cthulhureqiuem
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: Dec 12, 2011
Posts: 47
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 Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 1:20 am Post subject: reasons for believing? |
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im very curious... what exactly makes a ASD individual religious? i myself am not... but many of us are... and im wondering why those individuals are... any and all replys would be welcomed. please refrain from flaming each other... heck if your atheist feel free to post why your atheist too...
just do not reply to each other... just post your reason ^^
thanks in advance. |
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Lord_Gareth
Velociraptor
Joined: Feb 21, 2012
Posts: 440
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 2:03 am Post subject: |
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Your request re: us replying to each other displays much wisdom, but perhaps little sense; it's going to happen no matter what you do. But I'll reply in good faith and hope to be proven wrong - it'd be a pleasant surprise, at the very least.
I've been an atheist more or less since I first considered the question of religion, right around the second grade. My parents went to church for awhile, but it never really seemed relevant to our lives. I suppose you could say that faith never really caught on with me; stories of para-natural (fun fact: years of intensive training by grammar nazis have dissuaded me from using the term 'supernatural' for any reason whatsoever) events never really moved me or made me feel awed or inspired. Even then, it remained pretty much a non-question for me until about the second grade when, for reasons I no longer remember, it started coming up on the bus rides to and from school. When asked if I believed in God, I answered, "No, not really."
Big mistake. I spent the next seven years getting the living tar beat out of me at any chance folks had to catch me alone, and if they didn't then I suffered under the lash of verbal abuse, both in front of authority figures who did nothing and behind their backs where they could deny that it happened.
I'm not ashamed to admit that for a long time I was downright hostile about religion. Actually, you know what, revise that - I was an aggressive, defensive, arrogant little bastard about religion, but at the same time it held a sort of fascination for me, and with prompting (read: threats) by parents attempting to teach me tolerance and open-mindedness, I began doing research into the various faiths of the world. When my anger cooled, my interest in the psychology of faith didn't, and I continued to read holy books, myths, and textbooks on the rites, rituals, and beliefs of religions both modern and ancient. Mostly I've found more confusion instead of answers, and attempting to comprehend faith and those who hold it continues to elude me entirely.
Going hand-in-hand with my confusion about faith has been my belief that any paradigm about the world needs to be able to withstand rigorous testing. Eventually I found a name for this (empiricism) that fits it well enough, and I've certainly called myself an empiricist ever since. It's not about what I can see, or feel, or test, but about what turns up over and over again in rigorous experiments, about understanding the universe we live in through the lens of carefully considered evidence. By making sure that everyone else gets the same results I do, I establish that those results, if not necessarily absolute (gotta love Chaos Theory), are more reliable than simply making things up as I go along.
My experiences with religion as a victim, an observer, and an attempted participant have lead me to believe that its overall effect on human society is negative. Like Bill Maher, I believe that religion makes a virtue out of not thinking, encourages acceptance over innovation, and replaces the humility of doubt with the arrogance of certitude. Thus far I've managed to personally observe many lives impacted negatively or even downright destroyed by religious beliefs (observe the poor man who sold his business because a preacher claimed Armageddon was coming last year; watch the innocent girl beaten down by a mother who believes she carries a 'witch mark'), but have managed to observe no negative impact on life, liberty, property or happiness by embracing the gospel of doubt. Do I think that various faiths of the world have much to teach? Certainly. They're some of the earliest forms of philosophy and psychology there is, and their influence has shaped and been shaped by entire cultures. There is much to be gained by studying faith and seeing what parts of it are good - but I feel that one can take those good parts and make them one's own without having to embrace the entire package and plunge headfirst into the madness as well as the nirvana.
Aaaand that's my two cents. Thank'ee kindly for reading, my friend(s). |
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TeaEarlGreyHot
Your Maya
Joined: Jul 05, 2010
Age: 30
Posts: 28106
Location: California
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 2:07 am Post subject: |
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I'm sorry, I don't participate in discussions where discussion is prohibited.
_________________
Do you bury me when I'm gone?
Do you teach me while I'm here?
Just as soon as I belong
Then it's time I disappear |
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Declension
Phoenix
Joined: Jan 21, 2012
Posts: 1657
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 5:23 am Post subject: |
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| I haven't decided whether or not God exists, but either way, it will be as the result of reading about logical arguments. I don't have the natural intuition that God exists - I think that I have a defective sensus divinatis. Whether or not I come to the conclusion that God exists, I am pretty sure that I will never budge on this: miracles have never happened. |
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donnie_darko
Phoenix
Joined: Nov 27, 2009
Age: 23
Posts: 1794
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 8:49 am Post subject: |
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| I have not believed in my birth religion (Catholic Christianity) since I was thirteen and decided it was BS, but I've never really been an atheist. I think the Universe seems to have too much purpose, and also I find it difficult to explain our consciousness in a purely materialistic way, for me to think atheism, in the sense of there being no spiritual reality at all, is logical. |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 76
Posts: 29332
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:11 am Post subject: |
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Believe what you will. Do not impose your beliefs on competent adults.
