Don't Stop Believing

Is belief a choice or are our beliefs inherent to us? How do we decide whether something is true or not? With 7 billion people on the planet, there are about 10,000 different types of religious beliefs. How do we come to our conclusions? 
 

Epistemology is a complex area of philosophy that deals with how we process information and decide if something is fact or fiction.

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Preston Meyer  00:14

Hi, I'm Preston.

Katie Dooley  00:15

And I'm Katie.

Preston Meyer  00:17

Welcome to the 

Both Hosts  00:17

Holy Watermelon podcast.

Katie Dooley  00:21

We're changing gears.

Preston Meyer  00:22

Yeah, we've spent, what is it? Seven episodes, seven episodes on our mini series looking at specific different religious traditions. And now we want to get back into that frame that we were in before where we actually talk about things with more of a personal interpretation and academic leaning, rather than just historical, sociological stuff.

Katie Dooley  00:47

But we'll see right away with my opening point why we did what we did, because now we're going to be talking in comparisons to religions, and you guys at least know what we're talking about. So that's cool. And we'll know what we're talking about, too, because some of that was a big refresher. For both of us, I think.

Preston Meyer  01:06

A lot of these things I haven't studied in years. So it's nice to get back into it and keep it fresh for sure.

Katie Dooley  01:12

Today, we are talking about the concept of belief. And I've been excited about this episode. From our planning days of the podcast.

Preston Meyer  01:22

It's so big and nebulous.

Katie Dooley  01:24

It is and my belief on belief has actually changed. And my belief is kinda nebulous personally...

Preston Meyer  01:35

Wait a minute, you change your opinions based on new information?

Katie Dooley  01:38

I did. 

Preston Meyer  01:38

Oh, no! 

Katie Dooley  01:39

We're gonna talk about that. So strap yourselves in because this is another episode without any real answer. We're just gonna talk about the topic of belief for an hour. And I would love to hear your thoughts on belief if you want to drop us a line on social media or on our Discord. Because yeah, this is one area that I'm still really unsure of.

Preston Meyer  02:10

It's tricky. And I don't think it'll ever stop being tricky.

Katie Dooley  02:15

I wanted to start off with the question of: what do you think of these religions? Now that we've talked about them all. I will answer it the way I am thinking to help guide your answer.

Preston Meyer  02:33

That would be helpful. 

Katie Dooley  02:36

And this happened to me when I was taking religious studies in school, is when we're all done the year, I kind of sat back and said, they're all the same. They're all the same.

Preston Meyer  02:48

There's a lot of similarities.

Katie Dooley  02:50

I looked at all these religions, and went they're very much different methods to the same purpose. And when I say different methods, there's a ton of overlap. It was really kind of like pick and I have an ice cream analogy. Maybe the ice cream analogy will come up today. It's pick whatever flavor of ice cream you like, at the end of the day, it's still an ice cream dessert. At first glance, we look at Hinduism and Christianity as two very opposite religions. But you know, Hinduism, polytheistic, or pantheistic, whatever. Pick your poison. And Christianity is monotheistic, and when Hinduism has reincarnation, and Christianity has this concept of heaven, but all of a sudden, when you do some digging, there's these parallels in Hinduism, everything is Brahman, is that not monotheism and then in Christianity, we have two very convoluted Trinity, is that not polytheism? In Hinduism, we have Moksha is that not heaven? Doesn't God promises rebirth in heaven? Is that not reincarnation? All of a sudden, these things don't look so different. Once you have a - not even a very deep understanding, just a basic understanding of the beliefs and and history. So what do you think? A big question. That's my answer that big vague question.

Preston Meyer  04:18

Surface level there have a lot more similarities than differences for sure. And then there's the nitty gritty differences, like the difference between resurrection and reincarnation, for example. Surface level, they're basically the same thing. Resurrection is being made to stand again is literally the formation of the word and that is to be put into a body again. That's exactly what reincarnation is to be covered in flesh again. So, minor linguistic differences that carry less theological difference. Then literal semantic semantic difference. And yet the baggage that they carry is different.

Katie Dooley  05:12

Connotation, right? Yeah.

Preston Meyer  05:15

But ultimately, the idea that when you die, you will continue on is almost universal for all of the religions that I'm aware of not just limiting it to the ones that we've already discussed. And then there's, of course, this idea that if you're a good neighbor, your life after this one is going to be better than the alternative. The biggest difference between all of the religions on a day-to-day, how you live your life kind of perspective, is definitely what does that mean? What are the rules to being a good neighbor, to being a good part of the community, to being part of the holy community? What does that mean? And that's where you have a lot of differences.

Katie Dooley  06:08

I mean, I would even argue that there aren't a ton of differences.

Preston Meyer  06:10

I mean, mostly, don't stab, don't rape your daughter's wife or his daughter...

Katie Dooley  06:15

It comes down to... don't be a dick.

Preston Meyer  06:21

I think I've said that phrase in almost every episode. You know what that might be a t-shirt thing we have to do at some point. It's just don't be a dick. But there's also, of course, extra rules like don't eat cows, don't eat pigs.

Katie Dooley  06:44

It's the minutiae that changes. And as an atheist, right, as an outsider to all of these, I kind of look at those as the things to eliminate, right? Like, if everyone is telling you don't be a dick, then that's probably pretty important. If one is telling you not to eat a pig, and one's telling you not to have sex before paper is signed. And when it's telling you to cover your head, I would say that these are the little differences so that you have some sort of community identity.

Preston Meyer  07:21

Absolutely. In the Hebrew scripture, it said in a few different places, that some of the rules are given to Israel, just to make them different from their neighbors. So

Katie Dooley  07:34

Is that.. the wieners?

Preston Meyer  07:38

That is, that's actually part of it. That is part of that umbrella group of rules.

Katie Dooley  07:45

I think that at the end of the day of, I mean, this is the atheist in me, at the end of the day I kind of go, it's all the same, then none of it matters, which is terrible, right? As long as you follow the don't be a dick, then. And whatever comfort you need to pass from this life is kind of up to you.

Preston Meyer  08:06

What's interesting, though, is that even though all of these religions say, be good neighbors, don't be dicks. Almost every one of these religions has a huge population that uses their different from their neighbors as reasons to be dicks.

Katie Dooley  08:24

I mean, that's just people. Right? At the end day you'll never get any perfect population group, whether that's race, religion, nationality. There's always gonna be a dick. And well, you know, I am not so blind to think that all atheists are perfect. There's a lot of terrible people who are atheists. Well, you know, when we do our atheist/agnostic episode, we'll talk about that. But yeah, I think it's just people. Anything to the extreme is bad. And I mean, even how do you, you know, sometimes it's just societal prejudices, that we identify someone by their race or religion with the bad thing they did.

Preston Meyer  09:14

Which is nonsense. 

