| A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #442700] |
Sat, 15 January 2011 06:19  |
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Spoony
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as i'm sure you've noticed, i've debated a lot of religious people lately. there's one thing that always comes up, which seems to me what religion invariably boils down to - the threat of hell. of all the christians i've debated (a great many), only one never mentioned or alluded to it, and one other didn't believe it. for all the talk of love and salvation, this threat is what it always comes down to in the end.
i have three objections in response to it.
firstly that there are several contradictory religions that make this threat. the pope says only catholics are going to heaven and all other non-catholic forms of christianity are 'defective'. many protestant churches say the reverse is true. islam says all non-muslims are going to hell. clearly at least some of these claims are flat out wrong, so it becomes a question of who has the evidence (none of them)
secondly the person making the threat is putting themselves on one side of a particular moral question, or rather two questions:
Is freedom of religion a right we humans deserve? And if you say no to that, is torture an acceptable punishment for not being the right religion? like i said, every christian i've debated has come down on the wrong side of this moral question, i.e. the anti-freedom-of-religion and pro-torture side. but they try to justify this extraordinary position with my Thirdly.
thirdly there's one phrase that they always use when explaining why we atheists don't have freedom of religion and why we can be tortured for not being the right religion: "choose to believe". it's supposedly acceptable for us to be tortured forever for not being the right religion because we made a conscious choice in the matter. we've been warned, we've been told what the punishment will be if we persist in this crime, and we choose to continue in our atheism. well, if that were true, the person making the threat would still be fanatically opposed to freedom of religion and would still be pro-torture, but here's the odd thing. "choose to believe"? that's a baffling phrase. since when is belief a choice? does my mind work differently to these people? i could choose to pretend to be a particular religion if i felt it necessary (and for so much of history, many people really did feel it necessary and for good reason). i can choose to go to church or mosque and i can choose to pretend i'm praying. what i cannot choose to do is believe something. really, i can't. am i in the psychological minority here? am i the only one who cannot instruct my mind on what it must believe?
or is anyone going to put their hand up and say "yes, i can choose what to believe, i don't know why you can't but it's a shame you're going to be tortured for it"?
Unleash the Renerageâ„¢
Renedrama [ren-i-drah-muh]
- noun
1. the inevitable criticism one receives after doing something awful
[Updated on: Sat, 15 January 2011 09:55] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #442714 is a reply to message #442712] |
Sat, 15 January 2011 11:18  |
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Spoony
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Never mind for a moment how much evidence there isn't. I'm asking if anyone else can, after making a choice, will themself to believe something.
Unleash the Renerageâ„¢
Renedrama [ren-i-drah-muh]
- noun
1. the inevitable criticism one receives after doing something awful
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #442725 is a reply to message #442714] |
Sat, 15 January 2011 15:27 |
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Starbuzzz
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Spoony, since you pretty much grew as atheist and you had the sheer luxury of having superb parents, maybe that's why you are asking this. So I will say what a former-indoctrinated person would know:
I remember back in 2000 when me and my sister went up in the church and "confess" and were known as "saved." We were baptized a week later and we were told, "now you are in God's magnifying glass."
For younger people at the time like myself, it's really a matter of just believing. Since religion preys fully on the emotions of vulnerable people, it is much easier to believe something with the flick of a switch.
1 important thing to note here: the act of a young Christian believing is NOT a sovereign action of one's mind. It is always based on the yearly cumulative surrounding religious influences on the mind of the individual. Sunday school, church attendence, creationist documentaries, even the very act of praying before a meal...the influencing factors are too numerous to name. It is like being given a multiple choice question but with only 1 choice. So the individual at some point in entering youth-age, simply has no choice or obligation but just does what he was moulded to do: circle the 1 choice on the question.
Now, that is for younger folks. For adults, it is an entirely different process:
In all my life, I had heard only 1 Christian (Kirk Cameron) openly and honestly saying how the whole tactic is used on adults, i.e, "try to make people make a decision emotionally rather than allowing them to use their intellect to question what they are actually doing...by using "conviction" rather than reason, people can be saved."
