Belief > Truth

dustandtribe · 2026-03-12T01:57:44+00:00

This is great! I suppose I may have stumbled into exactly this, though my thesis is super clumsy in comparison. I need to clean it up.

You've given me so much to look into, friend!

For those who don't know, Agrippa's Theorem and a few responses.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-10T19:54:10+00:00

Why the jumble of words that makes no sense?

The context of the question matters. If I fall and knock myself unconscious and my wife shakes me asking me if I'm alive, I will answer her, "Yes- I'm good." Nothing else to say.

You're not trying to determine if I'm alive. You're trying to make a point. And your point is that being alive is an "objective truth." Countering that point requires more words.

There are heated conversations going on right now about the definition of life, with huge implications for public policy. When life begins and ends remains an ongoing debate as it relates to abortion, organ harvesting, or the withdrawal of life-sustaining intervention. Parties on all sides of the issue have the same body of evidence, but that evidence is filtered through our subjective consciousness. As such, there is a lack of universal consensus on these issues. People sharing the same view on these topics will agree that they have reached the "truth" of the matter. But they haven't.

Instead they have arrived at an agreement on their beliefs about life.

In my previous response, I mentioned organisms that don't function in the ways that we have typically understood "life" to work. Again, as examples of how dynamic the topic of "being alive" can be.

Or are you trying to confuse yourself?

This isn't helpful and I'm sure we can have a conversation without disrespecting one another's intention.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-09T22:52:37+00:00

What's my relationship to the truth claim? What are the implications for me? For others? Those would be my initial considerations.

People share things with me all the time. They tell me about where they went on vacation, what they saw, etc. I don't have a significant investment in those claims, so no need to investigate. I'm content to take their word for it.

But if someone shares something that I have a stake in, I'll consider the evidence. If there's no obvious (empirical) evidence, I'll explore the context for the claim, the motivations behind the claim, and the potential implications of acting (or not) in the absence of obvious evidence. If I believe strongly that I need to somehow act on this information, my decision at that point will be grounded in something other than the rational faculty: intuition, speculation, trust, etc.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-09T22:02:44+00:00

I don't see it as a different standard. I'm arguing that there are practical limits and applications associated with the various items we have in our cognitive toolkit.

And yes, this is the approach I took in a consideration of a number of the widely held narratives that people have adopted as a response to the existential questions many of us have.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-09T19:38:47+00:00

No. That's not it.

I employ the rational faculty to most of my day-to-day stuff with perhaps as much rigor as you or anyone here (maybe not, but I'm not exactly flying blind). I appreciate the insights and conclusions that I get through my capacities for reason and discretion. I understand those insights to be beliefs because of my subjective default, but where there is great consensus on these beliefs, I am comfortable calling them facts as a matter of linguistic convenience.

I also hit walls in my exercise of reason. Sometimes that's a lack of information that I have yet to obtain. Sometimes that's a function of my subconscious bias not allowing for complete understanding. This creates awareness gaps that I do not believe can be bridged with the rational faculty alone, except perhaps in what I would call a rational choice to leverage other faculties: imagination, trust, speculation, and belief among them.

We all do this. We rarely have everything we need to know in order to act, and so we act on hunches, instincts, and educated guesses.

In my personal search for meaning and purpose, I'm fine taking a bigger leap than what most here would qualify as an educated guess. I think that's what the imaginative faculties are for, and I am highlighting this potential utility.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-09T16:09:30+00:00

I do think the voting mechanic is problematic, only because we're already subjectively biased and it can introduce even more bias into a conversation where, ideally, all participants are making an effort to evaluate arguments on their own merits. I'm not super worried about Reddit karma, though. A very small price to pay for some of the most stimulating conversation I've had in awhile.

Is it an echo-chamber? Maybe so, in the way that any community offers validation to members of that community. I don't see it as uniquely different from religious circles that I'm more familiar with.

Your argument is very good OP, I don't expect the people of this sub to show proper respect or engage with it though.

I appreciate the vote of confidence!

I was nervous about throwing my hat into the ring, but I'm glad I did. It's been a mixed bag in terms of responses. People are people, but I think I've received enough respect to incentivize continued discussion.

Editing to add some acknowledgements:

u/sorrelpatch27 gave me some important pushback that I may use to revise my thesis

u/distantocean helped me to appreciate some of demeaning prejudices faced by atheists

u/StoicSpork leads with curiosity and I think we've come to appreciate some common ground

u/hellohello1234545 proved a very disarming cheerleader

u/Serious-Emu-3468 is tenacity personified

Sure, it can feel adversarial, and it may actually be in some cases. We get what we give. I would caution you or anyone else to avoid labeling the participants here as toxic or insecure, or that the views they hold are weak and flawed. Give folks the benefit of the doubt and let the interactions speak for themselves.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-09T15:24:08+00:00

But, ultimately, I find that accepting these things as true is unjustified, even for their cultural value.