Katie Dooley  09:15

Yeah. Right. Well identify someone as whatever. I don't want to, like...

Preston Meyer  09:21

It's like people being mad at the Jews because they killed Jesus.

Katie Dooley  09:27

Not all the Jews killed Jesus. 

Preston Meyer  09:28

Well, first most important point. According to Christian literature, he died voluntarily on a cross upon which he was put by Romans. So we got a problem there already.

Katie Dooley  09:49

And again, obviously, not all Romans, not all Jews not. But we've attached that to, in this case. Christ's crucifixion

Preston Meyer  10:01

People like to find a reason, however spurious or nonsensical, to be hateful.

Katie Dooley  10:08

We see this in our news all the time, they'll say so immigrant, I'm just gonna say generic immigrant because I don't obviously don't want to single anyone out specifically, they'll say immigrant committed a crime. It's like, it doesn't matter if there's Canadians that are bad people. It doesn't matter. Do you.. this is going to be fairly conversational episode, but I did want to touch on the definition of faith. Because it's a nebulous definition, and it will play... I mean, did you read my exam? 

Preston Meyer  10:45

I did. 

Katie Dooley  10:45

Okay. And it will. I mean, I'll play a role in how we talk about belief. Do you want to tackle that. I see you added some stuff. 

Preston Meyer  10:52

Yeah. So I want you to start with what you wrote. And then I'll take care of what I wrote. 

Katie Dooley  10:55

Do you want my conversation? I wrote out this example of a conversation? 

Preston Meyer  11:01

Sure, why not?

Katie Dooley  11:03

So the reason I wanted to define faith is because I was listening to an atheist call-in show, and the atheist, and the person calling in who was some Christian pastor, Priest, clergy person, obviously had different definitions of faith. So the atheists hosting the show, said, "Because you believe the Bible is 100% true. you don't have faith in God", faith being, in this case, believing something that there's no proof of, and the religious person came back and said, "No, I have faith because I know the Bible is true." And they basically went back and forth on this until one of them hung up. But if you know is true, then you don't need faith. So I while there are several definitions of faith, I just want to make sure we and our audience listeners are on the same page for the purposes of this episode.

Preston Meyer  12:07

All right, yeah, I like that. So there's some dictionary definitions that I think are pretty helpful.

Katie Dooley  12:15

All right, so I pulled up two ones from Britannica and ones from Wikipedia Britannica said faith is inner attitude, conviction or trust relating human beings to a supreme god or ultimate salvation. And Wikipedia has faith. derived from latin, is confidence or trust in a person, thing or concept in the context of religion, one can define faith as belief in a god or in the doctrines of teaching of religion. And then it actually clarifies religious people often think of faith as competence based on perceived degree of warrant, while others who are more skeptical, like myself, of religion tend to think its faith as simply believing without evidence, as I mentioned, in my example.

Preston Meyer  13:02

Yeah, faith is kind of a tricky thing. A job I had years ago was working as a translator. Translating ancient Greek to English, and specifically to modern English, not to weird 300 years ago, English.

Katie Dooley  13:22

Fleek was Jesus on fleek?

Preston Meyer  13:26

That that phrase simply wouldn't have come up in the New Testament, unfortunately. I definitely didn't have a formal training in language, I learned it on the job, which was a really fun way to learn the language. I've since studied the language properly in a university setting. And that's actually helped out a little bit. But the word that we always translate to as faith and why faith is its own word in the English language, is a deliberate attempt to replace the word Trust, because of the new context of religious writings, but the word that's always been translated as faith in the Bibles that we're familiar with it would be more truthful, to use the word "trust." And so when I talk to people, even in church environments, I will avoid using the word faith as much as possible. So that people don't misunderstand me when I speak because I do know that like we've already shown out some people define the word differently than others, which is frustrating.

Katie Dooley  14:43

Can I ask what you would say? 

Preston Meyer  14:45

Almost always I say, trust that I use the word trust instead of faith as much as possible. And I believe that if you're if you can't replace the word faith with trust in your sentence, you're using the word wrong, I can't think of an example where that wouldn't be the case.

Katie Dooley  15:08

In a religious context...

Preston Meyer  15:11

In any context.

Katie Dooley  15:13

I have faith this bungee cord will hold.  Yeah, you trust that it will hold. But it's also it has other effects on the way that I talk to people about faith as well. Like if you say that, I believe in God. Nobody ever says, Well, okay, not nobody. Very few people, when they say I believe in God, mean that they believe there is a God, I believe in God means I trust God, which already has the prerequisite of believing he exists. And you've got other people who believe that there is a God and don't trust him. There are absolute, there are countless 1000s of people who believe in the existence of gods in whom they place no trust. I think a really easy to grasp example, would be those people who follow the faith of Odin and recognize Loki as a god. But because he's a trickster, trusting him is nonsense. That's an example that comes to mind. You've also got a handful of people who believe in the God of Abraham, of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. They believe he exists, but don't trust him. For a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's because they believe there's a creator of the world but hate that there's disease or hate that people have free will to do things and not be smitten immediately. It's a weird triangle of words believe, trust and faith, because I, I wouldn't fault someone for saying they had faith in Loki or God and then not trust them.

Preston Meyer  16:59

It seems tricky.

Katie Dooley  17:01

It's like very like it's... We're getting into semantics here. Yeah, it's a weird triad words that get people into a lot of trouble. So um, how do we want to define it for this episode? Or do we just gonna avoid the word faith altogether?

Preston Meyer  17:22

I don't think it's super helpful to avoid the word when we're deliberately approaching the word in an academic way. But I don't know how to fix it beyond the definition of a simple trust.

Katie Dooley  17:45

I mean, yeah, so if you have faith, you believe God exists.

Preston Meyer  17:50

And most people who have these faiths in the gods of whatever their religion is, there's another trust that has taken its position first. For example, most people receive their religious education from a parent, which requires trust, and a faith in that parent, that they're not going to lead you astray. And that trust is built on previous experience with them. And then they are willing to accept what they're teaching. And then usually, if you stick to that faith, you have come to trust that this faith hasn't led you into danger or something along those lines. 

Katie Dooley  18:40

As per my example of, if you believe it to be 100% true, then you don't need faith, or faith without proof. Someone with faith would have their proof whatever that is, so even if I'll consider it proof and we're going to get into epistemology in a minute, they would have their proof to trust that God exists.

Preston Meyer  19:01

So another problem I've already come up against is the word proof.  You can have all kinds of evidence, evidence can take all kinds of forms. And evidence is like a witness something that offers testimony. I have a hard time thinking of proof as a real obtainable thing in any field other than mathematics. Like you can always prove that two plus two is four. Sometimes you can prove the two plus two is not. It takes some ridiculous mathematical gymnastics. But it's easy to prove reliably consistently. Two plus two is four. And there are also logical formulas that look an awful lot like math, that can give you what we call proofs. And anybody who's done enough logical computations can also see that there can be flaws in logical computations, to give false proofs. PEDMAS is actually, it's only problematic because not everybody agrees to do it. Let's be real.

