What does "respecting other people's beliefs" actually mean?

[Hakluyt]

I am often told I should - and I have been told that I haven't. But I genuinely don't know what it means.

I am a great believer in good manners, and I would always be polite if I was attending some sort of faith based event. I never go on prayer threads. I do try never to be rude. But the threshold for "disrespect" seems extraordinarily low- sometimes mere disagreement seems unacceptable.

Also, what constitutes a "belief"? The major world religions- OK- I get that. But do I also have to respect "new" religions made up in the 1970s/80s? Kabbalah? Is homeopathy a belief? If I say, for example "homeopathy is discredited bollocks and this is why" is that a public service or disrespecting someone's beliefs? Is astrology a "belief"?

Atheism isn't a belief system, obviously, but am I entitled to be offended and report the post if someone says that atheists lead empty lives devoid of joy? Or if someone says that science is evil and devoted to hiding the evidence for the paranormal/ the cure for cancer/whatever for it's own selfish ends?

pitchfo Wed 11-Jun-14 19:04:48
It's not splitting hairs, if you have a belief in a god you are using definition number 4. You might subscribe that another definition holds true for an athiest but that's disingenuous because the context is different.

Not true.

Just because the dictionary has different uses of a word (in this case the word 'belief'), doesn't mean you have to fulfil all 4 different meanings of the word to make it fit!

Thats like saying if you rebel against authority at school you aren't a rebel because you don't fulfil number 1) rebelling against a country ruler or 7) rebelling against corporal punishment.

rebel ?

noun
1.
a person who refuses allegiance to, resists, or rises in arms against the government or ruler of his or her country.
2.
a person who resists any authority, control, or tradition.
adjective
3.
rebellious; defiant.
4.
of or pertaining to rebels.
verb (used without object), re·bel, re·belled, re·bel·ling.
5.
to reject, resist, or rise in arms against one's government or ruler.
6.
to resist or rise against some authority, control, or tradition.
7.
to show or feel utter repugnance: His very soul rebelled at spanking the child.

CoteDAzur, you have a very strong belief that god doesn't exist, I respect your right to hold that view. I am agnostic, for the reasons I stated much earlier, I also respect the right of those to believe in god. We need to go beyond just respecting rights, to questioning things but the way that you argue your case, is not helpful, constructive or respectful, neither can it be said to be vigorous, because again, all you are doing is stating your preferred position. Nothing new in that is there, that is what most people do but this is philosophy, not a shopping trip where you can discriminate against pink shoes in favour of red.

And for the record I am reading philosophy and always happy to learn something new, I am not a physicist and neither have I been to Cambridge, they likely wouldn't have me!

I'm not saying you have to fit all definitions. But if the context you are using for belief is the 4th one (a belief in a god) that is the one you have to make applicable to an athiest. The context of use.

rpitchfo, if the Higgs boson is responsible for all the mass in the universe, then god can't be. Do you know what it is then?

Cotes
What makes me an atheist is that I heard all about your Gods and religions and didn't buy any of it. I have rejected your belief. I told you "That sounds like a lot of tosh". That is not a belief. It's an absence of belief.

First of all you have no idea what I do or don't believe, so you can't reject my belief! Or are you speaking generally and not actually personally to me?

Anyway, if you believe that homeopathy is 'tosh' as you put it (which I do), then believing its tosh is as much a belief as believing it will heal you. Both are a belief.

You can't say that if you believe positively then its a belief, but if you believe negatively then its not a belief!

So, for the record, I believe that homeopathy doesn't work.

And I think you might be confusing the words believe and faith. I'm not sure if saying atheism is a belief is the same as saying its a faith. I haven't considered that point but I will now.

faith [feyth] Show IPA
noun
1.
confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2.
belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3.
belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4.
belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5.
a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

rpitchfo Wed 11-Jun-14 19:31:22
I'm not saying you have to fit all definitions.
But if the context you are using for belief is the 4th one (a belief in a god) that is the one you have to make applicable to an athiest. The context of use. Of course it's not! I can use atheism in number 1, 2 AND 3 definitions, just not 4!

"Anyway, if you believe that homeopathy is 'tosh' as you put it (which I do), then believing its tosh is as much a belief as believing it will heal you. Both are a belief."

No. Homeopathy doesn't work. It's not that I believe it doesn't work. It just doesn't.
I don't believe that if I let go of a stone it will fall. I know it will. Homeopathy not working is in the same category.

It's responsible for mass. Not the Big Bang (which I think the pp is alluding to- I apologise of I misunderstood). I don't understand the assumption that a particle creating matter means no god exists.

Arrgghh but definitions 1.2 and 3 arn't applicable to the context!

Hakluyt Wed 11-Jun-14 19:39:42

No. Homeopathy doesn't work. It's not that I believe it doesn't work. It just doesn't.

Yes but some people would tell you they believe differently.

I don't believe that if I let go of a stone it will fall. I know it will. depends on whether your palm is faced upward or downward

"Yes but some people would tell you they believe differently. "

I know. That is their belief. But they are wrong.

