What Is The Apologetic For Cognitive Dissonance?

[bluegreenearth]

From Wikipedia -

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, or participates in an action that goes against one of these three, and experiences psychological stress because of that. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein they try to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.

In A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world. A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance. They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance.

Coping with the nuances of contradictory ideas or experiences is mentally stressful. It requires energy and effort to sit with those seemingly opposite things that all seem true. Festinger argued that some people would inevitably resolve dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe.

According to Christian theology, God desires for people to make the freewill decision to believe he exists and be in a loving relationship with him. Once people freely choose to accept Christ as their one true Lord and savior, the Holy Spirit is claimed to descend upon them to reveal the truth of Christianity in such a way that it is undeniable. Consequently, we would expect cognitive dissonance to never occur in Christians if their sincere belief is true. Nevertheless, one of the primary functions of apologetics is help Christians suppress the cognitive dissonance they routinely experience.

Once the truth of Christianity is divinely revealed to people by the Holy Spirit, it should be impossible for these Christians to hold two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. After all, their freewill choice to trust the word of God and acknowledge Jesus's sacrifice for their sins will have satisfied God's criteria for granting them the gift of salvation. As such, we expect there should be no theological purpose for God not to insulate his true Christian followers from experiencing cognitive dissonance now that he has assured their place in his kingdom.

At the very least, if Christianity is true, any secular beliefs that would seem to contradict Biblical beliefs should not be more compelling to a true Christian. However, the fact that Christians routinely experience cognitive dissonance demonstrates that the secular beliefs are often more persuasive than the Biblical beliefs they seem to contradict. Otherwise, we would expect an inability for those secular beliefs to routinely elicit experiences of cognitive dissonance in true Christians.

So, what are the apologetic arguments for why apologetics is needed to help true Christians suppress the cognitive dissonance they routinely experience given the aforementioned considerations? Why does apologetics not become obsolete after people become true Christians, but instead, it remains an essential tool for suppressing the cognitive dissonance they routinely experience?

[Don McIntosh]

Of course it is a dodge.

My challenge to you (Kindly demonstrate to readers how “without belief in gods� involves cognitive dissonance) is not addressed at all – and has nothing to do with what Atheists do or not do.

Your challenge means little to someone who doesn't happen to agree that merely lacking belief in gods accurately describes all variants of atheism or atheists. I initially left it alone because it completely, and ironically, sidestepped my own argument altogether.

“Those guys do it too� doesn't even work in kindergarten recess.

Good one.

Perhaps the OP question for debate is a bit too complex for some to understand.

Another good one! And yes, perhaps...

Signature that appears on each of my posts clearly states theistic position as Non-Theist

Pardon the interruption, but there is nothing especially clear about a position that is both theistic and non-theistic.

Now, given the way you communicate with me, what I should do at this point is browbeat you with a patronizing little lecture about the basics of logic and what a "contradiction" means, and maybe offer to tutor you in my spare time. Instead I will assume that "Non-Theistic" in this context means how you describe yourself with respect to theism.

and clearly states “ANY of the thousands of ‘gods’ proposed, imagined, worshiped, loved, feared, and/or fought over by humans MAY exist – awaiting verifiable evidence�

What part of that is difficult to understand?

It's not difficult to understand at all. What is difficult is squaring the claim in your signature with various statements you've made in this thread. I even presented a deductive argument using your own statements to demonstrate that you appear to be a de facto strong atheist, whether you want to give that impression or not (another argument you appear to have missed). This would potentially be yet another example of cognitive dissonance.

Anyone capable of reading without straw-man attempts would know better than to say, 'take it that you are a strong Atheist' –

So I am incapable of reading without straw-man attempts? Oh dear.

That seems self-defeating to me,

What it seems to you is of absolutely no significance to me and has no merit in debate.

But arguments do have merit in debate, even if I don't always state things as if I were a preeminent authority. And I explained why your positivist epistemology seems self-defeating, by use of yet another argument that you ignored completely: "there appears to be no evidence available to support the belief that beliefs without evidential support are fanciful tales – in which case the evidential version of strong atheism would constitute another example of cognitive dissonance."

