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The more I work with people like Atheist Ireland the more Theists I come in contact with. Similarly the more I write and read on forums the more I meet too.
What I am noticing is that a vast number, possibly even the majority, of theists do not even take their own faith seriously.
They claim there is a god but structure none of their life around that idea.
They claim that there is a choice between eternal bliss or eternal torture, yet they proceed with their selfish and capitalist and self serving ways as if there is no such thing.
The claim that there is one book only that tells you the truth about god and its intentions and desires, yet most of them never even bother to read it and some people when I give them one are shocked to see how big it is.
I could list all day the claims they make yet much of their lives are structured as if they actually believe the exact opposite is true.
So yes I would, like you, question just how atheist most theists actually are. As Daniel Dennett puts it, many of these people believe in belief, rather than foster any such belief themselves... in other words they want to promote that belief, and they want other people to believe it, but they do not, or can not, themselves.
On top of all this, in many places in the world, there are those who do not believe but pretend to because of peer pressure or social pressure or fear of some kind of stigmatization. They think "This stuff is nonsense" but do not want to be the one to actually say it.
those ( apparent ) lukewarm believers are hedging their bets , they go to church on sunday etc yet they live the rest of the week as rational thinkers , a lot of people cling to belief because they see athiesm as anti social and against the grain , most people dont want to be different
Yes, it's about skepticism, so I suppose I could have worded the title differently.
From the beginning of Christianity up until probably 200 years ago, most Christians believed literally in the events and miracles described in the Bible.
This isn't true. The conflict between literalists and other interpretations of the Bible is as old as Christianity itself. Don't buy into the modern Fundamentalist propaganda that they've got a stranglehold on "real" Christianity. Much of their doctrine was invented in the 1800s as a modernist response to science and technology - they have not more insight into the only way to believe than any other brand of Christians.
The thing that cracks me up is, if people do believe in this all-seeing god, wouldn't they know that god would know that they weren't really believing, whether or not they go to church?
I do think, if the must-believe-in-god-or-else idea gets put into a child mind, it's hard to shake. One might be able to shake the rest of it, but not the "gotta believe in god at least" seems the hardest to shake.
It's been said that agnostic is the only intellectually viable stance, since supposedly one can't know/not know for sure. I say the god idea would never have occurred to me if someone else didn't bring it up, so I can say not-believe with honesty. Not saying that agnostics aren't honest, but that one can come off the center with integrity, too.
The thing that cracks me up is, if people do believe in this all-seeing god, wouldn't they know that god would know that they weren't really believing, whether or not they go to church?
I do think, if the must-believe-in-god-or-else idea gets put into a child mind, it's hard to shake. One might be able to shake the rest of it, but not the "gotta believe in god at least" seems the hardest to shake.
It's been said that agnostic is the only intellectually viable stance, since supposedly one can't know/not know for sure. I say the god idea would never have occurred to me if someone else didn't bring it up, so I can say not-believe with honesty. Not saying that agnostics aren't honest, but that one can come off the center with integrity, too.
+1 , soviets in the 1930,s laughed at uncle joes jokes even they despised him privatley , same with iraqis and sadamm , surely god would know that some people were only sucking up to him so as to avoid the oven
This isn't true. The conflict between literalists and other interpretations of the Bible is as old as Christianity itself. Don't buy into the modern Fundamentalist propaganda that they've got a stranglehold on "real" Christianity. Much of their doctrine was invented in the 1800s as a modernist response to science and technology - they have not more insight into the only way to believe than any other brand of Christians.
Imagine you are living in 1812. The modern study of geology is only in its infancy. No one knows what the age of the earth is. No one knows how far away any of the stars in the sky are, or how large the universe is. No one even knows what a galaxy is, let alone has ever heard of the big bang. A 3-year-old child named Charles Darwin is attending school in Shropshire, England. No one has any clue how one day decades from now he will turn humanity's understanding about life on earth upside-down.
In a world lacking so much scientific knowledge, don't you think most people in the western world would fall back on religion and believe that God must have created the heavens, earth, man and all life on earth? What else are they supposed to believe?
