(January 17, 2025 at 11:32 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Did you believe in the christian worldview because you believed that christian superstitions were true, or were christian superstitions validated by being associated with a worldview which you felt (or still feel) is true?

Oh I'm a clear atheist, though I have some provisional metaphysical views.  I've been atheist for about 13 years now.

More the first one.

The progression went:

• Lonely (at university since age 16).  No girlfriends ever (or boyfriends, though the AIDS scare prevented me from experimenting with that side of myself).
  
• Some new friends were bonding over Christianity
  
• Go to an evangelist who did an altar call.
  
• Read the New Testament
  
• Want the story of a sky daddy and personal salvation to be true.  Just go with it and sort things out later.
  
• Really try to believe the bible was true as written.
  
• Realize the bible isn't what I thought it was, but maybe God works very subtly through the Holy Spirit?
  
• Church becomes more about community and less about belief
  
• Become active on the Amazon religion and atheist forums.  Sometimes take Christian or atheist sides in debates.  The Atheist ones seemed always more logical.
  
• I can't say these Creeds any more at church and not be a hypocrite.  I'm not a believer any more.
  
• Go a Unitarian Universalist church and find a home with the other skeptics.
  

I get that you've put christian superstition behind you. I was wondering about the X involved in whatever you wanted to be true about the story and the story as written. What you thought it represented, what you thought god worked subtly towards. The thing that made you a part of the community outside of belief in the common superstitions, what standard you would be a hypocrite by. The X that has you now in a universalist church.

Have these things been changing in large ways over that time or was christianity a sort of failed run at satisfying a worldview you continue to hold? As in, you still hold x and y and z to be true and good or desirable things - but christianity specifically is a bad case or argument or foundation for those things?

(January 18, 2025 at 12:41 pm)HappySkeptic Wrote:

• Become active on the Amazon religion and atheist forums.  Sometimes take Christian or atheist sides in debates.  The Atheist ones seemed always more logical.
  
  

The Amazon forums were really good! I learned a lot there.

There were bullies, of course, because there are always bullies, but there was also a diverse group of opinions, and lots of serious discussion. My views on religion changed A LOT due to the discussions there. 

It's too bad that Amazon pulled the plug. I wish we could have spun the forums off to a separate site somehow.

The story of Jesus is one of the most compelling stories for human audiences. Watch any soap opera and you will see story lines about people coming back from the dead. We live contemplating our death and the death of loved ones. Situations where it looks like someone died but they did not is a very satisfying fantasy. Abstract concepts relating to morality do not engage the primative emotion centered parts of the brain. The story satisfies our most basic fantasy and it justified a moral sytem that does not require too much thinking.

1. Being indoctrinated and 2. It is very natural to just see the world and say "this cannot all just make itself from nothing"

(January 22, 2025 at 8:18 am)Modern Atheism Wrote: 1. Being indoctrinated and 2. It is very natural to just see the world and say "this cannot all just make itself from nothing"

Gotta disagree on point #2.

If one finds it very natural to just see the world and say "this cannot all just make itself from nothing," than how can they reconcile that belief with an even greater thing (God) somehow existing without a creator?

There is no escape from the "First Cause" problem. This is a case of us not knowing. Isn't it more plausible to admit that we (at least currently) have limitations in either or both knowledge and intelligence which prevent us from solving this problem than pulling an answer (God) out of our stupid and/or ignorant ass?

God does NOT solve the "First Cause" problem. Nothing we can come up with does.

Socrates supposedly said, "The only true wisdom is knowing that we know nothing." It might not apply universally but it definitely applies here. We don't know how we ultimately got here. Sometimes, "I don't know," is the smartest, wisest thing we can say.