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Author Topic: Why should one believe in God?
El JT de Spang
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quote:
This is indeed the problem. The way to address it is not by arguing about who what kind of cake is best for hanging sheetrock or saying that eating is stupid.
I think we all can agree that fruitcake is the best cake for all your carpentry needs.
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dkw
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Wouldn't dwarf cake be even better?
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Javert
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quote:
Originally posted by dkw:
Wouldn't dwarf cake be even better?

I'm sorry. I don't believe in dwarves. Or their cake.

[Wink]

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Jim-Me
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quote:
Originally posted by dkw:
Wouldn't dwarf cake be even better?

Somehow I find it terribly appropriate that Prachett cuts right across the argument, even when he isn't involved in it at all...
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Christine
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OK, all this talk about cake is making me hungry, even if we're pounding it with a hammer. (Must be pregnancy hormones.)

Sooooo....since we seem to have exhausted this take on things, how about turning it around?

***Why should one not believe in God?***

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pooka
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Seems like plenty of people have been saying "because there's no evidence" pretty much since the start of this thread.
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pooka
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quote:
The fact is, history shows us time and time again that "accept the truth of your idea, then look for evidence" just doesn't work.
I can see this with respect to brand new ideas, but doing things the way other people who are still alive do them has a good deal of merit throughout history.
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El JT de Spang
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Non-belief is the default position, and that shouldn't change without evidence to the contrary.

Why should one not believe in the invisible shoulder ponies that never say or do anything, but are nonetheless there (in accordance with the ancient texts)?

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C3PO the Dragon Slayer
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Here is substantial evidence based on mathematical proof that God is indeed a powerful factor in life.
quote:

101%


From a strictly mathematical viewpoint:


What Equals 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?

Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%?

We have all been in situations where someone wants you to GIVE OVER
100%.

How about ACHIEVING 101%?


What equals 100% in life?


Here's a little mathematical formula that might help answer these
questions:


If:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z


Is represented as:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.


If:


H-A-R-D-W-O-R- K

8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%


And:

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E

11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%


But:

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E

1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%


THEN, look how far the love of God will take you:


L-O-V-E-O-F-G-O-D

12+15+22+5+15+6+7+15+4 = 101%


Therefore, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that:

While Hard Work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will
get you there, It's the Love of God that will put you over the top!

I got that in an email one time and thought it was funny.

Who am I to say that this isn't of God's design? [Wink]

*edited for spelling

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Javert
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quote:
Originally posted by pooka:
Seems like plenty of people have been saying "because there's no evidence" pretty much since the start of this thread.

Pretty much. There are more specific reasons, of course, like the problem of evil. But those are more for specific gods that people believe in.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
incidentally, how do we get from "there is no empirical proof of this" to "there is no reason to believe it"?

I have many reasons to believe the Cowboys will smash the Giants on Sunday, but I certainly can't prove it and many people, perhaps even a majority, would disagree with me.

Different sort of proof. You're making a scientific hypothesis, based on your previous experience with the Cowboys and the Giants. Obviously, this can be more or less "scientific" based on the rationale for your conclusion, but the fact remains that you're making a prediction based on available evidence.

Non-believers, by and large, do not believe that this is what religious people do re: God. The reason "insulting" comparisons to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny come up so often is that, to many non-believers, there is powerful contrary evidence against the existence of most forms of God that, in its own way, parallels the evidence against the existence of Santa Claus. (Note: inspecific, squishy Gods excepted. There can be no evidence against something that denies the possibility of prediction.) And the only positive evidence for God is, by almost all accounts, more plausibly attributed to some other influence (and when I say "almost all accounts," I include those of religious people, most of whom have no problem believing that their counterparts in other religions are not properly experiencing the God they claim to experience.)

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Jim-Me
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Edit: responding to Pooka. I need to start quoting more.

From where I stand, there's nearly as much evidence of God as there is evidence that Kate Boots is a woman living in Chicago.

