contact@onbelief.orgReader Responses: Page 9
Leo:Just a word to say that I am very much enjoying your web site, which I stumbled on in my efforts to understand the concept of belief from a philosophical perspective. My son is a philosophy (PhD style) candidate studying in Scotland. His special interest is is an aspect of belief, which at present I am not sure I can follow. But my efforts to learn more in this direction (and re philosophy in general) is proving to be a most enjoyable undertaking. And your site is helping me to make progress ! Thanks -
Commentary: Many thanks Leo.
Reg: Wonderful site….really fine writing, thinking and a welcome tone that speaks thoughtfully without the tone of condemnation of “the other”
Having thought a good deal about how people come to positions of faith and belief, I recently had one of those “aha” moments while reading an article about the future of oil…the article, detailed and well documented pointed out that there was plenty of oil and that technology will emerge to find it and extract it allowing prices to remain relatively unchanged. I had read an equally well documented book a few years ago that supported the view that oil production was peaking. I realized that I had “believed” the book from a few years ago, invested considerable money in building an oil refinery based on that premise and the belief, being reinforced with action and investment, left me without any objectivity about the facts. No matter what I now read about oil, I filter and interpret the “facts and interpretations” to support my “belief system”
Nothing earth-shattering about the above. But it did lead me to consider that we all operate in some random “faith based” system regarding the bear or bull markets, climate change, left or right leaning politics, political issues, parenting styles, religion, etc ad nauseam. Somehow thoughtfully or spontaneously, we cobble together a personal belief system fairly early on and find our lives hostage to supporting those belief systems by reading, association, and various forms of becoming vested in those world views with increasing calcification over time. As one who has long thought of myself as a “non-believer”, I am struck with the thought that we are all “believers”…we can't not be. Maybe, it is biological necessity. It is the way the brain is wired to our survival and that whether we come to our beliefs through study, epiphany, belonging etc, belief still occupies the same role in our survival, i.e. the simplification of choices to allow us to focus on the next set of indeterminate challenges. And that with aging, comes a calcification of the belief system and an increasing unwillingness to consider change unless forced from the outside.
I would be interested in seeing your thoughts on this and the calcification process and what are the conditions for personal and societal willingness to change beliefs.
Commentary: Thank you for your generous remark. I strongly agree with your analysis and find it very thought provoking. Your question is also very fundamental concerning the nature of belief.
Answer One: Individual Bias Wins Out for the Population
I have pointed elsewhere that extreme intellectual vacillation at a personal level leads to indecision and a lack of direction and so ultimately to a lack of change and a failure to make what we might feel is progress either in an intellectual or practical sense. If we as you say 'calcify' a belief by reinforcement, the particular beliefs that we adopt (and the decisions that flow from them) can of course end up with either unwelcome or welcome results, because meaningful and accurate prediction is difficult.
It is as though we experiment with beliefs at a personal level and communally as a society. On a population basis different people will adopt divergent beliefs and take different decisions and so we have a fairly randomised experimental investigation of possible belief and decision 'spaces'. This divergence would seem to me like a randomised Monte Carlo modeling process on a computer. By sheer chance some beliefs will prove productive or a have lasting impact whereas others will disappear or be blind endings and so become irrelevant to future generations.
Although perhaps very opaque for some people, another useful scientific analogy is the conceptual similarity between belief and human decision making and the movement of bacteria. Some bacteria go nowhere in particular despite the fact that they can swim very energetically. They merely undergo a 3 dimensional 'random walk (click for illustration)'. A population of non-directional bacteria would on average be expected to go no where in particular, merely occupy a bigger space over time. This for me represents people who cannot formulate a series of sequential beliefs and a culture that is stagnating. Other bacteria capable of a biased random walk can travel towards a source of chemoattractant nutrition and so survive and flourish despite the fact that sustenance is not immediately at hand. Those capable of bias in their 'walk' can be attracted or repelled and so travel along a particular path despite the fact that they do not adopt a completely persistent course. Bias (in the statistical sense) over a series of actions rather than consistency is enough to cause very significant change. For me these represent people who unlike automatons vacillate to some extent but nevertheless end up experiencing change as individuals and as a society.
At a population level there would seem to be an intrinsic benefit to a persistent individual bias, unless we have reached a complete equilibrium in which case no change is necessary. By individuals pursuing various choices ( within the space of all possible choices) the most satisfactory can be encountered within the population as a whole. However by definition we lead a far from equilibrium existence with a lack of predictability. In such situations we become, in Pascal's terms, philosophical gamblers in the sense that we bet on the value of a particular direction of travel or the value of a particular belief. Age will inevitably lead us to particular patterns of 'gambling' for we are creatures innately programmed for pattern recognition.
