Thank you. Do you mean your faith in god? Or is it your faith in humanity you mean? This board seems to be helping to restore my view of humans.
Is it possible that some of the posters you mention simply have different beliefs than you do, and are not necessarily posting with malicious intent?
Wearia, you spoke of debunking myths. What did you mean? What myths, and how did the process strengthen your atheism?
This messageboard, at least, seems to be capable of influence. Although I have not been led to a god, I have begun to think more deeply and consistently about such ideas.
Another aspect (arts related) of my life has been greatly affected, encouraged and strengthened by my time and reading here.
lel, thank you for taking the time to post. I truly hope you find what you are looking for.
Fatwater
The package did arrive. I wanted to digest some of it before replying ot you, so that I could give you a resoonse worthy of your generosity. I should not let that have made me tardy in saying “thank you”, though.
Thank you.
On another note, I think some of the threads which I have found most intimately and personally valusable have been explorations of morality. Sure, there have been a few of the “why don’t athiests rape, murder, and steal whenever they can get away with it” posts, but there have also been many thoughtful explorations (from multiple moral bases) which have helped me grow in both refining my own moral beliefs and understanding those of others.
I hope to have become a better person as a result (though one would never know it from my record as a correpondent, as both you and erl have learned to my embarrassment).
You’re welcome. I glad it arrived.
On morality, ethics, etc: The job I do to provide myself with food and shelter has been affected by questions raised in threads. At least, my approach to it has been affected. I strive for greater consistency and fairness in dealing with people with whom I come in contact while I’m working no matter what my personal opinion of each individual is. This is not an easy thing to do. But it seems the right thing to do.
I don’t post much, but I do read the posts here pretty much daily. I used to be a Conservative Christian Rebublican until I bought one one Cecil Adams’ books. I had never before looked at my views through the eyes of a cynic.
I have since spent more time reading about religion, history, and science in the past three years than in all the previous 27 years of my life. I would say that 70-80% of the intelligent (and some sightly bizarre) links on religion That I have read on the Net can be traced back to this GD forum.
So I guess that’s pretty profound. (to me at least)
Over the time I have been a member of the SDMB, I have gone from being a “true believer” in Wilhelm Reich’s orgone energy, to being so skeptical of it that I wrote a long series of Wilhelm Reich debunking webpages. Reading the Straight Dope, and the many messages on pseudoscience in the Great Debates forum here, were not instrumental in this personal sea-change, but they did urge me in the direction I’ve taken.
Now, I know many of you don’t think that belief in pseudo-sciences such as Orgonomy is on par with beliefs of a religious nature, and might not consider this personal change in my own beliefs to be as profound as that of, say, an avowed atheist converting to Catholicism. But in the family I grew up in, Orgonomy was a religion. I even had to go to a kind of “confessional” each week, in the form of a therapist trained by the American College of Orgonomy. Orgone energy was more than just another neat-sounding-alternative-theory-to-explain-everything; orgone energy was at the core of all the problems plaguing humanity and was also the only solution to those problems. Humanity had placed itself in a “trap” which it had perpetuated for the last 6,000+ years; those few lucky individuals who had come across the works of the great Wilhelm Reich and had “seen the light” of orgonomy and become “emotionally healthy” were the only hope humanity had for raising itself out of this “trap.” “We are the light in a darkened room, we are the flame on the arrow, we must pass the flame”, to borrow quote from a certain contemporary Christian song.
Only through much trepidation did I finally come to the realization that humanity is not in an emotional trap of its own making, that there is not some magical, primordial Utopia of human behavior that we would all spontaneously revert to if only we could become “emotionally healthy” again. That humanity acts now as it has acted for millennia, and the problems we inflict upon one another are not the fault of some “emotional plague” turning us away from our true nature, but are the fault of our true nature. Just as humanity’s great achievements and compassion are also caused by our true nature.
Believe me, giving up this Orgonomy-based Utopianism was something I agonized over, as much as any religious or non-religious convert has!
When I arrived at these boards, I was an agnostic, with an overall positive perception of religion. I used to think that religion made people happy, that it gave them fulfilment, and that it was, in general, a good thing.
The effect these boards have had on that perspective is remarkable. I’ve come to see religion as bad. Almost all of the hatred, the bigotry, the ignorance espoused on these boards is backed up by religious reasoning. It seems there’s not a hurtful point of view out there that doesn’t have its origins and its support in a religious institution. I see otherwise reasonable people hurting innocents because their religion told them to; I see people being put down, degraded and reviled because religion opposes something about them. I see people who have unexamined faiths standing staunchly behind their opinions, despite the facts and statistics and personal anecdotes and evidence of all sort proving them wrong, but unable to change their positions because they are basing them on faith.
The abandonment of reason for faith is appalling to me; the idolatry that allows people to espouse things that they can’t justify, simply because an ancient book says something about it in a vague peripheral way is absurd. I’ve seen compassion, humanity, sympathy and civility abandoned in the name of this book. And very little good done in its name.
I know that there are some posters here who represent the ideals of Christianity, of religion in general. But the impact they make, in their calm, reasoning, compassionate ways, is overwhelmed by the number and volume of the rest of the unthinking religious zealots that swarm over this board every week, denouncing what they don’t understand because that’s what their religion tells them to do. These few good Christians stand out, but I have come to believe that one of the reasons they stand out is the background they’re standing against. That we’ve come to expect so little from Christians, that finding Christians we respect comes as a very welcome surprise. And I believe that if these people had never identified themselves as Christians, they wouldn’t stand out nearly so much; their actions, their thoughts, their way of living seem to me to simply be the way that a good human being ought to conduct themselves, religion or no. Meanwhile, I see these few respectable religious people spending inordinate amounts of time turning intellectual cartwheels to try and reconcile the fact that they’ve found a way to base such a civilized way of life on a religious platform. I see them forced to try and explain how one can be a good person, and still believe in Christian principles. And I see them accused, time and time again, of not being real Christians.
