Human Programming

Thanks Chiroptera,
I don't think there's any such thing as butting in a public thread Anyway, it is not that complicated. The OP is asking if people's beliefs are programmed. I assumed that meant any belief but it see that Kader means only to question people who DO believe in God since he feels there is so much 'evidence' to refute God.The question of probablity came up.There is a God/s
There is not a God/sThey are still the only two possibilities.What are the odds? They are untestable.'I don't know' is not a choice; NONE of us know.We can only choose between belief or nonbelief.And yes, we can be in a state of in-between or agnosticism, but one of the two options will still be true in the end whether we ever chose to believe in it or not.I am only asking for non-believers to question whether they have been programmed as well.BTW your post was pretty neat. I had never thought about it like that before, but since I will not find out for sure until I am dead, at least, for now I only have belief. A stab in the dark that proves correct is still not real knowledge.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Hi, anastasia.

quote:

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There is a God/s
There is not a God/s

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They are still the only two possibilities.

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That is what I thought you meant. But before you said that these were the only two choices. Although I figured what you meant, you can see that the word choice can give someone a completely different meaning.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

I don`t think the concept of odds is applicable in a case like that.
One might argue that if god does exist, the odds of him/her/it existing is exactly 100%
on the other hand, if he/she/it doesn`t exist, these odds would be exactly 0%.
it beats me how could the concept of odds here be considered useful at all.

That's what I was saying. It's kind of a moot poimt now.

Sorry for not respond the last few days.. christmas crazy shopping Basically (the why people who believe are conditionned ) is you know the improbability of the bible being accurate on some point. But you chose to leave out the part that doesn't fit.You don't believe in the flood yet you believe in jesus. Why believe one part of the bible over the other ? I mean, if you'd give a bible to man who grew in a backwater country and never heard of jesus, would you expect him to start believing ? Or react as if you've given him any fairy tale book. It takes a whole lot of explaining when it comes to the bible, it takes someone else (priests) to show us how to read it (conditionning?) Well on the ground that it happen 2000 years ago, and the way it have come to you isn't orally (not anymore anyways) it's from a book. Who would argue that christianity is though from a book (or any religion for that matter..any religions I know of) ? I don't think a bunch of people who discovered jesus just by looking in there innerselves.So where else ? Oh and when you say written after-the-facts, well, what im trying to say is your taking them for facts. Your taking Jesus for a fact, million of people do. Million of people believe that mohamed is the last prophet and Jesus was a prophet too. They think of it as a fact. While in reality it is only a belief. It can be a fairy tale or for all you know jesus might of been a prophet.You understand where I think you ve been conditionned? I was conditionned too, but not to believe in god. I was conditioned to be a good citizen, I was conditioned to obey the law. We're like a pack of sheep, we all cross the street when the light is green. Some people are so conditionned that weither there is or not cars, they will still wait for that light to turn green. This is also conditionning. But I have not been conditionned to believe in God.So, I know you doesn't know if God exist. I know you believe he does. But when a belief is treated like absolute truth it becomes arrogant. And most christians I know are arrogant, and most muslims I know are arrogant. Some are less then other, some more, some none at all (the wisest ones). And in that arrogance, your belief becomes truth, and your truth becomes the only and absolute truth.The belief itself isn't built on something solid. It's built on the bible. Weither you interpret it your own way doesn't matter. Weither you decide to leave part out or to even acknowledge that there are mistakes in it does not matter. What matter is that you were conditionned to believe in God(a suprem being). Your medium happened to be christianity, for others it might be Scientology or Islam or [insert any religious belief].So when I see errors in the bible, I logically start question the validity of the bible itself. And (i am presuming lots of things) you do not question the validity of it.At school if a teacher would start giving books of scientology to your kids, and preaching it like if it was true, you'd be probably pretty mad, because to you this is all rubish. It's rubish because the book makes crazy assertion based on nothing. You don't have to look deeper or find a greater meaning. You logically reject the whole work because of the crazy assertion you've heard about.Well this should be the same for any work. If it contains some error here and there, or crazy assertion, it should not be takin as the word of God, for how can you decide wich part are good, and wich are not ? It is impossible, unless you just decide to belief.And we come back at the beginning, why do you even believe ?Edited by Kader, : No reason given.

