So you think that a conman "has" cognitive dissonance?
— baker

Which is is either in the context of religion as the rest of our discussion or a non-sequitur.

Also, this response doesn’t address any point I raised. You ignored those and instead raised a new question of questionable relevance and then acted as though I was being imprecise in my reading. — DingoJones

I was trying to make the discussion shorter and more concise. My point has been to show that it is questionabale whether religious people indeed necessarily operate under cognitive dissonance. Hence I wanted to illustrate a point about cognitive dissonance with the example of the conman, and then take things from there.

This has a stink of dishonesty to it, you don’t seem to be arguing in good faith here.

That is your perception.


In short, a case can be made that religious people do not necessarily operate under cognitive dissonance, because:
1. they have a poor knowledge of the doctrine they profess to uphold;
2. outsiders do not understand religious doctrines in the hierarchical and contextualized way as insiders do, so outsiders perceive cognitive dissonance where for insiders there is none;
3. the bloody history of religion warrants skepticism and the possibility of religious people in fact being duplicitious.

Everyone seems to know that happiness does not come from wealth and that a rewarding life is generally found outside of money and possessions. — Tom Storm

I personally do not know anyone who believes that. Everyone I know is either rich, striving to get rich, or bemoaning not being rich.

The theory that money makes people happier has to account for the happiness of people who have not a pot to piss in. How do the poor manage to be happy--enough poor people are happy enough to make the question worth asking. — Bitter Crank

But how do we know those poor people are happy? Because of pictures in National Geographic where poor people are smiling?

That being the case, communing with nature (or literally whatever) could be seen as communing with God. Doesn’t seems there’s any point to pantheism without experiencing the “sense that one is part of divinity”. I formally submit that the pantheist could become lost in this sensing and unwittingly become quietist. — praxis

Becoming a tree hugger is just at one end of the pantheist spectrum. A fascination with power and being active is on the other end.

And the only proper response to this is hysterical optimism and total faith in medicine?

It is a little disconcerting that the notion is incomprehensible to many, such as yourself, but "disconcerting" is part of the deal too, so I'm comfortable with it. Back in the day it wasn't such an anomaly. — James Riley

This is a philosophy discussion forum, not the water cooler. You're jumping to the conclusion that the notion of sacrificing oneself for others is "incomprehensible" to me. On the contrary, I want to explore what a proponent of it has to say about it.

Why do you tailor your quest by the model of a Catholic proselytizer??

And you want us to believe you'd die for these people?

Why would it be good to have such proof?

Who's "them"? — TiredThinker

The skeptics your OP is seeking to convince.

Realising this - “wow I’ve just realised I have all that I wanted in the past” and supposing you are in your best years and still have a good portion of your life ahead of you, what would you do? — Benj96

I'd go sit under a tree until I became enlightened.

Of course, the point can be made that theplacebo effect is real and that the patient's optimism about the treatment can importantly contribute to better outcomes of the treatment.

But then what is "safe and effective" isn't the vaccine itself, but to a possibly considerable extent, faith healing.

There is a difference between informed consent and uninformed consent. If the best advice you can give them is not to believe the science then they are properly informing them. What an uninformed patient wants should not be the deciding factor. — Fooloso4

Except that in this case, the necessary information doesn't even exist yet.

I am. — James Riley

You certainly don't sound like it. You're far too critical of others to still allow for the thought that you'd be willing to die for them.

Having been vaccinated does not prevent someone from spreading it, it reduces morbidity and mortality, not spread. — Book273

Yet the official party line and the pro-vaccination slogans are "Think of others, get vaccinated!" and similar.
(Here the Croatian one, for example.)

No, but a probable personal catastrophe if one accepts the COVID vaccine.
— baker

Possible, yes. Probable, I don't know. — TheMadFool

Depends on one's current health and financial status.

The vaccines haven't been tested enough to show what they do to a person who is already immunocompromised due to some other health problem (such as genetic autoimmune diseases, preexisting infectuous diseases).

The public covid vaccine discourse allows for no such considerations.

I would have thought that working together to prevent the spread of a virus via masks and vaccination would mean that people will die in far fewer numbers.

The significant barriers to this are clearly the positions people hold on government and freedom and what counts as evidence. — Tom Storm

What does it matter to you if you end up terminally ill after the vaccine?
Do you really take solace in other people benefitting from the vaccine?

Are you willing to die for others?

What's most striking about this thread is the parsing of an ethical decision as if it were a calculation of odds. — Banno

This is exactly how it is presented by some governments and people uncritically in favor of vaccination.