I am more convinced of the latter, for the record.

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Tresopax
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quote:
If your belief is really based on evidence and observation, then you should be able to give a list of observations and evidence that would falsify your belief.
This is not true. The falsification criteria applies only to the scientific method, not every belief based on evidence and observation. For instance, I believe my grandmother had a bike because she told me she did, yet there is no evidence available that could falsify this belief.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
From where I stand, there's nearly as much evidence of God as there is evidence that Kate Boots is a woman living in Chicago.
Has God posted to the message board recently? I'm pretty sure I've never seen his avatar. Banna's never claimed to have dined with him. A little inner voice only you can hear isn't evidence of anything except a little inner voice.

quote:
I believe my grandmother had a bike because she told me she did, yet there is no evidence available that could falsify this belief.
Sure, there is. Perhaps you'd discover a bunch of history books claiming that bicycles didn't exist when she was a child. Perhaps her siblings would tell you that she never owned a bike. Perhaps, later, she would tell your uncle that she wished she had owned a bike. That the falsifying evidence may be difficult to obtain, or may simply not exist due to the fact that it's not a false claim, does not mean that it's not falsifiable. Even the claim "I feel happy" is falsifiable in some situations, depending on whether you believe in qualia or not. [Wink]
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kmbboots
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Jim, honey, I hesitate to say this but, I live in Evanston. I appreciate the sentiment, though.

(edit to add: Good example. Watch where Jim gets new information and adapts his beliefs to incorporate that new information.)

From JT:
quote:
Non-belief is the default position, and that shouldn't change without evidence to the contrary.
I agree with this - where applicable.
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Tresopax
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quote:
Non-belief is the default position
No it isn't. If it were, we'd all be solipsists.

There is no default position. People don't believe in invisible ponies because they believe in the laws of physics, and that ponies are physical things that obey the laws of physics, which is evidence against the existence of invisible ponies that seemingly violate those laws. As always, it comes down to what we judge most likely to be true, given whatever evidence we have available to us.

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suminonA
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quote:
Originally posted by Tresopax:
quote:
If your belief is really based on evidence and observation, then you should be able to give a list of observations and evidence that would falsify your belief.
This is not true. The falsification criteria applies only to the scientific method, not every belief based on evidence and observation. For instance, I believe my grandmother had a bike because she told me she did, yet there is no evidence available that could falsify this belief.
Yet, it could. Like an exhaustive index of bike owners for the time period she claims to have had it. The fact that this kind of index doesn’t exist, might make it particularly un-falsifiable, not intrinsically un-falsifiable.

A.

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fugu13
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Tres: No, we wouldn't necessarily be so. For instance, you note how we all are naked by default, but somehow most of us have clothes on, now.

Of course, I tend to agree on no default position, though I'm not sure that statement carries any real meaning. But we could have a default position of no belief and still have the situation we have today.

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Jim-Me
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Has God posted to the message board recently? I'm pretty sure I've never seen his avatar. Banna's never claimed to have dined with him. A little inner voice only you can hear isn't evidence of anything except a little inner voice.

I did say *nearly*. [Smile]

But perhaps my point was more along the lines of the nature of the evidence-- there's correspondence and corroborating opinion from others, but my direct experience of the two of them is pretty limited in both cases. It *could* all be an elaborate hoax, either way.

And surely you can admit that it's a pretty big concession for a theist to compare the chances of God not existing to the chances of someone on the internet not being who they purport to be. That's not a statistically insignificant number.

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Jim-Me
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quote:
Originally posted by Javert:
There are more specific reasons, of course, like the problem of evil.

That one's a humdinger.
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Javert
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quote:
Originally posted by Jim-Me:
And surely you can admit that it's a pretty big concession for a theist to compare the chances of God not existing to the chances of someone on the internet not being who they purport to be. That's not a statistically insignificant number.

It is a big concession, but I think it's not going far enough.

