Subjectivity principle

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Religions and faith in God are for centuries making people more psychically stable, more happy in their lives and even more capable. One of reasons for that is that faith results in very effective treatment of problems one cannot solve: while people without believe are tortured and pressed by insoluble problems and usually think about these repeatedly, believer understands these things as "will of God" or "does not matter for my next life" or "does not matter because of SOMETHING" and is very quickly able to think and do something completely else, and have a stable and nice mind in addition. This SOMETHING can be thousands of things - and the effective treatment of insoluble problems will still work fine; that is why we have so many Truths.

My SOMETHING (which I recall in last 15 years when facing insoluble) is belief that problems are only subjectively (seemingly) important. More exactly the subjectivity principle says: problem you cannot solve at moment X only seems to be important at that very moment.
If this sounds interesting to you please devote few minutes to looking at Principle of Problem Subjectivity
I respect Truths of other people; there is no reason to change Truths that work fine, but maybe people could share the set of all problems and work in better cooperation to make more problems soluble.

PS: Of course the subjectivity principle makes one to extrapolate into future and think about very serious problems like diseases of close people or own death - these are not very pleasant thoughts and I apologise for invoking them in this forum. Maybe our perception of health and death problems will change once the guys from alcor.org defrost successfully at least one man (few thousand year from now :-?); until then one "modern" alternative for burying could be putting into liquid nitrogen for 50 year before normal burial?
PS2: I hope somebody will help me with improving the subjectivity principle over time, by constructive comments in this thread.

Kind regards,
Jiri

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@Jch,

My response won't address the subjectivity principle because I have to leave in a few minutes, but there was something I wanted to mention.

Jch wrote:

while people without believe are tortured and pressed by insoluble problems and usually think about these repeatedly, believer understands these things as "will of God" or "does not matter for my next life" or "does not matter because of SOMETHING" and is very quickly able to think and do something completely else, and have a stable and nice mind in addition.

That seems very pragmatic, and noble from a certain and common perspective, that of getting things done and moving on. I have this discussion with my boss all the time. He argues that it's better to believe in "something" just for the sake of having something to believe it, because it's at least a "start." It seems the scope of your post had to do with philosophical and existential quandaries, but he extends it to much more. For example, having opinions about certain races is seen as valuable because it's better than "being nice" or having no specific opinions.

Personally, I see this as a breach of intellectual integrity. I will admit there's a line somewhere, and accept that some people see a belief in "something" (philosophically) to be better and more productive than refusing to believe in something you're not sure of or hasn't been proven empirically because it would put at risk your intellectual integrity. However, as humans with the power of thought, I value nothing more than intellectual integrity. If believing that there's no clear meaning to life means I have to wallow in nebulous philosophical convictions, then so be it.

I can write more, but I have to leave. Good thread!

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@oftenly,

Thank you very much for your post, Oftenly, you are right in many aspects and I will think about it more.

Can anybody help me with the following: Is the idea of categorising problems or thoughts to "soluble" and "important only seemingly" (or less exactly "soluble" and "unimportant") present in any branch of philosophy? Or a work of classic philosopher?

Thank you in advance!

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@Jch,

Jch wrote:

Religions and faith in God are for centuries making people more psychically stable, more happy in their lives and even more capable.

Show us this. In bold, if you like.

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@Bones-O,

Bones-O! wrote:

Show us this. In bold, if you like.

He cannot; it is an error of predicate...

People cling all the harder to religion as an old form because the newer form is failing them; but the old form failed them too... Time for something new, based upon reason and to the heart true...

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

He cannot; it is an error of predicate...

People cling all the harder to religion as an old form because the newer form is failing them; but the old form failed them too... Time for something new, based upon reason and to the heart true...

Religion did not fail people. People failed religion.

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@Elmud,

Quote:

Religion did not fail people. People failed religion.

People failed themselves by believing in (organised) religion. Religion failed the people for allowing it to be believed in.

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@Jch,

Jch wrote:

Religions and faith in God are for centuries making people more psychically stable, more happy in their lives and even more capable.

Yea, personally, I experienced the opposite.

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@Elmud,

Elmud wrote:

Religion did not fail people. People failed religion.

For ideals the people must die because for the people ideals can never die...

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@Jch,

It's funny how often philosophical threads have overlapped with my own thoughts of the time. I'm reading The Brothers Karamazov at the moment and this has inspired thoughts in me as to the ethical and moral value of religions like Christianity where control of the believers is exerted in some fashion through promise of unfeasibly large rewards or punishments.

If I had my mind but for one change: that I believed in God, Christ, the Bible, Satan, Heaven, Hell et al, how could I ever be happy? Whatever I do or don't do in this life, I am always bearing in mind the next. If I want to do X but X is sinful, I deprive myself of X so that my next life will be good. If I don't want to do Y but the Bible says I must, I shall do it for the sake of my next life. I can't imagine this bringing me happiness, since I will spend my whole life doing what I must do for the sake of the next: that is, I suspend happiness in this life for the sake of happiness in the next.

Knowing (I'm just normal me now) that there is no next life, I can't help but feel that there's something grossly immoral about this. How many people's lives have been ruined or neglected for the sake of the next life? How many people have struggled with conflict between desire and religion?

Perhaps we all do this though... suppress our desires for the sake of a future that never comes.

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@Elmud,

Elmud wrote:

Religion did not fail people. People failed religion.

Wise words. :bigsmile:

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Subjectivity principle

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