But you do have the freedom not to go along if not the freedom not to be expected to go along. And of course not everyone will expect you to go along. To my knowledge vaccination is not mandatory in any democratic nations at least. I haven't checked to see if it is mandatory anywhere else; although I think I heard somewhere that it is in one part of Spain. — Janus

No, there are already consequences promised to those who have not been vaccinated. For example, in order to visit a restaurant or cinema, one has to provide proof of vaccination, proof of having been diagnosed with covid, or a negative test. In some companies, all employees had to accept the vaccine, or risk being fired. Discrimination is already taking place. Also, there is limited choice or none as to which vaccine to take. There is also shortage of vaccine. And scandals with using used needles (in order to get the most out of one vial).

About the health insurance angle: if that's true it's a bad sign and would seem to indicate that the insurance industry, who generally do very rigorously analyze and assess risk, must think there is a degree of risk that is unacceptable, to them at least.

All covid vaccines are experimental medications at this point, so from the perspective of health insurance, they are treated as other experimental medications.

This has to make one wonder how many cases of (possible) side effects of the covid vaccines have actually been underreported or misrepresented, in order to make health insurance pay for the treatment.

What I wish is that there would be more fairness and more opennes about the issue, and less hype.
Two examples of good practices:
When Iran started to vaccinate people, the government openly told people that they have an experimental medication that yet needs to be properly tested and that they're asking every citizen to help with the testing.
In Poland, when they started to vaccinate people, they also started a public fund to help those who would develop adverse side effects to the medication.

But instead, in so many places, the covid vaccines are touted as if they'd already be classical, approved, well-tested vaccines the taking of which requires no further justification or explanation.

a significant proportion of the populace has bought into Trump’s lies — Wayfarer

It seems more likely that they already believe such things, rather than having "bought into his lies". It seems unlikely that one person would have such power over others. Rather, this is about something that is already in the people. Similar as in Nazi Germany: Hitler didn't convert anyone, people weren't "buying into his lies". Rather, they already believed those things.

They’re too stupid to be genuinely dangerous. Trump is the definition of stupid. — Wayfarer

Don't be like the deva in the sala tree. That which you call "stupidity" is a seed, and it will grow, and destroy everything in its path.

Assuming E = the buddha exists after death.

1. E. No!
2. Not E. No!
3. E and not E. No!
4. Neither E nor not E. No! — TheMadFool

A buddha is impossible to define comprehensively (it is said that it takes a buddha to know one). Hence it is impossible to make definitive claims as to what a buddha is or isn't.

The way I see it, the point is to understand why a particular question is a wrong question. There are several reasons why a question can be a wrong question. A quick way to ascertain that is to look at one's intentions for asking it.

Ven. Sāriputta said: “All those who ask questions of another do so from any one of five motivations. Which five?

“One asks a question of another through stupidity & bewilderment. One asks a question of another through evil desires & overwhelmed with greed. One asks a question of another through contempt. One asks a question of another when desiring knowledge. Or one asks a question with this thought,1 ‘If, when asked, he answers correctly, well & good. If not, then I will answer correctly (for him).’

https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/AN/AN5_165.html

In the mind of an ordinary person, the five motivations, or at least the first four, tend to be intertwined, which results in confusion. Hence the importance of purification practices, thorough which one's motivations become streamlined.

I asked:

So you think that a conman "has" cognitive dissonance? — baker

This is a philosophy discussion forum. Read with precision.

I asked you about the conman, not about the religious conman, as the issue was the contrast between a person's thought expression and their behavior. I said nothing about the religious conman.

The average religious person has a cognitive dissonance though, I might even go so far as to say that belief in a religion is impossible without one. After all if you follow any one edict in the bible and not follow some other edict then you aren’t really making sense and since the contradictions of the bible make it impossible to follow them all you can’t really religious without making one or more breaches of logic and rationality.

This would apply only if religious people would typically be well familiar with the doctrine they profess to support.
They are generally not thusly familiar. Even by their own accounts and by the accounts of critics from their own groups. For example, you can read on Catholics blogs written by Catholics that Catholics generally have a poor knowledge of Catholic doctrine. Among cradle religionists, there are also folk versions of the religious doctrine that they profess to be part of; folk versions that are not in line with the actual doctrine (e.g. some Catholics have the folk belief that people who weren't baptized as babies are bound for hell and that baptism later on doesn't really count -- this contradicts actual RCC doctrine; or in Buddhism, there are folk beliefs about karma that have no grounding in the Buddhist holy texts).

Moreover, many religions don't even have a catechism-type of doctrinal text (the way the RCC does), so to begin with, it's not clear what said religion's doctrine actually is about. And if even that is not clear, how can we even begin to talk of cognitive dissonance? We can't.

