oh yes... im going there.... RELIGION!

[SCRawl]

Your definition could easily apply to membership in a political party, a union, or a social club.

Well, yes, you're right. I should have added the proviso that those beliefs include (in general) belief in the existence a supernatural god, and all that follows from that. Not all religions include this belief, though we're safe if we keep things in the Abrahamic "Big Three".

I'm a believer but I'm not religious.

I may share the same beliefs as others, but I also question and think.

I refuse to be a trained chimp,rather I act on my own free will, and make choices that not everyone will agree with.

Everything in life is not black and white, hence faith is required.

Yes, but not everything in life requires faith. That was (sort of) the point that eri was trying to make, and I couldn't disagree with her more about that.

I may have come across in this thread as stating the position that all religious people are somehow less intelligent, or somehow deficient. This is not my position; one of my oldest, best friends is Catholic, and he's at least as smart as I am. (I know, I'm damning him with faint praise...) But he is what I would refer to as a thinking religious person.

The thinking religious person acknowledges that, while he (I'll use just the male pronouns) believes -- has faith -- in whatever his religion requires him to believe, these beliefs are irrational. He believes them anyway.

I accept that you and others have a different opinion.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

This is true. It is not true, however, that all opinions are of equal value. Should my opinion about your health be held at the same level as your physician?

[Skippy]

Thank you for your clarification, which was much appreciated, and understood.

Would you be so kind as to clarify this point you made?:

"The thinking religious person acknowledges that, while he (I'll use just the male pronouns) believes -- has faith -- in whatever his religion requires him to believe, these beliefs are irrational. He believes them anyway."

Are you saying that the thinking religious person has faith in beliefs that he himself knows is irrational?

Thank you.

[SCRawl]

Would you be so kind as to clarify this point you made?:

"The thinking religious person acknowledges that, while he (I'll use just the male pronouns) believes -- has faith -- in whatever his religion requires him to believe, these beliefs are irrational. He believes them anyway."

Are you saying that the thinking religious person has faith in beliefs that he himself knows is irrational?

I should clarify by stating that such a person recognizes that it is the faith in these beliefs that is irrational. My wording was ambiguous, sorry.

[swouper2]

"irrational


• adjective not logical or reasonable." - Oxford dictionary


I'm an intelligent "thinking" Christian. I don't see however, how believing something that you yourself acknowledge as being unreasonable is a more intelligent stance.


Atheism is far too simplistic to make any sense, either. You talk about where the onus of proof lies. I don't feel that the putting the onus of proof on believers gives any more credibility to atheists. I personally think that the more "intelligent" method of disbelief is agnosticism, which at least acknowledges that we as humans, are fallible, and we do not know or understand everything around us.


I also know that my understanding of God is obviously not complete, but, just like everybody else, I'll find out when I'm dead.



I know you don't think it's intelligent for me to listen to my heart and my soul to know what is true. But honestly, that doesn't matter to me. We'll find out when we die, who's right or wrong.


My brother has an interesting theory, though I'm not entirely sure that I like the logic - here it is.


When we die, if there is truly nothing, then it won't matter what we believed, we're gone, and we no longer care what anybody thinks about us, or if we led good lives, or what we left behind, because we simply no longer exist. However, if we Christians are right, atheists have a lot to lose. So it's only logical to live a good life, and follow basic human values and decency, if you have any regard for your future.

[SCRawl]

"irrational


• adjective not logical or reasonable." - Oxford dictionary


I'm an intelligent "thinking" Christian. I don't see however, how believing something that you yourself acknowledge as being unreasonable is a more intelligent stance.

So you're saying that believing in something that cannot be perceived by any means we have at our disposal is completely reasonable? Have you ever heard of Carl Sagan's dragon?

The Dragon In My Garage
"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage" Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floates in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility.
Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative-- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."
Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons--to say nothing about invisible ones--you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.
Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages--but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence"--no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it--is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

I know it's long, but I think that it makes an excellent argument -- better than I ever could.

Atheism is far too simplistic to make any sense, either. You talk about where the onus of proof lies. I don't feel that the putting the onus of proof on believers gives any more credibility to atheists. I personally think that the more "intelligent" method of disbelief is agnosticism, which at least acknowledges that we as humans, are fallible, and we do not know or understand everything around us.

The fact is that we're all agnostics. You're probably an agnostic with respect to the Tooth Fairy -- there's no real evidence for it, but you really can't be sure, so you have to have a little doubt in your mind.

When we die, if there is truly nothing, then it won't matter what we believed, we're gone, and we no longer care what anybody thinks about us, or if we led good lives, or what we left behind, because we simply no longer exist. However, if we Christians are right, atheists have a lot to lose. So it's only logical to live a good life, and follow basic human values and decency, if you have any regard for your future.

If that's all that Christianity required to avoid damnation -- being nice to people and living good (by any reasonable standard) lives -- then it would be a much more humane religion. Instead we get a set of rules, the first of which is "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before Me." Not "Don't murder each other", or "Treat each other well".

[Skippy]

"I know you don't think it's intelligent for me to listen to my heart and my soul to know what is true. But honestly, that doesn't matter to me. We'll find out when we die, who's right or wrong."

As one cannot argue against one's own personal experience.

Only you and you alone know what is right in your heart,soul and mind.

[Skippy]

"If that's all that Christianity required to avoid damnation -- being nice to people and living good (by any reasonable standard) lives -- then it would be a much more humane religion. Instead we get a set of rules, the first of which is "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before Me." Not "Don't murder each other", or "Treat each other well"

Christianity in its truest sense is not a set of rules, rather it is a relationship.