Is There a God? - Lol

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When the people here who question or (do not believe) began their questioning, what was it that first caused it?

Oftentimes I think it is emotional before it is rational. This isn't to say that opposition to divinities or religions, be they polytheistic, monotheistic, anthropomorphic deities, etc. is unreasonable- in fact it is often quite reasonable- simply that much like with religionists the first inkling tends to come from the heart rather than the head, something I think a lot of atheists are more skittish about. I find things like "no being can rightfully consider itself above me" to be common in skeptical circles, for instance, which is not necessarily an exercise in empiricism since definitions of "above" and "below" or "better" and "worse" are often so subjectively defined by all human beings. It seems like a purely emotional appeal. "I reject this Jesus fella because he thinks he is better than me and my American values taught me that no one is better than me." This isn't wrong outright of course, emotional appeals do have value in discussion if only because of philosophical pragmatism ("I believe the things which it is best to believe.") Just something to note.

I suppose what all of this autism is trying to get at is "what first made you doubt?" I find most began to question things early. I don't meet a lot of adult converts to atheism or agnosticism. People have usually decided one way or the other by then. Of course most still continue to question individual things, or change belief systems, and so on. I don't mean to question that.
 
Alec Benson Leary dijo:
But... this is a very bad thing. Tuning out reality in favor of an easy fantasy is damaging on multiple levels.
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This is true, and I feel like this forum is a good example of that.
However, what separates fandom from religion is that religion has funded science, art, music, architecture and literature that reflect on reality and contribute to a greater good. This conversation has made me wonder what William James would think if he was knowledgable about fandom.
 
Gym Leader Elesa dijo:
When the people here who question or (do not believe) began their questioning, what was it that first caused it?
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I can give a specific answer for this, actually.

My family was never religious, but they sent me to 12 years of catholic school just because they figured it was a better education than public school. I was in 1st grade and class for the day was about the Genesis creation story, the whole "in the beginning 6 days of work and then on the 7th the Lord rested" thing. Now, like any 6-year-old boy, I was obsessed with dinosaurs, and I knew that dinosaur fossils were many millions of years older than humanity. So I asked the teacher "if God made the earth in 7 days and humanity was there from the beginning, what about the dinosaurs?"

Teacher was quick on her feet. She said "oh, well, God actually made a practice Earth first, and that Earth had the dinosaurs. When He was done he blew that world up and used the debris to make the Earth we live on, and that's why we can find dinosaur bones buried everywhere."

I was young but it immediately didn't sit right with me. Didn't take me a whole lot of time to start asking myself: if God is perfect then why would he need to "practice" anything? If that's the true origin of Earth how come Genesis just omits all of it without a word? I can't find any evidence that this is taught anywhere in Christianity - oh wait, teacher was making up a bullshit lie to placate a child because these religious leaders just want my blind obedience, apparently this righteous and moral religion is perfectly okay acquiring followers using lies and deception.

Combine that with my early distrust of any party that wants me to bend the knee and divulge my sins/secrets to a guy with a white collar who claims to represent the Almighty but is really just a man like me... I decided I was just going to walk away from what I perceived was an obvious manmade con game.

Abethedemon dijo:
This is true, and I feel like this forum is a good example of that.
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Can you clarify what you mean?
 
@Alec Benson Leary Most catholic school theology is mediocre that doesn't apply to a child's faith where it teaches that you have like a jesus high. This type of theology surfaced in late 60s-early 70s after vatican II when the mass was changed. it's shoved down the students throat in a way they do not understand what it all means..A lot of times the kids see going to church as a force, not understanding what the purpose of mass is.In my church's youth group, we weren't taught how to apply the faith to our own lives, after I got out of that when I graduated high school I didn't know squat about what being catholic meant Until I searched for things on my own 2 years later after I researched other religions. I think 3/4th's of the kids from my youth group I graduated with aren't practicing catholic's anymore, one who is an atheist told me he only went cause his parents forced him.
 
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Gym Leader Elesa dijo:
When the people here who question or (do not believe) began their questioning, what was it that first caused it?
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It was a slow process for me. Like @Alec Benson Leary my family isn't religious, but I went to a Jesuit prep school. To be fair to them, I never felt I was shunned despite being the only kid in the school who wasn't baptised, I just felt a bit left out during communion. So while I wasn't religious, I didn't feel any ill will towards it as a result of my schooling. I just didn't buy into it. And further credit to them, they actually taught evolution in science class. Crazy right?

The closest I came to being religious was when a friend of mine persuaded me to come to a church he was part of during uni. That was the point in my life when I could most confidently say I believed in God. However, my housemates at the time were atheists and they would often challenge me on my belief. I never felt I could give satisfactory answers, so I began to look into Christian apologetics and the works of great theologians like John Lennox, Alister McGrath, William Lane Craig, Ravi Zacharias, etc.

The more I thought about it, the more unconvincing I found the whole thing and matters worsened when I began watching debates between atheists and Christian apologists, only to watch the apologists get trounced every single time. I'd watch the atheist come in with a set of rational arguments and the apologist come back with special pleading, faulty logic and Olympic-standard mental gymnastics, but nothing that convinced me God was real or the claims of Christianity were true. I slowly went from being a liberal theist to being an agnostic and finally an atheist over the course of about a year. I never felt any ill will towards religion (although there are aspects of it I don't like), I just concluded it wasn't convincing and wasn't for me anymore.
 
