Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bruno on November 20, 2010 at 8:24am

Believing in a god without a religion

Hey Myke, the idea of god seems to be as old as we are. I wonder if even animals have anything analogous. It think it's not only possible to believe in any sort of god without following any religion but I'd be willing to place a bet that the vast majority of humankind is made of functionally nonreligious theists. But that's just me and my background, I could be way wrong.

Take Brazil, "my" country, for instance. It's called a "catholic nation" (ick), yet the great majority of everyone I know and talk to believes in a god of some sort, personified or not, but rarely go to church and have no idea whatsoever what's the new pope's name ( some don't even know there was a "recent" change) except that he looks like a Sith Lord. They have no clue what is going on in the Vatican or how it works or why it is even there, and I'd argue that most of them don't give the tiniest, slightest fuck. None of them ever reads or have read the bible (I barely made it through myself when I was a so-called catholic lol), few have the guts to attack it, but most are quick to dismiss its relevance in a very politely non compromising way. Moreover, hell is not real to every self-entitled catholic I know. To them, that's allegoric. All the above is downright non-religious, yet they all believe in god and pray to it.


Why?

Well, with so much uncertainty out there I guess almost everyone wants cosmic backup? :P The idea of god, stripped of guilt and religion, is so so sweet to most of them because that way they don't have to deal with the fucked up aspects of existence and our own limitations as the "beautifully fucked up things" we are. Heck, not even atheists are ready to face some of that stuff. It's the give me the fuckin fake juicy stake instead of the real grub attitude. Why are you so surprised? People PAY for beautiful lies all the time. There isn't a God In a Can for sale because it's already FREE and readily available! Totally hard-questions-free. Zero suffering and pondering guaranteed! :P

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 20, 2010 at 2:47pm

Beautiful rant, man. That's about what I've seen in the actual churchgoers in America, for that matter, never mind the ones who consider themselves Catholic but don't go to church. I'm sure there's a core of hardcore believers, but they're by far the minority.

Permalink Reply by Myke Sorrel on November 20, 2010 at 3:41pm

Yea i understand, guess i was just thinking if A (religion) created B (God), and you negate A then why still believe in B, and you perfectly answered my question, but yea, a lot of people I've met believe that God exist, but don't go to church. I just think it's funny we are looked at so evil, when they don't even embrace their own religion, "religiously". And i'm perfectly fine with Deist people, but even sometimes they look at atheist differently, i often tell my cousin why are we so different? If you don't believe in heaven or hell, then what is your reward for really believing that God exist, religion guaranteed a reward (afterlife). I presume one of the answers is what you stated Bruno, that sometimes it just seems like a cop-out of just having the balls to say "I just don't know".

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 20, 2010 at 4:51pm

Well, the whole issue of whether A created B is a big, blurry mess, particularly in the case of the god of the Old Testament. The Jewish/Christian/Muslim god was created from the merging of the Ugarit gods that existed in the area, before the Jews came rampaging through. I'm sure the Pentateuch was just a poetic justification for why they had the right to rape and slaughter their way through the whole place.

Christians and Muslims cast us as the most evil because they realize we're the greatest threat they're facing. Religions trading converts back and forth doesn't do much to hurt the system. That's just a function of evangelism, which is healthy activity for any religion (healthy for the religion, not the people in the religion, an important distinction).

We represent the end of the whole system.

Permalink Reply by Adebowale Ojowuro on November 22, 2010 at 11:13pm

It is certainly possible to fantasize a belief in god without having to profess a belief in those misleading theologies of all earthly religions. This is, however, not ruling out the possibility of opening another false religion through such fantasy. If you undertake a critical scrutiny of the possible origin of religion, the fact of my above stated assertion will be a lot clearer to you. You may wish to take a look into the first chapter of my latest book, The Crisis of Religion: The Feral Excesses of the Gullibility of Man. Therein, you will find my philosophy on the possible evolution of religion into the human culture, under the subheading, “The Development of Religion.” You see: the accommodation of several of these misleading theologies that compel a belief in supernatural source of evil and holiness on planet earth is wholly detrimental to humanity. Theologians are merely deceiving humankind with their kaleidoscope of theocratic lies. The tragedy of this case is that numberless of these theologians and professional preachers know it pretty well that the strange theology they’ve chosen to propagate is exceedingly irrational beyond absurd, as it has brought a chain of very appalling disservice and ruinous consequences upon the entire world, most especially upon black Africans. However, they still persist in perpetrating their evil trades, blinded by power and lucrative profits.

Permalink Reply by Estee Koen on November 30, 2010 at 4:01pm

for some people like this, they believe theres some "super power" that take control of everything in this world. but they rejected the religion, maybe they think that every religion are same, or maybe they think that better to live undoctrine as religion told.

Permalink Reply by Sol Gartner on December 5, 2010 at 1:48pm

The notion that God came from religion is a very mistaken one. The organized religions that we pay attention to these days were seldom widespread until they were institutionalized into governments (e.g., egyptians, hinduism). The overwhelming majority of 'religious' experience throughout history has been small groups with rather informal beliefs. Belief in supernatural beings started far before 'Gods', such as ghosts, witches, spirits, demons and such, and are still most prevalent in hunter-gatherer tribes. Belief in supernatural agents is actually rather normal, unless someone has the abnormal experience of being born in a society that supports rationality and teaches things like empiricism, science, logic, etc. Religion appeared long after belief in supernatural agents.

For detailed discussions by evolutionary biologists, cognitive psychologists, and anthropologists, see authors such as Pascal Boyer and Justin L. Barrett.

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