God belief hypothesis

I’ve been trying to understand the way religious people come to believe in their religion.

It seems to be traditional for either side of this story to frame the other side in their own side’s terms rather than the other way around, and this appears to be getting nowhere beyond providing entertainment and reinforcing each side’s view that they already hold. Very very occasionally you see a half-baked attempt to represent the other’s side in fairer terms, but it’s usually patronising and only a token gesture before they revert to pushing their own side just as before. I’m trying my best to do it properly here.

Is it fair to say that believers think in terms of types and non-believers in terms of tokens?

Often you hear atheists arguing that specific things in religion when read literally are absurd, could not have occurred, are not scientifically possible etc. and the religious will call a straw man. Is it then the case that the religious are instead looking at the kinds of things you come across in their texts and teachings? That the meaning behind what is being said is relatable and that is the truth that they are finding rather than the literal specifics? That would explain why they respond to the morals behind the events, behaviours and consequences that the religion lays out. The morals, how the stories make you think and feel - that is what is being said to be true to the world and what seems to result in more preferable ways of living, no?

Yes there’s slavery, rapes and tribalistic murder, and of course that’s not what’s being communicated as moral, it’s the lessons behind what merely happens to be the social norms at the time the text was written - I’ve often come across religious thinkers arguing that the texts had to be relevant to the times in order to gain traction. The literal atheist is obviously right to point out that many of the old customs have no place in modern society, and that this is a valid point about the place of ancient religions in today’s context, but the metaphorical theist is also obviously right to point out that the lessons set within the old customs are still valuable within new customs.
Both are right and wrong in different ways.

You see this mismatch in contemporary popular thinkers, such as when Sam Harris debates Jordan Peterson about truth. They’re talking about different ways in which to draw truth, both valid, but the paradigm is different - so they talk past each other. Does JP believe in God? He never seems to answer this question to Sam’s satisfaction or to the satisfaction of atheists alike. He’s answering it in terms of stories and “types” of truth. Sam and other atheists want specifics about believing that a God is a Being that exists “out there” in the world in some kind of detectable way. I imagine the answer to that requirement in atheist terms would be “no”, although it would be phrased as “not exactly” in theist terms. It’s not as though God doesn’t exist at all “out there” in the world in some kind of detectable way, because in a way He does, but not in the same way as matter, energy and forces do in science. God won’t have a specific temperature or mass etc. but that which is being identified as His effect is detectable to humans in a way that at least appears to be just as ubiquitous and eternal as any scientific law because as the religious point out - the morals appear to be valuable in ancient and modern contexts alike, and there’s no reason to believe that this will change in future.

Am I on the right track here with my distinction between type-truth and token-truth?

Is one more valid than the other? I think it depends on your values. I’ve been an atheist for as long as I can remember because I value specifics and drawing patterns from literal detail only in order to maximise accuracy in prediction in the most objective way possible. I imagine that theists are looking more to ethical decisions to guide the tendencies in how they act towards more preferable outcomes according to what they want from life. If so, the theist is in a way more engaged “in the world” than the atheist who is standing back from the world first before engaging themselves with it. I would presume that this is a similar difference between continental and analytical philosophical schools of thought, where the poets see the trees more than the wood, and the mathematicians see the wood more than the trees.

I consider that a consequence of the dream-like state that most beings are in on earth.
Fantasy is more appealing than reality.

One reaction right of the bat is that most religious people find themselves already in their religion. It is not so much a matter of cming to believe, but in continuing to participate. That participation will likely include a great many different beliefs and epistemologies - and most of the latter sloppily thought out in most people. That isn’t a shot at religoius people, most people in general don’t really notice their own epistemologies. And if they do, they tend to idealize them. For example, most people I encouter FIND an explanation when challenged but these often seem ad hoc and after the fact. And generally, few people will justify on intuition, when it becomes clear in the discussion that this likely was the case.

I don’t think so, but I will admit that despite relooking at Stanfords PHilosophy encyc on types and tokens, I still feel a bit hazy. I think different believers and different disbelievers vary. Though I would guess there would be more similarity amongst disbelievers, in the west, in any case.

But there are religious people who DO take things literally. Also there are many religious who will point to specfic events and experiences - I prayed and this happened, I felt the holy spirit, after I gave my problem to God, I never took another drink, to the experiences of mystics which often can take on the more miraculous token type stuff.

