Is faith the answer to cognitive dissonance?

where's admin when you need them?

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This interpretation fits with my opinion on the subject; cognitive dissonance increases along with the importance one places on being correct in their beliefs. People who have "faith" are not disturbed by cognitive dissonance because they are not particularly concerned about their beliefs being true.

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I think it depends on where the foundation of that faith lies. From your original link on faith: For CS, the flood doesn't appear to be the foundation of his faith. I feel that if their foundation presents a conflict with reality the person will probably feel the discomfort you speak of until they decide which way to go.I had patches of mental discomfort on my journey to understanding the reality of the Bible. Some realizations didn't bother me and some did. Don't ask me which ones bothered me, it has been a long time and I didn't commit it to memory.Once a decision is made to either accept the new evidence or hang on to the old in spite of it; the discomfort would be gone.

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Scripture is like Newton’s third law of motionfor every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In other words, for every biblical directive that exists, there is another scriptural mandate challenging it.
-- Carlene Cross in The Bible and Newton’s Third Law of Motion

All of which strongly tells us that relying on the physical evidence rather than interpreting myths is the way to go.

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But the physical evidence should lead us to conclude that the word in this instance means a very long time....thousdands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years or a billion years....it could be any of them.

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No, physical evidence gives us knowledge and can help us understand if what was written is fact or fiction, or outdated.You're rationalizing because what is written conflicts with the physical evidence you have.One has to decide whether or not to accept the physical evidence regardless of what the text says or one can rationalize and adjust what the text says to agree with the physical evidence.Does it make you uncomfortable when Bible texts conflict with physical evidence?

It doesn't have to be the basis; that isn't what I was getting at.Think about the behavior of faith, such a a "leap of faith", or having faith a god will see you though a hardship. This is fundamentally the abdication of one's perceived responsibility to justify one's actions; the leaper does not know what will prevent them falling, and the person in hard times does not know what will bring them through. Faith is giving up one's personal judgment to another, in a way not based on previous experience.Such things go against our nature. Nobody is comfortable jumping off a cliff without knowing themselves if something will catch them, not without deliberate training to give up that urge for knowledge and surety. It is the driving force behind both religion and science; we need to *know the reason* for things.Science and religion are two different answers to that urge. Science provides some answers, while religion answers them all with one solution: "You don't need an answer."The point I was getting at is that once one is trained to suppress that urge for understanding and confidence, the realization that one was wrong in a belief is much easier to swallow. It isn't so easy for someone not trained in faith to give up the reigns and the responsibility that goes with them.So thats it: Faith is the distancing of personal responsibility for the truth of one's beliefs. Thus it should be no surprise that cognitive dissonance is less of an issue for those comfortable with faith.

Right. I wasn't committed to the belief so it was no biggie to realize it was wrong. For someone who's faith in God rests on an inerrant Bible, which rests on The Flud being real, see that The Flud couldn't have happened would challenge their fiath in God and cause cognitive dissonance.But I don't think the OP is correct in the faith being a result of that CD. Its the other way around. The CD is a result of them having that fiath.

What beliefs would you say you are committed to? The validity of subjective immaterial evidence maybe?

Not much and I have a lot of apathy...I'd say I'm committed to Jesus's divinity and God's existence. For that, its not so much a "belief". An experience was convincing and I take it to be real and true as much as, say, me liking the flavor of chocolate. I don't "believe" that I like chocolate, I just like it.Does that make sense?

You and I seem to have fairly impassioned conversations about things which in other contexts we are both comparatively apathetic about then. I think a creationist would say the same. I would suggest that the difference between you and they is the evidence upon which you rationalise that commitment. They care whether the flud happened. You don't. My question to you is whether or not you are similarly committed to an evidential basis of any sort. And if so what it is. It makes total sense. That is exactly how I see it too.What makes less sense is the argument that this personal preference should be taken into account by others when looking at the evidence. You and I (and others) have argued ourselves blue in the face over the question of gods as being the product of human invention or otherwise. In the course of that extended discussion personal experiences of this sort have been consistently held up as a valid form of evidence that I (and others lacking faith) are accused of being too closed minded and pseudo-skeptical to accept.But I see it (and have always seen it) as you seem to be suggesting now. I see it as the objective evidence favoring gods as human inventions Vs faith based personal preference.I can understand why you might believe in god having had such experiences. What I cannot understand is why you would object to me stating that the evidence based conclusion is that the concept of god is most likely the product of human imagination.Unless you are in fact committed to personal subjective immaterial experiences as a valid form of evidence?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I agree.It is those who at root consider the beliefs to which they are committed to be evidenced who are putting themselves up for potential CD. Those who don't care about evidence either way are going to be largely immune.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Yes. Here, with you, is the only time I've ever discussed that crap. What do you mean? I don't see myself actively rationalizing it... Like how?I'm a big science nerd and I'm committed to it as an evidential basis. I'm not sure what you're asking for.I've experienced things that make me think the supernatural exists and from my science education I see that it'd be fairly easy for science to be missing it. Science is self contained and consitent, but the controls limit its scope.We have a lab here that I work in investigating customer issues sometimes... There's things that I just cannot investigate scientifically, and things that we just cannot replicate. Although, we don't ever ascribe anything supernatural, except as jokes, but still we're not eliminating them as possibilities either. Taken into account to the extent that, since there are smart people that actually believe this crap, it could be plausible. I've said that I don't think you should take my subjective evidence as evidence for you... but I also don't think that you can discount it as being evidence for me. It'd be like you telling me that I don't really like chocolate. Because I think that your argument is illogical, in that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises, and I also don't think your premise is true that the evidence suggests the liklihood you're using.But I've agreed that you can use that argument for some specific things...And I don't thing that you shouldn't be finding your argument as convincing to yourself, and also its a good argument for positively disbelieving particular gods. But when its expanded to God, I think it falls apart and I don't agree that its a rational conclusion. For me, I can't deny it but I don't expect you to buy it. Though, I don't think its very rational to just assume everybody must be crazy because science can't touch it.