Further, in religions, there tend to exist meta-level teachings that order the importance of teachings. To an outsider who doesn't know those meta-level teachings, all edicts in, for example, the Bible might seem as being on the same level, having the same importance (thus creating opportunities for contradictions). But to an insider, the biblical edicts are hierachically ordered, so that some are more important than others, some contextualize others, and so on. This order minimizes or annulls the possibility of contradiction, as contradiction proper can exist only between statements of the same order in the hierarchy or in the same context. For example, for Catholics, the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament, so the edicts between the two are not in conflict. For a Vajrayana Buddhist, the instructions of one's teacher supersede everything and everyone else. And so on.

I do wonder sometimes if mass shooters really believed they would go to hell for their actions, whether they would carry them out. The belief that ‘death is the end’ might be part of the rationale for such massacres, in that the perpetrators believe that when they die there won’t be further consequences. So that belief might be, ironically, consequential. — Wayfarer

At this point, the seriously injured Valeen Schnurr began screaming, "Oh my God, oh my God!"[127][131] In response, Klebold asked Schnurr if she believed in the existence of God; when Schnurr replied she did, Klebold asked "Why?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre

It can only be speculated how far the perpetrator's religious or spiritual quest went. But it sure is telling that at a critical moment like the one above, he wondered about the reasons for belief in God. We can speculate that he was wondering about these things for some time already before the shootings.

While I agree that belief in God might deter some prospective perpetrators from their actions, it's also worth noting that the despair and the social stigma resulting from a person's failure to believe in God can contribute to desperate actions (which might have been intended as attempts to force God "to show himself").

Both theists and atheists often underestimate the intense personal struggle of a person who makes an effort to believe in God but fails.

But 'failure of imagination' is not itself an argument against even ludicrous, evidence-free ideas like "after lives" or "past lives". — 180 Proof

Character assassination is a classical proselytizing method. It seems to work quite well on many people.

I know evidence that the conscious mind continues after bodily death is rare and iffy at best. But what type of evidence would be reasonable to convince skeptics that an afterlife probably is a real possibility? — TiredThinker

Why do you want to convince them?

For their own good?
For your own good?

But you will not answer this, will you?

So, if you want to tell the truth about tomorrow and rain you could say, either it'll rain tomorrow OR it'll not rain tomorrow. The same logic applies to any other proposition.

Conclusion: It's possible to always tell truths. — TheMadFool

Either there's enough gas in my car to get me to town or there isn't enough gas in the car to get me to town.
Either I'm dead, or I'm not dead.

Such "truth telling" is useless.

I have someone very close to me who has zero tolerance for lies - comes down hard on anyone caught lying - and the reason for that attitude is 100% ethical in flavor.

How about, solely for the purposes of an experiment, viewing that person as immature, naive; or as bossy and aggressive, rather than as a moral ideal?

Taking into account that one is ethically duty-bound to always tell the truth, isn't it rather intriguing that one way of doing that is by resorting to a tautological disjunction (p v ~p)?

Either one is ethically duty-bound to always tell the truth, or one is not ethically duty-bound to always tell the truth.
There you go.
There is no such ethical duty.

Thus, in some sense, being honest/truthful is to admit one is uncertain.

Only when one is in fact uncertain.

Ethics seems to have a very deep connection with epistemology.

Such is the view of virtue epistemologists: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-virtue/

Plagues, historically, have been proportionally far worse than the present situation, often killing far greater percentages than Covid-19. That we have a vaccine that works is an extraordinary vindication of the understanding that science provides. That we have several... we should be singing the praises of science from the rooftops. Millions of lives have been saved by applying science here.

But that's not what happened. Instead we have an abject failure to recognise the benefits, a wilful emphasis on every negative.

Comment? — Banno

To begin with, this is exactly what you asked for in this thread: Reasons against science.

What did you expect???

Also Cognitive dissonance is observable, primarily through the contrast between a persons thought expression and their behaviour. — DingoJones

So you think that a conman "has" cognitive dissonance?

It's supposed to get people to rethink their alleged thinking. Same with the lotteries, game tickets, etc. In other words, "risk" is not really the reason most of these people don't get the vaccine. They are either scared or petulant. — James Riley

What an extremely uncharitable position to take!


I think many people who refuse to get vaccinated or who are skeptical about taking (experimental) vaccines are so because the medical and the political establishment are abusing their trust.

We are in the position where we're expected to trust our lives to people who don't have time for us, who don't listen to us, who treat us like cattle, who are misrepresenting statistical findings, who are cynical, and some of whom have a personal history of betraying people's trust.

Are you not scared to put your life in the hands of such people?

We take much greater risks every time we walk out the door. — James Riley

What is this party line supposed to do??

