Re: Why do people believe there is a god?

"thissteve" <thissteve@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1135334960.003760.33450@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Brett Aubrey wrote:
> > What's your stand on ToE, BTW?
>
> I can't deny common descent, but I'm not satisfied that microevolution
> + time is all that's needed to get from cells (or even worms) to
> complex animals. My investigation here is not finished.

Good luck with it. FWIW, my favorite book on this is Darwin's On The Origin
Of Species. He described it as "one long argument", and it you can overlook
the obvious flaws of this book (not many, given it was the first attempt at
specifying the ToE), it's an enjoyable read.

> > Why do you get slightly miffed when all your points aren't responded to,
but
> > then don't answer others' points and direct questions? You even snip
> > questions, don't mark the snips and still don't respond. Should I get
> > miffed, now?
>
> I can snip (and so can you) because the originals don't go away. You
> can tell me what I'm ducking, and it's impractical to respond to every
> point. But you should have covered the one point I spent the most time
> on. I notice that your assertion that there is no supernatural still
> cannot be falsified.

I'm not saying you can't snip - just that getting miffed seems inapproprite
when you do the same or "worse" (not the word I want, but I think you will
catch my meaning.) This is like your earlier complaint that "not okay to
then state that believing in God is ridiculous" when it's obviouly OK for
you to state that atheism goes "against common sense"... you seem to have
one set of expectations for those you communicate with, and another set for
you. Even more pronounced was your statement that "it's not okay to then
state that ... that there's no evidence for God". If it's okay for you to
state that there's evidence for God, then surely it's okay for me to state
there isn't. As for your point, the lack of existence of anything cannot be
absolutely falsified. That's a major problem with it, IMV.

> Meanwhile, your entire belief system consists of:
>
> 1) much religion is regional
> 2) this regionalism comes from indoctrination

Oh, no. These are only part of why I reject organized religions and the
existence of God(s) - i.e. not all religions can be right. You never asked
what's behind my entire belief system. Here are a few of those parameters:

1) I was brainwashed to believe that God is a creation of man.
2) The ToE provides an answer for 99.9999% of life (just not
that first spark) - and the diversity of life is one of the main
reasons why religions gained a foothold in the first place.
3) Other sciences - notably astronomy and cosmology - have
provided answers to other areas where none previously
existed - the reasons for belief in the supernatural seem
to be falling by the wayside at a fantastic rate ever since
geocentrism was squashed. I expect this trend to continue.
4) There's zero evidence for God(s) (obviously, your milage
may vary).
5) There's abundant evidence that he doesn't exist (or alterna-
tively doesn't care about us) with the amount of suffering that
so many innocent creatures endure - whether through warfare,
natural disaster, disease, predation, or whatever.
6) Just as ID proponents suggest the eye and clotting systems are
too complex to have evolved, I think an infinitly more complex
deity is too complex to exist.
7) The intolerance of one religion towards another throughout
history leaves me with no desire to get involved with any
particular religion.
8) If a God exists, I can't believe he'd care one iota about this
planet in general and humanity or me in particular. I also
can't believe that if an invisible God exists that he'd punish
those who don't believe - a God like that seems most petty.
This is especially true, IMV, when one considers that most
of humanity has not even been exposed to Christianity.
9) The Bible has been shown to have an enormous number of
errors in it, and much else is to my mind either trivial or goes
against my grain as being morally or ethically questionable.
10) The whole thing - whether the flood, the resurrection or the
parting of the Red Sea, is just too improbable for me to believe.

> I could hardly avoid answering those. I showed that I have broken
> free of indoctrination. Yet I retained some of my brainwashing,
> such as algebra and Jesus's resurrection, because their truth
> survived my inspection.

I think that's a healthy attitude. Another coupl'a years and I figure
you'll be free of God entirely.

> > Do you "open the doors" to Zeus, The Tooth Fairy, Thor, Santa, Odin, The
> > Easter Bunny, Jupiter, Shango, Ra, Ka Tyeleo, Juok, Akuj, Ahura,
Aphrodite,
> > Apollo, Babaluaye, Cerridwen, Dionysus, Eos, Frigga, Gaea, Lord Genesa,
> > Hephaestus, Ibeji, Jehovah, Krishna, Loki, Manitou, Nahuiquiahuitl,
Obatala,
> > Poseidon, Quetzalcoatl, Lord Rama, Rhea, Set, Tammuz, Tir, Vishnu,
> > Wotan, XodA, etc., etc., etc. If not, why not?
>
> They mostly have zero historical foundation.

