Do you believe in God?

[VirtualPA]

I am interested to know what the majority of people belive.

I personally believe in a Christian God, Heaven and hell etc.

I raised a strict an athiest

My either/or works only because christians have set up the premise it stands on.

To escape it is easy. They can just say "I had a revelation that god purposely dresses up as different gods and hands out different rules because he likes the resultant fighting" or anything they like. They can invent any scenario they want. I have just pointed out the contradiction in their current position.

Onagar - my last post (at the top of page 40) cross posted with your crusades comment.

I in no way approve of the Crusades, nor the Inquisition, nor any one of a whole raft of errors that people have made over the centuries. As a Christian I disassociate myself from the Crusades and the awful motivation behind them. They are nothing to do with me, and if they were happening today I would speak out against them.

Can you see that not all religious people are bad? Yes we have had some bad ones, all worldviews have. The mistake made by many atheists is to look at some examples of religion that are bad and conclude that all religion is bad. If I ate some bread and it was mouldy I wouldn't assume all bread was mouldy. If you eat rotten food you don't give up eating food altogether, instead you look for food that is healthy and nourishing.

The task, which religious people like me and atheists can join in together is to point out bad religion/worldviews wherever they are and encourage the positive/healthy religions/worldviews as good for our world. I see that as a positive way forward out of the impasse between religious fundamentalism and their entrenched opponents in the equally voluble new atheist camp.

I do think it's bizarre when people say you need christianity to have a moral code. I have a personal moral code which I consider superior to a Christian one. I don't always live up to it, but it is clear and rigorous, and I am doing my best to instil it in my children.

Right - I am going to restate my often repeated position on religions.

I don't care WHAT you believe in. However I really object to any kind of religion being obligatory in our state funded schools. Surely even religionists can understand an atheists point of view in that respect.

Most Christians of my acquaintance do not say that you need to be a Christian to have a moral code. Those that do aren't looking at the evidence of moral people who aren't Christians.

But I have also met some atheists who claim that Christianity is morally inferior to atheism. Perhaps some people have a need to feel superior, and gain security from saying that other groups in society are somehow not as good as them. Personally I think most people I come across seem to be pretty good people, they just have different ways of doing it.

Religon is FACTUALLY not morally wrong. There is no objective morality. There is (at least we might as well assume there is for the sake of existing in the world) objective reality.

The Holocaust was a perfectly rational response to an irrational set of axioms. Much as the crusades, the inquisiton etc. were. As our treatment of asylum seekers and economic migrants is now.

Many justifications for what we now see as morally wrong actions are based on flawed ideas of 'The Other', whether this is people of different races, creed or nationalities. If the Tribe is everyone, then these things cannot be justified.

GetOrfMoiLand - I am not particularly concerned about state funded schools with a religious foundation. I personally think the church could do better things with its money than contribute to the education of your children.

But I do not believe that there is any neutral worldview within which to educate children. If religion were entirely ejected from schools then I would say that they would be preaching the secular worldview to the exclusion of all others.

I could also point out that the majority of tax payers in this country give at least some lip service to being Christians, over 70% of the population at the last census. To completely exclude religion from education would not reflect that fact.

Anyway, this thread is about whether people believe in God and why, not that hot Mumsnet topic of church schools.

Coalition:

"The Holocaust was a perfectly rational response to an irrational set of axioms."

You support my argument very well. You are appealing to an objective rationality which would hold for all time, irrespective of human views of the right or wrongs of the Holocaust. What you describe as rational axioms are either once-and-for-all objectively true principles which cannot be violated, or they are temporary opinions subject to change if "the tribe" so decides. So the decision still remains - was the Holocaust absolutely wrong, or are there circumstances under which you would argue that it was OK?

permanentvacation, my comment on the crusades was because you lost it with SGB

I have never said that religious people were all bad.

My position is simple. I don't mind you having a hobby, but don't force its practices on me or my children. You personally may not, but the religion does in the UK.

Every time I see a Christian (or Muslim) claim that their religion is real I will point out the lack of any evidence, the flaws in the reasoning and the outright lies.

I don't wish to see religion banned. I wish to see it lose its power to override the rights of others, to demand special treatment in our society and under the law.

I want equal rights for the religious. No more and no less.

permanentvacation, when you just said "Most Christians of my acquaintance do not say that you need to be a Christian to have a moral code." was that supposed to be a response to me? if so you misread/misunderstood what I was saying.

Onagar - the "Most Christans of my acquaintance" bit was a response to Seeker, not yourself.

And I didn't lose it with SGB, merely pointed out an inconsistency. I am a bit of a philosophy anorak at times and inconsistency irks me.

Gosh just room to say -- PV your posts are so clear and well-reasoned. Especially your attempts to explain the difference between what is right and wrong, and whether or not right and wrong objectively exist. I can't copy and paste on this pute but there was one point where you had a lot of clarity and it was not getting through.

I didn't see where you "lost it" at all. You're obviously v bright and v well read.

Onagar:

"Every time I see a Christian (or Muslim) claim that their religion is real I will point out the lack of any evidence, the flaws in the reasoning and the outright lies."

