First, you are reifying religion, as if it were some physical entity or external force. How specifically does religion take hold in a person’s mind? Please provide a cite for the actual mechanism.
I agree that believing without evidence is irrational. Somehow, though, you’ve made the leap from irrational to stupid. Please explain the connection. Also, please provide a coherent explanation of why there are educated, intelligent people who believe in God. While you’re at it, please identify and explain the relevant characteristics of “evidence” and compare them with whatever it is that you think leads to a belief in God.
Do you think that there is any evidence for the Sun revolving around the Earth?
“Don’t bother me with evidence! I have faith that the light is green!”
It seems to me that people of faith are perfectly comfortable making decisions based on evidence as long as the evidence doesn’t contradict their theological preconceptions.
Are you serious? They accept its assertions and alter their behaviors in line with the new information.
Trying to confuse the issue with nonsense questions is hardly helpful.
I said that it is a stupid action. Acting irrationally is often stupid. For instance, stupid people have trouble acting in a rational manner. Because they can’t choose the correct action. If you are afraid of mice and I have a pet mouse in my hand and am walking over to you. You could let me know about your fear, or you could in a panic jump out of a third story window. The second is irrational, and stupid.
Is semantic flailing all you have?
I said it plainly, a smart or educated person can do a stupid thing. There are geniuses right now who are addicted to heroin and sharing needles. So what? Smart people can take stupid actions, it happens all the time. And choosing to surrender to the delusion and baseless assertions of religion is a stupid act. Couple that with the fact that the vast majority of religious people are brainwashed into it by their parents as children, and I don’t see the problem you’re pretending to have understanding this.
Belief in God is self-serving. It is an easy answer, instead of facing the hard truth that after death there is oblivion. I’d like to meet the people I’ve loved who have died in the afterlife. It’s an attractive thought. But it’s nothing more than wishful thinking. Religion works because it preys on honest desires for meaning and assays the fear of death. That doesn’t make it correct. It makes it a particularly insidious lie.
I would say the Sun sweeping from east to west every day is a bit of evidence in its favor. Luckily, people looked beyond that and found out they were being fooled by their intuitions. If they’d only do that about religion the world would certainly be a better place.
What specifically is the “new information”? And how is it different from evidence?
What behaviors were altered?
How did the information alter behavior?
Easy to come up with general statements. Please provide some specifics.
The old “people are brainwashed by their parents” explanation. Who brainwashed the parents? And why did the children remain brainwashed when they became adults? And don’t hide behind the facile and empty claim: “Smart people can take stupid actions”.
Please explain how smart people come to believe in God, and how they do so without any evidence of any kind.
Whereas you are not self-serving, right? It seems that it is you who wants easy, simplistic answers to the complex question of why many people believe in God.
“A bit of evidence in its favor”?? It is a massive amount of evidence – every day, for countless generations, people have seen the Sun move across the sky. It is practically beyond belief that it is the Earth that moves around the Sun. Until you get some new information. BTW, what evidence have you used to conclude that the Earth revolves around the Sun? Please provide the observations, ideas, and the calculations that led Copernicus to conclude that the Sun was at the center of the universe. Or did you use some other evidence, like, perhaps, what people told you?
Just as there is plenty of evidence for a geocentric universe, there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God. But there is plenty of contradictory evidence, to the point the it overwhelms the idea of geocentrism and of a personal God.
The point of this thread is to stop the silly and false claim that there is no evidence for the existence of God. First, the idea of God is ambiguous and idiosyncratic, to the point of being meaningless. So, no evidence for what?
But, if we agree on any definition of God that is actually accepted by large groups of people, then, inevitably, there is evidence to support belief in that God. Not great evidence, but it is still evidence.
Right, but when given a choice between their theological assumptions and the evidence they far and away prefer their theological assumptions.
They are concerned with the evidence only insofar as it supports their preconceived view… which doesn’t really amount to very much concern for the evidence.
