I’ve read an article in which Graham Lawton is convinced the concept of deity is such a preposterous idea that nobody really believes in god. And yet all human beings are endowed with a ‘God-shaped conceptual space waiting to be filled’, which is why people are open to religious claims and want to embrace them. “But deep down people don’t actually think it’s true - not even priests and nuns.”
The last sentence may be regarded as bold and strong in some circles, but it sounds hollow to me. I doubt that Graham Lawton is so insightful that he can discern the inmost feelings of all religious people. Can anybody really know what believers believe ‘deep down’?
Not know, no, but you can infer from behavior. As an analogy, suppose you had a middle school class who had all been told that although the teacher was not in the room that teacher was observing the class through a video camera. If some of them believed it and some of them didn’t, you’d be able to make a pretty good inference about which were which by observing their behavior.
It’s the same with god. Everyone’s been told that there is an an omnipotent, omniscient god who wants them to behave in a certain way observing their behavior. From watching how they behave can you predict which ones truly believe it?
May I point out that there are numerous possible explanations for this, including:
(1) They don’t really believe in God.
(2) They don’t really believe God is omniscient.
(3) They don’t really believe that God wants them to behave in a way that is at odds with how they are actually behaving.
(4) They really believe that God doesn’t want them to behave that way, but they don’t care (and we could further break down the reasons why they don’t care)
(5) They really believe that God doesn’t want them to behave that way, but are unable, or only imperfectly able, to conform their behavior, with what God wants. (“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”)
(6) You have a biased sample.
Both of you are partly right. To expand on Thudlow Boink’s point #4, it would appear that Bill Door has never heard of the Calvinistic doctrine of Eternal Security, or “once saved, always saved.” To put it baldly, this doctrine states that once a person becomes a Christian, it literally doesn’t matter what he does after that–he’ll go to Heaven regardless.
No we can’t ever really know what someone believes. We can infer based on their words and actions, but we never really know for sure. Even when they tell us, they could be lying for any number of reasons. This is why persecuting someone for what they profess to believe, rather than what they actually say or do, is fraught with the potential for misunderstandings.
Just look at the Irish, for example. Protestants and Catholics you’d think would believe in the same God, but the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation, among other things, has left thousands of casualties in its wake. It all comes down to believe systems, and since neither can prove itself right and the other wrong, people will continue to kill each other or treat each other horribly based on what they believe.
Only you know what you actually believe, and sometimes not even then.
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As for the idea that “God is always watching,” I absolutely do not believe in God – and yet the idea, the notion, the concept – call it a fantasy if you want – the “meme” that God is always watching is in my head, and my behavior, all my life, has in part been shaped by the idea that what I do is not totally private, no matter how private my circumstances.
The idea of God has become integrated into my superego, if that’s a better way of putting it. “But at my back I always hear” – God looking closely with a nasty sneer.
I believe the idea to be absolutely false, but it’s still something that’s in my head and won’t ever go away.
But this analogy doesn’t work because these kids know, for certain, that there COULD actually be a video link. We’ve see it happen. There’s tangible, repeatable evidence that it does, at times, occur. One can’t say that about god.
To answer the OP, probably not in everyday life. There are surely some expirements one could set up, but they wouldn’t necessarily mimick or display the type of faith you’re questioning.
There’s plenty of secular reasons for that border to have turned bloody. In speaking of Northern Ireland, Protestant/Catholic was not just a religious divide, but a deep political and cultural one.
The only thing I can to this thread is that my DIL has said that she believes that my wife and I deep down must believe in god and she cannot imagine that we really really don’t. And she isn’t even that much of a church-goer. In fact, she even says that when she goes it is to get an hour of quiet contemplation once a week. I cannot doubt that she really believes, hard as it is for me to credit.
England first conquered Ireland and the Irish began rebelling at a time when BOTH nations were still Catholic. Ergo, the fight between oppressed Irish and British colonizers is NOT religious in nature.
“The Troubles” in Ireland are not ancient. They started in my lifetime, in the late Sixties and early Seventies, long after both Catholics AND Protestants in Ireland had ceased being devoutly observant.
Ah, but cancer isn’t omnipotent or omniscient. In this European study from 2006 16% of male smokers would end up with lung cancer compared to 0.2% of men who never smoked. One in six, with 5 out of six not getting cancer. If you want to say that people believe there’s only a 16% chance of there being a god, I might believe that.
Most flavors of Christianity popular in the US include the idea of nearly limitless forgiveness. IOW, you can do your sin and still be saved into heaven. Just issue the right apology at the right time.
That explains a lot of the belief/behavior gap right there.
I’m not real clear on what other major world religions have to say on the topic.
I was sort of implying that, but religion is a huge factor in cultural identity.
Yeah, but it was a sore spot before the ink was dry on Irish Independence. Sooner or later some kind of agitation was inevitable, and the only question was “how violent”.