How can you just switch religions?

Great Debates
21

Tomndebb, I think you’re being sufficiently vague. I don’t like assuming what grandiose sweeping statements are supposed to mean, because I’m reading into what I’m not sure you mean as just re-enforement of what I already believe. So bear with me if I ask you to clarify what might seem straight-forward enough to you.

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
What in the world makes you think that religious, (or, better, spiritual) things are anything other than personal? You are the one who is insisting that a religious person “convince” you of anything.
[/quote]

I have made no such claim. The claim I made was that my understanding of the conversion process was that Faith A convincing Faith B to change. I purposely excluded atheists/skeptics, who have a separate qualification for truth, which is evidence.

This all came from an internal conflict I had. (before anyone jumps down my throat, yes, I know I didn’t mention this earlier, and I won’t accuse you of “should have known what I meant”.)

Anyway, my original conundrum, which I am bringing out now for the first time: if belief in god is faith-based, and the answer to “why do bad things happen?” is “you wouldn’t understand with your understanding of the world”, then why are we expected to believe in any one god? Wouldn’t any religion and the things it claims it makes fall stand equally?

It would seem to me, then, that all religions which make the claim of “higher knowledge” reasons for why contradictory things happen are on the same footing, and belief in any one specific one would be entirely chance. It would then seem unfair for the deity to punish anyone for holding a different belief set.

The only thing I believe that statement allows is for the idea that punishing nonbelievers is logically unsound, which is tangential to the thread. Sorry, I’m just exploring ideas now.

What do you mean by this? That acquiring the mindset of needing evidence for belief is the same as acquiring the mindset for faith?

Taking two separate people, who share the same idea of “good” and “evil” and are only separated by their knowledge of human behavior, one could quite easily convince the other through direct evidence why their perception is more likely to be correct.

So your ultimate argument is that there is no such thing as truth, and thus all belief is actually an act of faith?

22

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
Taking two separate people, who share the same idea of “good” and “evil” and are only separated by their knowledge of human behavior, one could quite easily convince the other through direct evidence why their perception is more likely to be correct.
[/QUOTE]
I think this is the crux of the problem. The “knowledge of human behavior” is not something one acquires from a book so that piling up some set of facts on one side of the ledger or the other could tip the balance in the direction of one view or the other. One’s “knowledge of human behavior” is rooted in reactions to the way one is treated as an infant, in the way that one interacted with teachers and peers in school, in the interactions one has with one’s first love, in a million large and miniscule perceptions of all the human interactions one encounters in life. There is no way that a person could be argued into a change of view regarding basic human nature. (This is not to say that one’s views cannot change, only that it would never occur through a simple weighing of arguments.)

One’s views of religion/spirituality/the divine are created in the same way–and are much larger than the rather simple question “Are people good or bad?”. It is not a process whereby one logically sets down reasons to believe or fail to believe anything and then sums them up to an ultimate decision. On the extreme scale, two persons might come to a belief that the world made no sense without a divine presence or that the world made no sense with a divine presence. In the middle, among persons who were already disposed to be theistic, one person might consider the support (active and passive) of a religious community to make more sense when considering the divine while another person would consider a community distracting. A person who needed community would tend to wander away from a religion that had minimal liturgy and no social outreach while a person who found community distracting would probably tend to wander away from a religion that had an elaborate liturgy. Those decisions are made in the heart (or whatever aspect of the mind most closely characterrizes the aspects of decision-making popularly considered to be from the heart). Once that sort of decsion is made, the “intellectual” decisions will follow that choice, not lead it.

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
I have made no such claim. The claim I made was that my understanding of the conversion process was that Faith A convincing Faith B to change.
[/QUOTE]
No? That is how the following statement appeared to me:

I am curious where you have ever seen anyone actually persuaded to change denominations based on argumentation. I have a hard time picturing anyone trying to perform a conversion in that way or anyone being persuaded by that type of rhetoric. When I think of the various Fundamentalists who have tried to persuade me to abandon my denomination to join them, there has been very little peresuasion by argument. Generally, it has been a matter of them declaring that they had received God’s own Truth that they were right and my beliefs were wrong and that I had to switch to save my soul. (I have never tried to persuade anyone to “switch,” so I do not know how that works, either.)

