Why an atheist cares about religion:
glumbert.com/media/atheist
Why some don’t accept the resurrection, or anything about the early church as history:
infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html#1
Despite understanding that God
IS, I agree with the positions of the above urls. The theist/atheist argumentation is a red herring. It is like harvesting or plowing in the wrong field. You won’t get paid for it except as it overlaps in part the actual area of concern. Even in that case, since it is partial, such practice causes disorientation literally and figuratively.
The way we look at religion in our culture stems from a language based on an adversarial relationship with Nature or God. This is intrinsically built inot our grammer and goes unnoticed, and is why there have been a few attempts to annalys and correct this within English. But it is why religion
appears to be *about * truth, but is not itself Truth. That is why it is exoteric, secular, and why there are so many of them, all at odds with each other. Even “practitioners” of the christainist religons, all what? 3K+ of them?, are only one third by number of all religionists globally.
I was exceptionally lucky. I was forced by events in my own life to look from a different standpoint at the nature of my very adamant Catholic belief and proselytizing. I have only been increasingly happy that this happend to me, and my study has actually reconciled my view of the Church in part. But I cannot imagine how difficult it would be for someone to actually have to make an honest
choice to re-examine their belief system as an objective phenomenon. I am coming to believe, from encounters on here, that this is close to impossible, as the sense of
self in believers is mistakenly and, it seems, inextricably rooted in an emotionally charged intellection. I personally don’t think such a re-evaluation can be done wtihout the administration of a particualr kind of shock. This include anyone of any religion or any stripe of atheism or agnosticism.
I do think that for some who have to be intellectually honest with themselves, those who evaluate data from a position
outside their emotional involvement with it, can at least free themselves for a more prolonged look at themselves. But this is why it is said “Gnothi Seauton.” Know thySelf. But this is a dangerous undertaking. As one man said, it destroys your world. It is analogous to taking the red pill of
Matrix fame.
Most know their involvement with their faith at a chemical/emotional level intellectualized into the appearance of a consistent believability. Few are courageous enough to delve beyond their intellect’s limitation in terms of data, or their usual state of so-called waking awareness to examine the issue. That is fine. It cannot, I think be otherwise. If it were otherwise, we might have babes going directly into graduate studies at University without passing from kindergarten through high school, etc. But at least in that system, the ones in K>6, eg, acknowledge that there is more to be learned. This is impossible with addiction to an internally referenced belief system.
) So, no, I don’t believe in the entity you call God. I don’t believe in any God from any religion, yet I wouldn’t say there isn’t anything out there; it could be aliens or some other spirit who’s just “there.”
