.

[_Hoops]

I've noted your caveat "most". I'll just say that what you've described is nothing like the origin of my belief, nor does it describe how I tell my children to regard belief.

I doubt I'm that unusual, but, in other contexts, I've been told I'm quite unusual.


Did they use a different word..... I can't remember.....?

[_Scottie]

I've noted your caveat "most". I'll just say that what you've described is nothing like the origin of my belief, nor does it describe how I tell my children to regard belief.

I doubt I'm that unusual, but, in other contexts, I've been told I'm quite unusual.


Did they use a different word..... I can't remember.....?

Perhaps you can share with us how you came to believe in God?

I know for me, it was because my parents taught me to believe in God and the church taught me how to see God's hand in everything. Now I just see life.

[_Hoops]

Someone on this board made a compelling comment that describes the origin, the very, very beginning, of my belief. Since then, a friend and others have shown me just how profound this kind of comment is. You'll find it below.

Now I just see life.

[_Scottie]

Someone on this board made a compelling comment that describes the origin, the very, very beginning, of my belief. Since then, a friend and others have shown me just how profound this kind of comment is. You'll find it below.

Now I just see life.

I don't get it.

[_Hoops]

Well, I really don't feel like being called stupid and ignorant today so I'll leave it at that. My only point to you is that there are lots of people who come to faith in a different way than you've described above.

[_Scottie]

Well, I really don't feel like being called stupid and ignorant today so I'll leave it at that. My only point to you is that there are lots of people who come to faith in a different way than you've described above.

Fair enough.

Perhaps, instead, you could address why the vast, VAST majority of humans will die beleiving in the religion they were born into?

[_Aristotle Smith]

Well, I really don't feel like being called stupid and ignorant today so I'll leave it at that. My only point to you is that there are lots of people who come to faith in a different way than you've described above.

Fair enough.

Perhaps, instead, you could address why the vast, VAST majority of humans will die beleiving in the religion they were born into?

Perhaps you could address why you think this is such an important issue.

ETA: As just one counter example, statistics show that Americans are notorious church hoppers. Assuming that's true, a large % will die in a faith into which they were not born.

[_Aristotle Smith]

Well, I really don't feel like being called stupid and ignorant today so I'll leave it at that. My only point to you is that there are lots of people who come to faith in a different way than you've described above.

Fair enough.

Perhaps, instead, you could address why the vast, VAST majority of humans will die beleiving in the religion they were born into?

I'll just address western religions, but I think there are reasons why people do tend to stay in the religion they were born into.

First, prior to the mid 300's the vast majority of all westerners were pagan. While paganism can be termed a religion, it's actually incredibly misleading. You were not born into paganism. Furthermore, people worshipped all kinds of gods. So when you worshipped at the festival of Zeus one month, then participated in the Dionysian rites the next, were you jumping religions or were you staying in some sort of incredibly ill-defined pagan religion?

Second, after the mid 300's but before the reformation, there was only one church in any given area. It was either catholic (from mid 300's - 1054) or Roman Catholic or Orthodox (from 1054 - 1520's). That was it, there was nowhere else to go, so it seems rather basic that people were going to die in the religion they were born into.

Third, post reformation, while there was more diversity of Christian churches, in Europe there was usually still a tight connection between church in state. If you were in England, you were Anglican by default. If you lived in Geneva, you were a Calvinist. If you lived in certain German or Scandinavian cities, you were Lutheran. There really wasn't much opportunity to jump religions. Plus, there were tons of social, political, and economic consequences to doing so.

Fourth, when you give people choices and take away social, political, and economic barriers, people actually do tend to swap churches in large numbers. America is the best example here. As I stated, Americans in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are notorious church hoppers. But even more telling is that America is probably more religious now, at least in terms of religious affiliation and church attendance, than it was at the founding of the republic. This means that large numbers of unchurched and/or deist persons started going to church during the 1st and 2nd great awakenings.

[_Scottie]

Perhaps, instead, you could address why the vast, VAST majority of humans will die beleiving in the religion they were born into?

Perhaps you could address why you think this is such an important issue.

Because I see trends in humans. Humans are extremely blind to their own human weaknesses. It seems that these common threads that most, if not all humans possess are only present in everyone else, not "me". Why humans can't look inward and see the same traits in themselves is fascinating to me.

We see human children are indoctrinated into the belief system of their parents. It is almost impossible to persuade them that it is wrong, no matter how good or damaging we might think it is. I often use the FLDS members as examples. How would you convince a strong, faithful FLDS woman that she is in a destructive and damaging cult? I would say that you can't. Just as I could never convince you that the Hebrew God of the Bible doesn't exist.

But WHY? Why are we all so desperately connected to our religious beliefs?

ETA: As just one counter example, statistics show that Americans are notorious church hoppers. Assuming that's true, a large % will die in a faith into which they were not born.

I'll backpedal a bit here. Perhaps churches, but I would say few will worship a different God.

[_Aristotle Smith]

We see humans children are indoctrinated into the belief system of their parents. It is almost impossible to persuade them that it is wrong, no matter how good or damaging we might think it is. I often use the FLDS members as examples. How would you convince a strong, faithful FLDS woman that she is in a destructive and damaging cult? I would say that you can't. Just as I could never convince you that the Hebrew God of the Bible doesn't exist.

But WHY? Why are we all so desperately connected to our religious beliefs?

I don't think that psychology is the right tool for this job. I think it's the natural one for Mormons and especially ex-Mormons to reach for, because of Mormonism's psychologically/emotionally based epistemology. But I think the social, economic, and political reasons why people stay in a religion cover a lot more ground and explain most of the data. See my previous post for how I would go about accounting for why people stay in a religion, and what circumstances are favorable to people changing religions.

As for convincing me that the God of the Hebrew Bible doesn't exist, in my crisis of faith I did briefly consider that option. However, I do think that existence/non-existence of God is not a piece of data that can be shown one way or another. It is always a point of faith. In philosophical terms it's part of the foundation that one has prior to interpreting any data whatsoever. It conditions how one sees the world, which questions are seen as legal and/or fruitful, and how those questions get answered. In mathematical terms it's an unprovable axiom. It's what Plantinga calls a properly basic belief.