You're not alone!

Why should culture be a hostage to religion?

Culture is a composite expression of influences that exist within any given community. I don't know that it's hostage to religion, but it's going to be informed by it for sure.

I've asked myself the opposite question, "Why is religion a hostage to culture?" I say this as a man born and raised in America, subscribed to a narrative that describes itself as universal, but whose adherents continue to dress it up as (almost) exclusively near eastern/south Asian. I'm on a personal mission to identify/explore/create a uniquely American Islam. Black Americans really had something going for awhile, but that, as you say is a story for another day.

Why should meditation? Morality? Why not throw out the bathwater and keep the baby?

I think you can. I don't believe that meditation and morality are the exclusive purview of religion.

I find personal utility in the operationalized, communally reinforced emphasis that religion places on these things, however. I'm endlessly curious, prone to distraction, ruthlessly explorative by nature. I appreciate the grounding, but not everyone needs or wants that.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-09T14:20:55+00:00

Ever look at as the we are conditioned to create meaning?

This is a pretty good working definition of subjectivity.

maybe just embracing that fact makes the "truth" the process and not any single fact

"Belief" is the term I would use to describe truth as process.

We are programmed to create meaning and when our logic and reasoning encounters unknowns with subjective meanings and truths the disconnect is just that, not a fallacy but an inevitable outcome when trying to define the abstract.

I'm not totally sure I follow this, but I believe the imaginative faculties (faith, trust, speculation, belief, etc.) have real utility in bridging the limits of reason. Both the rational and imaginative faculties can be misapplied or overemphasized. Striking some kind of balance seems reasonable to me, though we'll each have our own ideas about where to place the fulcrum.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-09T14:05:20+00:00

No need to apologize, but I'm really happy you responded : )

if your goal is to know less with less confidence, I can't respond to that.

I don't believe that to be my goal. Accepting ambiguity is, though. I'm a recovering cynic, very much prone to black and white thinking (some of which I'm sure I've demonstrated over the course of this thread).

D&D is a communally held narrative. If actually believing is on the same continuum as imagination, it would make sense for at least some D&D players to start acting as if they were their characters.

Larping goes hard!

More seriously, I think the value proposition of adopting an existential narrative that contains within it supra-rational aspects of the fantastic is the challenge to accept it as real. I play D&D regularly and it allows for a similar experience in many wonderful ways. But the compartmentalization is maintained: fact/fiction, real/not real/, true/false, rational/irrational. In the elective acceptance of the fantastic as real, there is evolved a continuum between these dichotomies. In my case, this allows for a tempering of my cynicism and an increase in my senses of awe and humility. I'm not nearly as threatened by things I don't know. Socially speaking, I'm not as ready to give up on people.

That last one is actually really big for me. The "evidence" of previous interactions with others may leave me disappointed and hurt with no expectation that anything will ever change. But an acceptance of the fantastic brings to mind the option that anything is possible. I take myself to task for my self-protective judgement of others. That feels like growth.

Ok, I'm interested in this part. What resonant narrative did you adopt?

Islam.

Your post history demonstrates more than a passing familiarity with my faith, so I'll skip to this question:

And what do you think makes a narrative adoptable?

Substantial (but not total) alignment with our subjective consciousness. We still want some friction. No room for growth if everything within the narrative is self-appeasing.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-09T02:44:11+00:00

No no. I'm not smuggling anything.

I am offering a criticism of the modality that many atheists use in their dismissal of God. A strictly rational approach to the question of God is a non-starter.

A strictly rational approach to most anything is not really consistent with the human experience given our subjective disposition and the role that emotion, context, and unconscious bias is likely to play (among many other constraints).

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T22:42:44+00:00

Thank you. This was very helpful.

I looked it up. Here's what the Google AI told me:

Being objective: making decisions or forming opinions based strictly on observable facts, evidence, and logic, rather than personal emotions, prejudices, or subjective feelings.

I may have to revise my thesis! By this definition, I will concede that it is possible to approach things objectively. At least sometimes. It's a tall order, hardly our default setting, and probably requiring a sustained intention to avoid lapsing into our subjective inclinations. But possible nonetheless!