JP is not a very usual kind of theist, if he is one. I think also, again, most people, including people like Sam Harris are not so savvy about where their beliefs are coming from. I would bet he has beliefs that would not pass the muster he expects religious beliefs to pass. They might be more mundane - like ‘what women are like’ but these beliefs will inform how he acts in the world (that is will have real world consequences,) who he votes for, how he raises his kids, how he interacts with other races and so on.

Many Eastern theist practitioners would be very focused on specifics, accumulating skills and predicted experiences. Pagans and indigenous also. You might disagree about the quality of their ‘research’ but I don’t htink the type token distinction holds in general for theists. I can see where you are going with the main atheist debate in the US ,say, between Christians and Atheists, but even there I think many believers have a rather diverse set of epistemologies, both openly and then unconsciously.

Interesting questions. As Karpel seemed to suggest, many of us are indoctrinated into a religion when we are children. So we initially accepted the symbols, the narratives, the stories, the imagery, the rituals uncritically.

Many religious people that I talk to resist examining their beliefs philosophically. And indeed it does appear that the objects of a person’s faith are put at risk when a person tries to understand them.

So the question is whether the type/token distinction is helpful for understanding religious beliefs. To begin to examine the question, I will apply the distinction to a reading of a Biblical text.

Could we say that if Exodus 12 is read as an event that may or may not have been historical that it is being looked at as a token? And conversely if it’s read either as that which applies to me because I am a member of the Jewish community to whom the Passover was given or to me as a Christian because it symbolizes Christ who was sacrificed for me that in those instances it is interpreted as a type?

I really do mean something more neutral. Of course families take their kids to the mosque, church, synogogue. Of course humanist families will have their kids coming up in the midst of stated and implicit assumptions about reality.

I think it is useful in any specific discussion between people with different beliefs. A way to look at how they may be talking at cross purposes.

Sounds good. What would that look like? I’ve reached an impasse in discussions with some of my fundamentalist Christian friends.

I suppose, instean of focusing on the differences in your beliefs, you might focus on how they use the stories and images and personalities in their religion. It might not resolve anything, but it might bring some light into the differences in how you approach participation.

You know Silhouette like with any scientific question the answer is: try it. Gotta try to believe in some God. Then you can maybe find out why and how. So pick a cool God. Not some megabrand God but just a God or a buncha them that seem cool enough to suspend disbelief.

I tried it when I was 24. Pretty cool brain chemistry.

This is rarely even considered in theist/atheist interactions. That drawing conclusions could be based on experience, that theism might be empirical, though not in the sense of experiments in a lab. If one engages in the practices over a long period of time, what happens to me? What would I come to believe? Would it seem useful? Unfortunately in the West we are often dealing with less transformatory and tightly organized religious paths. The athiest imagines going to mass, confessing. Or getting baptized, once, then going to church and hearing about God and the Bible. And since theists in the West focus so much, especially in discussions, on belief, rather than practice and transformation, they find themselves trying to prove God with words or making threats about what’s coming, neither of which appeals to anything like the epistemology of the atheists. Off the table is the approach of learning by doing, deep practice with the idea that I might have to change before my beliefs might change. Or that I might find something useful.

There are many atheists who once believed like theists and/or practiced theism, but something happened or “didn’t happen” and they came to be atheists.

In my case I was brought up into some loose but prevalent and long term practicing of theism, and eventually I confronted the fact that I was getting nothing out of it. Enough time had passed for me to have developed a fear of “God”, so in a sense I abandoned the practice but had not rid myself of some elements of the belief side of theism. This required stern philosophical inquiry, but also guts - I was fighting underneath everything a guttural reflex that was instilled within me, and after a while reason was enough to think objectively and eventually live truly as an atheist without even a fear of God.

I would be surprised if this wasn’t a common story, at least with plenty of variation in methods of getting over a fear of “God”.
It also appears to be common that people believe more completely, with various commitments to the practice, but then something happens that makes them question their faith and in some cases abandon it.

On the flip side, I have heard of people “finding faith/religion” through all sorts of avenues. Maybe last year or so I tried a thought experiment to switch myself back into the mindset of a believer. It didn’t go anywhere, but I was toying with the mentality of becoming aware of an omnipresence from what I remember. Obviously there was a lot more that I could have done, but in this way as well as with the aforementioned transition of many from theism to atheism, the solution to transitioning to theism from atheism isn’t just to practice theism (and I’m sure it wasn’t suggested as a 100% route to success) - but I think more is needed to develop or re-develop a belief in God.