If this does not make you feel terrible, then I don't know what does. He said this in a YouTube video long time ago; perhaps in 2007; I was a Christian at the time but still felt sick by it.
No wonder such a tactic hopelessly fails with smart people who reason. It's the exact opposite for a religious person; he is steered away from the intellectual questioning process altogether and rather allows his emotions to climax to the orgasmic point of suddenly allowing himself to be convinced and believing that "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Personal Saviour" upon which he is told he is "saved." I have experienced it.
The ugly part is that with all emotions, the experience wears off within weeks/months and the warm-fuzzy feelings of the soft emotional sex in which the person accepted a comforting lie falls apart. The person is then back to square 1 surrounded by the same feelings of despair in not having the answers and the solutions. Actually, I say he never left square 1, the religion just creates an illusion of changing the carpet to make it look like square 10. It is a terrible falsehood to go thru...but at the time it doesn't seem as such and actually feels very comforting.
I lost count of how many times people who are so vulnerable in their lives do this over and over and "give their lives to Jesus" to "make the problems go away." I saw this over and over many times in my life. People would come crying to church with so many problems, terminally-ill loved ones, suicide cases, pure desperate unemployment...it is the same deal. I don't blame them trying to find an answer through praying...it comforts them while giving nothing in return while managing to rip their money.
This is the same deal with every religion, you are born into it, you get the religious education, and you end up acting as if the religion you were born into is the true one.
An intellectual mind that strongly reasons is automatically hell-bound. I have people in my family whose automated responses to some of my sneaky tough questions are "you can't think like that" or "you can't ask that" and "you cannot question god." The best one is "those are god's secrets."
If a young child is brought up in a religious environment, he is not going to have any trouble believing. For an adult, the Cameron-tactic's (which is every preacher/evangelists tactic btw) success rate depends on the mental abilities of the adult along with any problems/issues he is going thru at the time. Evangelism has always been about the exploitation of those who are weak.
So no, the whole, "choose to believe" concept is nothing but a verbal safehouse for theists.
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #442745 is a reply to message #442725] |
Sat, 15 January 2011 23:04 |
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Spoony
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^^ true dat
my brother's agnostic and my sister, though she's an atheist, teaches RE.
| Starbuzzz wrote on Sat, 15 January 2011 16:27 |
I remember back in 2000 when me and my sister went up in the church and "confess" and were known as "saved." We were baptized a week later and we were told, "now you are in God's magnifying glass."
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see, they probably thought that's a comforting thing to say. big brother is watching you. i can't help but shudder. it's like when people use the word "salvation" to mean "obey him and he won't torture you"
Unleash the Renerageâ„¢
Renedrama [ren-i-drah-muh]
- noun
1. the inevitable criticism one receives after doing something awful
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #442748 is a reply to message #442745] |
Sat, 15 January 2011 23:24 |
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Starbuzzz
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| Spoony wrote on Sun, 16 January 2011 00:04 |
| Starbuzzz wrote on Sat, 15 January 2011 16:27 |
I remember back in 2000 when me and my sister went up in the church and "confess" and were known as "saved." We were baptized a week later and we were told, "now you are in God's magnifying glass."
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see, they probably thought that's a comforting thing to say. big brother is watching you. i can't help but shudder. it's like when people use the word "salvation" to mean "obey him and he won't torture you"
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of course...almost every religious marketing phrase has a sinister real meaning. It makes me not just shudder but also sick at how immoral, heartless, and unquestioning zombies it has made its followers.
When my grandfather died back in August, my dad in his anguish took a picture of my grandfather to church to pray over it to find solace. This was the non-denominational church we have been going to for the past 1 year. The first thing the pastor asked my dad was "was he a believer?"
I felt truly sick and gutted and took it as an insult to the memory of my grandfather. Basically the pastor asked for his own curiosity, "is he in heaven or trashing about in hell fire?"
My disgust with such a hateful threat-based religion has no boundaries. No matter what sugar-coated words are used, it always boils down to hell: the immoral disgusting threat of punishment that has kept Christians in line for this many centuries.
