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.

[imported_luckyme]

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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.

[bocablkr]

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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.

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.

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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.

[bocablkr]

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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'?

[NotReady]

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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.

[ep510]

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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.

[hmkpoker]

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.

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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).