Belief

To: abehel@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Belief

I've intended to send this for a while but Dollywood continued to call. Today the Rampage is shutdown and I am not working. Something broke that fixing requires the channel be drained.  When drained the water somehow finds its way into a stream requiring Dollywood to control the flow so the urine (human and fowl), and associated  "purification" chemicals not pollute the stream. When they refill they have to notify Pigeon Forge of their intentions. Dollywood does not want it filled when guests are in the park; if it affects PF I can only imagine what it does to DW.

 

A few weeks ago the Supreme Court decided to not consider various state bans on same-sex-marriage allowing same-sex-marriage to proceed, at least in those states and for a while. During the report they showed two men kissing…. on the lips which brought to mind that you told me you thought homosexuality is a choice. I have asked a number of men what could influence them to choose to kiss another man and want to run their hands all over his body. I told them the question was rhetorical, because I did not want to know their answer. I cannot imagine anything permitting me to make such a choice so in my ignorance I believe the root cause of homosexuality must be something else.

 

Then we have the question of why do we believe anything?

 

When children who are ten, twelve, fourteen years-old are baptized are they capable of understanding what they are doing or are they just responding to someone they trust? For that matter do adults just respond to someone they trust? Faith is not enough. Who does not have "…confidence in what they hope for and assurance about what they do not see." in something? Consider people in "the" denominations, Muslims, Hindus etc all have "faith" as we have faith even atheists have confidence in something and hope for something.

 

Isn't it odd that what someone called "The Christian Age" is the first time since Creation that God does not interface directly with his creation? I realize many believe God answers their requests but factual evidence calls that belief into question. We are expected to believe without evidence of any type. We are not even allowed the Gideon test. I am told testing God is sin; relying upon God is testing God thus is sin; and that God helps those who help themselves. Our belief is based on our perception of the person telling us which is, in turn, based on their perception of the person telling them which is … you get the picture.

 

At some point shouldn't belief rely on fact, on knowledge? Are we the first of all creation expected to take somebody's word? God had been speaking directly but now…not a peep.

 

Studies have shown we are more likely to believe that a statement is true if we have heard it before---whether or not it is actually true: "illusion-of-truth effect." Subjects rated the validity of plausible sentences every two weeks. Without letting on, the experimenters snuck in some repeat sentences (both true and false ones) across the testing sessions. And they found a clear result: if subjects had heard a sentence in previous weeks, they were more likely to now rate it as true, even if they swore they had never heard it before. This is the case even when the experimenter tells the subjects that the sentences they are about to hear are false: despite this, mere exposure to an idea is enough to boost its believability upon later contact. The illusion-of-truth effect highlights the potential danger for people who are repeatedly exposed to the same religious edicts or political slogans.

Maybe we need to examine our "certainty."