In response to a participant who denied the possibility of objective knowledge (in the case of consciousness).

In that case, the question is: Can consciousness be studied as an object (similar to a stone)? The answer is: obviously not. Where is the difference: the behaviour of a stone is predictable, that of a consciousness is not.
Can any objective - partial - knowledge about consciousness be obtained? The answer is yes. And the final question: how far does our objective knowledge of consciousness go? This is the question. All the rest is muddling along.

Objectivity is a matter of intersubjective agreement on events which appear in different guises to each of us. — Joshs

Indeed, but it is not simple intersubjectivity, a simple matter of perception. The general criterion is what has been called the "adversity" index. That is, the resistance that the world opposes to our desires and practices. If it were not for this resistance, everything would be subjective and we would live an existence in solitude. Other criteria that are commonly used are derived from this one. Intersubjectivity, repetition, prediction, quantification... etc.

I don't see what is confusing. The application of the criterion and the objects to which objectivity is attributed may vary with our knowledge of them. The criterion does not change. And neither does our confidence in the existence of certain common objects throughout history and the world. A stone is always a stone and it is there. It is an immediate fact that only a fool -or a philosopher- would question.

In essence, we trick ourselves into believing that the empirical entities we study as scientists can be focused on independently of the conscious process that constitutes them. — Joshs

The empirical entities (phenomena) that science studies exist outside of scientific theories. It is another thing if the concepts that science uses to study them were absolutely objective, absolutely independent of the scientific theories that explain them. Concepts are a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity. Broadly speaking, we can say that some concepts are very objective or less subjective than others. We trust the objectivity of those concepts that have been repeatedly tested and distrust the objectivity of those that do not meet rigorous criteria.

If these things are not made clear, it seems that there is neither objectivity nor subjectivity. This is not true either.

To explain an event, it is necessary to define the event exactly in observable terms and to deduce it from a set of general laws and factual circumstances. The explanation must then be tested by predicting the recurrence of the event in the context of these - or similar - laws and circumstances.
Science in its present state (neurology and psychology, basically) cannot explain the specific phenomena that are called consciousness. Science can determine the general framework in which the phenomena of consciousness occur, but it cannot predict them.

It is not easy to understand whether this inability is due to intrinsic difficulties of the phenomenon called consciousness or to the current state of science. Much hope was pinned on definitive and immediate progress in this field in the 90'. It has not been achieved. Given the implications of the problem I am not sure whether this delay and its possible blockage can be beneficial or pernicious for humanity.

Nevertheless, scientists continue to study the issue with partial success. It is to be hoped that such progress will serve to prevent certain mental and social illnesses and not to control other people's minds without their consent. Both are possible.

As for the subjective, it is neither good nor bad. It is the inevitable outcome of the current situation. If we do without it we will not understand anything of actual facts of consciousness. That is why the subjective element must be included in explanations of consciousness.

Dostoevsky was a religious fanatic, an irrationalist, a devotee of autocracy and an anti-Semite. His vision of the Russian people was totally illusory and his hatred of progress and socialism was typical of the more conservative mentalities of Russia at the time.

His knowledge of philosophy was nil and his criticisms were based on a few commonplaces that he endorsed to all his enemies.

If that is to be a great philosopher, Dostoevsky was a great philosopher. Although I have my doubts as to whether his thinking can be called philosophy.

A novelist he was. And a great one. But it is convenient not to confuse literature with philosophy. They are two different things.

I do not believe that the interpretation of the Torah, nor the extension of faith to the Gentiles, nor the "rationalistic" interpretation of miracles serve to convince anyone of Christ's divinity who is not convinced beforehand. Moreover, it will not even convince anyone that Jesus was an exceptional being. He will first have to convince that Jesus existed and that the facts and sayings attributed to him were not invented by the early Christians. Secondly, he will have to show that these sayings were really original. I think this is an impossible mission. That is why, in discussions with non-believers, Christians always end up showing their faith off, which is something that does not convince anyone.

— Joaquin

But are testimonies not an acceptable means of evidence in court? — Joaquin

In no court would an anonymous and contradictory text written hundreds of years ago (it is not very well known when) be admitted as testimony, telling fantastic stories with the obvious purpose of lifting up to the heavens someone we do not know for sure existed.

To believe in the testimony of the gospels is to swim against the tide. Even Christian exegetes recognized long ago (Bultmann, Schweitzer, etc.) that the gospels cannot be taken as historical documents.

