Being able to acknowledge that there are smart and honest people on every side of a contentious issue is a world-shattering revelation.
I grew up being told that Christians were superstitious hypocrites who didn't understand science or logic.
As time went by I found that many *are* superstitious hypocrites who don't understand science or logic!
But I also found a few who weren't. I also found that I had been misinformed on many of my favourite examples of Christian stupidity, eg Christians didn't burn the library of Alexandria, Galileo was a friend of the Pope and had many of the church on his side, and people didn't generally think the world was flat until Columbus.
Life was so much simpler when everyone who didn't agree with me was either a liar or a fool...
“The truth is generally illuminating—if you have the right view, upon learning new things, they’ll make sense, for truth is interconnected“
Similar quote by Aristoteles: “With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.”
Generally I agree with it. That’s what I like about theism, it helps make sense of how everything is interconnected and makes sense together about human existence. Otherwise you end up all sorts of things under the rug, like consciousness, religious experiences, supernatural claims, anthropics, necessary existence, moral knowledge, meaning in life, and many other things, which seem to be suspiciously favoring theism.
One critique I have of this general method is that our intuitions actually get shifted as we spend more time thinking about arguments. This might be a reason we would anticipate arguments being increasingly convincing as we spend more time thinking about them.
I've experienced this recently. When I first read about Frankfurt Cases I thought they were dumb, yet gradually they've grown on me. It feels like some ideas take months, or even years, to properly understand
Being able to acknowledge that there are smart and honest people on every side of a contentious issue is a world-shattering revelation.
I grew up being told that Christians were superstitious hypocrites who didn't understand science or logic.
As time went by I found that many *are* superstitious hypocrites who don't understand science or logic!
But I also found a few who weren't. I also found that I had been misinformed on many of my favourite examples of Christian stupidity, eg Christians didn't burn the library of Alexandria, Galileo was a friend of the Pope and had many of the church on his side, and people didn't generally think the world was flat until Columbus.
Life was so much simpler when everyone who didn't agree with me was either a liar or a fool...
“The truth is generally illuminating—if you have the right view, upon learning new things, they’ll make sense, for truth is interconnected“
Similar quote by Aristoteles: “With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.”
Generally I agree with it. That’s what I like about theism, it helps make sense of how everything is interconnected and makes sense together about human existence. Otherwise you end up all sorts of things under the rug, like consciousness, religious experiences, supernatural claims, anthropics, necessary existence, moral knowledge, meaning in life, and many other things, which seem to be suspiciously favoring theism.
One critique I have of this general method is that our intuitions actually get shifted as we spend more time thinking about arguments. This might be a reason we would anticipate arguments being increasingly convincing as we spend more time thinking about them.
That's one thing to be aware of. Still, when presented with new challenges, people will often find the results weird.
I've experienced this recently. When I first read about Frankfurt Cases I thought they were dumb, yet gradually they've grown on me. It feels like some ideas take months, or even years, to properly understand