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[personal profile] jack
A standard warning is to avoid basing your actions on something being true simply because you want it to be true, not because you've any reason to think it is. Eg. Everyone agrees that "The ship can't be sinking, that would be terrible" is understandable if there's nothing you can do about it, but catastrophic if you're in charge of planning for lifeboats. But "There must be meaning in the universe, because otherwise it would be terrible" sounds very seductive, but is not conclusive for exactly the same reason!

However, a related but subtly different case, is something you want to believe because the effects of beleiving it are true. If believing X makes you or other people act in good ways, you are massively incentivised to want to believe X, and to hope X is true, and even to avoid any doubts about X, even if they're reasonable.

I think this is understandable and possibly wise, even though it leads to a sort of double-think of mainting the illusion that X, while simultaneously evaluating the truth of X, and trying to investigate alternatives to X, without ever admitting that's what you're doing.

However, I had a very startled moment, when I realised that many supposed rationalists (including me) tended to believe like an article of faith that it's better to make decisions based on true information. Yes, I think that's in general true. But if hypothetically I provided a celebrated atheist rationalist with evidence convincing in his/her eyes that actually, beleiving a popular religion WAS much more beneficial to humanity, would they go ahead and change their mind? In almost all cases, probably not.

That sounded understandable, but I realised that it was exactly the same process that many people use to justify a belief in heaven: that true or not, it's desirable that it's true, and then it's beneficial to believe it, so lets not rock the boat. Putting those two next to each other made me suddenly very uncertain.

Date: 2011-07-13 08:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com
An interesting comparison indeed (and nice to see someone from the non-faith side making the "athiests believe things too!" point)

Reminds me of a discussion we were having a while back - if one honestly believed Pascal's wager, but couldn't bring oneself to "believe" in God due to it, ought one to actively convert other people to believing in God as one genuinely believes it would be best for them? Logic says yes ... ethics recoils ...

Re doubt: I'd just like to point out that for at least some* people of faith**, religion/faith-related doubt is not something that we particularly try to avoid. Not that you were necessarily saying that, but I think sometimes there's a perception that people of faith close their eyes to any problems with their faith and ignore potential doubts and I don't think that's true. (Or not true for everyone). The vast majority of things I have been taught about doubt in Church are that it's okay to doubt, that doubt happens to most of us, and that you should talk about it and not bottle it up, rather than anything about not doubting.

*I have no idea what proportion but at least a significant some

**specifically Christianity because that's what I know about but probably lots of other faiths too

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