Religion-Psychology?

[vulturesrow]

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People believe in the Bible because they want to. Not because they have done a lot of logical analysis and determined Jesus must have existed and was X and did X. That's why it is a belief instead of a conclusion.

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This is simply untrue.

[NotReady]

Not to overwork C.S. Lewis, but he had an interesting answer to this line as well. The fact that I'm hungry doesn't prove food doesn't exist.

And there are plenty of people who want atheism to be true. They don't want to be interfered with, they don't want to be judged, they want to think there's nothing wrong with them and they are the masters of their own destiny. Lewis himself was like that, and was virtually dragged kicking and screaming into Christianity.

And no, I don't believe anyone, not even Lewis, is truly converted by logic. God is not found at the end of a syllogism. Nevertheless, logical inquiry is valid, human reason has it's place. It's the misuse of reason, like the misuse of any other of God's good gifts, that is the problem.

[PuertoKid]

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All I'm pointing out is we define greatness differently. Jesus forgave sins. If He wasn't God so that His forgiveness is bogus, then I questions His greatness. He advised people that He is the way, the truth and the life. If He was wrong about that then I question His greatness. He made many other promises and commands based on His claim to be the Messiah. I don't believe being wrong about that is compatible with greatness. Lewis didn't think so either. If you do, then I don't question your logic, just your judgment.


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Lol. ok. When you get tired of all the mental gymnastics and illogical thought processes you have to go through to maintain your belief system, I promise you it is ok to let it all go.

[NotReady]

I don't believe my thought processes are illogical, nor are yours if you allow people who lie or are woefully deceived about themselves to be great. It isn't a question of logic.

[lehighguy]

You may agree with the message of your religion. You may use it as a guiding light. You may think the stories are good inspiration. But to tell me that they literally happened with no supporting evidence is proposterous. You can't support it with scientific evidence or logic. The only answer is faith. I'm not saying faith is bad. I'm not saying people don't examine thier faith and test it and draw important meaning from it. But it isn't based around logic or science. And you can't prove any of the things in the Bible actually happened. And apparently Sklanskey can't deal with your kind and your percieved illiogical nature.

Personally, I think a different kind of logic drives faith. I think we can logically determine to turn of our logic if it benefits us. But whatever, that's an entirely different matter.

[Emmitt2222]

OK, I apologize for my first response because I read through too quickly and didn't properly respond to the question. Now that I have thought much longer about it I have a better response. I'm not sure you will necessarily be pleased with it, but I'm trying.

The best analogy I could think of was, well, poker. I truly believe in Catholicism and all that it teaches so I am one of the longshots that you were speaking of and essentially said I have a psychological problem. I would just say that this is comparable to having one out with only one card to come. You have to either go all-in or you give up and take a more profitable bet at another time [such as a more popular belief of a vague God]. But here is why people take that bet so often and why I have. What if the dealer [God] offered to show you what the next card was to come and you could actually see that it was the one card you needed. You would in fact not waste one moment and you would shove all you chips in right away. I believe that through many circumstances in my life, prayer, and the lives of others I have not seen the next card 100%, but I have seen it 99% and I would take that bet any day. I believe that everyone has not recieved the gift of being shown the next card because they have not been open enough, they have not asked.

I believe that people of other faiths caught a glimpse of the card, but not the whole thing. You could argue here that perhaps I have caught a glimpse and they have seen the whole thing so there is no way of proving who actually saw what. To this I would argue that this is one of those things that can't be proven on a large scale or there would be only one specific religion. I would only say that I believe many religions have Truth to them, most of them have the same one God, but that I have personally been shown that Catholicism contains the highest form of Truth. Some of the smartest people to ever live such as Aquinas and Augustine would agree.

Concerning conversion, if you had a friend and you wanted him to win also, but he wasn't able to see the card, you would tell him that you saw it and that he should take the bet too, because although the world is saying its a long shot, you know better and you want to see him prosper. This would be the reasoning behind trying to convert other people to your line of thinking as well.

