Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron W.
I spent a period of about a year in college trying to come to some sort of determination about what I believe on the basis of simply being raised in a Christian household compared what I believed on the basis of reasonable conclusions. I spent a lot of time reading about other religious frameworks and other philosophical perspectives, and spent a lot of time thinking carefully to attempt to gain clarity into my own worldview. Much of that time was about deconstructing my beliefs and searching through the various assumptions that were implicit in my understanding of the world in order to make them explicit. But it wasn't "completed" at that time. That was just getting the foundation set.
The reason that I can speak articulately about my beliefs is because I've spent time (and continue to spend time) refining my own understanding of things. At various points, different things start to appear more or less tenable, and then I continue to adjust and adapt my beliefs based on that new information. This is an active thing that continues to happen all the time.
Using the same measure, I can also see how little time you've spent coming to your conclusions. You've probably spent far less time intellectually engaged in your disbelief and much more of it simply parroting things. Perhaps you're just naturally contrarian. Perhaps it really is just some emotional bias that you're dealing with. Perhaps you've just found a subculture that you've decided to embrace. I don't really know.
But it's absolutely clear that reason has played a significantly smaller role in the development of your beliefs than mine.
You're correct in the sense that at this point in time, I've spent more time actively affirming my beliefs as opposed to actively re-establishing them. But that naturally happens as you get older. After you've rebuilt the machine a couple times, you have less to learn from taking it apart and trying to rebuild it again.
This is a nice response, and I appreciate your relating your personal experiences and how they have come to shape your beliefs. While I would still differ with you on our respective definitions of "reason", and how much time we have respectively devoted to using it to shape our beliefs, I appreciate what seems like a genuine effort on your part to discuss these differences in a non-snarky and civil manner.
I will definitely agree with you that I have spent less time reading about philosophy and studying philosophical concepts than you, or other posters in this thread such as OrP, well named, or tamed deuces (and probably others I have neglected to name). I would like to remind you though, that my fervent objections to theism, and particularly how it manifests itself in Abrahamic religions, are rooted in pragmatism and politics, and not in philosophy.
I actually find the philosophical discussion quite fascinating, and I feel I could learn a lot from it - for example, I read the whole thread that well named linked on weak atheism, and I found it very interesting - well, at least the parts I understood. But the philosophical aspect of religion was never the target of my OP, and I have subsequently made that clear. Inevitably, the discussion tends to gravitate in that direction though, and that is perfectly understandable.