I am asking if there is an evidential basis to your beliefs which, if demonstrated to be invalid, would cause you cognitive dissonance. Crazy? No. I think they/you are irrationally placing personal conviction and personal preference over objective evidence. So you consider belief itself to be a valid form of evidence? I don't believe I ever have. In the same sense that I would not dispute your personal preference for chocolate over strawberry ice cream as being personally "evidenced". I am not eliminating any possibilities either. I never have. In fact I have explicitly stated the very opposite of that which you are accusing me. Good. Then what conclusion does the evidence available to me suggest? You don't think that (to put it in the broadest of senses) there is evidence that humanity is highly prone to erroneously invoking the unknowable to explain the unknown? Yes. Things that do not conflict with your own beliefs. Would it cause you cognitive dissonance to accept that the objective evidence supports the argument that the concept of god is a human invention?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

What do you mean by an "evidential basis"? I don't know what kind of answers there are for that...What evidential basis are you committed to? What are the alternatives? I think you throw the word 'irrational' around too loosely when you just mean "something I don't agree with"...I don't have objective evidence that my personal conviction and personal preference are inaccurate so I'm not placing them over it and I don't see how you can actually determine the rationality of it. Not just the belief itself, its that people have thought it out and investigated it and come to that conclusion that makes me think its more plausible. Like, some kid believing in Santa Claus does nothing, but a Buddhist monk that has spent his life studying Chi energy makes me think he might be on to something actual. Discounted in the sense that you think I'm irrational for accepting it as a reason to believe. I wasn't saying that you were... Apparently that god doesn't exist. Although, I don't think the liklihood that you use logically follows from the evidence. If they're unknowable then how have they been shown to be erroneuous? And if they've been shown to be erroneuos, then they weren't really unknowable. Well if I thought they were wrong then I wouldn't believe them. I'm not just resisting the argument because of the implications, I honestly don't find it convincing. In the sense that I'd be accepting something that I didn't think was true, yes.Granting that I was conviced by objective evidence that there was support for the argument that the concept of god is a human invention, I probably would not have CD because the argument having support doesn't necessitate that its accurate. It still wouldn't prove me wrong, so to speak. But I guess it depends on the strength of the argument. I guess a very strong argument for the non-existence of god would cause me some CD, assuming I wouldn't just change my belief and go back to being an atheist.

wow I totally forgot about that thread back then. Happens to me sometimes, when I don,t come back to a thread without notice it's just that I forgot it. PM me in those occasions. It would represent the laws of nature, in a world where naturalistic abiogenesis is impossible for example. I think we live in such a universe analog to the illustration. I believe naturalistic abiogenesis is impossible in our universe, yet life exists. Therefore, since our universe also has a beginning, and that there was once no life and now there is life, supernaturalistic abiogenesis must have happened.Now, I permit myself to believe naturalistic abiogenesis is impossible in the same way an atheist believes God doesn't exist. Both aren't provable, being universal negatives, and so in both cases the burden of proof rests on the affirmative.So at least in this particular example, no cognitive dissonance for a theist who believes naturalistic abiogenesis is impossible, and for an atheist who believes that it is possible.Inversely, cognitive dissonance would arise for a theist who realizes that naturalistic abiogenesis is possible (if he believes God created life), and for an atheist who realizes that naturalistic abiogenesis is impossible.These are the 4 grand lines, with of course some specifics within each that can change.

