5 Levels of the Faith. My personal observation.

I was involved with the church (Christianity) for around 25 years. During my time there, I observed what I would call a pecking order. Here is that order, as I perceive it:

#1. Keepers of the faith- these people don't believe in this bullshit any more than your typical Atheist does, but they profit from it in some significant way (financially, politically, government, etc.). For that reason, they will go to whatever lengths necessary to preserve it. They will lie, cheat, twist, or destroy to keep the masses believing in the lie.

#2. Teachers of the faith- these people are held in high regard by the flock, but are ironically right on the fence when it comes to belief. To be teachers, they've had to learn too much for their own good. At the same time, they're still very much brain washed, probably because their indoctrination took place at a very early age, creating what may prove to be irrevocable damage.

#3. Justifiers of the faith- like #2, these people are somewhat on the fence. However, many of them are egomaniacs that have paranoid delusions, which helps them quickly dismiss any doubts that may arise about their faith. In their minds, there's a great conspiracy at work to "destroy the faith of the one true god." It's this very characteristic that makes them perfect to apologize for any discrepancies, negative moral implications, scientific impossibilities, etc., that the bible may present.

#4. Mindless sheep. These people will believe anything they are told as long as it's conveyed in a way that seems to promote Christianity. They can't be bothered to do any critical studying of their own, they prefer to be preached to and taught what to think and how to act. If their particular church is charismatic, they will usually begin to mimic that behavior. Naturally, it's the mindless sheep that are easiest to convert to some form of Atheism. With that said, getting them to admit that they've fallen away is an entirely different challenge, and not one I find to be worth the effort.

And, last but not least:

#5. Social Christians. These people are harmless, as they really don't believe. Or, perhaps a more accurate way of putting it is: they really aren't concerned about the validity of Christianity one way or the other. They like calling themselves Christian because of the social conveniences and advantages, but they aren't, at all, bound by it, and they won't be doing any more than socially necessary to maintain their status.

By the way, the above categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although some of them are incompatible with each other.

How do know the inner state of all these people?

(May 22, 2013 at 4:46 pm)Undeceived Wrote: How do know the inner state of all these people?

That's a book in itself, and I did qualify this post as an observation, although I'd argue that the evidence supports my position as much as any observation can be supported. With that, the simple answer to your question is time and careful observation.

#3 seems like the usual die-hard Christians, while #5 seems like what most Christians would be, i.e. they have faith in faith that the Christian dogma is true.

May I add one more to your list?

#6. The believers that know God is real. Because they took God up on the promises He made in the bible and He has answered their Asking Seeking and Knocking with everything He has promised 10 fold. These people have had their faith taken from them and it has been replaced with a solid belief because God has seen fit to to proof their faith in the fires of trials and hardships (Much like Job) and saw them through it when they were faithful to What God gave them. As a result nothing this world can offer up will be able to seperate the believer from his/her God.

There is also #7. The legitimate deity who suffered a cosmic concussion when slipping into our dimension and believes that he's just another human being, living out his life on Earth. The day he comes around and realizes who he really is, he'll probably cause the solar system to collapse in upon itself. And then, he'll... well, I'm not sure what he'll do then, and I don't care, since I'll just be a puff of ash floating around in space.

(May 23, 2013 at 9:44 am)Drich Wrote: May I add one more to your list?

#6. The believers that know God is real. Because they took God up on the promises He made in the bible and He has answered their Asking Seeking and Knocking with everything He has promised 10 fold. These people have had their faith taken from them and it has been replaced with a solid belief because God has seen fit to to proof their faith in the fires of trials and hardships (Much like Job) and saw them through it when they were faithful to What God gave them. As a result nothing this world can offer up will be able to seperate the believer from his/her God.

You mean like #4. Yeah, covered that.

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(May 23, 2013 at 8:53 am)Sal Wrote: #3 seems like the usual die-hard Christians, while #5 seems like what most Christians would be, i.e. they have faith in faith that the Christian dogma is true.

I have a number of friends who fit #5 to the tee. They're all good people who are fun to hang out with.

(May 23, 2013 at 9:44 am)Drich Wrote: May I add one more to your list?

#6. The believers that know God is real. Because they took God up on the promises He made in the bible and He has answered their Asking Seeking and Knocking with everything He has promised 10 fold. These people have had their faith taken from them and it has been replaced with a solid belief because God has seen fit to to proof their faith in the fires of trials and hardships (Much like Job) and saw them through it when they were faithful to What God gave them. As a result nothing this world can offer up will be able to seperate the believer from his/her God.

That's covered under #4, Drippy.

My view may be an exaggeration, or, at least, not describe all the believers that exist, but I think it's likely closer to the mark. The view advocated here seems to suggest that there is a significant discrepancy between what the person believes, what they represent themselves to believe, and what they are capable of realizing is true, if they'd only let themselves accept and acknowledge that truth. This is the view that religious belief involves cognitive dissonance, a lot of it, and that strong forces must be deployed to maintain that dissonance without reconciling it by acknowledging "The Real Truth[tm]." It is basically the view that all believers are either liars, mentally ill, stupid, or willful dupes, because any "normal" person would recognize the problems with their religion as problems and do something about it. I don't think this is accurate. I don't think being a religious believer requires significantly more cognitive dissonance than any other belief, from libertarianism to vegetarianism. This is a part of the warp and woof of the way humans and reality are, and attempting to explain it by inventing contorted positions to explain it just because it seems strange and inexplicable to you suggests to me that you are simply naive and ignorant. (Do you need to go to great lengths to remain ignorant on these points?) I think perhaps a more neutral example might clarify. As most here are likely to left of center, politically, most people will identify with this. Many times you will hear people maligning Republicans as liars and cheats, and suggesting that they are evil people because it's obvious (to the observer) that what they are doing is wrong; there's no way that someone could be stupid enough to do what that Republican is doing without knowing it's wrong. Are there likely Republicans who do fit this profile? I wouldn't be surprised to find that there are, but we tend to generalize about the whole class, not just those few exemplars. I think it would be unreasonable to believe that Republicans are somehow different than liberals (in meaningfully significant ways) such that Republicanism requires a special explanation for why the typical Republican continues to believe and act as they do (in spite of what "any normal person" would know is true). In the end, this appears to be a way of normalizing your own in-group, and explaining away the existence of people that disagree with you as flawed and defective. (Is it possible that these people, Republicans and believers do the same, and look at you and your beliefs as the abnormal ones?) In the final analysis, we no more need to have a "5 levels of belief" than we need a 5 levels of Republicanism or a 5 levels of Libertarianism or 5 levels of Liberalism; these are all just attempts to explain what you don't understand in terms of things you do understand, and I think they are all fundamentally flawed because they are infected by faulty assumptions and gross ignorance about human psychology, the psychology of religion, and social psychology.

#n+1 The believer who finds the alternative, atheism, less than compelling or logically inconsistent. This type identifies belief in God as one choice between two diametrically opposed and plausible ideas about reality.