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As a functioning, intelligent adult who believes everything written in my religion’s holy book I empathize with how ridiculous it looks from the outside. But to

As a functioning, intelligent adult who believes everything written in my religion’s holy book I empathize with how ridiculous it looks from the outside. But to me I have just as much trouble understanding how someone can go through life and not believe that there’s more to it than the natural world, and probably struggle as much to understand that viewpoint as you do to understand mine. To me it’s a self evident miracle that any kind of universe exists, not to mention that there’s life in it, and even more amazing that the life can observe the universe, explore it, and enjoy it. To me something had to cause all this, and if so then some religion has to be true. If some religion is true then you can’t pick and choose the parts you like and discard what you don’t. I agree that many of the most powerful religious leaders don’t actually believe everything they teach though. Religion is a powerful tool to get people to do what you want.

zwkrt 7y ago
Isn’t it much more likely that if a diety exists that it isn’t described by any of the small handful of religions we have concocted here on earth?
- ggggtez 7y ago
  This is a sort of "gambit" that doesn't work because it assumes that all religion is created by humans. But most religions claim they are handed down directly from God, so the point would be moot. Of course anyone who thought their religion was made up by a human wouldn't really believe it. So this won't convince anyone either way.
  - zwkrt 7y ago
    I guess I just mean to say that I can still have the abject wonder about the world we see around us and have reason to believe that there was something (as opposed to nothing) responsible for the entirety of existence, without having to fall back on saying that MY religion is the reason for this to be the case.
    - jbensan 7y ago
      I agree with your logic. Believing something made the world doesn't necessarily mean one religion reveals that something. In the journey of my life experiences I have found a compelling case in the Bible and Jesus. I understand that it sounds strange (incomprehensible?) to others with different experiences. But the best I can say it in short form, logic opens the door for belief, beauty guides me through that door. By "beauty" I mean that aesthetic sense of rightness. The same feeling that makes me know a painting is good is the same feeling that makes me feel that the story of revelation, fall, redemption presented in the Christian religion is True. What I can't understand is atheists who balk at the possibility of any kind of god, but happily entertain the notion that we are in a simulation. What exactly would be the difference in a created reality and a simulated reality?
ggggtez 7y ago
I think the point the previous poster is making is not just a need or desire for a vague answer (i.e. the universe was created and no one really knows so maybe it was God), but then actually going from that step to believe every word of a holy book, or from a preacher. There seems to be a big leap from a feeling of wonder at nature (essentially, unitarians as I understand it) and structured organized religion. More specifically: why can't you pick and choose? Christianity has hundreds of sects, each of which adds or removes beliefs both big and small. Belief the Pope is infallible being the most obvious one that caused a lot of bloodshed.
dpatrick86 7y ago
I appreciate your comment, despite not relating to it very well and it seeming a bit strange to me. I know that might come across a bit odd, but it's refreshing to actually try to understand other viewpoints and to do so inoffensively.
asark 7y ago
Sorry if I was insulting, I wasn't trying to be. That's why I called out my own difficulty as stupid, since in fact such people sure seem to exist (though, again, my problem is that I can't listen to them without a "no, but really, what are you after?" in the back of my head, so am having deep trouble modeling a fairly common kind of person I'm pretty sure is real). The "this is all so great (though, I mean, at least as Lovecraftian?) that there must be something behind it" or "Buddhist practices do help you find meaning (and Pure Land and saviors and all the stuff about wild miracles are allegorical or else wrong-but-maybe-useful)" is the sort I can understand, actually. It's the leap from there to "this specific set of stories is right—as in, actually true, or at least much of it is—and the rest are wrong. I've not picked this one to follow because the moral teachings and practices give me comfort and little offense, but because I think a large part of the specific supernatural episodes the faith considers true are true, in a real, actual sense". Supernatural angels and god(s) themselves really actually do stuff in real life—maybe now, and certainly in the past—that kind of thing.
schoen 7y ago
A few hundred years ago the deist option seemed plausible to a lot of people. (Martin Gardner, a writer I admire a lot, developed a contemporary version of a deist view.) This view agrees with what you described up until "if so then some religion has to be true": it affirms that we have reason to believe in a creator (and in some accounts, in divine providence of various sorts) but doesn't expect a divine revelation, or doesn't endorse any claims that we've received one. I remember that Descartes argued that the creator was logically required to be benevolent and that part of that benevolence would then entail getting in touch with humanity and letting us know something about the divine nature. But other thinkers took various other angles on this, including the idea that the divine benevolence is already complete even without revelation, or that revelation occurs in a non-public or even incommunicable way, or still other possibilities. Atheists and deists have both been very preoccupied with the idea that different revealed religions are all extremely plausible to people who are brought up in or around them (in modern times, even different schisms of revealed religions have this characteristic). In the deist account, this might be a reason to doubt that any of them is uniquely intended by the creator to be a revelation to all humanity, since which one people believe is for almost everyone a matter of luck. (Even if one account of revelation is more compelling than others, most people will never have the social conditions to verify this for themselves.) There are lots of theological accounts about why God might allow only some people to discover the true revelation, but a deist (and atheist) alternative is that it's also reasonable to think that that wasn't God's plan.
random314 7y ago
> To me something had to cause all this, and if so then some religion has to be true. The 2nd part of your statement doesn't follow from the first.