If you compared it, say, to someone only messaging you not being who they purport to be, it would be closer.

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Jim-Me
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I'm sure most theists and atheists disagree about the amount and quality of what I shall, for lack of better words, call "circumstantial evidence" regarding God. Not so much regarding Kate.
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ClaudiaTherese
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quote:
Originally posted by suminonA:
quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
And I'm still wondering if you know what "gentile" means -- or the rules for using quotation marks.

I thought I knew. This showed me that in English the meaning is different to what I would have expected, meaning that I thought it also meant “delicate” or “innocent”. My bad.
You might have been thinking of the word genteel, or maybe just gentle.
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swbarnes2
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quote:
Originally posted by Tresopax:
quote:
If your belief is really based on evidence and observation, then you should be able to give a list of observations and evidence that would falsify your belief.
This is not true. The falsification criteria applies only to the scientific method, not every belief based on evidence and observation. For instance, I believe my grandmother had a bike because she told me she did, yet there is no evidence available that could falsify this belief.
Oh, I suspect that if your grandmother had been very close to her sister her whole life, and her sister told you that your grandmother thought to her dying day that bikes were exceedingly unladylike, and that she was scared to death of being perched on a bike with nothing but phantom physics to keep her up, and if not a single relative or friend could claim to have seen her bike, and her finances had been handled by her brother and her husband her whole life, and there was no record of a bike purchase, and no one remembered her ever getting a gift as large as a bike, you'd change your mind.

But why stop with a bike?

If your grandmother had claimed that she was a spy for the Kaiser, or that she could fly if no one was looking, how are those claims more falsifiable than the bike claim?

Proving a negative can be very difficult, and can be impossible. That's why starting with a belief in things where it is difficult or impossible to falsify is a very bad idea.

What if I claimed I was a spy for the Kaiser? Does it make you look very smart if you accept that belief, and claim that there's no way to falsify it?

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suminonA
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quote:
Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese:
You might have been thinking of the word genteel, or maybe just gentle.

Indeed. Thank you. [Smile]

A.

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Christine
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quote:
Originally posted by El JT de Spang:
Non-belief is the default position, and that shouldn't change without evidence to the contrary.

I'm not ready to turn the discussion back around quite so easily. [Smile]

I don't buy that no God is the default position. At last count, most people in the world believe in God in one form or another. I have trouble accepting something as "default" when the vast majority of people believe the other way.

If there is a default position, I'd say it's probably what our parents taught us from birth.

Since humans are social animals, it takes something to go against the force of parental indoctrination and peer pressure.

So, especially for those of you raised in a religious home but no longer believe in God, why not believe in Him?

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Javert
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quote:
Originally posted by Christine:
quote:
Originally posted by El JT de Spang:
Non-belief is the default position, and that shouldn't change without evidence to the contrary.

I'm not ready to turn the discussion back around quite so easily. [Smile]

I don't buy that no God is the default position.

Not saying that "no god" is the default position. "Not believing in a god" is. There's a difference. It's subtle, I admit, but there.
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MattB
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On the hearts thing - that's an interesting point, and makes me wonder what exactly the phrase 'soften heart' means. Perhaps it's prevenient grace, or God's spirit making it possible for us to choose the good. Accepting that prevenient grace could be what Alma speaks of.

One should believe in God once one has accepted the premises that make God necessary. For some people, those premises have to do with the promises associated with a loving God. For others, it's because the existence of God re-visions the universe in a meaningful way. For others, God is the logical and meaningful conclusion to a spiritual experience.

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swbarnes2
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quote:
Originally posted by Christine:


I don't buy that no God is the default position. At last count, most people in the world believe in God in one form or another. I have trouble accepting something as "default" when the vast majority of people believe the other way.



Vast majority? I count 32% being Hindu, Buddhist African, or Chinese Traditional, and none of them believe in a single all-powerful God. 68% is not a vast majority.

It's just a majority.

