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Originally Posted by esspoker
Well for someone claiming you understand the mind of a religious person, I am a religious person and I don't think like that. So if you're genuinely curious, why don't you ask me?
Well, you do think atheists are angry little kids, like rebellious teenagers. You clearly don't have much to do with atheists. The concept of God is bizarre to me and most people I know, but bizarre in a distant way, kind of like how you'd look at witchcraft or astrology or paganism. A relic of deeply superstitious age where we didn't know much about the world and, being social creatures, invented and imagined human forms in everything to understand it. I don't live around religious people and I'm not rebelling against God any more than I'm rebelling against witches or aliens or The Matrix.
Apart from that I'd be interested to know what you believe. Do you believe in the supernatural claims of Christianity? Why?
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I can tell you that for me the world is a mystery, and faith is evidence that I think it's a mystery. If it weren't, I would call it "fact" and not faith.
If what you're saying about the limitations of the human mind is true, then atheists are indoctrinated as well. The logic cuts both ways.
Atheists aren't indoctrinated. Religious people are usually told from childhood specific claims which are presented as true, namely (for Christianity):
1. You have an eternal soul which contains the essence of you and survives death
2. There is a powerful force who loves you like a parent and is on your side on some level
3. You have to love this force back and be open to it to receive it
4. A bunch of associated claims/historical events come with this entity, some of which are plainly ridiculous, but despite this you have to have a special something called "faith" in order to prove #3
5. Faith is special and should not be questioned
6. (in most cases) This entity did all kind of things and had dealings on Earth, including sending his "son", the light made flesh, to save your unworthy souls
7. Questioning of the truth of 6. means your soul won't be saved and also means you fail at 3.
These receive constant social reinforcement, which is incredibly powerful given that people are naturally tribal.
In contrast, this is the indoctrination most atheists receive:
Do you see why people brought up without the specific indoctrinated and reinforced tenets elucidated above, and free from the social circles that provide intense direct and indirect pressure to adhere to them, are more likely to be rational and correct on matters relating to those tenets?
I'll agree with you that some atheists are just as dense and unselfaware as religious people and are atheists for reasons of rebellion or recalcitrance. These seem to be the people you're angry at, but there's mostly people who grow up in heavily religious communities - which makes me think you come from a heavily religious community. Because this type of atheists barely exists elsewhere; they have nothing to rebel against.
I would expect an atheist to be more correct about the ultimate truth of the various supernatural claims of Hinduism than a Hindu, of Islam than a Muslim. Wouldn't you? Do
you think Muhammed was a divine prophet? Do you think you're better at determining the truth of that fact than the 1.6 billion people who deeply believe he was a divine prophet (if the answer is no, then you should become a Muslim).
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There might be a God, there might not be a god. Anyone who says for certain there is no God is a moron, someone incapable of intellectual honesty.
My claim is that the concept of a God in a person's head has no relationship or correlation with God or to an actual entity or power who could be God.
When people say "God" they are talking pure fluff. It is a catch-all word to group a bunch of feelings and indoctrinations and leftovers from 20 years of parentally oriented thinking. As for the existence of supernatural entities, who knows? Reality is weird. We're ultra complex machines who can somehow feel and imagine and know themselves, crawling on a tiny ball of rock suspended in nothing in vast ocean of nothing where time itself is a dimension and only existing as an unfolding property of the universe. Pretty much anything could be possible.
But I can tell you for a fact that the human conceptions of God I've come across that are bound to religion are ******ed and infantile. I know this the same way I know that a child that says there's a four eyed monster under their bed doesn't have a four eyed monster under their bed. I know how a child's mind works to a good approximation and I know they are prone to creating fantasies and misunderstandings, and the claim presented is of a type that very clearly comes from that place because that is how a child's mind works. The same procedure applies to religious people bound to the claims of mainstream religions. Their beliefs weren't revealed or discovered. They were implanted in their minds. No Muslim has spontaneously come to Jesus without ever hearing of Jesus. Nor has any Mexican in the 9th century. Few people come to Christianity or Islam without being born into it or encountering it heavily in their social and cultural life. The chain of how the knowledge and "faiths" have came to be prominent and believed is very clear, and its very causal. As is the way in which and the reasons why people defend their religion. There is a causal chain.
Are there mystics and highly intelligent people for whom those models don't apply? Sure, and in some of them their thoughts and understandings and wisdoms are beyond my grasp. But 99% of religious people and religious claims, including about faith, are as straightforward as the kid with the monster under his bed. It is to those I am referring. The other are probably of the same type, merely with convolutions or abstractions beyond my mental capacity, but I wouldn't be so arrogant as to claim that they are of the same type, since I don't understand them.