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Old 06-04-2019, 05:55 PM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
48,564 posts, read 24,030,630 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Huckleberry3911948 View Post
Why do I believe in god?
Because if it’s just luck -if I were that lucky -considering where I came from and what I had to do and go through to get to where I am now -
If I were that lucky -I would go to the Indian casino down the street right now and clean them out in an hour
What you describe is not uncommon, plenty of people have led lives which seemed to defy normal odds, so you aren't in a position to claim something otherwise impossible.

Plus, anecdote is not evidence, or at least it shouldn't be employed as evidence.
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Old 06-04-2019, 09:31 PM
 
63,561 posts, read 39,846,061 times
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Default Reasons people believe or say they do. Can we list them?

Socialization or acculturation probably tops the list of reasons. My earliest memories were of going along to get along and do not recall any time (if it ever existed) when I actually believed in the religion presented to me. It was largely ubiquitous in the school plays and nativities, holidays, etc. I remember playing a Wise Man presenting Frankincense (but I enjoyed my role as Dopey in Snow White far more). I really hammed it up to much applause as I recall. In all that time, I cannot say that I truly believed in any of it.
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Old 06-05-2019, 12:01 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,083 posts, read 20,576,462 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
What you describe is not uncommon, plenty of people have led lives which seemed to defy normal odds, so you aren't in a position to claim something otherwise impossible.

Plus, anecdote is not evidence, or at least it shouldn't be employed as evidence.
Agreed. I am sometimes amazed at my good fortune to be where I am and When I am. But then, if that's a reason (as our Pal Huck suggests) to believe in a God arranging that all, why would he have an atheist right here and now instead of being a Moujik in 18th c Russia where my unbelief could do no harm?
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Old 06-05-2019, 04:24 AM
 
28,432 posts, read 11,518,409 times
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list the reasons ....

that does that
this does this
They seem to interact in this here manor.

I believe, based on those observations ... "insert statement that links to knowns".
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Old 06-05-2019, 04:55 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,821 posts, read 13,357,103 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
I'm unsure how to reduce this to a pithy sentence so that it fits neatly on your list, but I would add the person who has made a complete wreck of their life, reduced to alcoholism or drug addiction, who decides that embracing Jesus is the path not just to a post corporal reward, but the salvation of his or her life on earth.
Christian fundamentalism often presents itself as the solution to exactly this problem. It was what my oldest brother embraced, which made him the tip of the spear so to speak that drew my entire family into the cult. He had what they saw as a terrible drinking problem, when in fact all it was, was a terrible need for belonging problem. My brother transferred his loyalty to a less dysfunctional group than his Navy drinking buddies, and it was seen as validation for the power of god. My parents were terrified for my brother, didn't know how to help him, and god saved him, so far as they were concerned.

The impetus for that transfer of loyalty was some sort of wake up call I imagine (I was 3 years old at the time, so don't know first hand) where he realized this was not going to end well and opened him up to unburden himself with a Christian friend, who led him to a decision point using the fulcrum of repentance and committing himself to god.

So while the mechanism isn't what my brother thought it was, the church did facilitate and support his motivation to stop drinking and become a "respectable" citizen. It helped him to find his place in the world. It also gave him a way to manage his guilty conscience as he had done no small measure of carousing and hanging with "loose women" and the like. It did this, of course, in part by inflaming his sense of guilt around these things, never really resolving it.

The irony is that in his mid sixties when he realized he was going to die of a freak cancer, all that came back home to roost. He was obsessed in his final days with the notion that god hadn't forgiven him after all, that he had not lived a good enough life to deserve a nice retirement and easy death. Instead, he was going to die horribly in searing pain and leave his wife to fend for herself. He could not see his cancer as anything but god's just judgment upon him. He was inconsolable. He had tried so hard and (he thought) done so well. He advanced to deacon, and then elder, was a faithful husband, all of it. He saw all this as god's reward until it clearly wasn't a reward, and then he had to see it as god's punishment. It's all carrot and stick in that belief-system.

So while the claims of "saving" people from degrading lives isn't without substance or value, it is also a faux salvation that can really bite when the abstraction fails. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if my brother had found a more modern standard of care and counseling for his issues. That stuff can be hit-or-miss, too, but I'd put my money on that rather than on the church, as the best overall solution. Sometimes I think that even AA would have been better in the long run.
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Old 06-05-2019, 07:35 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,083 posts, read 20,576,462 times
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Thanks, Mordant. That flags up an aspect that the anti -religious can't simply ignore - the benefits - or claimed benefits - of religion. That doesn't make it True of course (only an evolved survival instinct), but it does give some weight to the 'We need it - true or not' line of argument. In the end I come back to what I decided and used as my Sig on my first board "The truth is important". I care about what I believe and will not accept being bamboozled on the grounds that it makes people behave better.
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Old 06-05-2019, 11:01 AM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
48,564 posts, read 24,030,630 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post

So while the claims of "saving" people from degrading lives isn't without substance or value, it is also a faux salvation that can really bite when the abstraction fails. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if my brother had found a more modern standard of care and counseling for his issues. That stuff can be hit-or-miss, too, but I'd put my money on that rather than on the church, as the best overall solution. Sometimes I think that even AA would have been better in the long run.
An example that I had in mind was the son of my landlady about 15 years back. He had been a hell raising drunk with several arrests for assorted alcohol fueled incidents, then he was "saved" by Jesus, I do not know the particulars. The saved version of him didn't turn him into a nice, selfless person, but it admittedly was an improvement over the trouble causing juicehead. He went to work as his mother's handyman, maintenance guy for the properties she owned.