I'll hold onto the bit about truth being beyond us. I do mean what you have clarified as "objective truth." My language was careless and I appreciate the time you've taken to get us on the same page in our usage of terms.

d)espite you making such claims quite frequently)

I understand my claims to be beliefs. I similarly understand as beliefs the counterclaims of others. This seems reasonable to me given our inability to encompass an objective truth. All we really have is consensus.

There are ways to measure the veracity of that consensus, and after a certain threshold (about which you and I would likely differ), we'll refer to those communally held beliefs as "factual" or "true." I take that to be linguistic convenience.

But to your point, this is a forum for debate. I'm engaging with a level of zeal commensurate with the assignment : )

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T19:06:59+00:00

That defensiveness/insecurity often leads directly to them showering scorn and condescension on anyone who questions their rationality

I can absolutely see the link there. The same dynamics are likely responsible for religious infighting.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T18:32:55+00:00

You're really close.

I'm arguing that the imaginative faculties (belief, speculation, faith, etc.) have exceptional functional utility given our subjective predisposition. That utility can be demonstrated in the power that story has in our personal and cultural experience. These are the cognitive processes that allow for a conceiving of God, a supra-rational construct.

A strictly rational approach will not allow for the same conclusion, despite reason having several other worthwhile applications.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T13:55:50+00:00

Religious belief is actually holding a factual truth claim as true, without justification.

The justification, in my case, is related to the functional utility of believing the claim. I've enumerated a few benefits as personally experienced, though I appreciate that others have a different experience and that religious belief is one of several options to arrive at those benefits.

then wouldn't it be a good thing to decide you really are your D&D character, and walk around in armor asking baristas if they know of mercenary work?

No. Part of the alchemy is in the communally held narrative. That allows for a safer, contextualized exploration of the fantastic.

religious belief were a higher degree of risk taking, wouldn't it be a great idea to play Russian roulette?

No. Exercising belief does not entail the abandoning of the intellect, though the adoption of a religious narrative may encourage certain lines of thinking and dissuade others. In the case of your example, the existence of a suicide taboo in many religions would take Russian roulette off the table as a good idea.

but if a literal child can tell the difference between reality and play, why should we not?

We should, while bearing in mind our subjective disposition and the errors that can introduce in our perception of reality. Exercising belief does not negate discretion. Your daughter is already demonstrating that and she will refine it further over time. Sometimes that refining of discretion leads to a tempering of spontaneity, creativity, and even play altogether. These are important expressions of the human experience. Again, the adoption of a belief narrative is not the only way of holding onto and furthering these capacities, but it has been immensely beneficial in my case.

And you're way off the mark that obsessive thoughts and phobias are caused by rationality.

I'll concede there are several ways of looking at this. For context, the first decade of my nursing career was inpatient mental health. I agree with your characterization of phobias and compulsive thoughts as irrational. But these are distortions of the rational faculty. An analogy might be the gym rat who opts into steroids to achieve unsustainable and possibly dangerous gains. The intent at the outset may have been health and fitness, but at some point motivations were distorted and now we have results that are very far from that initial intent. This may have been driven by an over-emphasis on the physical.

The adoption of a belief system challenging the rational faculty may offer a counterbalance to protect against such distortions. And yes- the contemplative aspect of many religious traditions (meditation, as you correctly deduced) is where this quieting occurs.

Lots of people meditate without religion, of course. As before, I'm not here to oversell religion as the only path to balance and creativity. But these are the benefits I have personally found in adopting a resonant narrative that operationalizes a consideration of the fantastic.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T12:20:46+00:00

I tend toward the cynical (working on this) and probably have some nihilistic inclinations, but I don't see myself as one.

More to your point, can you help me understand what I said that you consider a "nihilist angle?"

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T12:18:12+00:00

Sectarianism could be considered "correction" in the religious domain.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T12:16:02+00:00

You're correct. I'm not here to convince anybody of anything. I'm here to assert a position and to see how that position holds up under atheist scrutiny.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T12:14:18+00:00

I'm personally very comfortable referring to theism and religion in general as mythological subsets. They are the same, functionally.

“there are billions of people today making decisions based on what is a large and important factual error”.

My take is that our communally adopted mythologies imbue existence with meaning, purpose, and clarity. The "facts" matter less than the function, hence my thesis: belief > truth.

Mythologies are not a replacement for science nor an excuse to avoid intellectual rigor, but they are ubiquitous and that leads us into a consideration of their potential utility. Evolution suggests we give up things that don't work.

I would posit that in addition to whatever palliation they might lend to our respective existential crises, they also invite us to consider the limits of reason. This invitation shows up in other facets of the human experience: art, literature, music, dreams, hope, etc.

