sorry..........

Sorry to hear that you were traumatized by contact with the devil water as a baby. Reminds me of that Simpsons episode: "Dad, you took a baptism for me."

Anyway, as for undoing it, might I suggest this?

 

I think you will find many atheists are people such as myself who grew up in very close proximity to religion. I was raised in a very devout C of E family, my mother is a retired theology teacher, my father a church organist. I was forced to go to church as a young child and even made to take part in some of the on-stage rituals (carrying the incense thingy about etc). I realised pretty early on that I just didn’t buy into it at all, though rather than reject religion out of hand at that point I went deeper in - I joined a Baptist church! I have seen people writhing on the floor speaking in tongues and many similarly bizarre things. I also went to see Billy Graham. Twice! I realised he was merely a very good used car salesman and got out, my scepticism perfectly intact. I suspect I am not the only atheist who has tried, and completely failed to believe in religion. My mind is simply too analytical – it just doesn’t work on trust.

Tony.

 

Spot on Tony. Like you I was coerced into the Anglican church, then the whole family went over to the Methodists when the Anglicans got too high church for them. I had to do the whole 10 yards, Sunday School etc. I did my best to accept it, going in deeper, thinking my scepticism must be my fault but it didn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny. I finally rejected it in its entirety and like you think we'd be better off as a species without it.

 

Religion yes, but God?

I went to a C of E Primary school and my senior school was Christian, but none of that had any effect on me. I always felt uncomfortable in church, all seemed so twee. I just don't really see this sort of thing has any significance, not sure any organised religion I've encountered has much relevance to me at all really.

 

I went through 18 years plus of the sales pitch and didn’t end up buying. How can one possibly get close to something that all the evidence one has access to suggests does not exist? I am sure this is why the likes of Dawkins (or myself) have no specific argument for or against ‘faith’ - from a logical scientific perspective it is simply an irrational belief, fear or delusion and must be dismissed as such.

Tony.

 

Aren't you cherry picking ? The basis of Christianity, the bible, is apparently the word of God ?

Personally the whole subject of religion or a devine creator is so outdated, infantile and anthropocentric. It baffles me that people are still, in this day and age, swept up in it's pathetic cause.

 

This is closer to my idea of God rather than the more widely accepted vision of "a man in the sky".

 

But I would suggest that is due to your perception of the subject of religion, which judging by your confident assignment against an anthropomorphic and external figure, is possibly simplistic and to use your own words a little "infantile".

 

If the sales pitch you didn;t buy and the evidence you never found surrounded something other than, then this might explain it.

 

I simply don’t buy the supernatural aspect, that is all. I am no less in awe of nature, the earth, the universe and everything that surrounds me. It is far, far more amazing, enormous and majestic to me than the simplistic ‘magic’ portrayed in scripture. Natural selection is so much more wonderful, complex and truly beautiful than any creation myth. This is a key area the Intelligent Design nut-jobs get wrong, they consider the only options to be ‘creation’ and ‘chance’ when the answer is very clearly neither.

Tony.

 

I think I have the only logical perception of religion and no amount of wordsmithing and mumbo jumbo can convince me otherwise.

 

I understood that a 'purist' Intelligent Design nut job believes in 'creation' while an evolutionist goes for 'chance' (random mutation), combined with fitness for purpose. You've said above that the answer is very clearly neither. What then?

 

natural selection is the same as chance then....oh dear!

 

I didn't say that, Bob. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.

Mutation is random (according to evolutionists) but only those fit for purpose survive. 'Natural selection' is the combination of random mutation and survival of the fittest.

 

For survival of the fittest, read survival of the adaptable.

For mutation, read evolution.

 

When attempting to discredit natural selection the standard argument put forward by the religious zealot is “creature x is so amazing and perfectly developed for purpose that it must have been designed, it can not possibly have happened by chance”. This argument obviously sees ‘chance’ as some arbitrary gamble at the horse track or coming up trumps at the national lottery etc – this is clearly not the case. Natural selection is billions upon billions of subtle iterations that has taken place over a timescale the religious person is not even allowed to comprehend. As Dawkins says in his book Intelligent Design is merely creationism wearing a cheap tuxedo.

This brings us neatly to another aspect of religious belief – lets call it ‘selective religion’ for the time being. Anyone with an IQ over about 70 will agree the biblical timeframe of 6000 years or so from creation to now is utter bollocks. It has been conclusively proven by scientific means and no amount of nut-job financed creationist “museums” will be met with anything other than derision by anyone who has even the slightest grasp of reality. So given that any intelligent religious person has to reject this timeline and also tends to have rejected absurdities such as the old testament passages relating to stoning people to death for blasphemy etc we seem to have reached a point where it is considered acceptable for people to pick and choose the bits of their religion they want to believe, i.e. they can make it up as they go along.

This was one of the many things I struggled with when I played with religion back in the 70s. I always got the impression the C of E churchgoers would happily hoof a tramp out of the church porch and then sit and listen to the sanitised sermon convinced they had done nothing wrong. The last thing any of them would do was to give up any of their wealth to help others beyond making a token gesture of sticking 50p or so in some charity box. They had IMO selectively ignored the vast majority of documented teachings from their Christ and were clearly hypocritical. Likewise the US bible belt nutters use carefully selected biblical passages to bolster their aggressive and hateful right-wing politics whilst completely ignoring the key new testament teachings on tolerance, wealth distribution and pacifism. The problem with books such as the bible is that they are so incoherently and poorly written that it is impossible to interpret them without such levels of ambiguity. There is a stage where it all becomes completely and utterly worthless – if the instruction manual is bollocks what does that say about the product?

Tony.

 

Fundamentalism NE Spirituality.
No one here is arguing in favour of the former. Some of us are for the latter whether that's expressed in terms of godless or 'godded' wonder.

 

Perhaps we should be less concerned about the US Bible Belt nutters and more concerned about our own.

I've just come across this.

 

Astonishing and truly terrifying statistics. Evolution / natural selection is accepted scientific fact, yet apparently 52% of people are either insufficiently educated to grasp the basic concept or prefer to believe in hogwash, superstition or magic sky fairies. Absurd.

Tony.