You believe in God because your parents believed in God

And their parents believed in god, and their parents believed in God, and their grandparents grandparents great grandparents believed in God.

Belief in God (or any other non provable concept such as astrology, psychics, etc...) comes from being raised in an environment where the elders who shaped you when you were young instilled those beliefs into you.

For the most part.

Others, (a very small minority), came to believe in God (or astrology, or whatever) because they grew up in poisonous environments and needed something, anything to give them some sort of purpose and/or meaning to their lives. They were abused, or became alcoholics, or were unloved. Then, when those people have children, their children become part of group number 1, for whom beliefs are instilled from their elders.

There is one more group, probably even smaller than the first two. These are the people who had personal experiences that changed their lives in such a grand way that the only possible explanation is that a higher being must have been there to guide them. People who have near death experiences. People who see visions (angels, etc...) People who "saw the light" one day, if you will, through someone else's act of kindness, or a natural phenomenon of the universe, or pure dumb luck. Once again, these people have children, and the children become part of group number 1.

Every believer here is part of one of these groups. Which one?

is being introduced to the concept at a very young age, and having it confirmed by someone the child relies on.

IMO all groups share this common experience.

your parents didn't believe in God?
There is a logical fallacy in your thesis probably created by a particular agenda or point you are trying to argue.

I don't see the fallacy. What was posted in the original post makes sense -- if you believe that God exists, there's a reason why you believe so. Either your parents believed in God and passed it to you (like in my case) or there was a life-changing moment where you came to accept God.

This is, of course, if you believe in God. Big caveat there.

that it is giving extra weight to what your parents believe the way the premise is constructed and I am inferring that that extra weight would not be given to what your parents believe if you don't believe in God.

If that extra weight was given to the parents in the second case of not believing in God then there would not be such a fallacy. So I am reading between the lines and thus perhaps misreading .... but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm not misreading.

My belief is that you believe in something because you believe it after thinking it through on your own, not because of someone telling you to believe it. I'm not really sure I would say that you really believed something unless you had thought it through on your own.

edit -- to be a bit more accurate maybe I should say that there is a fallacy in how the word believe is being used in the thesis.

If the question is about how belief comes from parents, then **belief** that there is no god, must come from parents too.

I'm emphasizing belief here because to say that something does not exist because there is no empirical evidence assumes that everything in the universe(s) has been tested in every configuration of relationships to everything else in the universe(s) resulting in no empirical evidence, ergo there is no god, when in reality, it's really just that there is just no empirical evidence of god.

Note also how this assumes that rational empiricism (knowledge) is omnipotent.

Saying there is no god is a belief also.

at least it's rational. Blind faith is too "kool-aidish" for me anyway. Organized religion is the greatest breeder of hate in the world. Always has been, always will be.

Of course that's just my rational side talking, I could be wrong. ;)

To say anything absolutely, e.g. There is no God, in terms of rational empiricism, you have to have tested everything in the cosmos in every relationship to every other thing in the cosmos in order to say there is no empirical evidence of god. Have you dont that? No. Therefore, the statement, in terms of rational empiricism, would more correctly be put, "There is no empirical evidence of God." Or, "There probably is no God."

Rational empiricism does not produce absolutes. If it did, it would fill our definition of "God".

my faith isn't blind. If I didn't have some marker I could recall, I'd be an agnostic.

I have no belief in god. There is no proof for god. I am the null hypothesis to those that believe in god. I have nothing to prove, since I am not making an affirmative statement.

How many times does this need to be said in here? How many times do people have to tell atheists what they do and don't believe?

Do you have belief that there are no dinosaurs living right now? Do you have a belief that I do not own a pet dragon? Do you have belief that there are no unicorns? Not if you are being honest. So if someone came along and said they had a dragon for a pet, the burden would be on them, right? You would not want them to say that you just "belived" there was no dragon.

I'm tired of typing this over and over and over and over....

If you take this as some sort of personal attack, you apparently think it is more important than I do.

You type something in response to a post. You obviously feel strongly enough about it to put it out there and take the time to reply. I find something in there that doesn't seem right and is similar to a million other discussions I have had and point it out. And then you just dismiss it. I never said it was a personal attack. I said it was not correct and gave you several examples of why I think that is the case. Respond or don't, but the brush off is a little uncalled for.

Patrice is not saying that our saying "we don't believe in gods" is an affirmative statement.

To be honest, I think she's actually nailed the difference between strong/weak atheism that so many believers refuse to acknowledge.

I don't think Patrice is attacking us, or is even wrong. "There are no gods" really is an affirmative, unsupported statement, for reasons described below.

I don't think that is the case. And I know that I am going to open a can of worms here, but here is what I feel.

We don't talk about anything else like patrice wants us to talk about god. Nobody walks around saying that they "believe" there are no dragons living in the Rocky Mountains. Nobody says, "Since I don't know everything and haven't searched the world over, I believe that there are no dragons in them there mountains, but I could be wrong and my belief that there are no dragons is on the same evidenciary level as those that believe there are."

If we don't talk about that for anything else in the world, why do we reserve that leave just because this is god. I don't get it. God is the only thing that gets this level of treatment.



I guess at some level I don't buy into the strong/weak distinction. But that is a discussion for a different time, maybe.

Anyway, I have no problem with your comments ever. I understand your point.

that there are dinosaurs living right now.

Or did you get drunk and watch The Land Before Time one too many times? :P

Maybe she's got a way back machine.

I know my damned parrot is.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html

n/t

Now I'll have to apologize to the guys at work who believe Noah had dinosaurs on his ark.



:rofl:

American Heritage:



Science and Technology Encyclopedia



Unless your parrot is millions of years old, he's not a dinosaur.


Britannica Concise:


Columbia Encyclopedia:


From Wikipedia:



more from Wiki:

that link talks about birds being decedents of dinosaurs. It does practically TRY to confuse the issue though.

However I think its fairly clear that birds have evolved from the period of dinosaurs just as much as other decedents of the dinosaurs. Calling a modern dinosaur is the equivalent of calling a human homo-erectus.

My 9-year-old godsdaughter got it in about ten seconds. And here I thought you were into science.

Why do we always have to do the research for you, okasha?

