3 ms·

Is Religious Belief in Decline?

16 points by andrenth 8y ago

ilaksh 8y ago
I remember having a conversation like this with a friend of mine when I was a teenager. He grew up in a somewhat religious family and so believed in God. He contended that my atheist "scientific" worldview was just as much a "religion" to me as his worldview was to him. At the time I believe I acknowledged that he had a point to a certain degree, but I probably put an asterisk next to it, since I considered my atheist beliefs to be in a similar but still different and superior category. In my opinion this was mostly incorrect and so is the article. I have come to the conclusion that every human being does have a strong worldview, and worldviews and beliefs all operate the same way, regardless of how religious or non-religious or anti-religious they are. There is no such thing as a worldview that operates in a truly rational manner. People such as myself who consider their perspective to be informed by science do not actually perform a rational or scientific analysis of our core beliefs or generally form them from scientific experiments. When it comes to core, broad, conceptual aspects of worldview, we believe what we were taught in school and what our communities want us to believe. Two groups of people are on a slight hill facing east looking at a distant horizon. Visibility is OK for about ten miles but then things start to get very tiny and hazy. One group thinks whats on the horizon is generally a good place to go. The other group thinks that its dangerous. However, no one has any binoculars or a telescope. In fact in this scenario those things don't exist. Because when you are talking about things that are so distant in the past as how the universe was formed, or so broad that it attempts to put millions of people in a category (for example, democrats versus republicans), these are things that you may need to have an explanation or generalization for, but it is totally possible to operate with completely different beliefs about them and no one can prove otherwise. Because the topics are so broad or distant.

16 points by andrenth 8y ago

I remember having a conversation like this with a friend of mine when I was a teenager. He grew up in a somewhat religious family and so believed in God. He contended that my atheist "scientific" worldview was just as much a "religion" to me as his worldview was to him. At the time I believe I acknowledged that he had a point to a certain degree, but I probably put an asterisk next to it, since I considered my atheist beliefs to be in a similar but still different and superior category. In my opinion this was mostly incorrect and so is the article. I have come to the conclusion that every human being does have a strong worldview, and worldviews and beliefs all operate the same way, regardless of how religious or non-religious or anti-religious they are. There is no such thing as a worldview that operates in a truly rational manner. People such as myself who consider their perspective to be informed by science do not actually perform a rational or scientific analysis of our core beliefs or generally form them from scientific experiments. When it comes to core, broad, conceptual aspects of worldview, we believe what we were taught in school and what our communities want us to believe. Two groups of people are on a slight hill facing east looking at a distant horizon. Visibility is OK for about ten miles but then things start to get very tiny and hazy. One group thinks whats on the horizon is generally a good place to go. The other group thinks that its dangerous. However, no one has any binoculars or a telescope. In fact in this scenario those things don't exist. Because when you are talking about things that are so distant in the past as how the universe was formed, or so broad that it attempts to put millions of people in a category (for example, democrats versus republicans), these are things that you may need to have an explanation or generalization for, but it is totally possible to operate with completely different beliefs about them and no one can prove otherwise. Because the topics are so broad or distant.