My major memory of him was when he had chopped down a storm damaged tree, and then put a sign on it inviting whoever wanted lumber, to feel free to haul off pieces of the tree. The result was people coming by at all hours with their chain saws to get their chunks. I went to him to complain how his solution to the tree problem had created a bigger problem, chain saw noise that went on and on and on. His response was basically "tough." I then appealed to the Christian in him, asking him if his attitude was consistent with the beliefs he was now spouting.
Him: Oh, no, that's a trick.
Me: What? What is a trick?
Him: When you atheists try and use our religion against us
Me: Asking a Christian to live up to their beliefs is a trick?
Him: Yeah, and I'm not falling for it.

Well, as I noted, this was still an improvement over his inebriated days.

The one public example, the one complete success in the hell raiser-come -to-Jesus dynamic of which I am aware, is former heavyweight champion George Foreman. In his first incarnation as a fighter he was sullen, brutish, a bit of a dirty fighter and a monosyllabic communicator. After he lost the championship to Ali he fell into an extremely deep depression and at some point he had his conversion moment. The butterfly which emerged was this easy going, self depreciating happy fellow who was now one of the best natural comedians around. He really was a delight, I loved his appearances on talk shows, he always left you laughing...and liking him tremendously.
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Old 06-06-2019, 08:00 AM
 
Location: Elsewhere
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Quote:
me: Asking a christian to live up to their beliefs is a trick?
Him: Yeah, and i'm not falling for it.
lol
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Old 06-06-2019, 01:27 PM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,083 posts, read 20,576,462 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
An example that I had in mind was the son of my landlady about 15 years back. He had been a hell raising drunk with several arrests for assorted alcohol fueled incidents, then he was "saved" by Jesus, I do not know the particulars. The saved version of him didn't turn him into a nice, selfless person, but it admittedly was an improvement over the trouble causing juicehead. He went to work as his mother's handyman, maintenance guy for the properties she owned.

My major memory of him was when he had chopped down a storm damaged tree, and then put a sign on it inviting whoever wanted lumber, to feel free to haul off pieces of the tree. The result was people coming by at all hours with their chain saws to get their chunks. I went to him to complain how his solution to the tree problem had created a bigger problem, chain saw noise that went on and on and on. His response was basically "tough." I then appealed to the Christian in him, asking him if his attitude was consistent with the beliefs he was now spouting.
Him: Oh, no, that's a trick.
Me: What? What is a trick?
Him: When you atheists try and use our religion against us
Me: Asking a Christian to live up to their beliefs is a trick?
Him: Yeah, and I'm not falling for it.

Well, as I noted, this was still an improvement over his inebriated days.

The one public example, the one complete success in the hell raiser-come -to-Jesus dynamic of which I am aware, is former heavyweight champion George Foreman. In his first incarnation as a fighter he was sullen, brutish, a bit of a dirty fighter and a monosyllabic communicator. After he lost the championship to Ali he fell into an extremely deep depression and at some point he had his conversion moment. The butterfly which emerged was this easy going, self depreciating happy fellow who was now one of the best natural comedians around. He really was a delight, I loved his appearances on talk shows, he always left you laughing...and liking him tremendously.
If I may come up with a smart -alec rejoinder or response, it came out of something from the James Kirkup travel -books that i read (before i started going myself ). He was in the Philippines and some kid was trying to sell himself as a guide, but couldn't find what Kircup wanted (there's nothing much in the Philippines to see, which is why I've never been there. The las Pinas bamboo organ just isn't enough).
So kid offered churches and Kirkup said: "I don't need religion."

"Religion is good for you."
It took a while before I hit on the answer.

"Medicine is good for you, but only while you are sick. After that it's an addiction." (1)

While i can't deny that religion can often be the only way of humanising people who either know or care nothing about social rules, it's a pity that we end up with a lot of religion Junkies. Which would be ok in itself, but it causes social problems worse than a few abusive drunks.

The answer seems clear - keep the religion - in fact a whole raft of them. If our blind drunk doesn't like Christianity, you can try him on Jain or Zoroastrianism.

But for the love of humanity, let's not use the rehabilitation of a few violent sauceheads as a pretext to infest the social bod. with this pack of lies. Not just because it's untrue, but because of the people who use it to get and keep power.

(1) I can, of course, hear my converted Catholic colleague coming up with: "We are all sick." (with his chainsmoke puffing and a grimly sarcastic 'hur, hur' lol, signifying "I stumped the atheist")

Let me first dismiss one possible meaning of this crafty equivocation - if anybody ever uses it: Original Sin depends on Christian Dogma and that depends entirely on the Bible, which I reject and advise the populace not to fall for this Snake- oil scam.

The other is that society needs improvement and religion can cure that as it cures drunks. If anyone can't see the answer to that, I'll give it in exchange for the Reps which are my sole motive for even being here.

Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-06-2019 at 01:45 PM..
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Old 06-06-2019, 03:00 PM
 
Location: Florida
7,233 posts, read 7,025,519 times
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That's called 'hypochondria'.
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