This topic has been brought up multiple times in various threads, but I cannot recall seeing a separate thread for it, so please point me to one if it exists.
In
God & the Fairy Tree the topic of belief through an "accident of birth," or, to be more specific, through being directly taught about a certain belief or being raised in an environment where a majority of people believe a certain way has been discussed by Parasomnium, Catholic Scientist and Schraf (and pbee, I believe), but it is off-topic there.
In
Message 165 Schraf responds to CS:
quote:
Damn, I was going to say that 'being taught' could explain my particular flavor of theism, but the belief in god, itself, is of its own accord.
schraf writes:
So, do you ever remember a time when you didn't realize that people believed in and worshipped an invisible power that they called "God"?
I was raised a Catholic and was brought to Mass every Sunday from infancy on, and attended CCD starting at age 5.
There was never, ever a time in my sentient life in which I was not made aware of people's belief in God(s), and I suspect the same is true of you, and of most people on the planet.
The influence of religion is quite powerful, especially for children who believe in all sorts of things when adults tell them stories about them and even when they stumble upon them themselves (for instance, I fervently believed the Gelflings from
The Dark Crystal were real and I was terribly upset when my mother explained to me that they were not).
Schraf's experience (and probably the majority of those here, too) differs from mine in that I was not raised in a church-going family. I didn't step one foot inside a church (except for a wedding and a funeral, both when I was a toddler and a couple of rounds of Sunday school that I begged my mom to let me go to with my best friend when I was 7) until I was 13. I don't recall hearing any explanations about God until I was 7, but I did hear the word mentioned, most obviously, through our Pledge of Allegiance and probably through other media, but I didn't really know what was meant by the term. It wasn't until around age 7 or so that I remember having some kind of understanding of what "God" meant and I started imitating prayer based on books that I'd read and my friends' prayers during sleepovers. I heard tales about Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark and some Jesus guy who loved the little children and since most everyone I knew believed in this stuff, it became acceptable in my child's mind that there was some old man w/ a beard living in the sky with his angels (and dead people) on clouds looking over us and a devil living deep beneath the earth. It was a simplistic view of the Christian God and it wasn't a deep-seated belief, but I accepted it as true just based on what people around me were saying (my parents would neither confirm nor deny the rumors, but told me that when I was older they would let me see for myself).
I wholeheartedly believe that if I was raised in India (most parts) I would have believed in simplistic versions of Shiva, Krishna, et al or if I was raised in Saudi Arabia I would have believed in a simplistic version of Allah or if I was raised in Ancient Greece I would have believed in simplistic versions of Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, et al.
When I got older and after exploring many religions I came to the conclusion that there is no supernatural entity(ies). During this process of exploration, however, I always had this lingering doubt that if I chose something other than Christianity that I would go to the Christian Hell. I had not yet thought of or read about the refutations to Pascal's Wager and even after "becoming" an atheist, small doubts crept in and they were always about the Christian version of hell.
I wholeheartedly believe that I would not have had these
particular doubts if I was raised in a Muslim country/community or a Hindu country/community or in a San community or in a remote Amazonian tribe.
What I would like to know is how are theists so sure that they independently came to their faith?
Did they seriously look into other religions before becoming a {insert religion here},provided the choice was there in the first place, or did they only look into other religions after the fact, if at all?
The latter option doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I would propose that a prior conviction in one faith most likely dictates how one views other faiths and it is "relatively rare," as Crash points out for those from one religion to convert to an entirely different religion (although it seems slightly more common for people to convert to a different flavor, like, say, from Southern Baptist to Pentacostal).
Do the theists here agree with this proposal that it is difficult to seriously consider the merits of and arguments presented by other religions because of the bias towards their own faith, especially if they were raised in that faith?
And if one comes to their faith before exploring and/or understanding the merits of and arguments presented by other religions can one truly say that they came to their faith "by their own accord?"
Faith and Belief, please.
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