Scottyman

When I die.....if I have to see and relive all my lifes experience with all the people I knew when I was alive.....forever and ever.....I would consider that HELL!

southernhybrid

I've been following this thread without comment but I wanted to point out something to Fiach. Tim McVeigh described himself as an agnostic, despite the report that he did ask a priest for last rights before his death. I guess he was hedging all his bets. I don't think he was a religious fanatic at all. He was a political fanatic. IMO, it was only coincidental that the group he defended so much were religious fanatics. Obviously, he was very misguided. I've often thought his combat experience might have had a strong negative influence on him. His friends and family seem to think that he changed after that experience. It wouldn't be the first time in America that a combat vet went off the deep end. ( or off his chump for our British friends )

I saw him interviewed and he did claim he was an agnostic who didn't believe in an afterlife but if there was one, he'd have plenty of company in hell. His bio says he was raised as a Catholic but left the church around the age of 17.

Theists certainly don't have exclusive rights on all the misguided nutjobs out there. There are plenty of nontheist nutjobs from among our own ranks.

I'm sure Fiach won't mind me pointing this out since he's not a thin skinned American.

Sorry for the interuption.

Synaesthesia

said
9,000hp!

Yes, he would were he a noninterventionist (or non-existent, purely hypothetical God). If everyone hated each other, it would be suicidal. Those who develop alliances, love, brotherhood, familiy will have a hug advantage and proliferate their genes.

Love works for us. If it didn't, it wouldn't be love. Nothing but flitting wavefunctions, thermal gradients, evolution here. No all-powerful but strangely powerless God required.

Tercel,
I don't know what God's will is. I have no notion of what the consequences will be if I don't accept it. Since I have absolutely no idea of the risks or benefits involved, there is no sense in which my choice with respect to salvation can possibly be free.

For those who argue "Well I warned you", I don't accept their assertions about their knowledge. Thus, I cannot be expected to take their threats and promises seriously. Does God expect me to blindly stumble into an arbitrary choice of religion and expect to be correct? Highly implausible, there be the most rational justification to believe in God or my choice cannot be free.

Kenny,
I am not orienting myself from God because he is simply a product of human culture. If God did exist, my position would simply not be informed, thus I couldn't possibly have chosen him freely.

Knowledge is freedom. Ignorance is slavery. If God is to be defended on the basis of free will (which makes him all the more irrelevant, but which is a legitimate move), there must be sufficient degree of understanding on the part of the human. This is not the case by any observable means, and thus free will itself becomes an appeal to mystery.

openeyes

Fiach, I enjoy your contributions. I don't think you're being too harsh by any means. This may be "off thread" but help me with this genetic predisposition to atheism vs theim. If I'm atheist, but look at my family and see mostly believers, am I to conclude there are or have been "closet" atheists all along?

Why is America so religious? Drives us atheists crazy. Remarks by others like you with a perspective from a distance help reassure that we aren't necessarily aberrant not to be part of the majority.

Back to the topic. If one studies consciousness to any depth (the real, not the philosophical), one has to conclude that our consciousness dies with our brains and there's nothing left to go anywhere, so we might as well direct our efforts to worrying about something else!

Tercel

Synaesthesia, I do not believe salvation is a matter of "believe the right thing now or else", and to a great extent I consider belief irrelevant. I expect that beyond death all will encounter sure and certain knowledge of God and all will believe. But belief is not what constitutes salvation. James points out that "even the demons believe".

The question is not whether we do or will believe, but what we will allow God to make of us. I believe God wants to transform us all into the image of Christ - into loving beings of light and truth, kindness, compassion, humility and gentleness. However I believe there are those who are so immersed in their own hatred, anger, fear, lust, lies, pride, jealousy, hurt, self-pity etc, that they will eternally refuse God's transforming power.

Fiach

First, I think that the tendency toward religion was in Darwinian terms, adaptive. Religion conveyed unified identity, authority, discipline, eased fear by thinking that gods protected us, made us suspicious or hostile to the unbelievers. A group of unified, disciplined, hostile to others, and acceptant of authority had a definite advantage over groups composed of sceptical, argumentitive, freethinker, rejectors of authority, and undisciplined people. The latter would lose the war.

