My main reason for disbelief in god is that it makes a lot of sense that humans, being the way they are, would have made up a god, back when we had no answers for anything.
I doubt that it's possible for any animal to evolve to our standard without inventing a few religions. It's just natural.

natural ?





and probably another great reason belief is stupid . . . .

(May 10, 2016 at 1:33 pm)robvalue Wrote: Going back to the OP, I would say that my confidence that the specific god characters mentioned in the Bible/Quran etc. are fictional is as close to 100% as makes no odds. I'm as confident about that as I could reasonably be about anything.

I'd wager my life against a donut.

Trying to get back into the thread now, I agree with that but you come from a very different perspective... well almost very different. I'm like you are for every other religion other than Christianity... can just dismiss it out of hand as a bunch of silly, made-up characters... but since I have a background in Christianity I can't do that here so much, though I wish I could, believe me. If I hadn't grown up with it I'm pretty sure I'd see it just as you do, and just as I do about other religions, but as it stands it's too deeply entrenched to be able to treat it like that, and needs something more. Tbh I think it probably needs a psychological intervention - somehow - to defeat rather than reason alone. The question of how to unlearn something... the brain moves forward so (imo) when you forget something, you only forget how to trigger it, not the actual thing... so it's still laying there dormant even if you no longer think about it.

Before coming to AF, I was unaware just how pathetic and weak ALL God claims are. It's actually astonishing the desperation to find something, anything, in the God orbit that can survive even a particle of scrutiny.

Meh, as soon as I see a compelling reason to believe something, I will. But I don't, so I don't.

(May 11, 2016 at 10:46 am)vorlon13 Wrote: Before coming to AF, I was unaware just how pathetic and weak ALL God claims are.  It's actually astonishing the desperation to find something, anything, in the God orbit that can survive even a particle of scrutiny.

Yeah, me too... totally. I think there's some ironic truth in what I said before in another thread... if there was an 'International STFU And Let God Speak For Himself Day' belief might actually be stronger   Like, I think it was CD who said "there's nothing I hate more than a bad argument for something I hold dear"... something like that.

And a corollary (that I feel is applicable universally);

I've pretty much always known Mormonism is a big heaping steaming pile of total shit, but until I encountered the Tanner's book, "The Changing World of Mormonism", I had no idea how absolutely thoroughly and completely Mormonism had been debunked by the Mormons themselves, especially in regards to their bizarre  compulsion to record and PUBLISH all their contrivances and machinations as they've hammered, tweaked, rewritten, re-revelated, revised, and changed ALL their dogma.

All religions follow the same play book (since they are all administered by human beings) and having the relatively recent LDS cluster fuck so copiously documented, it provides a wonderful insight as to how the sausage is and was made in all the faiths.

Contradictions in the Bible, (and whatever version of the bible each faith ascribes to) are just more of the same inveigling we have literally unendingly documented in the Mormon sphere.


As for the early resistance Mormonism felt from (mostly) other Christian faiths, I'm thinking those other faiths should have tried harder to rid the world of Mormonism since ultimately, Mormonism indicted them all by spilling the beans on how they've all played the religion game.

(May 11, 2016 at 10:25 am)Emjay Wrote:

(May 10, 2016 at 1:33 pm)robvalue Wrote: Going back to the OP, I would say that my confidence that the specific god characters mentioned in the Bible/Quran etc. are fictional is as close to 100% as makes no odds. I'm as confident about that as I could reasonably be about anything.

I'd wager my life against a donut.

Trying to get back into the thread now, I agree with that but you come from a very different perspective... well almost very different. I'm like you are for every other religion other than Christianity... can just dismiss it out of hand as a bunch of silly, made-up characters... but since I have a background in Christianity I can't do that here so much, though I wish I could, believe me. If I hadn't grown up with it I'm pretty sure I'd see it just as you do, and just as I do about other religions, but as it stands it's too deeply entrenched to be able to treat it like that, and needs something more. Tbh I think it probably needs a psychological intervention - somehow - to defeat rather than reason alone. The question of how to unlearn something... the brain moves forward so (imo) when you forget something, you only forget how to trigger it, not the actual thing... so it's still laying there dormant even if you no longer think about it.