Yet what we are debating is the foundation of the belief. The validity of any religious book can be mathematically tested.And the human reaction to such tests doesn't vary greatly. People who though that the sun was not circling around the sun have been killed. Until came a time were they were too much evidence. And then, we all adapted our belief accordingly. Women who were though to be witches have been burnt, until we actually found out that there isn't witches, and if there isn't all that burning and killing was fo naugh. But yet, we still believe.We're all still adapting to the overwhelming evidence that shows that the bible isn't inerrant [or any religious book as far as I know]. And some decide to not believe anymore, while other find different interpretation, OE for example.EDIT : And I think the most important difference between thoses who still believe and thoses who doesn't is the level of conditionning.Edited by Kader, : No reason given.

Believe the Bible is inerrant or believe in God in general?

Simply believe in God through any religious medium (bible for christians)

Really? What is the mathematical test of a soul? Of redemption? Of resurrection? Of life after death? Of sin? Of honor? of Love? Of beauty? Of Faith? Of GOD? While you might well believe that, what evidence do you have to support such a belief?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The Bible isn't the source for my belief in God, in general. It is, however, the medium by which I believe that Jesus is the Son of that God, which I believe exists even without the Bible.

Do we? For example I know there was no world-wide flood in at least the last 600,000 years.I also know that there was no magic bean that grew overnight to reach a world in the sky inhabited by a Giant with a goose that laid golden eggs.However the morals and worth of both myths is not in the actuality of the events, but in the lessons folk may learn from the stories.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

When I said test it, I meant test what is written in the bible (or any other religious book) and test against reality. Like Ressurection....it has never been witnessed, you only believe in it because you believe in the bible (or budhism maybe).So what does test means? certainly not what you understood it was. It means takes something that is written in the bible we can test (like talking serpents or again, rabbits eating tehre cuds or whatever is written that we can observe) and test it against reality.The facts are the bible contains things that cannot be tested (like what happen after your death). But it also contains fact that have been proven wrong.So your left with facts in the bible proven wrong and untestable things. And yet you chose to believe in ressurection, in a virgin giving birth, in things that makes no sense with what reality all around us is showing. But when the bible talks about things like the flood, or the earth being flat, or the sun turning around the earth, then theses are dismissed as a matter of "interpretation".This isn't logical, we believe what we were programmed to believe, but logic in then end prevail, that's why science is where it is today. Even though everyone were thaugh that the earth was flat, logic said otherwise...and here we are...If there is one thing we know, it is that we know nothing yet. Our knowledge is nothing against the infinity of the univers. Does that answer our question about God ? NoHistory has proven many time that our ignorance is not a good argument to prove the existance of God. And right now, that's all it is, our belief are fuelled by our ignorance just like before.

Jesus (the son of God)doesn't exist without the bible.Please correct me if I'm wrong.So the simple facts of believeing in him (with no scientifical evidence) mean your believing in him because of the bible and nothing else (well maybe because of your parents, but they believed because of the bible, the bible is always the cause for believing in jesus)

Well you don't believe that the earth is young, that's simply an adaptation, there is still people believing the earth is young according to the bible (different level of conditionnning ?). You only modified your belief, but you left the roots intact.You still believe in jesus even if you don't blieve in the flood. Why's that ? How can you pick and choose ? And if you do pick and choose, how can you know wich party is real and wich isn't ?EVERY religion in the world has the greatest best moral of all, love, and compassion, and that we have a purpose, even eternal life. All the religions answer the same basic needs to have an answer for what we do not know. And though the moral of Jack and the Beanstalk is nice, you don't beleieve that jack existed, but there are things in the bible you believe are actually facts not just a moral.So there is no comparison between thoses, not for 99% of believer anyways. If you only believe in the moral of the bible, then you don't believe in jesus being the son of God, you believe that it is just a matter of interpretation.

I will try to respond to both of your recent posts in this one. And where have I ever said otherwise. There are many such things that can be tested. We know with a high degree of confidence that creation did not happen as described in either of the creation myths, that the conquest of Canaan or the Exodus or Flood or tale of Jonah never happened as described in the Bible, but what does that have to do with belief in the lessons? I happen to believe Jesus is a real story, but I have also said here at EvC many times that even if it is all but stories told around the campfire, the message and lessons still are of value.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion