What actually do JREF religious believers believe?

[Soapy Sam]

This is a spin off from the thread about the woman who died in Eire because doctors would not perform an abortion which was necessary to save her life.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=8778805#post8778805
In that thread, Rolfe refers to the difference between "genuine religion" and tribal prejudices.

This led me to ask her what is the difference, in her view, and what her actual beliefs are. I want to take my question to this new thread as it risks taking that one off topic.

Rolfe is someone we know to be a pretty hardline sceptic on most issues we think of as "woo", yet who at the same time describes herself as Christian.

Rolfe and I grew up near one another. We had similar schooling for a time, read the same (SF) novels in our town library. Our parents actually knew one another, although we ourselves never met until after we had both started posting at JREF and I became curious at the coincidences of style and background mindset that cropped up in Rolfe's posts and mine. Only when I PM'd her did I learn she came from damn nearly the same street!

Our upbringing was far from identical, but there are many similarities and while we can and do disagree on many things, there are clearly similarities of mindset that relate to that shared background.

Yet Rolfe is happy to call herself a Christian, whereas I was an atheist before I had even heard the word and don't recall ever believing in gods at all.(Though I recall thinking about it a lot as a child, which I assumed everyone did, but maybe they didn't).

One difference (I can't help seeing as critical) is that Rolfe's father was a minister, so assumptions may well have been absorbed early at a subconscious level. But I'm asking, not assuming.

My parents were regular churchgoers and I went every Sunday as I had no choice. I was into my mid teens before I managed to get out of it.

My mother was interested in biblical history and for years attended evening classes taken (initially) by the late and lamented Rev. William Barclay, one of the great Scottish theologians of the post war period. She would often talk about his explanations of biblical stories and miracles. His versions impressed me in two ways- first they demystified (Christ didn't calm the sea- he calmed the men. The miracle of loaves and fishes was that some folk had no food, some had plenty and Christ got them to willingly share, so everybody ate.) If you don't see either of these as miraculous, try it sometime.
This sort of explanation made sense to me. I was impressed by the personality of the man Christ - assuming the tales to be true at all- but even if they were true, and Robin Hood wasn't though 1200 years less garbled by time, so what were the chances? - even if they were true, they spoke of a charismatic man, not a divine being, which fitted my childhood suspicions.
So I went straight from naive innocent to naive atheist, without anyone indoctrinating me. Quite the opposite in fact, it was my experience of church and of actual theology that pointed me straight down the road to atheism.

Meanwhile, a few miles away, one of the smartest people I know was taking the opposite path.

I want to know why.

What do sceptic believers actually believe? Are they lying to themselves and aware of it? Is there just that one relict of their fairy tale and storybook childhood, hanging onto some brainspace when the dragons and unicorns have gone?

I can understand how religion grabs the minds of simple souls. But Rolfe?
Kittynh? And others on this forum. Famous scientists. Tony Blair and his wierd wife- clearly far from fools, yet still in the grip of this one odd irrationality.

Can any of our believers explain what it is they actually believe - and why?

 

[eight bits]

If I may be so bold, even if your topic is other people's beliefs, I think you underestimate how interesting your own testimony is.

Rolfe is someone we know to be a pretty hardline sceptic on most issues we think of as "woo", yet who at the same time describes herself as Christian.

Why is that situation even remarkable, much less the occasion to launch a thread with a (pleasingly) lengthy and carefully crafted OP?

Somebody agrees with you about many matters of personal opinion, and disgrees with you about some other matter of personal opinion. How can this be surprising, if you are both critical thinkers and have any independence of one another at all? Wouldn't it be more remarkable if you both agreed on each and every thing that comes up around here?

(There's a current topic over in the paranormal section which asks "What woo do you believe?" In other words, it's this topic, but with a wider net for the matter of personal opinion about which a disagreement might arise among sceptical people.)