If your faith is based on that testimony it has very little basis.

So, from the coherentist perspective, appeals to faith should not really be rejected on the grounds of circularity since this is a pernicious effect that could happen in any instance where one has to give an account of justification for one’s beliefs. — Jjnan1

Your justification of faith is not a justification at all.

Intuition is the same as faith if it is not supported by another instance. You simply change one word for another that means the same thing.
Authority is not an argument at all. You choose men with authority and discard others on the basis of the object to be demonstrated, namely, your faith. They will always tell you what you want to hear.
Nor do you explain the whole universe by saying that God made it. You only introduce a mysterious concept (god) and claim that with that everything is understood. Understanding means explaining the unknown by the known, not the other way around. The absurd does not explain anything. And faith is absurd. Paul says so and I agree.

Therefore, your justifications are valid only in the assumption of your faith. That is, a circular argument where the conclusion is used as a premise.

You justify the circularity of your reasoning by suggesting that every rational argument is circular. I do not think so. Please show it.

Jesus responds by saying, "blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe". Although some people seem to draw the conclusion that Jesus is saying it is better not have evidence and believe (blind faith), this is not at all within the text. — Daniel Ramli

I'm sorry if I'm interfering in this discussion.

John drastically asserts that there are two things: seeing (evidence) and believing. He attributes to Jesus the saying that one is better than the other: belief. I don't see your reason for interpreting this any other way.
Before touching the wound, Thomas had no evidence. Only second hand testimonies. Obviously a second hand is not evidence. Thomas applies here the rational principle that extraordinary statements require extraordinary evidence. Therefore, he only believes in the resurrection when he has extraordinary evidence. And he is admonished for preferring rational knowledge to faith.

I do not believe that any other reading is possible. Moreover, this reading is perfectly consistent with the Pauline distinction between faith and wisdom of men (1 Corinthians 1:21).

I learned by reading your posts that you are one of the smartest original thinkers on this board, with keen insight, and with a sharp mind. — god must be atheist

Gee, that sounds like irony or hyperbole to me.

The thing is simpler than everything you write. You gave a number of examples of things that are not "distinct ". But the thing is not complete if you do not give a number of examples of things that are "distinct" now.

As far as I know, there is a small difference between 'difference' and "distinction". Distinction is a sub-class of difference: it is the difference between things that are similar in other respects. For example: there is a difference in intensity between crimson red and scarlet red but they are similar red variables. They are distinct. But they are still different.

Coming back to our discussion, the difference between illusion and reality is not a simple distinction. They are contradictory concepts. Two things that contradict each other do not have a simple difference of hue.

I'm sorry, I'm not interested in hearing sermons.

Faith is to get us to a belief that changes things. — PseudoB

The lights of reason promoted by enlightened philosophers have led to open societies and the doctrine of human rights. What has faith contributed? The wars of religion and the inquisitorial fires. Of course, faith manages to change things... towards intolerance and sectarianism. It would be better if it did not change them.

I do not accept this definition. It is incomplete. — god must be atheist

I don't see the difference you make.

Usually we talk about a difference in shade, indicating that it is a slight difference.

You propose examples of difference that are not distinction. Now the examples of distinction that are not difference are missing. Without that the examples are meaningless.

I'm afraid you don't know exactly what you are talking about with the difference between distinction and difference.

There are no true or false definitions. There are useful or confusing definitions. I have just shown that your definitions are confusing.

I think it would be easier for your to admit I am right, but that takes an ego hurdle, I admit. — god must be atheist

Don't try to psychoanalyse me. It's not your thing. Give me answers to my objections and we'll continue.

I gave you a reason to distinguish what exists outside and inside the head (mind). Not convinced? Why not? This is the question.

What do you mean there is no difference? Close your eyes and paint the house red. You can do it. Open your eyes and paint the house you are seeing green in red. You can't. — David Mo

Not convinced? Why not? This is the question.

Faith is not Belief — PseudoB

Faith is a type of belief. Belief means an opinion or idea that is held to be true. Faith is a belief that is not based on rational arguments. It is a pure opinion. These are the usual meanings of the word faith.

If you think that faith is not a belief, define both terms to know where we are going.