A red light doesn’t challenge anything upon which their self-worth house of card is built… so it is easy for them to look at it and take logical action… but geology, evolution, genetics and other very impressive modern scientific frameworks DO rub up against that house of cards, which is why they freak out a little on the inside when they try to consider them.
Believers are concerned first and foremost with preserving the self image they have constructed. A self image of a magical God-loved wonder-animal. Their relationship with the reproducible, peer reviewed evidence is an uneasy acquaintance, at best.
People who choose to take on a religion do it because they want to. You want me to explain to you how the brain works?
I answered your question. Explain exactly what you aren’t able to understand and I’ll do my best to help you.
No one is born believing in a God. They either decide to believe it on their own or are convinced by someone else. As I also said clearly, people keep their belief because it is easier than facing reality.
Smart people could probably understand what I wrote in clear English.
Do you deny that intelligent people do stupid things on occasion?
I have some facts for you: There is no evidence for the existence of God. Some smart people believe in God. This means that some smart people believe in God with no evidence.
Not at all. It’s easier to be weak and lazy. Religion is the easy path to take. It’s downhill. Why worry about injustice and fear death when you don’t have to?
Until you start making detailed measurements, sure. This has no bearing on religion, but congratulations on understanding this.
I went to high school. I studied and learned how the solar system works. Again, you are making a point that has no bearing on what you are arguing.
You are utterly wrong. Full stop. Whoever told you there is evidence for the existence of God was mistaken.
Provide evidence that God exists or retract this claim please.
The amount of people who believe something isn’t evidence that it is true.
I want an answer that is better than “because”. And, as long as you’re asking, yes, please explain how the brain works, specifically in regards to the formulation of god-belief.
Well, thanks for being willing to help me understand.
I asked you six questions (I even numbered them for you) and you haven’t answered any of them. Please answer them. Thanks.
You know that the brain is the seat of consciousness, right? You understand that the sense of you, that you have is in your brain, right? You know that your brain stores information, right? Asking worthless and banal questions to deflect attention is a pretty piss-poor attempt at debate. Aren’t you here to debate?
You asked nonsense questions. I assume you are a functional adult and could answer these things for yourself. What possible purpose could you have for asking them other than an attempt at faux-Socratic posturing? Why not ask what color the sky is, or how many feet Jesus had?
But sure, I’ve got a second. These answers will be about the Abrahamic religions in specific:
**1. Who created the assertions?
**Specifically? I don’t know, some stinking, primitive person or persons living in a miserable desert?
**2. Why were those assertions created?
**As answers to questions before science. And storytelling. And power. Any number of reasons. I don’t know in particular.
**3. Why did people accept those assertions?
**Because they were unbelievably ignorant primitives for whom everything was a mystery? Modern adults choose to believe in Scientology. Modern adults chose to believe in the Branch Davidian cult and gave up their children to be raped. People will choose to believe stupid things. Certainly people thousands of years ago were no less gullible.
4. What specifically is the “new information”? And how is it different from evidence?
Rabbi, priest or imam tell a parishioner that God doesn’t want them to masturbate. This new information is stored in the brain as memories. Specifically the type of memory called knowledge.
**5. What behaviors were altered?
**When Rabbi Joe said God didn’t want people to eat pork, boychick Larry stopped eating pork.
6. How did the information alter behavior?
Humans are able to access memories and use them to assist in choosing current behavior. Are you ready to stop pretending that you’re completely ignorant of humanity?
Can I ask that you from here on ask sensible questions that are actually based on the topic instead of this silliness?
The answers to your questions are lost in the mists of time. However, thousands of years ago God belief was probably the best answer to a lot of questions. What is lightning? We know that people throw spears, so why isn’t the answer really big people who live in the sky throwing thunderbolts?
Now, for this question. Who brainwashed the parents? Their parents, of course. I believed in God as a kid, because my parents seemed to do so, and so did everyone else around. But I never believed in Jesus, because my parents did not, neither did most of my friends, and I got sent to shul where no one did. What other explanation is there but “brainwashing” (which is too strong a term) for my God belief and lack of Jesus belief?
