Overcoming Bias

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Strength To Doubt Or Believe

www.overcomingbias.com

Strength To Doubt Or Believe

Robin Hanson
Sep 6, 2007
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Strength To Doubt Or Believe

www.overcomingbias.com

From yesterday’s New York Times:

A new book of her letters, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light," published by Doubleday, show her struggling for decades against disbelief. "If I ever become a saint," she wrote in one letter, "I will surely be one of `darkness.’ " … "I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe," wrote Flannery O’Connor, the Roman Catholic author whose stories traverse the landscape of 20th-century unbelief. "What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe."

Being proud of having the strength to resist religion in the face of social pressure is just as biased as being proud of having the strength to resist doubt in order to retain religion.  Not everything is about your strength!  Your beliefs should reflect the world out there, and not just inner qualities you want to show off.  I will be proud of you if you can find the strength or weakeness, as the occasion demands, to just believe whatever the evidence supports.  Hat tip to Chris Masse.   

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Strength To Doubt Or Believe

www.overcomingbias.com
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