As it happens, I do participate in the group who works with the pre-conversion education of people looking to join my church. However, while we explain our theology and provide a history so that they understand our perspective, the choice remains theirs and we make no effort to “persuade” them. The closest we come would be in the area I already described: we talk about how our life experiences match up with the theology of the church and how that resonates in our lives. If they do not find that it resonates for them, they generally choose not to switch and we part on good terms with no hard feelings. Since, by the time I meet them, they have already expressed an interest in switching, I often have no idea what prompted them to make the change, but I am fiarly sure it was never based on rational arguments.

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
So your ultimate argument is that there is no such thing as truth, and thus all belief is actually an act of faith?
[/QUOTE]
No, my ultimate response (because I don’t see that we have established enough of an understanding of the discussion to actually argue about it) is that I find your OP a bit confusing and I am trying to point out that (based on my unclear understanding of your question) people do not switch religions based on logical discussion. My overall point is that people join with others who express a theology that most closely matches their own understanding of the world and that arguments from facts or logic are simply used to place those beliefs in some sort of context so that they can talk about them. As a sideline, I note that theists and atheists come to their views of the world in the same way.

23

Since I have never from one religion to another, my view of how conversion happens was incorrect. What you have gathered was indeed my original idea, but the thread and input of people who have changed convinced me that it was a different process. I think you are correct in your assessment of my original mindset, and I think we’re mostly on the same page now.

As I said, this was more of an IMHO than a GD, but religion tends to get nasty, so I brought it here.

24

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
The “lack of evidence” one applies to all religions. That’s why they call it “faith” after all.
As for why people can switch religions ? It’s all zero evidence nonsense to begin with; if one is silly enough to be a believer in the first place, there’s no reason not to switch every other week or believe in three religions at once. It has about the depth of switching from Coke to Pepsi.

In other words, “Why not ?”
[/QUOTE]

Would that be true of all unfounded beliefs? All beliefs held in the absence of evidence?

25

If you want a mundane real-life example, my wife was raised Catholic and I was raised Methodist. Soon after we moved to a new area, we found out that we were expecting a daughter and wanted her to have a church to celebrate the usual milestones and have some fellowship. My wife never really liked being Catholic and this is when the Boston sex scandals in the Catholic church were at their peak so. I told her that Episcopal services were like Catholic services but women were allowed to be priests and they tended to be more liberal overall. We visited the local Episcopal church and loved it especially the female priest who was an ex-high powered attorney. We started going and that is all it takes to convert in the Episcopal Church. As our second daughter lay dying in the ICU, the church was a huge savior in earthly, practical terms.

It doesn’t sound very complicated to me.

26

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
Since I have never from one religion to another, my view of how conversion happens was incorrect. What you have gathered was indeed my original idea, but the thread and input of people who have changed convinced me that it was a different process. I think you are correct in your assessment of my original mindset, and I think we’re mostly on the same page now.

As I said, this was more of an IMHO than a GD, but religion tends to get nasty, so I brought it here.
[/QUOTE]

I applaud your willingness to learn and honesty. :slight_smile:

27

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Would that be true of all unfounded beliefs? All beliefs held in the absence of evidence?
[/QUOTE]
Let me guess; you’re going for the “atheism takes just as much faith as religion” lie. No, it does not. Disbelief is, or should, be the default for all beliefs. Therefore atheism should be the default religious stance, and would be in a sane species, which humanity is not.

28

People find the religion that is best customed for their personal outlook on the world and so switch when they find themselves in a religion that doesn’t line up. If you have an authoritarian mindset which demands hard rules then you’re probably going to end up being a fire and brimstone fundamentalist. If you have a practical live and let live mindset but still want gays to burn they have places for you. If you think nature is god and like, oh my god, he’s all around us, they got places for you, etc.

29

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Let me guess; you’re going for the “atheism takes just as much faith as religion” lie. No, it does not. Disbelief is, or should, be the default for all beliefs. Therefore atheism should be the default religious stance, and would be in a sane species, which humanity is not.
[/QUOTE]

That was a yes or no question. But thanks for the example of an unfounded belief.

