Comment by anthonypasq
5 days ago
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
> this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
And what of people that were convinced by rational argument that a God must exist? To some (Aristotle, Plotinus, Leibniz, etc) it is irrational to deny such existence:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...
You also seem to imply that rationality is a single monolithic thing:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whose_Justice%3F_Which_Rationa...
Do people really lose their religion because of logic and reason? I’ve never seen this. There is usually some deeper story. If someone asks me why I don’t believe, despite being raised in the church, I’ll simply say it didn’t make sense and babble on about reason and logic if they push. This is just a shield to avoid sharing the truth with people I don’t trust on a very deep level.
Yes. Your experience is not every experience.
This is why I said “usually”, and provided an example from my life, instead of saying “always” as if it was a universal fact.
No, but it's extremely common.
Whenever I've met people who claim to have "reasoned" their way out of religion it has always been extremely shallow teenage rebellion, and always driven by feelings.
Even aalewis was "euphoric".
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> every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
Do you know any specific examples of this? All examples I know are like people collected some experiences, they needed some mental map for it, and they've built one that doesn't involve religion. In the process of building they really listened to rational arguments, but rational arguments were not the reason for the change, they were the means.
The author of the article complain that people do not listen to their arguments, but if we take a closer look, and look for bigger things, not things like the best way to write bubblesort, people are not ready to change their views while in an argument. They could listen for arguments, but they wouldn't change their position. It would be stupid to change the position in a heat of an argument. It may be stupid to change the position as a result of an argument. People needs time and may be a lot of conversations to look at things from different angles, to think it through. And after that it is very hard to pinpoint what was the reason of the loss of the religion. People talk with other, get new ideas, and they live their lives applying these ideas to the reality. Sometimes it leads to changes in their worldview.
I was reading the article and it made me think. I read through the comments here, and yours was resonating a bit with what was on my mind. So, I apologize for butting in.
The article was quite interesting, and basically was something I already noticed myself in a way. But it bugged me immensely that the author seemingly just gave up on the whole issue, that nothing can be done.
I don't want to go hard on the author, it's just my subjective feeling I got, but halfway through article went into some business leader speech, like something intended for a LinkedIn post. It also irks me when I see stuff like that getting weaponize into another tool for the cutthroat, capitalistic hellhole we live in, as if it didn't already done enough damage. And it smelled to me like some LLM writing, but that could just the author using a bit of marketing-esque, and that's what a lot of LLM training data consist of. Though, again don't want to sound harsh, just pressed some buttons in me that are not the author fault probably.
When I read the article, I just thought that there could be some way to change other person mind, while not engaging in fruitless arguments. And it kind of relates to your comment, but I think it could be more productive to instead engage with another person argument, and hear them out. And instead of directly attacking, just ask to explain their argument, not adversarial, but as one interested in the idea and curious about it. Make the position more like student - teacher, in a way. And that could maybe made the other person engage with their argument, to think through more deeply about it and rationalize it. And if it's incorrect that could be step forward to change their views.
Of course, that is simplifying the issue, and I'm not a smart person that could tackle it. Or it's something that was already known about, and just not working in most cases, anyway. I'm just maybe too naively hopefull that some more kindness in the world instead of treating every other person as a competition would provide something better.
I always interpreted it more as saying that the person has to reason themselves out of their position.
A similar saying that I think I picked up here would be, "I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."
> I always interpreted it more as saying that the person has to reason themselves out of their position.
But that interpretation would make the second half a moot point, wouldn't it?
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
If you want to say a person can only reason themselves into any position, it could become "You can't reason someone out of a position."
No because I believe you CAN reason a person out of a position they reasoned themselves into, but if they hold a position that they DIDN'T reason themselves into, THEY have to do the reasoning.
I had a little chat recently with a glaciologist and he told me about a student who had come from a very religious family. The guy had to learn all about the formation of Earth, etc, and decided to give up geology because it would put him at odds with his family and friends and he decided that they were more important.
So, you could say he rationally decided to keep his irrational beliefs.
Isn't that just point #2 from above? He rationally decided that his friends and family, and the values he is a part of, are more important to him, then being in geology, and some deep truth that it would supposed show him. Maybe he just didn't care enough about _this_ truth, compared to being part of the world he is in.
People aren't convinced by rational arguments. Someone who does not believe in god will not be convinced to believe by a proof of god's existence, and someone with faith will not become an atheist because someone debunks the proof.
The rational arguments form a structure that beliefs can hang on, but the core process of changing ones mind is not rational. Like many people, I have changed my thinking on many topics over the course of my life, and arguments that I used to find convincing I now consider to be filled with holes, and arguments I used to think were paper-thin now seem stronger than steel. You can find a rational argument for most beliefs, and you can tear down a rational argument for most beliefs.
Reason just isn't how we form our beliefs at all, it's how we convince ourselves that the things we believe are true.
> Someone who does not believe in god will not be convinced to believe by a proof of god's existence
I'm sure some atheists could be convinced. The rule "all atheists will reject evidence of God" seems false. The rule "all atheists will accept evidence of God" also seems false. Life is more complicated than that. It depends on the atheist and on the evidence.
This is not true, Atheists position is that there is no God. Agnostics position is that there may, or may not be a God.
In this case, you're talking about Agnosticism rather than Atheism.
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> Someone who does not believe in god will not be convinced to believe by a proof of god's existence.
But of course that's not true. I would believe in a God with proof of their existence. I simply have not encountered such proof that hold up to my standards of proof of such an extraordinary claim.
> I simply have not encountered such proof that hold up to my standards of proof of such an extraordinary claim.
And you never will. This is pretty much my point!
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But you DID NOT reason themselves out of a religion. You might have planted a seed that then the other person developed on their own. Still no small feat, but it's fundamentally different.
This is conflating all religious following with lack of reason. There are those that are fully unreasonable and those that find it reasonable from their current perspective.
It's also conflating holding a rational position as coming to hold that position by rational means
You can believe the right thing for the wrong reasons, and I would argue all humans are in that bucket nearly all the time.