Your 1st consideration is one I would say is also motivated also by desire, but unlike the next two is motivated primarily by a wonderful part of yourself that has not been destroyed by your bad experiences – love, true love. Love that is chosen and not felt.

I am very sure based on our discussion so far that our beliefs are rooted in desire, not logic. So if this is the way we are, I think we have to accept it. If this is the case, can we at least be cognizant of our desires? If we can, can we also willingly choose to formulate beliefs based on desires that are the most beneficial to accurate belief while ignoring for a time beliefs that come from desires that cause us to believe what we want to believe?

Anger has been a powerful desire and motivator in my life, but after seeing many years go by trying to examine it’s effectiveness, I have concluded that it’s motivating purpose is for movement or action, not for the incubation of new belief. It can lead you away from bad belief, but it cannot help guide you to a new belief. I wish it did fullfill that duel purpose, but it is blind to all but movement away. It is reactive, not creative.

I think love should be the desire that guides us to new beliefs. It takes the baton from anger and finishes the race.

- Love should guide us to help us do what “feels” right.
- Love should examine the evidence for or against a belief, regardless of if it appears overwhelming.

You sound like you’ve thought though this a good deal, but as for me, I am still angry. Because of that, my belief in a pervasively corrupt church (which is born out of anger) cannot be believed as reality. My anger will not show me truth, only tell me what I want to hear because I have been hurt. So the jury’s out until I can learn to love again.

is my first consideration.

I just saw a special on Jim Jones and the people’s temple. Thoroughly frightening. Made me sick to my stomach. I hate religion.

I like your first consideration. I like your next two as well, but I’m sure you know with experience as well as I do that they are highly susceptible to our original problem. What “feels right” when I am angry may be terribly wrong in reality. I can conjure up all kinds of evidence to support a belief that I want to believe in. Even worldviews will be at my disposal – switching between them like tools to build the edifice of a belief whose foundation is rooted not in logic, but in desire. As I said before, we are screwed.

Because I know I can’t be fully objective, though I believe there are universal truths, I have to have considerations:
-Is it harming me or anyone else?
-Does it feel right?
-Is there significant evidence against it?

The answers to these inform what I choose to believe.

Never underestimate the power of wanting to believe in something.

Like John, this phrase jumped out at me too. (sorry for commenting late on this, but I think this is something that has tripped me up too.

When I had bad experiences at multiple churches, I began to hate all churches. I believed them all to be hopelessly corrupt and immoral. I think I believed this and continue to believe this because I was really hurt and wanted to believe it, even though such a belief is unprovable (I’ve never been to every church in the whole world to see if they are all immoral).

So my question is, knowing this reality about ourselves, how do you in fact determine what is true and what is not ? Do our motivations and desires behind our beliefs hopelessly cloud our rational minds? Can we with certainty say that our motivations are only purely objective when finding truth, or must we admit that we believe what we do because we are angry or hungry for something?

It sounds like we’re all screwed. We move from one irrational belief to another based on life experiences, and not on cold hard logic. We do not run our lives or find truth like an objective scientific experiment – I personally cannot objectively analyze was it true or not in my life because I’m too emotionally involved in it and end up believing what I want to believe most of the time.

How have you dealt with this problem on your own journey to find what is true? It sounds like it is one of your biggest obstacle, and I’m sure it hasn’t gone away.

I view the concept of god as the good in all of us

Namaste, wren, thank you for sharing

I also have to join the praise for the phrase that John mentioned. Sometimes it still seems like it would be so easy to just slip back into my old mold (I was raised in the church and those things run deep in my psyche). It’s so good to know that others have felt similar things.

Lastly, this really struck me as well:

I believe compassion and mercy not from an unseen deity but from each other is our salvation in the here and now – and the here and now is what matters. It is all we really know we have.

Well said and right on!

Never underestimate the power of wanting to believe in something.

I can testify to this! My skepticism is all the stronger for having withstood my at times overwhelming desire to believe in Mormonism.

One of the things I love about Mind on Fire is the discussions that prompt me to further mull over what I believe with others finding their way on their own journeys. Thanks for the opportunity to share, John.