Every time you make a ridiculous claim, you fail to back it up, we end up doing the work for you, post our findings and then you start playing semantics until you realize you can't argue your way out of the maze you created.

I would expect such scientific ignorance from a 9 year old, but even they know how to look up definitions.

See post http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=86320&mesg_id=86714">#107

It's fairly obvious who isn't into science.

Or definitions.

And here I thought you were into language.;)

It certainly is. Maybe if you got beyond the dictionaries and the encyclopedias into the actual scientific literature. . ..

They're not just making shit up off the top of their head like Ken Hovind and the anti-science crusaders on DU.

Just because I'm feeling generous, why don't you have a look at the link Hunter cites? Maybe I'm just prejudiced, but somehow I think the real, live scientists at the University of California's Museum of Paleontolgy know more about the subject than someone who appears to have a degree in Google Studies.

You might be glad to know, though, that the fundies agree with you 100%.

http://www.cryingvoice.com/Evolution/Dinos.html

http://www.s8int.com/dino1.html

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v15/i4/dinosaurs.asp

http://www.projectcreation.org/dinosaurs_and_people/dino_people_detail.php?PRKey=6

http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/dinocam.html

http://icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=306

http://www.gennet.org/facts/nessie.html



Birds are the descendants of dinosaurs but scientists are still debating whether or not birds can be considered dinosaurs.

Until the jury's back, I'll stick with the original and accepted definition.

Of course, you and your godsdaughter can always inform all the nice scientists that you've already made the decision for them.

Let me know how that goes.

Note to self: Do not attach things to the ceiling when you have a parrot.

Note to okasha: Hunter is a wicked amateur evolutionary biologist, and left wing radical Catholic too.

They're cavity nesters--do you suppose he's trying to tell you something?

Note to okasha: Hunter is a wicked amateur evolutionary biologist, and left wing radical Catholic too.

And very good at both, it seems. ;) Left wing radical pagan, free-lance naturalist (to borrow John Tveten's term) and nature writer here.

If you had, you'd have noticed they never mentioned birds. But what the hey, if you can get one of your little bouncies in, who cares if you have anything relevant to offer, right?

I will admit you're making progress, though. You've gone from calling anyone you disagree with "ignorant" to at least acknowledging that there are other views. Keep up the good work.

Where's the new and improved definitions, unique translations and historical revisions that you normally pull out of your toolbox when you can't back up your claim?

Tsk, how disappointing.

N/T

You'll just keep playing word games until everyone has forgotten that you insulted Zhade, made an unsubstantiated claim, offered no explanation or evidence when asked, and can't admit you were wrong.

Yawn.

NT!

You do understand it wasn't meant to be "rude" or "offensive," of course.

atheists and challenges them at every opportunity, are you?

'Cuz they have issues.

If I were stalking Zhade, I'd be posting at him every 20 or 30 minutes nonstop for a couple of days. When he very reasonably offered to take my problems with him to PM and spare his other readers the spew, I'd refuse on the grounds that he's a potentially violent person who might do me physical harm. I'd steadfastly ignore the pleas of more reasonable posters to shut the hell up.

That's what I'd do if I were stalking someone. I just don't think I'd have the patience to be very good at it, though. :)

If you weren't trying to make Zhade look stupid, you should be able to provide proof that you weren't arguing from ignorance.

All you've done so far is evade the questions and pretend another poster made your point.

Happily, atheists like me (of the "weak", which is to say non-assertive, flavor of atheism) don't say that, because we recognize that to be able to know that statement would mean we know all information in the universe, which would ironically make us gods!

I think the OP could be refined to say "the idea of believing in gods" comes from parents/other authoritative figures in childhood.

but I assert that there's no god, because it's just pretty fucking obvious - shall we a say a real safe bet? - and not because I think I know all information in the universe. I certainly don't imagine I'm something I don't believe exists.

I don't have a problem with anyone saying "there's no god" is a statement of belief. It's when they add that it takes faith or is an unprovable statement that I take exception because, in my view, all it really takes is common sense - the kind most people talk about but don't really have - and there's a lot of proof, or I should say evidence, if only people would recognize it.

So now here's you, comparing strong atheism to some kind of god complex. What is that? It sounds like an agnostic position to me. It's pretty close to saying there might be a god, after all.

I don't mean to pick on you, and I'm sure it's been discussed to death, but I keep seeing this bit about an unsupportable statement or unprovable assertion, and it's extra bothersome coming from other atheists.

Why separate yourself - or me, by making that distinction?

I didn't attack you.

That aside, here's where we differ:

"It's when they add that it takes faith or is an unprovable statement that I take exception because, in my view, all it really takes is common sense - the kind most people talk about but don't really have - and there's a lot of proof, or I should say evidence, if only people would recognize it."

Believers say a very similar thing about their gods. The fact remains that as close as you may be to 100% accurate, you simply do not know everything in the universe, and thus cannot logically rule out that there may be beings/forces/whatever somewhere that would fit our definition of gods.

What you've pointed out supports you partially: there IS strong evidence that the gods of major religions (I'm ignoring the ones I don't know much about) do not exist as described, based on impossibilities caused by physical laws of the universe as we know them.

But there might be super-advanced extraterrestrials somewhere we know nothing about that that would be "gods" to us. Who knows? I won't pretend I know everything in the universe and state flat-out that such beings have been found not to exist. It's intellectually dishonest, even if the probability of such beings is tiny.

I am an agnostic atheist, in that I don't know any gods exist (due to the lack of evidence) and thus don't believe in any of them. The only difference between you and I is that I haven't ruled out the possibility of gods existing, while we both have ruled out the probability of them existing.

I hope that made some semblance of sense.

although I wouldn't think of super-advanced extraterrestrials as gods, even if they put us here to observe us and are manipulating our world in some way. Then they're just like, I don't know, overlords. I'm willing to bet against the existence of any being or entity that transcends laws of physics. It isn't intellectually dishonest.

Thank you, though, for your thoughtful reply. I didn't think you attacked me. Why did you think my post was vitriolic - because I said fucking obvious?

:D

It was more for everyone's benefit. I thought about saying darned instead - in fact I even typed it, but felt it weakened my strong atheistic statement. That's something that Nice Mormon Girl Atheist would say. Well, she'd say flippin' obvious.

It's all good, my friend. A little earnest discussion is good for the, uh, 'soul'.

:hi:

I grew up in Jack Mormonville, had about five years of forced participation as a teenager. I blew it off 19-20ish and then sort of forgot about it until about three years ago, when I realized how profoundly it had affected my life.

I didn't know you were exmo, either.

Girlfriend thing. Like all other mythologies, I couldn't believe the silliness.

sorry, PZ Meyers fan here.

That seems to be kind of a cop-out on the whole question.

Most atheist websites and even Wikipedia has information about strong or explicit atheism.

It is absurd to think that one can have absolute knowledge that there are no deities.

I am an explicit atheist when it comes to the christian god, but only because christians are the ones who dictate said god's parameters.

and I hope you're not suggesting I should agree that I have faith because some atheist websites and Wikipedia say so. I don't have a particular problem with distinguishing between strong and weak atheism, although I think it's nitpicky and wonder why the weak atheists don't just throw in with the agnostics - especially if they include super-advanced extraterrestrials in the god category.

Okay, maybe it's absurd to think one can have absolute knowledge that there are no deities, but it's not absurd to have a lot of confidence that there are no deities.

should check out some of those atheist websites. ;)

We're a bit more complex that most theists give us credit for, remember, they're the ones who keep claiming we're all the same.

and make a note to self. If I was into complexity, I'd propose some new subcategories, like absolute strong atheism and confident strong atheism.

I'm still exploring explicit atheism and pondering whether my disbelief in the supernatural puts me in that category.

affects my thinking about atheism.

But, then again, I watch too much Star Trek.

(Gods, AFAIK, and definitely no such thing as watching too much ST!)

I think they are as varied as the believers who conceive them.

I will give you the latter, there is no such thing as too much Trek. :D

NT!

by evidence.

Oh what fun it is to create a pre-axiomic infinity! (The state of mine right now - the one drawback is it can trash any incident information)

It is absurd to think that one can have absolute knowledge that there are no flying spaghetti monsters.

Here are a few more statements, and you tell me if you think they are absurd:

It is absurd to think that one can have absolute knowledge that there are no giant mutant ants ready to invade planet Earth.

It is absurd to think that one can have absolute knowledge that there are no Klingons.

It is absurd to think that one can have absolute knowledge that there are no hobbits living in trees in the forest.

Until then, the belief that you have absolute knowledge about the non-existence of deities remains absurd.

Simply put, something that is supposed to interfere with our lives so compellingly should have a lot of evidence, and the lack thereof means that there is only a very small chance that there is such a God, in fact, by varying interference by God we can take the chance as close as we like to zero, and at zero implicit = explicit atheist.

(If you like formal stlye, then "For each difference q > 0, we can choose some God G such that lack of evidence thereof implies P(God exists) < q" As per formal definition of limit)

Anyway, I would still argue that there is not conclusive evidence for the set of all Gods around the maximum probability density where neither effect nor required evidence dominate.

In other words, if God does nothing and sits there it is the same as no God.

If God is supposed intervene constantly, then the absence of evidence is actually evidence of absence.

However, at some point where God intervenes only a little we are unable to rule out that God is there.

:)

A little technical, but very correct. :)

a god sitting there doing nothing is still a god, doing nothing ... or doing something we're not capable of observing/understanding ... or don't have a right or adequate knowledge or experience to comment on.

To me, it - meaning the man-god or any intelligent thing with a mysterious purpose and the power to intervene, that might regard me as anything from a beloved child to an inconsequential speck - just ain't there, and my saying so does not mean I think I have infinite knowledge. I do recognize that that's not possible.

Yeah, there might be a big giant head floating out there somewhere, looking at us. Or some other extremely powerful, previously unknown thing going about its business, with or without awareness of our existence, affecting us in ways that could be called godlike. I doubt it, enough to say it's not there - i.e., there's no god.

There's something to be said for validating (as purely as possible) two "opposed" phenomena to the point that you can hold each "truth" as nearly equal as possible. It's kind of free-ing.

I dislike false dichotomies because I basically distrust language (It's a construct, please see "the Absurdists" such as Samuel Beckett or Ionesco). There is so much lost to fights over words that are essentially arbitrary to begin with.

In fact, the language you're typing in helps prove the point you're arguing against, I think.

Do you believe in English like your parents?
...or

Did you survey the the available languages and decide that you preferred English?


Do you believe in working dozens of hours a week to earn money to buy 'products' to live in this culture like your parents?

...or

Do you live as harmlessly and carefree as a coyote?

when I edited and added " to be a bit more accurate maybe I should say that there is a fallacy in how the word believe is being used in the thesis."

so fallacy might not be the exact word.

It doesn't disprove the point I'm making either.
You missed that my point was that there is no difference (at least in relation to beliefs coming from your parents) between God believers and God disbelievers.
That's what the false construct of the original argument is (despite the poster claiming s/he is not making that argument - it's implicit in making the point in the first place).

Equating language and belief in God as being similar processes is slippery reasoning. Language is not a belief in the same way that belief in God is a belief.

You also are making an awful lot of assumptions about my lifestyle and my parents' lifestyle.
I find it very amusing.

but the coyotes in my neighborhood aren't harmless. Free, maybe. But I have provided them dozens of chickens, ducks, geese, sheep and goats over the years!

I could have been more clear, though.
I was trying to point out that humans in our culture today do not live as harmlessly as coyotes.
If we did live as harmlessly as coyotes, the community of life on earth would be much better off.
Coyotes don't make it a policy to destroy their competition, but our culture does.

go after the same chicken and the coyote beat up the fox, but that's a pretty isolated event!

j

I didn't (and am not) say anything about people who don't believe in God. I'm talking about the ones that do.

And I'm glad you're still here.

:hi:

Being here is preferable to the alternative. :toast:

I'm betting on it.
Even in your response you make a distinction between those who do and those who don't.
I don't agree with making that distinction.
How people arrive at their beliefs does not have to do with what belief they arrive at -- a belief in God or not.
Implicit in your distinction is the premise that it does.

Attending 'church" was like taking part in a fantasy theatrical production.

I could always relate closer to the warm caring nature of Christ than I could in any other part of religion.

