WTF is this forum coming to? Awesome discussions on life, the universe & everything!

I've followed most but probably not all of this thread, so forgive me if my following question has already been answered. I was hoping to elicit such info in an earlier post but no-one took me up on it:

Would any-one with faith care to share with the rest of us the origins of their faith?

Whilst I would, broadly speaking, say I am aligned to the definition of atheism on wikipedia (i.e. there are no deities), if I were to experience a direct form of communication with a deity then, once I'd questioned the likelihood of my hallucinating etc. I would obviously be open to adjusting my position. Does that make me agnostic? Does it really matter - I don't think so.

So in the above respect I am most interested in what others have experienced that has given rise to such great conviction. Please share.

 

I was raised in a Protestant environment, with everyone from my family to schools blindly practising their faith by singing hymns and reciting prayers together. Yet I can remember from a very young age being extremely lucid in my mind that the ritualistic and supernatural nature of the worship held no logical meaning to me. The whole thing just reeked of nonsense.

Do not misunderstand, I heard some great ideas about society and life, and I listened to some great sermons from some genuinely intelligent men and women. But these were always invariably spoiled by their conclusions or meanings being inextricably linked to God.

By the age at which I was able to opt out of the indoctrination cycle, that is exactly what I did. I studied religion and philosophy in sixth form and gained a philosophy degree thereafter. At no point in any of this did I ever develop, understand or feel any inkling of "faith".

I have always lived my life as well as I am able to, the more obvious moral teachings of all religions are common anyway and I truly believe that if religion was factored out of existence humanity would continue to recognise that killing = wrong etc. I will ensure that my daughter is raised with a sound moral framework, and by the time she is able to she will be allowed to make her own decisions regarding religion and religious beliefs. However I strongly believe that in her formative years she should be raised without faith, to allow her a fair opportunity to reach her own conclusions.

Faith is a product of nurture not nature in a huge majority of cases, and in the rare instances where a person finds faith later in life I'm pretty convinced that a good course of therapy would be enough to find the root cause. Unless it's as obvious as a traumatic event.

I believe that the analytical and evidence driven nature of my mind is the only reason I didn't become part of the flock.

I would suggest that I am not alone in my experiences of faith, even on this forum.

 

hey I was just trying to lighten the mood

thing with christianity, you really have to understand why people believe what you consider crazy.. growing up I was very pro choice.. like most thought looking at the issue- it's a womans body.. let her do what she wants.. end of story

but why try and sneak up on my backside and give me sausage surprise

you see hopeless people and realize.. you know what, they just don't know.. it doesn't have to be like that.. I'm sure you've seen it where you work too nexxo- people off drugs, there's people on death row who've coverted, bums who reintegrated into society.. it's more than a helping hand

most need a traumatic incident to finally take the first step- that's true.. but if you've seen true christians in action.. it's not about oppression at all- it's about being freed from your old ways of thinking- being truly happy without that titty bar and helping along the way before your stinking up a box somewhere

*edited out cartman.. was over the top

 

Probably agnostic.
Atheism=There is no God
Agnostic=You don't know

Many people here don't believe, and rightly so due to lack of any empirical evidence for God. However there is also no evidence for a God not existing therefore Agnostic is the logical belief to hold.
http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html#

 

That is why I say that I am extreme agnostic and not atheist.

 

I disagree. Firstly atheism doesn't require anyone to say that there is definitely no God or any other deities. Atheism is the lack of belief in their existence, not the belief in their non-existence.

Secondly I think that agnosticism is only the logical position to take when all other positions have an equal probability of being correct. For example, it's logical to be agnostic about the existence of aliens because we simply don't have anywhere near enough information available to us and it's a 50-50 toss up as to whether they exist or not. I would contend that in the case of God or any other deity that isn't the case. We have plenty of evidence to demonstrate that nature is perfectly capable of producing everything we see around us without the need for the intervention of a deity but none to show that he is needed. Furthermore if a deity does exist and has interacted with the universe in some form or another then there should be some evidence of that which so far we haven't come across. Now it may be that we're too intellectually and/or technologically immature to be able to locate this evidence but given our current knowledge I don't believe that the question of does God (or any other deity) exist is as simple as a 50-50 choice. When we are aware of mankind's proclivities for creating stories to explain the unexplainable and in the face of so much evidence to demonstrate that said explanations are no longer needed with no evidence that they are I think we can begin to shift the probabilities of existence. Doing this eventually leads us to the point where altho we can't entirely rule out the existence of deities due to the lack of definitive proof we can say it's highly likely that they don't exist and are nothing more than the creation of mankind.

In my case I'm atheist but I don't hold the view that deities definitively do not exist, merely that it's extremely unlikely they do so I live my life as if they don't. I'm agnostic about the existence of deities to the same extent as I'm agnostic about the existence of goblins and dragons and fairies....

 

You couldn't help it, could you? Surely there aren't many atheists out there who, if confronted with irrefutable evidence of the existence of a god, wouldn't reconsider their position. Just because an atheist believes that won't happen, it doesn't mean that it won't. Anyway, please let's not get bogged down in the distinction between one and the other, cos I ain't boverd.