So to squarely address what seems to me an objection without much of a purpose: yes, I agree that "without belief in gods" cannot involve cognitive dissonance, since c.d. entails having conflicting beliefs.

Thank you for acknowledging the obvious

I would thank you for acknowledging that I didn't dodge your question after all, but as it turns out you're still accusing me of dodging it despite tacitly conceding right here that I answered it squarely.

What beliefs held by Atheists 'to justify their Atheism' do you imagine?

The premises of the strong atheistic argument below (drawn largely from your own statements and which you ignored):

1. The religious claim that God exists is unsupported by evidence.
2. Religious claims unsupported by evidence are fanciful tales.
3. Fanciful tales are manifestly false (implied by definition).
4. The claim that God exists is manifestly false.

Notice that no cognitive dissonance (or 'beliefs of their own') are required to lack belief in Leprechauns, fairies, or unicorns. Same goes for gods.

Is. No cognitive dissonance is required. But...I agree.

Correction: Read what I actually said and note the question mark (which indicates a question not 'stating unequivocally') “Do you realize that you cannot provide verifiable evidence?� There IS a difference between a question and a declarative sentence. Does this require further simplification or clarification?

Would you mind staying on topic? I can accept the possibility that you're so intelligent and highly educated that you've earned the right to talk down to me, and I'm sure all these little digs at my own intelligence play well to the home crowd – but after a while it gets wearisome and not a little distracting.

Accordingly, I would implore you to please consider context, to interpret others with a minimal level of charity, and try not to be overly pedantic and contentious (which is not to say I've never been guilty of the same). Yes, I understand that technically it was an interrogative rather than declarative sentence – though if you prefer to believe that I never knew the difference I won't try to stop you.

In any event the loaded question, "Do you realize that you cannot provide verifiable evidence?" is not a serious inquiry simply because it starts with "Do you realize" and ends with a question mark. In the context of our debate it's obviously a rhetorical form of an unequivocal assertion that I cannot provide verifiable evidence, in the same way that "Are you still beating your wife?" is a rhetorical form of an assertion that you are guilty of beating your wife. That's why I took the liberty to say that you stated it unequivocally.

[Don McIntosh]

Consider this argument, based largely on your own statements:

1. The religious claim that God exists is unsupported by evidence.
2. Religious claims unsupported by evidence are fanciful tales.
3. Fanciful tales are manifestly false (implied by definition).
4. The claim that God exists is manifestly false.

Note that the logic here is perfectly valid, and the resulting conclusion is not a mere lack of belief but a strong affirmation of atheism.

Incorrect, this logic is NOT valid.

It's fine until (2). At (3) you make a wild leap from "fanciful tale" to "manifestly false". Just because someone makes a tale does not necessarily render it false. It may very well be (and perhaps likely be), but there is no direct relationship between a "fanciful tale" and "manifestly false".

Though I see your point, I will stick to my guns here and insist that technically the logic is valid. By that I mean simply that the conclusion follows deductively from the premises. The problem with the argument above is not validity, but soundness. Because one or more of the premises may not be true, it’s not sound. And I think you're right to raise the objection.

Now Z has it that because (he thinks) no verifiable evidence (as opposed to unverifiable evidence?) has been presented for it, Christianity is a fanciful tale on a par with fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Most of us would consider those tales manifestly false, indeed manifestly false by design, though arguably not provably false (it's always possible that leprechauns, unicorns and fairies do exist and we've not yet found evidence for them).

The fallacy, I think, is in lumping together all beliefs for which there is no evidence into the same category as fairy tales strictly for polemical or rhetorical purposes. Consider the following set of beliefs for which there apparently is (or was at one time) no evidence:

> That the conclusion of a sound argument is true
> That the objects we perceive around us exist independently of our perceptions
> That I had a patty melt from Whataburger for lunch last week
> The correctness of quantum mechanics or special relativity as of 1850
> The correctness of any and all future scientific discoveries

Clearly those beliefs do not qualify as fanciful tales simply because we cannot, or could not in the past, confirm them with evidence. So even if someone were to somehow demonstrate to all observers that no evidence for Christianity has ever been put forth, it would require more than that to make the argument that Christianity is comparable to a fairy tale.