30

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
If religion is faith-based and its reason is outside of our reasoning abilities, how can you be convinced one is wacky and switch to the next?
[/QUOTE]

You might decide one religion is better than another for reasons other than scientific/historical evidence, or lack thereof, for the truth of their respective claims. E.g., you might decide one religion seems more moral to you than another. If you can’t stomach Christianity because of the abominably cruel doctrine of Hell, there’s Buddhism, which leaves open the possibility that every soul will reach salvation/enlightenment eventually. There might also be esthetic reasons to prefer one religion to another, and social reasons, as well as “spiritual” reasons very hard to define.

31

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Therefore atheism should be the default religious stance, and would be in a sane species, which humanity is not.
[/QUOTE]

Bear in mind we have no basis for comparison. It might be that every sentient species in the universe is prone to religious belief, for reasons intergalactic psychologists have yet to determine but which apparently are inseparable from possession of a self-conscious mind (though stronger in some individuals than in others).

32

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
That was a yes or no question. But thanks for the example of an unfounded belief.
[/QUOTE]

Looked like a “guess” to me. Or are we now counting all guesses as separate beliefs now?

33

I don’t believe it.

Regards,
Shodan

34

[QUOTE=Shodan]
I don’t believe it.

Regards,
Shodan
[/QUOTE]

Pity. Put your affairs in order.

No one expects the Unitarian Inquisition!

35

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Bear in mind we have no basis for comparison. It might be that every sentient species in the universe is prone to religious belief, for reasons intergalactic psychologists have yet to determine but which apparently are inseparable from possession of a self-conscious mind (though stronger in some individuals than in others).
[/QUOTE]
That would just mean that all species are crazy. However, I don’t buy it for a second; if that was true, atheists would be impossible, not just rare.

[QUOTE=Shodan]
I don’t believe it.

Regards,
Shodan
[/QUOTE]
Oh ? And how, precisely, do you not disbelieve the near infinite number of absurd yet non-disproven concepts that exist ? Do you operate on the assumption that a purple gnome may be sitting on your should, or that a four armed giant rabbit may sneaking up behind you with an axe ? Disbelief is the default for anyone outside of a mental institution. We don’t have the time to systematically disprove every possible belief or claim, not to mention the ones that can’t be disproven.

36

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Looked like a “guess” to me. Or are we now counting all guesses as separate beliefs now?
[/QUOTE]

It’s a guess when you propose it once or twice as a possibility. When someone repeats it over and over as if it’s a fact, and has no real evidence to support it, …unfounded belief. Just like the ones he bitches about.

Ironic, ain’t it?

37

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
It’s a guess when you propose it once or twice as a possibility. When someone repeats it over and over as if it’s a fact, and has no real evidence to support it, …unfounded belief. Just like the ones he bitches about.

Ironic, ain’t it?
[/QUOTE]

When someone repeats it over and over again, and takes into account your reactions to it over and over again, we call it an “educated guess”, not “unfounded belief”. When enough of a pattern is established, it moves from “possibility” to “probability”.

38

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
When someone repeats it over and over again, and takes into account your reactions to it over and over again, we call it an “educated guess”, not “unfounded belief”. When enough of a pattern is established, it moves from “possibility” to “probability”.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry. Der Trihs repeating his “religion is insane” or “religion is idiotic” over and over without providing a shred of evidence or logical deduction beyond his absolutist assertions fails to eastablish any level of “possibility” or “probability,” even if a more articulate poster could actually make a case for the probability of a similar assertion. There is no evidence (provided by Der Trihs) that his mantras are anything more than unfounded belief even if he happened to be coincidentally correct.

39

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
When someone repeats it over and over again, and takes into account your reactions to it over and over again, we call it an “educated guess”, not “unfounded belief”. When enough of a pattern is established, it moves from “possibility” to “probability”.
[/QUOTE]

Educated guess??? By what standard? I thought an educated guess had at least a reasonable amount of real data to support the conclusion. The conclusion is called a guess because the data is recognized as incomplete. Isn’t that close?

Asserting something is *fact * repeatedly without offering any credible data to support the conclusion is hardly that.

40

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Oh ? And how, precisely, do you not disbelieve the near infinite number of absurd yet non-disproven concepts that exist ? … We don’t have the time to systematically disprove every possible belief or claim, not to mention the ones that can’t be disproven.
[/QUOTE]

Whoooosh!!!

Must…resist…too obvious…

Regards,
Shodan