Jobar

Welcome fellow Georgian! I think you will find that II is a very good place for those of us who break the 'Zeroeth Commandment'- Thou Shalt Not Question!

Most people I know here in the southern US seem to have religion walled off in its own little compartment. Some center their social lives around their churches, and since questioning the philosophical/theological basis of religious belief would get them ostracized they avoid questioning. (Some may have questioned in private, but decided to remain silent and thereby stay a part of the social structure.) Some appear to be calcified in the belief system they were taught as children, and resist, with varying degrees of violence, any attempt to break them out of that mold.

And some non-churchgoers just don't seem to give a damn. They carpe that ol' diem, and let philosophy and theology slide. (I have an old and close friend who is like this.)

I hope you enjoy your time here, and when we Georgia infidels next gather we'll send you an invite.

Shadownought

I'm in North Carolina, and I know what you mean. I've seen this sort of thing first-hand.

I think that one of the reasons religion is so persistent is that so many people are injected with it from birth and continue having those ideas reinforced as they grow up. If everyone around him keeps telling him "Don't worry, son, there IS a God, trust me," with few or no nay-sayers around, then eventually the idea will become cemented and difficult to remove.

This sort of indoctrination is immoral. Very young children cannot think logically for themselves about things like that, and will believe most anything you tell them. Throwing them head-first into the parent's religion is just taking advantage of them.

Welcome, J Ford!

Never

J
I know just what you mean. I felt the same as you in Sunday school as a child and decided then it (religion) was bogus. I have never understood how an intelligent person could just accept whatever they're told without question. Of course, that may be part of the answer. When I asked my husband recently if he believed in god, he said yes and I asked why. He said because when he was a child, the adults in church told him so and they were adults and he was a child so they had to be right. Somehow, I never felt that way as a child (that adults had to be right) but I suppose a lot of kids do. I did a lot of thinking as a kid - no wonder I was so boring!

j ford

You know, I guess maybe some people are suited for thinking and others are suited for being told. When I was growing up, I couldn't relate as well to kids my age, as I could to grown ups. It was very strange, I had to learn what the limits of intellect were, depending on the group I was around.

It seems to me that most people that I meet who are like minded, went through the same thing. Questioning religion is just one part of my different thought process. It's a good topic to have discussions on the human psyche though. I can understand where some people find it easier to just believe what they are told, I can't count how many times I've been lost in my mind due to questioning things deeply.

I really in the last year have had a resurgence into deep thinking, and questioning. I got caught up in wanting things to be easy, I got married, had a child and felt I had to assimilate to an extent. I was unhappy, and realised that I had pulled away from thinking as I used to. So I can see where people would easily fall into be told, it happened to extent with me. Luckily I feel that I've pulled out of it.

I was thinking today about an instance with some christians when I was younger, and I got a kick out of it. I was probably about 12 years old, and I was with my family at a water/amusement park. I was by myself at the mini golf course, and in front of me was a youth minister and some teenagers. They kind of mobbed me with talk about Jesus and Christianity, and giving myself to Christ. So, within about five minutes, I told them after being asked, sure, I'll give my life to Jesus. So the youth minister goes through this whole shabang, and Voila, I'm a born again Christian. The funny thing was that is was totally a game to me. I was fully amused at how these people were acting, and decided to play along. I had a pleasant golfing experience with my new found friends all kissing my ass and patting me on the back for my decision. Yeah for me right? After the round of minigolf, we said goodbye and went about my business just as I had before. All I could think about was how funny it was, that it was such a social act, and how I realised that people joined religion just to feel loved.

If that happened to me today, I would have questioned their beliefs and asked them why they felt they needed religion and god in their life to exist. It still is funny that at such a young age it seemed like a bunch of nonsense, I just wasn't at a point in my mind to further the questioning.

Never

Cute story about being "saved" during mini-golf. I would have thought the same about them that you did at that point, but I was so damn shy it would have freaked me out if they had tried to convert me. I know I would have been so uncomfortable I'd have found an excuse to leave. Now if my dad had been there, it would have been awful (for me) because he would have reacted more like you and never stopped talking to them even if he was just stringing them along. (He liked to do that to telemarketers sometimes too).

beyelzu

first off let me welcome you to internet infidels.

I think that xians believe by erecting a wall of separation like the one between church and state only this their's is between church and reason/rationality/logic/their brain.

only through a pretty thorough partition of thinking can they maintain their irrational beliefs in the supernatural.

beyelzu

Jobar,

I am wounded, here I have made over 500 posts and you never said that you would invite me to the next ga infidels gathering, is it because of my bo or my religious intolerance?

stretch

Hi J Ford,

It's somewhat ironic that you are asking a question of how people believe in a forum made up primarily of agnostics and atheists, eh? Not that there's anything wrong with that, just that it's going to lead primarily to responses from people who don't believe.

I rejected any belief in gods etc as a kid. My logical, mathematical brain said it's just a bunch of stories.

Since I came to faith as an adult (in my 40s), with no external pressure from anyone to believe, I don't think that I was 'duped' into it. I came to a point where I no longer considered it completely irrational to believe in God. That is not the same as believing in God, of course. But it was a starting point.

(I hope it's not bad etiquette around here, but I'm going to address somebody else's post in the same post .... )

Hi Asha'man

Theism can be both more comforting and less comforting. A was pretty comfortable as an agnostic. Even when I became Christian I had a certain longing for the days when I figured that my consciousness would just fade away into oblivion .... For the first year or so as a Christian, it seemed to me that I had been happier as an agnostic ... agnosticism still has a strong emotional draw to me. Go figure

I assume you aren't implying that all believers buy into Pascal's Wager. I'm an applied statistician by trade ... anyone who knows a little bit of (Bayesian) statistics knows that you can get the same payoff by flipping a coin and : if heads go for a burger and never think about whether or not God exists again; if tails take Pascal's wager.

------
denise

j ford

Hi Stretch, thanks for your reply.

I think a lot of what I was going at is how a lot of people (once again this is generally speaking) that follow a religion, become content with living exactly as they are told by writings and supposed holy men/women. A lot of my friends that are religious seriously never question anything about life. Some won't even entertain the notion of evolution because some churches fight it so. They won't even try to make their own opinion, I guess that would be too hard.

This is where I'm confused about it. I have no problem with other peoples beliefs, I just don't understand the desire to not think for ones self. I guess some of the books that were suggested to me will explain some of the reasonings behind what I'm asking.

Like I said, I'm generalising, so please don't think that I'm saying you don't question life, if you didn't, you probably wouldn't be here. Can you honestly tell me though that some of the people in your religion are not like that... that everyone questions life and the universe. Or, do you actually see what I'm getting at when I say some people do it just because they are told so, and that is good enough for them.

stretch

Hi J Ford,

I don't understand how anybody could not question their faith. Believing because somebody told you to might be reasonable for a 6 year old ... at that age, survival depends on being guided by others and there is probably some innate impulse to trust everything that somebody who is taking care of you tells you.

I think that there are a lot of Catholics (or insert religion of your choice here) who practice a simple fideism and refuse to question anything. I really can't relate to that. But we all have our shortcomings, eh?