Answer Two: Personal Experience and Culture
When I began writing on this subject I also considered myself a 'non-believer', by the commonly used sense of the term. I had a view that faith was something associated with the unprovable and the improbable. Indeed such attitudes are very prevalent and are even fostered by philosophers who should know better.
More generally I had an outlook which overemphasised the value of 'facts' and logic. Formal education (particularly in science) can have the effect of causing us to views ideas as either 1 ) 'facts' 2) if not facts then at least hypotheses to be accepted and acted upon 3) ideas of presently indeterminate value and so worth investigating further by analysis or research 4) 'beliefs' to be either treated as nonsense or superstition and resulting from ignorance, incomplete knowledge, speculation or illogical thinking.
However when I came to view 'belief' as having 2 essential components 'utility' and 'emotional impact' my 'world view' began to change. Rather than merely ask, 'based on the evidence, is a belief logically true of false ?' I have come to think we should have a much more nuanced approach. We should consider how true an idea might be. How useful will it be to act on the notion that an idea is true? And of equal importance what satisfaction will I obtain from adopting the position that an idea is true or partly true or simply useful? As I have said elsewhere, it is an irrelevance that you know 'the truth' it is merely a question of what you decide given the evidence. Taken to extreme we can of course allow this approach can lead us to very firmly 'believe in' completely nonsensical ideas and practices. We can even seek to justify such beliefs by rational argument and systematic observation. So it is that we have many professional apologists for the bizarre. The pseudoscience of homeopathy is, for example, a marvelous example of a deviant and bizarre experiment (preparation of remedies with nothing in them) on a complex system (humans). Homeopathy is largely innocuous due to the dominant effect of mainstream science, technology and medicine. Thus in evolutionary terms it appears to have been largely without effect, so far. However what would happen if the evolutionary selection pressures were to change? If some new and deadly (flu) virus were to emerge by biological evolution and conventional medicine had no effective response people would look for alternatives. If homeopathy were then to claim control of that virus biological natural selection would soon take care of its adherents. That fictional scenario is rather extreme, however it surely exemplifies an underlying selection process of ideas and practices that is continually operating in our culture.
In order to address your question I feel we first need to look at the way beliefs arise. You have identified various ways by which we as individuals come to a particular belief state or hold to a belief system. I feel that by also examining the wider culture in which we are embedded and address the influence of that culture on us we can arrive at a more comprehensive view. Although your question is formulated at a personal level, which is of course perfectly valid, I feel it is advantageous to also take a more global perspective and consider how individual decisions concerning belief influence our culture as a whole and vice versa. Sadly I do not know how to even begin such a very complex task.
It would appear that we try a variety of ideas and behaviours then pragmatically pursue what seems to work or makes us feel good. In other words our individual as well as our communal existence is experimental. However in many circumstances it is difficult to assess the effect of our beliefs and behaviours and we thus come to rely on or 'believe in' all sort of bizarre cultural experiments either devised by ourselves or 'crystallized' over time by others. (Even when we do reach a productive analysis science, mathematics and computing teach us that we cannot expect to accurately predict the detailed behaviour of complex systems.)
When we consider less practical and more abstract beliefs there is a danger that we will centre our analysis on a process of introspection. Rather than contemplate our internal thinking machinery it can sometimes be more productive to ask how does an idea come to be regarded as useful, true or satisfying in our culture. However it is often difficult to disentangle to what extent our ideas are culturally dependant and to what extent are they the consequence of our survival needs and thus influenced directly and indirectly by our evolutionary history.
Nevertheless I now feel it is almost impossible to overestimate the extent to which our culture shapes our beliefs and influences our lives in a practical sense If you were set down naked into a world without a pre-established human culture you would have no developed language and be largely devoid of all life skills that we presently regard as important. You would not even know what plants would be safe and nutritious to eat. Indeed even the idea of good nutrition might never occur to you. In other words you would be extremely vulnerable. By considering such extreme scenarios it becomes clear that modern life as we experience it and the ideas that we possess are almost entirely the product of our culture although we may have a very individualised route to acquiring particular beliefs. If much of our thinking and practice is the product of our culture, the selection pressure that this must exert on the sort of individuals who will survive and reproduce must be enormous.
