What are you trying to do when you debate against people denouncing your beliefs?

[Jim]

Well, let me see. Do you think all this denouncing going on is productive, or healthy?

All I am saying is that each side of religion vs. science feels that they have foolproof ways.

Some of it looks very unhealthy to me, but I think that there might be healthy ways and good reasons for denouncing and ridiculing some beliefs and practices on all sides

 

[Jim]

However, from the neurosciences we learn that the part of the brain that decides whether something is true or false lies in close proximity to the part of the brain that detects spoiled food.

As in “something smells fishy here.”

 

[Ayjaydee]

Debate is a highly overrated exercise

 

[Aupmanyav]

I’m talking about ways of thinking that are important to a person to think of as being true or right, especially when it’s important to them for other people to think the same way. That’s usually how people feel about what they think they know from scriptures or from science.

That is a funny statement. You do not want to give the freedom of belief to other people? Why should they think the same way as you do? You consider Bahaollah to be the mirror image of Allah, I do not even believe in the existence of any Allah/God. I consider him as another in the long line of proponents of One God Abrahamic religions who considered themselves to be prophets / saints / messengers / sons / manifestations / mahdis of God/Allah, an egoist preacher of 19th Century Iran who did not know anything about science of his days and lived in 7th Century. People of science never think that way. They are always open to new possibilities - if there is even an iota of proof.

Debate is a highly overrated exercise

What the other way could be? Even Buddha debated with people around him. Questioned and answered. That is what the Suttas are.

"He (Buddha) proposes not a passive acceptance but, rather, constant questioning and personal testing to identify those truths which verifiably reduce one's own stress or misery."
Kesamutti Sutta - Wikipedia

 

[Mock Turtle]

I started wondering about this just now when I was writing a post. There might be many different answers. Sometimes it might be just for the challenge of it or for social interaction. Sometimes when I’m tempted to do it, it’s just to test some ideas to see how well they will float or fly, maybe like experimenting with paper airplanes. Maybe sometimes it’s to help strengthen the beliefs of other people who believe the same way? Maybe sometimes people think that it’s a way of telling people something they might need or want to know? Maybe sometimes people are trying to prove that they aren’t wrong? Prove it to whom?

Perhaps point out different perspectives, and different sources for information or ways to find such?

 

[Twilight Hue]

Did you mean for that to be an answer to my question? When you debate against people denouncing your beliefs, you’re trying to find the actual truth of things and/or the actual truth of the matter, not thinking that you already know?

Of course. There's a reason you/they would be debating. It's a question as to whether you feel things would pass muster in any way weather in the debate or in hindsight.

It makes you think, plan strategies, and can prompt the return to the debate with new information , altered information , or the same information as one chooses.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I started wondering about this just now when I was writing a post. There might be many different answers. Sometimes it might be just for the challenge of it or for social interaction. Sometimes when I’m tempted to do it, it’s just to test some ideas to see how well they will float or fly, maybe like experimenting with paper airplanes. Maybe sometimes it’s to help strengthen the beliefs of other people who believe the same way? Maybe sometimes people think that it’s a way of telling people something they might need or want to know? Maybe sometimes people are trying to prove that they aren’t wrong? Prove it to whom?

Well, I "fight", because I have been "wronged" as a human. I then try not to do it and try not to prove that I am right and they are wrong. Nor that I am wrong and they are right.
But because most people at least in the western world regardless of religion or not believe in effect in some version of "objective right", they are thus defending themselves against being "wrong".
The joke is that all version of rights and wrong to humans are subjective and not objective. Objective right and wrong are with God.
So maybe I should stop fighting?!! But I am an old "warhorse" and it is hard as an "old dog" to learn new tricks. So I as a skeptic fight with reductio ad absurdum down the "rabbit hole" of the reality, that reality is in the end to a given human is subjective. Most of us then believe in the objective parts as real. But that is an unsupported belief without reason, logic, proof, evidence and what not. It requires trust and faith.
I came to God as a "worst" kind of non-believer; a general skeptic, and I still "fight" as a general skeptic.

• Some people regardless of the particular individual version: I hold the Truth.
• Me: I don't and neither do you. We just believe differently subjectively.
• Someone: (To the effect of-) I don't like that.
• Me: I am used to it now, so I don't mind. I have made peace with it and have faith and trust in God. But I don't speak for God. I speak as a human, warts and all.

Regards Mikkel

 

[sooda]

Typically I don't debate them, but simply explain where they may have gotten it wrong. After that they can believe and do whatever they like.

.

I am always learning from others on the forum.

 

[Jim]

I’m thinking now that arguing with people when they say that we’re doing something wrong might be a learned reflex in some societies. That might be what’s happening sometimes in forum debating, without any awareness of trying to do anything, or making up reasons for it. Not saying that all the debating is that, but maybe some of it.

 

[Jim]

You do not want to give the freedom of belief to other people? Why should they think the same way as you do?

I’m not sure how you’re reading all that into my posts, so I don’t know how to answer.