Well said MinnieTheMinx 19.29.

rpitchfo Wed 11-Jun-14 19:41:12
Arrgghh but definitions 1.2 and 3 arn't applicable to the context!
I don't know if you were trying to be comical but that made me really smile.

Look, You say it doesn't, but

1. = something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that there is no higher being and we all die once and there is no eternal life
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement like existence of God being considered not real and unworthy of belief.
3. confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his ability to know that his/her decision/wisdom about God's existence can be relied upon to be trusted and right and correct.
4. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief

a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief. this is the only sense atheism is not a belief. However it fits all of the other first 3 descriptions.

Think about it. The word Rebel means to rebel against the ruler of a country. So if I call you a rebel for refusing to put your recycling in the right bin, does that mean I can't use the word rebel because you're not an anarcist?

Hakluyt Wed 11-Jun-14 19:43:17

I know. That is their belief. But they are wrong.

Still a belief though

"In quantum physics, it was a Higgs-like particle that sparked the cosmic explosion [the Big Bang]. In other words, everything we see around us, including galaxies, stars, planets and us, owes its existence to the Higgs boson"

However this is not uncontested

"Even theoretical physicist and Big Bang evangelist Lawrence Krauss has acknowledged that the discovery of the Higgs boson in and of itself does not provide an explanation for the cause of the Big Bang, saying that determining the cause for this supposed event may be beyond our present technological capabilities"

www.icr.org/article/higgs-boson-big-bang/

MiniTheMinx - "CoteDAzur, you have a very strong belief that god doesn't exist, I respect your right to hold that view."

Ffs, is that really what you understood from my last post:

CoteDAzur Wed 11-Jun-14 19:20:20
I don't know if the universe was created by a conscious entity or if it happened by accident. It would be foolish to claim that I have that knowledge. What makes me an atheist is that I heard all about your Gods and religions and didn't buy any of it. I have rejected your belief.

"We need to go beyond just respecting rights, to questioning things"

I agree.

"... but the way that you argue your case, is not helpful, constructive or respectful, neither can it be said to be vigorous, because again, all you are doing is stating your preferred position."

Well, you haven't even understood my position, so how do you expect me to expand on it?

"that is what most people do but this is philosophy, not a shopping trip where you can discriminate against pink shoes in favour of red"

I agree. In a shopping trip, "I like red shoes" and "I like pink shoes" would be personal preferences, all of which are equally valid. There would be no debate and we would all agree to disagree.

Of course there are other people who get stoned to death because others can't tolerate their beliefs.

You have to balance the need to stop people from harming others and themselves with the need to be a bit live and let live about other people's ideas and what gets them through the night.

Of course in reality that isn't at all easy, e.g. when there is a conflict between a parent and doctors re: the care of their child.

"Still a belief though "

So how do you distinguish belief from fact?

Mini - "if the Higgs boson is responsible for all the mass in the universe, then god can't be. Do you know what it is then?"

It's just a subatomic particle. It's not conscious. It's not "responsible" for anything

That's like saying "If the sun is responsible for keeping the planets in orbit, then God can't be".

You sound about as knowledgeable about Physics as the Inquisition that questioned Galileo!

(Btw, I confused you with larry on another thread who was saying she has a Physics degree from Cambridge.)

GotAnother - "No. Homeopathy doesn't work. It's not that I believe it doesn't work. It just doesn't."
Yes but some people would tell you they believe differently."

Those people are either ignorant of the facts or willingly ignoring them. There is no other explanation, and it is not possible to respect their belief.

That doesn't mean I tie up and stone friends who feed their kids sugar arnica pills after a fall. It means I wait for the right moment to ask them if they would be interested in some research and send them the links to some meta-analyses & Cochrane review on homeopathy.

Hakluyt; "So how do you distinguish belief from fact?"

I found Ruth Putnam, Creating facts and values, really good on a similar and related question about moral facts. Many would argue that moral facts do not exist, others will argue that something is a fact without elaborating what makes it a fact (such as those who might follow the ten commandments or Jewish food laws) others will say that moral facts can be established through reason and others like Putnam argue that facts are established through consensus, in much the same way as I suggested with science and peer review.

Putnam suggests that moral facts are like moral theories, because facts are like small theories, and this process involves consensus. If we all agree that killing babies is abhorrent, then it passes into society as a moral fact, it goes unchallenged, this is the best we can hope for. So if we all believe something, this belief goes unchallenged then it can become a fact.

CoteDAzur, I am saying that the Big Bang theory doesn't/shouldn't be used as an argument by atheists in their quest to discount the existence of god. As previously stated. Maybe the choice of the word "responsible" was misleading, sorry.

But what about something like if you drop a stone it falls? Is that a belief or a fact?

Big Bang is never used as an argument against the existence of God, and it certainly wasn't on this thread. How can it possibly be? It is conceivably how a God would create a universe - out of nothing and with a bang.

And the discovery of the Higgs Boson didn't prove that Big Bang happened or anything. I don't know why you are referring to Big Bang when we were talking about the Higgs Boson.

There are loads of people who believe in God and The Big Bang......