[Don McIntosh]

An invalid extrapolation and a classic example of cherry picking. The proposed beginning of space-time may not have been the beginning of everything which would be contrary to Genesis. Then we have the fact that creationists ignore the billions of years of cosmological activity following the Big Bang before the Sun and Earth formed by mechanisms that are nothing like the colourful story described in the Bible. As with biblical interpretation one needs to consider context.

I disagree, but I do think those are mostly fair points to make.

Before going further with my reply, I would remind both of us that the question is whether there is any evidence for Christian theism that might be inherently valid for any rational observer. The assertion that there is strictly no evidence, or that no evidence has been presented to date, is a strong claim that carries with it a certain burden of proof of its own.

Right off the bat, then, I will repeat an argument that I've made maybe a half dozen times now in this thread: that there appears to be no evidence for the claim that evidentially unsupported claims should be considered false (or at minimum subject to out-of-hand dismissal). If that argument holds, it would mean that strong evidentialists cannot meet their own burden of proof, and by implication that an evidential version of strong atheism is incoherent. Yet I gave some examples earlier (e.g., "that I had a patty melt from Whataburger last week") of beliefs for which no evidence can be provided but which seem reasonable if not self-evidently true.

But even if we discover that evidence is required to justify a belief, I don’t see how your objections would render my proposed evidence null and void. You're right that the proposed beginning of space-time may not have actually signalled the beginning of everything. (Of course I would agree, and point to God as something that plausibly exists entirely outside of space and time.) But cosmological evidence for the big bang is not supposed to somehow negate other possibilities; it only lends strength to the particular hypothesis that space and time began at some point. And evidence for the beginning of space and time accords well with the creation of the universe as a basic tenet of theism.

You mentioned interpretation. All of this lends itself to interpretation, which amounts to another reason why the assertion "There is no evidence for Christianity" cannot be justified. The fact is that honest and rational observers disagree on what makes for good evidence for a given hypothesis. And even well-trained Bayesian confirmation theorists agree that the prior probability of a hypothesis is necessarily somewhat subjective.

In sum: you might be justified in saying, "I do not personally find the evidence I've seen proposed for Christian theism convincing, and here's why…" But you cannot assert that there is no evidence for the claims of Christianity whatsoever without assuming a burden of proof which seemingly cannot be met.

As for Genesis and cherry-picking: this post is taking me longer than I intended going into it, so I will address it later if that's okay.

[bluegreenearth]

I just thought it would be responsible for me, as the person who initiated this thread, to indicate that I have been following along with this fascinating dialogue despite not offering much in the way of my own contributions. So, in the event anyone was curious, I am still interested in what people are posting here. Thanks and keep up the intellectually stimulating conversations.

[Difflugia]

Right off the bat, then, I will repeat an argument that I've made maybe a half dozen times now in this thread: that there appears to be no evidence for the claim that evidentially unsupported claims should be considered false (or at minimum subject to out-of-hand dismissal).

I disagree. We have a ready supply of people that believe things without evidence. Reliance on those beliefs when making decisions seems to lead to negative outcomes much more often than it does positive ones. I'm not aware of any controlled studies, though, so maybe I'm suffering from confirmation bias.

[Don McIntosh]

As for Genesis and cherry-picking: this post is taking me longer than I intended going into it, so I will address it later if that's okay.

It seems to me that advocates for any hypothesis will emphasize certain facts and minimize others. Darwin justifiably made much of Galapagos finches and tortoises, but had to explain his way around the systematic fragmentation of the fossil record and the specifiable complexity ("extreme perfection and complication") in the structure of the mammalian eye. There are strong implications of general relativity that would find no place in quantum mechanics, and vice-versa. Yet there is considerable evidence for each. And so forth.

The important question, I think, is how well the proposed evidence supports the hypothesis relative to other evidence, and other hypotheses. If the hypothesis predicts the evidence while others do not, and the evidence would not otherwise be expected (it's not probable in itself), then the evidence supports the hypothesis. If it can be considered a "hypothesis," theism arguably predicts something like the cosmological evidence we have (evidence of a creation from seemingly no pre-existing materials), while naturalism fits much better with a universe that has no beginning and therefore need not be explained by something else outside of it. At the same time the creation of the universe is the defining event of the book of Genesis, in that it sets the stage as the precondition for all that follows.