We have to train our children so that they can survive, so a certain amount of belief imposition is required.
ruveyn |
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cthulhureqiuem
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: Dec 12, 2011
Posts: 47
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:45 am Post subject: |
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| TeaEarlGreyHot wrote: | | I'm sorry, I don't participate in discussions where discussion is prohibited. |
then why bother posting here? i am not prohibiting it... just discouraging it because i wished to get the opinions of religious believers... who i have found... find my (and other atheists) company... abrasive...
sorry for the attempt to keep things civil. |
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cthulhureqiuem
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: Dec 12, 2011
Posts: 47
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:52 am Post subject: |
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| Lord_Gareth wrote: | | Your request re: us replying to each other displays much wisdom, but perhaps little sense; it's going to happen no matter what you do. But I'll reply in good faith and hope to be proven wrong - it'd be a pleasant surprise, at the very least.... |
awesome post thats essentially what im aiming for from people ^^ thank you for the great shot at it...
essentially you had the same experience that i did though i took longer to stop pretending to believe (almost went to seminary for instance)
and i kept thinking that it would eventually all make sense, or that Something would happen to inspire me to belief.
as for your earlier comment... wisdom with a lack of sense is what i do |
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TheHouseholdCat
Phoenix
Joined: Mar 01, 2012
Posts: 667
Location: Berlin, Germany
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:55 am Post subject: |
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I don't think it has anything to do with ASD or not, but with how people have been brought up and what beliefs they have been confronted with in life.
I have never questioned the religious community I have grown up in until I was 13/14. I had never... shared the community's beliefs... Not really. I was also never really a part of the community, except for the fact that I have been educated in that way.
These days, I realize, I am much better off without feeling connected to a religious community. I like some... customs from various religions, but I do not share their beliefs.
At the moment, I like to engage in thoughts about Pantheism. ^^ It's an interesting concept and I guess I have had pantheist beliefs for a great part of my life without knowing about it.
_________________
EXPANDED CIRCLE OF FIFTHS
"It's how they see things. It's a way of bringing class to an environment, and I say that pejoratively because, obviously, good music is good music however it's created, however it's motivated." - Thomas Newman |
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AngelRho
Synclavier owner/operator
Joined: Jan 05, 2008
Posts: 3727
Location: The Landmass between N.O. and Mobile
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:16 am Post subject: |
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The story of my faith has has seemed to me very similar to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" musings. I grew up in a Southern Baptist home and church; my mom was a volunteer youth choir director, my grandfather was a deacon, my dad was a Sunday school teacher, my aunt played the piano. So we were in church every time the doors were open.
The thing is, I never had a problem believing in God or accepting who Jesus was/is, and so on. It wasn't that I minded church that much, but three times a week (Sunday morning AND evening, Wednesday night)? Revivals always wore me out, too, and to this day I hate them. So the endless involvement in church activities as a young child that I wasn't really interested in but forced to endure anyway didn't shake my faith so much, but it didn't encourage any desire that I had for it, either.
The other thing is I'm not a comfortably social person. Sure, I felt comfortable around others in our small congregation, but talking to others about faith or evangelizing is not something that is easy for me. So I remember one of my teachers telling us that if we don't tell someone about Jesus and that person dies and goes to hell, we're going, too. Um...???
Which leads me to my second biggest problem with religion in general: Stuff that just doesn't make sense. I'm aware that atheists will say nothing about religion makes sense, but what I'm talking about is within a Christian worldview. Take the above example: The idea that someone who goes to hell not hearing about Jesus can drag a believer down with them is insanely unbiblical. Sure, I might DESERVE to go to hell for that, but if my sins are atoned for then there is nothing that can possibly cancel my fire insurance. So that idea is flat wrong. And then you have fire/brimstone sermons and revival preachers trying to scare the hell out of you, along with the ensuing extended invitations/alter calls and people suddenly not knowing if they're saved or not.
