I’m merely giving you the same advice you provided atheists. I do not think that theists of any particular stripe are special, and nor are atheists. If you think theists are somehow smarter or more informed, that certainly constitutes a prejudice.
As a former Christian and Catholic, I agree that this is true. I, and pretty much everyone I know who is a Christian is one because that is what they were taught. They were surrounded by it, it permeates our society. To reject it can result in alienation from family and friends and, in extreme cases, lead to a disconnect from society and support structures. This is especially true in more rural areas and small towns. It is a huge part of our culture. I think many people just never really think about it. I know some who just go along to get along, but who don’t really believe at all. Pressure to conform to norms can be huge as is evidenced on this forum - believers to non-believers. IMO, that’s why most people adopt, at least on the surface, the religion of their culture.
I’m not trying to prove God using this hypothesis. I’m arguing for a peice of evidence that you can do with what you will. If the Christian is better adjusted because of his or her faith, then that would be something that the Atheist would need to explain. Here I have in mind such miserable Atheists like Schopenhouer, Nietzchi, Marx, etc… This is also the premise of many books like Donald Demarco’s “Architects of the Culter of Death”, and another book called “The Philosophers”. Are atheists maladjusted because of their Atheism? JonW has provided a few example of people who do not fit this mold who are Atheist, and I also know a few Atheists who do not fit this mold. But maybe these people are analogus to your cultural Catholics. They are atheists because they were raised that way. Who knows. I’m just asking questions and not trying to be offensive here.
There is a rather badly written book on this subject called the “Spiritual Brain”. This neuroscientist was studying Carmelite nuns in Montreal, asking them to start praying while under an eMRI. He claimed his results showed activity in multiple parts of the brain, but nothing that would indicate a volitional part of the brain that initiates the experience. He seems to identify this volitional aspect with a non material soul interacting with the physical aspects of the brain.
True. But again, I’ve never seen anything analogous to religious mystical experience among atheists. Perhpas certain religious experiences akin to buddhist mysticism, but nothing coming close to Christian mysticism.
Not the ones I’ve encountered. Example: The miracle of Mary’s appearance at Fatima is thoroughly documented. 50,000 people witnessed the event. Athiest and communist reporters for Lisbon daily newspapers covered the story and admitted they went to ridicule the childrens’ story and came away convinced they saw a miracle. I told that to a group of athiests on a website and challenged them to google the story. All I got back was denial. Sarcastic denial and an obstinate refusal to consider the evidence objectively. I believe athisism is a religion and these guys were true believers!
If you really believe that, and if you really know anything about it, I’d like to see your work. I’m a serious Catholic and my culture has nothing to do with it.
If that’s all it takes to turn you away from the most important question of your life, you can’t be too serious about learning the truth.
Now that’s childish.
A very high percentage of people who say they have a religion have the same religion as their parents and their grandparents. It’s something like 90 percent. If you are not one of them you are the exception, which would mean that only ten percent of people have the “right” religion.
Bigfoot and alien abduction believers abound. No doubt they number in the tens of thousands. All their stories are also thoroughly documented.
But not simultaneously, as in miracles at Fatima where approximately 100,000 people saw the same thing at the same time. If you use the above as a criteria, you may just as well throw out all history since there were witnesses there too, that may have been inaccurate.
These explanations have been given ad-nauseum.
If you have a collection of people that belief in God, and have a certain image of Jesus in their minds, when they see a cloud that looks like Jesus, they will “witness” Jesus observing them.
Did Aquinas argue against Anselm’s ontological argument? I’m not a fan of it, something fishy is going on with it.
Mass psychogenesis is a documented phenomenon. Simultaneity at Fatima only supports this. More importantly, Fatima is just another example of a religious holy place. There is nothing new or believable about Fatima than about the oracle at Delphi. There has always been a market for these things.
So Christians believe in God because they want to avoid death. I agree with this. It fits in with the Platonic understanding that this world is a world of flux and change. Death is just one more part of that flux. What Christians affirm is that there is an unchanging center to this world of flux that alone can satisfy our human desire for stability, God. For me, there can be no certainty of truth without the guarantee of an eternal God that created that truth. Otherwise truth is arbitrary. (I’m sure you’ve heard this all before).
But what if the very desire that Atheists are denying is actually designed to lead us to the truth that God exists? I’ve seen atheists try to deny the validity of the desire by providing several evolutionary explanations for it, a God gene, or a God part of the brain, etc…
Agreed. You have to accept death, as well as the absense of any moral absolutes (or at least, I cannot imagine how there can be any moral absolutes without God). In my opinion, this leads to a world governed by arbitrary forces without meaning. Human beings are designed to live in a meaningful world, or else that world become very hellish (this my point about the miserable condition of many atheists although there are some exceptions).
I have never made this claim. I do believe that most atheists are seekers of truth, probably more honest with themselves than many religious folk. I believe Jesus loved people like this (see the Gospel of John and his greeting to Nathaniel).
I don’t see them as weak, but I am wondering if the affective satisfaction at the proposition of the existence of God is too lightly rejected by them. Based on what you say, you believe that belief in God fills an emotional need in human beings to avoid death. This is certainly a good proposition, but in my opinion it does not square with Christian, and more specifically catholic mystical experience.
Where I differ from you is my estimation of human capability of knowing truth in its full sense. The bitter and jaded Pilot asked Jesus, “What is truth?”. Jesus stated earlier, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Pilot is jaded about the possibility of truth because he relies solely on his experience. Jesus invites us to believe in him as a source of truth superior to what we can obtain on our own. His miracles and resurection attest to this. It is an invitation to a source of knowledge beyond our human capability of grasping, except through faith, and it leads us to this overwhelming claim of eternal life for those that believe.
Agreed. This is my experience from my agnostic days.Very…interesting.
It is the question of this desire that I want to delve into with greater detail. That is why I bring up the Christian mystics, and their focus of the desires of the heart that brings about union with the divine, and great feats of moral heroics, asceticism, kindness, etc…
I believe you’ve given a good description of how athiest operate. Thanks for sharing.
Well, we can always maintain that there really aren’t any conspiracy theorists and never have been, but that people simply wish us to believe in conspiracy theory, and so fabricate events to give the theory credibility.
Permeates our society?? Do you live in Vatican City? Look at any sit-com on one of the networks or the ads on football games and tell be Catholicism permeates our society? Your idea is a fallacy. The Catholic culture you allude to has been dead for 50 years. You have a twisted and false concept of serious Catholics. Probably a product of your own experience.
I doubt it. I’d like to see your work on that one, too. Just making self-serving allegations like that without backing them up is saying nothing.
Exactly the kind of arrogant denial I alluded to. Show me something that says tens of thousands of people have seen Bigfoot or alien abduction. Or anywhere near that number. Your remarks are called ‘lying to yourself.’
Truth is an absolute. Can you prove your beliefs are true?
You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have an idea and, like the pompus, arrogant snots I encountered, you refuse to look at the evidence objectively. And you know nothing about the evidence. Nothing. You’re just mouthing off
Another know-nothing.