.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Be honest. This is intended for believers, and please keep it intelligent.

Oxymoron?

No.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Interesting comments AS, few follow up questions:

(a) Was Nietzsche the only atheistic author you explored in-depth?
(b) Did you explore any other world religions?
(c) How does the spiritual experiences you had as a Mormon now factor in your Christian faith now?

[_Scottie]

There are too many things that science can't explain. Our only options are that science can explain it, or God caused it.

Classic false dichotomy (not sure if you were being serious or not).

What about a third option of "science can't explain it (yet) but that doesn't mean it has no natural cause"?

This is quite commonly used as a reason to believe in God. Not by me, mind you, since I'm an atheist.

[_Some Schmo]

This is quite commonly used as a reason to believe in God. Not by me, mind you, since I'm an atheist.

Holy crap... *face palm*

I thought you were agnostic/atheist, which is why this comment surprised me... right up until I reread your post and realized you were offering additional alternatives.

Way to go, Schmo. Reading comprehension for the win!

[_Aristotle Smith]

Interesting comments AS, few follow up questions:

(a) Was Nietzsche the only atheistic author you explored in-depth?

At the time I had read several of Nietzsche's works. If I remember correctly, at the time I was familiar with the overviews of most of the main 19th and 20th century continental philosophers (most of whom were atheist), but have not explored them in depth. I had read 1.5 books by Daniel Dennett, some articles by Sam Harris, and probably some other Nu Atheist stuff here and there.

But to be fair, I was mostly influenced by Nietzsche.

(b) Did you explore any other world religions?

Beyond Judaism and Christianity, no. I have two main reasons/excuses for this. First, it was just a matter of time. There simply isn't time enough to go out and really do justice to all of the religious traditions. Second, and related to this, is I think it is really hard for a Westerner to understand Eastern religions. I think this is why most westerners who practice Eastern religions tend to misunderstand them and practice them superficially.

(c) How does the spiritual experiences you had as a Mormon now factor in your Christian faith now?

I take the experiences themselves to be real. One of my major critiques of the ex/post Mormon community is the rush to explain away past religious experiences in terms of psychobabble or whatever. My position is that the experiences were real, they were of a spiritual nature, but that like all experiences they are subject to interpretation. Take as an example the Book of Mormon. Most of my positive experiences inside Mormonism involve the Book of Mormon. It wasn't much of an interpretive leap to see the Book of Mormon as describing a generic protestant Christianity, having little to do with lived Mormonism in the 21st century. Thus those experiences were easily assimilated to a more orthodox Christian worldview.

[_Chap]

The reasons given by adults for believing in a deity when they are called upon to justify that belief are many and various - and not uninteresting either.

But if the question is phrased as 'how did it come about that you started believing in a deity', I suspect the real answer to that will in most cases have to be 'Because my parents brought me up in a world where the existence and significance of such a deity was one of the basic assumptions of daily life. Being a child, I had no way to question that assumption before it became a part of my world-view that I could not completely discard without a sense of fundamental loss'.

One reason for thinking that this actually is the reason why most people believe in a deity is because the deity people believe in (when they do have such beliefs) is mostly exactly the same as the one their parents believe in. That is probably not a coincidence.

[_Quasimodo]

Oxymoron?

No.

Humor.

[_MrStakhanovite]

No.

Humor.

Trite.

[_Quasimodo]

Trite.

The only real sin is taking life too seriously.

[_MrStakhanovite]

This board is board is skewed towards Atheist/Skeptic types, and that tends to create a hostile environment for Theists of any stripe. This board struggles with trying to keep Ms. Jack and Smith somewhat active here, because it’s comments like yours (you know, the humor that insinuates that they are dumb) that make them question why they bother to post here. As of right now, we (non-theist types) have three common types to engage with, we get to choose between:

A) Getting trolled by BCSpace with his absurd certainty about anything to do with politics or religion.

B) Going to the ER, because we tried arguing with Simon and subsequently bashed our heads against a wall.

Or

C) Dealing with such charming figures like Yahoo Bot and Pahoran, and frankly, my pug leaves better coils of personality on the lawn.

Ezias started an interesting thread that let’s believers outside of TBMs (a group that is almost totally absent by the way) opine about their beliefs and justifications. I’d like to give some people a chance to open up some and talk about their faith, before the majority of us start telling them how irrational and silly they are.