I hope that better clarifies where I am coming from with my "psychological problem"

[motorholdem]

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Wanted to clear up some misconceptions about why I posted about religion and why I posted about it on this forum.

First of all it has no bearing on me personally. I'm not examining my own mortality or anything like that. Actually it all started when someone asked why poker players tended not to be religious. I answered that it was because being religious was not compatible with the clear thinking that pokers players need to use.

Lo and behold I got a lot of responses from apparently clear thinking people who were also religious. And at this point it was obvious to me that there must be psychological issues involved. It made me wonder if I could figure them out. And to what legnths people would go to deny strong arguments against them. Clearly a subject for the Psychology forum.

To believe that there is some sort of God out there does not mean you are either stupid or crazy. But as you start getting more specific, things change. It would be different if there was only one major religion. But as it stands if you believe specific facts (eg Mary was a virgin, Mohammed talked to Allah, dinosaurs walked with man, etc) you are disagreeing with the majority of people smarter than you who are not only atheists or agnostics, but also members of some other religion. In other words if you are the five millionth smartest person on the planet, at least four million of those smarter than you believe different from you on these specific issues. (80% of those dumber than you also believe differently but you could argue that doesn't matter).

In light of the above what does it say, psychologically about yourself if you are still sure you are right? If you are not sure, that's different. If you believe that your SPECIFIC religious beliefs are an underdog to be true but you merely HOPE they are, I have no problem with that. It's even somewhat rational to believe that that your religious beliefs are the most likely from among many to be true. As long as you understand that you are less than 50% to be right. But if you truly believe, not just hope, that your specific beliefs are more than 50% you have a psychological problem. It's worse if you truly believe the probability is at or near 100%. (I understand that we run into a problem here because most religions don't consider anything less than complete faith acceptable. So some who have doubts won't admit them)

Worse even yet are those who not only believe with certainty in their religion but also think that others should clearly want to convert. Those people not only have an irrational belief, they also have an irrational opinion that the OBJECTIVE evidence for their religion is stronger than the evidence for all other religions, agnosticism or atheism, combined. As I've said before this is akin to those stroke victims who will not believe they are paralyzed and are astonished others believe differently.

So to reiterate, I never actually was interested in debating religion per se. I was only interested in trying to figure out what makes people who believe this stuff tick.

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Ok, the percentages make a good case here. Even though I am an athiest, on my deathbed I am going to factor in my "implied" odds here and "call" God. lol

I'm not sure if will be +EV, but it can't be -EV .......lol

PS. If there is a Christian god, he had a couple of options after the lucifer fiasco: (1) god could have (as the creator of ALL good) realized he wired something wrong in old lucifer, and recalled him back to the shop. Or (2) he could have blamed man for the problem.

God chose option 2 and somehow I'm supposed to believe this is a loving God....

No thanks, I'll fold

[NotReady]

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But to tell me that they literally happened with no supporting evidence is proposterous. You can't support it with scientific evidence or logic


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There's plenty of both.

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But it isn't based around logic or science.


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This is true. Neither is atheism.

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And you can't prove any of the things in the Bible actually happened.


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Actually, many of the events, historical places and characters from the Bible have been verified. None have been proven false.

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And apparently Sklanskey can't deal with your kind and your percieved illiogical nature.


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I'm still waiting for someone to show where I'm illogical. Atheists love to throw that term around like holy water, but they never come across with the goods.

[lehighguy]

I'm not an atheist, so much as I don't give a rats as if God exists or not. When he starts hurling lightning bolts down I'll start to care. Right now he doesn't effect my life.

If you read Skalnsky's post, you realize we don't have to prove God doesn't exist. The burden of proof is upon you. And Sklansky has listed a number of things he wants you to clear up in his post. If you can clear them up for him, in a way he understands, then you have succeeded in answering his question. If you can't, I offered my two cents on why people have "exclusionist faith" in another post.

[NotReady]

See?