Re: What do people believe when it comes to religion and or spirituality?
@Zakc93, when I was going through my transition from Christianity to non-theism I found myself asking the same kinds of questions. I did actually go out and try to find answers for them, and here is the conclusions I managed to come to after a bit of research.
First, is why God would send someone to hell for not believing in Jesus. Unfortunately, salvation is the linchpin, the core doctrine, of Christianity. I could quote bible verses at you but the long and short of it is that one must implicitly believe in Jesus, accept him as one's personal savior, in order to be saved. If someone fails to accept Jesus as his or her personal savior, no matter why, they are apparently going to go to hell. From what I have read the bible doesn't seem to give any room for doubt.
Personally, I think part of the problem here is the scriptures written long before philosophy and skeptical inquiry were well known. Therefore empirical evidence, the kind of evidence you and I would accept as being valid, wasn't even discussed or considered in the bible. One case in point is a little snip of Matthew I vaguely recall from my bible believing days.
As I recall someone asked Jesus what would be the sign he was the Christ, the messiah, and Jesus replied that he would be crucified, die, and be raised up on the third day. No other sign would be given.
That's all well and good if one can verify it as having happened but after 2,000 years there is no way to validate the story, to confirm it, and if that is the only sign, per se, that would be given to verify Jesus as being the messiah then it is a very poor one by today's standards precisely because there isn't any empirical evidence that we can scientifically test. Thus the scriptures do not address the problem of empirical evidence, because I do not believe the writers felt such evidence was necessary. They assumed that simply telling the story would be more than enough to s way someone, and perhaps in those times it was.
In any case if God is real he does not seem to want to force someone's beliefs by revealing himself in a way that can be objectively verified. It is as though God expects us to take his word on the subject, the bible, and to ignore our five senses in this matter. He has not made allowances for skeptical in query and rational evidence based research. It is actually one of the principle issues upon which I left Christianity, because I honestly believed, was looking for evidence, and found nothing that would convince me that he was real.
Like you said I consider myself a fairly open minded person. If God would show me some sort of evidence I would find credible it would change my mind. If he is truly all knowing as people believe he is then God would know what it would take to convince me of his reality. It isn't that I am closed minded, have a grudge against God, etc but merely a skeptical inquiry that if God is rea l then there should be some empirical way to test his existence the same way I would any other living creature or being that inhabits our world.
@Bashue, the best answer I can give as to why other atheists failed to explain their beliefs to you is simply they probably didn't know how. We aren't all good writers, we aren't all knowing on every subject, thus even though they might be convinced of their point of view they might not be able to explain it in a way another person with a contrary point of view would understand.
All I can ay is I have had some education in this area. When I was in college I took a course on communications, and as part of my communications class we discussed how to debate controversial topics and get an opinion across without sounding accusatory or offensive. I probably wasn't the best student at it, but I did learn how to compose speeches and argue a opinion in a way that would get the points across in away that someone witho ut a detailed understanding of the subject could get it. Maybe those other atheists you talked to just didn't have the skills to get their points across.
The other reason might be simply because I educated myself out of a religious world view. I grew up Christian, believed in everything I had been told, but when I started having doubts I started to do a lot of reading on the subject. I tended to read both Christian arguments and atheist arguments and decided after a couple of years went by that
Christianity was not true. I didn't want to give it up, didn't want to leave my beliefs, but I did feel the scientific arguments against it were strong and convincing. Thus I might know more about why I believe what I believe than your average Christian or atheist because I came to my beliefs after much reading and personal soul searching.
For example, I am no expert on the neurological sciences by any means. However, I do know there has been a lot of research put forth the last couple of decades into consciousness and as it turns out a lot of things people use to think were unexplainable phenomena like out of body experiences, life after death experiences, etc may in deed have a physical basis in the human brain. We are learning more and more all the time of how the brain works, how it functions, and from a scientific standpoint we are coming to a point where we can explain away strange spiritual phenomena as neurological in nature. I know that won't please spiritualists and people who take this stuff seriously as evidence of their spiritual beliefs, but the more we study, the more we know, and the more we know is that there is more and more reason to doubt the claims of religious believers.
That said, though, I don't believe you are crazy for believing in God. If that were the case everyone who believed in a god or gods would be equally crazy, and I happen to think they have reasons for thinking and believing as they do . I may not agree with those reasons, but everyone has a reason for believing as they do be it good or bad. In your case you clearly pointed out you believe in God because you feel comforted by the love you have for God and the love you believe is coming from God. That is a powerful motivator to believe in God, and I am sure other believers have similar reasons.
Let's face it. As fragile humans we are afraid of all kinds of things. We are afraid of being all alone in the world, afraid of dying, afraid of not being able to pay the bills, feel helpless when a loved one gets sick, etc. It is comforting to believe there is someone bigger, smarter, and more powerful is out there somewhere looking for our best interests. I suppose that in a nutshell is why most religions exist even when on the face of it there may not be a lot of objective evidence for it. People need to feel loved, wanted, perhaps need a sense of purpose, so cling to religious explanations because it com forts them to do so. That doesn't mean they are crazy, but merely that they are human with the same needs and desires we all have.
I have to say that was the biggest part of my transition from Christianity to atheism. I went from a belief that God had my back, was watching out for me, to realizing I was all alone and everything I was frightened of could happen. If I got lost I couldn't pray and God wouldn't make it okay. If I got sick I couldn't pray for God to make it better. In short once I realized there was no God up in heaven I was frightened even terrified of being all alone without God there to back me up in times of trouble. However, after a while I realized everything was okay. I was okay. Often times things turn out alright with or without a belief in God. I realized in time while I have the same needs and desires as everyone else I couldn't turn to religion, a belief in God, to find comfort. I had to locate real world solutions to thos e problems and needs.
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