Religion makes me extremely uncomfortable.

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A plural pronoun with a singular antecedent is a no-no.

Perhaps this leads to what is a classic complaint of this thinking.

First that a believer has Faith the God/Jesus will provide a happy outcome for a difficult situation. If this indeed happens it's like a miracle.

But what if it it doesn't have a favorable outcome? Either they'll say their faith wasn't strong enough or that The Lord works in mysterious ways.

I'm just guessing this is essentially what is bothering the OP.

I think that my reasoning is extremely logical and rational, so I can't comprehend blind faith. I believe things or accept theories based on evidence. Without evidence, why would someone believe something? I've had problems understanding this my whole life. To me it seems like voluntary delusion.
I used to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny until I caught my mom being both. After that, the rest was out, including the tooth fairy and any kind of god.

Ditto everything you've said. I think that people predominantly believe in gods because they are brainwashed with a particular religion from childhood. Because their parents and peers believe a particular religion makes it seem more reasonable. It is for that reason that most people born in Christian communities become Christians, those born in Muslim communities become Muslims and so on. Religion is a meme - it is like a contagious mind virus, passed on from generation to generation.

Last edited by TallyMan on 29 Jul 2012, 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Whether something is a mystery or not depends on an individual's understanding of it. For many Christians, the role of God in their existence is comfort in knowing that God is in charge of their lives and that they'll never be separated from God. That's about as far as they care to intellectualize it. An interesting turn of events in my life at first might lead me to say, "The Lord works in mysterious ways," but after reflection on it, I might be, like, "Oh yeah, that makes sense..." God's ability to act doesn't depend on our comprehension of His judgements.

I'd shy away from faith not being strong enough. I think it's easy to confuse faith with wishful thinking. Peter's faith at one time might not have kept him above water, but he still believed in Jesus' ability to save him. A lot of what I see when people talk about not having enough faith is blab-it-and-grab-it theology. I think the kinds of things that we are guaranteed to get through faith are the kinds of things mentioned in the model prayer, the high points being "our daily bread," "forgive our debts," and "lead us not into temptation." Beyond that, it seems Jesus got everything that He asked for and told His followers that they'd receive everything they asked for in keeping with Jesus' nature and character, as long as they believed God had the power to give. I'd say if you have faith and you aren't receiving, it could be you lack the right motivation and you aren't asking for the right things.

I despise religion. I think it's a form of mind control. Why do people force their stupid beliefs on others and try to control them? Why do people think they have the answers? No one does.

Just saying it can be frustrating when people use twisted logic to invent a proposition where they can't lose or be wrong. It's a setup where no matter what happens the use the outcome to validate their faith.

Indeed; as someone else mentioned, when things go right for a believer it is due to God's grace; when things go bad it is God testing them or God working in mysterious ways or "Thy will not mine". It never occurs to most believers that the apparent non-intervention in their lives by God is due to the fact that no such creature exists.

this.

I very much agree with that. I feel very uncomfortable with any religion that is like that because it promotes delusions about the world, and is disconnected from the real world with it's injustice, and where God fails to take people through these issues. Religion feels comfortable because it tells people that things will be ok, but this is a false assurance.... and I don't like these lies.

It's even worse if you want to dare ask questions or want clarification. It's walking into a modern Taboo.

Here's a question. If peers expect you to "grow out" out of beliefs such as the Tooth Fairy or Santa, how can they expect you not to grow out of other religious thought?

What you are referring to is the "Separation" clause in the Constitution of the USA. What you say is true, but the courts have ruled that our government is not allowed to do anything to promote Theism, which could be described as "freedom from religion." You are right if you mean that the Constitution does not guarantee freedom from religion in other ways.

Yes. Everytime I hear news about a tragedy or disaster, and people say, "god was watching out for me, and got me through it", I think how do they know that? Maybe their god was trying to kill them, but failed, or at least he wasn't doing a very good job of watching out for them. If their god was really watching out for them, he would have prevented the disaster in the first place, or at least kept them clear of it.

The role of faith in christian life is so central to being one. You often just substitute faith in place of questioning assumptions and premises because you are sold on the big picture, even if the sum of its parts aren't foolproof, or logical. That... and of course, the greatest key to spreading something false: Repetition... combine for a deadly combination.

The Christian will often judge their own circumstances, and that of others as a referendum of faith &/Or living out the will of God. It is very common for them to try and read into things, as if God is telling them through their misfortune that they are not on the right path, or if a family member has come down with Cancer that it is because they themselves or we the family have not been walking as strongly on the path of righteousness that God wants us to. Some of these readings I'm okay with. I don't agree with them, but whatever. Judge your own circumstance as a weakening of your faith & not living out the will of God? Go for it. But to say that a 6 year old came down with a terminal illness as a referendum of their whorish mother or that someone lost a child because they focused more on their career then God is cruel, keep that s**t to yourself, its not a way to live. There will always be someone more pious then you and even they go through troubles that have nothing to do with their faith or their walk with God. And it's just stupid. There's many secular Christians, atheists, and evil people who've done a lot of bad having the time of their lives, disease free, and don't have your problems so what does that theological way of viewing things say about God in light of this reality? Will the Christian who walks outside at sub-0 temperature able to triumph nature and less likely to get hypothermia then an atheist because of their faith?

This isn't exclusive to christianity though, it exists anywhere were faith can bridge reality & the ends (often unrealistic) that we are trying to reach - I observe it in politics amongst anti-tax absolutists and almost all liberal progressives (Leftism is a religion.). I think it also takes a great level of faith to say that there is no God with such certainty that many atheists have. They "Know" there is no God. There is no way we can construct a test to test the Multiverse theory, and there is no way to test for the existence of a God who is definitionally beyond the confines of Nature and Naturalism, but there's people out there who'll walk around saying - with the same certainty one would reaffirm that in fact the earth is round - that God does not exist.