How do cherry-picking believers decide what to believe?

chakka35 | 18:07 Thu 06th Jan 2011 | Religion & Spirituality

168 Answers

One would think that a person who could think rationally would be consistent about it. But this seems not to be so. Below is a thread about a chap who rejects God but believes in an afterlife, even though both beliefs have a similar irrational status.

How many other cases are there? People who, for example, reject astrology but believe in Tarot cards; who reject dowsing but accept ouija boards; who reject crystal balls but accept ESP; who reject weeping statues but accept alien abductions; who reject fairies but accept angels…..and so on. How do they discriminate between one lot of nonsense and another? What criteria do they use?

I anticipate one possible answer: a believer (naomi perhaps?) might say that she believes in ghosts because she has seen one. But this cannot always be the answer, surely. What is?

What if there is a God... And He's evil?

spiritulism and tarrot cards

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woofgang

yup gratuitous insults are no part of civilised discussion

naomi24

//Where you are wildly wrong (as is ludwig) is in accusing me of ........ refusing to believe in things out of sheer cussedness....... //

The silly thing is that after all this wrangling, Chakka still doesn't understand that no one is asking him, or expecting him, to believe anything, but simply to acknowledge that he doesn't know whether these things are possible or not - because ultimately, despite all his puffing and blowing and lofty lecturing, he doesn't - and that goes for his supporters here too.

It seems that 'believers' aren't the only ones who can be accused of reading more into something than is really there.

woofgang

I don't even expect/require that. All I want is for him to treat people who post different views from his (after all this is a debate) with good manners.

naomi24

Woofgang, I always considered Chakka to be the quintessential English gentleman, but this is the second time in as many days that someone has shown his true colours and has proven me wrong to hold him in such high regard. Sad people.

chakka35

Question Author

My, my, how tetchy some of you have become. I am slightly bemused by the fact that I have insulted, or been rude to, no-one at all: I never use ad hominem 'arguments'. What I have done is challenged people to answer my question. And since the thread moved sideways into a discusion about weird beliefs (not my doing, that) I have commented occasionally. Because of this I received a lot of ..well, not abuse exactly, but indignant claims of having been ungentlemanly and so on. Something to do with motes and beams rings a bell.

ludwig, what you said is that you know nothing about ESP so you are going to wait for evidence. My point is that if you bothered to learn about it you would see that it was baseless and that you could close that uninteresting file. I will research that subject if you wish, though I don't see that there is an equivalent point.

woofgang, I'm not sure what your complaint is. I acknowledged you as the only one to answer my question and apologised for having missed it.

Well, mib, hope you're grateful that I rode back to relieve you of the flak!

Since it doesn't look as if pixi is going to finish her answer, I need no more from this thread. See you all on another one... and...er.try to keep your composures next time. Pip pip.

woofgang

"You said that you divide up irrational things according to how they affected you personally, without, apparently, caring about their irrationality.
That's fair enough. I asked for an answer, not specifying that it had to make sense, and you supplied one. I apologise. "
gratuitously insulting.

naomi24

Woofgang, ha ha! At least you got recognition - even if it was ill mannered. According to him I'm the one who's "losing something up there" and I'm not even mentioned in dispatches! Hey, you don't think he's forgotten what he said and is now suffering from delusions do you? :o)

Actually, on a serious note Chakka and I have always been good friends, and I think what he's done on this thread is really very sad. Never mind, as he says it's all part of life's rich pageantry. What a pity he tripped over his superficial finery and made more of an exhibition of himself than he realises.