Why do some people have religious beliefs?

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The main inconvenience of science is that it imposes (by default) some form of self-accountability. Without a super-sky-daddy to blame for your own negligence in preparing yourself for life's little disasters, you have no choice but to take on the blame for yourself. There is no "Act of God" or "Satan made me do it" - there are only one's own choices to determine one's own actions. Of course, this presumes that a person has both the ability to choose and the ability to act.

This is why the science-based "Free Will" crowd is so at odds with the faith-based "Pre-Destination" crowd - the former accepts personal responsibility, while the latter seems to find every possible excuse to abdicate responsibility for their own screw-ups.

Responsibility and accountability are anathema for those who want to believe that their sky-daddy has everything planned out for them.

Hmmm I wonder how much the way a person was parented/raised affects the likelihood of their being religious.
I wonder if children who tended to be more dependent upont their parents are more likely to form or maintain some sort of religious belief later in life, in order to sort of fill the gap the abscence of their parents enforcable authority represents to them.

Last edited by MarsCoban on 06 Feb 2012, 4:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Would identifying a contradiction in the Christian Bible be sufficient to prove the non-existence of the Christian god? Or, do we also have to prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist?

You have also got to prove there isn't a pink unicorn living in my kitchen cupboard.

I have expressed my opinion regarding religious belief quite frankly in this thread. I do not hide the fact I have contempt for organised religion and the harm it can do. The fact that Christianity was forcibly pushed down my throat as a child with beatings for refusing to say prayers aloud is irrelevant. The points I made in my opening post stand on their own, whether you feel they are insulting or not. The thread is not directed at you at all and I feel sad that you seem to have chosen to take it personally. However, religion is such a divisive issue that frank discussion is likely to upset some people.

Its not merely a neuro-chemical reaction in the sense that its just molecules bouncing around. The neurochemical states also channel an experience of interconnectedness. When you practice Metta Bhavana meditation or are filled with the holy spirit or whatever you want to call it, you feel an experience of oneness (love) with the space and world around you. At first this sounds like delusion, but logically its a realization of the ultimate reality, since everything is seemlessly interconnected in the whole universe.

Right as I was about to post this yesterday, the server crashed.

Last edited by JNathanK on 06 Feb 2012, 5:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Something that I have noticed while reading this thread is that people are forming bizarre alliances.

Take three people.
Person A does not believe in any God, and does not believe in the miracle stories of any religion.
Person B likes to say "God is love", and does not believe in the miracle stories of any religion.
Person C believes that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, and gave us instructions from God on how to live.

Which two people should be forming an alliance? I'll give you a clue, it's not B and C.

Its not that I believe or don't believe in miracles. i think they're plausible, because I ultimately believe universal laws are a set of habits maintained by a universal mind and that deviations from those habits can rarely occur. Even quantum physicists have admitted this. I just think miracles aren't as important as love. I'm allied with everyone, because I believe I'm supposed to love others as I love myself, and that entails entertaining other points of view. I think there's room for rationalism and that its not completely invalid. It has its place, just as the supernatural has its place.

I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter how zen you are, you have a responsibility to have an opinion on certain things.

It's not about "believing in miracles" or "not believing in miracles", it's about believing or not believing specific miracles.

For example, Christians believe that the body of Jesus physically rose from the grave. Do you think that this really happened? Why or why not?

I'm not trying to be "zen". I don't think its plausible, but I don't really know how possible it is. ...and I don't think that's the most important part of Jesus' life or ministry. If the main focus of one's faith is blindly believing in the virgin birth or the resurrection, I don't think there's a lot of merit in that, because it doesn't really do anything to change you as a person, other than condition you to buy into a claim without any evidence from an authority figure. The true faith comes from how he lived his life and being inspired by that. He spread his message of love to the bitter end, even though he was violently executed for it. All his disciples abandoned him, and that really shows you the dynamic of society. A lot of people wanna talk the talk, but nobody wants to walk the walk. The whole societal structure of Rome, or any human civilization in history, is held together by fear and domination. If you remove the fear factor, fear of being an outcast, ridiculed, and humiliated, the dominating factor will crumble apart. If his followers carried their crosses with him in the sense of being willing to take the risk, all the corrupt social orders in Rome and Israel would have collapsed through love and compassion. Merely believing Jesus healed the blind without any evidence to back it up doesn't have value. Even the Romans bought into hero myths. However, doing unto others as you'd want them to do unto you and casting the beam out of your own eye before lashing out in judgement at the speck in the current scapegoats eye is another story.