Do you see a problem here? — PseudoB

I don't have a problem. You have a problem. Science does not believe in sense data without reason. It uses sense data to predict facts. Belief in sense data is not irrational but is based on the success of the prediction. Your problem is that I have already explained this to you a day ago and you are ignoring my explanation.
Please answer this, and we can continue.

But a scientific basis for a philosophical conversation can only go as far as the "sphere" allows. I am coming from outside that sphere — PseudoB

Excuse me, but you entered the sphere of science when you stated that science is based on faith. I have replied to you about this. If you do not want to pursue this issue, I have no problem. Let's go outside.

It's all based on the laws of momentum, applied to things non-physical, being thoughts and agreements with those thoughts. — PseudoB

The laws of social psychology - if they exist - are not like the laws of physics. You call the "law of momentum" a simple empirical generalisation : many people are strongly influenced by some (which?) social agents. This is not very precise but we can take it as a starting point. I agree. The churches are a good example. Many people are indoctrinated by them and lose their ability to think for themselves. The priest says "Kill!" and they kill. "Hate X!" and they hate X. MIchel Foucault wrote a very good book on the techniques of indoctrination by confession in the Catholic Church. But the scenes of mass hysteria in other Christian meetings or the killers of Allah are other examples among many others.

So what if Jesus said something that totally dissolves a brain altogether?? — PseudoB

Well, now it seems that you want to enter into biblical exegesis. I don't mind. I know something about it. I suffered from the Church's indoctrination techniques for a few years. But in my readings of the Bible I never found Jesus engaged in "dissolving" brains. If so, what a danger!

So what is faith?? — PseudoB

If you are going to take a two thousand year old doctrinal text as an English dictionary we are lost.
At the time of the Epistle to the Hebrews there was no science in the present sense and the author does not seem to know anything about his philosophy of the time. For example, Plato believed that the true reality is invisible but he did not claim by faith but by reason. That is why defining faith as the knowledge of the invisible is neither clear nor distinct.

If you want to take a biblical reference I think Paul is a better reference.

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. (1 Cor 1:21)

You see: Faith is the knowledge that God gives to believers against the wisdom of reason. Pure irrationality. This has if it means anything.

If you wanna destroy "science" with me, I'm happy to entertain the notion. — PseudoB

I don't want to destroy "science" with you. I will not go into Pauline fanaticism. I think that irrationality is a bad option for man. But I will be glad to discuss abut this with you on the plane of rational arguments. If you come here to indoctrinate with Sunday sermons I am not interested at all.

It is relieving to 'know' or 'believe' in the view that life is meaningless, — The Questioning Bookworm

I believe, with Camus, that the role of philosophy is not to comfort without lucidity. Philosophy is a project for human self-knowledge and consolation without lucidity is self-deception about humanity. I do not deny that some horrible circumstances can justify self-deception. Mitigating circumstances, I would say. But not as a rule.

I just don't understand how the laws of force and momentum can ever allow for something concrete, when all they seem to offer is a watery perception that changes from person to person? — PseudoB

I'm sorry to say that I still don't know what you're talking about. The only law of momentum I know says:

For two or more bodies in an isolated system acting upon each other, their total momentum remains constant unless an external force is applied. Therefore, momentum can neither be created nor destroyed.

It is a law of physics. Sociology has its own laws. I don't know what it has to do with education and social classes.

Now to bring this back to faith, the reason certain writings are so "undefined", is because there is only One Who is meant to decide the manifestation of those things, — PseudoB

It seems to me that you are a bit solipsistic. I mean you carry your own closed line of thought.
If you don't respond to other people's comments this discussion goes nowhere. I'm sorry.

If it applies “here”, it should apply “there”, and due to that very agreement, we apply our will, and move to test our predictions. — PseudoB

No. Predictions are not a matter of will. Prediction is the basis of the scientific method because one can control the facts by means of it . The position of the moon at any given time is predicted and the rocket lands in the Sea of Tranquillity. You cannot predict nor control facts by faith. As has been proved countless times, religious prophecies are either very vague or fail miserably. The scientific method, based on prediction, has had enough success over the centuries to be called knowledge. The failure of prophecy has brought about enough failure that it can be said to be based on illusory thinking.

So much for science. If you object no more we can move on to the thinking of the common man.