I'm curious because my parents were LDS, and attending church didn't feel natural because we had not always done it. I felt like we didn't belong there and they were trying to be something they weren't, or maybe just trying to become something else.

There was a definite sense of trying to fulfill some fantasy of theirs - like we were emulating the Osmonds or this other particular family in our ward. My dad put these people on pedestals. You wouldn't even believe how much trouble I got in for making fun of Donny and Marie.

My mom now says I don't remember our family as it was, and once even said I wanted a different family. I think that's projecting on her part, because I've never told her what I said in my first and second paragraphs. I just try to tell her how it was for me, when she asks, and in response I get stuff that deflects attention away from her failure to ask me at the time.

Anyway the theatrical production really struck a chord. I suspect you meant something different, but I'm interested to know what.

my parents nor grandparents never discussed god yet i believe. I did however grow up in a world where some people i met did believe in god.

The question this line produces is how did the concept of god get started.



crazy person or seeded by God.

We really don't have original beliefs. We adjust beliefs according to circumstances.

possible to develop original ideas and ways of thinking.

but then I remember some original thoughts I had at a very young age, like 3-5ish, that could have turned into beliefs if they'd been validated. I remember sitting in the back yard, looking at the mountains around me, noticing they resembled teeth (or so I thought), and thinking maybe the world is inside a giant's mouth.

Another time it occurred to me that my parents might have been bank robbers who kidnapped me. Sure, I probably got the bank robbers and kidnapping from TV, but the application to my parents was totally my idea. And this was long before I had a problem with either of my parents.

Is that you believed something when you were 3-5 years old, but then later, because those beliefs were not validated, you got over them.

Why does the same thing not happen with the belief in God?

just thoughts I had - you know, what-if kind of stuff that I don't think I told to anyone else. Belief in God gets validated by others' expressions of the same belief, and that seems to be enough for most people.

My mother spent a lot of time with me when I was very small, reading and singing and drawing pictures. I entered first grade believing a particular shade of crayon was called "greeny blue," because my mother said so, and quickly got into an argument with another little girl across my table who insisted it was "greenish bluish."

I was all, "No way," knowing that greenish bluish was less gramatically correct and therefore less likely than greeny blue, and immediately doubted what my mother had told me. My dad had supplied a lot of prior experience with a parent lying about things like chocolate milk coming from brown cows, the plastic cow atop a silo on what is now the Van Winkle Expressway being alive, and other stuff even less likely than that.

Unfortunately, the labels had been peeled off the crayons in the box at the center of the table. But I could read, and I had crayons with labels. I went home and checked, and then Lisa G. learned it wasn't greenish bluish OR greeny blue.

I confronted my mom, too, and while I don't specifically remember what she said, I do remember she was defensive and full of denial.

Then there was the much more profoundly disturbing experience of discovering from my fourth-grade peers that my parents had lied about Santa Claus. Ugh.

If these kinds of things happened more often with ideas about God, religion would quickly die.

use the word "God".

I think it is relatively obvious that there is something that caused everything to be, i.e. "the first cause", the reason why there is something rather than nothing.

I think there is some affinity between humanity and this reality that I just refered to as "the first cause", by that I mean that we apprehend it to some extent, though "as through a glass darkly". Our experience of it does not extend beyond that limited and wordless apprehension. We do not "know" it directly, completely, nor perfectly in any way. Though we are of it, and have therefore some congruence with it, it does not "know" us beyond the fact that we are part of it. In fact words like "affinity" and "know" do not apply to it; words only apply to us. They are our constructions, not reality itself.

I think it's there. I think we are a part of it. I think being part of it affects us in some ways that we can recognize and that it is possible that it can affect us in ways that we do not as yet, or cannot ever, recognize. We do not affect it. We affect only how we apprehend our relationships to it.

I wasn't sure that made sense.

When you tell people from the time they're babies that they will be punished eternally in the Lake O'Fire or whatever, well, that's kind of damaging mythology to push on young children. I would never belong to any kind of "fear factor" religion. I was raised Catholic and while there was a lot of positive things about that experience, that "justice after you die, we promise!" thing always seemed like such a conjob to me, even as a kid.

until a Catholic friend clued me in. Freaked me out.

At least, it's probably a significant portion of intelligent adult believers.

Some believers are raised by parents of faith; but, as adults, they reject their parents' beliefs -- and even belief in God -- for years or decades. Before coming to a different sense of God and spirituality.

In my case, it was studying philosophy and reading a wide variety of books (even books like The Brothers K) that eventually led to developing my own sense of faith.

My mom, stepfather and father were and are all agnostics or atheists, very hostile to organized religion. Yet, I've been a Christian most of my life, from childhood (albeit a very liberal one), and attended church with friends each week while growing up. I'd believed in God and wanted to attend church from my very earliest memory. I'm 41 now and am still a liberal Christian. And my parents are still agnostic or atheist.

I think. I don't know that I know anyone in that situation!

I didn't always know that was the case

I think you wayyyy oversimplify your groups.

I came to know God when I needed him most.

It really wasn't a case of I needed "anything" to belong, but if you want to put it in those terms I'll buy.

So what?

...that most people that do believe in god, do so primarily because of the way in which they were raised (i.e., - through the influence and education of their parents). The other avenues that lead toward a belief in god: reared in an environment of opposing beliefs and life-altering events I think are valid, although probably occur less frequently than the former.

Based upon anthropological study, belief in supernatural beings is consistent among all prehistoric groups. Belief in supernatural beings is closely related to experiences with cataclysmic events and occurrences in nature that are inexplicable. And thus such beliefs provide a form of insight as well as an outlet for understanding of the whys and wherefores of their existence.

Early humankind's gods were primarily about things found in nature. Those that killed and therefore were feared. Those that provided sustenance and therefore required supplication. And those of the mysteries and therefore demanded our respect and unquestioning subservience. And elements of all of these can still be found in the so-called "modern" religions. And it will no doubt continue this way, except as we gain in knowledge and understanding.

:toast:

So what can I say.

My family were very religious, believed in a god, and apparently tried to teach me to "believe". However, I never realized I was actually supposed to believe. I thought they were teaching me what was proper for me to profess to believe (like a form of etiquette).

