So, uh, you have a problem with Valteron’s statement that religious people think their belief is rational, and not from parental control/brainwashing/society?
really?
you think religious people don’t think their belief is rational?
Maybe blaming it on this is too harsh. Children are raised in an environment where everyone believes a particular religion, so they believe it also without thinking. No explicit brainwashing required. Then they get sent off to church or shul because it is right, and social norms make it very difficult for kids to become smart alecks and doubt. (Though we’ve heard stories of just this.) I got taught to listen to teachers in school, so I listened to my Hebrew School teacher also. I didn’t go because of any great religious fervor, but because if I went I’d have a big bar mitzvah and <Sam Levinson>get presents, get presents, get presents</Same Levinson>.
My kids, growing up in a house without any religion, had no great difficulty being atheists, and attendance at various religious clubs with friends didn’t make a dent in their lack of belief.
As for me, my atheism is purely rational, but my disbelief in Christianity is much more deeply rooted, since from babyhood I grew up with no one around me thinking Jesus was in anyway special.
Once again, a SD intellect rephrases my point in a way I am uncapable of.
Thanks Voyager.
You know this because he’s a pal of yours? 
Way to tap dance around the issue. Unless and until you bring something to the table in terms of a credible cite, there is no debate. You mentioned Thomas Aquinas earlier. What did he say? Which of his writings support your point?
BTW, I wrote a paper debunking Aquinas years ago, when I was an undergrad. But to do that, I actually had to read Aquinas first. I’m not sure you have. Might also want to check out Rene Descartes and his whole “I think, therefore I am” thing.
Ball is in your court. You either want a serious debate, or you don’t. If you want debate, bring some cites.
Despite the levels at which this has sunk, let me try.
DT, my post was clearly not meant to be taken seriously (I hoped). But since you picked it up and with the fresh insights that come from the contact of wet trout skin sliding past mine, let me posit this thesis:
Religion is to knowledge of God what romance is to love (art to beauty, maybe?). Different people at different times and different places, have fallen in love. What they do about it, to conquer the love of the object of their feeling, varies a lot from what goes around in their environment. From clubbing them in the head and dragging them by their hair, to offers of grasshoppers, to chocolate, to Rolls Royces, to poem and songs, to suicide. What they have to offer to explain their love is nothing, other than their personal experience of it.
To someone who has never been in love, the notion is just alien and romance is silly and illogical. And when they eventually fall in love, the whole thing makes sense.
Likewise, people have felt the presence of God. Their expression of that experience and how they share it with other people who have had the same experience, varies with whatever is around them. Certain common themes arise, just like diffiicult to acquire presents in romance, but the details vary enormously with location and time.
To the person who has experienced God, faith and religion make no sense.
So religion varies because it is a human creation, a response to a feeling and an experience. Tradition guides it and so we see some things get carried in history and accross space sharing and sometimes outlasting novelties. The environment shapes it and so we see variation.
The underlying experience of the divine transcends both regional variation and traditions and that is why we see the same common themes throughout the whole range.
Your analogy to government is just perfect. With notable exceptions, they all share some common values: management of the common good, protection of the needy, etc. How those values are carried out in particular governments, vary a lot with the history and circumsances of that nation.
Actually, only the Abrahamic religions have all those things in common. And in Judaism, the afterlife is an afterthought.
Buddhism, for instance, is compatible with atheism. Buddha assumed the reality of the Hindu gods – but they’re beside the point; they’re in the same fix we are, trapped in the world of maya, and you don’t reach enlightenment by praying to them.
Rationalist, non-revelationist defenses of (Abrahamic) religious doctrine generally fall under the heading of natural theology, which has had proponents going back to St. Augustine.
I agree that the choice of reasonable and logical vs. brainwashing or societal pressure can be attacked as a false dilemma, and I think that an argument along the lines that sapo started* is certainly a good argument for this. I just find Oakminister’s insistance that Valteron show that religious people beleive their belief is rational to be bizarre.