I hope our discussion on from objective morality shows that I have some good reasoning on that front, and thank you for acknowledging that my point is a reasonable one. The tone of many atheists on internet discussion groups implies the view that all Christians are uneducated idiots who practice their faith purely because that's what they were taught as small children and have never thought about wider issues. As a thinking Christian who rejected the atheism of my youth I find this attitude patronising.

If I had the time we could go through other arguments - the existence of scientific laws and matter, specific Christian arguments about the actions of the early church which I posted about earlier to UQD, the analogy of the subjective experience of beauty being akin to the religious experience of God, as well as spending some time working through the theories of knowledge that Christians and atheists use and whether such theories are internally consistent.

But I have to go on the school run, and then take DD to dance class.

Best wishes,

PV.

No - sorry i wasn't clear in what I meant. I think religion needs to be taught in school, all religions, but schools should not be affiliated to one religion and religiion should not be taught as fact.

Yes this is not a church school thread, but it was discussed at length pages back.

Couldn't agree more, PV. Thank you for all your excellent posts on this thread.

"The task, which religious people like me and atheists can join in together is to point out bad religion/worldviews wherever they are and encourage the positive/healthy religions/worldviews as good for our world."

permenantvacation - if there was a group that

a) were dangerous to humanity
b) not human
c) inferior to humans

then there confinement and the reduction of their population would be seen by many as a very reasonable course of action. Smallpox no longer exists outside labs. Wolves do not roam the streets. We make extensive (though often ineffectual) efforts to control the population of rats in large cities.

There is no evidence for a), b) or c) though.

the more i learn about quantum mechanics the more i believe in god. the more i go to church the less i believe.

Permanentvacation: it's not about what I think is right and wrong. My point is that there is no act that human beings can enact that some human beings can't come up with a moral justification for it they want to do whatever it is, whether that's killing, stealing or simply being tiresome. Remember that lots of people did think that the Holocaust was OK. And the Crusades, and the Inquisition, and the war in Iraq. And having sex with children has been acceptable (well, as long as you 'married' them) in probably more human cultures than it has been condemned.

I'm enjoying the debate now, particularly SGB and Permanentvacation. PV I hope you earn a lot of money as a barrister or something - you should! I'd be really interested to know what church you go to.

Some of it is a bit over my head! I reflect that it would probably have been well over the heads of the early disciples (maybe not Paul, he was a clever, educated guy!).

seraphine, the paradise comment is clear and I accept it, but as far as my current thinking goes, there is such a place as 'Hades' which is different to heaven. Haven't examined it enough yet. A lot of what we take as 'doctrine' is actually tradition. The emphasis on 'heaven now' was a response to the catholic doctrine of purgatory/ 'buying' favour after death. As you can see (and I'm sure already know), there is debate within the 'Christian' church, but I think we do tend to agree that there is a God, Jesus was sent for the salvation of mankind and the Bible is the basis for what we believe. Within that there's a whole lot of disagreement which doesn't do our cause any favours, but I think it's the inevitable result of imperfect human beings trying to grapple with things way beyond their understanding.

lamplighter, the debates over how much of the original law we need to stick to are ancient (existed within the early church where circumcision was the main one - you can imagine if was very hard for the Jews to let go of the necessity of that one! But they were asked to do so by Paul who said it was not necessary for Christian gentiles to be circumcised). In terms of the old law, I think (maybe someone else knows) Jesus actually reiterates only 9 of the 10 commandments, the only one he missed was the sabbath day rest. As a Christian, I do sometimes do my Tesco shop on a Sunday!

hmm, nearly at 1000 posts.....

Don't worry, somebody will start exactly the same one again in 3 or 4 weeks.

Okay - I am agnostic but my father is terminally ill and my elderly mother is going back to her Catholic upbringing and wants to go on a Catholic retreat. I am struggling to find one for her within Scotland.

Last chance saloon. (I can't believe I am trying to find a nunnery for my 77 year old mother) but she needs a break and I want to find it for her!

An agnostic looking for help from God? That's a mind bender!

Hmmm SGB. Sorry to nitpick, but actually very few people 'thought the Holocaust was OK' - even within a society where a progressive series of steps were taken to cause people to think of those with any link to Judaism (and homosexuals, and Slavs, and those with any form of learning disability) as the Other and as a kind of infection in society that needed cleaning up, the Holocaust still took place largely in secret, and even the most fanatical Nazi leaders knew that it was something that had to be hidden and that they would be excoriated for if they were found out.

I don't agree with Permanentvacation that there must be an morality which is supernatural for humans to operate at all; I think the rules that most human societies agree on are based on community protection of one kind or another - certainly the rules excluding Jews from public life and restricting their activities, which DID take place in public, were conceived of and agreed by the society of the Third Reich, as a protection for the 'Aryan' community, and those within the society who resisted them saw them as wrong in my view because their various philosophies meant that they regarded all humans as part of their group ('they came for the Jews but I did not speak up because I was not a Jew...' etc). But I certainly can't argue at her level and maybe I will be the only person who changes their mind as a result of this thread!

Any ideas before the thread cuts me off?

Leave links for me. Please.