Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
It sounds like wuf is trying to get at a core question of why do we believe anything and how do we justify those beliefs?
Maybe with the deeper question: are there things worth believing that have always been things which people believe?
It's a good question. The best answer I can come up with (stolen from Jordan Peterson) is that which has led to reproduction. In the human scope, even the organism scope, this has limits. However, it might be applicable logic to existence itself. For example, a mode of being of a quantum particle that doesn't lead to survivability of its system can probably be thought of as unworthy since it is an elimination of itself, roughly speaking.

I saw some YouTube video with Bill Nye going through some evolution-denying / creationism "museum" with a religious creationist giving him a tour. The tour guy kept trying to say that Bill believes in evolution because he made up his mind to believe in evolution, then sought data to verify his assertion. Bill kept arguing that he made no decision until he was presented with evidence which favored one argument or model over the other.
OK:
So the problem I have is that, if the creationist guy was clever, he would have said something like, "So you decided that evidence leads you to believe things. What led you to believe in evidence?"
An interesting thing is that there is ample evidence that gods exist.....in peoples' minds (and lives/actions). Something I'm really hung up on is that abstract, metaphysical ideas are real in that they are conceptualized, and a conceptualization is a real thing. Given our nearly non-existent understanding of existence or consciousness, it can be the case that a thought somebody has in his head is as true as an asteroid landing on dinosaurs. I don't know what to make of any of this.