Why Belief?

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Wow, the guy can't say a thing about his own experience without you dogging his every move and telling him he's wrong -- about his own experience yet.

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The largest determinant of what religion a person will identify with is the religion of his or her parents and local community in which he or she was raised.This is simply a fact.If it were not true, then we should se much less regional pattern and much less consistency over time of what religion people are.

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According to you, he is a Christian because his culture is Christian and you are adamant about that. Nothing he says counts for anything.

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To say one is not influenced AT ALL by the culture one is raised in WRT what religion one chooses among the thousands in existence is silly. It is particularly silly as it looks like he was born and raised in Texas. Last I checked, Texas is in the Bible Belt.

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He's right, it is very easy not to notice anything Christian in this culture, although it may be so obvious to you.

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Does the business you work in close for Ramadan? Do you have a cleric calling you to prayers five times a day from the minaret in the center of town? Do you see the Buddhists providing food for the monks at the Temple near where you were raised?

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I can say that I too had just about no sense at all of anything Christian in my environment before I became a believer. Yes, there were quite a few Christian churches in my town too, but I was only inside them when community events were held there and their Christian meaning hardly crossed my mind.

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But were you inside Jewish Temples, Mosques, Hindu Temples, Shinto shrines, or Buddhist temples just as much as the Churches?

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After childhood I never went to a church service except to a Unitarian service once in a while because that was the thing to do among us "intellectual" types. I don't remember anything about it. I think it was pretty boring and irrelevant. In my case, however, I was in a trendy little town on the West Coast where there was every other kind of religion in evidence more than in most American towns, all the Eastern stuff, the New Age stuff. However, I only noticed those because I had friends who were involved in them, which I found irritating and depressing since in those days I was an atheist and considered all religion to be irrational and weird.

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So, Christianity is, indeed, very dominant in our culture and these Eastern religions are considered "wierd" or "trendy"?

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Yes, so nobody can say one thing about his/her own experience without being told that he's lying if his experience doesn't conform to the statistics.

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Please show me where I said that Jackal was lying.It is much more likely for a person to be simply wrong or mistaken about something like this rather than to be actively lying.That is why I have been asking about his particular experinences with other religions in the culture in which he was raised.I mean, if know about Christmas and Easter and Noah's Ark, you attended weddings and events in Christian churches, ever saw any televangelists on television at any time, etc. then it means you were exposed to Christianity.

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I see. You know all about him. He knows nothing. And of course he's lying if he doesn't immediately agree with your statistical way of understanding everything.

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Why do you keep misrepresenting me like that?Nowhere have I ever said that Jackal is lying. I just think he is mistaken.I will repeat that I am completely open to the idea that he really wasn't exposed to any Christianity AT ALL growing up in the Bible Belt. I find it highly unlikely that this is the case.That is why I have been asking about his particular experinences with other religions in the culture in which he was raised.

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He's right, it is very easy not to notice anything Christian in this culture, although it may be so obvious to you.

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Complete irrelevance.

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It is hardly irrelevant.All government offices and almost all businesses close down for a Christian holiday in this country, Faith. The same happens on the Christian day of worship every single week.The entire work week, and even University and school semesters, are structured around the days that Christians practice their religion (Easter break and Christmas break).We do not, in comparison, even recognize ramadan.

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The point is that if a person tells you he became a Christian completely independent of the culture the not-only-polite but reasonable thing to do is believe him.

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Nobody is independent of their culture unless they are a hermit.

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I can say that I too had just about no sense at all of anything Christian in my environment before I became a believer. Yes, there were quite a few Christian churches in my town too, but I was only inside them when community events were held there and their Christian meaning hardly crossed my mind.

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I'm sure your reasoning makes sense to you but it's bogus. (snip)

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I am afraid you didn't really answer the question.I am unclear on if you were raised in a very religiously diverse community or if you chose to seek out such people later in life.

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Nobody is denying that Christianity is dominant in our culture,

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Thank you.

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more or less still though dying fast, but you are missing the point that it is very possible to grow up in this once-Christian culture

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Huh, "once Christian"?It is the most Christian nation on the planet.

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and it have zero impact. It's simply a meaningless cultural backdrop with no more religious influence than all the McDonalds and KFCs in every town.

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Oh, then you believe it has a HUGE impact on our culture, just as fast food chains have had a large impact on our culture.These chains have affected almost every aspect of our lives, in fundamental ways that many people are not really aware of, and the influence starts at a very young age.

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Really becoming a Christian is a very big thing that has nothing to do with culture.

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If that was true, wouldn't we see less of a trend for Christian communities to stay Christian, and Hindu communities to stay Hindu, and so forth, if it had nothing to do with culture?

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It is not something you choose. it is something that happens to you.

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Then why doesn't it "happen to" any of those Buddhists or Hindus who weren't raised in a Christian culture?Why do we see the pattern of religious distribution that we do, Faith.Explain how culture has nothing to do with that.

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If you would like to understand it at all, you should listen to those who have been through it. But of course if you just prefer sounding erudite without knowing a thing, keep going with the statistics.

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I keep asking many questions which you don't answer.edited to fix quote box.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 05-07-2005 07:41 PM

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Thanks for the help Faith. I hate to see I have a reply to my messages just because I know they will pick apart every word I say.

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Well, yeah.This is a debate board, after all.That's what one comes to a debate board to do; to get one's ideas and posts picked apart by everyone else's in order to have interesting discussions and hopefully learn something new or get a different perspective that you hadn't thought of before.You made an interesting claim; that your descision to become a Christian was not influenced by the Christian culture in which you live.I doubted this, and asked you a whole bunch of questions based upon what I have learned about the religious choices people make in general.While I certainly am fairly sure I'm right, the reason I asked those questions of you is to test my hypothesis that the reason you chose Christianity is because you have never really been exposed to any other religion and that it is everpresent in our culture, and especially your culture in Texas, deep in the Bible Belt of the US.Since you have not yet answered my questions, I can't really be sure that I'm right, but knowing that it's often true that when people avoid answering direct questions entirely or put a twist or spin upon their answer, it usualy means they are avoiding, at least in part, giving a totally straightforward answer, because that answer would show them to be wrong or mistaken.

Only if there's lots of oil in Belarus.