It’s probably not helpful that “converted” atheists think of the standard theist as simply not practicing atheism and seeing if it does anything for them - whether or not there is truth in this assumption - but I think the solution to practice theism to try and bridge the gap goes both ways.

But I think very few people have a genuine knowledge of what it would take for them to change either way from theist to atheist or vice versa - myself included I think, even though I’ve put a great deal of thought into it. Many scientists and speakers have put forward how it would simply be a legitimate case of scientifically verifiable evidence, but I’m not sure if anyone in practice has that much plasticity in their ideology - I think in many ways it’s incorporated into your physiology. Physiology and how something is embedded into it can change, but I don’t think it’s as easy as flipping a switch.

I believe that I have to point out that there is more to religion than just christianity and catholocism, though most people reduce what they know of religion to just that. Certainly Odin, Zeus, Ra; are all Gods pertaining to peoples religion. If you wish to understand it, pacing around the outside is alright as a start, but whether I tell it to you or you make the decision yourself, you’ll find yourself jumping right into the middle of belief to figure it out from the inside, just what it’s all about.

And once you pop just one, hence why I brought up the others, you might just find more answers than you know what to do with right away. ‘Might’.

Sure, though if we are talking about Christianity, for example, this means that they perhaps were encouraged to pray, without much guidance on that, did not contemplate or meditate, went through the motions of rituals that were not part of what might be called a practice, and likely not a practice that included guidance from experts. They were told a lot of ideas, but not given much support in terms of training in relationship, or in discipline in practice. Of course even in Christianity there will have been exceptions to this. There is no one rule, one set of experiences. I am not asserting that.

Wagging the dog - to really put it in crass terms - seems less likely to succeed than when there is real interest, curiosity, drive…I don’t think most atheists, at least those that openly debate the issue are very interested. And this would not only affect the ‘experiment’ because the wagging the dog would be short term, but also not really driven by any interest that might lead to change.

It would if my point or someone’s point was that atheists should try it. And I am sure many theists think they should. But my point was more that the issue often comes down to here is a verbal argument why you should join vs. here are the reasons I am not convinced. Which is fine, but very limited. Were an atheist truly interested, I think it incredibly unlikely that any change would happen via logical or ‘logical’ discussion. Getting the right thoughts in your head or different thoughts in your head is a very limited process. It would likely take something much more pariticipatory. Something that leads to change not just in thoughts. One could think of it in terms of relations. One could think of it in terms of skills - as one might in many branches of Hinduism. Skills and changing the way one relates require more than reading and arguing. Some people might be stunned by an atheist or theist argument and snap over, but I think that’s rare.

Yes, this is more or less what I was getting at. Everyone believes a lot of stuff they have very little or no scientific evidence of. Political issues, ideas about the opposite sex, what it takes to develop as a person, how to raise a child, what other people think of them, how best to get what you want from others. I do realize that these ideas are all congruent with the paradigms of both theists and atheists, but my point is that everyone acts in the world, and these acts have real important affect on them and others, without scientific evidence assuring that their conclusions are right. These beliefs are based on experience and media and parent beliefs and peer beliefs. A mish mash of intuition, perhaps some insight in the human sciences, deduction, and the conclusions based on what they experienced, perhaps some of it on a few experiences as a child.

Most people, even skeptics, not only have these kinds of beliefs, but live them out in the choices they make. Once you open the door for this kind of learning, it is hard to say no one else should draw conclusions based on their experiences. And intentionally choosing to see what happens by undergoing an organized set of practices cannot be ruled out per se without heading into hypocrisy. This does not mean one should explore religion or spirituality or atheism or whatever, however assuming that rational arguments is the given method of ruling things out or being converted seems off to me. Further that implicit judgment by some atheists that they just base their beliefs on science is also problematic.

I recently listened to a neurosurgeon called Michael Egnor explaining some interpretation of neuroscientific experimental evidence in favour of substance Dualism. By the end of the video it was clear that he was trying to find room for God in the gaps, but that didn’t detract from said gaps being interesting.

It also opened up a familiar conception of God as this existential mind from which everything humanly intellectual and beyond the directly physical originates. For example, motor functions map far more precisely and specifically to parts of the brain than things like abstract and moral reasoning - such that when epileptics have seizures, their symptoms appear to be physical and never intellectual e.g. convulsedly performing mathematical calculations, or evaluating morality. I also wasn’t aware that the experiment where participants were asked to note the position of a timer at the point where they decided to press a button (I think that’s right?), and their brain activity was monitored to discover a spike reliably prior to the point they made their decision, was also conducted such that they would also note the position of a timer at the point where they decide not to press the button - and no such spike was observed. This was interpreted as, instead of evidence that decisions are made before we become aware of them, evidence that this only applies to physicality and not “the mind”.