To challenge core agreements takes faith in the unseen. — PseudoB

Excuse me, but I find your writing rather confusing. You use too many colloquial expressions and it is not easy to follow your arguments.
But, to begin with, you should focus on the subject a little. We were not talking about beliefs in everyday life, but whether science is supported by some kind of faith. If you are talking about science, to say that you have faith in the invisible is to confuse things. Science talks about a multitude of invisible entities: forces, electric charges, protons, etc. What makes them scientific is not that they are visible, but that they are indispensable conditions to explain visible phenomena. Do not confuse visible phenomena with scientific entities.

That is why it can be said that every scientific statement is justified by experience, not that every scientific entity is visible.
What falls outside the field of science is what is not a phenomenon nor can it be part of a theory with predictive power, that is, it has no basis in experience of any kind. This is the case with fairies and cherubs. For different reasons they are excluded by scientific thought. If you want to believe in them you will have to get faith. This is not the case with atoms or magnetic fields. This is no a question of faith but of evidence.

If you are clear about this, we can go on.

A distinction is a difference that is not measurable or definable. "Peter finished his dissertation with distinciton." — god must be atheist

Sorry. Distinction has two meanings. We are not talking about the one you mention. I use the word in the sense I said above.

distinction: a difference between two similar things

Well, the question is a bit ambivalent. If I see a house, I see a house, so the image is in my mind (in my head) and outside. There is no difference. — god must be atheist

What do you mean there is no difference? Close your eyes and paint the house red. You can do it. Open your eyes and paint the house you are seeing green in red. You can't. Because the house exists outside your head.

I can give you more transcendental examples, if you like.

I'm sorry but your answer doesn't clarify anything about the two things I asked you:

1) How does a difference differ from a distinction? How do you define difference and distinction?
2) Don't you see a difference (or distinction) between something that only happens in your head and something that exists outside it?

Faith is the typical starting point for all Science, “believe it or not”. All Science starts with assumption and hypothesis, — PseudoB

A hypothesis is not faith. It is something provisional that must be contrasted in experience. No scientist says that a hypothesis is true before it is tested. Faith is blind, by definition. It believes that it is sufficient in itself to proclaim a truth superior to any other.

think it is a preference to choose to lose freedom. — Coben

That is impossible. The man who chooses to submit to the will of another is doing so freely and weighing the advantages of doing so. The doctor knows more than I do, the master protects me from greater evils, my employer pays me a good salary, etc. If he thinks that by doing so he has lost the use of reason and freedom he is definitely deceiving himself. At any time he can revoke his decision rationally and freely. In other words, reason and freedom are two indispensable elements of the human condition. The believer who chooses the blindness of faith does so because he wants to, even if he then tries to hide this choice and become a slave of his god or his tyrant.

What needs to be discussed is whether there are special circumstances in which it is preferable to renounce reason and freedom. And I am not talking about banal circumstances. Turning irrationality and submission into a life project seems to me to be contemptible.

No paradox. Different philosophies, as pointed out, but the same philosophical exercise of making (a) truth meaningful by living (or striving to live) that truth. — 180 Proof

It is not a paradox. I agree. But Camus' reproach to Plato and rationalism is that it substitutes life for abstract thinking. It is a vitalist point of view, although it is not an irrationalist absolute like other classical vitalists.

I think it is quite unfair. At least, reading some of Plato's dialogues

I'm unaware of the reasoning that led up to Camus' statement, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". — TheMadFool

It is not very clear. It seems that, according to him, happiness can be in lucidity, the awareness of not expecting anything that one does not give to oneself.
Don't give too much importance to the word 'imagine'. Keep in mind that we are talking about a myth. Camus wanted to say that it is possible (imagine, like John Lennon) to find happiness in the absurd.

As I said, I'm taking Plato's help only to show that, in philosophy, truth is valuable and living by it is meaningful. — TheMadFool

Camus did not say that life has no meaning. He said that the world has no meaning in itself. In fact, The Myth of Sisyphus concludes with the hope of happiness in the absurd. Camus' second philosophical work, The Rebel, is an attempt to overcome the absurd in a different way.
In reality, Plato and Camus agree on one point: the world has no meaning. They differ in the second proposition: there is an objective sense in another world (Plato). For Camus, this ideal world is an illusion.

That sounds like the same thing! A distinction without a difference. — TheMadFool

distinction: a difference between two similar things

The Cambridge dictionary and I see no difference between 'distinction' and 'difference'. Could you tell us where the difference is?

