Hello atheistforum

[brotherlylove]

Skepticism, I suppose. I stopped believing in ESP, alien visitation, Bigfoot, Nessie, and ghosts before I stopped believing in God. It was just the result of applying the same standards to all my beliefs.

What standards did you apply?

How do you know that? Were you so messed up that only a being that speaks universes into existence could account for the improvement in your situation? Do you get information about distant galaxies only an omnipotent being could find out? What the heck are your criteria for determining that something you are in (effectively) psychic contact with is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent?

Psychic is not the right word to describe the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. My general criteria are being able to shape and alter events and circumstances both large and small, predict the future, know me completely, always being there, and a pure love.

In a way that can't be objectively demonstrated. Why on earth would you expect someone to take your word for all that? Anyone could claim the same thing, which is a lot of unfalsifiable stuff that sounds very grand.

I don't expect you'll take my word for it; I pray God will have mercy on you and draw you near to Him.

Do you think other religions were inspired by God? If not, how do you think they got started?

Satan.

What invention? The tools to start a religion have been lying around for millenia. Mormonism is one of the fastest-growing religions and it didn't take a genius to come up with the charismatic leader becomes a legend in his own time formula. It doesn't require conspiracy, just a good meme, like 'everybody you know will suffer an eternity of torture if you don't convince them Jesus was the son of God'. You don't even have to read 'Brainwashing for Dummies'. David Koresh and that Heaven's Gate guy weren't geniuses. They were just charismatic and deluded, and delusions can be catching, especially in situations where you isolate your followers from their friends and families.

Again, even skeptical historians believe that the apostles were honestly convinced of the resurrection of Christ. Further, all but one of them were all martyred for their faith. The theory doesn't match the facts. You have a long way to go to prove a conspiracy.

People are belief machines, they can be convinced of almost anything under the right circumstances. We connect the unconnected by instinct all the time. Your team won when you wore a particular jersey? Wear it next time and maybe it will help them win again! There's a reason why the fundamental basis of science that has enabled us to make so much technological progress in the last few hundred years is finding ways to keep experiments from being influenced by human bias. We are incredibly easy to fool, especially by ourselves.

I can agree with some of this, however, it doesn't follow that belief in God is a delusion, or is ruled out by, or mutually exclusive with science.

Most of psychotherapy is just listening to the patient and giving good advice on how to deal constructively with problems, many of us are lucky enough that we don't have to shell out $75 an hour for someone who can do that for us. Even an imaginary friend can make us feel better. Countless people are comforted by what they think are the ghosts of dead loved ones and feel guided by them and helped by talking to them. I'm happy you got good results, but not amazed by it. It isn't remarkable. I acknowledge that faith in a higher power helps some people change their lives and get through things, but I also acknowledge that it doesn't seem to make any difference who or what they think the higher power is. I do have a reservation about that, though: I haven't observed that people who don't believe in a higher power have more trouble getting through things and improving their lives than people who do, my impression that faith can be helpful could well be bias based on hearing a lot of anecdotes to that effect.

According to statistics, believers live longer, have happier and healthier lives and are less prone to depression and suicide. In any case, the changes in my life are remarkable, and happened with virtually no effort on my part. I think that is noteworthy, you are free to disagree. It's not the central point to any argument I am making.

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So if the old laws etc have been nullified by jesus how is it that Leviticus is quoted whenever christians want to condemn Homosexuality??

I'm not sure why any Christian would quote Leviticus on that, because homosexuality is described as sin in the New Testament.