Part of the problem here is how ideas and beliefs are 'stored' in the brain. Ideas don't have to be logically coherent, and most of the time aren't, to be associated with each other... they just have to coincide in time... we're natural coincidence detectors (and associators). So a belief system is just a bunch of associated ideas, made stronger essentially by how interconnected they are (as a result of neural network dynamics of bias and feedback). So the question remains how to attack such a context. Merely stopping thinking about it just deactivates it, but it doesn't destroy it. And it's made worse by the fact that emotion is also associated with these ideas, and that acts as an irrational pull to ideas, so another question is how to neutralise that emotion. So basically defeating a highly emotional and highly interconnected context of ideas such as religious indoctrination is a major ask, and I haven't got a clue, but it's a very fun and interesting question trying to figure it out

(May 11, 2016 at 11:10 am)vorlon13 Wrote: And a corollary (that I feel is applicable universally);

I've pretty much always known Mormonism is a big heaping steaming pile of total shit, but until I encountered the Tanner's book, "The Changing World of Mormonism", I had no idea how absolutely thoroughly and completely Mormonism had been debunked by the Mormons themselves, especially in regards to their bizarre  compulsion to record and PUBLISH all their contrivances and machinations as they've hammered, tweaked, rewritten, re-revelated, revised, and changed ALL their dogma.

All religions follow the same play book (since they are all administered by human beings) and having the relatively recent LDS cluster fuck so copiously documented, it provides a wonderful insight as to how the sausage is and was made in all the faiths.

Contradictions in the Bible, (and whatever version of the bible each faith ascribes to) are just more of the same inveigling we have literally unendingly documented in the Mormon sphere.


As for the early resistance Mormonism felt from (mostly) other Christian faiths, I'm thinking those other faiths should have tried harder to rid the world of Mormonism since ultimately, Mormonism indicted them all by spilling the beans on how they've all played the religion game.

I didn't know anything about Mormonism until I came here and met you, but it gets more and more interesting with every post you make   I guess it provides them with a sense of legitimacy and tradition to record every change they make... kind of like the Civil Service who - according to Yes Minister - love their red tape and find it gives them meaning   I'd love to read about that though... the Mormon handbook to how to make up a religion as you go along   I guess Catholicism is kind of similar in that regard, but perhaps to a lesser extent?

(May 11, 2016 at 10:25 am)Emjay Wrote:

(May 10, 2016 at 1:33 pm)robvalue Wrote: Going back to the OP, I would say that my confidence that the specific god characters mentioned in the Bible/Quran etc. are fictional is as close to 100% as makes no odds. I'm as confident about that as I could reasonably be about anything.

I'd wager my life against a donut.

Trying to get back into the thread now, I agree with that but you come from a very different perspective... well almost very different. I'm like you are for every other religion other than Christianity... can just dismiss it out of hand as a bunch of silly, made-up characters... but since I have a background in Christianity I can't do that here so much, though I wish I could, believe me. If I hadn't grown up with it I'm pretty sure I'd see it just as you do, and just as I do about other religions, but as it stands it's too deeply entrenched to be able to treat it like that, and needs something more. Tbh I think it probably needs a psychological intervention - somehow - to defeat rather than reason alone. The question of how to unlearn something... the brain moves forward so (imo) when you forget something, you only forget how to trigger it, not the actual thing... so it's still laying there dormant even if you no longer think about it.

I totally understand that. I was lucky to not get programmed into a religion, but I did get programmed in other ways that still affect me today. Even though I know those thoughts I have are irrational and unfounded, I can't simply dismiss them. It takes regular challenging of those thoughts. I find writing it down helps a lot, and then writing what the evidence is for and against that thought. It's when it's bouncing around in my head unchallenged that it gains the most momentum.

Maybe some sort of cognitive behaviour therapy would help with thoughts that are still troubling you, it did wonders for me.