Yellow Shirt Guy dijo:
@Alec Benson Leary Most catholic school theology is mediocre that doesn't apply to a child's faith where it teaches that of you have like a jesus high. This type of theology surfaced in late 60s-early 70s after vatican II when the mass was changed. it's shoved down the students throat in a way they do not understand what it all means..A lot of times the kids see going to church as a force, not understanding what the purpose of mass is.In my church's youth group, we weren't taught how to apply the faith to our own lives, after I got out of that when I graduated high school I didn't know squat about what being catholic meant Until I searched for things on my own 2 years later after I researched other religions. I think 3/4th's of the kids from my youth group I graduated with aren't practicing catholic's anymore, one who is an atheist told me he only went cause his parents forced him.
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Well, if they didn't want to teach their faith to me in a way that actually appealed to me, then that's their loss.

It's the same position I would later take with Social Justice. If some self-righteous movement wants to tell me I'm living life the wrong way and that there's a better way, but 1) they can't prove it and I have to have blind faith and 2) it's my job to educate myself because they can't even be bothered to understand that they want me and not the other way around, then I'm just not interested.
 
Alec Benson Leary dijo:
Teacher was quick on her feet. She said "oh, well, God actually made a practice Earth first, and that Earth had the dinosaurs. When He was done he blew that world up and used the debris to make the Earth we live on, and that's why we can find dinosaur bones buried everywhere."
Presiona para expandir...

That's not the Vatican position on evolution. Nor has it been for some time.
 
TheImportantFart dijo:
It was a slow process for me. Like @Alec Benson Leary my family isn't religious, but I went to a Jesuit prep school. To be fair to them, I never felt I was shunned despite being the only kid in the school who wasn't baptised, I just felt a bit left out during communion. So while I wasn't religious, I didn't feel any ill will towards it as a result of my schooling. I just didn't buy into it. And further credit to them, they actually taught evolution in science class. Crazy right?

The closest I came to being religious was when a friend of mine persuaded me to come to a church he was part of during uni. That was the point in my life when I could most confidently say I believed in God. However, my housemates at the time were atheists and they would often challenge me on my belief. I never felt I could give satisfactory answers, so I began to look into Christian apologetics and the works of great theologians like John Lennox, Alister McGrath, William Lane Craig, Ravi Zacharias, etc.

The more I thought about it, the more unconvincing I found the whole thing and matters worsened when I began watching debates between atheists and Christian apologists, only to watch the apologists get trounced every single time. I'd watch the atheist come in with a set of rational arguments and the apologist come back with special pleading, faulty logic and Olympic-standard mental gymnastics, but nothing that convinced me God was real or the claims of Christianity were true. I slowly went from being a liberal theist to being an agnostic and finally an atheist over the course of about a year. I never felt any ill will towards religion (although there are aspects of it I don't like), I just concluded it wasn't convincing and wasn't for me anymore.
Presiona para expandir...
The Jesuit's are pretty liberal compared to the rest of catholicism, along with the vincentians, those groups had the most influence when Catholicism changed in the late 60's when the mass changed, priests and nuns dressed less conservative (wore habits and cassock the long gown) and they argued the church didn't outwardly symbols like those, and the mass wasn't modern and that people can interpret the church by how they feel and it will be alright. One Jesuit priest in the Vatican Fr James Martin influences this theology there, his views border on heresy compared to the rest of catholic scholars.
 
@Alec Benson Leary
What I mean by the forum being a good example is that countless Lolcows here are affected by fiction in such a drastic matter that it makes their lives radically different than if they had outside interests. Religion actively encourages outside interests, whereas someone like OPL has none, and has been completely consumed by fandom.
 
Abethedemon dijo:
@Alec Benson Leary
What I mean by the forum being a good example is that countless Lolcows here are affected by fiction in such a drastic matter that it makes their lives radically different than if they had outside interests. Religion actively encourages outside interests, whereas someone like OPL has none, and has been completely consumed by fandom.
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I don't know if I agree that religion in general encourages outside interests (some do I'm sure), but I get what you're saying now, thanks.
 
The vikings believed that the oceans are made from the blood of the primordial giant Ymir. Once, because I am a strange man, I went to the beach, sat down on a rock, and dwelt on that while overlooking the waves. The sky, they thought, was the skull of Ymir, held up by 4 dwarfs. It seems utterly ridiculous, but of course from their perspective this made total sense. And if you sit on the beach and try hard to imagine it you can almost kind of see where they were coming from.
The universe is so utterly vast that human beings naturally try to fit it into some sort of pattern that makes sense to them, some sort of chain of events. I don't think we're built to handle the concept of infinity, and the complexity and size of the natural universe is such that it is almost incomprehensible and even somewhat terrifying. Something that seems to have a power beyond anything man can fathom. God, or the idea of god, is something that puts that into context for people.

Is there actually a god? Weirdly I don't think it matters. If there is or isn't, you're still here, on earth, and it is only how you act that defines you. You are tiny and insignificant in the face of the universe. You live a finite existence. There is no point in trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. That you are alive at all is enough of a miracle. You don't need any more.
 
I think there's a god but the Bible is a tool to get humans to be moral on their own without the need for a rigid belief system, and I still think evolution and science are correct. Essentially I see God as having created the conditions that created the universe. I think he influences it every now and again and finds practical ways to guide humans to be better.
 
PerishableDryGoods dijo:
I think there's a god but the Bible is a tool to get humans to be moral on their own without the need for a rigid belief system, and I still think evolution and science are correct. Essentially I see God as having created the conditions that created the universe. I think he influences it every now and again and finds practical ways to guide humans to be better.
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So your like a deist.
 
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