*It looked like Sapo was starting an arguement that most religions beleive God revealed Itself to a group of people, so of course that group won’t be convinced by the arguement that people outside the group don’t beleive, as God didn’t reveal himself to that group. If I misunderstood, or if you didn’t intend to make this arguement, my apologies Sapo.
You’re right, and this is why I was careful to say that some differences are a matter of style, not substance.
I took the liberty of bolding the word where I think you go wrong (i.e. “just”). I fully agree that childhood indoctrination and societal pressure affect what people believe, about religion and about all sorts of other things. But they’re not the sole determiner. Otherwise how do you explain away all the adult converts to one religion from another or from atheism?
Don’t tell that to Thor. Or Apollo.
Why? I think the burden of proving such a claim is thoroughly in the OP’s court. I personally don’t consider my religious belief to be rational if we’re defining “rational” as “consistent with or based on or using reason”(first Google hit on define:rational). Nor do I accept the unspoken assumption in the OP that not rational or irrational means “false”.
My religion is one I have because of personal experience and faith, not reason. I don’t think I’m alone in this, although many people (myself included) try to present rational arguments for their religion, I’ve yet to meet anyone who “got faith” through logical thought alone. (I am aware that some philosophers have attempted to prove or disprove the existence of God through logic alone, but frankly, I’m not convinced by their arguments.)
My religion is literally irrational: “not consistent with or using reason” (first Google hit on define:irrational). It is outside the realm of reason, therefore it is not rational.
If the OP is claiming that religious people claim their religion is found through reason, then he needs to support that claim. If he’s using some other definition of “rational”, then he needs to define it and support that claim.
Their mythologies don’t involve celestial minions screwing things up (by which I presume you’re referring to Satan’s role in the Fall of Adam and Eve).
Perhaps those threads I’ve read where religious people get bent out of shape by an OP saying that religion is irrational are figments of my imagination. Often they were careful not to say religious people are irrational, though the responses often assumed they did. Not everyone is as rational in their irrationality as you are.
As mentioned, there have been many proofs of the existence of god. The correctness of these proofs is not at issue - they certainly attempt to prove religion rationally.
Eh. SnakeSatan gives Eve an apple. Loki leads the giants over the Rainbrow Bridge. Yet both arguably had some redeeming qualities. Not saying it’s an exact parallel, but it’s close.
What about the story of Pandora ?
Or the big dad god creating all other celestial beings. Norse mythology in particular doesn’t have a lot of the same problems as most of the Abrahamic religions.
It was always the gods’ intention she should open the box. Their way of getting nasty with us.
You are changing the terms of your discussion. You originally objected (to your false assertion) that religions claimed to be based on rational belief. I do not know many religions that have that basis. Now you are noting more accurately–but in contrast to your original assertion–that (given the starting points of their revelaed truths) religions tend to hold that their belief is rational. You may still object to their arguments, of course, or you may deny that actual divine revelartion is the sourece for their beliefs, but a strawman at the end of a bait-and-switch argument does not actually make the point you seem to believe it does.
As to your charge to “debate like the others,” my reading of this thread indicates that most posters are simply riffing off other comments and pretty much no one is seriously undertaking to either challenge or defend the strawman argument of the OP.
OK, so if those are your cites, please link to them. And be aware that if you link to threads with unsupported claims like this one, posts that equate irrationality to wrongness, stupidity or ignorance, then they don’t count.
Right, I know that. I was the one that mentioned it. But your claim wasn’t that a few philosophers have attempted to explain the existence of a creator through logic, but that religion itself is based on rational belief. Your OP then further expands that to “the vast majority of people born in Muslim countries” and “the majority of people in Christian countries” and finish once again with the assumption that someone besides you is claiming “religion is based on rational conclusions” Not “can be explained by” but “is based on”.
That, to me, is an extraordinary claim that has yet to be proven.