How, exactly, would you tailor your explanation? — charles ferraro

First, I would need to feel a genuine need for it (which I don't).

The question, as I see it, is simply whether, or not, the Cogito Sum argument has an inherent integrity, regardless of Descartes' motivations. Can the argument stand on its own two feet? If not, explain why. We're talking epistemology here, not religion.

My assumption is that epistemology is done by persons, so no argument can somehow stand on its own two feet, regardless of the person making it.

Care to elaborate on how you got this "passive-aggressive wimp" from my 'stoic warriors' post? — 180 Proof

*sigh*

I was trying to explain a point about S/stoicism to TheMadFool, in line with the discussion that far. So I asked him a question about a type of profession that probably most people nowadays do not associate with S/stoicism. I wanted to saliently make the point that being a military general (a characteristically proactive profession where there is a lot at stake) is not in conflict with being a Stoic. And then I wanted to elaborate why this is so, depending on how TMF would reply, addressing his further questions or concerns.

*sigh*

Actually I might assume the Pantheist to have quietist tendencies, wanting to contemplate and commune with God at the expense of all worldly concerns. — praxis

No, there is no personal god to commune with in pantheism.

It’s not lenience, it is just understanding what’s going on re cognitive dissonance. — DingoJones

It's not clear that in the case of the religious not living up to what they profess this is really due to cognitive dissonance. You'd need to rule out deliberate duplicity. Religion's bloody history warrants such scrutiny.

Maybe binary isn’t the right term...I meant to describe how on your view your belief is either backed up by action or it isn’t really a belief. That seems like a binary metric to me.

You asked:

That if you really believe something you obligate yourself to act in accordance with it? — DingoJones

To which I replied affirmatively. But see my above post: Some beliefs are inactionable, at least for some people. So one has to wonder why would anyone profess those beliefs? Because of their metavalue? (Ie. because professing such beliefs spares one from being prosecuted by other people?)

Compare: You and I believe that radium-226 has a half-life of 1600 years; I assume neither of us works in the nuclear industry, so we can't act on this belief. We also don't make a point of telling anyone that we believe that radium-226 has a half-life of 1600 years. So what gives?

I don’t see “belief” as binary like you do, I think as long as there are differences in how strongly people can believe things you have to accept that conviction and belief are distinct from each other. — DingoJones

This is a poor distinction. Rather, the pair should be belief -- relevance of said belief to a particular person's life.

For example, you probably believe that radium-226 has a half-life of 1600 years. But unless you work with radioactive elements or in some relation to them, said belief has little or no relevance for you. It's also inactionable for you. (It's relevant and actionable for those who plan to build nuclear waste storage facilities, for example.)

It's similar with religious beliefs: for the most part, they bear little relevance to a person's life and are inactionable. The belief in, say, the immaculate conception of Jesus is inactionable for the vast majority of Christians, except indirectly (!) for, say, translators of holy texts or inquisitors (given that wrong beliefs about Jesus are cause for accusations of heresy and according actions).

How would one act on the belief "God exist"?
How can one act confidently on the commandments supposedly given by this God?

Except for formal religious actions (such as praying, venerating), there is nothing to do as far as the belief "God exist" goes. Given this, the commandments supposedly given by this God also can't bear much weight to a person's life.

This approach has more explanatory power than the dichotomy belief -- conviction. The fact is that you can have all the conviction you want in a belief like, for instance, the immaculate conception of Jesus, but you still can't act on it.

I have a question: Why does the discourse about this have to be so superficial??

The risks from being vaccinated are demonstrably far smaller than the risks associated with getting the disease.

I put anti-vax on the same footing as young-earth creationism and climate change denial. In that sense, I'm not the least 'anti-science'. — Wayfarer

Sure. But 5 in 200,000 is a very small personal risk. I've had my shot, and I think you have made a poor choice. I wonder how you took into account the risk, should everyone follow your example. — Banno

While I don't wish that upon either of you, I'd still like to see how you'd do, what you'd say if you were the ones ending up with the negative side-effects of the vaccine, and with all the associated costs. Such as having suffered a stroke and ending up homeless because you couldn't pay the medical bills.

What the two of you are doing here is scientism -- an unwarranted optimism in the power of scientific solutions, and a public reviling and misrepresenting of anyone who doesn't fall in line with that optimism.


Mind you, I will get vaccinated, as the national plan here foresees. But share in your unwarranted optimism about science I will not.

Baker would have us not vaccinate because of a relatively small risk. — Banno

See, this is the hysteria I'm talking about. Making stuff up like that, black-and-white thinking.
Either you're hysterically with us, or you're hysterically against us!!!!


Fuck you for this.
Millennia of philosophy down the drain.

*sigh*