what age did you stop beleaving in the religion you where raised with?

[Sparrow]

To be perfectly honest I was asking b/c I came out as an athiest to the SSG this week and as it happens he's a Deist. As I can't talk to him often enough or long enough to have a decent religious discussion I'm asking you guys. Chances are it'll come up when I see him again in April and I want to come prepared.

[dzagama]

Originally Posted by Cretaceous Bob

The assertion that to gain knowledge is to emulate God is a poisonous concept.

potato/potato.

[Cretaceous Bob]

Originally Posted by dzagama

potato/potato.

Well, in case I was unclear, I wasn't quibbling about anything you said.

Originally Posted by Sparrow

To be perfectly honest I was asking b/c I came out as an athiest to the SSG this week and as it happens he's a Deist. As I can't talk to him often enough or long enough to have a decent religious discussion I'm asking you guys. Chances are it'll come up when I see him again in April and I want to come prepared.

I think reading Part One of The Age of Reason is a good place to start. It isn't long at all, and has a view of theism that is hardly represented in this country. To me, it was a refreshing and soundly reasoned read. It seems like the strongest argument for a benevolent god that can be made to a modern atheist.

[dzagama]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

To be perfectly honest I was asking b/c I came out as an athiest to the SSG this week and as it happens he's a Deist. As I can't talk to him often enough or long enough to have a decent religious discussion I'm asking you guys. Chances are it'll come up when I see him again in April and I want to come prepared.

In my experience, a Deist is someone who believes that atheism is not the opposite of theism. A Deist acknowledges the existence of the unknown. Atheism implies knowing the unknown.

In reality, they are part of the same set, they just often don't realize it.


Bleh, it's starting to annoy me how much of a 'believer' I sound like, so to reset the scales...



FUCK GOD.



Ah, I feel better.

[dzagama]

From tuttle88's blog:




It's just hard not to sound condescending when countering these arguments, but it's nice seeing Christians questioning things.

My take on highly religious people is the following: Have you ever met someone with peanut allergies? A person with peanut allergies will vomit at the slightest whiff of peanut butter. They will recoil in revulsion if you snack on a Nutter Butter. To the person without peanut allergies, this behavior is so foreign, it almost seems pathological.

How does one describe the creamy, deliciousness of peanut butter to those with allergies? Is it possible at all?

The allergic person has developed this behavior as a coping mechanism. It's an adaptation that ensures their survival against the risk of peanut poisoning. Behaving this way increases their likelihood of propagation.

Could highly religious people be operating under the same modality? It seems many people acquire their faith after periods of enormous stress. It is their means of rationalizing and coping. Without faith, they feel like they cannot exist.

Maybe religious dogma is rooted at a deeper level than rational thought.

[Leixes]

Originally Posted by dzagama

From tuttle88's blog:[youtube]

After seeing this video I am not surprised as why tuttle88 thinks he's not here by chance.

[Wile_E_Peyote]

Wow, I could only get about half way through that "5 Questions...". It's riddled with bad science, bad philosophy and logical fallacies. Whoever made it has a "religious" understanding of science.

[dzagama]

Originally Posted by Wile_E_Peyote

Wow, I could only get about half way through that "5 Questions...". It's riddled with bad science, bad philosophy and logical fallacies. Whoever made it has a "religious" understanding of science.

Yeah, the part on 'chance' really made me cringe, merely because it's the same sort of philosophical discussion that lead to the Copenhagen interpretation. In a sense, these issues have been 'solved' in modern physics. Not that we intuitively understand them, but by accepting them, we have created quantum mechanics, which is the "crown jewel" of modern physics.

I don't think any physicist unquestioningly believes the philosophical ramifications of the Copenhagen interpretation, but by moving on, a theory of immense beauty and predictive power was created.

I think about the non-deterministic nature of reality all the time. I'd love to be the one who comes up with an alternative explanation. In due time.

[william]

I was very religious until my early 20s when I started having theological doubts, being exposed to others whose beliefs - their personal epistemology - were as true to them as my own.

What is the nature of belief and why do we believe what we do? Is it innate and part of our nature, a product of evolution - or is it part of the weltanschauung and etiology? (And I use these words because they cover the arching thoughts I have).

This lead me to a multi-year quest into why I believed and what was belief for me. Ultimately - sadly - I lost my faith, am an avid atheist, but I still find beauty in many of the things I was taught as well as in the story of "The Passion".

My children we raise sans theology and yet though our common culture, they are exposed to concepts (magic, ghosts, fairies, and ultimately gods) that we never introduce to them. Fortunately to date, they understand that magic is all tricks and illusions and that ghosts and fairies are imaginary and theology is not something they encounter even among their peers.

But what if I didn't live in a place where theology was a private thing? What if I lived in a community where people would ask you "where you went to church"?

It would be difficult, no?

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by william

What if I lived in a community where people would ask you "where you went to church"?

It would be difficult, no?

I live in the south. Which church you attend is a standard question along with who your people are. It's a staple of the culture. You are the company you keep and most people will take those two pieces of information to infer things about you from how good your potato salad is to whether or not you're a piece of trash.

Is it difficult? Not s'much. Is it ridiculous? Absolutely.