Katie Dooley  20:22

I mean, I, when I was learning PEDMAS, I was like, "This is dumb. Why would anyone forget this" and now at 30 I see equations and I'm like, what's PEDMAS? So, I get it.

Preston Meyer  20:35

Math is tricky. And it's its own thing. And as far as I can stretch my mind right now, based on things that are coming to mind, that's the only field in which I accept the existence of actual proof 

Katie Dooley  20:53

What's the problem with science?

Preston Meyer  20:56

Most of the sciences are either evidence based or math based. I do have to distinguish between those two things.

Katie Dooley  21:10

This is a good segue into epistemology.

Preston Meyer  21:14

Which is a really...

Katie Dooley  21:17

It's not really for us.

Preston Meyer  21:19

It's super tricky. I took a class on epistemology in the university. And I enjoyed it, though, it was frustrating. It was... it's a question is still doesn't have much of an answer. 

Katie Dooley  21:32

I thought it was gonna be really easy. When I wrote my stuff on epistemology, it is not. But basically, like, really basically, because I can barely understand it. It's how we, it's a part of philosophy. And we're not philosophers. Maybe one day we'll find a philosopher to help us with epistemology.

Preston Meyer  21:54

I might be a philosopher, depends who you ask, actually. I keep interrupting. There's a philosophical position that I've heard, that dictates that if you have an opinion on philosophy, you are a philosopher. So according to those who adhere to that principle, you're a philosopher.

Katie Dooley  22:20

Cool, because I'm about having an opinion on this. Put really simply, epistemology is how do we consider something a piece of knowledge? Or how do we know if we're knowledgeable about something? So it's deals with knowledge, and how we absorb information. And it's one of those things that I don't think people realize, other people think differently. There are a few memes that have like gone around, where apparently, a portion of the population thinks in pictures and a portion of the population thinks in words, and we don't realize the other exists. And it's just like, mind blowing. So it things like that or even if you're like an auditory or visual or kinesthetic learner like these little things on how we absorb information. I need to know are you a picture or word brain person?

Preston Meyer  23:19

I don't think I'm just one or the other. 

Katie Dooley  23:22

Interesting. Wow, that's because I know exactly what I am.

Preston Meyer  23:29

Yeah. Are you a word person? 

Katie Dooley  23:31

I'm 100% word person. I constantly have, like, a monologue in my head of words. I mean, I can like picture things. I mean, for my job, but like..

Preston Meyer  23:42

One would hope.

Katie Dooley  23:44

When I start everything with a word map, like I sent you for the podcast. Everything starts with words. I think through conversations, like everything in my brain is words.

Preston Meyer  23:57

That makes sense. For me. It's it's a little frustrating that I feel like I'm both that I think in pictures, I wouldn't say a majority of the time, but often enough, and it's tricky sometimes to convert those into words that I can relay to another person and have them understand what that image is supposed to be. And it'd be a lot easier if I could draw properly. I used to draw a lot when I was a kid a lot. And then I kind of stopped when I was in junior high, I think? But that probably was a big part of it. Actually, that drawing was very appealing to the girls when I was in elementary school. And then it didn't get me any attention at all in junior high and I think that helps shift my medium of communication and and whether or not that's affected the way I think is a question for people with greater education than mine in that field.

Katie Dooley  25:09

As I was saying, epistemology is how we take these pieces of information, process it and stick it into our brain file. The big question is how do we justify knowledge and belief. So epistemology deals with memory, perception, reason, and testimony. And this is how we decide if something is valid. I wrote down an example that made sense in my brain, but the example I wrote is how do you know if someone is good at their job using those four things. So the memory, maybe you remember them doing something similar before, and ergo you can extrapolate and think they'll be good at this as well. Number two, for perception, lots of people say perception is reality. And I don't disagree with that. So maybe they appear to be successful, maybe they're well dressed or wealthy. So ergo, if they look successful, they're probably successful at their job. Not necessarily true, but people make that assumption all the time. Reason, I would say they put this under concrete evidence. So they might have good sales numbers, good conversion, numbers, ROI, all these business terms that, you know, actual tangible numbers, that we can reason to believe that they are good at their job. And number four testimony, someone has told you that they're good at their job. And that's why as a business owner, and podcast host testimonials, and reviews are important. It's huge, so that people know that we're doing a job before they listen.

Preston Meyer  26:48

And testimony is super tricky. Because that kind of loops back on actually they all do. But testimony in a more obvious way than the others relies on trust.

Katie Dooley  26:59

Yeah, I... doing this research. I think the two biggest ones and I might have even made notes on this. The two biggest ones I think religion leans on his testimony and perception. And this is going to be an unpopular opinion, I'm sure but but that's because you can warp perception.

Preston Meyer  27:17

You can, you absolutely can warp perception.

Katie Dooley  27:21

And I have a note, I was reading a fantastic book. It's a long, it's a bit of a slog. But it's a good book called When God Talks Back by Tonya Lehrman. And it's about evangelicalism in America. And this is sort of the perception piece that she talks about that if evangelical Christians train their brains, to see God in everything. And this is through prayer and community and all the pieces of that. And believing that God, you have a personal relationship with God. And therefore they can make it more real than someone like me. Who I'm not looking for God and everything so I don't see God and anything I don't believe in God. Do you have anything to add to that?

Preston Meyer  28:19

I had a bit of a thing, and then I lost it. So epistemology asks questions like, what is knowledge? We looked at some categories on how we can kind of explain that. How is knowledge acquired? is super tricky. That if you look at a thing, like I look at red socks, I know those socks are red. But that doesn't translate well to more complex ideas. You know?

Katie Dooley  28:54

No, and I was having this conversation with a friend. And we'll get into whether belief is a choice or not. She said, you can choose to believe something else. And I said, I can look at the sky and choose to believe it's green. I can pretend. And so when you say red socks, and you I know they're red, but you could arguably choose to believe that they're not red.

Preston Meyer  29:15

Well, you could theoretically convinced yourself that something is wrong with your eyes, that you perceive colors in the color wheel inverse from reality.

Katie Dooley  29:26

Or that it's a different red is the wrong name for that color, or, yeah, this is a slippery slope.

Preston Meyer  29:35

It's tricky. It is and unfortunately so is this entire topic. And the ultimate question of epistemology is can we have knowledge? Can you really know anything?

Katie Dooley  29:54

That really hurt my head.

Preston Meyer  29:55

There's loads of people that say of course I can know things. I know those socks are red. I know this carpet is softer than concrete. But, I mean, ultimately that comes down to perception. And for the vast majority of philosophers, including you and me, perception is reality. But what if it's not?