And anyway, I'm too busy rofl at:

 

but doesn't creation bother you a bit? I mean life where proteins line up in goop just right to kick start a chain of dna.. and they have found we come from one monkey in the gene pool (I'll spare the details on what that monkey looked like)

that's the thing.. the more they try to prove life just happens- the more it looks as if that's not the case.. even some guys- they are so bent that there's life everywhere claim 100% chance on certain planets in the goldilocks zone.. that's quite a jump from honest to agenda

good to keep your mind open though.. think a lot of people want red headed aliens to land in their backyard tomorrow

 

If my understanding about evolution and the current scientific views on abiogenesis were as bad as yours then yes it would bother me a bit. Fortunately that isn't the case so no it doesn't bother me.

 

You've got this a little wrong I'm afraid. Agnosticism is a position about the universe - namely that certain things are unknowable, or to bring in the name, that regarding some matters we are necessarily without knowledge Atheism is a position about the existence of supernatural beings. It is not a stance on religion, agnosticism is a position about knowledge. People who list this as their "religion" are generally atheists. You can be atheist and gnostic, or religious and agnostic.

Now some people say that athiesm is a positive statement that there definitely (100%) isn't any good, but that's a bit of a strawman. I don't know anyone who isn't a teenager who'd claim such a thing. What most "strong" atheists really claim is that we can say there is no god in the same way we can say there is no invisible pink elephant in the corner of every room which moves around really fast and silently so that no-one ever detects it. I can't be 100% that the elephant doesn't exist, but I can say that there is no evidence for it, and so it's not very likely.

That misunderstands how proof works and who the burden lies upon. I don't need to provide evidence that god doesn't exist to say that god doesn't exist. Just as I don't need to provide evidence to prove to you that my elephant up there doesn't exist. If someone wants to claim it does, they have to bring evidence. If they fail to bring any then that does not mean that we're both at even chances of being right. It means they're probably wrong and I'm probably right.

No, it was an inevitability. If you understood evolution you'd understand this too.

This isn't true. In fact the more we try to prove that life occurs under specific circumstances the more it seems like it very much is the case.

 

Well I guess if you feel the only way you could ever be happy is by lying to yourself, the only way you can control your desires is by repressing them, the only awe you can experience is a particular story written by a few nutters a few thousand years ago, the only way you can help other is from the threat of divine retribution and the only sense of purpose you can experience is to blindly serve, then there's not much more to say.

Personally I find the idea of a omnipotent man with first century human morals in the sky perverse. Furthermore, it's so unimaginative, any deity that has the time to give a **** about us is quite clearly a fairly minor specimen. What's worse is that to affirm such a specimin entails denying the constant and boundless beauty of the universe, I am in a constant state of awe about every new thing I learn about the universe we live in. For me, ascribing to any modern religion would be the equivalent of confining myself to a small box for the rest of my life with just enough sustenance to continue living.

 

Just to clarify I'm not stating that its some kind of 50:50 toss up. I'm saying that while I'm 99% sure there's no God I'm not certain so therefore I can't identify myself as Atheist due to its definition as the belief that there is no Deity.

Dawkins argues the point much more eloquently than me.

 

Yes, you can. You are an atheist. Atheism does not mean you must declare the positive statement that a god has been proven not to exist. This is impossible. It means you declare a negative statement about what others claim. That there is no evidence for a god. Declare yourself as you like, you're an atheist.

 

Atheist isn't a belief that there is no deity, it's the lack of belief in a deity.

I don't think he does. I think he argues the point that atheism is an appropriate term to use even tho we can't 100% definitively say that deities don't exist.

 

hehe ok let's talk about abiogenesis.. tell me how it happened? this should be good.. let me pull up a link on where science is at right now.. remember there is no evolution going on before life exists.. let's hear it!

http://naturalselection.0catch.com/Files/whichcamefirst.html

 

Electricity + hydrocarbons + water vapour = life, give it four and a half billion years and we have this rather confusing debate, and a rather confused hippoz...

 

hydrocarbons? except that would be an opinion based on the study in livermore.. check out the titan arguement- hydrocarbons can possibly be created without biology (atmospheres contain methane on certain planets and moons in our own solar system- jupiter, saturn, ur anus)

I'm not saying it's impossible- anything is possible.. be nice if someone could explain how in a more scientific way- I know it's over your head but that's my point.. it's almost impossible from what we've found to date.. they found no life (that we know of)

if we could prove that.. then you've just about debunked all of intelligent design

 

I really don't have time to sink my teeth into this as I'm off to bed, but I do feel that I have to advice you to rethink your source(s). Sean Pitman ... a medical doctor who specialiced in pathology is not the best source for current status on research into abiogenesis. Particularly not considering the strawman versions of it he is espousing; "It would be like taking millions of watch parts and shaking them all together for a billion years and expecting a watch to self-assemble just because all the necessary parts and required energy are there."

Nor is he the best source to consult regarding relativity.

 

Intelligent design has already debunked quite thoroughly.

 

Funny, I haven't seen a single article to that effect.