I don't understand how people believe.

Greets

In 4 decades have come up- with a few angles.. and is that not what 'looking at the idea of design'
Is all about..
new perspective = new understanding. In all situations...
it's not about knowing.[knowing is an effect and a ground]
Life is about.. asking the right questions.

Roo

 

I dont care.

The most powerfull words ever spoken.

Understand them. And you are set free.

 

LMAO if people are programmed to believe in God, that would make the belief in God natural. Why in the fuck would we be NATURALLY inclined to believe in something that isn't real?

 

We naturally believe lots of inaccurate things. What matters is not that our beliefs match with reality but that they prove evolutionarily useful, ie they help us to survive and reproduce. Many of the instincts behind religion and god-belief are very useful in evolutionary terms: group cohesion and loyalty, hostility towards out-groups, agency and threat-detection, social reasoning, altruism...

 

Please tell me which natural human instincts are wrong.

There's a difference between natural believing and conditioned believing. The latter can disguise itself as the former, actually it usually attempts to just about all of the time.

And I don't believe in God. I know God. Beliefs are for things that could possibly be false. While I don't think I know everything there is to know about God, the experiences I've had alone tells me there is a higher power that has been guiding my life even during times I didn't realize it. I don't even acknowledge the religious version of God because Christianity describes God as a slightly nicer devil. God is Love.

Spiritual awakenings are real. But someone tried to explain theirs to me before I had mine and I was completely lost and thought they lost their mind. People are conditioned to base their beliefs on experience, mainly personal experience. So how could I possibly explain a spiritual awakening to someone who has no experience with it?

This aint what I WANT to believe, I used to be as atheist as you all. Only I didn't feel the need to post on religious boards or even have discussions with religious people. I felt people who believed in God were so stupid they didn't even deserve my time.

Nice to see atheists are evolving LMAO.

 

Here you go, stare at the black cross for a minute or so:


Explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilac_chaser
There are simply tons of things about which your perceptions differ from objective reality.

Something like 90% of the humans on the planet have some kind of spiritual/god-belief. It appears in all human cultures. Something so universal cannot be cultural indoctrination. Religious belief is as natural and instinctive as having legs...

 

I'm not doubting that we are inclined to believe in God.

I'm also perfectly aware of the fact that perception and reality hardly go hand in hand.

What I'm saying is, there is no backbone to the argument that people being programmed to believe in God is based on illusion.

 

I agree. The pioneering researcher on the genetic basis for belief, Dean Hamer's The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired Into Our Genes, concedes: "If there's a God, there's a God. just knowing what brain chemicals are involved in acknowledging that isn't going to change the fact." Hamer's book is based on research showing correlations between nucleic acid cytosine on the VMAT2 gene and feelings of self-transcendence and mysticism in a sample of human subjects. The study is open to criticism. First, the title is misleading. Feelings of self-transcendance and mysticism are not necessarily related to belief in God, as the godless religions of the east bare witness. Second, we don't know the incidence of cytosine in the general population. If it is proportional to believers in the general population, that would be significant; if not, other factors must be involved. My observation is that some believers are not very self-transcendant or mystical at all. Their religion is esssentially a routine. Third, the data lends itself as readily to the interpretation that God programmed us to believe in Him as the interpretation that we developed a concept of God to improve our survival. Of course, there may be other factors besides genetics at work. Dennett's Breaking the Spell doesn't endorse the genetic theory, but does identify a number of plausible social and psychological factors that could plausibly account for the development of religion. But plausible explanations don't necessarily mean true ones.

 

Selective breeding, it's been going on for millions of years.



Believe in my God or die.

 

Just out of curiosity, re the photo of the pile of bodies. Where was that taken? What bodies are we looking at? Does it have something to do with God or religious belief?

 

I was going to ask the same question, Okie. I'm thinking it's in Armenia.

 

Jews from the Holocaust. The file name gives it away.

 

I personally would never say believe in my God or die. I personally feel God will Love you whether you believe or not as long as you live right and even if you don't live right God will still Love you and be there to steer you the right way whenever you're ready. That's what I'd personally say. I don't know how true that is but I do know God is Love and Love is not controlling or possessive. Only someone controlling and possessive would tell you "believe what I believe or die."

Wow, you atheists really think all people who live through God think like Christians huh?

 

It's all butterfly kisses and lollipops until you skip to the polls and vote in the next economy crushing war monger because your judgment is askew and you think he believes in god like you do.

 

That's only if you're a right wing fundamentalist. I voted for the other guy!

 

I don't vote.

I voted for Gore in 2000, as did most other American voters yet we somehow ended up with Bush for 8 years.

That's all they had to say for me to know my vote doesn't count.

 

How do you feel about the last election?

 

I ignored it almost completely.

Obama was chosen long before anyone went to the polls.

So I didn't bother waiting on those long ass voting lines.

2 middle aged black ladies who lived next door to me at the time were mad at me for not taking part in electing the first black president. If only they knew they played the same exact role as I did.

 

That's how we got eight years of G.W. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

 

lol