Belief - repost

[andrewducker]

Question three was borked. Rewritten to actually cover all the bases, and not be internally contradictory. Apologies to the 7 people who already filled it in!

[Poll #1427776]

Comments

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

It would have been more instructive if you'd narrowed this down to adult life. Most kids believe in a god, because they're taught to.

[andrewducker]

You're dating yourself there. We're now beyond the tipping point where most parents don't believe in God.

I was never taught to believe in God as a child...

[matgb]

Possibly--but I got myself transferred from the local CofE to a further away secular school when was 7, in large part because I couldn't stick the religiosity.

Ergo, from the age of 7, I know I've not believed, before that doesn't really count.

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

Believe in god is one thing.
How many kids adhere to a belief system?

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

I agree with this.

I deliberately excluded the time where my mother's decrees that God would listen & related admonishments held any weight.

I know I was formally questioning religion when I was 'trained' for my first communion aged 7. I know I have not believed since.

The previous period I do not remember my beliefs, but don't think it's hugely relevant as I may have also believed in the Tooth Fairy.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure about my answer to the first question. I've only ever been a Christian or an atheist, but my Christianity has evolved and changed substantially over time, even though it has the same name, so I don't know whether it can terribly accurately described as a single belief system.

[andrewducker]

Does it feel like you'd be able to be a member of the same sect, or would you have to convert from one to another? Because the former would seem like a single belief _to me_, while the latter would feel like two separate beliefs.

[cdave]

Oh, and where you place a strong agnostic on question 3?

[andrewducker]

That's why I worded it the way I did :->

Do you adhere to a supernatural belief system?

Becuase, in my experience, agnostics do not. They don't declare them impossible (as strong atheists do), but nor do they adhere to one.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I;d be with the person that says we should narrow this to adulthood.

And youu need to classify supernatural beliefs. I said yes - cos as a kid, though not religious I had all sorts of weird ideas about how the world/universe worked - and I bet most of those who happily ticked 'never believed' did too. They were fined into something workable/consistent as I got older.

About 12 I went all the way from "nothing really exists" to "and it doesn't matter (just keep [mostly]acting like it does)" in one afternoon. Not really changed that basis since then.

You been reading Supersense by any chance?? if not, I recommend it.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I guess I'd say I'm agnostic (as there's really no way to positively prove or disprove the existence of something outside of what we can perceive) but with strong atheistic tendancies (Invisible Sky Guy doesn't strike me as being terribly likely, or as a useful model for finding out how the universe works for that matter).

I did "hang" with a United Church lunch group for a year in junior high and found the social aspect pleasant but the theology dull and self-contradictory... and spent only a few services at Anglican churches before the parents (Mom's United, Dad nominally Anglican but seems uncomfortable with the whole idea pro- or anti-) gave it up as a bad idea.

-- Steve is one to "live and let live" on this, though, unlike the Crusading types. (Specifically including Dawkins in this category, along with the mullahs and televangelists.)

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

I cannot choose any of the options above primarily because of the "system" approach. My spiritual beliefs are too vague for that. Strong, but vague. Same beliefs I've had my whole life though, and which I've never doubted. "Accuracy" is not a term that I really feel applies. It works for me. *Shrug*

[andrewducker]

I did think about asking how specific people's beliefs were. Some other day :->

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

I am interpreting "At some point I did not adhere to a supernatural belief system - and I currently don't" as a superset of "I have never adhered to any supernatural belief system".

[andrewducker]

You are interpreting correctly!

[robhu.livejournal.com]

The question about the supernatural only really makes sense from a philosophical (as opposed to methodological) naturalist perspective.

At the time the Bible was written and before (and for a lot of afterwards) there was no idea of natural things and supernatural things. Everything was thought of as being a work of God, although some works were 'greater works' than others. In fact when English translators include the word 'miracle' in their translations what the original Greek actually says is 'greater work'.

The idea of a kind of clock work world which is 'natural', where possibly a God might come in like a kind of wizard, zap something, and have done his bit of 'supernaturalism' isn't a Biblical idea at all.