Imagine you are living in 1812...In a world lacking so much scientific knowledge, don't you think most people in the western world would fall back on religion and believe that God must have created the heavens, earth, man and all life on earth? What else are they supposed to believe?
Yes, most of them did (but not all). I agree that it was more defensible then, but we should know better by now, since we know so much more about how stuff works.
This isn't true. The conflict between literalists and other interpretations of the Bible is as old as Christianity itself. Don't buy into the modern Fundamentalist propaganda that they've got a stranglehold on "real" Christianity. Much of their doctrine was invented in the 1800s as a modernist response to science and technology - they have not more insight into the only way to believe than any other brand of Christians.
That's a point worth considering. Theists often claim that the great minds of old (including scientists) were all creationists (the argument is often put using that very word) and, as in the way of theist apologetics, there is a grain of truth. Up until Darwin (we keep coming back to him - no wonder Darwinism is such a focus of Creationist hate ) there was no theory of any other origin of our world than Goddunnit.
Even in the times of the enlightenment when it was painfully clear that there was no God, the thinkers of the day were deists - in a sense, creationists, because they thought (and this is reflected in the writings of the founding fathers) that there was a god who made them, but He (or it) wasn't around now. While they were, in a sense, Creationists, they had little time for the miracle- claims of the bible and less for organized religion, except as a way of keeping the scum in line.
But that is not quite the same as the creationism we have today, which is remarkably similar to the flat earthism of the 19th century (1) which only died a long overdue death when the first photos of a round earth taken from space were published.
While flat earthism was at first a misconceived attempt to be scientific and only later went biblical in order to get religious support (and the church has been rather unfairly saddled with the flat earth -belief legacy ever since), creationism started out as a religious objection to Darwinism and only later engaged in misconceived attempts to be scientific, look scientific and even buy into scientific.
(1) This was the brain-child of Robert Owen(1771-1858) who was led by socialist views into questioning the scientific orthodoxy. His original view that nothing should be accepted on trust, everything should be subject to proof, is laudable enough. unfortunately, he seems to have done what he accused scientific orthodoxy of doing; starting with a theory and adapting the facts to suit it, even to inventing entities for which there was no evidence and no need. He lectured and pamphleteered as Dr. Birley Phd' and later after changing his radical views to a defence of the Bible, as the anonymous 'Parallax'. he impressed his audiences by remarks such as (in reply to the evidence of the shadow of the earth on the moon) "What proof is there that it was the shadow of the earth at all?" If he did get worsted in debate, it was noted that he would sieze his hat and march out.
Not sure what people in 1812 would think unless something was stuffed into them as children, like bible or whatever.
I imagine Indians or other indigenous people who had never heard of god/bible/creator as such had their own ideas but nothing that looked like the Christian world.
Not sure what people in 1812 would think unless something was stuffed into them as children, like bible or whatever.
I imagine Indians or other indigenous people who had never heard of god/bible/creator as such had their own ideas but nothing that looked like the Christian world.
Perfectly true. while it seems probable to me that a huge invisible human is why things happen (until science discovered physical and biochemical processes could work on their own account) it is evident that the gods of horses turned out to have four legs. That is, we all created gods very much in our own image. And then said it was the other way around.
I'm not going into the debate about power and control, but where we ended up was a lot of authority figures shoving a Holy Book at us and telling us that it was true.
In the 18th century, people really began asking searching Q's and decided that it couldn't at base be true. They didn't have the answers that we got in the 19th and 2oth century and why in the 21st we still seem to be struggling against the perpetration of myth peddled largely by what (as the greatest country in the world) ought to be the most rational, but apparently, it isn't.
Atheism is the default position into which we are born. Theism is taught. And an agnostic is someone that is still made aware of a god, however, at a later date.
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) there was no theory of any other origin of our world than Goddunnit.
that a huge invisible human is why things happen (until science discovered physical and biochemical processes could work on their own account) it is evident that the gods of horses turned out to have four legs. That is, we all created gods very much in our own image. And then said it was the other way around.
