Are religions manmade and natural or supernaturally based?

Some research out this week reckons 43% of the UK population believes that Jesus was resurrected. Which is quite amusing as the same research says that only 9% of the UK population are practicing Christians (attend church once a month or pray).In fact, at 12% of the UK population, atheists now outnumber practicing Christians (and all other religions).You have to question what belief in resurrection actually means if so many say they believe a man can be raised from the dead, but so few find it sufficiently impressive to then go on to practice the religion he supposedly died for.https://www.churchofengland.org/...talking-jesus_booklet.pdf

Probably both. Which is a pity beacuse if they did read and think about what the bible actually says there'd be a lot more atheists. The only atheist propaganda I've ever seen was an ad on the side of a bus a few years ago. It must have been the most effective marketing campaign in advertising history to have the effect you think it had. Compared to the effort religion puts into its propoganda it was a raindrop in a storm. My tiny little village has three Christian churches and a faith school in it, that's probably an extravagance, but it's a situation more or less replicated throughout the UK.Every Sunday I have to turn my favourite BBC radio talk show off for 45 minutes as it broadcasts a sickly Christian service to the entire nation. A situation that worsens every Christmass and Easter.I see from the survey that practicing Christians work predominantly in education - 19% cf only 7% for the general population. I wonder why that is?And don't get me started on papal visits...It seems to me that if we're talking propaganda, Christians have a slight edge. (And a 2,000 year start.)Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

The whole damn thing is a puzzle. It puzzles me why believers feel the need to justify their beliefs using their totally inadequate and corrupted understanding of science. Why not just believe?All of these big physics concepts are actually totally incomprehensive to those of us without extreme understanding of mathematics - they're not available to language, logic or metaphor. You can't just philosophise your way through this stuff, you need an advanced understanding of mathematics that's available to all but a handful of people. And who the hell can show that they're right or wrong or just bonkers?At some point the simplest of concepts just go critical on you. Science glibly says that the universe is expanding. Well ok, but what into?

I doubt you believe anything that I believe ICANT. And in science, what you or I believe is irrelevant anyway.The point I was making is that it's not possible to have an opinion about these things without also having an advanced understanding of the mathematical concept behind them. They simply do not conform to everyday, common sense analysis. You've grasped hold of this sciency looking equation T=0, with absolutely no concept of what it means.This is why you, like billions of people before, have hit the brick wall of understanding and solved it by inserting the supernatural. This imaginary thing takes all those difficult T=0 problems away at a stroke.But it doesn't does it? So far you've failed to tackle the ultimate paradox of the cause of the supernatural being that you've conjured up. To do that you have to invoke the causeless cause. Now that's an even harder concept than your little equation isn't it?

Look, you're not making a point that's difficult to understand. It just resolves to 'God did it.' Fine, we all get that. But It's been pointed out several times by several people that that just pushes the argument back a stage. So who or what caused God to exist? It's hardly an original thought, why are you not answering it?Is God a causeless cause? If such a thing can be possible then perhaps the universe can do it itself? Perhaps the universe is god?Let's see if you can get beyond goddidit.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

And what, created the supernatural power? Or have you simply invoked the causeless cause? No kidding! What question?

I've really got no interest in what you think about that stuff - you're not remotely qualified to talk about it and in any case it's beyond both of us. I'm happy to accept that we can't and don't know about it - talk of brains etc is interesting speculation for the very few people capable of understanding it. There's no point asking an atheist what a supernatural power would look like.......But you've AGAIN sidestepped the only question I'm interested in hearing you answer - if you think a supernatural power created the universe, what created the supernatural power?

That would be all of it.All you've done is invoke the uncaused cause. Goddit. Turtles all the way down. Fine, end of discussion. It's just special pleading, "your argument requires a cause, mine doesn't"

'We' don't have a position. 'We' are struggling to understand such things. On a personal level, I know I will never understand what the mathematicians are saying. If I have a faith, it's that we will never know. There's no reason at all why we should be able to. We've come a long way in a short time in understanding this but it's merely a hope that we'll have the capacity to get there. Evolution has absolutely nothing to do with this. Evolution is a mostly understood process that began billions of years after what we regard as the beginning of what we know as the universe. Even you understand and accept that, so why conflate the issues?

'Turtles all the way down' is a metaphor for an infinite regression. God made the universe. Who made god? God made god. Who made god? Etc etc etc. It's got nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is an understood process. Other processes are other processes, some of which we don't yet understand, some of which we may never understand.At this point believers just say goddidit. With no other evidence whatsoever. Science just says we don't know. Don't confuse thing that we know with things that we don't.

Why? You've read here that some scientists believe that there are good reasons why our universe could have started itself. I have no way of understanding that but at least it's based on mathematical evidence, not just made up. There's no reason why your imaginary universe creator needs to be sentient or moral. Certainly the evidence that it's moral is totally lacking - rather the opposite, the universe is a hostile place. Science builds it's hypotheseses from evidence, then tests them - it doesn't just make shit up. Goddidit is a pure man made invention, born out of ignorance. The reason why science is successful in sweeping away the primitive belief structures of ancient religious superstitions is because it doesn't just make stuff up. It finds its answers in observations of what actually happens, not what some shaman says happens. It's how society progresses. Why there's something rather that nothing is one of the great remaining question for science, I personally doubt that we'll ever actually know the answer to that. But what we certainly won't do is make up an answer, form multiple mutually exclusive cults, get on our knees and worship it in fear our eternal damnation.