Clearly there will be conflicting pressures at work. Those who are biologically well adapted to a culture will survive to reproduce. On the other hand some of those who question our existing culture either scientifically, technologically, politically or socially will find new survival strategies and niches and in so doing might influence the evolution of our culture as a whole. Others who seek new strategies will fail to thrive. In some cases those who adopt more conservative strategies will be more successful than those who favour a novel approach. By this combination of approaches our culture will evolve even in the absence of explosively fast scientific and technological change.
When as individuals we adopt a particular belief system and find a niche for ourselves within our culture we have in effect worked out a survival strategy that maximizes our emotional rewards or allows us practical advantage. Changing that strategy is inherently risky. For some the perception of risk associated with change will outweigh the desirability of the new. For others curiosity will prevail and they will advocate change.
During the course of an individual's lifetime the reinforcement of our 'world view' with increasing age and experience will bring the illusion of certainties and with that understanding the emotional comfort and particular behavioral strategies. Having survived past the age of reproductive competence into older adulthood our beliefs, no matter how bizarre, are likely to have less impact unless we have a very public role in our society. This seems to be something politicians instinctively realize.
Answer 3. The Expert
One way to address your question is to examine the way in which some people come to be regarded as 'expert' in their fields of supposed competence. Those people are relevant because we come to view their belief system as desirable. If we were medieval people we might be happy to have the medical expert place leeches on us. We are perhaps better viewing expertise as a cultural position rather than a statement of intrinsic meaning. Nevertheless it is instructive to ask ourselves what we might expect of experts as a paradigm for belief formation. Clearly we would expect them to be knowledgeable and also practiced in their art. We would also expect them to have learned from their own mistakes and the errors of others. We might expect them to have made predictions or extrapolations and tested their expert view against such predictions. It might also be reasonable to expect them to arrive at some rules-of-thumb or heuristics by which they can ease the process of decision making. However what happens when the expert is faced with incomplete evidence? She needs to extrapolate beyond her knowledge and experience. In this circumstance we might wish the expert to explain the evidence to us and so arrive at some concussion for ourselves based on her opinion. In circumstances where we either need or want to arrive at a decision it could be very frustrating if the expert did not produce an opinion on which we could act. For example a radiologist who upon examination of an x-ray will not commit herself to a differential diagnosis would be of no particular use to the physician or patient.
So why do we crave definitive beliefs in the absence of incomplete evidence? I argue that this stems primarily from our need to act in the world. We all have a need for expertise albeit in a watered down form. Our culture however would seem to engender in us the desire to reach definitive conclusions and go beyond what we can know with any reasonable degree of certainty even where their is no manifest need. This in part because through our education we have learned that practical and intellectual progress can be made by investigation. However our desire to formulate new beliefs must also be a reflection of our innate curiosity. Some people however are simply more curious than others. Indeed I see, by comparing my children, that a questioning attitude and enquiring mind are not directly related to creativity. Some will creatively arrive at a new synthesis others will be able to ask more fundamental mechanistic questions about how things come to be as we find them. Even for the more creative expert 'calcification' will always be a possibility.
Follow up Responses from Reg:
I concur with your statement “we crave definitive beliefs …to act in the world” which raises the question above about how “beliefs will be formed in a post modernist world'…would enjoy seeing your thoughts on that.
My niece ( age 23) just sent me a piece (google: quarter life crisis) about the generational challenges growing up with “ambiguity of boundaries and belief, sense of self etc which I think is a cultural and personal challenge for a generation growing up in a post-modern world. Post-modern (google it) is a vast quagmire of verbosity, but my summary definition is the “rejection of the grand narratives” that we have been raised with. When one rejects the grand narrative, a whole new set of challenges is created…how to build a world on nihilism? That leads to a whole other discussion, but an interesting one that really seems to be a fundamental challenge moving forward…how is belief formed in a post modernist world? If you disconnect from the past narrative, deconstruct, etc…where do you start and where do you go?
I have traveled the same path from overemphasizing the “facts and logic” to viewing and respecting the functionality (emotional, psychologically, culturally) of the belief. Adding to your example, I had the occasion to re-think the “replacement belief” as the lesser of two evils….while with the Masai tribe in Kenya last year where the female genital mutilation is still practiced, the local missionary (a converted Masai), told me that when people convert to Christianity, they stop the FGM…having never been a supporter of Christian missions, I was surprised to find myself won over by the “lesser of two evils”…better to be a Christian and stop performing this brutal ritual, than to be part of the ancient belief and brutalize the young girls…but then, that's me and my beliefs entering in..but that is who we are…ultimately,we are a set of random beliefs that may or may not be consistent, provable or particularly useful, but we seem to be willing to fight and die for them…why is that do you think? Why would someone fight and die for the abstract ‘flag” or “honor” etc?