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #442758 is a reply to message #442700] |
Sun, 16 January 2011 01:15 |
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Hypnos
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If the preachers put their energy into something useful, like teaching people basic science, then we wouldn't have this problem.
I feel for those who come from this type of background you described, Starbuzzz, I'm lucky that I come from the third generation, so to speak, in my family because the roots of my family on my father's side are strong Irish Catholics, and due to my grandmother marrying a protestant, we have somewhat been singled out from the family, and I attended a non-denominational school and therefore only had the odd hymn here and there once a week, and it wasn't really rammed down my throat.
My mother was a strong catholic through her childhood due to her parents but by the age of eighteen, with her father dying and then the church refusing to "help" due to the fact she had sinned, kind of put her off and she took a step in the right direction, in my opinion at least.
At the end of the day, religion is sheer hypocracy, sugar-coated to look pretty and is layed upon the weak or narrow minded to continue their regime.
| Caveman wrote on Fri, 21 January 2011 08:26 |
Well this topic is still going on. I have to say I haven't watched much Anime recently (maybe a year or so) the last thing I saw was GITS (for the third time)
Im not too sure whether I just dont enjoy Anime anymore or whether its just I dont have time really to shit and watch it.
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #442773 is a reply to message #442758] |
Sun, 16 January 2011 07:31 |
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Spoony
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| Quote: |
and due to my grandmother marrying a protestant, we have somewhat been singled out from the family
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My mother was a strong catholic through her childhood due to her parents but by the age of eighteen, with her father dying and then the church refusing to "help" due to the fact she had sinned
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there you have it.
y'know when that villainous old slug the Pope was here, he basically said atheists are nazis? well, back in the 30s and 40s the only nazi the catholic church ever excommunicated was goebbels... for marrying a protestant. stomp all over europe, put millions in gas chambers... no problem. marry someone from a SLIGHTLY different religion and it's an outrage
Unleash the Renerageâ„¢
Renedrama [ren-i-drah-muh]
- noun
1. the inevitable criticism one receives after doing something awful
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #442781 is a reply to message #442780] |
Sun, 16 January 2011 08:09 |
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Spoony
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different coloured cloak; same thirst for power, lack of conscience and indifference to human suffering
Unleash the Renerageâ„¢
Renedrama [ren-i-drah-muh]
- noun
1. the inevitable criticism one receives after doing something awful
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #442902 is a reply to message #442714] |
Tue, 18 January 2011 03:35 |
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reborn
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| Spoony wrote on Sat, 15 January 2011 13:18 |
I'm asking if anyone else can, after making a choice, will themself to believe something.
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Absolutely not, and most faiths require that true belief. Faking it simply wont cut it.
Perhaps you can kid yourself for a while maybe, but I would imagine that to be able to truely claim you can will yourself to believe something, you would have to be mentally disturbed.
I think that people can believe there is a chance of it being real, and that's all that has been needed for religion to exist.
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #443800 is a reply to message #443462] |
Sat, 12 February 2011 22:54 |
Rocko
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| bmr_71 wrote on Mon, 31 January 2011 22:39 |
why are you people so fucking butthurt over what other people do
let other people be idiots and profit off them. you aren't going to change anyone's mind anyway, mostly because you are a faggot
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rage about rage
black and proud
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| Re: A psychological question: "choose to believe" [message #443817 is a reply to message #443800] |
Sun, 13 February 2011 09:58 |
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HaTe
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Fear, hope, and tradition control the belief of god.
Fear that your afterlife will not be that of your liking if you do not believe.
Hope that god will somehow save you from misery and depression.
Tradition that says because our parents believe in it, we should too.
Quite honestly I don't give into any of these three. I'm with Hypnos as Spoony.....I need hard evidence, and let's be honest here....there is none supporting that god exists.
I also find myself agreeing with arghathol. It's much like the movie "The Book of Eli". The bible comforts many people, and gives them standards to live by in a mostly confused society. I believe in the belief of god. That is, that people truly believe there is a god, and I personally see that as a good thing. Some people do indeed need this belief in their lives. I'm not one of them, however.
‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’ - Edmund Burke
[Updated on: Sun, 13 February 2011 10:02] Report message to a moderator |
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