Brahma's atheist

Most people seem to follow the religion of their parents and those around them. Few actually choose the one true god they decide to follow. The religion they are born into is the right religion.
Born into x you are x and everyone else is wrong.
Everyone is born atheist though, aren't they? You don't know of any gods or religion, all that is drilled into as you grow up. But if you were left to your own devices would you 'find god'? If no one told you that this god is the only god, follow this religion would you worship and follow? Which one would choose? Would you come to the realisation that gods are a crock? A human construct born of ignorance and insecurity and the need to control.
It's all a bit ridiculous. Like choosing a supreme being to be your one and only from a selection in a hat. Or would you study all religions that are known about, all gods and then make an informed choice? "On the basis of this I will worship the manimals drawn deep in caves, they are the one true spirits of Earth,everyone else is wrong and are doomed to forever fail to catch any prey."
Of course if some deity or other existed it would be there like the Earth beneath your feet. You wouldn't have to be told about it to know that it existed. It would just be. You really would be 'born into it'. You wouldn't have to say 'read this to see that this god exists'.

Hugo Holbling

While we're generalizing, perhaps some people are non-religious simply because they're born into it?

rainbow walking

All the older ideologies traditionally mine their converts from among their own off-spring.

emotional

You would probably go the same way humans as a whole went through their religious evolution: first an animist, then a polytheist, then a monotheist etc. Just as a person, if left to his own devices to grow without science, would believe in a flat earth first, and perhaps arrive at the conclusion of the spherical earth later, like the Greeks did.

kenaz

i find your opening statement fatalistic- that people in general do not have the critical faculty to decide for themselves.

Everyone is born atheist. They are also born apolitical, amoral etc. Guess what im trying to say here is that there is little point distinguishing self-realization and nurture since socialization is inextricably tied to our knowledge formation of the world around us. No one resides in his/her own bubble, thus every decision, every choice is drawn from forces that influences your existence, your perception of reality, and consequently your truth (not Truth with capital T though…). Beliefs are constructs, but what you choose to believe is yours alone to decide ultimately. One shouldn’t blame one’s family or people around for shoving them down one’s unsuspecting throat.

You are assuming the irrefutability of reality. Even if some deity exists like the earth beneath our feet, you have to form your own perception of what that entity means, conceptually, and how it fits in to your ethical matrix. This is by no means an objective exercise, and there is nothing innate about it. Once that happens, then it’s not nature anymore, ie. that you are “born into it”, but a process of nurture, which brings us back to my paragraph above.

Hugo Holbling

Nice post, kenaz.

Do societal factors influence religious belief? It seems trivially so. Can we reduce belief to these terms? Hardly, for then we would need to find grounds for exempting non-religiosity or the OP would be moot.

Shake

I'd generally agree with this. Not all people though, are brought up to believe that their religion is necessarily the right/true one. Many are, but not all. But generally yes, the few exceptions are those who are brought up to question things and learn for themselves, and are further strong enough to challenge the beliefs of those raising them. And I don't even mean an outright rejection of religion in general. Not all of us who believed in something at one time went directly to non-belief. Some people go through a few things before complete rejection of religion. See the Atheists' Testimony thread for examples.
I'd agree that we are all born atheist, making a similar argument to yours. These are the theistic memes of society which we (your non-theistic friends here at II) are trying to change. Just like it says on the II t-shirt:


Well, you'd like to think so, right? Xians (and other theists) will argue that their deity does make his/her/its presence known. You just have to have faith, and pay attention to the signs. At least, this is what they'll tell you. OTOH they might just say that their deity (no longer) takes an active part in human affairs ... although he helps athletes make spectacular performances, and allows politicians to get elected, etc. The gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans supposedly made their presence known ... having intimate relations with attractive mortals, becoming very angry if they were offended by said mortals, etc. The OT god of Xians and Jews was very involved in human affairs as well. But not since OT times.

To get a bit more technical about your title question though, I think many people get into a specific religion simply due to family tradition. Others will argue that humans in general have some sort of basic need for religious type beliefs; that it's something hard-wired into our brains. Maybe that's been the case, but as we become more technologically and scientifically advanced as a society, we are evolving away from the need for religion. I don't think the fall of religion is something that will even happen in my great-grandchildren's time, not completely. It will be a long process, hard fought by certain peoples, until they are the minority, the "weird" fringe group.

I'm just curious to see what will happen in my lifetime. I'm letting my wife take our son to church, but I'm not going to shy away from any questions he has about why I won't go or what I believe and why. At 2.5, I'm not that worried about him yet, he seems like a bright kid so far.

Adrammalech

Left to ones own devices and if we can eliminate an religious socialization at school or especially in the family (icluding family that say there isn't a god) I would imagine that the person would have no reason to believe in anything spiritual. And once matured if confronted with the notion of a supreme being would probably ask for evidence, and seeing none would probably remain by and large an atheist, because at the point of true maturity they are less suseptable to religious socialization.
But the resistence to religious socialization also depends on other factors such as intelligence, gullability, self-confidence, etc.