Do you think that belief in something requires thinking it is real?

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   Kylyssaposted 9 years ago

   Do you think that belief in something requires thinking it is real?
   
   If not, please explain how one would go about believing in something one does not think to be real if no clear physical evidence for it exists. 
   
   

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   JThomp42posted 9 years ago

   Of course. Take the chicken and the egg. Which came first? No one really knows, so does that make them not real? They are both real but this one simple question cannot be answered by anyone.

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      The question I asked was whether or not you have to think something is real to believe in it. I'm not sure how your statement relates.

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      JThomp42posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      The question really makes no sense and you are looking for answers that you agree with. What is your intention in asking this question? Your non-belief in God? Of course thinking something exist has to be real. God is real and he exists.

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      My intention is to find out if people believe in things they don't think are real and how they do it if they do. It isn't even God-specific. I'm looking for someone who believes in something they don't think is real to find out how it works.

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   Robert the Bruceposted 9 years ago

   Not everyone requires evidence to believe that something or someone is "real." Take most of the religious people of the world; they believe in very specific deities that have no solid evidence to back up their existence.
   
   For many people, the desire for mental and emotional comfort, along with a perceived "purpose" for their life overrides their natural, rational demand for evidence, thus producing a deeply held belief in a deity or the like.
   
   This is a fact of human nature. Humans create religious beliefs in order to guide their lives and give them comfort in this cruel and unforgiving world.

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you for understanding the question and for not reading too much into it. I'm trying to understand how accepting cognitive dissonance works to allow a person to think something isn't real yet still believe in it.

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   gregb4hopeposted 9 years ago

   The human mind does just that….it believes something is real but in reality there is no solid "objective" proof that it is real. I call it blind faith in regards to many religions which are murky and without substance. 
   
   People with certain illnesses such as bipolar ,truly believe something is real to them but to others it is not seen as such not real. Our minds have the power of imagination. The use of it does not make something real except within the mind. However, everything we see before us as a reality was first in the mind without physical existence.
   
   As a christian, I believe in the resurrection as a reality because of the biblical evidence which demonstrates it. I also find Jesus Christ to be one of the most objective person who despite being rejected proved his point of coming back to life.  The requirement was not to have one sin in his life. Because that is the one thing that gave Adam and all of us death, biblically speaking.  There is substantial evidence to back up that fact and it is based on objective evidence. Who would die to prove that they can live again? I have not seen it…or read about someone coming back yet with reincarnation…..or any other religion. Real people put Jesus on a cross.
   Christianity is very objective for it proves God's descriptive word fulfills itself despite man's unbelief. Now that is absolute reality at work. buff said!

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      Robert the Bruceposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Greg, the Bible is the claim, not the evidence. It has been proven to contain many errors. You say the resurrection of Jesus is based on objective evidence...I challenge you to provide some evidence other than the biased claims of the Bible. So?

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      JThomp42posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Greg... I actually voted up on your answer. Great answer. I would not fall for the bait. He is only trying to provoke a debate out of you. And believe me it is not worth it. God bless!

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      Robert the Bruceposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Greg, all I'm asking for is some objective evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. No games here. Are you up to the challenge or will you ignore it?

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      gregb4hopeposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      The Bible, has more information and accuracy than any other book. You say it's subjective but it is objective. It is so opposed to the way mankind want to think versus the way we ought to think.   Man sins and die Jesus remain sinless & lives.

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      Robert the Bruceposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Ok, like I thought, you've got nothing. Believers see what they want to see, and ignore what they want to ignore. I suppose there's nothing more to say here.

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Imagine the question doesn't refer to God (it just refers to believing in things) but to something YOU don't think is real and has no evidence YOU accept. Can you believe in things you don't think are real? That's the question rephrased.

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   reasonablerobbyposted 9 years ago

   You first have to resolve the nature of reality. This is an ontological question and the stuff of philosophical debate for thousands of years. One can take reality as independent of the observer and grounded in indisputable fact, and there to be discovered (Realist take on reality) or one can take it as something that is located in the mind of the observer (Idealist take on reality) and socially contsructed.  Most of us are Realists I would guess. Some realists say reality is what we definitely see, and others so called critical realists (see Roy Bhaskar) say that invisible things that cause effects in the observed world are real too e.g. a culture.
   
   Belief is connected to the question of 'how we know' or epistemology. How do we determine the truth of something? Some people are Positivists (most often natural scientists - they collect 'facts' about the word. Others say we give meaning to the world these are Interpretivists. The philosopher Neitzche suggested there were no such things as facts only interpretations. This leaves a problem that everything becomes 'relative' there are no solid facts and anything goes. If I believe it then it is so...so there! We have the problem that we can believe things that are not true and disbelieve things that are true. Thus belief is often associated with matters of faith where no evidence is needed to hold the belief (like I believe there is a dragon under my bed) whereas knowledge is associated with empirical evidence (I have looked under my bed and know that a dragon is not there)

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I think the definition of reality that is important to this question is the one held by the person who holds the belief.  What a person thinks is real is his version of reality and the only one relevant to what he believes.

