A Question for Thesists

[Longhorn]

Thor is real?

Pretty sure he meant Zeus.
He's the god of all Gods...

Oh come on. We all know he's talking about Hathor.

[Longhorn]

If I had been raised in an Atheistic environment, I would have become religious eventually, with intuition being the starting point.

How can you be so certain of that? What do you base that belief on? Would you say that if you were raised a muslim, you would've converted to the one true catholic faith™ eventually?

[Buzz]

If I had been raised in an Atheistic environment, I would have become religious eventually, with intuition being the starting point.

How can you be so certain of that? What do you base that belief on? Would you say that if you were raised a muslim, you would've converted to the one true catholic faith™ eventually?

 I'm not certain of it. That sentence is a mere hypothetical scenario, based on my personal circumstance.

[Longhorn]

How can you be so certain of that? What do you base that belief on? Would you say that if you were raised a muslim, you would've converted to the one true catholic faith™ eventually?

 I'm not certain of it. That sentence is a mere hypothetical scenario, based on my personal circumstance.

Sorry then. It sounded pretty confident.
Do you think that if you were born in Saudi Arabia, you would eventually become a catholic?

[Lemonvariable72]

The argument of location is a incredibly powerful argument. One thing I've noticed is that most wlc style arguments work for nearly all religions. From there its not hard to understand why there is a Muslim wlc in the back of my mind d saying the same words and arguments.

[Pyrrho]

A theist on here did pretty much admit she is in her religion simply because she was raised in it. She was honest enough to admit she would probably be a Jew if raised Jewish. Not many theists can be that honest. For every 100 theists who think they would end up in their current religion regardless of the kind of indoctrination they receive, probably 70%+ would be wrong.

This didn't seem to bother her at all though, she was still convinced she is right while admitting it's also an accident of birth.

People are either deluded into thinking they'd have found their own religion regardless (statistically they wouldn't) or that it just happens to be the right one anyway (handy).

The accident of birth also applies to things like nationalism.  Many people believe that their nation is the best.  This also often applies to the local sports teams.  These are all forms of ethnocentrism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

[Pyrrho]

The argument of location is a incredibly powerful argument. One thing I've noticed is that most wlc style arguments work for nearly all religions.  From there its not hard to understand why there is a Muslim wlc in the back of my mind d saying the same words and arguments.

Any argument that does not use proper evidence will work for the local religion.  "Just have faith" is a common thing for people to say. It is the same for every religion.

If any religion actually had proper evidence, they would use that and nearly everyone in the world would likely be converted to it.  But that does not actually happen, because none of them are supported by actual evidence.  It is pseudo-evidence that is used, like the feeling that one is right.  Every religion has members who feel that they are right, so it is obvious that feeling something is right is not proper evidence at all.

[Pyrrho]

To the theists who frequent this board, Why do you believe in god?  Is it a simple matter of continuing the tradition of the way you were raised?  Is it the result of scientific research in which you determined that religion answered your questions about life and the world more accurately than science?  Something else?

As a follow-up question, had you been raised atheist, what do you suppose the chances are that you would have found your god and converted to your religion in adulthood?

I was raised as a believer in God via parental rearing. I continue to be a believer in God from a combination of intuition and intellectual pursuit. 

If I had been raised in an Atheistic environment, I would have become religious eventually, with intuition being the starting point.

What do you think of the fact that believers in other religions use intuition as support for their religions?  Muslims intuit that Islam is correct, Hindus intuit that Hinduism is correct, etc.  Are they right to do that?  If not, how can you be right to use intuition as a basis for belief?

[robvalue]

The religious arguments tend to all start out the same, then at the last second they all take a total non sequitur (on top of the ones already committed) to randomly jump to one of many contradictory positions.

If an argument appears to prove everything, that's a warning sign that actually it proves nothing.

[TubbyTubby]

I brought this subject up on a christian site once, suggesting that their 'chosen' religion was a direct result of their birthplace (mainly southern US I think) and parental belief system. I suggested that, if they had been in Yemen, Saudi et al, they would likely be Muslim. Without exception, they refuted this citing cases of christians in those countries as proof they too would have found the 'one true faith'. The cognitive dissonance can be a powerful force as we know.

It requires the theist to apply some introspection that would lead to questions that would lead to doubt and they avoid that at all costs.