 

[Ayjaydee]

That is a funny statement. You do not want to give the freedom of belief to other people? Why should they think the same way as you do? You consider Bahaollah to be the mirror image of Allah, I do not even believe in the existence of any Allah/God. I consider him as another in the long line of proponents of One God Abrahamic religions who considered themselves to be prophets / saints / messengers / sons / manifestations / mahdis of God/Allah, an egoist preacher of 19th Century Iran who did not know anything about science of his days and lived in 7th Century. People of science never think that way. They are always open to new possibilities - if there is even an iota of proof.What the other way could be? Even Buddha debated with people around him. Questioned and answered. That is what the Suttas are.

"He (Buddha) proposes not a passive acceptance but, rather, constant questioning and personal testing to identify those truths which verifiably reduce one's own stress or misery."
Kesamutti Sutta - Wikipedia

Debating in western culture is based on the adversarial system. It's designed to win even if it means hiding evidence detrimental to your side and truth is a side issue that may or may not be arrived at. It's the same system our courts use

 

[Aupmanyav]

I’m not sure how you’re reading all that into my posts, so I don’t know how to answer.

I know only one thing - You are a Bahai who says that Bahaollah, the 19th Century Iranian preacher who claimed to be the mirror image of Allah, and has a new and unique message for the universal peace which no one ever, not Zoroaster, not Jesus, not Krishna, nor Buddha ever said, but under the banner of Bahai religion with One Allah. I am an atheist and a Hindu, I am not going to deny my thousand Gods and Goddesses and I always write against such egotism and falsehood. That uneducated Iranian preacher is not going to be my idol. I have many better. You are in opposition to all the religions of the world.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I know only one thing - You are a Bahai who says that Bahaollah, the 19th Century Iranian preacher who claimed to be the mirror image of Allah, and has a new and unique message for the universal peace which no one ever, not Zoroaster, not Jesus, not Krishna, nor Buddha ever said, but under the banner of Bahai religion with One Allah. I am an atheist and a Hindu, I am not going to deny my thousand Gods and Goddesses and I always write against such egotism and falsehood. That uneducated Iranian preacher is not going to be my idol. I have many better.

You apparently like your "markers" of "right and wrong".
I don't get that Jim comes across as a fundamentalist, though he is a Bahai. I never think that it is that simple.
As to falsehood, if you have that for all humans, you are sort of a fundamentalist yourself.
I know nothing about any version of objective falsehood in any sense. I believe in God, but how falsehood plays out outside us fallible humans, I leave to God.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I believe in God, but ..

.. you don't have any evidence of his existence.
Carry on, continue to believe what you believe. I don't resent that, all my community is theist. I am only against pontificating.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

.. you don't have any evidence of his existence.
Go on, continue to believe what you believe. I don't resent that, all my community is theist. I am only against pontificating.

Nobody have evidence of the reality behind and independent of their individual subjective experience. I believe and I know that. You believe, you just don't believe that, you Know.
So you can Know all you like. You have no evidence of objective reality as objective reality in itself. Neither do I BTW.

 

[Jainarayan]

I simply want my beliefs respected as I respect yours. I don’t need or want to hear I worship idols or false gods or demons.

If you get stupid with me I’m going to get just as stupid and rip your beliefs apart. Because when it comes down to it all our beliefs in this physical world, bound by physical laws as we know them, are totally ludicrous and nonsensical. We have only our personal beliefs and faith. I did not witness Jesus’s transfiguration or Krishna’s vishvaroopa (cosmic, divine form... his transfiguration).

That I worship some blue dude or dudette with 4, 6, or 8 arms (actually, the iconography is to tell a story and depict the powers of the deity... “a picture is worth a thousand words”) is any more or less ridiculous than walking on water or achieving Earth escape velocity to reach Heaven?

It’s all about mutual respect. Period. Full stop. End of sentence.

 

[Aupmanyav]

That is the problem with Bahais. Sham respect for Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus, Mohammad, Krishna and Buddha, only to maintain that their Allah has sent his mirror image in that Iranian preacher (even his assumed name is bloated with ego - Bahaullah, Glory of God) who has a message better than all the rest.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Nobody have evidence of the reality behind and independent of their individual subjective experience. I believe and I know that. You believe, you just don't believe that, you Know.
So you can Know all you like. You have no evidence of objective reality as objective reality in itself. Neither do I BTW.

If I do not have evidence, at least I am not believing. You have no evidence but you believe. That is the difference.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

If I do not have evidence, at least I am not believing. You have no evidence but you believe. That is the difference.

If you don't neither evidence nor belief that what do you do then?

 

[Aupmanyav]

I have a different belief - Advaita (non-duality), that all humans, all animals, all vegetation, all non-living things without any exception are none other than Brahman. Brahman is not God but what we started with at the time of Big Bang, 'physical energy'. All things in the universe are constituted by Brahman. Even science does not refute that. I do not need a God for this belief.