The research that I’ve done as a result of the debates that I’ve participated in, as well as the debates themselves, has painted an overall picture of modern American Christianity as being a rapacious, power-hungry political organization, dedicated to fostering ignorance and divisive hatred in order to strengthen its ranks for its own political ends. It stifles rationality, discourages the examination of its tenets, and foists an entirely immoral set of principles on its congregation.
I remain an agnostic; I really thoroughly believe that I don’t know anything about God, not for sure. I have a few hunches, but I think that they apply to me, and not to anyone else.
As a result of my readings on this board, however, I’ve begun to believe that organized religion is one of the most dangerous and destructive forces on the planet.
Rebublican? I’d better stick to reading the posts.:o
Both. People like His have shown me that filth like Jack T. Chick are not alone in this world, that Christianity is rife with horrible bigots and monsters who wallow in their utter, complete and total ignorance and stupidity while spreading nothing but viscious, hateful lies about innocent people who don’t hurt anyone else. If the God they worship exists, then he is a bastard and a monster, and doesn’t deserve the fealty of anyone with a soul.
Intent means nothing. Their beliefs, their views, are evil. Totally, unsalvagably evil. What they say about gays, and about other religions that they understand even less than their own, is nothing short of hate rhetoric. Any religion that spurs such posts by its followers must be evil to its very core, and thus rejected.
And so I struggle, trying to find if Christianity can be separated from the evilness of fundamentalism represented by Hiss and other members of her cult. I’m not sure if it is. I’m not sure of anything anymore.
In these things, the personal perception can be the only measure.
I believe you. Your post does address belief and disbelief in the sense I meant.
Whether the object be science, psuedo-science, or religion, I suspect a case could be (and more than likely has often been) made that the mechanisms of belief are the same. Ditto disbelief. It does not matter whether a thing is true or false, nor whether it can be proven to be true or false; belief/disbelief are emotional. I’m not trying to disparage emotions or belief/disbelief – where would any of us be without them and the sense of purpose we take from them? But being aware of why we have them, in what part of us they are rooted is important.
Are belief and disbelief the same in the end? Do they both arise from a desire for surety? (Is this pop psychology?)
Mr V, if you’d be so kind, I’d love to see you open up a new thread to discuss this POV vis-à-vis the stance I and others, and those who take the Sinners-in-the-Hands-of-an-Angry-God approach, have. Obviously, I don’t see myself as turning cartwheels to reconcile ethics and belief, nor as “less than a real Christian.” And it’s a topic that’s been alluded to but never met headon in dozens of threads over the past couple of years. So it’s something I’d really like to see tackled.
Ah, MrVisible, I see we arrived around the same time. Happy belated anniversary to us both!
I understand your jaundiced view of organized religion. I ain’t a big fan myself, in general. I believe what I see there is what can happen when personal belief is subsumed.
I’d like to see that, too, Poly.
Sdrawkcab, the anger I infer from your latest post saddens me. Does namecalling and the flinging of accusations ever help? There are enough people in the world who act and speak in hurtful ways, must we add ourselves to those ranks?
My beliefs/opinions WRT politics/ethics/whatever have changed somewhat from my participation and lurking on various internet forums, or at the very least my beliefs/opinions have become better informed. The same isn’t the case with my religious beliefs/opinions, though – four years ago (when I first started skulking around on internet forums) I believed that somebody’s (dis)belief in God wasn’t very relevant, and four years later my belief hasn’t appreciably changed.
Ah, but how and when such things change can be both fascinating and enlightening, loinburger. It’s “in the details”. (imagine smiley here)
—It does not matter whether a thing is true or false, nor whether it can be proven to be true or false; belief/disbelief are emotional.—
I don’t think disbelief, or what I see as the crucial meaning here: lack of a particular belief, is necessarily emotional at all. That view of things both underplays the potentially laudable activity involved in belief and at the same time makes particular beliefs out to be more important and intrinsically central to everyone’s thought than we can presumtively assume that they are (since there are many potential beliefs people can hold, not JUST the one in question).
Believers believe in their particular beliefs for a reason. That motivation and its fruits open up a potential: potential for either good or bad. But not believing in something doesn’t require an active reaction to that particular belief, a motivating reason to NOT believe it: and there is thus no potential for either a laudable or criticizable outcome. Nothing ventured, nothing gained: an opportunity missed, or rightly avoided.
To put it differently, both believers and non-believers face the possibility of Type 2 error (false negative) in a general sense (there are truths out there they may not recognize) while believers additionally open themselves up to Type 1 error (a false positive) in regards to the particular belief currently in question.
So, in regards to a sense of purpose, only a belief can give it. Lack of belief provides no gounds for doing so.
—I see people who have unexamined faiths standing staunchly behind their opinions—
This is always going to be the case, whether it be with religious beliefs, anti-theists, or otherwise. Even conservatives can shudder at many of the people over on the Free Republic boards.
But I think there is much more to be concerned about with people who HAVE examined their existential beliefs, can defend them admirably, and yet also stand behind moral positions I find objectionable. I know of no good way to convince someone who’s values are flat out different than those I think are right, especially if they think they can appeal to authority for their treatment of others. No good way other than simply being sincere and empathetic as possible, and putting yourself out there.
It certainly wasn’t a nasty, moronic anti-theist that made Lib want to question his God about whether non-believers can potentially be truly happy. It wasn’t nasty, poorly argued literalists that made erislover soften his opinion about the potential for Christian belief to worthy of respect.