You can cure ignorance of the Bible by reading and studying the Bible. So I understand those things in my past that were mistakes. My biggest problem with religion is with people who claim to be Christians don't act Christ-like. My grandmother had a filthy mouth and a raging gossip--remember, my grandfather was a long-time deacon. My father, the Sunday school teacher? Verbally, mentally abusive, controlling, manipulative, cussed his own dad (the deacon), and (I later found out) cheated on my mom. My dad and my aunt both smoked, as did many others at my church--usually in the area right in front of the church. And I knew smoking was horribly unhealthy and was around a lot of elderly people suffering from emphysema and lung cancer; but doesn't the Bible teach that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? Why is it ok to gather in front of the church to have a smoke, but you're going to hell for drinking (and drinking real wine was even instituted in OT religious observances; Jesus encouraged drinking by turning water into wine). All the negativity and judgmental attitudes that I saw church people contemptuously treat each other with. A pastor that played cliques off one another. Exactly where is Christ here? Is He not the head of the church?
I got away from it and sporadically came back throughout college. That gave me a few years of actual reflection away from everything I grew up with. I'd experienced too much to abandon my faith. I'd had dreams about a wonderful friend of mine I'd become deeply attached to, and in the end those dreams helped me let her go (she's not dead or anything that drastic, but it was a painful separation for me since she was the only real friend I had). I once had a dream about being a passenger in an auto accident. The dream was amazingly detailed, and the moment certain things started to happen I remembered that I'd already seen it all happen and what it was I had to do to survive the crash, which was simply open the car door and step out. It even seemed like I heard a voice in my head telling me to get out of the car while it was still moving. I walked away with barely a scratch, but the car had been flattened. The thing is, I've never needed nor have I asked for any kind of confirmation of my faith, and it seems that I got the evidence anyway. There have been other "little things" I won't go into, but you get the idea. After I'd been away from attending church regularly through most of college, I felt a very strange urgency that I HAD to get back into church. I wasn't scared of going to hell, I didn't feel I had to go to church to please God, I wasn't emotionally disturbed or suffering a personal crisis, or anything like that. I wasn't unhappy or deeply depressed. Just an odd, unprovoked sense that I HAD to be in church around other believers. So I started attending a small church while I was about half-way through my master's degree. There might have been a month or so I missed since then when I relocated where I am now. I chose to stay within my denomination, but mostly everything I've heard since then has been more focussed on having an actual relationship with God and why we believe the way we do rather than emphasis on consequences of eternal punishment. And that has made church life a lot easier to digest than what I grew up with.
I also dedicate a good amount of time to reflection and scripture reading. I've read through the Bible twice, something I started doing a very few years ago. Actually reading what people had to say about Jesus has really added depth do my former more passive understanding and strengthened my faith. I think that for someone like myself who potentially has ASD, it's tempting to go the way of hyper-intellectual philosophical paths that resist ties to religion. But it all also depends on who you listen to. Christians themselves don't always completely understand their faith and what it all means. So as someone growing up in the faith (or some version of it) and hearing a lot of stuff that really is inconsistent, it's easy to write the whole thing off as false. My experience is that need not be the issue, and there are numerous intellectual and logical cases that are in favor of God and Christianity; there are plenty of reasons to believe. Perhaps the most difficult part to accept is that ultimately this whole God thing ultimately reduces to a step of faith at some point. For example, there is no evidence out there that compels anyone to believe anything, even if your own outlook is purely naturalistic. The support for naturalism itself, for instance, is itself axiomatic--you can't use empiricism to empirically prove itself. You have to accept certain things as given in order to support the conclusions you draw. So I think of Biblical explanations as the best for understanding why the world is as it is. The only argument I've yet seen against the reliability of the Bible is that it's nearly 2000 years old in its current form. It's unreasonable to assume that age is all it takes to render something unbelievable--after all, it COULD be true. So ultimately the matter of faith is whether one chooses to accept the evidence or not. Either way, admit it or not, acceptance or rejection are both giant leaps of faith. From my own experience, just waking up to a new day is reason enough to believe. |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 76
Posts: 29332
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:18 am Post subject: |
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If you are scared sh*tless of death and dying believe whatever you need to believe to say calm.
ruveyn |
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TeaEarlGreyHot
Your Maya
Joined: Jul 05, 2010
Age: 30
Posts: 28106
Location: California
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| cthulhureqiuem wrote: | | TeaEarlGreyHot wrote: | | I'm sorry, I don't participate in discussions where discussion is prohibited. |
then why bother posting here? i am not prohibiting it... |
... because I was drunk and bored.
_________________
Do you bury me when I'm gone?
Do you teach me while I'm here?
Just as soon as I belong
Then it's time I disappear |
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