On belief and respect.

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Politics, religion, psychology, economics. In other words: how the human world works and why it works as it does is what fascinates me. Sometimes I post about such ideas here. Often I expand on such ideas to suggest how I think the world should work and why I think so. Sometimes, however, I just post pretty, shiny content I've found while sifting through the internet. Ask me anything Submit

October 21, 2010

On the topic of beliefs, my friend stated this:

What I’ve discovered is that people don’t believe what they believe because they pulled it out of a hat. People stand for something because they truly believe in it. After all, you wouldn’t believe in something you thought was not correct so in that way all of us should respect each others sincerity and not belittle. Because in doing that we are saying to others, “What you believe to be true is stupid.” and to make that assumption, we are being not only arrogant but making fun of somebody’s sincerity which is really quite mean.

My response:
People can believe what they want. But it is not right that just because of that all beliefs should be respected. People are worthy of respect and I even respect the right of a person to choose to hold whatever beliefs they want, but in and of themselves beliefs are not worthy of respect. People hold beliefs that gays are somehow subhuman and it is appropriate for them to be discriminated against. Hitler was also probably sincere in his beliefs that the Jews were the problem. Beliefs in and of themselves are not worthy of respect. If that makes me intolerant, so be it. I will respect a person’s right to hold such a belief and I may even maintain respect for a person with such a belief - although obviously not in that aspect of their life - as holding a belief does not mean they try to force others to abide by that belief or that they even act in a way which directly affects others. It still stands: I will not respect such beliefs.

My friend also stated:

You can say, “That is your belief and this is my belief”, but you should not say, “You are wrong and you are stupid”. Arrogance is never flattering, especially in terms of something as hard to quantify as spirituality.

My response:
People can come to different conclusions than me, and many certainly do. I respect their right to hold their conclusion and in the spiritual realm I can even respect that a reason they come to such belief is a different weighting to probabilities of knowledge, value judgements or a priori assumptions. However, most religious people cannot justify their probabilities, value judgements or a priori assumptions in the realm of religion/spirituality to a particularly good extent relying instead on what they want to believe or apologetics. (The nitty gritty doesn’t actually lie in scripture or practice. It goes back further than that. It goes to the existence of a deity/higher power. Once you prove/offer convincing evidence for that, then you get to try and prove/offer convincing evidence as to why your belief and not others.)

Furthermore:
1) People can hold beliefs which are wrong.
2) People can be stupid.
3) However, very rarely will I say outright that a person is stupid for holding what I see as a wrong belief and if I do, it will usually be in a frustrated aside to somebody else in confidence rather than the believer, as telling the believer they are stupid is not conducive to my argument and the believer will likely be even less receptive to it. It serves little point outside making the believer feel belittled. (I tend to attempt to make them understand where I am coming from in what I am saying.)
4) The people I will tell outright they are stupid tend not to be my friends as the vast majority of my friends (yes, there are a few exceptions and no, none of the exceptions have been involved in this conversation at any stage), whatever they are, they are not stupid and they are not trolls.