Since I became an atheist, my kids grew up with no god belief, and they both have become atheists. The extent of my non-religious training of them was reading the beginning of Genesis and pointing out the contradictions and absurdities. But they both had role models of parents who had no God belief, and this was plenty to make them uninterested even when they went to their friends churches and shuls.
How did I escape? It turns out my grandfather was probably an atheist, but that wasn’t something you advertised in 1950s America. I went to Hebrew School so that my father could invite his friends to a big bar mitzvah for me. So I was not heavily brainwashed. And, my friends both in high school and especially college and grad school were not exactly religious.
One nice thing about being Jewish is that you get a lot of the community and identity you get from religion just from who your mother is. You don’t really have to choose, and you don’t really have to believe.
I agree. So then lightning was evidence for the belief. Likewise, creation was the evidence for a Creator, and human intelligence was evidence for the Higher Intelligence that created mankind. In simple terms, god-belief explains why the world exists and why it is the way it is. Until a better explanation comes along.
And, of course, I was referring to the parents of the parents, and so on, all the way back to the point when people developed the idea of God for the first time, because it made sense. And, other people accepted the idea because it made sense. Today, it doesn’t make sense for some people, and there is a lot of evidence that contradicts god-belief or that offers a better explanation. God-belief is no longer necessary for many people so they subsitute the idea of God with a naturalistic explanation, or they abandon the idea of God because it serves no purpose in their lives.
Most people (98% according to the gospel of Segan) were indoctrinated by their parents and piers.
From birth we’re taught not only to believe but that we will BURN FOREVER if we even question those beliefs. That we will indeed be confronted with “science” and “facts” but they are the work of the devil and he wants you to fall for them so you will join him in HELL.
I haven’t seen a Gish Gallop like this one here in a long time. How do smart people come to believe in God? Who brainwashed the parents? Tell me how the brain works. Great stuff!
Ignorance, self indulgence and the desire to control others.
“Obey or die”. What makes you think they were given a choice? And after millennia of systematic murder by believers humanity has been selectively bred for a specific form of insanity, religion. We have an inborn tendency to fall for it, because for most of history being impious would get you murdered.
No, I used what science told me - which unlike religion has a history of being correct, and correcting itself when it isn’t. And if I’m interested enough to look, the evidence is provided - as opposed to religion, which has zero evidence to provide.
For any and all versions of god(s), and every other religious claim. That after all is part of the function of religion, to provide excuses to believe in stupid or evil things that have no evidence for them. If a belief is true it isn’t likely to be called religious in the first place.
No argument with any of this. I’ll just note that God belief doesn’t really explain anything. We can have Genesis, or we can have a good masturbating the universe into existence, or any number of other methods, none of which help us to understand the universe. Science does. The Big Bang theory suggests other things to look at with the goal of understanding the universe.
Not everyone who was indoctrinated into a religion in childhood was threatened with hell or told not to question. Neither my parents nor my rabbi ever mentioned hell - we don’t believe in it. And the very first story in my 3rd grade Hebrew “history” book was about a young Abram doing an experiment to prove that the idols didn’t eat the food placed for them, the priests did. That message of skepticism was not lost on me.
I agree that god-belief does a very poor job of explaining those things that science explains well. But science falls short in answering many of life’s basic questions.
For many people, god-belief fills in the gaps, not in understanding the natural world, but in understanding humanity’s role in it. This attempt at understanding is based on examining the evidence of the human experience.
Indeed, God never wrote anythig ,said any thing or inspired anything, all is the word, and work of humans, so our belief is in humans not God. No one can say in truth that they know anything about God, it is belief that was taught to them, they read about or thought!
Jesus was chastiseing the Pharisees because they accused Him of blasphemy becaused He called God his father, and said many times my father and yours! He taught people to pray,’ Our Father’ not our adopted father!