I was about thirty (and hadn't been "home" for fourteen years) when I finally realized that I had been expected to "believe", and that some people actually did believe. I can honestly say that it shocked me.

Beliefs, especially religious beliefs, are generally handed down through tradition. Just have a look at the geographic concentration of the world religions. Such concentrations aren't accidental. It's not as though everyone freely chooses to believe what they think is the best sounding story after a comprehensive review of all major belief systems. If that were the case, you would expect the concentration of religions to look a bit more random.

There's a pretty strong correlation between the beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children. This is not, however, a perfect correlation. There are apostates and theists whose parents were not religious. By and large, however, the story is that if you believe X, your parents probably did as well.

Of course, there are other variables at play. Things like rebellion and life-altering events, as you mentioned play a part. There are doubtless many other influences on our beliefs as well, like level of education and SES. The real story is undoubtedly more complex, bot those are just two variables that I know have a relationship with religious belief.

it would have been kind of odd had I grown up to be a Muslim in a family of Episcopalians.

a good pilot for a sitcom :)

it could probably be determined how accurate or how generalized by a couple of simple questions like these:

Did your parents believe in God? or maybe What, if any, religious beliefs did your parents teach you?

Do you believe in God? or maybe What, if any, are your religious beliefs today?

I'm sure there are other questions which could be added to cover the other questions.


For me, I do believe in something greater, you can call it God, or All That Is, or the Great Creator; it matters not. My mother was raised Baptist, my father was raised Methodist, traditional beliefs, not hippy types. However, I can clearly remember at a very young age - like about age 2 - knowing that I had lived before. At that very young age I believed in reincarnation, even though I had never heard the word, my parents never believed in it or even discussed it. Furthermore, I never talked about it to them, I understood they wouldn't get it - and I knew it would upset my mom, something I never wanted to do, even as an adult (my mother was the greatest person ever). This was about 1961-62. I can also remember being in vacation bible school learning about Jesus and thinking to myself that these stories are too simplistic, too dumbed down, why are these people taking them at face value? Although at the time I would not have been able to articulate these thoughts, at the time it was more a knowing than a string of words. I was a rather precocious child, I learned to read and write at age 3.

The point really is that without any exposure to these beliefs which were totally foreign to my very traditional, mainstream - and southern to boot! - family, I as a small child had very different beliefs.

edited to add: these thoughts often scared me when I was really young because I thought I'd be in big trouble, or would be going to hell if anyone found out!

God-Subjective & Objective view points

This entire Universe is objective because the Creator is the subject and the Creation is the object. Any item in the Creation is also object. The human body is the most convenient object. Through such human body only the Lord should be meditated upon and should be served. The subjective God (Creator) is beyond words, mind, intelligence, logic and imagination as said in Veda. Gita says that if one approaches the subjective God directly, he will end in misery (Avyakthahi Gatih Duhkham…). This verse in Gita means that the souls having human bodies cannot worship the subjective God directly because such worship leads only to misery. You cannot even imagine the subjective God. When the approach is subjective, the mind is destroyed as said in Gita in the above verse. Only the objective approach will give happiness because there is no difficulty in capturing the God through an object. Since you are an object, you can capture the boundaries of another object through your mind.

Any object is within the four-dimensional space-time model. The subjective God is beyond the dimensions of space and time. When you try to capture the subjective God, the mind is unable to catch Him and undergoes lot of difficulties leading into strain that destroys the mind. But when you experience God through a human being you will not have any strain in capturing God who is identified with the object. When the subjective God is not at all experienced, how His characteristic sign, which is Bliss, can be experienced? You are not seeing the Sun directly and how can you enjoy the heat or light? Even if the Sun is not seen directly if an illuminated lens by Sun is seen, you are enjoying the light and heat atleast in small quantities in reality. When the Sun is completely hidden by the clouds, neither Sun nor his heat nor his light is experienced. Bliss is defined as the continuous happiness, which is infinitely intensive. You may mistake sometimes the temporary happiness also as Bliss. When you have not tasted the infinitely intensive happiness, you may misunderstand even a small shadow of the bliss (happiness) as bliss itself. Moreover, the bliss of yourself is not the highest goal. You must please the Lord and pleasing the Lord must be highest goal.

Therefore, your experience of the bliss need not be necessarily the pleasure of the God. The Bliss can be obtained from materialistic things like drink etc. Only the divine knowledge followed by the divine love and bliss can give you the identity of the Lord. But once you recognized the Lord by the knowledge, love and bliss, your aim should be the service of the Lord through which the Lord must be pleased. In service you may not have the bliss or sometimes-you may have to face even lot of unhappiness. Jesus told that unless one detaches even from his life for His sake, he couldn’t be His dearest disciple. But you should feel all that unhappiness as your happiness if your unhappiness in terms of service pleases the Lord. You must have patient analysis and power of discrimination in the search of the truth. Your aim should not be the attainment of bliss but making the Lord blissful through your service and sacrifice. If this ultimate goal is realized, the soul gets the top most place in the heart of the Lord.

You have entered the heart of the Lord deeply through your proven love towards the Lord in the very first step itself. The Lord wants sincerely to hold on you in the path of the truth. The Lord does not want to use any super power in this matter because the path of the knowledge and devotion should be spontaneous, natural and real. The final result of the effort of Swami thus depends only in the power of your discrimination and on your patience to analyze in search of the truth. You will have firm faith only when the divine knowledge helps you as a fertilizer to germinate the devotion and also acts as a pesticide to remove worm like attractions and illusions of Saturn, who always tries to take away the sheep from the Lord like a wolf or a fox.


At the Lotus Feet of His Holiness Sri Dattaswami

Anil Antony

www.universal-spirituality.org
Universal Spirituality for World Peace
antonyanil@universal-spirituality.org

did you type that out yourself or cut and paste it?

Welcome to DU.

imagine such a thing meant it must be true. The faithful just know there is. Existentialists just know there isn't.

A good time for that cool Polish poem that goes something like

Even if there IS no God
You still have a responsibility
not to tell your brother
that there is no God.

He is an interesting atheist.

