So this is an issue I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Sure, there have been some pretty serious (and some unfortunately trollish) debates about whether or not god is real; however, there hasn’t been much lively discussion about religions themselves. What I want to understand is how a fundamentally rational human being can ever continue to be part of a religion.

Yes. I get it. as a child, you don’t have a choice. There are cognitive psychologists that liken early religious indoctrination to mental terrorism. You are raised how you are raised, and you can’t exactly choose another option under most cirgreat timesstances, as, just like cults, religions demand the indoctrination of your kin and the conversion of any non-believer into your own faith.

What I don’t get is how, after receiving an education, (which, tragically, is apparently not available to most southern or rural areas [See: The University of Alabama, any university in the midwest, any university in Texas; the list goes on]) one can still be religious. If you have a degree from a worthwhile university (and didn’t **** away your four years just drinking/doing drugs) you are capable of forming rational arguments and thinking logically. How, at that point, can you not cast off the chains that bind you earlier in your life?

Are you afraid? If god is gone, suddenly that magical cushion that protects you isn’t there? Isn’t that argument bull****, since, well, according to the religions, god exists regardless of whether or not you buy into their faith?

Don’t you worry about picking the wrong god? There are a lot of options. Some have messiahs, some have messiahs that came after the other messiahs, others think that there is a pantheon at place…why are you so sure your god is THE god?

Didn’t you ever question the whole tithing thing? At what point does that -not- strike you as a tax imposed upon you by charlatans in exchange for snake oil in the form of warm feelings and a wonderful afterlife?

Is it because of all the ‘good’ your religion does? Have you forgotten the wars caused by all of the current religious organizations (****, even the Tibetans are stirring **** up in China now)? What about the wonders of abstinence only sex education you fight for, or the stripping of civil rights from people that have never done anything to harm you (and are in cases introduced to a lifestyle you do not approve of by your own sick, perverted, pedophilic spiritual advisors.)

Studies in cog psych have shown that the hierarchical power structures of all corporations (a term which, obviously, encompbumes all religions as organizations) lead inevitably to corruption.

In the face of all of this sheer detriment to humanity, how is it possible for a sane, rational, adult human being to NOT reject the tenets of whatever faith was unfairly thrust upon them in their youths?

I have a graduate degree, have never lived south of the mason-dixon line, and I worship the Greco-Roman Goddess of Chaos.

Nice to meet you.

I’m a Deist, so I’m going to get right to the primary point of your post that struck me.

DOPE-HARDCORE-0 Posted:

Don’t you worry about picking the wrong god? There are a lot of options. Some have messiahs, some have messiahs that came after the other messiahs, others think that there is a pantheon at place…why are you so sure your god is THE god?

I don’t believe in any specific religion’s definition of ‘God’, because even at the most basic level, the concept of ‘God’ is beyond normal human ken. To apply any specific rules or titles to the divine is simply ludicrous.

God simply is, regardless of what Man has chosen to write on paper and claim to be fact.

Organized religions are simply an attempt to control the idea of God for personal gain, or else to create a structure of reference that the human mind can perceive comfortably. That which a Muslim calls Allah is no different than that which a Jew calls Yahweh, or a Christian calls Jehovah. These names mean nothing to an infinite, divine being. They only mean something to Man.

DCSD10:> Apparently this is not in a roleplaying forum.

Dead Celebrity Seance Droid Mk-10 Posted:

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Hmm, you edited that pretty fast. I’ve never seen someone ‘moon’ Deism before.

Anyways, Deism really isn’t a ‘religion’, as far as most people view religions. It’s more of a spiritual and philosophical belief. We don’t rely upon ‘supernatural revelations’, we instead use our own powers of observation to perceive the divine. I see things like the fact that we just ‘happen’ to exist on a planet that just ‘happens’ to have an environment that is conducive to spawning life, and just ‘happens’ to be the right distance from our star to not be too cold or too hot.

I see things like evolution as strong indicators of intentional, intelligent design.

I didn’t rely upon a legendary ‘burning bush’. I used my own eyes and ears, and came to a conclusion.

AntiRules187 Posted:

that was very deep. Did you actually come up with this? (not trolling)

When I was younger, I never felt that my family’s religion really made any sense. It was all dependent upon belief that another human being told another human being a story, which kept getting pbumed around, and that we should base our entire belief system on little more than a glorified game of ‘Telephone’. I always felt that we should be able to think for ourselves (isn’t that what God gave us brains for?) and explore our own world and approach the divine in our own way.

This went on for a few years, well into my early twenties, until I discovered Deism. Virtually every conclusion I’d come to on my own was reflected in Deism. It just made sense.

Acid Flux Posted:

I don’t believe in any specific religion’s definition of ‘God’, because even at the most basic level, the concept of ‘God’ is beyond normal human ken. To apply any specific rules or titles to the divine is simply ludicrous.

God simply is, regardless of what Man has chosen to write on paper and claim to be fact.

Organized religions are simply an attempt to control the idea of God for personal gain, or else to create a structure of reference that the human mind can perceive comfortably. That which a Muslim calls Allah is no different than that which a Jew calls Yahweh, or a Christian calls Jehovah. These names mean nothing to an infinite, divine being. They only mean something to Man.