The point is you are using naive empiricism and intuitive rationalism here. You had an experience, and you used your intuitive reasoning to conclude what that experience was.It might be the case that cause of your experience is something that science does indeed 'miss' for whatever reasons. But science is just a formalised system of gathering evidence and applying reason. And science has shown that on the whole humans are pretty crap at intuitive reasoning under certain circumstances AND that they are prone to giving undue confidence in their intuitive conclusions.So if you are 'committed to {science as an evidential basis.' then you have to conclude that relying on your perceptions of your experiences and your personal interpretations of them is prone to significant error. I'm willing to bet that they are scientifically investigatable, but doing so is beyond the scope of your lab, not science. But it is evidence. I have further evidence for the hypothesis that many humans claim to have had some kind of religiously based experience.If I accept that people have had these experiences, then I just need to a hypothesis to explain why they have them.One is that these experiences stem from the brain, that something occurs neurologically that causes an experience that is interpreted religiously. This maybe similar to a bout of extreme paranoia, only with a reverse emotion. A feeling of unseen forces acting in your interest rather than against you. Maybe other such neurological events combine to produce various effects.The other is that the experiences are caused by the things the humans experiencing them think they are caused by (at least approximately). Again, that you have a memory of it, you have strong evidence that it occurred. As far as I can tell, you have no evidence of what caused it. You do have evidence of some of things that can cause those kinds of experiences.I once watched a man cut a woman in half in front of my own eyes. I experienced what a man cutting a woman half would look and sound like. But we both know that the experience probably wasn't caused by a man cutting a woman in half. I am talking about a childhood memory, so I don't remember the names of the people involved, the venue or the date. So using your naive (in the technical sense) method I could conclude that in this case the woman really was cut in half and was kept alive by magic and that just because in some cases there is a more mundane and replicable explanation that doesn't mean it was in the case I remember. Not at all. Straggler isn't saying that you disliked the religious experience. He isn't saying it didn't happen. It would be more like Straggler saying "But you don't have any evidence that chocolate exists, it is a well studied fact that humans have spontaneous novel taste experiences and that they fill this mystery with various mythological 'perfect dessert' archetypes." And he isn't saying that because you can produce a bar of chocolate and tell him that this is similar enough to the thing you ate and you enjoyed the taste. You can deny it. I've had multiple highly convincing religious experiences. I've seen optical illusions. I've experienced the belief that I was more competent than I was. I've engaged in confirmation bias, fallen prey to peer pressure, subjected to authority figures without question and so on. I know that I can trust my senses, but only so far. I know I can trust my instincts, but only so far.And that's what the religious people on these boards seem to be calling faith. Trust in their senses, in their gut feelings to a degree that science has shown is too far.The Christians often comment about our moral failings being integral to our existence. But it isn't just moral failings, our failings cover a wide range of cognitive issues. It would be foolish for evolution to evolve a being that questioned everything it experienced. Of course you are going to be inclined to believe the magician really flew, or that a loving presence is guiding you through the hard times. It's not that we're crazy, it's that our brain is filled with shortcuts its dying to make, associations swirling around. You feel a sense of awe and protection? That's associated with the emotions one might have for one's father. Some kind of superfather of some kind might be an intuitive explanation for it...The weird thing is that you know this. You know people, despite their best intentions, will get in the way of themselves. That biases that we may be unaware of will colour our actions. You know this because you respect the scientific method which has been developed as a means to getting around all the failings we have.And if you want to claim that in your personal case (and in the personal cases of others) science cannot directly investigate because it is in the past - I submit this is flawed.I had a headache last week that lasted an hour or two.Science cannot study my headache, since it no longer exists and it is probable that the cause has since passed and any evidence of it is now gone. Other than my memory.But science can study headaches.We can't rule out a supernatural cause, and some people do believe in supernaturally caused headaches.We could go on. Every scientifically investigated phenomenon has a supernatural explanation. And there may be some people that strongly 'feel' that the supernatural explanation is correct in some cases. Maybe they heard a voice from the agent in question, or felt its chill 'presence', or had whatever subjective experience that they personally interpret in whatever way that if true would confirm existence of said agent.I wouldn't say faith is about resolving cognitive dissonance. Any cognitive dissonance that might arise is its own affair.To me though, a good deal of faith comes from allowing a personal experience with no understandable cause to be interpreted in an intuitive fashion almost entirely uncritically. Intuition is the kind of thing that recognizes people's faces, tells us their emotional state based on subtle fatial geometries and so on. There's no conscious working anything out. It is like identifying the taste of chocolate. It's automatic, and we generally don't think about it in any depth. Once the impression has passed uncritically from intuition, it becomes experiential fact and so the conclusion 'God is with me' is as unquestionable as 'the table is in front of me'.'Faith' is simply 'selective naivet' Where naive means 'believing uncritically an experience'. Calling it 'faith' makes it sound more palatable - indeed even noble. There are many times when this kind of faith is appropriate, but it shouldn't go unchecked. It is appropriate to engage the more analytical part of the mind to double check intuition's working because intuition is demonstrably bad at some tasks.I can't argue with your feelings, or your memory CS - but I will argue that analytically you should be sceptical of the experiences you had. If you aren't - then you are not being committed to the science which strongly disagrees with you.So you are either committed to science or merely mostly committed to science except when it is talking about your own failings. Maybe that's where the cognitive dissonance comes in?