Phat writes:
Some of us have experienced a feeling. Subjectively we had strong confirmation.
I'd say that's almost normal - all you need is the right conditioning and have it reinforced by other. (It should be a clincher that no one ever believes in something that the society they live in has never come across, but of course it isn't somehow.)
Yeah but that's really a fantasy of your own. It may be predominantly the case at least for all those who were actively raised in a culture's religion, but there are those in every culture who end up accepting the religion of another culture. People tell me -- I love how some people are willing to tell other people what's REALLY going on in their heads against everything they say about it themselves, never have to face an unwelcome fact that way -- so, people tell me that I'm a Christian because I was raised in a Christian culture, was even sent to church as a child, utterly discounting thirty years of my life as a professed atheist and the fact that when I did become a Christian in the end I started out believing that all religions worship the same God, expected at first to embrace one of the Eastern religions, then Catholicism, then read my way to Protestantism. Just because I ended up a Protestant is all the evidence needed that I simply ended up embracing my childhood religion.
So, how do you explain two friends of mine who were both raised Protestant and ended up serious Buddhists, one a priestess? All those at EvC for that matter who say they were raised Christian and have given it up. Somehow none of that counts for some reason.
Also, Christian missionaries DO succeed in converting people of other cultures to Christ, it's happened all over the world. Their societies "never came across" the gospel of Christ until the first missionaries showed up. Often it took a long time for them to succeed, but eventually some did come to believe and churches were started. The Church in China was begun by Hudson Taylor and there are now millions of Christians in China even under persecution by the Communists. Millions, yes millions. South Korea is known for the biggest church on the planet IIRC. Christians in India are persecuted by both the Hindus and the Muslims and yet the gospel continues to be preached there.
The West is losing its Christian foundations but other parts of the world are embracing the gospel of Christ. Probably evidence that Christianity thrives under persecution and gets watered down and irrelevant where it is taken for granted.
I believed the entire thing in a really committed way until my early teens. Then suddendly I didn't - it all become utterly preposterous.
Under no influence whatever? Just arrived at that opinion on your own? I too gave it up as a teenager under the influence of atheist friends and the idea that religion is something for children, but I did feel a pang of loss. You didn't? Nevertheless I didn't look back, I went on as a "grown up" for the next thirty years.
Now if your god actually does exist why would he do that? One minute I'm saved the next I'm going to hell for all eternity. Seems a tad unfair don't you think?
Well, God isn't stopping you from changing your mind you know. It's still your choice in the end.
But isn't it rather odd that someone who claims none of it is true spends so much time complaining about people who think it is true? Shouldn't you just quietly pity us? I mean you put a lot of emotion into your objection. Maybe you have to completely defeat us in order to be as sure as you want to be that none of it is true?
And you know what else is odd? Nobody spends much time if any complaining about Buddhism or Hinduism or any other religion on earth but Christianity. Don't you find that odd? Surely they are just as irrational by your lights, and surely they influence the people around them to their irrational beliefs.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.