I also wondered about this,

One difference (I can't help seeing as critical) is that Rolfe's father was a minister, so assumptions may well have been absorbed early at a subconscious level. But I'm asking, not assuming.

Kudos for not assuming, but you also mention only one possibility, and an odd one to be the only one mentioned, I thought. Why would her learning the details of at least one Protestant perspective have turned on something unconscious, when her father was an overt and professional promoter of that point of view? Why is not the leading hypothesis that she came to understand one particular religious stance in depth, in full consciousness, and having done so, rationally, reasonably and, I think, fairly routinely found that something like it made sense to her to serve as her personal opinion in the matter? Especially this matter, where a personal opinion is all anybody has anyway.

This is not a "rebuttal" post. My questions are questions, and my expression of interest is based on finding your own self-revelation just as interesting as the self-revelations you solicit. Maybe you would be inclined to discuss your perspective on agreeing only partially as a complement to your announced topic.

 

[psionl0]

Ultimately, I suspect that faith is not something you can arrive at logically or through reasoned discussion. Otherwise, there would be no religion left today at all.

 

[Aepervius]

Ultimately, I suspect that faith is not something you can arrive at logically or through reasoned discussion. Otherwise, there would be no religion left today at all.

You can arrive at a faith position thru logic and reasonned discussion. That position is agnostic atheism. If you use pure logic, and "non personal anecdotial" and a good standard of evidence, with what we have right now, this is the only position you can arrive to as far as I can see. In other word "I dunno but so far I have seen no evidence of existence of any gods whatsoever, I am still open to it though as a possibility".

The reason religion exists is that only a crushing minority use logic and rationality for a religious position, and that's not even counting the childhood indoctrination which is difficult to get ride of, maybe impossible for some people.

In fact I contend that if forbid people to teach kids religion and allow it only when people have rational "shield" or when they are adults, I would betcha my weigh in gold against a speck of dust that religion would mostly disappear in a generation and only be practised by a minority.

 

[eight bits]

psionI0

Ultimately, I suspect that faith is not something you can arrive at logically or through reasoned discussion.

Really? I assume by faith you mean something that involves personal acceptance of an uncertain contingent proposition. If so, then all logic can accomplish for contingent questions is to monitor the consistency of commitments.

Logic cannot determine the choice of the premises and assumptions with which a person is consistent. So, it is unremarkable that people don't arrive at premises about one subject by means which don't deliver premises about any subject.

Anecdotally, it would seem that reasoned discussion generally is a channel for arrival at personal opinions about uncertain contingencies. It is not obvious why religious subject matter would differ from other areas of contingent concern.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

Somebody agrees with you about many matters of personal opinion, and disgrees with you about some other matter of personal opinion.

Especially this matter, where a personal opinion is all anybody has anyway.

The veracity of claims made by religion or other forms of woo are not matters of personal opinion. They are claims of fact and as such are either true or false.

Either homeopathy heals the sick or it doesn't
Either psychics talk to the dead or they don't
Either an omnipotent being created the universe and watches over it or it didn't and doesn't

I think Soapy Sam is right to point out that there is something interesting about being quite clearly able to see that 'there is no evidence this is true' for homeopathy and psychics but not being able or willing to say the same about God.

If it truly was a matter of opinion - such as what music they enjoy or their view on the Lord of the Rings movies then you might have a point.

 

[bruto]

I think the difference between, say homeopathy and belief in God is that, although there's no direct evidence either is true, there is good experiential evidence that homeopathy is false. Science and rational thought have left homeopathy in the dust. But on the deepest levels of ontology, there remains an area of the unknown and inconceivable which makes some people too uncomfortable without faith. It's not for me, but I can sort of understand it. You can be a good person and do no harm while being a Christian. Not so if you're a psychic or a homeopathist.