Um.... I hate to break it to you, but the idea of Jesus being born of a virgin, performing miracles, and rising from the dead is by far the most important aspect of Jesus' life and ministry, at least in terms of historical impact. If Jesus wasn't the son of God, then he was just some hippie. What do Christians say every Sunday in Church?

"who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead."

I'm also open to the idea, but probably to a much lesser degree. Like I said, I'm agnostic in regard to an undefined, unknown god who has never dictated a holy book. And it's hard to argue with Deism or Pantheism. The universe is a god that I can believe in, even if I don't call it a god



I have no idea. I could imagine though that due to the strong taboo against suicide in some religions, adherents of these religions are less likely to commit suidice even if they suffer from severe depression or find themselves in a situation that makes living no longer worthwhile.

An atheist is probably more likely to think along the lines of "Ok, I'm 93, I can barely walk or cr*p anymore, and I've just been diagnosed with stage IV colorectal cancer with unresectable metastases. I've had a good and long life, but now I get the feeling that I've overstayed my welcome. Have fun y'all! I'm out of here". Which is a very reasonable train of thought in that situation, if you ask me. I fully support assisted suicide in such cases.



I'm not okay with abortion in the sense of "yeah, go ahead and flush it down the toilet, who gives a damn". I would also feel much better if all pregnancies were planned and wanted. I simply think that nobody other than the pregnant person can make this decision. I'm glad that I will never have to make it for myself, and I wouldn't dream of deciding this for anybody else.

The entire pro and contra debate is moot in my opinion, because we can hardly force any woman to carry a child to terms, no matter how we personally feel about abortion. If we tried to do that, desperate women would have illegal, unsafe and potentially deadly abortions in back alleys. So neither my opinion nor the take of a religious person on this issue will save any lives, but an anti-abortion stance can certainly cause a lot of pain and suffering.

Anyway, If religious people suffer because other people exercise their rights and make their own decisions, well... I really don't see how that can be helped. Some might also feel distressed that schools no longer have prayer and Bible classes and instead teach evolution. Some feel very strongly about cartoons that depict their favorite prophet. Some are disgusted when they see certain foods for sale, such as pork (or meat in general, in case of vegans). We can't respect everybody's sensibilities if it means to infringe on other people's rights.

I don't care about historical impact, because human pack mentality is corrupt and apt to not see the forest for the trees. They told the illiterate masses for generations who they wanted them to think Jesus was.

To me, the most important aspects of Christ's nature wasn't all the stuff that sounds like plagiarized material from Prometheus or Horus. Its the more mundane stuff that humans can relate to, like loving God, loving others as you love yourself, not casting judgement without judging yourself, etc.

I agree with you.

What I don't understand is: what do you have in common with a Christian? You just basically stated that you think that Jesus was a humble moral teacher that history has transformed into a supernatural figure. A Christian believes that the supernatural figure is the real Jesus.

I also feel a connection / kinship with all living things. That's why I'm a humanist and an environmentalist. I simply rationalize my compassion for the rest of Earth's biosphere in a different way, and break it down to the basics in order to understand it better.

I still think he was the messiah, by virtue of his behavior. He had all the same temptations we have, but he resisted them. I don't even know that he was sinless, but its a good archetype or template for us to follow. The more sinless we are and the more we follow that template, the more we'll be saved by that path.

It really depends on the Christian. Some are only following the myths on a really superficial level. Some believe in the myth but also apply the teachings and philosophy.

Last edited by JNathanK on 06 Feb 2012, 6:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.