Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

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I got a bit confused with the first sunday of each month and thought it had to be something else.

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Its a Lutheran thing. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

"Animals murder, steal, "rape", kill their own, and yet they are rational, because to not do so would threaten their survival, which is their only "meaning". Clearly humans descend from the animal order, yet clearly we are no longer animals. Yet the objectivist or the "realist" view denies this and purports, basically, that we are animals. That I do not like nor accept."

Then how do you explain this obviously apparent behavior in humans? Why would God give us such qualities if they are only conducive to evil?

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

I question the merit of the Christian faith. I question the intellectual honesty of its followers. By that phrase I mean their willingess to ask themselves tough questions. I used to be a Christian and I remember avoiding those questions, by either ignoring science or relying on very weak arguments from Christian authorities, which I should have known to be specious. It was later when I questioned my reasons for wanting to hang on to my faith in the absence of good reason. That was my final gateway to atheism.

Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

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Clearly humans descend from the animal order, yet clearly we are no longer animals. Yet the objectivist or the "realist" view denies this and purports, basically, that we are animals. That I do not like nor accept.

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Riddick,


Again, that is the issue (re-phrased) that all atheists face in one way or another. We are animals, we have like all species distinguishing characteristics, one of which is our reflexivity, our ability to juggle with abstractions, which contribute to the determination of our behaviour. But to infer anything supernatural from that is too big a step, unwarranted by any possible evidence.

However that recognition may be sufficient to discover a meaning to your life, or make it up. without having to rely on the concept of an absolutely immoral god(s) to guide your choices.

Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

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Then how do you explain this obviously apparent behavior in humans?

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In the same way that other obviously apparant animal attributes (hair, tailbones, appendix) are present in humans.

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Why would God give us such qualities if they are only conducive to evil?


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We already know why such qualities are present. The more important question would be why would God give us, among other incredible qualities, reason, that does not exist in any other living thing on Earth? The ability to question whether something is morally right or wrong, in defiance of the selfish, "rational" innate desire?

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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That was my final gateway to atheism.


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It should have been your gateway out of Catholicism. But rather you gave up on asking yourself tough questions in order to land on an easy answer. And that is the definition of intellectually honest?

Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

It seems obvious in the Christian model why God would give us reason. It is to decipher right from wrong, in the way that he instructs us to decipher it. If we ignore the instruction in the bible, though, we can use reason to come to many different conclusions, sometimes those that oppose God's wishes. Why would God gives us eyes, letting us see the apparent godlessness of this earth, and endow us with reason, to further let us stray from his true path? Is he a great deceiver?

Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

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We already know why such qualities are present. The more important question would be why would God give us, among other incredible qualities, reason, that does not exist in any other living thing on Earth? The ability to question whether something is morally right or wrong, in defiance of the selfish, "rational" innate desire?

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Riddick,

It seems the more important question would be why did god give us a deficient immune system, a deficient eye, etc.. and that apply to "healthy" beings, why would a god allows, or intervene, in the conception to ensure that there are some that are born in unviable form, or seriously disadvantged forms, etc...

And indeed I think it right to question the immorality of such a god should one believe in it, rather than subvert the meaning of the word love by superimposing it on such a thing. By the way this only, touches ,on the apparent immorality of the being that you call god. There are heaps more examples to list. I do not mean to sound disrepectful, but I find it obscene and, worst, it is achieved via a sort of perversion of language which is only attributable to the worst forms of propangada. Orwell's 1984 double talk comes to mind here.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

If you look back at my original post you'll see that I was raised Protestant, not Catholic. I also studied the bible on my own, as well as many other religions. Look, I can't possibly get into all the reasons for becoming an atheist in a few minutes, even a few hours. And do you really think atheism is an easy answer? It's much easier to believe in a god. Realizing nobody is up there after believing it your whole life doesn't exactly make you want to jump for joy.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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Faith and religion were invented by people who felt the same weaknesses I did and we all do from time to time. It's comforting to think there is an all-knowing being out there. It's not reasonable, though. I'd rather live honestly than blissfully. Then again, my religious days were anything but blissful.


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Do you see how inconsistent this is? You said religion made you miserable so you became an atheist. Logically, atheism was invented by people who didn't want to feel uncomfortable. That very tired, old bromide you offer for why religion was invented just doesn't wash, logically or practically. You might want to think a little deeper about why you rejected God.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

I feel so excluded..... Atheist born and raised.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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Atheists: (if you were non-atheist at an earlier point) What caused you to believe what you believe about theology?