Following on that, it is hard to condemn “giving hope through faith/conversions” for the destitute…even if we consider it an opium for the poor, who can condemn the benefits of the anesthesia? The benefits to the grieving spouse or mother that the dying husband or son is “going to heaven” seems preferable to the belief that “this is the end of the road”.
When you speak of culture shaping beliefs, one of the backdrop beliefs is the receptivity to change. The price of changing beliefs in a culture can be severe in traditional cultures. My wife (see www.traumainstitute.org ) is an international expert on societal trauma with emphasis on the Mid-east. For a child to change beliefs there is almost a ticket of excommunication. Religious conversions are subject to death. Even violating the political consensus (for example a Palestinian supporting peace with Israel ) can be lethal. So the adaptation of belief in historically oriented cultures (where beliefs of elders are revered) is at odds with adaptation rates in the west where “new” is better” commercial culture has seeped into the very core belief areas and identity. As the pace of change accelerates, the pace of change of beliefs is at odds with the survival in many cases. You have addressed some of this more abstractly, but it would be interesting to see you expand on this. I have a theory that as the pace of change increases, larger portion of the population is unable to adapt…and those become susceptible to becoming “orthodox” or fundamentalists where there is a comfort in the old tried and true metaphors, images etc…so we are seeing the rise of global fundamentalism and traditionalism as result of the increasing pace of change…and that this will continue.
Commentary: Many thanks for such stimulating feedback.
Abuse of Power
You raise interesting points about the abuse of power (or Imperium in the Roman sense) that often comes to be associated with established belief systems of all sorts, be they social, legal, political, religious or technological. I have argued on another page it is the science and technology, rather than religion, that is perhaps the most worrying of all in this respect ( see: Can science by itself provide us with a way to live?).
Pursuit of Things and Objectives
Although there is a severe ecological change awaiting our technological pursuit of the bigger, the faster and the shinier, it is extremely difficult to see the direction that this will take us in terms of social organization. The increased scale of war in the past one hundred years, which rapidly evolving technology has made possible, is for me, more alarming for it suggests that technology has worsened our abuses of social hierarchy. Similarly the increased devastation and globalization of war suggests that our political culture has not evolved rapidly enough to bring us to a more peaceful way to live despite the fact that this would seem to be a desirable goal.
The Rise of Fundamentalism is an Illusion
Despite the problems that our culture faces, I think however the view that there is a rise of "fundamentalism and traditionalism" does not stand up to any serious analysis. The world has not suddenly or fundamentally changed because of the terrorist attacks of Belfast, Bali, London, Madrid, or New York, or the atrocities that our countries have recently inflicted in other parts of the world. Sadly these events are part of an extremely old cultural continuum. The wars that Europeans have engaged in for at least 2,000 years or the barbarities with which very large groups of Africans have treated their neighbours, or the viscous empire building that has been prevalent for much of recorded history is not dissimilar to our present time in many respects.
In addition, this mantra appears to have become a very recent political excuse for the way we in the economically developed world lead our lives, view others, and as a justification for the way we treat other countries. When we encounter some novel form of aggression focused on us or our allies (such as the horrendous events of 9/11 in New York) it seems that we can easily manufacture lies and self-deception that give us a spurious justification for responding with equal barbarity. When the Christian President Bush and his evil henchman Blair in the UK launch an unprovoked all out war on Iraq we are some how expected to see the highly professional bombing of people and property in a different light from the more amateurish Islamist terrorists. We after all are bringing our superior democracy as we did in the age of the British Empire.
Optimistically we can point to the fact that in Europe Christian fundamentalism is definitely on the wane. In the former Soviet Union communism is extinguished. Chinese society has undergone the most spectacular change in the whole of human history within the past 20-40 years. Perhaps most encouragingly of all we know that the Chinees have succeeded in curbing family size and population growth on a massive scale. A new realization seems to be slowly dawning on the populace of many industrial countries that our present way of living cannot be sustained in the long term.
