Growing up, I never cared about religious people's views. I just viewed it as just people's funny beliefs, such as Big Foot or Alien Abduction.
Over the last 6 years, I have lived in a legally mandated theistic state. It causes me to wonder why do people believe such outlandish things?
Even when I was a 7 year old child, I was skeptical about such claims. How can any reasoning adult believe in fairy tales?
I think its something to do with life being deeply random and meaningless. Believing in the supernatural is such a more attractive alternative that ties all the strings together. Its the same reason people believe conspiracy theories, its a more 'fulfilling' explanation, its better then reality.
Fear of death.Quote by: Elithium
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith. - Christopher Hitchens
Really it's based on fear and ignorance. Fear of the unknown, fear of death, fear of being alone so they invent or embrace an imaginary friend who is always there and can comfort them when they're unhappy.
There is nothing demonstrably true that religion can provide the world that cannot be achieved more rationally through entirely secular means.
We believe in gods because aliens came to our planet and mapped them for us. They showed us how each planet and moon is a diety, and then taught us to speak. Then they built a 'pyramid scheme' and then showed us how to care for the needs of each god. Then they left.
Have you ever thought the rigors of language, how long it would actually take to learn it? Think of all the gutteral arguments that would ensue, the people of the bible started off knowing how to speak striaght away. The rigors of english, for everyone to agree that one word would mean the same to everyone else, would mean that before the bronze age started, they would need how many years?
!! Going to my destruction !!
Belief in the supernatural could also come from reasons such as a terrific imagination or a desire for life to be something far more meaningful than a brief organic existence that ends when your body rots.
Honestly, I think humans are just too vain to want to believe they're no more important than a tree or a fish.
Dear Optimist, Pessimist and Realist, while you guys were arguing about the glass of water, I drank it! ~ Sincerely, the Opportunist.
In other words, they're delusional. No matter how much you believe in a falsehood, it remains false.
There is nothing demonstrably true that religion can provide the world that cannot be achieved more rationally through entirely secular means.
There's nothing wrong with being open to supernatural ideas...but to "believe" in such is delusional.
Dear Optimist, Pessimist and Realist, while you guys were arguing about the glass of water, I drank it! ~ Sincerely, the Opportunist.
lazy thinking, fear, ignorance, the unwillingness to question one's beliefs (kinda falls under lazy, but this is very specific in that people build little bunkers for their supernatural beliefs where rationality and skeptical inquiry arent allowed), delusion, and lots of other reasons or combinations of reasons. With religion, it seems to be a regional indoctrination thing. Most americans are christian because their parents were. Had they been born in the middle east, they would likely be muslim.
but the effect of indoctrination cannot be underestimated. People who are drilled with this stuff day in day out when they are YOUNG tend to believe hard and not give it up for any reason. and those are also usually the types that integrate their religious belief with who they are, which means attacking their beliefs as unsound means attacking their very definition of who they are as unsound. They dont know how to seperate the two.
Nothing has been proven false as of yet.
What about gut feelings? Of course, one could not expect another person to change their view based on another's gut feeling, but for the person having it, it's hard to deny. If you've had a gut feeling, a certainty that you can't explain, you know what I mean. Should you ignore your feelings because you can't 'prove' them?
I can't say I believe in supernatural forces because I don't think it wise to believe in anything but I have a gut feeling that our universe is intelligent in some way. Maybe this is where theist belief comes into play? Maybe that gut feeling they once had has been molded, shaped and added to, and becomes that of their religious institution. Either way I can't prove my feeling and either way, it's not going away. I don't think it's wise to rationalize away my gut feeling only because I can't explain it, just as I also don't think it wise to start creating a 'theory' of how this intelligent force might operate or what it might do. Suffice to say, I'm okay with saying I don't know except what I feel.
Precisely. You should be open to the possibility of just about anything, but in order to actually believe anything should require demonstrable, objective evidence that said idea is actually true.
There is nothing demonstrably true that religion can provide the world that cannot be achieved more rationally through entirely secular means.
Irrelevant. It's nobody's job to prove anything false, it's the job of the claimant to prove that their claim is true. The supernatural has not been proven true in any way, shape or form.
Gut feelings do not demonstrate fact, sorry.What about gut feelings? Of course, one could not expect another person to change their view based on another's gut feeling, but for the person having it, it's hard to deny. If you've had a gut feeling, a certainty that you can't explain, you know what I mean. Should you ignore your feelings because you can't 'prove' them?
You can believe whatever you want, but the reality is, your beliefs have no bearing on factual reality. If you're interested in what's actually true, instead of what makes you feel good, you have to reject "gut feelings" as a valid way of discovering truth.I can't say I believe in supernatural forces because I don't think it wise to believe in anything but I have a gut feeling that our universe is intelligent in some way. Maybe this is where theist belief comes into play? Maybe that gut feeling they once had has been molded, shaped and added to, and becomes that of their religious institution. Either way I can't prove my feeling and either way, it's not going away. I don't think it's wise to rationalize away my gut feeling only because I can't explain it, just as I also don't think it wise to start creating a 'theory' of how this intelligent force might operate or what it might do. Suffice to say, I'm okay with saying I don't know except what I feel.
There is nothing demonstrably true that religion can provide the world that cannot be achieved more rationally through entirely secular means.
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