Unless you’re looking for confirmation bias, I believe such experiments bear thinking about but do not yet constitute sufficient evidence in favour of substance Dualism.

Instead, it occurred to me that people are finding God in a way that can be understood in terms of Experientialism, as I had been doing in this thread a few months ago. The gap being filled with “God” would appear to be the one between Continuous and Discrete Experience, which results from an inversion I’ve been bringing up for a particularly long time by now:

In summary, with matter as objective quanta of mind, removed of subjective qualia, subsequently inverted by materialists to be understood as mind being a subset of matter, it becomes a mystery where qualia comes from (The Hard Problem of Consiousness).

This is where God belief can come in: the unified collective of qualia from which qualia originate. Or: the “whole” of Continuous Experience being greater than the sum of its “parts” in terms of Discrete Experience.

This explains a lot about those concerned with “objective” truth often tending towards Atheism and those concerned with “subjective” truth (i.e. utility) often tending towards Theism. The former are interested in the quanta of Discrete Experience independent of Continuous Experience, which is more like a holistic fabric of fundamentally indistinguishable quanta and qualia (until one picks it apart for analysis) that the latter are interested in - importantly with the qualia still in tact. With the inclusion of qualia in this continuity, therein originates the implicit God belief, “safe” in its separate domain to the analytical world of those concerned with the Discrete Experience of matter without the need for God, who are all irritated by the “spiritual” realm outside of their scope.

So Materialism and the like cannot access God belief because such belief is included (mostly unknowingly, I imagine) in what they are intentionally leaving out in order to access the “objective” (the maximally independent from the unreliable subjective). Here is where the Theists invert their advantage such that their God of the gaps assumes this same position as “objective” - illegitimately by the rules of the Atheists, but legitimately in the eyes of the Theists.

The two irreconcilable methodologies thus inevitably “rub up against one another” but far apart without actually touching, resulting in the incessant Straw Man creation by either side in order to substantiate what they find themselves rubbing up against - each according to their own rules and not to those of the others.

For physicalists, this is how it will be seen. The will see religion as to do with hypothetical immaterial ‘things’. But actually matter is hardly physical, not in its qualities, it is these seethign qauntum foam that is mostly vaccuum and also shifting in and out of superposition and potentially in a many world/multiverse constant splitting. Science, yes, cuts against dualisms, but then at the same time it cuts radically against anything like the everyday folk belief materialism that would see just little gaps in ‘material’ reality.

The conception of the God that most does this is that of the Abrahamic religions, some of the worst corporations, least experientials monstrosities, and this is the main focus of most online atheists. Shamanistic/indigenous, panphysicst and pagan religions - who have been nearly wiped out by the Abrahamic religions, generally with the technocrats in cahoots with Abrahamic religions desire to get these groups and beliefs out of the way, tend to get ignored. And with them the handy dualism issue is not so relevent. Imagine how these groups thought when encoutering scientists who denied - as was the rule up into the 70s - the consciousness and experiencing in animals. Or encountering the strange ideas about a dead, solid, materialist universe these boorish men had also.

Epileptics - I live with one - can have all kinds of cognitive seizures, in fact this is more common than physical ones. Though the dichotomy is not really a useful one. Oliver Sacks book on music and the brain has many of these jsut in the area of music. I might not be understanding you here, but there is a vast array of not just flopping around on the ground seizures where all sorts of cognitive activities take place and also alternative experiential ones.

And as someone neither materialist nor Abrahamist, the entire debate looks like a Straw man. Because two factions that have in fact worked together to eliminate a fuller range of ideas - and not just in debates but in colonial practices, terraforming, brainwashing removed children, public education biases, and the misuse of power in general. IOW the whole thing is also a false dilemma. Choose between these two versions of reality, these are the two options - this is not generally explicitly asserted, but it is implicit in the debates, where theism is almost universally some version of Abrahamism. And materialism is some watered down, extremely confident Newtonian-ism physicalism focused on brains.

I can’t stress enough how these two factions have, for the most part, worked together to eliminate potentially third party competition. And both have seen this as rational. And that verb eliminate is both eliminate the memes and eliminate the people who hold those memes.

And neither of these two systems allow for the kinds of experiences adn exploration necessary to actually change their minds. The science group tend to think they have open minds and no metaphysics. Which is sad but also funny.