For myself, I was brought up more or less as a Christian though my parents were not very church-oriented. I went to Sunday school, joined a church and so forth in my youth. I had some really smart and interesting teachers, who were not friends of blind faith, and wanted us to think our way to the truth, whatever it might be. I found the liberal Christian position rather comfortable, but when it came to real faith I just couldn't seem to make that leap. I could never, for example, take prayer seriously. For some time I just set it aside as something I need not address immediately, perhaps a fault of mine. Further thought of course pushed me the other way, and I have become more of an atheist and less of an agnostic as I age. I have always felt, deep inside, that there is no overarching purpose to existence, and it has never bothered me. But I remain more "Christian friendly" than many here, because I think I have seen more of the positive side of non-fundie, non-creedal faith in people's lives than some have.

My official position, so to speak, is that there's no particular evidence of any supernatural agency in the world, but that there certainly are some things we cannot really grasp even if we can find words that sort of explain them. The universe is what it is, without requiring a guide, a purpose or a plan. The reality of what lies beyond it in time or space is outside my comprehension, and I'll die without knowing it. If I end up wrong, it won't make a difference because it's pretty clear that if there were a thing you might call God such a thing would have to be beyond our ability to understand too, and would not care what we think. If we see God before we die, all we'll get, maybe, is the last piece of the puzzle to put in before we go blank. Most of the gods of religion are human imaginations of "what I'd be like if I were god," and a laughable insult to anything that could merit the designation.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
Why is that situation even remarkable, much less the occasion to launch a thread with a (pleasingly) lengthy and carefully crafted OP?

Because it's hard to reconcile belief in god(s) with critical thinking.

...Somebody agrees with you about many matters of personal opinion, and disgrees with you about some other matter of personal opinion. How can this be surprising, if you are both critical thinkers and have any independence of one another at all? Wouldn't it be more remarkable if you both agreed on each and every thing that comes up around here?

It's not the personal opinion aspect, it's evidence based vs faith based beliefs and some of us find faith based beliefs to be no different be it homeopathy or gods.

 

[EdG]

In fact I contend that if forbid people to teach kids religion and allow it only when people have rational "shield" or when they are adults, I would betcha my weigh in gold against a speck of dust that religion would mostly disappear in a generation and only be practised by a minority.

Didn't the Soviet Union try something like this without much success?

 

[Soapy Sam]

Somebody agrees with you about many matters of personal opinion, and disgrees with you about some other matter of personal opinion. How can this be surprising, if you are both critical thinkers and have any independence of one another at all? Wouldn't it be more remarkable if you both agreed on each and every thing that comes up around here?

It would. But this is a sceptic forum. Most people here do not accept the reality of the paranormal. Yet Christianity is expressly about belief in the literal existence of a triune entity for which there appears to be no evidence at all. What I'm curious about is why religion is such obvious nonsense to some of us, but to others is a special case of paranormality- one which cannot be airily dismissed.

Kudos for not assuming, but you also mention only one possibility, and an odd one to be the only one mentioned, I thought. Why would her learning the details of at least one Protestant perspective have turned on something unconscious, when her father was an overt and professional promoter of that point of view?

Young children accept what adults do as "normal". If one's parents act as though god (or Santa) is real, most children will simply accept this without much conscious thought, in the same way they accept the reality of equally invisible entities like the Inland Revenue.

Why is not the leading hypothesis that she came to understand one particular religious stance in depth, in full consciousness, and having done so, rationally, reasonably and, I think, fairly routinely found that something like it made sense to her to serve as her personal opinion in the matter?

Perfectly possible, but if so I'm curious about what specifically made sense which I failed to see.

Especially this matter, where a personal opinion is all anybody has anyway.

Well that's the biggie, right there.

This is not a "rebuttal" post. My questions are questions, and my expression of interest is based on finding your own self-revelation just as interesting as the self-revelations you solicit. Maybe you would be inclined to discuss your perspective on agreeing only partially as a complement to your announced topic.