I would bet you've tested that out on very few, if any, of the Gods
mentioned, and there are still hundreds (or thousands?) of others that I
didn't mention. How "open" have those doors been in actuality - as open as
the door to your Chritianity? Have you consciously studied all other
deities? And how about Allah then - it seems that Islam has even more
concrete basis than Christianity - have you ever considered conversion to
Islam? (Of course the resurrection would be your problem here, I suppose.)

> > Facts? That's interesting. Give us a few of these facts, please?
>
> Modern scholarship holds that stories of Jesus's resurrection began
> circulating in the 40s and 50s. The original apostles were prominent
> in the church at that time. Therefore they must have heard and
> endorsed those stories. Therefore Jesus's resurrection (the
> resurrection itself, not the small details) can only be either a lie or
> a truth. It cannot be a myth from gradually evolving tradition. Myth
> is the most popular hypothesis today, but it falls apart on inspection.
> Does the explanation behind Thor fall apart on inspection? No.

Presumably you meant 'Yes' here. At best, your resurrestion point is
contested by secular scholars - some even question the existence of Jesus.
Can you point me to a couple of reputable non-religious sites discussing the
resurrection? (I've googled on it and note that there are non-miraculous
explanations for this, as well - many Muslims, for example, believe that
Jesus' crucifixion never happened. Rather, another individual was executed
in Jesus' place. Others believe he survived the initial crucifxion and died
later. I mention these re your point that it "can only be a lie or a
truth"... these explanation would allow for a third possibility - a
mistake.)

> So my religion is different from most religions.

But of course, most adherents of most religions think that, ISTM.

> > I'm not trying to
> > say brainwashing is 100% effective, 100% of the time, but it's a very
> > powerful agent, especially if it's uncontested and with children.
>
> *sigh* I hoped that this would have come through in my posts, but
> I'm not a child anymore.

I wasn't suggesting you're a child. I was merely pointing out that
indoctrination is a very powerful agent, especially if it's uncontested and
with children. To expand and provide an example - since you misread my
meaning - I think that the reason Muslims (IMV) seem to be generally more
devout than Christians, is because they are more thoroughly indoctrinated
from a young age and there tends to be less information to counter this than
in most Western nations. Basically, the more indoctrination one gets as a
young child and throughout the formative years, the higher the chance of
retaining your views as an adult. And I think there's a danger that the
more devout one is to one set of beliefs, the greater the level of
intorerance towards another set of beliefs. (I know this goes a little
beyond my original point, but these are the reasons I tend to be against
indoctrination as a child, even though it happened to me in a somewhat
innocuous - IMO - way.)

I'm reminded of a recent article in the National Review whereby a Muslim
suggested that a nation under God is most acceptable to Muslims, but "a
nation under Darwin" is considered a plague - one that presumably (as with
most plagues) should be eradicated. To me, we need more tolerance in the
world, not less.

> > To me,
> > it's the only explanation for the regionalization for religions.
>
> If I was raised to believe Thor, I would have dropped it like
> a young earth.

I'm not so sure you can say this with such certainty. The reason you
dropped a young earth was likely because of the huge information base
pointing to an alternative. I don't think that there was much pointing to
any alternative re Thor, Odin, et al. I'll also note that this flies in the
face of your claim that belief in a higher power was universal - here you
are saying that you would be the only atheist in Scandinavia - you surely
don't consider yourself to be that far above all Scandinavians of yore. My
expectation is that you might be able to drop it is some communities where
belief was not particularly prominent, but that it's unlikely that you'd be
dropping it in more strongly religious communities (it's my guess that
there'd be a range). - Brett.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: AiG goes after Francis Collins
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  • Re: AiG goes after Francis Collins
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  • Re: Killing me softly with zzzzzzzz ....
    ... He had mentioned the Second Wahid at one point, a passage on the Day of Resurrection: ... The meaning of 'the Day of Resurrection' in the sight of God and in the terminology of the people of truth is that, from the moment of the appearance of the Tree of Reality in every age and in every name, until the time of its disappearance, constitutes the Day of Resurrection. ... And from the day on which the Messenger of God was sent until the day of his death was the Resurrection of Jesus, for the Tree of Reality was manifest in the temple of Muhammad, who rewarded all who believed in Jesus and punished by his words all who did not believe in him. ... >> Similarly, from the time of the appearance of the Tree of the Bayan until its disappearance in the Resurrection of the Messenger of God, which was promised by God in the Qur'an. ...
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