I don’t need the red meat, and Mrs. Cake is right that the thread is badly off track at this point. What I’d like to see, personally, is for you to give other people credit instead of assuming they’re in denial or being dishonest and that you know more about their views than they do, and for you to answer questions or back up your statements when people ask you to. If you don’t want to get into an argument or stay on topic long enough to have a real discussion, why bother with a message board?
I haven’t had a crisis of non-faith, but some time ago, not sure exactly when I’ve developed a profound hope that there would be some sort of afterlife. I don’t believe there definitely is one, but I really hope there’ll be more to it then just oblivion after I kick the bucket. Though some days oblivion doesn’t sound half bad either. I don’t have much of a rational basis for hoping an afterlife might exist, but I figure if the great entropy of the universe can result in a consciousness, there is no reason it can’t preserve it through some quantum mechanics trickery of physics yet undiscovered or some such.
No crisis here, and I really don’t understand how one could happen. Either there is evidence, or there isn’t…if something pops up, there’s something interesting to investigate. I’m not afraid of such evidence-I’ve actually been asking believers for evidence for many years.
Once you understand that religion is a particularly stupid lie with no evidence to support it, it’s not like adversity makes you forget that.
When you’re running low on money during the holidays, do you have a crisis of Santa-disbelief?
At a raw emotional level, yeah, sometimes I think about theology. When I’m really down, I wonder about God. When I’m frightened, I wish I had someone to pray to for help.
But it’s emotional. It’s sub-rational. It’s like being afraid of the dark. Anyone here have that? You’re in your own home, you know nobody’s there, but it’s dark! It’s scary. Your rational mind says, “This is silly!” But a hundred million years of evolution says, “It’s dark! There might be predators!”
Or swimming in deep, dark water. You know there isn’t any Loch Ness monster about to surface beneath you, but, still, you have to fight off the foolish, baseless fear.
This is why ghost stories scare us, when told right, and in the right atmosphere. A camp-fire, a dark forest, the stars overhead… Even the groaners, like “The Bloody Hook,” which we laugh at now, are scary!
So, yes, my hind-brain, the reptilian core of my emotions, sometimes has doubts.
My rational mind always ends up scolding it. That’s what comes of having brains built up in layers over so great a period of time!
For me, belief in God is as meaningless as belief in ghosts. Just…don’t ask me when I’m sick, or in terror, or all alone in a dark forest.
Heh. Were you raised religious? I’m curious about what impact it might have.
It’s almost funny… I was never given any religious instruction! I first learned about religion at age six or seven, reading “The World’s Great Religions.” I didn’t understand a word of it!
(I was very impressed by the art! Temples, and statues, and stained glass windows, and cathedrals, and pyramids… Wow!)
I picked up religious information in the schoolyard (same way I learned about sex!)
The biggest defining moment in my life was when some religious bullies beat the living shit out of me for my disbelief. That turned me into a nasty, hate-filled, bigoted atheist.
The good part was that discussions like the ones here, and especially the kindness and patience of one particularly good Christian, averted me from the foolish path of hatred, and allowed me to co-exist in peace with religion.
Since then, I’ve studied comparative theology to a small degree. Read the Koran, skimmed the Bhagavad Gita, skimmed the Book of Mormon, read the Bible, etc.
Hell of an odyssey!
When I have those fears, it isn’t of ghosts, it’s of people or animals. It’s of tangible things, not spirits or demons or hell.
Your unconscious mind is more rational than mine is! I get creeped out in the dark by the Alien from Alien, or similar scaries, no matter how much I try to convince myself it can’t happen!
Are you serious? Do you really believe a Muslim will try to kill any non-Muslim who he meets? And you complain about people disrespecting religion?
If this was an attempt at a joke, I’ll point out it’s still offensive against religion. And then I’d ask you why you are afraid to get in a serious discussion about your religious beliefs.
Glad to hear you were able to resist the Dark Side, Trinopus! 
That was tongue firmly in cheek, you’re right. But I was as much joking as I was serious. No one gets what they want all the time, the world doesn’t make sense, and life is unfair. If an atheist introducted me to a Muslim named Abdul for the purpose of evaluating my ability to reprogram a Friend of Allah into a Friend of Jesus, at the same time expecting me to cure him of his atheism via the same process …
… I would immediately admit defeat and acknwoledge the Almighty as the only one capable of touching men’s hearts and minds in that way. The trap here is thinking that as a man I could put the Holy Spirit into the hearts & minds of the other two men. The trap here is thinking that anything I quote from the Bible would penetrate their heavily fortified defenses. In other words, the only way to win is not to play.
I can’t imagine a major life-crisis making me turn to god. The biggest and worst thing that has happened to me was my first husband’s death. If there is a god, that god had just said “fuck you” to me and my life.
The problem of evil is a big problem when my life is great. It’s even more insurmountable when my life is terrible.
I appreciate your honesty. Thanks for sharing.
I was suggesting you were trying to convert the Muslim. The atheist is the person looking for a religion. And he is looking for a religion - he asked you and Abdul to try to convince him of your religious beliefs. So this is a person who’s asking to be converted - you’re not going to get any more of a slow pitch than this one. If you say you have no hope of converting this guy, you’re pretty much saying you can’t convert anyone.
If, as you seem to be saying, the only people who can ever be Christians are those who are born as Christians, raised as Christians, and live in a Christian environment, then isn’t Christianity as much a habit as a faith? If Christianity is the one true religion, I’d expect it to be a little more robust. You make it appear pretty fragile.
No, it’s just Pascal’s Wager.
From Cecil: the football significance of 3:16. Also, there’s this column if you want to know what happened to the guy.
It has nothing to do with “imperfection”. It has to do with the fact that there’s no reason to appeal to an impossible, absurd fantasy that I consider no more real than Gandalf or Darth Vader or Santa Claus - and less plausible than all three of them. Besides which, God as typically portrayed is at best uncaring and generally outright evil; even if I believed in him I see no reason to appeal for help from an amoral supernatural egomaniac.
Oh; and as far as the “what if you’re wrong?!” line; if I’m wrong I’m wrong. But that doesn’t make the believers right. If there’s some sort of “god” or “gods” out there, I see no reason so buy that it or they resemble in the slightest myths made up by human primitives millennia ago, or that they even know of much less care about humanity. If there are “gods” out there, the believers are only right about it by pure coincidence because their myths aren’t based on reason or evidence in any way.
It’s robust, all right. It’s just that I don’t use the Bible like a spiked mace or a cat o’ nine tails or some other medieval weapon. Would you respect me more if I did? Would you respect me more if I was a Christian soldier in the literal sense of the word?
I suspect that there is no pleasing you.
I’m not talking about using Christianity as a weapon. What I’m talking about is the belief that Christianity is strong enough to stand up for itself - that Christianity can survive in the same room as atheism and Islam without crumbling into pieces.
And I’m beginning to suspect that you’re looking to take offense at anything that’s said to you.