Far and away it is because one comes from a family where people believe in God. Think about it. Why do you believe, say, Hinduism and not Christianity? Chances are it's because your parents are Hindu, and their parents, etc.

that works very well and makes it close to impossible for a society of unbelievers to emerge. One of the successes of the Enlightenment which led to the founding of the US was replacing religion with reason. It only takes 2 generations to build a tradition in a single community. The biggest threat is secular social services and religious/cultural diversity which is why many major cities have the highest number of non-believers. They do have success in neighborhoods as one can see in NYC for example.

It is pure psychology and human nature. People have needs and whoever fulfills those needs will become the popular and powerful.

Marxism is feared by all organized religions because the needs of humans that have historically been used by religion to gain adherents are taken care of by the secular state. All non-religious movements that provide social services and fellowship(unions, freemason lodges, ethnic clubs, etc..)are a potential threat.

States with official religions are not so much a threat because theists are easier to convert/control.(except for the Jewish people)

In the US, Mormons are a good case to study as is Scientology since both have used the "formula" successfully.(Christian Scientists and Jehovah Witnesses are two other cases documented using the formula)

Secular movements have been less successful since they immediately are ganged up upon by all the different religions whenever they gain traction. The Fellowship foundation in DC a/k/a The Family is the "cabal" which keeps secularism in check.

Why do you believe in God? and somehow imagined you had, until I read your post a second time. That's why I had to delete one of my replies below.

You started out with a pretty bold statement. Sure, I believed in God because my parents did, and I think a lot of other people believe for that same reason, even if they won't admit it. But you didn't give them any wiggle room, dividing them into three groups - doot, doot, doot.

I'm surprised you're not getting more indignant responses.

Some people never knew their parents. Some had parents who believed but effectively encouraged their kids to think for themselves and really did let them decide. Others had parents who didn't believe in God - maybe they had friends or a role model who introduced them to a particular way of believing, maybe they had a transformational experience, maybe they went looking. Some people are just seekers, without ever being abused or toxified.

The three groups you've specified are too limiting.

WENT TO CHURCH. But we didn't pray. It would have been in rather poor taste, you know?

But I have had a few personal experiences that have reinforced my prior belief and taken me to a different level of faith than I inherited from my family.

My children are agnostics.

rational empiricism, i.e. our basis for what we call knowledge.

If your statement, “There is no God”, is based on evidence, in this case, the lack of evidence of God, then the process by which evidence is identified and validated, rational empiricism, is the standard. (If it's not based on evidence, then it is indeed a belief.)

Rational empiricism says if we test the relationships between experienced/physical phenomena we can make statements about their causes and effects. Those statements are called knowledge. Athiests are saying they have no knowledge of God when they say "There is no God" because they see no evidence of God upon which to base knowing.

I am saying that rational empiricism does not allow that kind of statement, an absolute, because it is not possible to test all physical phenomena, under all circumstances, in all combinations of relationships to all other physical phenomena, everywhere, thoughout all time.

The statement therefore, "There is no God", in terms of rational empiricism - our basis for knowing anything rationally, is not possible. It is more properly, "I see no evidence of God" or "There probably is not a God". Knowledge is always qualified by, always relative to, the conditions of its "proof".

Rational empiricism does not produce absolute statements. Treating it as though it does makes it the god that you say does not exist.

in response to Zhade.

Do you apply that same standard to everything or is it just god? Do you think that a declaration of there being no dragons should rightfully stated as "I see no evidence of dragons" or "There probably aren't dragons"?

I see the world as there is no god. What I mean by that is that there is absolutely no proof whatsoever for the existence of god. I can explain it best in terms of statistical research. My statement, to me, is the null hypothesis. I don't have to prove it, I don't have a belief in it, that is the zero state.

I understand what you are saying about the concept of absolutes. But if we start making that move, I think we can naturally move into the nature of reality and whether we can know anything.

"I see, or no one has ever seen, evidence of _____________".

I do not understand how you think you can say there is absolutely no proof of ______________ until you have tested everything in the universe, in every relationship to every other thing, under every circumstance, throughout time. Whatever proof you have of ________ is relevant to the conditions that produce it and those conditions are limited by the process of "proof" itself.

For the empiricist there is nothing but your experience, you manipulate it with various tools, but it IS limited. You can, to a certain extent, use the experiences of others as long as they abide by the same rules for establishing what their experiences are, but that also is limited.

Rational empiricism does not allow us to "proove" the negative. For the reasons I stated before there's no way you can absolutely proove something isn't, only that it "is", or more properly "might be". Some things "are" with such a high degree of probability that they might just as well be absolutes, but they are not nonetheless.

one baby-step from extreme skeptisicm (not that I have a problem with that approach necessarily). We have no way to know that we aren't actually fueling the battery for the big bad aliens. We have no idea if that person offering us a red or blue pill is even real himself.

If that is your stance, then fine--nobody knows shit. We could all be somebodies nightmare only to disappear when they wake up. But who actually goes through their day like that? That there is no god has, for me, such a high degree of probability that it is an absolute. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are unicorns, too. But I doubt it.

Nice avatar, btw. It is the desktop for my computer. I love Vincent. My wife doesn't so much. She thinks his art is to dark and violent for her liking. I did persuade her to put a print of this beauty up in the bedroom. It so completely matched the orange/yellows in our room it was hard for her to turn it down.

Rational empiricism (RE) works pretty good for positive statements (statements like "__________ is" and all of its derivatives and permutations) because RE is based on observed relational experiences. People just need to remember that because what we call knowledge IS limited to experience, "________ is _________" is still only a statement of probabiity dependent upon the conditions of the experience that produced it. What we call knowledge and "proof" are really just statements of probability (sometimes very high probabilities, but probabilities nonetheless (until everything in the universe is tested yada, yada . . .)). A word I use instead of "proof" is "support", because too many people understand proof to be 100% and though things might get close (99.99999999999999999. . . .) they aren't actually ever 100% (until everything in the universe is tested yada, yada . . . . )

My problems with this thread were two:

RE is experience based "knowledge". People seemed to be using RE to proove a negative, something to the effect that "There is no God, because I/we have experienced no evidence of god".

If they claim knowledge is experience based, i.e. to be rational empiricists, well then, RE simply *******HAS NOTHING TO SAY****** (one way or another) about that which is not experienced.