The thing is that to my POV, there is nothing interesting about my POV. Nobody prodded me hard to accept the reality of religious doctrine. I had schoolteachers who were keen to provide answers to questions. I found Sunday school teachers tended to dodge the issue. I saw no sign of gods in everyday life , and so put church in a separate box- similar to Santa Claus and Fairy Tales- one people pretended to believe but did not act upon.

To me this was so obvious I could never understand why anyone saw it differently. I still don't.

 

[qayak]

Young children accept what adults do as "normal". If one's parents act as though god (or Santa) is real, most children will simply accept this without much conscious thought, in the same way they accept the reality of equally invisible entities like the Inland Revenue.

One must also take into account how the human brain functions. We all like to think we have thought through and given weighty consideration to all subjects but in truth we seldom do. What tends to happen is that we hear a statement, true or false, we decide very quickly whether we believe it or not, and then we create our own narrative to support this new "truth."

So, believers have simply created their own narrative for why they believe and non-believers have created their own narrative as for why they don't. Most really haven't given it a whole lot of thought although to hear us talk, it is all we have done our entire lives. Each believes equally that their narrative is the truth because each freely accepts the information supporting their narrative and discard that which doesn't so we feel we have overwhelming evidence.

Our brains make up stories to fill in the blanks of the world around us. It works pretty well for allowing us to survive but not so well when we get down to the hard details of the real truth.

 

[llwyd]

Well, I wonder if I qualify - I'm a member of the Lutheran Church of Finland and the Finnish Pietist Association, call myself a Pietist-agnostic, or Christian-agnostic, and I believe that it is exceedingly unlikely that there would be a god (or gods) in existence in the universe, and that it's not healthy to believe so. But I also believe that some interpretations of religion are very serious and very meaningful speech about the human condition, like the best art and best philosophy. Natural science after all is a pretty mundane affair: measuring and analyzing things that exist and establishing trustworthy, evidenced accounts of them. That's all fine and good as far as it goes, but it doesn't really say much anything about how we should react to this wild experience and those accounts.

 

[EdG]

I also believe that some interpretations of religion are very serious and very meaningful speech about the human condition

Religion has provided sets of rules that can improve the human condition when followed. However, following seems to be the hard part.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Religion has provided sets of rules that can improve the human condition when followed. However, following seems to be the hard part.

That's crap. There are so many inconsistencies in the Bible, in the Koran, and in how people interpret these texts. I'm guessing it is the same for most religions.

 

[kerikiwi]

Religion has provided sets of rules that can improve the human condition when followed. However, following seems to be the hard part.

Which religions do you have in mind?
I am not convinced that the human condition of certain people was improved by the Aztec priests following their set of rules.

 

[Aepervius]

Didn't the Soviet Union try something like this without much success?

Kind of, they expropriated the churches belonging and murdered the priest, but in the privacy of their home people still indoctrinated the kids.

I am speaking of an idealistic case , utopian, never to happen, where even the parents voluntary don't teach anybody but 18+ adults.

Yeah I know totatly fantasy, but I can dream, right ?

 

[Pope130]

Religion has provided sets of rules that can improve the human condition when followed. However, following seems to be the hard part.

One can cherry pick passages from the Bible, the Koran or the Gitas to construct a decent code of conduct (while leaving out a lot of abhorant behavior). One can do the same (with less editing) from the stories of Arthur, Robin Hood or Harry Potter.

The trouble is that you first must have a concept of what is right and wrong, and then pick the bits that agree.

Not really a useful set of rules.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

Religion has provided sets of rules that can improve the human condition when followed. However, following seems to be the hard part.

Religion provides a pretty terrible basis for improving the human condition. I'd much rather people were taught to think for themselves than defer to any book, priest or deity.

 

[EdG]

"has" "can"

Modifiers, people. They serve a useful purpose.

 

[EdG]

That's crap.

How so? Did not Jewish dietary laws protect against food-borne illness? Weren't the 10 Commandments an early codification of rules for civil society?