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

But it's easy to explain whty so many people are theists. It's how human beings are wired. We look for patterns, even when they aren't there. We are social creatures, and figuring out the motivations of people is second nature to us. So when we see something happen, it's natural for us to think "who did that?" so we can figure out how to respond.

But it's like craving sugary foods, it's an instinct, but it can steer us wrong.

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camus
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quote:
Not saying that "no god" is the default position. "Not believing in a god" is. There's a difference. It's subtle, I admit, but there.
I'm curious, how might someone go about testing whether belief or non-belief is the default position? It seems to me like there are too many unknown or uncontrollable factors involved in belief to be able to generalize what a default position may be.
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Christine
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quote:
Originally posted by swbarnes2:
quote:
Originally posted by Christine:


I don't buy that no God is the default position. At last count, most people in the world believe in God in one form or another. I have trouble accepting something as "default" when the vast majority of people believe the other way.



Vast majority? I count 32% being Hindu, Buddhist African, or Chinese Traditional, and none of them believe in a single all-powerful God. 68% is not a vast majority.

It's just a majority.

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

But it's easy to explain whty so many people are theists. It's how human beings are wired. We look for patterns, even when they aren't there. We are social creatures, and figuring out the motivations of people is second nature to us. So when we see something happen, it's natural for us to think "who did that?" so we can figure out how to respond.

But it's like craving sugary foods, it's an instinct, but it can steer us wrong.

I never said "single all-powerful GOd." I said God in one form or another. But it doesn't really matter that much, I think you pretty much agreed with my socialization point (that our default position tends to be what we're taught). You just left out the part where you broke free of this mold. [Smile]

quote:
Not saying that "no god" is the default position. "Not believing in a god" is. There's a difference. It's subtle, I admit, but there.
You're right -- the difference is huge. I still submit that it's hard to go against the grain and throw off the religions we were indoctrinated into, though.
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suminonA
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quote:
Originally posted by Christine:
Since humans are social animals, it takes something to go against the force of parental indoctrination and peer pressure.

So, especially for those of you raised in a religious home but no longer believe in God, why not believe in Him?

I only know why I don’t believe in the favorite deity of my parents.
For one, they couldn’t explain to me what that deity was/is like, to any relevant degree of accuracy. At least they admitted that they couldn’t.
Secondly, I was always asking “too many” questions and never settled for the “no answer” or the “blind faith”. I found out about Logic early on. No wonder I’m the first engineer in a long line of non-engineers. I thank my family that they allowed me to follow my way, and not insist with the religious indoctrination.
Thirdly, my personal questions toward the eventual deity have remained silent to this day. I’m still waiting, but in the meanwhile I only rely on duplicable kind of experience and evidence. I don’t reject the other kind; I just don’t rely on it.

A.

PS: just to be clear, I don’t suggest to anyone that they shouldn’t believe in their respective favorite deity.

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El JT de Spang
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quote:
Originally posted by Christine:
I went on to say that the real default position is probably whatever you were indoctrinated into.

If you have to be taught it or indoctrinated into it, it's not the default position.
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Javert Hugo
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Considering just about every culture* has a religion, it would seem that a belief in the divine is the default.

*I am, of course, sans cites for this and am possibly making it up. I don't think so, though Is there a perponderance of counter-examples?

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kmbboots
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We have to be taught to love. Is love not a default position? If not, why would default positions be prefered?
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Christine
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quote:
Originally posted by El JT de Spang:
quote:
Originally posted by Christine:
I went on to say that the real default position is probably whatever you were indoctrinated into.

If you have to be taught it or indoctrinated into it, it's not the default position.
I'm not sure how you can reason this out. Certainly, as a baby, I didn't know anything about God one way or another. But then again, I didn't know anything about curtains or shoes or rocks or socks...(must stop reading Dr. Seuss! [Smile] )

My parents taught me all that, and right alongside they taught me about God. It's the truth i accepted from my earliest awareness because I didn't question my parents then. It's the many years I spent trying to be a good little Catholic because my parents wanted me to be.