RE also seems to be used to produce absolutes, as though everything in the universe HAS been tested, in all combinations of relationships with every other thing, under all conditions, throughout all time, in which case it meets the conventional definition of God.

.......................................

I love Van Gogh!!! Starry Night feels to me like the verb we refer to, somewhat in-accurately, as "reality". I know what bothers your wife about his pictures; some of his sunflower pictures are downright creepy. I like that about them. The cafe makes me think of an experience my daughter and I had in Baden Baden, Germany several years ago.

It's been fun talking to you. I'll say hi if I see you around.

In Robert Heinlein's A Stranger in a Strange Land, Michael Valentine Smith's friend and kind of a sponsor, Jubal someone (I hope you'll pardon me, I read it when I was 19, and I can't remember his last name) Jubal kept what they called a "witness" (3 or 4 of them actually - all beautiful women, though a witness could be anyone who was properly trained and certified) on his payroll and on hand at all times. Witnesses were trained and certified and their testimony in a court of law was highly valued. Anyway, Jubal, in explaining to the "stranger" Michael Valentine Smith what a Witness is, said to one of his Witnesses, whatever her name was "______, what color is that house over there?" To which the Witness responded, "This side of it is white."

That's what Rational empiricism is.

and actually in the case in many others of my generation. I know many who had no religion that found one, or completely changed faiths, or denominations, or became orthodox members of the faith that there parents were non-observant in. I came to believe in God after growing up in an agnostic household.

Think of Cat Stevens converting to Islam, for example.

Your third group seems to disprove your thesis, however:
"These are the people who had personal experiences that changed their lives in such a grand way that the only possible explanation is that a higher being must have been there to guide them." You limit the idea of God to a being, which many with religious belief do not. However, being or not, it shows that people are capable of independent thought and analysis and experience.

I see your thesis as being essentially that people believe in a faith because their parents do. What is missing in this analysis is that belief is infinitely subjective; their understanding and practice of their faith will inevitably be different, even in the most rigid and formulaic of faiths, from their parents and from everyone else. Every believers relationship with God is ultimately personal, no matter how much organized religion tries to be come intermediary and authority. There will be commonalities and differences with everyone else, even in the same church.

This is another shining example of how the premises one already accepts as true have a strong tendency to skew reasoning processes.

No question that for some beliefs about a great many things are primarily influenced by their surroundings - the standard nurture argument. Family, culture and context all influence the values a person holds, or the way in which beliefs are formulated and adopted.

However, ultimately you place to much emphasis on the nurturing component and not enough emphasis on the fact that it is still the individual ultimately accepting and rejecting these influences and forging his or her own path. By your analysis, most people who are raising in a certain kind of religious way would grow up to emulate that upbringing. But we know this is often not true - so often in fact as to make the basic premise unreliable. Many people who have shed any belief in a god or gods were raised to believe in god. And many more who were raised to believe in god a certain way, go on to find their own path and ultimately adopt beliefs that are not compatible with their past.

Second, your claim that every believer here is part of the three groups you mentioned seems to be false. It fails to appreciate the nuances in how people believe, what people believe and why. It doesn't seem to appreciate for example, the difference between people with literalist beliefs or more traditional beliefs verses people who understand religion more broadly in a much more philosophical way, where myths and historical traditions may contain within them valuable life lessons worth taking seriously, or may point symbolically beyond themselves to a broader dimension of human experience. People who see their beliefs like that haven't necessarily been in such a horrible life place that they turned to religious dogma for saving, nor have they necessarily had a special revelation of some sort as you describe in your last group.

Now its certainly possible if not probable, that the reason such folks may find something of value in any kind of religious exploration - even a very non-traditional one - due in part to their upbringing and the influence of culture and context on their lives. But again, to act as though this is always the case is false, or to act like individuals do not ultimately remain responsible for an in control of their choices is false. We know this because of the many many individual's raised with certain beliefs who walk away from those beliefs or come to believe something different in their adult life. It happens all the time.

Finally - the biggest weakness of the argument is in the "most people" "fewer people" "even less people" breakdown of your argument. People love to say things like this, but usually it only reflects their gut feeling about what the "majority" of people do vs. the "minority" of people. You don't have any statistical data on those breakdowns, or any evidence at all other than what "feels" naturally right to you. But I would argue that even if on the big picture you are right, and the number of people who come to their beliefs through life desperation is smaller than those whose historical context has impacted their thinking, it is still a large enough number of "other people" who fit those categories and several other categories so as to make all the analysis basically meaningless.

The only think you can rationally claim here is that:

-some people grow up and fully adopt the beliefs with which they were raised
-some people grow up and fully reject the beliefs with which they were raised
-some people come to new beliefs later as a way to rectify a bad situation
-some people come to new beliefs later after some kind of special experience
-some people grow up and partially adopt the beliefs with which they were raised
-some people grow up and blend new beliefs in with partial old beliefs
-some people grow up and reject one set of beliefs and adopt another set of beliefs that makes the most sense to them

All of these statements are essentially "no shit sherlock" statements that tell us nothing new, and don't lead anywhere interesting. But its about all your can say justifiably. You certainly can't say that all believers fit the three narrowly constructed classification you devised. You can disprove that with direct counter-example.

... than if they just mindlessly remain Catholic because their parents were Catholic.

If you do not exercise your mind intellectually and spiritually, your mind becomes weak.

Some religions and non-religions seem to cater to intellectual and spiritual couch potatoes --Don't think, follow us like little sheep, and be happy-- but my hope as a parent is that I've inoculated my children against those. I don't want my kids to continue to going to Mass when they are adults simply because that's what they've always done. It only has meaning if it is a heartfelt choice.

My wife and I have many siblings, of various faiths and not-faiths, but I think we are all characterized by a strong desire to exercise our minds, both intellectually and spiritually. Our parents raised us right.

:yourock:

"And their parents believed in god, and their parents believed in God, and their grandparents grandparents great grandparents believed in God.

Belief in God (or any other non provable concept such as astrology, psychics, etc...) comes from being raised in an environment where the elders who shaped you when you were young instilled those beliefs into you.

For the most part."


