nozflubber
DoubleplusUngoodNonperson
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2008
- Messages
- 2,078
- MBTI Type
- Hype
Is it possible for a person to believe in God but not be aware of this conciously? that is, the person essentialyl has unconcious faith the concious mind is not aware of, and as such their verbal behavior will be that like an atheists? "I don't believe.... Jesus sucks" etc?
I think it is possible for a variety of reasons but I ask because I think this poses a HUGE moral problem for believers - Accurate Discrimination of faith vs non faith. Many actions done for the betterment of persons is largely based upon superficial measurements of Faith. (the other flip side of this is people whose verbal behavior is indicative of faith, but they don't really have any...however I don't wanna get into that just here...)
Think of it from my perspective - a neuropsychologist trying to comprehend the effects of termerament and also trying to "dig through" and see through verbal behaviors (verbal behaviors/beleifs will not always align so well with action). An arbitrary brain is given the stimulus of something religious along the lines of "do you believe in God?". The biological diversity of nature, already having act the brain, has a certain "mode" we call temperament.... it kicks in, and takes over as the speaker for this question - NT, NF , SJ , whatever, a particular set of neural pathways is activated(lets just pretend for now this is always temperament related, ok?). That pathway ilicits the motor response areas to give a response of something atheistic and just all around negative, like "There is no God, its totally retarded". Question: How do you know that brain(person) does not have some other pathway that when properly activated (however that may be... again, this is probably a type variable) would yield the response of a Believer?
A stimulus of "do you believe in God", however interpreted by the person, does not necessarily yield the "always true" answer. It's not that the person is lying about, they just don't see HOW they can believe in God.
I think it is possible for a variety of reasons but I ask because I think this poses a HUGE moral problem for believers - Accurate Discrimination of faith vs non faith. Many actions done for the betterment of persons is largely based upon superficial measurements of Faith. (the other flip side of this is people whose verbal behavior is indicative of faith, but they don't really have any...however I don't wanna get into that just here...)
Think of it from my perspective - a neuropsychologist trying to comprehend the effects of termerament and also trying to "dig through" and see through verbal behaviors (verbal behaviors/beleifs will not always align so well with action). An arbitrary brain is given the stimulus of something religious along the lines of "do you believe in God?". The biological diversity of nature, already having act the brain, has a certain "mode" we call temperament.... it kicks in, and takes over as the speaker for this question - NT, NF , SJ , whatever, a particular set of neural pathways is activated(lets just pretend for now this is always temperament related, ok?). That pathway ilicits the motor response areas to give a response of something atheistic and just all around negative, like "There is no God, its totally retarded". Question: How do you know that brain(person) does not have some other pathway that when properly activated (however that may be... again, this is probably a type variable) would yield the response of a Believer?
A stimulus of "do you believe in God", however interpreted by the person, does not necessarily yield the "always true" answer. It's not that the person is lying about, they just don't see HOW they can believe in God.