Do you believe in god, if not do you believe in something else?

[Tispower1]

vlad321 said:

Kasz216 said:

chapset said:

vlad321 said:

chapset said:
after reading some of your posts, it's clear to see that some of you do believe and some don't, am just curious why people believe and why not, i mean by that, is it because you where raised in that environment or did you decide to believe by yourself? same question for the non-believers.

personally I feel like we are spirituals beings and that's why most of humanity believe in some kind of god, my mom is a protestant but she never forced me to go to church while i was growing up, so that's maybe why i don't believe that much.

 

There was no religion in my house, either anti or pro, and I remember my mom being extremely pissed when my grandmother taught me to pray, but she still didn't say anything. My beliefs are my own, I formed them by myself and my parents had absolutely no effect on them. I didn't know they were diehard atheists until after my belief's basis were formed. Yes I knew about Jesus and different religious ocurrances and holidays and stuff, but my parents never took a pro or anti stances on those, I am after all a Christian in terms of culture, atheis/agnostic/deist in terms of eligion.

This is why I also hate religion, it spreads by parents stuffing it into their child's head at an early age when the child thinks that their parents can NEVER be wrong. It is a horrible practice and my theory is that if it stopped religion would outright die out. Many things are taught at an early age that should never be taught and history is rife with examples of what happens when ideas are stuck into children's heads, one needs to look no further than World War II to see its effects. It's also the #1 reason why I hate religion with a strong passion, it's isidious, and targets the most vulnerable creatures of humanity.

yeah, i get what you're saying.

anybody else has something to add?

 

That people who outright hate religion probably have anger issues and is probably projecting.

Also, Kids are also taught to believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and any number of other things... that eventually they don't believe in.  If religion had nothing real to it people would just not believe in it.

Not sure what WW2 had to do with religion/people taught something as kids though... he really lost me on that one.

As for me... I wasn't raised any religion... though did have a strong feeling of some sort of "god" some of which caused by very measurable circumstances.

After which, i studied up on just about every religion i could... even some not practiced anymore... as well as arguements for atheism... and decided i wasn't too happy about any of them.

The Christian god seemed "most right" but at the same time a lot of stuff people tended to preach seemed counter to what he said, and in general the bible just seemed like it was cobbled together by the Romans to make a more docile religion.

So, i just took up the prospect to be who i was.  Since god made me that way anyway... and that God would let me know what he wanted me to know.  Since he was god.

It's worked pretty well for me so far.  It's kinda like a Christian Deism.  Though who knows.  He might even not be the particular Christian God... might be someone else.  But either way, i think i've got a feeling of the right guy.

'I don't always know what the right thing to do is, my Lord, but I think that the fact that I want to please you, pleases you.'

You know, if i'm wrong.  It's not like i lose anything anyway.  Well unless it's some other god.  In which case... whoops?

 

Oh please save your broad generalizatoins for some other place, if you actually asked around and talked to people that knew me thay'd all say I'm one of the most laid back and calmes people they've met. Then again I could jsut go ahead and start by making my own gnealizatoins by saying that people who start with personal attacks have reached the point of having to grasp at straws to try to rationalize what they believe in, cognitive dissonance at its finest. But then that's just another generalization.

Yeah kids are taught to believe in Santa and the Tooth fairy, and they keep on believing right up until they learn they aren't real through one way or another and then confrimed through people they trust the most, parents. If no one told them that they were false they'd grow up and still believe they existed. Your argument fails on this point.

Maybe you haven't read about children being taught about how the propaganda machine worked? Children being taught from the earliest stages to hate Jews and to treat them as inhuman beings. They all probably believed that at the time and in the most extreme cases they believed in even after the war and all the way into their adulthood. But, maybe I can use other examples, the beginning of the USSR, children were taught that Communism was the best thing to happen to them and they kept on having faith in communism all their lives, later on when things started going downhill the whole system of teaching children started to fall apart due to the fact that in real life Cummounism didn't work as well. You can see the same thing in the US with Capitalism and recently how people who voiced their opions against the government are unpatriotic, many of those chilren are now fighting in Iraq. I can keep going and going on this, religion works the exact same way, teach them young, make it fails safe (how can god be wrong if you can't talk to him, you can't see anything of his happen and the only thing you have to go on is blind faith?), and you have a lifelong believer who will then pass on his teachings to his children and the cycle begins.

I've studied social effects and reseached the spread of religion througholy, and it's the main reasson im not religious at all, I too looked into religion and just did not see why I should blindly put my faith into anything, anyone who says the world is too perfect is a naive fool. (would have majored in History instead of CS if there was more money in it...) I see it for what it is, what it can do, and the power it has over people and that's the reason I hate it so much. Marx put it best "Religion is opium for the masses."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_masses

It's always out of context! When he said that he meant Religion gave poor people happiness and hope, and therefore was useful, as obviously a contented people was less likely to lead to crime.

And obviously I was indocrinated by 2 degree holding parents, one in Physics, and one in Human Biology. I hate it when people generalise and think "oh his parents are Christian, he must have been indocrinated", I'm sorry, but my parents most certainly weren't (their parents weren't Christian at the time), and I you can't do A-Levels in Further Maths and Physics and not question everything.