Which Religion?

[jd_here]

Having been brainwashed by nuns and monks in the catholic religion at school I felt a great weight lifted off my shoulders when I left over 50 years ago. I was then able to choose for myself. Which did I choose? None. Has it done me any harm during the last 50 years? No.

With that background though, I can't completely dismiss the existence of a greater being, even after all those years, however I remain very sceptical and consider myself to be a Born Again Agnostic.

[mibn2cweus]

We are all born atheists, (and a-toothfariests, a-saintnicholists and a-religionists) by virtue of not yet having acquired the prerequisite background to formulate concepts essential to making a distinction between the real and the imaginary, or an understanding of what and what not to believe and why . . . and most never do.

[jake-the-peg]

"God" is just a label

Persingers subjects describe it as things like a presence sometimes greater than themselves.

Add that into a natural desire to explain the natural world and that's an easy link to make and one I think that will have been made in dozens and dozens of different circumstances.

This gives you a creator spirit which I think most people would recognise as a religion.

Religion doesn't have to mean something as highly structured as say Catholicism - it's just a shared supernatural belief usually associated with some sort of ritual.



The alternative is to

[Elderman]

Most of us, if we stopped to think about it, would agree that belief is something that is too important to be left to chance. Why, even in everyday matters, we try to control our own lives as much as possible. Who wants to be just a victim of circumstances?
If you had a bad headache, would you quickly swallow a couple of pills found among a pile of assorted medicines without first looking carefully at the label?
If you were choosing new clothing, would you grab the first suit that came to hand in the store, blithely assuming that it would no doubt fit you exactly?
If you were purchasing a secondhand car, would you drive it away without even checking the engine?
‘Only the foolhardy would do that,’ you may think. Such matters should not be taken lightly. And yet, for many of us one of life’s most crucial decisions— what to believe in or been decided for us by chance, by long-forgotten quirks of history, and by place of birth.

[naomi24]

Keyplus, following Birdie's post, just to clarify my last to you. Mohammed said "No babe is born but upon Fitra (as a Muslim). It is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Polytheist." - and that he got right. The rest, however, as Birdie says, is nonsense. As for the video, I didn't watch it all, but having read Birdie's appraisal, it's no more than I would expect from you. To believe that every child is born with a natural belief in Allah is patently ridiculous, because I've never been a Muslim either, so clearly that claim is false. Nevertheless, as potty as the idea is, you will no doubt continue to choose to believe it because someone else told you it's true.

Jake, the subjects of Persinger's experiments are pre-conditioned. Children are not.

[naomi24]

//"No babe is born but upon Fitra (as a Muslim). It is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Polytheist." - and that he got right. //

Oops. I've just realised Mohammed didn't include 'Muslim' in that list of religions. I take it back. For one happy moment, I thought he was being sensible. My mistake.

[jake-the-peg]

Having just gone and read Persingers actual papers I was disappointed to see that his subjects were not interviewed to determine whether they had and pre-existing religious beliefs which might have influenced the experiment.

Nor were there explicit controls where the helmet was used without a field as a control.

I'd consider these as serious shortcommings in his study

However putting the God-helmet to one side there is additional evidence to support the idea of religious belief being innate (at least in some people).

The Minnosta separated twins experiment showed a lot of surprising correlations one being a tendency to religion.

A genetic factor of just under 50% was calculated from the data

http://books.google.c...ns%20religion&f=false

[naomi24]

Jake, you're missing the point entirely. We have all been exposed to religion at some time and in some way, therefore, where religion is concerned, no mind is a completely blank canvas. Unless such experiments can be conducted on people who have had no exposure whatsoever to religion, it is impossible to discern whether or not the results emanate from pre-existing conceptions - albeit latent ones.

[jd_here]

Gee.....after all those answers and points of view I'm so, so glad that I remain a born again agnostic!

[mibn2cweus]

While agnosticism is (for the most part) an honest position, it is one that can only be arrived at and maintained by an incomplete understanding of the reality that excludes the possibility of the existence of a primordial creator god. A belief in the possibility that such an entity might exist is evidence of an insufficient understanding of reality. Only following an understanding of that which in reality precludes the possibility can one know with certainty what does not exist. Short of having acquired a sufficient understanding of why the existence of such an entity is not a possibility, the only honest alternative is to admit that one does not possess a sufficient understanding to make a determination either way. But to adopt a belief in anything prior to ones understanding of the nature of that which in fact might not exist is without reason or merit and is therefore irrational.

It is in the believing that a lie becomes indistinguishable from the truth.
The invariable need to deceive others is an inevitable consequence of having first deceived oneself.

[jomifl]

Elderman.. to persue your analogy a little further, if insufficient information is available to enable you to make a choice of car then get a bike.