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Logic and reason over time. There was no one epiphany that did it.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

I very young in school. We were made to pray every morning and I never really gave it much thought. I vaguely visualised prayers going up somewhere near the moon. One day when I was ten years old a very good friend of mine said "You realise there is no god, right?". I was a little shocked, but over then next few days came to realise he was right, it was all utterly ridiculous. I felt the same about it as I had about the tooth fairy and santa.

Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

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Anything that I do that contains any purpose (including such things as investing, studying, working out) is done in context of the future.

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What about things that are...you know...fun? Fun things have a purpose: a very simple purpose.

I like eating out, going to parties, playing videogames, swimming, surfing, dancing, meditation, painting, making love, playing music and the occasional entheogenic experience for no reason other than the fact that I enjoy doing them. Life is full of enjoyable things.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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And do you really think atheism is an easy answer? It's much easier to believe in a god. Realizing nobody is up there after believing it your whole life doesn't exactly make you want to jump for joy.

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Agreed. I went from the belief in eternal life, to reincarnation, to Taoism, to atheism. None of the steps were very pleasant, but each one focused me more on my life, and accordingly, I became a much happier person.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

My terse answer:

I was a Fundamentalist, then a Calvinist. Then I could no longer believe the Bible was inerrant/infallible. Then I allowed myself to question the deity of Jesus. Then I looked at other religions. Then Unitarian Universalism. Then I became agnostic. Then pretty much atheist -- in practice if not belief.

There may be a God... and I hope there is... as long as it's not the "Christian God of the Bible". But, I'm a skeptic by nature... I'm a doubting Thomas. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Occam's razor & Hume's maxim are two principles I find useful in examining beliefs.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

It's just a basic antipathy towards a "this religion is right and the rest are going to hell" attitude. I grew up with a Roman Catholic mother and an atheist father. I minored in religion in college - mostly American religious history.

I tend to gravitate more toward eastern thought like taoism and zen, which are non-theistic philosophies.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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I grew up with a Roman Catholic mother and an atheist father. I minored in religion in college

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Wow, me too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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Faith and religion were invented by people who felt the same weaknesses I did and we all do from time to time. It's comforting to think there is an all-knowing being out there. It's not reasonable, though. I'd rather live honestly than blissfully. Then again, my religious days were anything but blissful.


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Do you see how inconsistent this is? You said religion made you miserable so you became an atheist. Logically, atheism was invented by people who didn't want to feel uncomfortable. That very tired, old bromide you offer for why religion was invented just doesn't wash, logically or practically. You might want to think a little deeper about why you rejected God.

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It is consistent if religion was invented by people who want to make people feel happy, but failed in doing so.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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I grew up with a Roman Catholic mother and an atheist father. I minored in religion in college

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Wow, me too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I think we just found our two compatible candidates for Lestat’s brain transplant experiment. Are you two willing to give it a go for the sake a science ( and Religion for that matter)?

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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I grew up with a Roman Catholic mother and an atheist father. I minored in religion in college

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Wow, me too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I think we just found our two compatible candidates for Lestat’s brain transplant experiment. Are you two willing to give it a go for the sake a science ( and Religion for that matter)?

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It would be too small of a sample size to be conclusive. I ask that you volunteer yourself as well, with your choice of compatible brain donor from either a field cricket, a watermelon, or BigSoonerFan.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

I was born an atheist.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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I was born an atheist.

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Wow, me too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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I grew up with a Roman Catholic mother and an atheist father. I minored in religion in college

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Wow, me too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I think we just found our two compatible candidates for Lestat’s brain transplant experiment. Are you two willing to give it a go for the sake a science ( and Religion for that matter)?

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It would be too small of a sample size to be conclusive. I ask that you volunteer yourself as well, with your choice of compatible brain donor from either a field cricket, a watermelon, or BigSoonerFan.

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Was just a joke. No need to get nasty. But since we are in the mud now, I must agree with you when you said:

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It would be too small of a sample…

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Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

Try harder.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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I was born an atheist.