In short, Plato's take is that life in true reality is meaningful. A truth as per Camus is that life in true reality is meaningless. Paradox — TheMadFool

There is no paradox, but different philosophies.

Plato's myth of the cavern is a myth-poetic metaphor. It should not be interpreted literally. (tale or legend) Plato wants to explain his concept of reality with this myth. He believes that the world we see through the senses is not real but a bad copy of reality (like shadows). True reality is a world of forms or ideas that exists on a different plane. Man can only reach it if he gets rid of the world that we see through the senses and thinks only through reason. That is why true reality is not made of colours, sounds, passions, material pleasures or pain, but is that which can be expressed in like-mathematical terms. That is the one that makes sense, the other one does not.

Camus does not believe in Plato's ideal reality. He thinks it is illusory. The only reality the world in which we live with our sensations, passions and pains. He agrees with Plato only on one thing: that this material reality either has no meaning.

Therefore, Plato believed that the meaning of life was found in the ideal world. Camus says that there is no meaning, neither in the ideal nor in the empirical worlds.

but in no way do habits justify anything — TheMadFool

I agree. The principle of uniformity of the past is justified because of is universal. Everybody believes it. Other practical reasons can be discussed. But the main reason is this.

People often move away from freedom, let other people decide things for them. — Coben

My questions follow:

Is it rational to choose irrationality intentionally? Where does this lead? — David Mo

I am not a stoic, but knowing that life is meaningless and there are no overarching principles or meaning in it is relieving. — The Questioning Bookworm

You're not the first case I've met. But I find it hard to believe that you have never felt that the real world is indifferent or hostile to your most human desires and that this has not made you feel a sense of helplessness. This is the absurd.

I see. I've always wondered at the notion of the so-called illusions that you refer to. — TheMadFool

I am not the one who refers to illusions in those texts. They are by Camus. From the Introduction to The Myth of Sisyphus. Anyway, you centre your objection to Camus on the distinction between illusory and real. If you do not want to use those words you will have to use others to distinguish what is only in your head from what exists outside it.

An example: A thirsty voyager walks in the desert. He sees a mirage in the background and thinks it is an oasis. But when he reaches the place where he saw the mirage there is nothing but sand. The oasis was an illusion and the reality was the sand of the desert. Do you not accept this difference? Water can be drunk, but not sand. Does that make a little difference to you? Not for the voyager.

The concept of illusion in Camus has another collateral meaning that is expressed in English as 'wishful thinking'. That is to say, when illusion depends on a strong desire, it conditions beliefs. A typical effect is cognitive dissonance. It consists in looking for more or less inconsistent ad hoc hypotheses to save a belief that the facts refute. It is very typical in religions. In Camus' terms one can speak of a philosophy of lucidity versus an illusory philosophy.

Plato's cave. Where the two have diverged in an important respect is that Camus claims the illusory has more meaning than the real; — TheMadFool

I see that you have opened a new thread with this theme. If I have time I'll go over there.Here I will only say one thing: Plato also makes the distinction between real and illusory. The difference is that for him the real world was the ideal world. The name 'idea' leads to confusion. Plato's ideal world was not in the head of human beings but in a higher plane of existence. In philosophy the term 'idea' was adopted for that transcendent world. It would have been less confusing if the concept of 'form', which Plato uses, had been taken on.

But the fact that rationalist and empiricist philosophers do not agree on which things are real and which are not doesn't mean that the distinction between real and illusory is not made in both sides.

As I said, the absurd is above all a feeling — David Mo

Care to expand on that? I thought it had and is supposed to have a sobering, depressing effect on us? I'm not sure. — TheMadFool

We can accept a provisional definition of absurd in Camus.

The Absurd can be defined as a metaphysical tension or opposition that results from the presence of human consciousness—with its ever-pressing demand for order and meaning in life—in an essentially meaningless and indifferent universe. — David Simpson, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This tension manifests itself in a strong sense of the futility of human existence. (Note that meaning does not necessarily mean a religious or transcendent destiny. You can find meaning in pleasure or in the struggle for life).

Camus makes an extensive explanation of the absurdity in the Introduction to the Myth of Sisyphus. The book is half philosophy and half literature. Therefore it can sometimes seem poetic. This is Camus' way.

