(May 1, 2018 at 7:22 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Why would rational theism be informed by magic book at all? If that's what jumps out..when trying to determine how theism could be rational, then we might find it useful to remind ourselves that magic book's problems are magic books problem. Not gods problem.Why do people believe in gods in the first place? In ancient times people needed comfort when they experienced disasters. And since their lives were so crappy they hoped for a better day, even if it was after they died. So they came up with the idea of souls, which is pretty much universal around the world. Once they got the soul thing working which let them enjoy eternal life in some kind of heaven or happy hunting ground it was easy for the con men to take charge and create all sorts of gods who would give the people eternal life but only if they did what the con men said. Moses worked that con like a master.
The god of classical theism so beloved by believing rationalizers..... was a pagan god, after all.
Today people are stuck with those ancient gods, like Yahweh, Yeshua, Allah. People can't dump them and replace them in their religion so they have to go with the bad versions that ancient con men cooked up.
The prime reason the average person needs a deity is because only an all-powerful deity can give the person eternal life. In order to get the reward the person has to follow the rules, whatever they are. Otherwise the deity will inflict eternal punishment on the sinner. It's an universal model.
Atheists generally reject the idea of gods. So that involves rejecting the idea of eternal life and eternal punishment. When you're dead you're done. But as you look into your future what kind of a funeral do you want? Even if you plan to jump into an oven and have your ashes dumped in a forest it's still hard to eliminate all traces of religion from the process.
