The Duality Of Belief: The Simplified Version
The great thing with spending considerable time with a group of outspoken and culturally-diverse people is that you’ll get a good pulse on why certain people believe certain things and others don’t. Of course, such conversations are limited to those who are also willing to listen to something that is not natural to his/her belief system. Intellectual convergence is always a good thing as long as it entails the objective and organized presentation of ideas. Friendly banter and light rebuttals always make the exchange more lively, but it’s comparative theology that just makes the session not only engaging but also educational.
I think it’s all about predilections. And how are these predilections formed? Since I won’t exactly put my neck on the line by saying that religious belief has a genetic component *gasp*, it’s more logical to think that belief is a function of one’s upbringing and the general set of values, ideas and concepts that an individual has picked up through out the years.
To really simplify things, I think people are hardwired after a certain point in their development. A good majority have the tendency to believe in a god. These are the people who would believe in a god whatever happens. They make choose not to act on it (becoming a non-practicing version of a follower of their religion), be an atheist (one whose main beef against the existence of a god still relies on the whole god archetype) or go from one phase to another in different points in their lives without following a clear pattern, but in the end, the belief that was seeded early on will be there and would manifest in one way or another. A Genuine Theist (may it be a Jew, Christian or Muslim) will never be a Genuine Atheist - bit he/she can try to fit in.
The same goes for atheism. Genuine Atheism, in my opinion, deals with the fundamental inability to release the grasp from empiricism, common sense and logic and make assumptions regarding the very foundation of existence and the universe. The leap in intellect is so vast that it requires one thing that atheist don’t/ will never have - faith. I know a couple of atheists who say they’ve been re-converted to their de facto religion, but to this day, their minds still ask the same question regarding the leap of faith and similar issues. In the end, they cannot stop their minds from working the way it has worked for the past decades. A few months of re-engineering will not change hardwired thought processes that has been in use for ages. Genuine Atheism can venture to the other side, but they’ll still end up fooling themselves in the process. And if the god that the three major religions believe in truly are intuitive, such an effort to mask one’s real perspective (and yes, I do believe that this stand will not be changed through any intervention short of lobotomy), still falls flat in the rewards-and-punishments concept of judgment. At the end of the day, a Genuine Atheist will never be a Genuine Theist - but he/she can try to fit in.
That’s the thing. People are in well-defined lines. And the lines are not the type that divide people involved in aware. It’s a mere ideological divide. And life is more than just ideology, religion and a belief/non-belief in a god.
At least to this Atheist, it isn’t.
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That’s the thing — it’s really not, hence faith
Magagalit ka ba kung mag “amen” ako? :p
Ironically, something that I learned in the course of my questioning and faux-agnosticism (http://blog.kapenilattex.com/2007/04/06/how-i-choose-to-believe-jesus/) is that some atheists can in fact be very spiritual and theists can be very temporal (for lack of a better word).
Meaning atheists, despite their lack of fate, or their belief in God, can be very in touch with themselves and others, and quite compassionate to their fellowmen to the point that they follow the tenets of the theist’s doctrine more than many theists do.
As for me, my agnosticism stopped there. I’m a theist that can never truly be an atheist. Hopefully my mind is open enough to get where you come from (I think it is, at least).
i think that the hardwiring thing may be true, but not universally true. humans are plastic, moldable and ever flexible. i can be truly atheist, and i can be truly theist, and people from either side won’t be able to tell the difference.
the true question then is, is theism or atheism an act? do you put it on for others? do you put it on for yourself? can you ever know yourself fully, honestly, truly?
haha. i just made the case for agnosticism.
You have definitely oversimplified things, hehe
Where is this “certain point” that you speak of? Is there any evidence to back up your hypothesis?
My father was a Protestant pastor, and my parents did everything they could to raise me as a God-fearing Christian boy. And they succeeded too. For a long time, I was a devout churchgoing, Bible-reading Christian who prayed to Jesus everyday–a Genuine Theist–until I became an atheist at the age of 23. And no, I didn’t turn away from religion because I was angry at an archetypal god. I did because I was convinced by reason and logic.
I think much of the hardwiring that can be done on people is done by genetics. The environments that people are raised in of course play a huge part in shaping who they are, but the effects are not necessarily irreversible. The key here is the ability of humans (and animals) to learn, i.e., to take in new information and modify the way we think and act accordingly. Kids may learn faster than adults, but you can still teach an old dog new tricks
there’s only one thing certain, we all want to be certain about something.. either way it’s still someTHING!
Choice is what we are…
‘Free’ Will makes us free of what; if what is nothing? Where does ‘WILL’ fit in?
i wonder how theists and atheists can co-exist. they have very big differences when it comes to beliefs and since the beliefs are connected with the way a person lives, hence, the wonder.