Many Christians today will think in terms of natural and supernatural because most Christians don't know very well what the Bible says, and because they import a lot of the philosophy of the culture around them. However your question doesn't fit if you know what the Bible says and what the church has historically believed (i.e. what orthodox Christian belief has been).

[andrewducker]

Of course, one can define "natural" as "the set of things which can be understood by investigation, hypothesis and experimentation", which will then provide us with "natural laws". "Supernatural" entities would then be left as the things which are capable of acting in ways outside of this - modifying the natural laws, etc.

This would, of course, merely mean that our natural laws were a side-effect of a larger set of natural laws which we do not have direct access to (as the inhabitants of The Sims do not have direct access to our natural laws) - the larger set would still be "natural" to the beings that inhabited that domain, not to us.

I do enjoy that kind of thinking rather a lot :->

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Sorry if this has been covered - I couldn't find it - but tell me the definition of supernatural you are using then I'll answer the poll xx

[andrewducker]

Outside of the laws of nature. God, for instance, would presmably be able to ignore gravity, the speed of light, the inverse square law, etc. if God so wished.

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Although I answered the final question with >99% confidence, I did want to clarify what I mean by that. I am not >99% confident that everything I believe at present is accurate. I am sure that there are things about the God in whom I believe which I do not know or have misunderstood. There may be things that I need to change my mind about, and places where my understanding needs to develop. But I am absolutely confident in the God in whom I have placed my trust.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

"Adherence" is perhaps not the right word for the way I feel/believe. I have always had a sense, going right to my core, that there is some sort of omnipresent figure that most religions would call "God" and most atheists would call "supernatural". But my belief is not terribly specific, and those things that I do believe are not part of any religion with which I was brought up; I don't believe in a God that is interventionist or directive in hir behavior, and I don't anthropomorphize God to the extent that most of the people I know who are religious do.

I still believe in what I'd call God for lack of a better term though. As to what "God" means, YMMV.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Good poll.

When I was a child (in the south of England, in the 1970s), Christian belief was considered not only to be the default but the only option. My parents considered themselves CofE (in the ultra-weak sense of attending church only for births, deaths and marriages, and not even for major church festivals) and never questioned the possibility of lacking religion. My education was within a Christian context (state primary school, public secondary school); it was assumed that you celebrated Christmas, Easter and the Harvest Festival. I attended Cubs and Scouts, went to far too many St. George's Day parades and church parades, and listened some pretty lousy sermons (the Methodists were generally worse than the United Reformed).

When I was about thirteen, I had something of an anti-Damascene conversion. I realised that I didn't actually believe any part of Christian dogma; I could believe that there might have been a Jesus of Nazareth, but the origins of the Bible meant that it was exceeding unlikely that there was any truth in its accounts of him. In short, the Bible could only be taken as allegory at best. The existence of any sort of supernatural being was so deeply implausible (and the prayers that invoked him so close to the sort of crawling parodied by the Pythons) that I couldn't see how any rational person could believe in one. Wish fulfillment at best.

Or, to put it more succinctly:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

[andrewducker]

I was also born in the South of England, in 1972, and I never believed. A fair number of my compatriots of the time seem to have felt likewise.

There were celebrations, but they seemed to be entirely rite, with no actual belief involved.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

You can't be sure that your beliefs are accurate. They're beliefs. Anyone who didn't tick the last option is a) wrong, b) deluded, c) irrational or d) a monkey who can't use a mouse properly. (I might be persuaded to make exceptions for people who ticked the second one, on a case-by-case basis.) The use of the word 'belief' clearly implies irrationality, because beliefs are irrational! Belief in anything is irrational, because the word 'belief' implies, at least to me, that you don't have proof for it.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

You can't be sure that your beliefs are accurate.

Equally, what proof do you have that any of the people responding to this actually exist?

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to add to the discussion, but I would love to be able to sit down and discuss beliefs with a religious person? I don't think I've actually had the chance to learn and discuss at a personal level since I was 15 and had Mrs Emami for RE. The internet is, frankly, crap at this because any attempt at finding stuff out assumes you need converting.

