[moches]

Originally Posted by star reaper

I think the biggest problem for everyone here looking at different views is because of a personal bias based on the one everyone begins with.

this is a good point: I'm a Christian (though incredibly moderate) and was raised throughout my entire childhood in the church. my thoughts are obviously going to be quite different from the dude raised by atheists. honestly, I find the question of religion to be an incredibly personal issue and I'm not going to try and convert anybody in here. finding one's inner peace is more important, imo (though how you define "peace" is going to differ from person to person).

I will, however, include one of the more interesting posts on religion (one I've been turning over in my head for quite some time, in fact) I've seen on the interwebs:

I don't think they're trying to say they are the same, they are simply saying that their personal experience of conviction is the same. Like, if a person saw the sun, but lived the rest of their life underground in a world of people telling them no such thing exists, they would still believe in the sun. Why? They experienced it. They may be told many times that it was a hallucination, and given many examples as to why it wasn't real. However, to them, they experienced it and it was real and continues to be real even when it is not being experienced.

If a person had an experience of faith it is going to be the same way. Even at times when it is explained away, even with many arguments being made against it, being compared to other things that look similar to it, even when they are not actively experiencing it, they are going to follow along with their own memory of their own conviction that they experienced something very real. Most of them take it passively, anyway. They aren't going to hold their life to a strict standard of faith and they wouldn't hold their life a strict standard of science if they didn't believe. Most people just don't want to try so hard at being right about everything and go with what feels nice to them.

Now, that isn't something you can defend. It's unobservable, unrecordable, irreplicable, indemonstrable, etc. However, that conviction is there, not just a faint memory of a possibility, the very conviction itself is actively keeping its grasp. That person may or may not be warping their view of everything else to fall in line with that conviction, although it seems more common to do so. However, the state of the situation is that they didn't choose for it to take hold and they can't choose to shake it away. I've seen athiests enjoy videos on youtube by Evid3nc3. Well if faith does work on a matrix like that, you should take that as something that happens with people and also not expect them to work hard at deconstructing their own matrix.

Whatever it is, it is a very real and incredibly common phenomenon in humanity, and people who experience it should be shown the dignity of being normal human beings and reacting to their experience as normal human beings seem to do. Perhaps you don't like it, so maybe it is like another normal thing that isn't pleasing, like anger. You can say it is not ideal, something we shouldn't follow, something we can work to change, something we can master... yet, ultimately, something that is normal for humans to feel and shouldn't be judged for if feeling it, but only for acting in damaging ways because of it.

anyway, this thread has been a very interesting read so far, and I hope it leads to understanding on both sides.