Looking to the New with Optimism
We should instead be optimistically replacing the old grand narratives of pre-modern thinking with a constructivist and experimental approach based on assumed, or even idealized ethical values. Such values need to be underpinned with a more analytical frame of mind in which we teach our children the importance of philosophical materialism and the virtues and pitfalls of experimental pragmatism. We also desperately need to teach the value of observation and analysis. Whether or not we will be successful is another matter.
Nevertheless our culture is steeped in the beneficial communal experiences (or experiments) of at least 30,000 years so we have reasons for optimism. Along with these benefits come the evolving social narratives (or myths) accumulated over long periods. So it will continue to be.
The inconvenience, uncertainty and impracticality of rediscovering new ways to be during our short lives (and our even shorter reproductive periods) when coupled with a reticence to take risks will inevitably mean that much of our ethical and social milieu will be a adopted without rigorous analysis on an individual basis. Any other course of action would probably seem wearisome to many. Thus our practical lives and thinking are to a very large extent shaped by our inherited culture. The increased "pace of change" however brings to the fore tensions that have always existed.
Since there is little point in living without some sense of optimism about what we can do or achieve in future, we should look forward to what can be achieved by the dissemination of new value systems that will come to replace what we presently perceive as legitimate. Clearly we can change. The civil rights movement in the US clearly modified although not entirely eradicated extremely racist internal practices within the boundaries of that country. Such change should give us hope.
I strongly suspect that the increased pace of change that 'successful' cultural strategies can engender merely serves to make obvious or highlight the orthodoxies of the past not make them any more prevalent. I should add that they also potentially make previous ways of thinking either dangerous or redundant at an ever faster rate. (Perhaps this is what has been exercising you.) It is one thing to be highly aggressive with a spear, for example, and quite another to be aggressive with a Kalashnikov or a fighter aircraft. Clearly if we are to survive but remain in increasingly widespread possession of thermobaric and fusion bombs there needs to be a very severe moderation of present social and political norms. The legitimacy of physically attacking 'out groups' and even the recognition of alien 'out groups' needs to be modified by new sets of values.
The Problem of Satisfaction
We also have the difficult problem of satisfaction (or happiness) to contend with, i.e. the emotional value or content of beliefs. A belief might have no utility, no evidence in its support but it can still give us satisfaction for reasons that can be hard to evaluate logically. Religion can only survive because this is indeed the case. The solution might be to attempt to combine satisfaction with logic and enquiry. It would seem that we that we need to learn to derive satisfaction from scrutinizing evidence and adopt ideas on a 'probably true' basis rather than want to know 'the truth'. The old cultural norm of going along with the local majority in situations of rapid technological change may even be counterproductive since the old ways of doing things become inappropriate. The evolution of new technology gives rise to new ways of living that need to be contained within new cultural norms. More social experiments are required in the novel situations that technology presents.
As we are in the end almost entirely pragmatic there are potentially many possible pitfalls. The consequence of our limited reasoning capacity and the inherent unpredictability of the world, will inevitably mean we will choose new (or resort to old) beliefs and actions with unintended consequences.
Rejecting Cultural Narratives in Favour of Ethical Beliefs
Despite our desire to cling to particular ideas of truth we as a civilisation are coerced by the nature of things into believing and acting iteratively. Even religion evolves. We should consider beliefs to be experimental propositions to be tested in the light of experience be it in the laboratory, in the marketplace, the clinic, the parliament, the courts, or house of religion. Technological change of course facilities new iterations of social relations. We should embrace this idea.
If we are not to live in states of civil strife, war and unhappiness we need to evolve evidence-based value systems through our social experiments rather than rely on narratives that claim legitimacy without observational or logical justification. We need to apply these at a personal, community and national level. However we should not come to regard new or re-evaluated social norms and personal values as true, merely consider their utility and seek to optimize them. If our values cause unhappiness to ourselves or others we should consider modifying them. How much these social and ethical values that we come adopt should be regarded as rigid principles needs to always remain open to debate.