[yalovetz]

I recommend theology degrees for such discussions. ;)

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I have to caveat my answers, since I went to a CofE primary school, but stopped believing in God when I was nine or ten.

As far as I am concerned, God is a human construct; I don't believe we need to invent God to understand or explain the universe. Indeed, inventing supernatural powers is such a cop out.

[andrewducker]

I also went to a CofE school when I was young, but I never believed.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

Didn't answer the last. I follow Model Agnostism (Specifically, Wilsonian Postmodernism via RAW), and there's no option for rejecting belief as an operant.

Also, I see with interest that the atheist anthill has been poked with a stick. Don't do that. They don't like it. ;}P>

[darkoshi]

I'm not sure what I believed when I was a kid. I remember coming up with the idea that whatever anyone believed, was true for that person. Ie. if you believed in reincarnation, you'd be reincarnated, or if you believed in heaven, you'd go to heaven, etc. But I don't remember what I personally believed at that time. There was a point later on when I realized that I did not believe in Christianity, or in a god... which sort of implies that I did believe it before then, but I'm not sure. Yet I did believe in Santa Claus at one time, and the Easter Bunny, so does that count as a belief system?

[yalovetz]

I'm certain that at least one of my beliefs is wrong, but I don't know which, so I continue treating all of them as if they were right.

I'm not quite sure where that puts me on your last question. I went for the middle option, because the final option is simultaneously too weak (in level of certainty) and too strong (in scope) for my position.

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

I was brought up as a JW and as a kid I definitely believed. As I grew older I still believed but didn't like a lot of it. The whole 'living forever on a paradise Earth' scared the crap out of me and would induce feelings of anxiety and panic. I'm not entirely sure why. Probably because I couldn't stand the thought of having to spend an eternity with only the rest of the congregation. While they weren't bad people they weren't much fun. It sounded so dull and boring. I still believed whole-heartedly up until the age of about 16 when I started questioning but still went along with all the beliefs. Creation, no Christmas, no celebrating birthdays, no blood transfusions etc. It was only when I started university that I let that lot go. I went from JW to agnostic to wiccan to atheism. I'm much happier with regards to the whole belief front now.

[moniqueleigh]

Coming in a bit late on this one. After reading the prior comments, I probably fit best with the agnostic theists. I've had some personal experiences that seem to me as fitting with the idea that there is some sort of Supreme Being. But I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of enforcing my ideas of said Being on anyone else. Plus, there's the whole thing of my ideas of said Being seem to change on a semi-regular basis.

I was raised very much US Southern Baptist, and my mother's family is primarily Pentecostal (yes, with the whole speaking in tongues & women not being allowed to wear makeup, cut their hair (unless it's severely damaged), wear pants or short sleeves, etc.). But my parents weren't really church-goers. My paternal g-mother was the one dragging me off to every church event she could find, and my parents would go for weddings, funerals, etc. Although my mother is Definitely a Christian, she doesn't seem to subscribe to any particular denomination or to care much about others' faith as long as they behave in a manner that seems moral & ethical to her.

Somewhere around the age of... 14? 15? ish? I really started thinking about where I fell on the whole religion question. At the time, I was just coming out of the above strong indoctrination (although it never truly bothered me if I found that someone I liked believed differently), & so couldn't quite classify myself as non-Christian. At the time, I settled on "non-denominational Christian." In college, it became "agnostic, but more-or-less Christian" & eventually "err, Wiccan? Sort of? But Definitely Pagan." And now, it's come around to Agnostic Theism. *shrug* It's all good, I guess? AKA, whatever works? Heh.

[daisy-stitch.livejournal.com]

Have tried to fill this in as best I can but for several of them I found it difficult to pick an option. I have arguably always had a broadly Christian outlook. But having said that, my beliefs incorporate a whole lot of other supernatural aspects that aren't necessarily Christian, or viewpoints that don't maybe fit into the stereotypical Christian worldview. Also while I am usually (if not always confident of basics (eg existence of God), I am a lot less certain on details. And this is partly self-encouraged havering (though certainly not entirely so) as I think 100% certainty can be dangerous in any believer. See the old Quaker proverb: "Always consider that you may be wrong..."