This ultimately led to more successful procreation by the religionists. They would pass on their genes. Some genes along with control genes, programmed for brains that are generally receptive to hearsay claims (gullible?), submissive to what goes for authority, disciplined, tend to be organised.

Why do I think that this is genetic? Because 80% of the world is theistic, which is what you might expect with the prevalent gene for religiosity. 20% are Atheists, Agnostics, or Freethinkers and that percentage is suggestive of a "recessive" gene. If people contain two genes of the same part of the chromosome, one is dominant (religion) and the other (scepticism) is non-dominant. If two such people have 4 children the odds are that one will have both religiosity genes, two will have the dominant religiosity gene and the suppressed non-dominant sceptic gene, while one out of four has both recessive genes (25% chance). Remember sperm have half of the genome as do ova. Each two ova have one gene and the other has the opposite one.

If religiosity is gene R and scepticism is gene S. A woman's ovary splits cells into ova with half a genome. Half of all sperm will have one side of the gene and the others have the other gene. So Mary with RR marries Jack with RS, her children will be RR, RR, RS, and RS. All will be religious. If Jane has RS and Henry has RS, the children will be RR, RS, RS, and SS. One child will have both recessive genes for scepticism while the other three are prone to religion.

Does that make sense?

This is why pending a major evolutionary selective shift, Atheists will always be less than 25% of the population.

Obviously genes may play a major role but not necessarily the only role. Family and cultural influences may push the child to religion despite the gene to the contrary.

I further suggest that genetics may describe the differences between Europe and America. Europe was plagued with religious wars for 1500 years. Monarchies had established religions and persecuted those who dissented. Only religious people tended to dissent. Unbelievers tend to just shut up and not risk persecution.

So, after the Thirty Years War in Germany, the Huguenot Wars in France, the Covenenter Wars in Scotland, the Cormwellian wars against the Irish catholics, the Inquisition, Orthodox perscution of Polish Catholics, etc. many of the religious ones came to America to set up their own particular sectarian theocracies (Puritans, Pilgrims, Huguenots, English Catholics, Quakers, Anabaptists from Germany, Irish Catholics) migrated by the millions.

That might well have drained much of the West European gene pool of those with the R gene, and concentrated them in America. So if that is the case you would expect Europe to have a disproportionate number of sceptics and America to be more religious than the mean. Well that is exactly how it is.

Scotland: 49% Atheist/Agnostic/unbeliever versus 40% Christian and the rest other.

Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Hungary: over 50% non-believers.

USA: 5% Atheist/Agnostic (some polls say 11% disbelivers) and close to 90% Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other.

Fiach

openeyes

Fiach, I think the genetic thing is probably a lot more complicated than based on one gene, but it's interesting to note that I come from a family of 8 kids (good Catholics!) and as far as I can tell, my sister and I are the only non-believes, or 1 in 4! (I just recently came out of the atheist "closet" but none of my 6 brothers has come forward with any indication that they're not believers.) But then, both of my kids are non-believers and my ex turned out to be a non-conventional religious nut who's no longer alive because of his beliefs (obviously some other mental problems also contributed). Maybe he had a recessive "non-belief" gene and both my kids got that. It really seems far too simple to be based on simple genetics (even eye color doesn't exactly follow the dominant/recessive expectations); I'm sure there are other factors.

Synaesthesia

So, by our faults, by our faults, by our most grevious faults we fail to win a race. We thought it was just for fun but, the ground falls beneath the looser's feet and they are buried alive.

They may be fully well responsible for how out of shape they are. They might well know that there are dangers to being out of shape, and that their family relies upon his winning the race. Thoughtless guy, but we really can't justifiably say that he had it coming. The fellow has no notion of the importance of winning.

But hey, the fundamental thing about God is that it doesn't have to be coherent, because we have this black box mechanism that sorts everything out.

doodad

I am able to work with your post just fine this time. Thanks. We seem to be digressing from the original theme of this thread so maybe we should meet again someday on another topic. It's been fun though. I have learned from you and I hope
you have gotten to know me a little better.
Bye for now.

Answerer

Well guys, all of you seem to forgot that the theists are also spreading their religions to the East especially the East and Southeast Asia. Much of my friends had already been converted and I can't do anything about it. Arghhh.


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