Does a christian believe in Vishnu? No, of course not, they are atheist when it comes to that god, and the thousands of other gods humans believe in.

Were ALL born atheist, its the default position.

the tens of thousands of 'gods' man has made up and discarded over millennia.

I think the OP's point is dead on.

Vishnu hasn't been discarded.

and that we learn to be religious, but I am not sure that most people are just playing along. I think that most people do truly believe that there is "something more", and this is because they don't think about it much. They just accept that there is a god.

It would be interesting to know whether children born and raised in a remote place free from all influences of religion would create their own god or would happily accept that life is just life. Would they feel the need to explain the unexplainable? I think that this is what keeps people believing in god.

But I do know many people who are just playing along. And I am basing that on their behavior in all aspects of their life, including "I believe in god" but they never bother to find time for church. This seems to be a real cop-out to me---I don't know how you can believe in and revere a god, but not find time to worship and support that god.

Well, damn it, I may have just talked myself out of my first premise.

I had to smile when he said that they were not lost, so they did not need saved. Perfect.

But I keep reading that atheists are the minority and I just find that difficult to believe. I played along throughout my childhood, thinking if I played along hard enough I'd believe. I honestly thought something was wrong with me, and that I needed to hide it. It was with genuine relief that I figured out in my teens that I was an atheist, rather than a sociopath. And I figured it out by realizing that being without a god of some kind, did not make me a bad person doing bad things. I don't need a god to keep me from hurting others. My conscience does a very good job of that.

So I think atheists might well be a majority, but only a minority admit it.

Well, here's at least a whole tribe who appear to be natural atheists. No creation story, no gods, and no beliefs - other than a belief that "the world is as it has always been."

A RIVETING and hugely satisfying report on BBC Radio 4 today tells the story of a missionary who was charged by an American missionary group with taking the Gospel to the little understood Pirahas tribe in the Amazon – only to realise how ridiculous his faith in Christianity was.

Daniel Everett, 57, a linguist in the Departmental Chair of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Illinois State University, told presenter John McCarthy on the Excess Baggage programme, that he had travelled to the Amazon in the 70s to bring the tribe “the joy of faith” only to discover that they were a deeply contented people. In fact they seemed far better contented than he was...

The Pirahas, he said. believed that the world was as it had always been, and that there was no supreme deity.

Furthermore they had no creation myths in their culture. In short, here was a people who were more than happy to live their lives without God, religion or any political authority.

Despite Everett translating the Book of Luke into Piraha and reading it to tribe members, the Piraha’s sensibly resisted all his attempts to convert them.

According to a report in the New Yorker:

His zeal soon dissipated … Convinced that the Piraha assigned no spiritual meaning to the Bible, Everett finally admitted that he did not, either. He declared himself an atheist…

http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/

and encouraging story. Thanks for posting it.

It brings to my mind a movie from 1991 called At Play in the Fields of the Lord. Quite an epic film about a missionary family that goes to the Amazon to concert the natives. John Lithgow, Tom Berenger, Kathy Bates. A stunning film realistically portrayed and very moving but not quite the same ending of your posted story.

Which of course is not true.

Their answers were all the usual religious dribble but the big point that he learned was that they genuinely and completely believed it. Every religion teaches that it is the "Absolute Truth" and while fewer and fewer people are taking the bait there will always be people who do.

Doubt and certainty are very far apart although they might look similar on the surface from time to time.

The doubters are sensible enough to fix the leak in the roof rather than praying for god to make the rainstorm go around it.

I figure there's probably close to the same number who are certain there is no god.

Everyone else is agnostic.

and very different upbringings I would have a hard time thinking we are all to some extent atheist without including the possibility of being a born theist. I think our brains are very flexible especially when we're young and early impressions along with our own coding will strongly determine our directions.

I was brought up in a strong Christian environment and did my best to please, but it was never in me to believe no matter how hard I tried. But for others it's as easy as falling off a log. I'm sure our wiring has a lot to do with it and environment probably has even more to do with how we make life decisions than anything. Some people see the whole picture and can analyze it, others can only see one small piece of reality at a time and can't venture beyond a certain point. Others have a propensity toward confusing imagination with reality and others have a well defined view of the difference between the two. Some have an almost survival need to conform and others are loath to conform to anything. Some are adrenalin junkies and others are not.

I think we are a combination of what we are genetically and what we are made into by experience and there's a lot of room in there.

Through my 30s I was a believer, a Catholic no less! I remember clearly wondering as a child how come this all loving and powerful god let my brother and I suffer so at the hands of my mother. I was never able to buy into the guardian angel thing because of her abuse.

Through later childhood I took much comfort in religion. At school and church everyone was very nice to me. Never got hit, screamed at, whipped, dragged by hair or any of that sort of thing. Lucky to have had very kind, liberal nuns I guess. The whole Mary thing held special appeal to me, as you might guess.

Took my last refuge in religion after my dad's death. Was very emotionally tied to him and he was pretty devout. As time passed after his death I started following intellectual paths that led to atheism. I had outgrown my need for religion and was able to research and reason my way out of the world of magical thinking.

Julie

It's just that they can't bring themselves to analyze their religious beliefs too much.

My father was the son of a southern minister with a very religious family. They had coming if age ceremonies where they had to "accept the holy ghost" in front of everybody. My father, in talking to his older siblings said he couldn't really "feel" the holy spirit like he was supposed to be able to. His older siblings told him that you are just supposed to "go along with it".

My father, being incapable of being dishonest, refused to say he felt anything while onstage and seriously embarrassed the rest of his family.

I'm an atheist, and was never raised in the church, but his story Seems relevant to this point.

mainstream Protestantism (Lutheran, UCC, Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian) in middle to upper middle class white suburbia is practiced at least as much out of habit as out of deep and sincere belief in what's confessed on Sunday mornings. Dad ushers, mom helps with coffee or sings in the choir, they put little Susie in a pretty dress for her first communion and let the aunts and uncles dote over her. They sing the hymns and do the rituals. Because that's what their parents did (or do). Because that's where they have friends. Because that's what's expected of respectable folk in their demographic. Because being the only open atheist at the PTA meeting is still a little too radical and too exposed. But if pressed hard, I think a lot of them would admit to not really believing much of the supernatural stuff.

I see a lot of these people as rather like a supercooled solution (to be a science geek about it). Cold enough to freeze, but able to stay in the other state as long as nothing disrupts them. Or like Christopher Reeve in Somewhere in Time..able to maintain a fragile state of belief as long as nothing too contradictory intrudes on it, but liable to an abrupt transition.

I was raised Presby, but my parents never told me I had to get baptised, or I was going to hell. It was just a habit.

Later I found the UU Church which didn't have any of the silly beliefs of Christianity.
I was so sick of the myths & beliefs of Christianity being forced down my throat as I got older, and ran into Jesus freaks that were real pushy and rude.

I had prayed and all that and never got any evidence that there was a God. You are not allowed to ask Christian ministers hard questions. That is bad, because they hate disobedience and don't have good answers for the big questions. Christianity stole the pagan holidays like the winter solstice.

When my parents and maternal grandmother got old, they told me religion was a sham, they didn't believe in god, and thought that when they die, there was nothing after that. No heaven. And they were happy. They were down with it and I was glad that they were satisfied with their conclusions. My aunt, the Methodist, gave me a commercial for Jesus when I called her and told her her older sister died, and I was so pissed at her that I didn't even have a funeral for her, since Aunt Jesus Nut said "When you have a funeral, I want to be there."