(April 15, 2015 at 8:58 am)robvalue Wrote: This is something that has intrigued me for a while, ever since I heard it. "Most of the time, theists live like atheists." I think it's true. When it comes to general mundane decision making and survival, that is what they do. And when they stray significantly from what atheists do, it works out badly for them. This is what I wanted to examine further.
Some easy examples:
An atheist looks both ways before crossing the street.
A theist thinks, "God is looking after me. But best be on the safe side...", looks both ways before crossing the street. Thinks, "God got me across the street."
A theist thinks, "God is looking after me. I don't need to look." Theist walks out into the road without looking. Theist gets hit by a car.
An atheist goes to the doctor when they are ill. Gets better.
A theist thinks, "God is looking after me. But best be on the safe side...", and goes to the doctor when they are ill, and prays. Gets better. Thinks, "God made me better."
A theist thinks, "God is looking after me. I don't need to go to the doctor." Theist prays. Theist gets very ill.
And so on. What the theist is doing, minus irrelevancies like praying and attributing things to god, is exactly the same. When it isn't, they come off worse.
This is open to anyone to discuss, and to think of any more interesting examples of when theists behave like atheists, or times they differ and how that works out for them. My point is that basically theists are acting like they don't believe god is looking after them, betraying their professed beliefs.
Your last point first:
When I was a theist, I always viewed 'bad things happening' as not a big deal. Because in the big picture, you get eternal salvation. Intentions were the primary focus. Not looking both ways because I wanted God to know I trusted him to keep me safe was dumb, because I didn't view God as particularly invested in whether or not I got hit by a car. I thought of those things in the "Give to Caeser what is Caesers" classification. "I laid down the stuff I want you to do, the rest is up to you." with things like not walking into traffic fitting under 'the rest.'
The earlier point:
I think we see a lot of overlap, because evolution has left us with a lot of the same desires.
I imagine you take "Pray to God instead of going to the doctor" lady, remove her religion, and she's some anti-vaxx holistic medicine wacko in California. What's driving them isn't the religion, it's some weird defective brain impulse.
Just like a theist thanks God when they beat cancer, and an atheist thanks science. Both are really just happy not to be dead. The base feelings are the same, it's just they express them in a different context.
Another example, if you remove the context, it's often tough to tell many Atheists and Puritans apart the way they judge people. It's the same propping oneself up, and dehumanizing the other based on what you believe. For whatever reason, that seems to be a very big part of human nature.