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   Craig Suitsposted 9 years ago

   The first part of your question is obvious as it is asked: If one doesn't believe is something then how could they believe it's real?
   
   Secondly:
   Put to the wire, most people except die-hard fanatic nut cases would secretly admit that they don't know anything about a god or an afterlife.
   It all boils down to dying. People are scared of death so they cling to the only explanation they have about death that they can feel relatively good about, Valhalla, Heaven, Stobakor, etc., etc..
   This fantasy hope in reality happens to be the most destructive and backward force known to mankind. It always has been, and provided we don't annihilate ourselves in an ongoing religious war, it always will be.
   
   As a dog cowers in a thunder storm, the human mind cowers thinking about death. It doesn't know the truth what ever that is so it invents fairy tales to sooth the fear and before long, it's dropping dollars in the collections boxes all around the world cementing the fallacy and in time, it sends it's children to the killing fields to be slaughtered defending the very same fairy tales.

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   Radical Rogposted 9 years ago

   You shouldn't simply believe or have faith in anything, but you ask for physical evidence. Many modern cosmologists believe in the existence of dark matter and dark energy because they consider this necessary for the universe to exist, or at least exist according to their mathematical equations however, there is no physical evidence.
   So, do logic, reason and philosophical evidence count as valid forms of evidence?
   Follow this route and there is reason to believe in the existence of things like dark matter and dark energy. There is also reason to believe in the existence of gods, but not as proposed by the main religions of the world. Now this opens a real can of worms!

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Obviously, everything is evidence of God to someone who already thinks God is real; that wasn't the question.  The question was whether it's necessary or not to think something is real to believe in it.

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      Radical Rogposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      True, but that is a blinkered view of whatever evidence there may be. I will always advocate taking the blinkers off and examining the evidence free from any preconceptions. Believing is the problem, the call to believe and have faith. Don't believe.

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      It's a question.  The question is whether or not you have to think something is real to believe in it or can you think it is made up and still believe in it.

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8. 90

   Kylyssaposted 9 years ago

   I'm not trying to discover what evidence makes people believe but if people need to think something is real BEFORE they believe in it.
   
   It's a yes or no question.
   
   The second part is ONLY for people who don't need to think a thing is real to believe in it and/or for people who have seen and understood the phenomenon of someone not thinking something was real yet believing in it.
   
   It's about finding out how it's possible for someone to both think something is not real and to believe in it at the same time.
   
   Let me rephrase it a bunch of different ways because I clearly made poor word choices.
   
   Please read the words as they are written, using standard dictionary definitions. When I use the word "you" in the following sentences I mean actually you, the person answering. When I refer to something being real or not real, I'm referring to what the exact specific person who has the belief thinks is real and not real. I'm not referring to the ultimate nature of reality which no one knows but to the thoughts of the specific person having the belief about reality.
   
   I've changed the order around in some of the re-phrasings below in case the word order was a problem, so a yes to the original question might be the same as a no to one of the re-phrased questions. Just in case, I've also rephrased it so it's not a yes or no question, too.
   
   Must you think something is real before you believe in it or can you believe in things you do not think are real?
   
   If you personally don't think something is real, can you believe in it if there's no evidence you will accept?
   
   If you think a thing is just made up can you believe in it?
   
   If you think something doesn't exist and there's no evidence for its existence that you, personally, will give weight to can you believe in it or is thinking something is real even necessary for you to believe it?
   
   If you believe in God, do you think God is real? Did you have to think God was real to believe in God or could you believe in God if you thought He were fake?
   
   The second part asks the question of only people who believe in things they DO NOT think are real. Only explain how you believe or have believed in things you do not or did not think were real at the time that you believed in them or if you understand how others believe in things they do not think are real
   
   Thank you for your patience; I often have difficulty phrasing things well enough to be understood by people from different cultures.

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   lone77starposted 9 years ago

   Many scientists believe life can be created in a test tube, but they don't have proof of such an idea.
   
   Belief in God doesn't require thinking of anything. Feeling is the active ingredient. Thought usually gets in the way. This can seem tough to someone who has made a life with intellectual prowess, but it doesn't have to be. I have a low genius IQ, taking computer science in college and graduating summa cum laude. Believing in God was easy because I have felt spiritual things all my life. I was ready for them after hundreds of lives spent in relative darkness, spiritually.
   
   I have experienced dozens of miracles and it seems so clear to me that a need for proof only gets in the way of creating miracles. It's like a little child who is too afraid to step out onto a ledge when their house is burning. Fearless confidence is required. Faith in themselves and in the future could save them, but fear and focus on the fire could destroy them. It's that simple.
   
   The universe exists, therefore He IS. But you need to feel the spiritual, otherwise all the intellectual thrashing about won't amount to anything on spiritual discovery.

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      The question is not about believing evidence; it's about whether or not you need to think something is real to believe in it. It's not even specifically about God. Please imagine there's something YOU don't think is real and apply the question to it.

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