zwkrt 7y ago

Isn’t it much more likely that if a diety exists that it isn’t described by any of the small handful of religions we have concocted here on earth?

ggggtez 7y ago
This is a sort of "gambit" that doesn't work because it assumes that all religion is created by humans. But most religions claim they are handed down directly from God, so the point would be moot. Of course anyone who thought their religion was made up by a human wouldn't really believe it. So this won't convince anyone either way.
- zwkrt 7y ago
  I guess I just mean to say that I can still have the abject wonder about the world we see around us and have reason to believe that there was something (as opposed to nothing) responsible for the entirety of existence, without having to fall back on saying that MY religion is the reason for this to be the case.
  - jbensan 7y ago
    I agree with your logic. Believing something made the world doesn't necessarily mean one religion reveals that something. In the journey of my life experiences I have found a compelling case in the Bible and Jesus. I understand that it sounds strange (incomprehensible?) to others with different experiences. But the best I can say it in short form, logic opens the door for belief, beauty guides me through that door. By "beauty" I mean that aesthetic sense of rightness. The same feeling that makes me know a painting is good is the same feeling that makes me feel that the story of revelation, fall, redemption presented in the Christian religion is True. What I can't understand is atheists who balk at the possibility of any kind of god, but happily entertain the notion that we are in a simulation. What exactly would be the difference in a created reality and a simulated reality?

ggggtez 7y ago

I think the point the previous poster is making is not just a need or desire for a vague answer (i.e. the universe was created and no one really knows so maybe it was God), but then actually going from that step to believe every word of a holy book, or from a preacher. There seems to be a big leap from a feeling of wonder at nature (essentially, unitarians as I understand it) and structured organized religion. More specifically: why can't you pick and choose? Christianity has hundreds of sects, each of which adds or removes beliefs both big and small. Belief the Pope is infallible being the most obvious one that caused a lot of bloodshed.

dpatrick86 7y ago

I appreciate your comment, despite not relating to it very well and it seeming a bit strange to me. I know that might come across a bit odd, but it's refreshing to actually try to understand other viewpoints and to do so inoffensively.

asark 7y ago

Sorry if I was insulting, I wasn't trying to be. That's why I called out my own difficulty as stupid, since in fact such people sure seem to exist (though, again, my problem is that I can't listen to them without a "no, but really, what are you after?" in the back of my head, so am having deep trouble modeling a fairly common kind of person I'm pretty sure is real). The "this is all so great (though, I mean, at least as Lovecraftian?) that there must be something behind it" or "Buddhist practices do help you find meaning (and Pure Land and saviors and all the stuff about wild miracles are allegorical or else wrong-but-maybe-useful)" is the sort I can understand, actually. It's the leap from there to "this specific set of stories is right—as in, actually true, or at least much of it is—and the rest are wrong. I've not picked this one to follow because the moral teachings and practices give me comfort and little offense, but because I think a large part of the specific supernatural episodes the faith considers true are true, in a real, actual sense". Supernatural angels and god(s) themselves really actually do stuff in real life—maybe now, and certainly in the past—that kind of thing.

schoen 7y ago

A few hundred years ago the deist option seemed plausible to a lot of people. (Martin Gardner, a writer I admire a lot, developed a contemporary version of a deist view.) This view agrees with what you described up until "if so then some religion has to be true": it affirms that we have reason to believe in a creator (and in some accounts, in divine providence of various sorts) but doesn't expect a divine revelation, or doesn't endorse any claims that we've received one. I remember that Descartes argued that the creator was logically required to be benevolent and that part of that benevolence would then entail getting in touch with humanity and letting us know something about the divine nature. But other thinkers took various other angles on this, including the idea that the divine benevolence is already complete even without revelation, or that revelation occurs in a non-public or even incommunicable way, or still other possibilities. Atheists and deists have both been very preoccupied with the idea that different revealed religions are all extremely plausible to people who are brought up in or around them (in modern times, even different schisms of revealed religions have this characteristic). In the deist account, this might be a reason to doubt that any of them is uniquely intended by the creator to be a revelation to all humanity, since which one people believe is for almost everyone a matter of luck. (Even if one account of revelation is more compelling than others, most people will never have the social conditions to verify this for themselves.) There are lots of theological accounts about why God might allow only some people to discover the true revelation, but a deist (and atheist) alternative is that it's also reasonable to think that that wasn't God's plan.

random314 7y ago

> To me something had to cause all this, and if so then some religion has to be true. The 2nd part of your statement doesn't follow from the first.