Assumption 1: Pain calls for action or a change in course

Assumption 2: Pain has the potential to cause one to doubt his belief system; the more severe the experience, the more likely one is to doubt

Scenario: I have a well thought out belief system that completely addresses what pain is and how to react when it happens. Then, I experience a deeply painful experience that causes me to doubt my entire belief system. What then?

Would you trust in your direct experience of reality that is encouraging you to question your entire belief system or would you jump back into your belief system in order to access its coping mechanisms and ideas?

I'd say it depends on the type and level of pain, and your tolerance to it. Also, if the pain clears, chances are fairly big most people will be able to rationalize their experience at continue holding similar beliefs as before. You can't really torture anyone out of their beliefs for example, though you might be able to make them question it there and then or have them temporarily abandon principles in order to to save themselves.

I don't think 2 is a given. Not all pain can cause abandonment of belief, but when it does it isn't necessarily linked to severity as much as it is linked to (perceived) causation.

To answer the question: Pain will of course make me question my perception of the world. If I step on nail, I'll no longer assume the floor is safe. If I suddenly crash into the ceiling, I'll question gravity. However, one of these scenarios is far more likely than the other to make me also question my sanity.

Right, but assumption 1 says that pain is calling for a change. When we put our hand on a hot stove, the pain is telling us to act by removing it. When someone is questioning their religious belief system after losing a loved one to a tragic accident, is life, in that moment, attempting to get that person to abandon their belief system?

The second example is much less obvious than the first but there is insight there. However, that insight may only be able to be grabbed during the actual experience and not in an analysis like this, I don't know. I reject the notion that the reason the religious person in that example is contemplating the validity of their entire belief system is due to questions of causality of the incident. I feel strongly there is more to it than that.

A more correct way of saying this is that we're geared towards avoiding pain and discomfort. But being burnt doesn't make a lot of people question the need for an oven, experiencing personal loss doesn't convince a lot of people to abandon religion (if it did, religion would be markedly less popular after all). I even think personal loss can lead people to religion, since they'll look for meaning to what happened.

I personally don't think life is trying to do anything, so that question is not something I can answer. To me life just is.

I shouldn't have portrayed this as a logical process; it's done by feel. The pain creates a desire for change and then our belief system is at the periphery of our awareness. The question is during this window of pain, do we want to bring our belief system more into conscious awareness.

(Pain + awareness of our belief system) = insecurity in our belief system

The more we observe our belief system from the outside, the quicker it dissolves. The only way we know we are outside of our belief system in order to observe it is during times of pain or discomfort. Once the pain passes or we avoid it, we get sucked back into our belief system where we are stuck until the next window of pain.

Once we discard a belief system, we will automatically adopt a new belief system. With each belief system adopted and discarded, we get closer to truth. We get to truth not through addition, but by subtraction, by peeling back the onion.

Placing my hand on the stove doesn't cause me to question any part of my belief system. My beliefs account fully for the physical pain caused by temperatures hot enough to burn.

I can only see pain impacting on beliefs when that set of beliefs fail to account for some phenomenon causing pain e.g. you belief bee stings will heal you, but actually it makes you feel far worse. But then this isn't exclusive to pain - anything that is unaccounted for could trigger a change in beliefs. It may be that pain is a better motivator than some other experiences in the way that negative reinforcement can work.

This seems a bit like plain old waffling. Changes to beliefs could of course get further from the truth, and subtracting from beliefs to get to the truth makes little sense. We wouldn't say we got to germ theory by "subtracting from" the four humours.

Let me ask you, how do you think anyone can drop their religious beliefs? Anything can be rationalized, so how does anyone get past these rationalizations?

That was a self note - disregard. Religion/spirituality is unique and has its own unique process to get to truth. I'm not expecting agreement on that point.

Any number of things can trigger change. Typically I think it's as I said: at some point the beliefs become insufficient to satisfy certain experiences of the world. Maybe they don't feel whatever religion gave them any more. Maybe they don't believe a loving God would do such things to them/others. Maybe they're swayed by an argument. Maybe they doubt the historicity of the texts. Maybe nothing ever does it.

craig1120,
re: "Scenario: I have a well thought out belief system..."


What's the difference between a belief and a belief system?

The term of human life is fixed, and there is no overstepping it. That's a fact and no matter what the doctors and science tell us we cannot overcome the will of God. Heart surgeries, brain surgeries or any advanced medical procedures will just do us more harm then good while giving only false hope and creating huge medical bills for the government to pay into the con health care system. There's nothing to decide everything had been decided for all of us already.

An example of this phenomenon of satisfying the eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, for taking action, which is felt in times of suffering. They satisfied the eternal human need that is seen in its most elementary form in children— the need to have the hurt place rubbed. A child hurts himself and at once runs to the arms of his mother or nurse to have the hurt place kissed or rubbed.