When adult atheists adopt faith?

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Polytheism was probably the Soap Opera of the ancient world.

Jokes (and David Icke ) aside, I can vouch for crisis and shame being 2 major factors in religion at one point being of slight interest.

VIDEODROME, you brought in another idea - that there are a lot of things that look within the realm of human science and culture but yet cannot be explained to this day such as huge structures, ancient cities, cave / tomb paintings and the actual drawings / glyphs themselves. So people will look beyond humanity but keep them in the loop in order to explain and justify these phenomena.

I guess it's not infeasible that some researchers might take up religion if their research into ancient civilisation or whatever other field creates more questions about life (predominantly human life) than it does answers.

I saw a ufo once. I was driving along, broad daylight, and I saw this greenish sort of enlongated thing floating over an empty farmer's field. It was not far off in the distance, but maybe 30-40 feet from the road. It was higher than my car, but not a lot - maybe 15-20 feet in the air. It looked kind of metallic but kind of vaporish at the same time. I was with my husband, and I turned to him and said, "What the hell is that?"
He was looking at it too. He said, "I don't know."
The weird thing is, we just kept going. Now, I'm the type of person who stops whenever I see something interesting, especially if I'm not in a hurry and there aren't any other cars about, as was the case that day. So I really don't know why I didn't turn around, or why my husband and I never discussed it again.
In all probability, it was probably some wandering bog gas or such. Whatever it was, it looked awesome. I really wish I had gone back for another look.

No dice (if you will pardon the pun). Whaterever logic you apply to the Universe is equally applicable to a proposed creator e.g. what created God? An unthinking reply might be to define God as the only thing that needs no creator, but this could equally be applied as a definition for the universe itself.

All the reasoned arguments for the existence of God have long since been roundly dismissed, including the design argument, otherwise there would be special entries in every philosophical textbook celebrating the fact that philosophy finally owned science

In the light of this, while people may still go with thier hunches, and claim to have reasoned thier way to God, it is an inexcapable fact that it will be a largely self-serving exercise. Look therefore to all the benefits, emotional and material, that may be gained from reigious beliefs.

Adult addicts can find religion through their treatment programs. They have to identify a "higher power" to cling to and can sometimes go full bore holy roller. I've met a few.

I remember one christian woman in particular who was trying to preach to me. After I started throwing the usual skeptic arguments out, she just admitted that she *had* to believe. It was the only thing keeping her away from heroin. She felt that a god was required for her to escape it and that if she lost faith she'd go right back to it. No doubt that was a side effect of her treatment.

I think that's more than a side-effect, I'd call it a perfect example of the utility of religious beliefs. For all but the most unfortunate of us, beyond our own conscience, it would be family, peers or law-enforcers that we had in mind when contemplating the way we conduct ourselves but in some cases where these have all lost their hold, an imagined entity with ultimate powers could be the final port of call. In effect, this is just going back to square one and drawing on one's own conscience.

And where does this conscience come from? It may be helpful to understand that we are not a blank slate at birth, and that we come packaged with many predispositions that successfully navigated our ancestors along a perilously thin line of descent. Of course this line will sometimes turn out to be a dead-end which is why we must remember to tread on other people's beliefs with the greatest of care.

Wouldn't you be better off simply teaching them how to cope without having them resort to nonsensical beliefs about the supernatural? There's tons of very hopeful, happy, and perfectly scientific philosophies out there which could accomplish the same thing, I reckon.

For example, look up "optimistic naturalism". Or, read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

Shau, it would indeed be nice to think that people could find their way to redeem themselves without resort to mysticism but Religion has monopolized a great deal of the language we use to speak of such matters and this tends to vector people towards its purpose-made organizations. For example, discussion about "spirituality" implies to most people that Religion is involved. Non-religious spirituality is generally considered to be somewhat exotic. This is a shame because the concept is quite natural for a contemplative being like us. Unfortunately, before we understood the extent and age of the universe and the causes of the widest class of natural phenomena that we have direct experience of, pre-scientific thinkers and administrators codified every last ounce of what goes on in our heads, when pondering the complexities of life, into their own scriptures.

I'm sorry to say that I would hesitate to recommend Dawkins to anyone in an existential crisis. Jonathan Haidt (especially his book "The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom") would be my own suggestion.

This is something that can be changed with time, especially if we can uncouple the religious connotations, or use alternative terms. People can continue to use their religion and such as shall we call it "secular spirituality" takes the stage bit by bit.



The Selfish Gene is actually very tame, especially by Dawkins' standards. He seemed to have written it before he went into full on anti-religion mode.

a. to increase income, contacts or apparent moral standing in a community

b. a spiritual experience ie: after death experience, mushrooms and acid

c. wifey is into it

d. rebellious phase has ended

e. for friendship ie: a club

f. fear of death

g. better access to poon tang

h. political pressure, pressure from aggressive religious groups who threaten with retribution ie: Taliban, Westboro, psychologists

i. needing to end a current lifestyle due to drug/alcohol addictions etc, and choosing to believe to save oneself in the here and now, disguised as the forever after

j. autists seeking shelter from an aggressive bullying mainstream culture, only to be screwed in the ass by the church instead

k. academics and intellectuals who have studied ancient history, historical floods, ultra heated rocks near Sodom, weird metallic objects in India, Easter Island, Egypt, Stonehenge

l. Likes the look of crosses, beads, mandalas, robes, sex with witches in the forest, orgies

etc etc etc

............. one or more above feature's may apply....

I'll go with k, l and g thanks

You have all the wordy answers?

I'm a good person trying to be bad.....

I first read that as "better access to porn tang" which left me wondering what sort of porn that was.

Science and technology
is the
new mythology

Last edited by Surfman on 04 Aug 2012, 9:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

^ Eh?

What is poon tang anyway?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... =poon+tang

Vulgar slang sexual intercourse with a woman.

I thought your comment included reference to possible Freudian sexual motivations for attending schools of religious doctrine

[there is a church near me with a rock band ever Sunday, the building is in a red light district and LGBT village, and the congregation is comprised of sexually active attractive 17-25 yr olds]

Please excuse my flippancy, I have autism, and have never got a woody in church, honest