Katie Dooley  30:22

Then we're in the matrix. And things are gonna get weird. That's a hard question to answer, I think it's a difficult question because things change so fast.

Preston Meyer  30:37

Well, and you can be 100% sure of a thing, and then find out that's not the case. In fact, one example that I had in my epistemology class, was the idea of you're driving down the road one morning, and you look at the hill that's rising up on the south side of the road, and in the distance, you see sheep, and you say out loud, I see sheep. And the kid in the seat next to you is like, are those sheep? And kind of your default answer is, yeah, I know those are sheep, because I can see them. The road winds a little bit, and you get closer. And uh oh, you found out that they're actually llamas just kind of curled up. And then all of a sudden, your knowledge that you were so sure of before is no longer justified. And but you were so sure that you saw sheep on that hill, and the road winds a little bit more, and you get a little closer and behind for some statistically improbable reason behind each of these llamas is a sheep and so you were correct that there are sheep on the hill, but did you actually ever know that there were sheep on the hill? And can you predict in the future that you're not going to find more contrary evidence?

Katie Dooley  32:03

Inside the sheep? Is a llama. They're all llamas in sheep costumes.

Preston Meyer  32:13

Can you know anything?

Katie Dooley  32:14

No, I don't know. I don't I don't know. I think we can know some things, but probably a lot less than we think we know.

Preston Meyer  32:27

It gets tricky. The real question and for every little piece of knowledge that you think you have is do I actually know this? And for an awful lot of people with religious experience, and I'm going to categorize this nice and broadly. Every single person has the majority of the world population opposing the justification for their belief.

Katie Dooley  32:55

Yes, absolutely. It doesn't matter what group you're in. 

Preston Meyer  32:58

Yeah, there's, there is no group that has a majority population on this planet. So everybody has more than half the world saying no, your belief is not justified for their religious beliefs. There's obviously most of the world does believe the sky is blue. Even if they didn't have a word for it until 400 years ago, or 1000 years ago or whatever. Everybody knows the sky's blue most days.

Katie Dooley  33:30

One note I made a little further up. That seems like a good point to bring up now. This is just being a good neighbor--don't be a dick--is I think it's important to remember that everyone thinks they're right.

Preston Meyer  33:45

Absolutely. It's like you wouldn't hold on to a belief if you thought it was wrong. 

Katie Dooley  33:50

But I think people forget that. You know, everyone thinks they're right, in whatever, particularly in religious beliefs. I think there's other topics. People are a little more, I'm willing to learn. But when it comes to religious beliefs, and where we go when we die, everyone thinks they're right.

Preston Meyer  34:09

The most are willing to admit ignorance to some degree. They never say I think my beliefs are wrong, because then they cease to be your beliefs.

Katie Dooley  34:20

So I just, you know, if you're, if you meet someone who's different than you just have that compassion for them because

Preston Meyer  34:28

You can't hit somebody into believing what you believe. It doesn't work. People have tried. God people have tried so much. But it doesn't work.

Katie Dooley  34:38

Remember all those Guru's that were murdered in Sikhism? A month ago?

Preston Meyer  34:44

Right? It's what? There's countless records of Christian martyrs that are reasonably familiar to our audience, and countless martyrs of every faith.

Katie Dooley  34:59

Is Schrödingers Cat like epistemology where you don't know if it's alive or dead?

Preston Meyer  35:07

It fits into epistemology but it's, it's not why the thought experiment exists, I think, but it fits into epistemology really well,.

Katie Dooley  35:19

Yeah. When you were talking about sheep or llamas was I was like alive or dead sheeps and llamas are a little more wholesome though.

Preston Meyer  35:27

Well, versus a potentially dead cat in a box?

Katie Dooley  35:32

I think I might ahve to create a llama in a sheep costume graphic.

Preston Meyer  35:36

Now we need one. There's a few more questions that are important to epistemology as well, that I do want to hit. So in, in following that theme of what is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? And can we actually really have knowledge? There's some interesting follow up questions of what do people know? Like you're going to run into people who are 100% convinced of things, they have strong convictions, and that you have to wonder, what do they know? What evidence do they have? What experiences have they had that bring them to where they are? It's kind of fascinating. That's how I like to apply that question anyway. There's also the question, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? That's a long really wordy question, but it's how can you say you know anything?

Katie Dooley  36:41

That's different for everyone. It has to be. I mean, especially in the context of religion and right, like, in my world, I've seen no proof of God. But obviously, most of the world disagrees with me.

Preston Meyer  37:02

even though they also disagree with each other.

Katie Dooley  37:04

Absolutely. Yeah, so is that I don't want to make people sound dumb. But is that bar lower is I think it's just different bar altogether.

Preston Meyer  37:16

It's a different bar altogether. It's their experiences, bring them there. And I think part of that is the religiously, what is the question of testimony, which I think is really fascinating that in the Hebrew Bible, one of the big rules is do not bear false testimony. And there's loads of people who will testify of their beliefs, testify to the truthfulness of their beliefs. But really, a lot of the time, all they have to go on is they trust somebody who said it.

Katie Dooley  38:00

I mean, especially in early religious days, I think. Another piece is, it's actually and I'm no neuroscientist by any means. But it's actually just how your brain processes information. And I think that's where we see people leaving religion or deconstructing or converting, or people who I mean, I know people who grew up not religious that became religious later in life. And I think it comes down to how we process information, because we all get the same information.

Preston Meyer  38:37

Mostly, kind of. Mostly kind of, because perception is a thing, right? And perception relies a lot more on the filter than the object. I think. Going back a little bit to what you said, the idea of people changing the way they live because of this idea of reevaluating knowledge. For example, you've got loads of people leaving the Catholic Church in waves, and it's a lot less to do with, oh, I don't believe in God anymore. And a lot more to do with I don't trust this source of information anymore. Specifically with the way things are happening with the Catholic Church, that a lot of them are moving to other churches, many are giving up on theology altogether for sure. But one of the biggest drives on that is definitely losing trust in the people who bring you that message, losing trust in the witnesses. All right, I'm

Katie Dooley  39:55

just thinking. My perspective is I'm thinking of two friends that I had In university that became Christians later in life, they were not raised religious. And when I say people get the same information, well, it's not like I haven't been to church or heard about Jesus. But something about that stuck with them, that didn't stick with me. And we basically, I won't say basically, family situations are different. But, you know, we both had all three of us had non religious upbringings. So with the same, especially entry level information to get you into church, it's not like they drop the whole Bible on you and say, do you want in, right, they just give you bits and pieces, and then you learn more as you join. Or as you stay. So that's where I'm coming from with people process the same information differently, because it's not like I had less knowledge than them. I've just taken that knowledge and done something different with it. Started a podcast.

Preston Meyer  41:02

I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that they perceived something you didn't. And it's entirely possible that that's not just a filter issue, that they've probably also had other experiences to which you are not privy that have affected that decision.

