Yes. I wrestled with it for a long time because I felt that the thoughts I was having would lead me to burning in hell forever. Ultimately it was my choice but it's also the choice of every brainwashed cult follower, many of which never come back to reality or require deprogramming(de-brainwashing). What stOx is saying is that it's not an inevitability that you continue to follow the religious beliefs that you were taught, but it is highly probable that you will. And it's not a sort of passive continuance of belief. Religious/supernatural beliefs get a hold on people in a way that most other things simply can't. That's why you can't compare correlation in religious beliefs between parent/child to correlation in choices of food. Types of food simply don't have the grasp on people that religion or supernatural beliefs do. It would be more suitable to compare the drive to eat(any food) or the drive to have sex to the drive that one feels to continue believing in a religion or set of superstitions. Because they are all very basic, primitive drives, it's just that one(the superstition drive) is not fully defined, it is more of a template or foundation which the culture or environment provides structure to. But no matter the specific structure, the drive is fundamentally the same.
From what I see, your parents' religion didn't matter for you to make the ultimate decision. You made the choice based on your own reasoning. Or am I wrong? I perfectly understand what Stox is saying. Probability is assumption. it's not the fact. People follow the religious beliefs they were raised with because they do not see any reason to change their faith. Once they do, they change it. At the end, it's a matter of choice where nothing else matters.
And last i checked, Billions didn't. You are still having trouble grasping the simple concept that "most" doesn't mean all aren't you. really? that is your case? that the factor responsible for making people in different countries more likely to be one religion over another is coincidence? Is this claim a result of denial or intellectual dishonesty? I think you have given up now. Your replies are nothing more than symbolic gestures.
Billions didn't because they didn't find a reason to do so.. Simple. If and when they do, they would. Parents' religion wont matter then. Not even a bit. Are you?
How fortunate that they happened to be born to parents of that religion in a country where that religion, Ya know, the religion best suited to them, is the majority religion... that certainly is a coincidence. Give it up.
Wow are you indicating Divine intervention? Hmmm, you could sway me back toward religion. What part of faith do you not get? Your arguments are trying to justify your own faith. Billions are 100% without a doubt wrong while little stox is right! I think you just find yourself trying to justify your own faith by attacking others. That has no logic whatsoever. Because those people chose to follow the beliefs of their society, it in no way is a justification for your faith in no God. Your arguments tell me that you are rebelling against your parents and that you are trying to justify that by attacking others who have different beliefs than your own. Once again, I am willing to offer you counseling to address those issues you are having. Taking the first step is the hardest.
Could be. Just because many people follow it or believe it doesn't make it right or real always. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html http://www.amosweb.com/cgi-bin/awb_nav.pl?s=wpd&c=dsp&k=fallacy+of+mass+appeal
It also does not prove that it is wrong. I have no problem with anyone believing there is no God or that there is. I find no positive proof either way. However, his view is to attack anyone else who does not share his exact view. His point that his is the one and only way is the same basis that drives the very religions he hates.
My parent's religion and all those around me very much did matter. Like I said, I struggled with it for years. The way I see it, religion and superstitions have two obvious drivers. I'll call them implicit and explicit for lack of better terms. Implicit drivers are the underlying drives in most humans to believe in superstitious nonsense. Explicit is the more conscious, the fabric of the belief system, that which requires some conscious thought(but not necessarily reason). I would call the fear of burning in hell forever an explicit drive, one that is instilled through indoctrination. The combination of implicit and explicit are incredibly powerful. If you've ever seen people speak in tongues in real life you'd know what I mean. It's far from simple assumption. A solid case could be built using statistical methods. Just like heroin addicts quit heroin once they decide to. There are parts of the brain that do not operate within the purview of the conscious mind. Addiction and religion are probably similar in this regard although the specific mechanisms in which they exert their influence may be different.
Not going into whats religions and what it is similar to.. Since I'm an atheist myself, I exactly know what religion is. You do not understand what I'm saying.. You sure struggled for years, you sure had troubles in thinking outside of box, sure in all that time your parents' religion and teaching did matter. But at the end, when you broke free, The time when you made the choice, nothing else mattered except for your own reasoning. Is it correct or not?
Fortunate... Or a result of their conditioning. I think most people understand which it is. The fact that you continue to claim this phenomena is the result of coincidence does nothing for your credibility and only serves to expose your intellectually dishonesty.
Consider myself Agnostic purely because I do have a certain feeling of the higher force...but nothing has been imprinted in my head at a young age...so yeah - A
Yaaawwnnn!! Heard that before, from people who got nothing left to say.. Couldn't care less though...
I'm not sure if I'd say it's exactly correct. I would say that yes my reasoning won out at the end of the day. But you make blanket statements about an entire data set based on one value in the set. We can prove or disprove anything if it were true that one incidence or one value in a sample or population were conclusive and definitive. But that's not how it works. I'm the exception. If you scoured the world you could find a handful of heroin addicts who quit cold turkey and stayed that way for years but that wouldn't prove that all addicts have a choice and could choose not to continue heroin use by making a conscious decision. I do believe that belief of religion or superstitions could be reasoned away in a lot of cases but it wouldn't be easy. It would take rigorous therapy directed specifically towards extrication from the religious/superstitious belief system, which is basically what deprogramming is, except deprogramming is often done involuntarily. For most people a simple yes/no choice is not an option because you're fighting wiring that was set up over 10s, 100s of thousands, or maybe even millions of years. And much of that wiring was probably put in place before the conscious mind even evolved. Marketers try to exploit this by marketing to a part of the brain that isn't so capable of choice through reason, called the "reptilian brain".
Wooo.... Muslims are at 2nd place after Atheist Pegan 2 1.83% Agnostic 12 11.01% Atheist 47 43.12% Christian 14 12.84% Buddhist 1 0.92% Jewish 3 2.75% Taoist 0 0% Muslim 21 19.27% Hindu 7 6.42% Other 2 1.83%