(June 15, 2016 at 7:13 pm)Veritas_Vincit Wrote: Religious people don't actually believe for the reasons they give in defence of their faith. 


Here are the top 5 reasons why I think they really hold on to their beliefs:

1) IDENTITY - 
2) COMMUNITY - 
3) TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCE - 
4) FEAR OF DEATH -
5) INDOCTRINATED FEAR OF HELL – 

If there are any I have missed please feel free to post them in the comments below.

For religious people who hold their beliefs for these reasons, they may feel justified on an emotional level to ignore the intellectual defeat of the ideas and apologetics they give in defence of their religion, as they were never what they were defending in the first place. They don’t care about TAG or Kalam – they care about managing their personal fear of death and damnation, about protecting their identify and self image, about being a valued member of a community, and about validating the most transcendent experiences of their lives. This is why they use 'faith' to insulate these core values against intellectual scrutiny.

After all, as evolved primates we are still hard wired to have our conscious thinking overridden by instinct to avoid a perceived threat - the "indelible stamp of our lowly origin' as Darwin so rightly put it.

Despite this, I still believe that in the end, the truth will win out.

I think you have overstated #5, but I can see why you would think that.

I think you forgot a pretty big one, actually the biggest one...People believe the truth claims of the religion. Since you are obviously talking about Christianity, that would mean that one would believe the contents of the NT are true. This actually supports your thesis that people don't believe in Christianity because of natural theology arguments. However it brings up another problem to add to your list of problems:

1. Your list dealt with emotional/psychological reasons and as such are easily dismissed. Now with the NT thing, you will have to deal with a belief in real people and real events. 
2. I am curious why you think Christianity in particular needs an adherent to "ignore the intellectual defeat"? 
3. Your belief that Christians use "faith to insulate these core values against intellectual scrutiny" is quite a bold statement. What scrutiny can you bring to the table that I cannot go and find 500 books on written over the last 2000 years? You seem to operating under the mistaken assumption that you can bring up objections that cannot be answered. 
4. You also seem to be positing faith as a product of evolution and..."in the end, the truth will win out.". Your message is not getting out. There are more Christians in the world every day than there were the day before.

Perhaps there wouldn't be if you'd leave the children alone?  I doubt anyone needs to explain to you that your religion is on the decline, and pretending that it isn't is droll.

(June 17, 2016 at 1:15 pm)SteveII Wrote:  People believe the truth claims of the religion.  

I think this is where religion really fails .... People are indoctrinated to believe before they can weigh the facts for themselves .... Religion, and belief in Father Christmas are similar, but the Father Christmas claims can easily be dismissed as Woo as there is no loss of eternal reward or punishment attached to questioning the fallacy ....

It would be interesting to see how many Christians  would still be Christians if no child was indoctrinated through out childhood .... Oh wait that experiment has been run in non Christian households such as Hindu's, Muslims, etc. etc .... does that not tell you something empirical?

(June 17, 2016 at 1:30 pm)madog Wrote:

(June 17, 2016 at 1:15 pm)SteveII Wrote:  People believe the truth claims of the religion.  

I think this is where religion really fails .... People are indoctrinated to believe before they can weigh the facts for themselves .... Religion, and belief in Father Christmas are similar, but the Father Christmas claims can easily be dismissed as Woo as there is no loss of eternal reward or punishment attached to questioning the fallacy ....

It would be interesting to see how many Christians  would still be Christians if no child was indoctrinated through out childhood .... Oh wait that experiment has been run in non Christian households such as Hindu's, Muslims, etc. etc .... does that not tell you something empirical?

I posted this a couple of months ago in another thread:

Okay, say we take the US statistic of 85% of Christians were born into a Christian home. You are claiming that these people only stay because of the "brainwashing" they received as children. The 15% adult conversions are exceptions...or (319 million US population x 70.6% Christians = 225 million x 85% born into Christian homes) = 191 million people. And this is in the wealthiest country with vast amounts of information available to anyone with access to a computer (to say nothing about the education system's attempt to undermine faith). 

I don't think the numbers support your conclusion.

The indoctrination of a populace with regards to the  traditional religious beliefs of the culture hardly ceases at adulthood.....and adult conversions don't happen in a vacuum.  You seem to think that mentioning the minority demographic has some ameliorative effect on his conclusion when -at least- some portion of even that demographic received the very same childhood indoctrination...if not the entire demographic.

The internet is great, but it's littered with jesus/allah/vishnu shit.....so I'm not sure why you chose to include that either.

(June 17, 2016 at 1:40 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(June 17, 2016 at 1:30 pm)madog Wrote: I think this is where religion really fails .... People are indoctrinated to believe before they can weigh the facts for themselves .... Religion, and belief in Father Christmas are similar, but the Father Christmas claims can easily be dismissed as Woo as there is no loss of eternal reward or punishment attached to questioning the fallacy ....

It would be interesting to see how many Christians  would still be Christians if no child was indoctrinated through out childhood .... Oh wait that experiment has been run in non Christian households such as Hindu's, Muslims, etc. etc .... does that not tell you something empirical?

I posted this a couple of months ago in another thread:

Okay, say we take the US statistic of 85% of Christians were born into a Christian home. You are claiming that these people only stay because of the "brainwashing" they received as children. The 15% adult conversions are exceptions...or (319 million US population x 70.6% Christians = 225 million x 85% born into Christian homes) = 191 million people. And this is in the wealthiest country with vast amounts of information available to anyone with access to a computer (to say nothing about the education system's attempt to undermine faith). 

I don't think the numbers support your conclusion.

? you have posted figures that support my proposition .... 85% are born into Christian homes and 15% try to fit in with their community ...

What are the rate of Christian Conversions in a non Christian country?