I was raised as a Jehova Witness (and you know how are they) and i’m not saying that they are bad, just a bit closed.

Anyway, i have to agree with Acid flux here, i believe god simply is, and truth be told, i also believe a lot in sciense, but as well as religion has been qualified has magic, you cuold say that sciense is in a way magical, after all it was once know has alchemy.

If i were to “take a side” i like to believe in god, as is, because that magic that you talk about, makes life more enjoyable, even if god doesn’t exist at the end. If’ sciense is the real deal, then life could get boring.

And remember, bot theories have flaws, after all, nothing is perfect

AntiRules187 Posted:

May I ask what Deism is?

Wiki has a decent article on it.

Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme natural God exists and created the physical universe, and that religious truths can be arrived at by the application of reason and observation of the natural world. Deists generally reject the notion of supernatural revelation as a basis of truth or religious dogma. These views contrast with the dependence on divine revelation found in many Christian, Islamic and Judaic teachings.

In other words, I believe in God not because someone else told me to believe in Him, but because I saw what I perceive to be evidence of His existence in our world.

I’ve never believed in the whole ‘proof belies faith’ idea of divinity. To me, that simply sounds like a con-man trying to dodge a direct question. I say that you can look for proof of God’s existence, and such proof only strengthens faith, not erodes it.

The problem and bias you bring into the discussion though, is that religion does not lend itself to logic whatsoever. This is completely untrue. I am a Christ follower, and though I was born and raised in the church, I’ve put a lot of effort and time into learning about other religions, learning about science, etc.

I spent two years as an Anthropology major, for starters, so I know a great deal about evolutionary theory and have no issue whatsoever accepting it as pure fact.

In truth, there is a lot of talk about the quantum physics of Genesis, since science as it is currently exists can’t come up with a decent theory about the beginning of the universe for crap.

For example: According to the Law of Conservation of Mbum, matter can be neither created nor destroyed. With that in mind, the Second Law of Thermodynamics claims that no system can be infinite. Perpetual motion does not exist, and within an eternal system, all reactions would have burnt out and ceased to exist.

So, we see that the universe can’t have always existed, and indeed hasn’t. It was formed, or created, or whatever, roughly 14.5 billion years ago.

So, simultaneously, science says matter cannot have always existed, but yet cannot have been created.

Are you afraid? If god is gone, suddenly that magical cushion that protects you isn’t there? Isn’t that argument bull****, since, well, according to the religions, god exists regardless of whether or not you buy into their faith?

In response to this question, in particular, I would like to extend that I think atheism would be the far more comforting option.

Are YOU afraid of having a higher power that you cannot control constantly watching over you and being aware of your actions? Or is it more comforting to you to think that you are self-reliant and in complete control of your life?

I would venture to say that atheists are afraid of being accountable, in the same way that you claim those following religions are afraid of having our “crutch” taken away.

Shii Posted:

For example: According to the Law of Conservation of Mbum, matter can be neither created nor destroyed. With that in mind, the Second Law of Thermodynamics claims that no system can be infinite. Perpetual motion does not exist, and within an eternal system, all reactions would have burnt out and ceased to exist.

Well….

The “law of conservation of mbum” is widely known to be false, it is constantly violated on a subatomic level and doing so actually is what holds the nuclei of atoms together. It’s one of those artifacts of clbumical physics that is entirely irrelevant in modern science.

The second law of thermodynamics says nothing about whether or not a system can be infinite. It says that for any system which is not at equilibrium, it will change in such a way that maximizes entropy, with the maximal entropy occurring at equilibrium. It’s entirely compatible with infinite systems.

So I don’t really agree with your reasoning here.

The most important thing you’re missing is that there is no law of conversion of mbum, the universe cheats all the time. Particle/anti-particle production pairs are common and measureable, occasionally entirely out of nowhere a particle and its antiparticle will appear (e.g. an electron and a positron, two photons, etc.). It’s widely believed that the origins of the universe were actually due to a mbumive scale vacuum fluctuation, which created an equal (large) amount of hydrogen and anti-hydrogen and some force caused a broken symmetry that caused some of the anti-matter to change into matter and after the annihilation process, there was matter leftover and the universe went on its merry way. However, since there’s a lot of mysterious processes at work here (What’s up with a vacuum fluctuation of that magnitude? What caused the symmetry to break?) that most mature intelligent people have no trouble granting that you can attribute the cause to some unknown named force, if you so choose.

Really, it would be baffling to believe in any sort of deity that creates the universe and doesn’t actually shape it using the principles on which the physical universe actually operates. Sure, you can appear as a burning bush if you want, but it’s more elegant to actually use the machinery that’s already in place. Bushes don’t normally spontaneously combust, but vacuum fluctuations are comically frequent for something as counterintuitive as they are.

DOPE-HARDCORE-0 Posted:

In the face of all of this sheer detriment to humanity, how is it possible for a sane, rational, adult human being to NOT reject the tenets of whatever faith was unfairly thrust upon them in their youths?

This is what I ask myself every single day.