Katie Dooley  41:23

My head hurts.

Preston Meyer  41:24

sSo complicated to think about, what is knowledge.

Katie Dooley  41:29

You have one more question. Do you want to tackle it?

Preston Meyer  41:33

Yeah. The last question on my list of questions of the basics of epistemology is what makes justified beliefs justified? And this is kind of tricky.

Katie Dooley  41:46

Isn't that an album by Justin Timberlake? Or Justin Bieber? Who did the Justified album?

Preston Meyer  41:55

I've listened to a lot more Timberlake than I have Bieber. But honestly, that's neither one of them is high up on my list of listening

Katie Dooley  42:03

I haven't listened to either enough to know. One of them put out a Justified album.

Preston Meyer  42:09

I don't even want to guess. So justified beliefs do get a little trickier. What constitutes your, your evaluation of beliefs? Are you strictly limited to laboratory quality testing? Because that doesn't work... 

Katie Dooley  42:31

For a lot of situations. Yes.

Preston Meyer  42:35

You've got the the idea of witnesses that most people in their lives will bear true testimony to most of the things that they are sharing. But have also got a history of lying at some point. That complicates things a lot, right there. Reason is important to most people to be able to use logic and think through things and understand that A follows through to B in these scenarios.

Katie Dooley  43:16

But even that doesn't work in everything.

Preston Meyer  43:18

It's not, it's not foolproof.

Katie Dooley  43:20

Literally. I was gonna be like, did you enjoy dinner tonight? 

Preston Meyer  43:24

And I can say I did

Katie Dooley  43:25

But you can't justify that with reason, because it's not you cannot statistically prove dinner was good.

Preston Meyer  43:31

Right. It doesn't work. But you enjoyed it. So that makes it easier to believe me when I say that I also enjoyed it. 

Katie Dooley  43:39

That is which one? Testimony. That's testimony

Preston Meyer  43:43

That's testimony and reason. Perception is a huge... Honestly, the quality of food is mostly perception. But you are also relying on me being a true witness of my perception. It's so complicated, Katie. 

Katie Dooley  44:04

And then there's someone who wouldn't like that dinner at all. 

Preston Meyer  44:07

Yeah. If I hated bell peppers and onions, I probably would have not liked it. But it also didn't strongly taste of bell peppers and onions.

Katie Dooley  44:17

So yeah. So do we know your dinner was good or not?

Preston Meyer  44:23

I liked it. And I hope you believe me when I say I liked it. And that's basically all we've got.

Katie Dooley  44:29

Yeah. And I think because two people liked dinner, if we made it again, others would be willing to try.

Preston Meyer  44:36

I would hope so. 

Katie Dooley  44:37

But that doesn't make it true. Which is crazy.

Preston Meyer  44:42

It's improbable that you and I are the only people on the planet that would enjoy this meal. But one has to admit that statistically speaking, there is still the possibility and reason barely factors into this but it still kind of does. Epistemology is hard, guys.

Katie Dooley  45:06

We didn't want to go too deep, but we have gone quite deep. We're not philosophers. Well, we are philosophers apparently. But we're not very good philosophers.

Preston Meyer  45:17

Philosophy as a thing is definitely not monolithic, and is huge and complicated. And I love the idea that having an opinion on philosophy makes you it makes you a philosopher.

Katie Dooley  45:34

You left some notes here. I don't know who Stephen Talbot is.

Preston Meyer  45:40

Yeah, so I went I what I actually Googled was epistemological exercises, hoping to come up with something really good. And didn't find what I was looking for, at all. Apart from something that somebody would use in a theology class that I thought might work as an exercise between you and me, but in reality, I don't actually think it would right now. So we're skipping that. So Stephen Talbot had four really interesting points on epistemology that I cut out some content, so it's easier to follow. Because really long sentences may often be the thing that looks like the heart of philosophy is just having long sentences. But you're, you can't communicate so well with long sentences. So I've broken this down into easier bites without rewording him very much, which I think deserves a little bit of credit. Thanks. So point, number one, the qualities of our experience, and the qualities we find in this world are the same. Which is broadly true, though, we have to admit that insanity, and, you know, those folks who have completely lost their mind will perceive the world completely different from the rest of us, at least in many cases, and so

Katie Dooley  47:24

True, but within themselves, their experiences would be equal to how they see the world.

Preston Meyer  47:31

Yes. So again, things get complicated with epistemology. But, yeah, our experiences are basically the qualities you find in the world. Absolutely. And we'll see them differently, for sure. So that's point number one. Point number two, is, amid all the appearances we discover each other, and the reliable presentation of things, by these appearances, we can coordinate our activities and make our livelihoods. That we live in a shared universe. That we have to perceive most things in the same way. A bookshelf is a bookshelf. If it's got something other than books on it, maybe it's being used improperly, maybe it's got another use. It's easy to identify that it is a shelf for its purpose. The floor is the floor, the roof is the roof unless your house is turned then you got problems. And everybody should recognize that you got problems in that scenario. And in the shared universe, we can be productive interact with each other in reasonable ways and make our livelihood. It's complicated, but it's not crazy, complicated. Point number three. It makes no sense to say that the place where the appearances appear, is inside our skulls. things appear right where they are. Now, that's a weird, weird turn of phrase. That is to say that the world that you are perceiving that you are acting in the bench that this laptop is sitting on is not in my head. That doesn't make sense, because I'm touching it with my hand which is stretched away from my head. We have to recognize that there are people who have really complicated mental illnesses where they can perceive solid physical objects that are not there. And though that complicates this point, it's also a have an interesting piece of evidence in favor of the point.

Katie Dooley  50:07

I mean this. Perception is reality, if you think it's there, it's there.

Preston Meyer  50:13

For you.

Katie Dooley  50:15

Oh yeah not for everyone,

Preston Meyer  50:16

That's the really tricky bit is that there is one reality that is 100%, the reality, the real state of things. But there's no person on this planet, that you're going to be able to convince that their perception of reality differs from your own. Which is complicated and frustrating. Like, I could not convince you that I believe that there's no carpet on this floor. And if I didn't manage to convince you that that is my belief, you would have somebody take me away, you would ask that I not drive home.

Katie Dooley  51:07

Isn't that the Emperor's New Clothes?

Preston Meyer  51:10

Yes, that's exactly the deal, that he managed to find himself in a position where he was convinced that he was wearing clothes when he was not

Katie Dooley  51:20

And he convinced everyone around him to go along with it.

Preston Meyer  51:24

But they were just going along with it. None of them believed that he was clothed. They thought that this whole deal was embarrassing, and it's a lot easier to just go along. Sanity is a tricky thing. There's a reason it's not a medically approved term. But it is a way that the casual person evaluates other people. The fourth tip, or fourth point, from Stephen Talbot, that I've written down, is the familiar world is brought to appearance only by the grace of thinking that Paige's perception of the world, not terribly important to you and me. We want we both want her to think that the world is a hospitable place. But whether she thinks the walls are green is of no importance to us. But

Katie Dooley  52:29

She can't see color. She's a dog. She thinks the walls are grey.

Preston Meyer  52:35

See, I've always wondered on this and I think this falls is really neatly into epistemology is how do we know dogs are colorblind

Katie Dooley  52:43

Bbecause they are missing... I forget which one rods or cones? I think it's cones that see color, process color. I forget which ones see color.

Preston Meyer  52:51

I realized that there is a biological component. However, what if the structures that are present in dog's eyes operate slightly differently from apparently similar structures in our own eyes?

Katie Dooley  53:09

Preston, please.

Preston Meyer  53:12

I've never looked into the science on why we think most animals appear to be colorblind. I'm just kind of spitballing ideas right here. I could be exactly that's how we know. And it's also probably been heavily tested. But you and I, we perceive through a filter of thought that we have to assume that everything that reacts to its environment is also doing the same thing. To some degree or another. Obviously, you and I think a lot more about what's going on around us than butterflies do. They're just like flower, go. You I mean, not so much. It's tricky. And I really like that Stephen Talbot has boiled it down to these four interesting points.

Katie Dooley  54:06

Basically, it's really hard guys and we're doing our best.

Preston Meyer  54:11

People believe things because they perceive a reason to believe them. 

Katie Dooley  54:17

Oh, that's a perfect segue into my next point. And my opinion has changed vastly on this and I to the point where I don't have an opinion, which is I don't know if that's a great place to be but is belief a choice.

Preston Meyer  54:36

I have opinions but I want you to keep going with what you got.

Katie Dooley  54:43

I don't know anymore. I used to think that it absolutely was a choice. And there are examples that I think it is just a choice and, obviously our personal beliefs are coming up a lot in this episode, but as an atheist, I go well look at the science, there's no evidence. Why would you ignore evidence or even lack of evidence? Like I

Preston Meyer  55:15

Like the lack of God all over plane windshields?

Katie Dooley  55:18

Or, you know, Richard Dawkins always talks about the teacup floating between the Moon and Mars or whatever, you can't prove that it's not there. So how do you know it's not?

Preston Meyer  55:28

It's wildly improbable. Like, how, why would there be a teacup of all things? 

Katie Dooley  55:34

Why would ther be a white bearded man in the sky?

Preston Meyer  55:37

Who says he's white? Who says he's got a beard?

Katie Dooley  55:39

I mean, all the pictures show that 

Preston Meyer  55:42

It's true. The vast majority of pictures have a beard and the vast majority have him white, at least around here anyway.

Katie Dooley  55:50

And a great example, I talked about this in one of our very first episodes is the Ken Ham Bill Nye debate, where they're debating evolution. And I've talked about this very moment. At the very I think it's one of the very last questions, moderator asked what would change your mind, and Bill Nye says evidence. So presumably, if we've dug up an ark that was 10,000 years old, and go, Okay, I believe that this happened. And Ken Ham says nothing. So even though we have dinosaurs that have been carbon dated for millions of years, and all the rock layers, he doesn't believe that the earth is more than 10,000 years old. And I think he's at that point choosing to be ignorant. And that's where my original belief, and still this is where my confusion in my mind comes from, is, I think he's absolutely choosing to ignore facts. My belief was changed when I read a very good book and we posted this on our social media as well called Why I Left, Why I Stayed by Bart Campolo and his dad, Tony Campolo. So Tony is an evangelical pastor, and his son, and Bart was and then became a humanist chaplain. So he left the church, why I left, why I stayed it's in the title. And they go chapter by chapter alternating, and they talk about their journeys. And in one chapter, Bart talks about how it's not a choice, because if it were a choice, he would have chosen to stay. Because he lost his job, because he was a pastor. He lost his family, because they were all religious. And now he wasn't anymore. He lost all his friends and his community, because all of a sudden, he's not going to church anymore. He said, If it was a choice, he would have chosen to stay because it would have been easier. He lost everything and had I mean, I don't know what kind of education goes into theology, but I imagine it's not particularly transferable.

Preston Meyer  57:57

Not so much.

Katie Dooley  58:00

And that really changed my mind on whether it's a choice or not, because I get that, right, I can understand while that I'm not a Christian, all of a sudden, you lose this entire community. Why if you could, right, he couldn't even fake it. Right? So it's I find in that regard. I'm like, Okay, I guess that's not a choice. And just like, I couldn't choose tomorrow to be a Christian. I was like, okay, that really changed my perspective on it. And so yeah, now I don't know. Talking around topics.

Preston Meyer  58:36

Right? There are things that a person can choose to believe and choose not to believe. If somebody bears witness to a thing that is within the realm of what you've already established to be possibility. It's a lot easier to say, Yep, I believe that and just make that choice. You can choose not to believe somebody based on just a lack of previous experience with that person, or choose to believe them. It's a lot easier to make a choice in that sort of situation. But to choose to believe the sky is orange right now when it's blue. That's not a thing people are doing. It doesn't make sense to do that. You can't use reason or justification for that. It's tricky. And if somebody were to try and convince you that the sky is orange, even if you trusted them. You had a strong pre-existing trust, that trust would dwindle rather than your mind change. I believe to complicate your absence of a an answer to the question that there are things that you can choose to believe. And there are other things that you have perceived sufficient evidence to hold on to that belief, or to acquire that belief. The water boiler is leaking. You can't deny that. First you hear the noise of water dripping, you walk down to the basement, your socks get wet, you've perceived water. You realize there's a problem, you're going to have to evaluate what you see when you try to track down the source of this water. And when you see that, oh, all the water is coming out of the boiler. You can't choose not to believe the water is coming out of the boiler and still be sane.

Katie Dooley  1:00:57

But I want to establish something you can choose to believe. Like, that's almost harder for me.

Preston Meyer  1:01:04

Fair enough. I think that often enough, that is the case with religious belief. 

Katie Dooley  1:01:11

I haven't found that with any belief and choose to think my dog was cute. It just happened.

Preston Meyer  1:01:20

Saw the dog and go yep, that's cute. You had some sort of pre-exists... or not pre existing, you had experienced leading up to this point that led you to have a favorable perception of this appearance.

Katie Dooley  1:01:37

And that's why I mean, that's why I struggle with is it a choice? Because I can't just choose to think she's not cute. And that's like, that's not even existential right. I am literally holding her right now. As opposed to like, does God exist? Like this big concept that we can't see. But I can't turn off my feelings for my dog. Right? And like, I didn't choose to not be your Well, I guess I would be a lie, though. Like, I could be like, we're not speaking anymore, but it wouldn't be an honest decision. Right? So it's really hard for me to, again, unless you're like Ken Ham, where it's like, here's all this evidence and go Nah, it's fine. But that goes back to the sky is orange. So I don't... I don't know. Well, again, where I don't think Ken Ham is a trustworthy person before I go, Oh, yeah, the planets 10,000 years.

Preston Meyer  1:02:37

Right. But even if you did go into this interview on his side of the argument, the idea that he can just discount evidence as totally unimportant, and that nothing could ever change his mind. You know that that's not a healthy perspective. And even if you went in trusting him, a reasonable person would have to come out of that questioning that trust.

Katie Dooley  1:03:05

So what's your answer, Preston?

Preston Meyer  1:03:07

Some things you can choose to believe and other things, belief is hoisted upon you. It's It's a frustrating subject. And it's a frustrating reality. And I think that's why a lot of people are bad neighbors, because they're so incredibly frustrated with why people perceive the world differently than they do.

Katie Dooley  1:03:32

Yes, that paired with lack of just like general knowledge and understanding,

Preston Meyer  1:03:37

And typically also a lack of empathy.

Katie Dooley  1:03:39

Yes. Because I mean, it always drives me crazy. When people like the Muslim God, I'm like, you're a Christian. It's the same God, right? There's a lack of understanding and empathy. Even before, though, why did they believe that? And why do you believe it's the same thing?

Preston Meyer  1:03:55

Well, and, unfortunately, so many people say, when you ask them, Why do you believe this? Because it's true. What evidence do you have for it being true? You have testimony, and you have experience, and unfortunately, your experience of religious nature, whatever that experience is, is almost always super ambiguous on to what it is justifying.

Katie Dooley  1:04:27

I was going to say I think testimony, in a religious context works almost only in the religious community to reinforce. You know what I mean?

Preston Meyer  1:04:38

Kind of, it exists in the scientific community, too, but it's different.

Katie Dooley  1:04:42

I know but in the context of religion, I think testimony, you know, on how to, you know, determine if something is a piece of knowledge or not, I think it only works within the community. Because I mean, obviously you have a testimony, you're Christian but that doesn't encourage me to believe, and I think that's where we run into problems with religion and people understanding each other is because I haven't had the same religious experiences. And then your testimony doesn't affect me.

Preston Meyer  1:05:15

As opposed to scientific journals where you'll have some guy who's working on his postdoctoral project, or maybe even a professional application of a thing. And he'll say, I did this thing, and it worked. And you're not going to have everybody say, Yeah, okay and, and then just go about doing it all the time. You're gonna have peer review, you're gonna have people trying to duplicate it. First before it's done on mass.

Katie Dooley  1:05:47

Yeah. And I even mean, like, you know, testimony of is this restaurant good? Or was dinner good tonight? We're more likely to listen to that testimony from anyone? Whereas like I said, I think religious testimony really only works within the religious community to reinforce belief.

Preston Meyer  1:06:05

Well, if you have a Muslim, say, I've read the Quran, and I've gone after and experienced, and I've actually had an experience with an angel. And he goes to another religious community. Like, say, a Christian church, for example. And the Muslim guy says to his Christian audience, I've had an experience with Jabril, who is also a figure that shows up in the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible. Christians be like, we don't trust you because of your identity.

Katie Dooley  1:06:46

Or they would  turn it into he's a Christian or like they'd say it was a Christian experience, as opposed to a Muslim experience

Preston Meyer  1:06:54

Which complicates that even more.

Katie Dooley  1:06:58

So I think that's just something that makes it so much more complicated, but to be aware of as well, right? That just because you have a testimony or perception, it's not shared. And that doesn't mean it will change someone's mind. Because clearly, Ken Ham has his perception of the world and his testimony of God and nothing's changing that. With that point on Ken Ham, I just wanted to throw in this fun fact about or fun fact, I thought it was a really good definition of fundamentalism. And you can be a fundamentalist in any religion. This isn't throwing shade, we just see, obviously Christian fundamentalism a lot in North America. But the definition was that if you believe something in your religious texts, that is scientifically disproven, then you are a fundamentalist.

Preston Meyer  1:07:51

Sounds pretty solid to me. For centuries, people talked about God and the angels literally living among the clouds, like within our atmosphere, but at least 20,000 feet up. And then we got airplanes and we noticed we're not wiping angel feathers off of our windshields, but you know, it's a seagull. And if you want to question it, you can test it. The fact that we haven't run into physical structures in the clouds, does defy previous traditions. There's loads of individual things about loads of religions that are disproven on an individual basis. But we haven't found a way to scientifically prove the absence of God. But we have pretty solidly disproven a lot of beliefs about him. And we've got an awful lot of people that deny these evidences.

Katie Dooley  1:09:01

I was having this conversation with a friend the other day. I've said atheist about 1000 times episode, take a drink every time go play it again.

Preston Meyer  1:09:16

But I think you're overestimating how much you said atheist.

Katie Dooley  1:09:19

Okay, take a shot. Obviously, I'm an atheist. So I don't believe in the Abrahamic God or any of the Hindu gods or Buddha or whatever. If there's anything, it's far bigger and vaster than anything our brains can come up with. And it doesn't care about papers before marriage. It doesn't care about you eating pork and it doesn't care about honestly, I doubt it even care about you murdering another person. Truly, I think it's if there's anything it's so big and vast we can't even comprehend it. That would be mostly this thing to religious statements.

Preston Meyer  1:10:07

I mostly agree with those points, that the idea that you can't have sex before you sign a piece of paper with another person that as far as I can understand it, that's not really the deal with any religion, that and really every religion that I've put any real thought into and study and you guys have witnessed me do it with seven, specifically on a rather in-depth basis. God is interested in who you are. And it also stands to reason that if there's any sort of community life after this mortal fleshy life on earth, then there is going to be requirements on how to participate in a community. And being honest and truthful and not looking to wreck somebody else's house is a part of your character. Your individual actions, as we talked about, in our Hinduism episode, individual actions, cosmically have no impact at all. But habitual actions affect who you are. And habitual actions are definitely driven by how you perceive the world, and what you believe. And we've talked about the No True Scotsman fallacy a few times, but I'm gonna pick specifically on the Christian faith, you've got an awful because as a Christian, I get to for sure that there is this huge, very visible collection of people who claim to believe in God and a heaven and a community. And yet, it's very obvious by the way they behave, that their belief does not translate into their character, which makes you wonder how much they believe. And therefore, how much do they belong in that community? It's super tricky. And the weird thing about religion, and all religions that I've been able to take a look at very much is that gatekeeping is 100% the biggest thing.

Katie Dooley  1:12:55

And see I think, whatever if there is anything, let's call it Universal Intelligence. I like I said, I don't even think they care for murdering each other, not that we should. Morals are still a thing, but I go, there's 7 billion people on this planet. And if you go at night, and you look at every single star in the sky, you can't tell me that there's not another planet like Earth.

Preston Meyer  1:13:19

I 100% believe that we're not alone in the universe. 

Katie Dooley  1:13:22

And let's say there's 7 billion people on those planets. Like, at some point, you can't give a shit anymore. Like truly. We become very, very tiny specks in a much bigger picture, where, and that's where I just can't fathom that. Someone cared that I signed the paper before I

Preston Meyer  1:13:42

And I don't believe that, that God cares if you've signed a paper. Yeah, in fact, even the murder thing.  I have a tricky relationship with this one. Okay. Because it's, it's not a simple thing. That to murder somebody as a one time incident, maybe that doesn't define your character. And maybe it doesn't have any influence cosmically, but it probably does. Having murdered somebody can change a lot about who you are. And almost always in a negative way. I would say probably more than half the time. It's also the product of a defective character.

Katie Dooley  1:14:35

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying. Like that out of the billions of stars with the trillions of planets with the quadrillions of people.

Preston Meyer  1:14:48

It affects what kind of communities you'd be welcomed into, if there is another life to go into

Katie Dooley  1:14:52

If there's another life to go into which is different. I do want to touch on the last point for belief, I think it's kind of important.

Preston Meyer  1:15:06

Go for it.

Katie Dooley  1:15:09

The point he says, I don't kno how to say it. The point says religion falls along geographical lines.

Preston Meyer  1:15:16

I mean, kind of.

Katie Dooley  1:15:18

I mean, as we globalize less so, but historically, absolutely. And I yeah, that's also important to keep in mind just from a don't be a dick perspective of why you think someone might be wrong. It's probably because they grew up in a different part of the world with a different tradition. 

Preston Meyer  1:15:40

Often that's the case.

Katie Dooley  1:15:42

Don't be all high and mighty that you know, right, just because you're born in a different part of the world.

Preston Meyer  1:15:48

For us, a lot of human history, religions were carried from place to place by conquerors. And the real evaluation of whether or not you've properly conquered people, is if you have won their minds, and their faith, really their religious faith, that when tribes would conquer one another, there was I'm not gonna say universally, but really broadly, it's observable, that rather than just replacing the local gods with the new gods of the conquerors, which is also frequently seen in reality, there's this pattern for people who are comfortable with polytheism, and henotheism, which is pretty common in the old world. That is, a conquerors would place themselves in a position of, it's okay to worship the gods you had before, but know that our gods are superior, very often that would take the form of our God is the Father of your God. We see that a lot, the Greek and Roman gods, this is definitely the reality that happened, that people were allowed to keep their minor gods. And they were to be seen as children, or sometimes a couple of generations down from Zeus, who was head of the conquering nation. Or Jupiter in the Roman sense, but slightly different, but similar. And so geographical lines absolutely reinforced this division of faiths, of religious traditions. And that's definitely how you see this, these lines showing up. But there's, yeah, with globalization, that's less and less of a problem, but it's more of a people choosing to be in neighborhoods of people who they feel comfortable around, which can have similar effects on your perception of the world.

Katie Dooley  1:18:10

My base point with this is that

Preston Meyer  1:18:13

Don't be a dick.

Katie Dooley  1:18:15

Well, how can someone believe that? Well, you will believe it, too. If you were,

Preston Meyer  1:18:18

if you had the same experiences, that's what you would have believed.

Katie Dooley  1:18:20

If you were born on other side of the world, you would probably believe it do. YAnd absolutely, I'm curious to see what the next 50 years looks like for people in religion, because, I mean, from what I see on the internet, we're, I mean, things are mixing vastly. And I think it'll be it'll fall less along national or, or racial lines, but

Preston Meyer  1:18:47

We've already seen that. 

Katie Dooley  1:18:50

Yeah, they'll get more and more so. Yeah. But yeah, just if you're ever wondering why someone believes something. Ask yourself why you believe something? Because that's probably the same reasons, just a different belief.

Preston Meyer  1:19:05

Yeah. Don't believe in God, because a lack of evidence makes perfect sense. But for other people like myself. I've seen sufficient evidence to believe what I believe. And my beliefs have changed over the years.

Katie Dooley  1:19:21

Preston is so interesting. We'll do a whole episode on him.

Preston Meyer  1:19:25

Okay, I accept.

Katie Dooley  1:19:31

Any final thoughts on this big topic? I was like this'll be an easy episode. And I'm tired.

Preston Meyer  1:19:37

It's a tricky mind heavy topic.

Katie Dooley  1:19:42

We did some mental gymnastics.

Preston Meyer  1:19:45

A little bit. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  1:19:50

I did. Maybe you didn't do any But I did. I thought critically.

Preston Meyer  1:19:56

I sure did. Yeah, it's it's heavy. And I would recommend that if you're interested in philosophy and enjoyed this episode, you should definitely dive into the worm holw. No into the rabbit hole. Wormhole is a completely different than dive into the rabbit hole of epistemology. Even just the reading the Wikipedia article on it is a great start.

Katie Dooley  1:20:21

And I, I've talked about this before, but I think it's really important to be moderate in belief. I don't think extremism is good. But I also don't think it's good to be lazy in your beliefs and not really understand why you believe what you believe or have any conviction in it. And I think this is a good episode to, you know, if you're listening to sit back and and evaluate what you believe and why you believe it, and maybe what some of the people around you believe and if you're comfortable with those people have some of these conversations because I mean, like I said, my mind has changed.

Preston Meyer  1:21:03

I think that's a healthy position. Your mind should change. Maybe not on all things. 

Katie Dooley  1:21:08

No, but not super frequently. 

Preston Meyer  1:21:10

Right? That sounds dangerous.

Katie Dooley  1:21:14

Yeah, read some good books and talk to some good people and have that challenge. And I think that's been important for me in my beliefs is I never wanted to be a casual atheist. I never wanted to be someone who was called out for not knowing about religion, and that's how I got into this I never wanted to be called out for not knowing about religion and being an atheist. Oh, you're an atheist? Because you just don't know. No, I know. I promise you I know.

Preston Meyer  1:21:41

Do you know or have you simply been informed?

Katie Dooley  1:21:46

And with that you can follow we are wrapping it up.

Preston Meyer  1:21:56

Epistemology is hard. There's not one solid answer, which I think is part of the charm of the pithiness of the question.

Katie Dooley  1:22:05

You can follow us um, nothing else.

Preston Meyer  1:22:09

No, I think we're good. Follow us on 

Katie Dooley  1:22:12

You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook @holywatermelonpod

Preston Meyer  1:22:16

You can email us at [email protected] or

Katie Dooley  1:22:20

you can join our Discord and the conversation there.

Preston Meyer  1:22:25

Find our links on our social media. Since you can't find us through discord yet

Katie Dooley  1:22:30

Yesm, bring 7000 friends

Preston Meyer  1:22:35

I'm trying! 

Both Hosts  1:22:39

Pease be with you.