Duplicity Belief

Duplicity Belief?

It seems to me that young people who attend church and youth groups and such things, have a two part belief. It seems that these young people don’t examine their religious beliefs along with their “other” beliefs to make sure they coincide. I’ll explain.

Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction states that “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.”

Take this made up scenario;
A young girl goes to church, her family is very “in” to the church, she goes to the services on Sunday, the young people’s classes on Sunday, and the youth group on Wednesday… She goes to school also (what high school-er doesn’t?). When she is at church she nods and always says ‘yeah I believe what they say at church’ when asked she will say again ‘yeah I believe what they say at church’. When she is at school she says ‘yeah I believe what they say at school’. Someone asks her sometime, maybe they are not a Christian, and they are curious about her faith. They hear that Christians believe their God created the Universe and that Evolution or the big bang are wrong. This person has only learned about evolution and the big bang through school and is curious why anyone would believe anything else, but knows her friend goes to church and always says ‘yeah, go Jesus!’ (Not in those words).

She asks her church going friend if she believes God created the Universe, her friend says ‘yeah, Jesus is awesome, God is awesome, and I believe all that’. She asks the church going friend, well; don’t you believe evolution and stuff? Scientists say it is absolutely true right? The Christian girl says, yeah well, I believe that too. Now she is confused.

Do you get my point?

How do you believe two things that contradict?

Can two contradicting beliefs be equally true at the same time in the same way?

Lets take a look at that thought:

This brings us to Russell’s Paradox,
There was once a barber. Some say that he lived in Seville. Wherever he lived, all of the men in this town either shaved themselves or were shaved by the barber. And the barber only shaved the men who did not shave themselves.
That is a nice story. But it raises the question: Did the barber shave himself? Let's say that he did shave himself. But we see from the story that he shaved only the men in town who did not shave themselves. Therefore, he did not shave himself. But we again see in the story that every man in town either shaved himself or was shaved by the barber. So he did shave himself. We have a contradiction. What does that mean?

If something contradicts itself, it cannot be true. If your basic set of beliefs contracts itself, it cannot be true. So if your basic set of beliefs, includes contracting facts, your basic set of beliefs is a bunch of bull.

In the study of logic, if Q is the opposite of P and P is true, Q cannot be true. So if your set of basic beliefs includes both P and Q, then your set of basic beliefs as a whole cannot be true.

If you believe two contradicting things at once, you end up not believing in anything at all, because you believe in a fantasy world that doesn’t pay attention to facts.

How do these high school students believe anything at all?
Do they?
In logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical inversions of each other. Illustrating a general tendency in applied logic, Aristotle’s law of noncontradiction states that “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.”

A paradox can be an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition; or it can be, seemingly opposite, an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth (cf. Koan). Typically, either the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. The word paradox is often used interchangeably with contradiction. Often, mistakenly, it is used to describe situations that are ironic.

You don’t want your belief to be a paradox do you?
That doesn’t even make sense.

Assess what you believe, don’t believe contradictory things.

J just some thoughts.