Religion from my perspective

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While growing up in Michigan, I attended a Baptist Church. In the fifties they called themselves Swedish Baptist. When I was 13 I learned a few magic tricks. I saw magic as a type of dishonesty that I hadn’t noticed before. I saw that same dishonesty while in the army when I became familiar with the prophesy tricks, I Ching and fortune telling.

A couple months before my 27th birthday, in 1977, I had reason to be concerned about my afterlife. I felt that I needed to understand God. One day after about six weeks of research and a lifetime of religion, I was getting into my truck. Magic and prophesy came to mind with religion. I think I said it out loud, “It’s the same thing.”. That is the moment that I became an atheist.

I see religion as a trick using the same kinds of dishonesty that I see in magic and prophesy. To pull this off, you present yourself as an emissary of a god. You convince people to have faith in you. You convince these folks that having faith in what you say is having Faith in God. You guide their fantasies by speaking for the imaginary god. Believers will respect you to the point of worship.

People of every religion believe the god stories because they have faith in these tricksters. In earlier times it took charisma or a gimmick to sell god fantasies. Now you can go to a school to learn how an established religion would want their version of a god fantasy handled.

Now I understand God.

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What a nice story… It’s always amazing when you have a moment of clarity like that. I’ve had a few in my life that were of the same ilk. Simple life lessons in which connections are made and the results are amazingly life-altering.

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That’s a fine conclusion you arrived at, IMHO.

I feel pity for those who have been conditioned by their religion to distrust or ignore the products of such critical thinking.

Whether you have particularly strong willpower, the religious types in your life may not have been assiduous in that conditioning, or whatever, it’s good to hear you made it out.

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When you want to know something you learn. Its not about just hearing and believing in what others say but experiencing what is said yourself. Spiritually, activity is personal. A pastor cannot bring us closer to God, they can only give us instructions which we must practice and use to become closer ourselves.

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Please demonstrate that anything exists that is “spiritual.”

Then perhaps demonstrate that any gods exist.

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Pretty ironic given you are quoting clams you have been taught are true from the gospel myths, when exactly did you experience those I wonder?

You have yet to define, let alone evidence it even exists, and of course it’s personal, that is the nature of entirely unevidenced subjective beliefs.

I don’t believe they can do any such thing, and making yourself suggestible, and accepting instructions uncritically is utterly useless in establishing the truth of anything. You get to the truth by examining claims critically, and bend beliefs to the facts, not the other way around.

You have littered the threads here with your preaching, but not offered even the pretence of evidencing your claims.

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Can he even demonstrate a deity is possible? That might be a less challenging first step for him.

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I think you should refrain from preaching. This is an Atheist community, not a church group where you go around proselytizing about your imaginary friend. That would get you far in a Christian forum, but not here.

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The only thing a pastor can bring you closer to is bankruptcy.

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That is so true. In my early 20’s when my mother was forcing me to go to her church, the pastors were always hitting me up for money. Saying that “god” provides and blah blah blah. I found myself broke and in need of that money. The church didn’t help me. All they ever did was take from me and try to control my life.

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My agnostic/atheistic epiphany occurred because of my work in the medical field as a paramedic.

I started working as a medic close to the beginning of the HIV epidemic, and I saw how religion mobilized its forces to attack LGBTQ people without mercy. There were firebombings with Molotov cocktails, “queer bashers” would stalk gay bars and beat people up for perceived homosexual tendancies, and so forth.

This is when I began to equate Evangelical Christianity with violence, and it didn’t take very long for me to start questioning the existence of God.

I still practice parts of my religion, though. I fast on Yom Kippur, I light candles of remembrence, and I recite Kaddish for my dead loved ones. I’m also a vegetarian because I believe that the suffering and killing of animals is relevant . . . and I don’t want to contribute to it any more than I absolutely have to.

I do sometimes get mildly concerned about being a hypocrite, but I use the excuse that these practices are also a part of my culture.

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Oh look, more bollocks.

Did you have a school to attend as a child?

Once again, a key aspect of learning, when conducted properly, consists of acquiring the means to test assertions to determine their likely truth value. Which in order to conduct in a rigorous manner, involves being taught reliable methods for the testing of assertions.

Without the acquisition thereof, you have no means of working out if you’re being fed bullshit. Once again, methods that have proven time and again to be reliable are:

[1] Experimental tests of assertions about observational reality;

[2] Error-free deduction in a properly constituted formal system, to test assertions in the abstract realm.

Thus far, no competitors to the above two have been devised. Treating unsupported mythological assertions uncritically as fact, then making up apologetic nonsense to try and pretend that said assertions aren’t unsupported, fails dismally in this regard.

Neither you nor any other mythology fanboy has ever provided an atom of evidence for the so-called “spiritual”. Which bears all the hallmarks of infantile fabrication. Come back when you have some genuine evidence, by which I don’t mean “my favourite Bronze Age mythology says so”, or ex recto apologetic fabrications that an astute child would point and laugh at.

Ahem, there are untold trillions of interactions taking place in the universe that have nothing to do with sentience of any sort. Gravity being a canonical example. Funny how humans were able to devise reliably working models thereof that possess demonstrable utility value, without needing to introduce superfluous assertions about the “spiritual”. Indeed, all the evidence amassed to date points to testable natural processes underpinning everything we observe, not nebulous magical tinkering.

Since no one has ever provided an atom of evidence for this entity, all assertions thereabout can be safely discarded.

Poppycock. Cognitive neuroscience is far better equipped for this task than vacuous wibbling about a cartoon magic man from a Bronze Age mythology.

Once again, did you have a school to attend as a child?

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I’ve got no religion from my perspective just science and technology.