You illustrate part of the problem for people who learn certain assumptions about meaning in life and how things are supposed to be, like prejudices, yet they don't learn how to be critical and objective thinkers to challenge what they think. Our brains can run wild and feral if we have bad thinking habits. When I hear people have "their own reality" it suggests they have some distorted view of how things are and colored with a list of biases, prejudices, assumptions, and other filters that prevent clearer understanding of how things are. I'm not suggesting we humans can have absolute knowledge. What I suggesting is that we should endeavor to have as objective and true understanding of how things are that we are capable of having. That means self-awareness. It means being able to assess the self's beliefs and biases that color how we perceive the environment and life experience.
Who holds the definition of how things are, though?
How do you do that when their reality is their view of the objective world?
If you take a whole village of people who was born, raised, and will die in their beliefs and their objective reality incorporates the supernatural, unless "we know the keys to reality" whose to say they are wrong and we are right?
Most cultures so told don't separate spirituality and, how to say, the material world. That separation is foreign-it's all one reality and objectivity is and in many communities based on those supernatural characteristics. So how do they question it insofar they have no basis in comparison to know whose right and whose wrong?
This question illustrates part of the problem of how we think. What we understand about how things are is not up to people. It's not a dogma that anyone has. What reality is is just how things are, and we humans can work to understand how things are and separate out the personal meanings we often impose on what we observe.
To many how things are incorporates spiritual things. Dogma or traditions are used to understand or put structure to it but doesn't negate its incorporation to life if not in itself defines it.
What's their basis and criteria of comparison?
As an example any of us can see a sunset and feel a wave of emotions about the wonder of life. That experience doesn't;t inform us anything about what we observe. The planet is spinning and that is all how matter behaves according to the laws of physics. Yet we humans seek meaning and want to feel significance in our life experience, so our brains do function in a way that creates that meaning. Those who see a sunset and believe it proves God's wonder at work are experiencing "their reality" but it's colored with loads of learned assumptions.
There's nothing wrong with this unless one who believes in god believes that god controls the laws of physics. If it's just awe and finding meaning to the workings of the physical universe and its signify, that's fine. In other words, if it is the god of the gaps, I can see some irrationality in it but in itself is harmless. If it's just putting meaning to the physical universe, its both rational and harmless.
To my mind it's fine to believe whatever a person wants. I also think they have an obligation to understand that they have learned to believe a God exists and this vision of a sunset has nothing to do with confirming that these beliefs are true. A 6 year old can still enjoy Christmas after learning Santa isn't real.
I don't believe this should be an issue if it doesn't lead them to harm anyone. In and of itself, it's a harmless association. I don't feel the need to pop someone's bubble unless I'm saying I know everything about life to determine what they "should" believe and not believe-which is exactly what a lot of believers do vis versa.
Hey, maybe it's the Matrix, right? Maybe A. Maybe B. Maybe C. Maybe anything. Ask questions. But don't get lost in being confounded by possibilities, especially those that are unlikely. We have to be responsible for the questions we ask. I see people ask questions that we CAN'T answer. What do we do with these questions? Set them on a shelf because they don't help us understand anything. I see people ask questions so they can be further confused and uncertain just to see them retreat into an illusion like some religious framework. It's a trap that the self sets and then ends up in.
I can see that. I also see people ask questions to learn more about themselves in a place of an unknown universe. Helps with their sanity.
Really? How many non-skeptics aren't religious? What you describe here isn't accurate. Non-skeptics tend to fall into some framework that isn't consistent with facts or observations. And these frameworks tend to be what they adopted from their social experience, like being Catholic. Do you think non-skeptics believe in a god because they can't explain why their child died? Objectively the child died from Leukemia, but to a parent that learned a loving God exists, how does the child's death make sense? Look at creationists, they acknowledge that we can't explain how life started on earth, so they say "God did it". Skeptics don't assume that, they just acknowledge we don't know.
I don't believe you got what I'm saying.
Skeptics want knowns and want facts to compare what is accurate and what is not based on those known factors. So, they can't do anything with what they don't know (an X factor) so they put it aside.
Non-skeptics have that X factor, that unknown, incorporated in their lives. They don't need to compare, contrast, and prove when the "mystery of life" is something they believe they need to accept regardless the language, dogma, or traditions in which they use to explain it.
The only people I can think of that use god of the gaps over medicine is JW (and another group I can't think of at the moment) when it comes to blood transfusions or medical treatments in general. All believers I know so far will say god has something to do with whether blessing or not children's sickness but not insofar they will opt for that god of the gaps from treatment. Their belief gives them solace but not to where they don't let doctors treat their illness.
I do believe most non-skeptic god believers believe their child died of Leukemia. How they deal with it and explaining agency because of their grief makes sense. That doesn't mean they don't understand how life and death works.
The only topic I remember non-skeptics saying "god did it" without any outside influence are miracles.
I haven't met creationists before. Most people I know believe they don't know how god made the space and the universe, the big bang, or something along the lines of an invisible force.
Skeptics NEED to scrutinize bias and assumptions because those factors can often interfere with understanding what is true about how things are. When I see a sunset I can feel awe like a theist. But I'm not going to interpret what I see and feel as evidence of the God that my society taught me about. I scrutinize what my thoughts and feelings do to keep my understanding about things are true and accurate. We follow the facts.
If it helps them live in the world, yes... especially when it comes to the sciences.
You don't have to. I don't either. I understand what they mean by god-experience but using that term and using it as an label to my experience makes me uncomfortable. That doesn't mean others believe anything more irrational than I do because I chose not to use that language and see it from their perspective. Non-skeptics even think I am like them because of how I experience things... we as humans we have something in common... but using dogma and spiritual terms to describe it and god of the gaps are harmless. I see it rational as a psychological and cultural need not a scientific one.
in full armor, i do not directly believe what i saw is possible. But i know what i saw was a "real" sight but i can not explain it.
