Why Belief?

I had kind of a similar experience - my church more or less "told" me that I had to judge those who believed or lived differently than me - that I had to believe that Buddists and homosexuals were hell-bound.I didn't want to, and the evidence clearly was that 1) Christians couldn't prove that they were any more right than anybody else, and 2) homosexuals that I knew seemed like just-fine people.As a Minnesotan, condemning people who weren't harming me just didn't sit well. Not that that lead immediately to atheism, but it was probably the start.

Just so you know - that feeling you get "within"? That feeling of certainty? That's what indoctrination, particularly cultural indoctrination, feels like.

In Texas? Yeah - like everywhere else in our country its "jesus jesus jesus god god god" almost 24-7.

Um, no. The exact opposite.What I was saying is that you are wrong. Our TV is not as far from Christianity as you can get; in fact, most of what's on TV is Christianity in one form or another. So too with radio. Particularly down in Texas. The reason why you haven't noticed this is because what Schraf has been telling you is true - you were indoctrinated into Christianity. That's why you don't see all the Christianity on TV and radio - its transparent to you.

Why is that a bad thing? That is to say, why is that something you don't find enjoyable?

Got it. You're an intellectual pussy in regards to discussing your beliefs.What I don't understand is why that fact means I don't get to ask questions. If you can't handle the heat then why are you here in the first place?

You can't claim no experience of something we have every reason to believe you have experience with. (You can't claim not to have seen something if I know it was held right in front of your open eyes.)There's more than enough Christian influence in popular culture to ensure that Christianity, or at least belief in the Abrahamic God, is the default religious position for pretty much everybody on a spiritual quest in American society. It's irrefutable. Certainly you willl find persons who wound up something else, but if you ask any one of them, their personal narrative will include the specific rejection of Christianity somewhere around the beginning, because that's what people try first in our society.I mean, c'mon. Let's not be ridiculous, ok? Of course it does. Otherwise you wouldn't have Christian societies like ours or Muslim societies like others. You'd have predominant atheism - because honestly few people would fall for religion if they weren't exposed to it as children - with pockets, here and there, with one or another religion.

No, but it sure makes me look pretty stupid when I tell people I don't know who Ronald McDonald is. I mean, c'mon. Why should anybody believe me when I say that "oh no, lived next door to one all my life, saw their commercials, but I don't know who the hell that clown dude is?" I wasn't resistant to it. I was a Christian (and a creationist) for many, many years.

Uh-huh. And if I told you that I was a victim of coulrophobia, the irrational fear of clowns, and that I had lived next to a McDonalds as a child, wouldn't you find it pretty hard to believe if I tried to tell you those two things were unrelated?Never mind, I'll answer for you: "not if you were a Christian." That's right. Faith will balk at absolutely nothing so long as it has the imprint of her religion.

I went to college; an experience that, for most everybody, radically alters their perspective towards the culture in which they find themselves. (Christians are right about one thing - college is bad for faith.)

And we can know those things, to a reasonable degree of acccuracy, by examination of the general culture in which they grew up. But you already do, you see. You already know at least some of what influenced me, from the relevant fact of my exposure to McDonalds. If I make a claim that I was not influenced by Ronald McDonald, you know that I'm lying, because you already know that I was exposed to that influence.C'mon. Let's not be ridiculous, ok?

I don't see in what way that was a personal attack. I'll grant you it was a touch snarky, but so what? That's what it takes to get through to Faith.Moreover I don't see in what way this debate is fruitless. Faith is making reasonable, if wrong, points; I'm responding to them point by point. The debate is heated, but certainly moving forward.

Those weren't secular nations. The leaders of those countries viewed themselves as gods.

Sadly, it's the case that most people, in the absence of religion, will invent one of their own. In the cases you've cited it became the state itself that was worshipped.

That's the opposite of what I'm saying. The government shouldn't be in the God business, and religion should not be in the law business.Get it?