The One Thing I Wish People from the Other Side Understood (America, myth)

[hiker45]

I wish people would not carelessly endanger the safety of others.

I would not change what other people believe.

In my life, most of what I have learned is from people who did not agree with me. When people disagree with me, I think about their point of view, and sometimes I realize they are right.

[Hueffenhardt]

The one thing I wish people would understand is to not take one's personal experiences at face value. Experiences are always vulnerable to reinterpretation when we adopt a new perspective. So, the argument that "if you had only experienced what I have experienced, then you'd believe" does not have any validity for me.

Experiences are several steps removed from reality. Merely having an experience does not prove that your interpretation of that experience is the correct one. And there are always alternative interpretations for every experience. One does not have to accept an experience at face value. Although it may be real that you really did have an experience, it may not be real that what you think happened during your experience actually happened.

Personal experiences (aka anecdotal evidence) are great for generating hypotheses but are never sufficient as reliable proof of anything. They are too faulty, prone to misperception and misinterpretation, subject to bias and prejudiced by one's beliefs, jumps to unwarranted conclusions, subject to delusions and hallucinations, are at best a mental model of what happens in the world around them. It is well documented that our memories for personal experiences are crap. Loftus showed through scientific research that witnesses are horrible at describing what happened during a motor vehicle accident they were shown - their accounts contradicted each other and the tape. Memories can be manipulated and planted without a person's awareness.

I have seen too many psychological experiments that illustrate and exploit our brain's weaknesses to accurately understand what is going on and remember it correctly to ever trust accounts of personal experiences, even my own.

[Pleroo]

Originally Posted by Hueffenhardt

What is the one thing you wish people from the other side (those holding opposing beliefs from yours) understood? What is the one thing that you feel they really need to know? It is the one thing that if they understood, a lot of other things would fall into place or open up for them. Please explain why you think that one thing would be so pivotal.

I'm an ex-Christian atheist, and the one thing I wish people from ALL sides understood is love. That's it. If we all got a handle on what love really is and the power it has, I'd like to think that all the extraneous stuff that divides us could fall by the wayside.

[nimchimpsky]

Originally Posted by catman

I wish they would realize that agnostics and atheists can have good ethics without belief in a deity.

And I wish that a lot of the atheists and agnostics I talk to didn't assume that I believe they are amoral or immoral without God. I don't believe you need God to be moral and I am tired of so many of the atheists I talk to lumping me in with all the other believers that do believe that.

[nimchimpsky]

Originally Posted by Pleroo

I'm an ex-Christian atheist, and the one thing I wish people from ALL sides understood is love. That's it. If we all got a handle on what love really is and the power it has, I'd like to think that all the extraneous stuff that divides us could fall by the wayside.

[Stavemaster]

That there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio (or whatever your name may be) than are dreamt of in your philosophy...

We are infinitesimally tiny specks of human dust hanging out in an indescribably huge and complex universe for 100 or so years, and that's if we're lucky. Our sense of the big picture is seriously limited.

[catman]

Originally Posted by nimchimpsky

And I wish that a lot of the atheists and agnostics I talk to didn't assume that I believe they are amoral or immoral without God. I don't believe you need God to be moral and I am tired of so many of the atheists I talk to lumping me in with all the other believers that do believe that.

There was no need to take it personally. The "they" I was referring to was those who do believe that one must believe in a deity to have ethics.

[godofthunder9010]

Originally Posted by catman

There was no need to take it personally. The "they" I was referring to was those who do believe that one must believe in a deity to have ethics.

Does anyone seriously believe that??? I think that the vast majority of believers know very well that you can have morals and ethics without believing in God/gods/whatever. You have your odd wacko but then again Atheists have their share of nutters too.

[imbobbbb]

Originally Posted by catman

There was no need to take it personally. The "they" I was referring to was those who do believe that one must believe in a deity to have ethics.

Many people on both sides generalize and put large,diverse groups into small boxes.You might have been directing your comment only at those for whom 'the shoe fits' but many paint with a broad brush.This board is full of posts of non believers belittling the intelligence,logic,and tolerance of all believers and believers attacking the morality,logic,and tolerance of non-believers.
To read the titles on some of the threads its clear that some feel that all believers are mindless,zombie like,right wing republicans who are led around by the nose by their church leaders,unable or willing to think for themselves,and living only for the day when they can rejoin their imaginary God in the sky who doesn't exist and spend their days fixated on gay people.

There is also no lack of posts by some believers that all atheists/agnostics are immoral,dupes of satan who only reject God so they wont feel guilty about their promiscuous ways,get abortions as a hobby,and worship drugs and drink.

In reality there are plenty of atheists who vote republican,don't particularly like abortion,don't drink or use drugs and there are plenty of christians who aren't fixated on gay people,get a respectable score on iq tests,believe the earth is billions of years old,and don't think that 95% of the worlds population is going to hell.

Unfortunately the fringes on here often make the most noise.My responses often leave people confused about which camp im supossed to be in.

[tinynot]

I think the best thing would be if atheists and christians just did not talk about "it" and whether or not which one is more correct than the other. Just don't talk about it, and the two factions wouldn't be arguing all the time, nobody ever wins.