It is MY default. I'm hardly alone in that.

If you're trying to convince me that there's a universal default, you're going to have to work harder. Most people I know who became atheist or agnostic did so *against* a position that was programmed into them.

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suminonA
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quote:
Originally posted by Javert Hugo:
Considering just about every culture* has a religion, it would seem that a belief in the divine is the default.

*I am, of course, sans cites for this and am possibly making it up. I don't think so, though Is there a perponderance of counter-examples?

I would argue that what all human society has in common is the simultaneous fear and amazement in the face of the unknown. The more "primitive" the society, the greater the degree of both.

Maybe the (organized) religion was adopted on top of that because it served the few with the higher degree of knowledge than the rest. Disclaimer: This is a hypothesis, nothing more.

A.

[edit: bad quote format]

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pooka
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I'm not sure we have to be taught to love.
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kmbboots
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If we don't have to be taught to love, then we don't have to be taught to know God either.
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Paul Goldner
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That doesn't follow.
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pooka
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I think little children, at least ones who are secure as to their basic needs of sustenance, shelter, and love from their parents, are naturally loving.

But I guess that "love from their parents" is a pretty big deal.

I'm just going off the kingdom of heaven = little child thing.

To elaborate, I'd say the child doesn't have to be taught "this is love" in the same way they have to be taught to walk or to speak. They do learn these things naturally enough under normal circumstances, unlike, say, toilet training. Sure some babies are colicky, but that's irregular. Mostly babies radiate love (in my experience, anecdotal and all that though it is.)

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kmbboots
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Paul, Sure it does. The rest is details.

pooka, those children who are being loved and being cared for are being taught to love.

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Christine
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pooka -- I think we're shown how to love through example if our parents do it right. I would consider that the same thing as being taught love or taught to love, but semantics don't really matter that much. [Smile]
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MattP
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quote:
If you're trying to convince me that there's a universal default, you're going to have to work harder. Most people I know who became atheist or agnostic did so *against* a position that was programmed into them.
It depends on the individual, but for me I think it was more the case that the programming never took.
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pooka
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But I think being loved and cared for can be considered a default state. I don't think that's too much to ask, and I think it's the norm the world around. There are far too many children who do not enjoy such security, but I'd still consider it the default.
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DevilDreamt
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quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
If we don't have to be taught to love, then we don't have to be taught to know God either.

quote:
Originally posted by Paul Goldner:
That doesn't follow.

I suppose it depends on your definition of God? If there is a cosmic force that binds all things, that created all things and loves all things it created, and we call this force God, I don't think it would be necessary to teach people to know it. Helpful, maybe, but not necessary.

If people are inherently capable of love, they should be inherently capable of knowing the God that has been described. If God is something else, though, something more complex than love and protection, teaching would likely be needed.

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Threads
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quote:
Originally posted by pooka:
I'm not sure we have to be taught to love.

That's because its genetic.
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Paul Goldner
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"Paul, Sure it does. The rest is details."

"Knowing" and "Loving" are very different things. Plus, if god doesn't exist, then we can't know god, whether or not we are capable of loving. So, no, the rest isn't details.

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pooka
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I'm still pondering whether teaching about God is needed.

I mean, I come from a point of view where the world is fallen - both on a global level and the society of man - and so the experience of God is not as direct as it was in the Garden of Eden where God was able to speak to Adam and Eve.

I guess I'd say that spiritually we are like Helen Keller trying to learn to communicate, and so in that sense we do need to be taught. Jesus was born as a man to be that teacher, to bridge our world with Gods.

But as has been noted, the necessity for us to fall is puzzling. [Smile]

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kmbboots
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Paul, then you and I define God differently. For my definition of God, it absolutely follows.

pooka, we may be dealing with different versions of "default". Sadly, for much of humanity, I don't think that being sufficiently loved and cared for could be assumed as a default either way.

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