As for the origins of the Sun and Earth, and of life itself, there seems to be comparably little evidence to work with either way (though I haven't visited the issues in a while), and so I think those remain much more open questions from a theoretical-evidential standpoint.

[brunumb]

[Replying to post 86 by Don McIntosh]

The important question, I think, is how well the proposed evidence supports the hypothesis relative to other evidence, and other hypotheses. If the hypothesis predicts the evidence while others do not, and the evidence would not otherwise be expected (it's not probable in itself), then the evidence supports the hypothesis.

What evidence supports the proposition that God created everything as described in Genesis? Beyond the similarity with the universe having an apparent beginning there is nothing. Numerous other creation tales have similar beginnings. They can't all be right, but they can all be wrong.

If it can be considered a "hypothesis," theism arguably predicts something like the cosmological evidence we have (evidence of a creation from seemingly no pre-existing materials), while naturalism fits much better with a universe that has no beginning and therefore need not be explained by something else outside of it.

Theism predicts nothing like the cosmological evidence we have. The evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to now is supported by observation and measurement. Genesis basically says nothing. When you add in biological evolution after Earth was formed, it too contradicts the fanciful account imagined by the early biblical authors.

At the same time the creation of the universe is the defining event of the book of Genesis, in that it sets the stage as the precondition for all that follows.

Irrelevant, and does not qualify as evidence.

As for the origins of the Sun and Earth, and of life itself, there seems to be comparably little evidence to work with either way (though I haven't visited the issues in a while), and so I think those remain much more open questions from a theoretical-evidential standpoint.

Perhaps you should visit the issues again. There is nothing to work with from a biblical perspective, but there is a mountain of supporting evidence for 13.8 billion years of natural processes requiring no gods.

[Don McIntosh]

What evidence supports the proposition that God created everything as described in Genesis? Beyond the similarity with the universe having an apparent beginning there is nothing.

The gist of that seems to be, "Besides the evidence we actually have, there is no evidence." I agree, but again, that's true of any theory or evidential proposition one could care to name.

The universe is precisely what God in Genesis is described as having created from nothing; thus evidence of the universe coming into existence from nothing is evidence supporting the initial creation event described in Genesis. Otherwise we would not have the "similarity" you mentioned.

Up until the mid-twentieth century there were theists who believed the universe had an absolute beginning and naturalists who believed the universe had essentially always existed. As the evidence suggesting the universe had an absolute beginning came in, which of those positions do you think was better supported by that evidence?

Numerous other creation tales have similar beginnings. They can't all be right, but they can all be wrong.

You're right, in that almost any form of evidence will be compatible with a potentially limitless number of hypotheses. That holds equally true, of course, for whatever evidence one may present for various theories of cosmology, abiogenesis, macroevolution, etc. (For one example, much of the evidence offered for Darwinian evolution is also compatible with Lamarckism, Lysenkoism and even young earth creationism.) The question always remains, not whether there is any evidence that can be cited to support the theory, but how well the theory predicts or explains that evidence and how probable it is that we would have the evidence apart from the theory.

Meanwhile the great majority of competing creation tales/accounts involve the creation of the world by God or the gods from pre-existing materials (as opposed to ex nihilo). That leaves mainly the three Abrahamic religions. And again, if a particular form of evidence is compatible with other hypotheses that's not a failure of the evidence or of the hypothesis. It just means more evidence, and more kinds of it, may be required to make the overall case. Christian theism cannot be true without a creation and without the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. But a different set of evidence is given for each.

Theism predicts nothing like the cosmological evidence we have. The evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to now is supported by observation and measurement. Genesis basically says nothing. When you add in biological evolution after Earth was formed, it too contradicts the fanciful account imagined by the early biblical authors.

Disagree. The absolute beginning of the universe is not only strongly implied by Genesis, but as you say, supported by observation and measurement. Also, I don't add in biological evolution, if by that you mean the emergence of all living things from a common ancestor by purely natural mechanisms. And we're already falling back on the old "fanciful" and "imagined" rhetoric?