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I loved this post when I first read it, "Aren't we all?" I smiled and nodded.
It was short lived :-( because research from both neuroscience and psychology seems to lean to hierarchical social animals having evolved 'easy reception', at the least, to the concept of "Meta -alphas".
In a simple sense, if you belong to a species that has a social structure that depends on hierarchy it's one of the paradigms you're dealt, and you'll see many situations in terms of hierarchy. So it's an easy build.
Sigh, at a basic level we may be less atheistic at birth than it may appear. No wonder it's a tough position to arrive at.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

The truth is I have no memory of ever having believed in God. From the time I was sentient I have been an atheist. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it........

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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I felt the same about it as I had about the tooth fairy and santa.


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I went through the same process at the same age. When I grew old enough to think I realized how silly the comparison is between God and Santa.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

Luckyme,

Do you really think that if there was no religion, no one to teach you there was a God that anyone born today would start believing in God? I am talking about now, after science has explained so many of the 'unexplained' phenomena of the past.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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The truth is I have no memory of ever having believed in God.

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I actually took your post to mean that the first time around, but I chuckled because I think we all are born atheists, most just don't stay that way. I skimmed over some suggestions around why most don't, or at least why most are easily swayed to meta-alpha views.

A friend of mine has a vegetarian son, he's been that way almost since he could say "no", and it doesn't seem to be an allergy or any physical aversion. The family is a very meat-and-potato type. I don't think we'll ever know 'why' because by the time he's 15 or so he'll have built a whole house around the 'why' rather than have access to that initial toddler reaction.

I mention that because it sounds like atheism was very natural/easy for you ?? For me, and others that have posted, it was quite an interesting route. I'm not equating it with my li'l natural vegetarian ( which is also usually a result of a 'route' of some kind). I'm sure he'll have ample and coherent 'reasons' by 15 but it won't be the reasons that he had at 2. I find it interesting because I think there are people that are born with a personality/psyhological makeup that will make certain religious positions almost irresistable for them. I could name names :-)

Most of us seem somewhere inbetween and while relgion seems easy to adopt as youngsters we go through some 'trial' period and then take our path. I think psychological issues are a major part of the choices but it's complex regardless.

I'd be interested in why you found it so easy, or did you? You only noted that you never believed in god but was there a time it ever seemed 'conceivable' to you?

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

NotReady, it took many stages of spirituality to get to atheism. What I originally took as a comforting feeling eventually manifested itself as an unhealthy desire for non-life. I am an atheist not because I want to be happy, but because I want to live truthfully. It's just a side effect of religious thought that it turns one against the world in which we live and breathe.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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Do you really think that if there was no religion, no one to teach you there was a God that anyone born today would start believing in God? I am talking about now, after science has explained so many of the 'unexplained' phenomena of the past.

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Absolutely not !
However, we are born into cultures and with a lot of innate but primative perception structures that make social interaction work.
In japan or europe you're more likely to get a 'personality-cult' arising than a 'god' cult, but nothing is ruled out. IOW, I think the hierarchal and alpha-headed perseective of many social animals is pretty deep and quite easy to stimulate. Exactly how it plays out depends on the culture you're born into for the most part.
I don't think 'god' attribution will ever disappear because it's such an easy expansion of two basic paradigms we're stuck with ... cause-and-effect, and hierarchal social urges. The fact that we can think-through both of those does not erase the innate underpinnings.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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I'd be interested in why you found it so easy, or did you? You only noted that you never believed in god but was there a time it ever seemed 'conceivable' to you?



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Honestly, no. I have to admit having a father who was a physicist and an atheist probably helped. It wasn't so much that he told me there was no god but rather he never told me there was one. Since I was always around science I saw the 'real' reasons for most things and never needed a supernatural reason. I do respect people that were raised theists and then became atheist on their own accord. It has not been 'easy' because where I grew up everyone believed in god.

That does bring me to my question I asked before - Do you really think that if there was no religion, no one to teach you there was a God that anyone born today would start believing in God? I am talking about now, after science has explained so many of the 'unexplained' phenomena of the past.

Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

I've only read half the thread and I came a little late, but here's another perspective FWIW.

My parents were always christian (congregationalists) and they dragged me to church more sundays than they let me sleep in, but I was never that interested. It was during high school when I started asking questions about the world myself that I started to begin to develop personal beliefs.

Two main factors lead me to begin calling myself a christian, one is hearing a version of christianity that is actually somewhat reasonable, and the second is having what i can only describe as an experience of God.

