYSICAL being operating simultaneously. It is most important that they operate in harmony. To be at odds one with the other, causes dis ease.
The nature of God is predominent in man, therefore we want to believe.
We know the Earth is round, although our physical view of this doesn't completely support that belief. When you look towards the horizon, the Earth appears flat. So, our viewpoint doesn't necessarily lend itself to the facts. So, our belief is based upon what has been proven by those few who have been able to find ways to show the rest of us the truth.
So, is a spiritual belief or even a physical/scientific belief something that we need to have personally verified ourselves? I'd say not necessarily. But, we do need to keep in mind that there are a very small percentage of people who have been able to create the tools we have to see the Earth is round. hus, just because someone says they are God, doesn't mean we should simply believe them. There are only a small few who physically walked with Jesus on Earth, and even some of those doubted their own belief.
That's the thing that always surprises me about mankind. We can have the most obvious thing right in front us, yet we would still deny it's existence.
Tim,
Well, it's sort of round. Here's one explination. (http://74.125.95.132/unclesam?q=cache:up1Mt_XmeA8J:www.ngs.noaa.gov/TOOLS/Professional_Surveyor_Articles/GEOID.pdf+shape+of+earth&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us)
"To be able to relate to the geoid, it is next necessary to refer to an ellipsoid of rotation. This is essentially a spheroid where the two of the three axes are the same length. For the earth, the polar axis is actually about 21 km shorter than the two equatorial axes. This ellipsoid model provides a first order estimate of the size and shape of the earth but does not contain the shorter wavelength features, which represent how the geoid surface undulates about the ellipsoid surface."
Tim wrote: "So, is a spiritual belief or even a physical/scientific belief something that we need to have personally verified ourselves? I'd say not necessarily."
So at what point does it become necessary or at least important enough....(after all, 'necessary' is a pretty strong word.) to effect an effort on our behalf regarding some sort of verification? I suspect that the more 'important' it is, then perhaps the stronger the effect to affect effort. Example, cross over a 1000 ft deep gorge on a foot bridge that looks like it may or may not stay together if you crossed it. How about if the bridge is only 2 ft high off the ground? What about 5 feet off the ground? 10 ft? 20 ft? 45 ft? 200 ft? I’m sure the reason for going on the bridge would also play apart, but whatever the reason for crossing would not determine whether the bridge will hold or not.
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