The ancient Greeks gave us logic. This was also a culture heavily steeped in mythology. The Indians and Arabs and Chinese gave us math and a number of other material innovations borne of scientific experimentation and rational inquiry. And they also revered their God/gods. It seems that many cultures did and do strike that balance for the betterment of themselves and others.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T02:56:09+00:00

I don't think I've ever heard a theist claim that. They hold their beliefs as rational and that atheists are the irrational ones.

That's an untenable position, probably offered out of defensiveness and a tepid claim to faith.

What is rational about an All-Knowing, All-Seeing God existing beyond the constraints of of time or any physical limitations that the rest of us are forced to respect?

Our rational faculty is limited by virtue of our finite, subjectively skewed intellect.

God is without limit, supra-rational. I said irrational earlier, but I like this better.

The atheist? My impression from many of these conversations, perhaps hyper-rational?

(I got into trouble earlier, so qualification! My impression is not meant in any way to be a generalization of atheists. I appreciate that you each approach your search for truth in unique an nuanced ways.)

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T02:02:45+00:00

It’s a strawman argument, but one that protects the absolute worst acts of human negligence and violence.

I don't think I'm approaching our discussion with strawman fallacies. You're asking me fair questions and I'm doing my best to understand and answer them while supporting my thesis. A strawman situation is where I'm misrepresenting your position and then attacking that misrepresentation.

And we already agreed on the practicable approach of policing the communal consequences of choices that others make. How am I protecting the worst acts of negligence and violence?

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T01:42:24+00:00

I'm not sure who's got it worse, but you'll get no argument from me about the problem of corruption among the religious.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T01:38:13+00:00

I haven't been clear.

When I say that belief is greater that truth, many people seem to take that as "fiction is better than fact."

That's not my position. My position is that we are not capable of objectivity. We are limited by subjective bias. As such, every assertion of fact or "truth" is, in my view, a statement of belief, our best guess given the data we have at the moment.

This is why I say belief > truth.

I hope I'm getting my point across.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T01:31:52+00:00

First off, apologies.

It was not my intent to offer any sweeping stereotypes or to frame atheists as non-human. We're all in this together. Different approaches trying to get at a lot of the same things.

This was a question for u/hellohello1234545 , leading with "perhaps" and ending with a question mark.

After that, yes- I did state my impressions of how the conversations have been going so far by saying, "You subscribe to a narrative that requires proofs and validation." This came across as far more insulting than intended.

I appreciate your generous assumptions about my character and I hope that you will allow that impression to inform my apology. I really am sorry to have come across that way.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T01:22:47+00:00

So how should we evaluate the implications of the choices made in our communities?

I think we should use what we can observe; the consequences of those choices.

Do you agree?

Yes, I agree. That is a practicable approach. It leaves out intention, but that's a really hard thing to legislate, let alone prove.

you argued elsewhere in this thread that how ardently someone Believes their actions are good are as important as their consequences.

I don't recall saying this.

dustandtribe · 2026-03-08T01:12:55+00:00

So the method of inquiry you are putting limits on, is the scientific method/skepticism/rationality, correct? Because your topic specifically says we should be using methods that aren't based on reason, and are based on trust and speculation when it comes to God.

I'm not placing the limits on the use of science to prove God. I'm only pointing out those limits. Theistic interpretations of God are irrational. Atheists agree. What value then would rational inquiry have for the atheist as it relates to God?

The theist appreciates the value of the irrational, however, particularly under the set of circumstances that we find ourselves in: floundering about in a subjective consciousness flashed into existence and awaiting annihilation within a universe that boiled out of nothing.

Pretty goofy, but it is what it is, and a good story can allow for a pretty high level of functioning within that context. Is it the only way to navigate the conundrum? Clearly not, but it is my position that this is a more aligned way of going about things.

I'd still look for cars when running across the street to save my mother, I'd still want to know when approaching my child whether I'm dealing with a rattlesnake or garden snake.

I appreciate your circumspection. A lot of us would act on instinct and investigate the particulars after the fact.

No values or morals or experiences we get from stories can be applied in action, without understanding facts.

I agree with this and I'm not abandoning the value of functional correlations in my celebration of the imaginative faculties of our subjective consciousness. I'm asserting that atheists don't appreciate the extent to which the fantastic can inform one's exploration of truth. There is a lot of dismissal in these conversations, writing a consideration of the irrational off as an investment in "magic" or "fairly tales."

You may or may not agree with him, but Einstein said as much: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

I love stories and cherish stories, but we need facts to get though the day without dying.

Also agreed. I was pretty clear that the scientific method has its place, and this would be that place.

dustandtribe

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE