Chapter 4 – “Belief and Reason”
Series 106: belief and reason
‘faith’ involves ‘belief’ and ‘trust’; shall concentrate on ‘belief’ aspect of faith until discover someone to trust; rational belief, irrational belief–important distinctions; Robin Williams comedy routine: golfer hopped on cocaine has paranoid beliefs as result; impulses resulting from interaction of cocaine with neural chemistry combined through physical assocation resulting in sensory impressions from being on golf course; a ‘belief’ develops: there is a snake in the hole of the 14th green; this ‘belief’ a real, objective event in brain and in psychology of perception; but an irrational belief (per my stringent particular usage of ‘irrational’)–produced purely as unintended by-produce of non-rational biochemical reactions; content of this ‘belief’ not necessarily false!; but no connection to reality except by incidental environmental linkage; could be building block for more irrational beliefs or for rational beliefs; a new round of automatic association results in more irrational beliefs; actively analyzing first belief-impression result and draw inferences from it–rational belief results; why rational instead of irrational?; depends on whether second belief matches reality?–no; mistakes not necessarily irrational; depends on irrationality of first belief?–no; results may be physically indistinguishable either way; difference is in intention, initiative; cocaine has no intent, only non-intentional behavior; factually correct result does not make difference; most people accept and understand that non-rationally produced belief cannot be trusted in and of itself; can only be trusted on grounds different from ostensible claim of non-rational belief