In my experience this is not the case. I was raised mormon, and became disenfranchised when I was 18. I went to church every sunday, went to all the extra events, potlucks, bazaars, went to boy scouts at church, Young Men/Young Women activities, and then Seminary all four years of high school. I was raised around a lot of strong Mormons, my mother probably being the strongest, my father being the "pick and choose" what he wanted to do sort. My father had quite a few issues with the church, but felt the most comfortable within the mormon church than any other organized religion. My father's biggest beef was not in the doctrine itself from the bible, or BOM, it was with new rules, or guidelines being put forth...aka no caffeine, can't watch R-rated movies and what not...but I'm off base, sorry.

I am the second oldest of 12, but its an extended family of half brothers/sisters...My bio mother had 9 kids, two died, and of the 7 remaining, I was the oldest. My father had a daughter before adopting me, and marrying my mother. And of the 7 of us that were raised within the mormon church, four of us are disenfranchised and could careless about it(currently). The division of Church between the four of us is 50/50. Tom, and myself didn't give dissenting thoughts of church while under under our parents roof. My brother sam/dan, 22/16, both gave a lot of dissenting grief about everything concerning church growing up.

Not that I didn't have issues with church...I hated waking up early to go to church, I didn't like sunday school, or any of it. I just sat their like a bump on a log, trying to catch up on my sleep. But there were things I enjoyed, boy scouts, young men/young women activities...those were about the only things I enjoyed. Seminary on the other hand was a nightmare, I just did it, so I wouldn't have to fight my parents tooth and nail on it...seminary=its like a zero hour high school class, but its a bible/bom class...for me, it started at 6:20am, until 7:15am...

Sorry for all of the background, but I'm putting forth a history. Of 7 siblings so far, 4 of us, could careless...my sister, and my brother dave I don't know how they feel...my other brother joe who is 22 is autistic, and he loves going to church and being around people. So far, the thought or angle of your first point, doesn't hold much water in my experience, and is quite the opposite.

With the friends I had growing up, and continue to have, they follow the same pattern as myself. But on the flip side, I do believe there are people out there who have followed the belief structure of their parents, grandparents, and continue to do so in their daily life(I just haven't seen much evidence of that in my personal life).

I do agree with most of the groupings, but they are limited(I see a part of myself in all three mentioned)...and there are a lot of other groups out there. Myself, I believe there is something out there, can't prove it, can't prove its not there...just my gut feeling, that there is something out there, be it god, zeus, krypton, or superman...:)

When I was younger I never questioned much of anything, until I went out on my own to college. There I was faced with some facts, of the mormon church, and the church couldn't answer it(aka minorities couldn't have the priesthood, gays), plus the pressure of the church when I wouldn't go to church anymore and hold the phone...I smoked, and they didn't want to associate themselves...with...gasp, a smoker...:) With the church I was with, it carried a Holier than Thou attitude, with a full blown rumor mill, and that aspect of it...I would rather go to the dentist, and get my teeth drilled on. But, on the other hand, its rough because all the role models, you had growing up...are now, lost to you(most of them IME)....

Of all the role models growing up, I take after my father the most, I do believe that being good to one another is good, and treating others with respect is good...I got that from him, not a bible, not from church...I got my ability to question, and to dissent from him, because I saw him do it while growing up...and a few others in the church(the ones I still get along with)....I do believe, when church, is mixed into religion...it becomes a slippery slope...covered with ice/oil, and littered with pit/traps all over...

just my .02 cents...

on edit: After my falling out with the church, I became very anti-church, and was very vocal about it...it felt like I had a ton of chips on my shoulder, and I made sure to throw it around like no other. I got into a lot of fights with my mother, and mormon friends I had while growing up, and the bitter feelings that I had, I took out on a lot of people. I carried this chip for a very long time...from 18 until I was 26, when I met my mother in law. I was rude...I mean was EFFING RUDE about church goers, and proclaimed christians...every time I saw a WWJD sticker, I would become unglued and make fun of people who had those stickers, I would flip off church vans, while they drove by me...I am serious. I wasn't very nice....but, I felt like it was deserved, I felt like I was lied to my whole life....and I took out my aggression on others(christians). I won't, and can't lie about it, its the truth. It took my mother in law, to snap me out of my ...foolishness.

It was fall of 03, my wife, MIL, and myself were coming out of mcdonalds, and there was a church van there, and on the back, there was a sticker that says "Jesus Loves You"....and I pop off "%$#@ Jesus! He don't care!"...and my MIL just looked at me, and shook her head, got into the car, and proceded to cry, all the way back home...:(

My MIL is one of those televangelist/evagelical/baptist/american indian women...to but it bluntly, she loves jesus, and draws her strength from it, no matter the source...she especially loves Billy Graham. She is probably hands down the most sweet, most giving, caring women I have ever met...and here I am...being a total ass, to be an ass...that day was another awakening for me....and I have put my bitterness that I had for christians away...its gone. I live by this thought nowadays "live your life, believe/don't belive what you want"....just dont' "shove it down my throat." And, my MIL didn't shove anything down my throat to deserve what I said, I was being an asshole.

I don't find much wrong with the christians I'm around nowadays, and I don't even know if I'm a christian myself...I believe there is something out there...:)

Superman is in the theater. And your house. :)

Coincidentally, I just posted a seminary story that might amuse you. It also talks about the rumor mill, which I call the rat culture. PM me and I'll tell you where it is.

We all like potato salad but so do our in-laws, unrelated by genetics and blood to us potato-salad-eatin' fools in my family.

And god knows potato salad can be delicious. Wish I had a bowl right now.

Make it two bowls.

My parents are atheists - my dad pretty militantly so, my mom more of a lapsed-Catholic agnostic.


I went through a whole long quest as a kid--was briefly Christian out of peer pressure. Eventually found that Paganism is what aligns most closely with my experiences and intuitions, so that's where I've been for nearly 20 years now, no complaints.

The God/dess/es I believe in (and the literally incomprehensible Unity they are in some quantum sense) are pretty dang complex and I have no interest in proselytizing it to anyone else, because I don't believe spiritual telemarketing ever helps anyone. But I feel I know in my bones there is more than just the material world out there--and my parents and I argue furiously about it all the time.

(The stakes aren't all that high, though. We'll all find out who was right when we're all dead, perhaps. Not worth actually alienating people I love over, in any respect.)