I have found this introduction online:
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf

I have copied some fragments here in case you do not have time to read it:

Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence, for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized,even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering. What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death. (2)

A step lower and strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is "dense," sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millennia. For a second we cease to understand it because for centuries we have understood in it solely the images and designs that we had attributed to it beforehand, because henceforth we lack the power to make use of that artifice. The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes again what it is. It withdraw sat a distance from us. Just as there are days when under the familiar face of a woman, we see as a stranger her we had loved months or years ago, perhaps we shall come even to desire what suddenly leaves us so alone. But the time has not yet come. Just one thing: that denseness and that strangeness of the world is the absurd.

Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man's own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this "nausea," as a writer of today calls it,is also the absurd. Likewise the stranger who at certain seconds comes to meet us in a mirror, the familiar and yet alarming brother we encounter in our own photographs is also the absurd. (5)

That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism,those categories that explain everything are enough to make a decent man laugh. They have nothing to do with the mind. They negate its profound truth, which is to be enchained. In this unintelligible and limited universe, man's fate henceforth assumes its meaning. A horde of irrationals has sprung up and surrounds him until his ultimate end. In his recovered and now studied lucidity, the feeling of the absurd becomes clear and definite. I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together. This is all I can discern clearly in this measureless universe where my adventure takes place. Let us pause here. (7)

Lets take a break, then.

By tue way your sun example is an inductive inference - it has nothing to do with habit. — TheMadFool

The belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is based on the belief that the past will repeat itself in the future. This is the basic principle of induction. Obviously induction cannot be justified by induction. Only habit justifies it. It is a natural habit, but a habit.

If I have the opportunity of marrying two equally attractive women, your advice is to not marry at all? :chin: — TheMadFool

Have you considered bigamy?

Conscious faith is freedom while emotional faith is slavery. — Nikolas

It depends on what you mean by "conscious faith". Can you consciously choose slavery? Is it rational to choose irrationality intentionally? Where does this lead? To the same abyss, I'm afraid.

I think your choice would be understandable as long as it moves in the realm of banality or inevitable choices. But I don't think the choice between believing in God and not believing is inevitable. Nor is it banal.

Faith is what one does, not what one thinks. — unenlightened

Casting my vote here. — Hippyhead

It is usually said that faith is the motive why people believe and do certain things. However, I can't find any way for people to do things if they don't believe something. For example, they go to church on Sundays because they believe that God commands it. You kill infidels because you think God commands it. Etc.Behind acts that are not reflexes there is always a belief. Specially in the field of religion.

You're proposing a causal link between habit and faith here. How does that work? Do you have a causal argument to support this? — TheMadFool

You repeat so much the experience of seeing the sun rise every morning that you end up believing that it will always be like that. The believer who repeats a prayer with a lot of force ends up accepting it as an untouchable mantra. This is how superstitions work, as Skynner demonstrated with a dove.

Whether there is freedom or not I don't know. I can give an opinion on this, but I don't know.

What do you mean by "experience"? — TheMadFool

Knowledge extracted and/or justified from the senses.

What then? Am I not free, in the sense there are no justifications to force a choice, to choose any one of these hypotheses? — TheMadFool

In that case you refrain from giving your opinion. Only in very special circumstances do you take an option without any support. But it is very rare to find a circumstance in which there is no slight support for an option. Most often you find some reason to believe in something. It all depends on you being able to find the best one.

In the case of religious options what you do is choose one or the other after hearing from those who defend or attack your belief. And you choose from those options. If you are honest you will recognize that you are not very sure. This happened even to Teresa of Calcutta, as she herself acknowledged. If you are not sincere with yourself you will say that your faith is unshakable (Paul) or that you have irrefutable proof that your god exists (Thomas Aquinas).

Did you find joy in reading and taking in this book? — The Questioning Bookworm

An intellectual pleasure and a personal concern. 'Joy' is too strong a word that I reserve for personal relationships and other special circumstances.
In any case, it is not a book you can overlook.

In other words, contradictions are apparent in every corner of life, and there is no universal meaning for anyone. This calmed my anxiety and depression — The Questioning Bookworm

Why? The only way to overcome the anxiety produced by a vital desire that cannot be satisfied is to stop having it. But I believe that this recipe cannot be maintained for too long. May the stoics forgive me. There are desires for justice, for love, for the absence of pain that one cannot suppress without amputating a part of oneself. And this would be bad faith. If a man is as impassive as a lettuce he is not a man, he is a lettuce. At the very least, a lettuce is not happy. And it is happiness we are talking about. Isn't it?