At the same time the creation of the universe is the defining event of the book of Genesis, in that it sets the stage as the precondition for all that follows.

Irrelevant, and does not qualify as evidence.

I'm not following this. You suggested that my emphasis on the initial creation event in Genesis was cherry-picking, because it did not also address the origins of the Sun and the Earth in Genesis. Now you seem to be suggesting that the entire narrative of Genesis is irrelevant because it doesn't qualify as evidence. But it's not supposed to qualify as evidence. The initial ex nihilo creation narrative in Genesis is what the evidence I mentioned is meant to support. In the same way the germ theory of disease is not evidence for the germ theory of disease, the belief that JFK was shot by multiple gunmen is not evidence for the belief that JFK was shot by multiple gunmen, etc.

As for the origins of the Sun and Earth, and of life itself, there seems to be comparably little evidence to work with either way (though I haven't visited the issues in a while), and so I think those remain much more open questions from a theoretical-evidential standpoint.

Perhaps you should visit the issues again. There is nothing to work with from a biblical perspective, but there is a mountain of supporting evidence for 13.8 billion years of natural processes requiring no gods.

I think you're confusing "mountain of evidence for 13.8 billion years of natural processes requiring no gods" with "multitude of brilliant scientists and intellectuals who are convinced that naturalism is true" – two different notions altogether. But maybe I am behind the times. Is there now an evidentially supported theory for the evolution of the Sun or the Earth? Did someone finally come up with a coherent and robust theory of abiogenesis, or a demonstrable mechanism for macroevolution, while I've been distracted with my religious devotions?

[brunumb]

[Replying to post 88 by Don McIntosh]

I think you're confusing "mountain of evidence for 13.8 billion years of natural processes requiring no gods" with "multitude of brilliant scientists and intellectuals who are convinced that naturalism is true" – two different notions altogether.

No. The mountain of evidence all points to the same conclusion. The opinions of the people involved are irrelevant. The facts speak for themselves.

That aside, the Big Bang theory does not have the universe form from nothing. In that it is in clear contradiction of the Genesis story and creation ex nihilo. Genesis also contains contradictory sequences of events which are also incompatible with the formation of life on Earth. The primitive writers clearly didn't have a clue.

[Don McIntosh]

[Replying to post 88 by Don McIntosh]

I think you're confusing "mountain of evidence for 13.8 billion years of natural processes requiring no gods" with "multitude of brilliant scientists and intellectuals who are convinced that naturalism is true" – two different notions altogether.

No. The mountain of evidence all points to the same conclusion. The opinions of the people involved are irrelevant. The facts speak for themselves.

Those are some weighty assertions. But claiming to have a mountain of evidence is a poor substitute for actual evidence. Until you present that evidence here, I’d assert to the contrary that there is a mountain of evidence for Christian theism and maybe a molehill or three for naturalism.

The problem naturalism faces is that there simply must be a natural explanation for every phenomenon, no matter how inexplicable or improbable it may seem even in naturalistic terms. The corollary to that is atheists/naturalists often feeling compelled to maintain that there is not so much as a shred of evidence for theism (and for good reason: a single miracle confirmation, for example, would be enough to falsify naturalism completely). All of that makes for a rather unwieldy burden of proof.

That aside, the Big Bang theory does not have the universe form from nothing. In that it is in clear contradiction of the Genesis story and creation ex nihilo.

Lawrence Krauss and a lot of others would disagree about the "from nothing" part. Technically I think you're right, though; the big bang is thought by various cosmologists to have resulted from fluctuations in a quantum vacuum, or from a collision of branes, or from other exotic, extra-dimensional (super-natural?) entities which strictly cannot be considered "nothing." But as Hawking argued, such entities merit no place in the model, because if they exist at all they exist outside the space-time continuum and are therefore not subject to scientific examination in principle – no different from God in that respect.

Genesis also contains contradictory sequences of events which are also incompatible with the formation of life on Earth. The primitive writers clearly didn't have a clue.

Genesis straightforwardly describes the formation of life on earth, so it can't really be incompatible with the formation of life on earth. Now if life's "formation" is supposed to refer to some particular scientific hypothesis of the origin of life, I think it would be your burden rather than mine to present the relevant evidence.