As a philosophical relativist I feel that it should become natural for us to want cast off some of our inherited cultural values and narratives when they seem to have become, in the light of experience, inappropriate. The rise of analytical philosophy (and science as one of its branches) should make us more critical of the value of apparent truths and should help us to distinguish useful and partially useful beliefs from the bizarre whether or not the are very well established in our culture. I personally see most religions as surprisingly bizarre although I recognize the great comfort they provide. It is truly amazing how well entrenched the God idea, for example, has become within a variety of cultures despite the rise of science. I am optimistic however that this will fade in the long term due to the encroachment of scientific materialism into domains that were once the preserve of religion. We should not however restrict ourselves to escaping the idea of truth as conveyed by grand narratives of religion we must also consider politics or even science in that light should (should this become appropriate) and ask what is the utility of a belief and what is its supporting evidence. We wantonly wage destruction in the name of democracy when the excuse arises, since we adhere to the narrative that democracy, as we presently practice it, is the only acceptable way to organize our social relations within communities and nations. We should instead seek to know both the weaknesses and strengths of our belief systems and develop the practice in ourselves of 'considering the converse' and evaluating the evidence associated with the converse. However as you point out local orthodoxies develop within our cultures of ideas and are pursued without question or understanding.
If we are indeed to place value and ethic before narrative we could start with the 'Golden Rule' applied personally and politically. (This would of course mean that we would not wantonly declare war on other countries and invade their territory, such as both of our countries have done recently.) However we need to be cognisant of the principles of biological evolution and realise that survival is often competitive. Aggression and cheating can have their rewards in relative survival terms. If I steal your goods, your resources and your land it might increase my reproductive success. To deny the possible value of aggression and rule breaking is foolishness, however to condone it may become more self-destructive in the long run.
Evolve or Perish
It has always been true that we need to modify our pursuit of happiness with the biological imperative to survive and reproduce. In the past 50 years however it has also become more apparent that the success of high-functioning cultures bring with them the same perils as for any other species. Too much success in surviving and the consequent over-population will almost inevitably bring population crashes. We are not free of the same ecological and evolutionary principles that influence the size of other animals populations despite our ingenuity and resourcefulness. Technology might also bring us to the point where we either over-expand our population, aggressively destroy one another, or make the world uninhabitable for ourselves. (One engineer I spoke to recently who is concerned with the problems of future electrical power generation at a national level suggested that we might consider ourselves to be over-successful parasites on the earth. I do not go along with that entirely but see his point and the value of that idea.)
Looking into the very distant future we must expect to evolve or become extinct or perhaps both. There is no a priori reason why we as a species are not subject to the same restraints that applied to every extinct species before us. If we are to survive in the long term however it seems likely to me that our civilisation in the next 50-100 years will be have to accommodate enormous social and political change and much of it will not be peaceful since we are inherently competitive and aggressive. The geopolitical patterns of aggression will change. Continued industrialization, population increase, population demographics, resource problems and climate change will be some of the catalysts. There will of course be other challenges that we cannot predict. Scientific education and technological development will not abate our aggressive behaviour merely change its method of delivery. We need a new emphasis on ethical values as experimental hypothesis to be tried and tested.
Living Happily without 'Truth'
At a philosophical level I feel that we can optimistically accept that although there are no infallible truths, gods or indispensable gurus there are perhaps ways to moderate our competitiveness and aggression and deal more appropriately with the social challenges our civilisation will face. (I unashamedly acknowledge that this is a utopian concept and one that gives me personal satisfaction.) There will however be no fixed goal to be achieved or any fixed rules to be applied for all time. As I have said in the preface, we are perpetually living in a state of personal and communal experimentation because even our presence in the world brings change. The sooner we acknowledge this state of affairs the better. There are no quick fixes, no ultimate truths, no predetermined or inherently predictable paths for our culture to follow; only trial and error. We should be content with that prospect. Many however will be blind or resistant to new possibilities and will resort to what has gone before, as has always been the case. It is on that way our social evolution will continue.
Your Response
Please indicate if your response is not intended for publication on this site. Your response might be shortened or paraphrased or be restricted to a particular point you have made.
I am happy to discuss the ideas expressed on this site with religious and non-religious people alike. However despite my contentious remarks about religion, I no longer see any personal value in debating the correctness of particular details of the many theologies that exist with the religious or 'non-believers' and do not obtain any satisfaction from doing so. Perhaps you could direct such comments to a 'believer', priest, minster of religion, theologian, philosopher, atheist or skeptical thinker as you think appropriate. I hope you will not see that request as arrogance on my part but merely as a desire to move on to other areas of debate, which at this time in my life, I view as more productive. If you have been personally insulted by what I have written you have my sincere apologies for I seek to challenge rather than insult. I can say very little to those who see all challenges to their beliefs as an insult, especially if those challenges come in the form of newspaper cartoons. Otherwise your comment is very welcome.
On the Nature of Belief
www.onbelief.org
Scotland, 12th October 2007 and thereafter
Copyright 2007 onwards