The reasonable version of christianity is not very smiliar to the one that it seems most people rejected when they decided to become athiests. Babies dying of SIDS doesn't have to mean there is no God nor does it have to mean it is God's will that those babies die. When I learned that some people read The Bible as a history of a people's evolving understanding of their relationship with God, rather than as the divine, infallible word of God, I started to see that there is a lot of wisdom in the book. I started to see the punishments that were foretold not as God's wrath, but rather as the real consequences of living inconsistently with God's wisdom.

The experience of God happend when I was visiting Israel with my church youth group in the summer after my junior year of high schoool. I went on the trip reluctantly, because my parents wanted me to and because my sort of girlfriend was also going, but it ended up being quite a spiritual experience.

The moment that stands out is when I was baptized in the Jordan river (I would call this the moment I became a christian, I was baptized as I child but that had nothing to do with my personl motives so I don't think it meant much). Anyway, as I was fully submerged in the Jordan I felt this overwhelming feeling of connectedness. It felt like the water, the trees, all the people around me were just flowing through me. This connectedness is what I call God - this is what I would be referring to if I were to say that God is everywhere.

I agree with the athiests that is very hard to believe in the white beard big man up stairs image of God.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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That does bring me to my question I asked before - Do you really think that if there was no religion, no one to teach you there was a God that anyone born today would start believing in God? I am talking about now, after science has explained so many of the 'unexplained' phenomena of the past.

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Even now most cultures still have some kind of religion. Also most people I know are of the belief that kids should be brought up believing in God, that it is somehow innocent. This could be different in Europe or Japan. All I'm saying is that regardless of what parents teach, there is still a culture that has an effect on children. Most regular people don't have a good idea of science or philosophy, so it doesn't matter what advancements these fields have made. America's education system is pretty pathetic.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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That does bring me to my question I asked before - Do you really think that if there was no religion, no one to teach you there was a God that anyone born today would start believing in God? I am talking about now, after science has explained so many of the 'unexplained' phenomena of the past.

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Even now most cultures still have some kind of religion. Also most people I know are of the belief that kids should be brought up believing in God, that it is somehow innocent. This could be different in Europe or Japan. All I'm saying is that regardless of what parents teach, there is still a culture that has an effect on children. Most regular people don't have a good idea of science or philosophy, so it doesn't matter what advancements these fields have made. America's education system is pretty pathetic.

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I think you are missing the question. Belief in god started as a way to explain the 'unexplainable'. What if we started with a clean slate. No one believed in god. But we still have all the scientific knowledge that we have now.
Do you think the belief in god would have still 'evolved'?

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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It's just a side effect of religious thought that it turns one against the world in which we live and breathe.


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It isn't just a side effect. Atheism is hostility toward God, enmity with Him. This is His universe which we have corrupted through sin. Because unbelief is totally opposed in principle to God Himself Christians are totally opposed to the atheistic world view. It comes down to a choice between truth and the great lie. There's no middle ground, ultimately no possible compromise. So I'm against the world in which you live and breath and for the real, true world that God has created and will someday restore. I'm against the death of the soul and for eternal life.

Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

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Because life without afterlife is awfully pointless.

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Please elaborate.

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Otiose, senseless, purposeless. Anything that I do that contains any purpose (including such things as investing, studying, working out) is done in context of the future.

Would you go to work on Monday if you knew you were not going to get a paycheck on Friday? Would you make personal plans for a month from now if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?

I a) try to do the right things, and b) drink a cup of wine and eat a loaf of bread the first Sunday of each month in preparation for my inevitable death, hopefully many decades from now.

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I think your point confirms the atheistic point of view of why religion is a crutch. You're arguing that without a point, everyone should basically off themselves. And I'd agree that many people would do just that without religion. Which is why, from the atheist's view, religion is, to a degree, necessary yet untrue.

Re: A Very Sincere Reply
 

A friend of mine went to Israel last year and said he's thinking about moving there; he said it was hard to describe, but the land felt like a "node." (we're both RPG geeks; a "node" refers to a wellspring of spiritual energy) I'd really like to make the trip one of these days.

Re: A question for Christians AND atheists
 

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Belief in god started as a way to explain the 'unexplainable'. What if we started with a clean slate. No one believed in god. But we still have all the scientific knowledge that we have now.
Do you think the belief in god would have still 'evolved'?

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I think so. For one, there is a lot that science still doesn't know. People fill in the gaps with God -- although, since we know more now than before, the God would be less personal.

Also, there is the power of religion. Religion can control people. Smart people will take advantage of this, and a charismatic person will start a religion that might just take off and evolve into something very big (scientology, mormonism).