I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
Steve3007
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Steve3007 »

robbiej653 wrote:I have been lucky enough to read MANY LIVES, MANY MASTERS, which has reinforced my belief that our life is just a transient phase in a much longer span of our spirits existence. This has led me away from the need to believe in a God.
Could you not have gone straight to simply believing that when you die you die? Do you think that even if you drop God concepts you still have a need to believe that a few decades of sentience is not all we get? Why do you think it is that so many humans seem to crave never-ending consciousness?
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Tegularius »

SneakySniper179 wrote: February 22nd, 2021, 10:35 am
You are afraid of burning in hell forever and ever. Hows that for all mercy and love. I'm just aggravated by religion. I couldn't have thought of a worse thing to happen to me.
Individually or collective, life is just a case of easy come, easy go. You came from nowhere emerging due to a natural biological process, and you're going back to nowhere, the place you came from. End of story! Forget love and mercy as something god grants when asked for. You're more likely to get it from a starving hyena. Religion is and remains complete bunk; its lifeblood consists of total hypocrisy which never ceases to circulate.

Knowing that doesn't depress in the least having instead absorbed the facts of nature which are also those of life...all of it! There's a far greater degree of freedom in that simple acknowledgement than trying to reconcile all the false promises and contradictions of religion.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by SneakySniper179 »

I'll have to read that.
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Sculptor1 »

SneakySniper179 wrote: February 22nd, 2021, 10:35 am There is always some straight up ******** with it. I was raised Catholic and I really cannot stand the religion but I feel forced to believe in it. I see how it got so far. It holds your soul at gun point.

People use to sell indulgence at one point and that makes me sick but I bet they sold like hot cakes. Who the hell even knows what people use to preach when the bible was in latin. None of it makes sense and it doesn't help me in the slightest but I am forced to believe in all this **** or burn forever. I don't believe in Islam and I don't feel any way about it but that could be the right religion after all and I could be wrong.

God doesn't do **** for your life unless you want him to. It really doesn't matter. You can pray all you want but stage 4 cancer will never go away. So what do prayers really mean. I believe people are scared of what they don't know that happens after this place so they pray for their souls.

I mean, if we truly loved god we wouldn't be held down by fear. I do love life but I do love God or fear him. I fear him to a certain extent and I believe most people do but you can't be honest about that or like I said, you'd go to hell. Crazy stuff.

Let me end by saying this. If you don't fear the conquences of going to hell and you truly love him than denounce god out loud. I don't think any religious person would because you won't be forgiven. I'm not nor do I want to but that's my point.

You are afraid of burning in hell forever and ever. Hows that for all mercy and love. I'm just aggravated by religion. I couldn't have thought of a worse thing to happen to me.
If you were born in China, do you think you would feel compelled to believe in the horrific game which means being a good boy or you will burn eternally?
Take your mind out of your conditioning for a few seconds. Read some history and anthropology. When was this horrific social contract entered into after the emergence of humans 200,000 years ago? And how extensive is it? What about the other 99% of human history do you think they are burning in hell for not behaving like a good Catholic??
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Newme »

SneakySniper179 wrote: February 22nd, 2021, 10:35 am...I was raised Catholic and I really cannot stand the religion but I feel forced to believe in it. I see how it got so far. It holds your soul at gun point.

People use to sell indulgence at one point and that makes me sick but I bet they sold like hot cakes. Who the hell even knows what people use to preach when the bible was in latin. None of it makes sense and it doesn't help me in the slightest but I am forced to believe in all this **** or burn forever. I don't believe in Islam and I don't feel any way about it but that could be the right religion after all and I could be wrong.

God doesn't do **** for your life unless you want him to. It really doesn't matter. You can pray all you want but stage 4 cancer will never go away. So what do prayers really mean. I believe people are scared of what they don't know that happens after this place so they pray for their souls.

I mean, if we truly loved god we wouldn't be held down by fear...
I can relate - grew up in the mormon cult & due to inter-faith marital beliefs now, I still am affiliated despite a “faith crisis” (truth crisis).

God is beyond religion & atheism. Religion & atheism are herd mentalities. Religion especially is busine$$ and helps control narratives (oppresses people). The most powerful social media is Twitter & the pope had the most followers. Mormon leaders honored the pope a few years back so my guess is he’s above them in the interconnected business. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism etc., each have positive elements but they tend to insist on being worshipped as gods, despite the “Thou shalt have no other gods before God.” One truth from Christ that is a bit anti-religious, because it shows you don’t need religion to connect with God is in Luke 17:20-21:

”And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”


It takes time to be deprogrammed. You’re on the right track.

Faith Stages:
http://psychologycharts.com/james-fowle ... faith.html
“Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.” - Epicurus
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Terrapin Station »

I like a lot of the fantasy aspects connected to religions--especially the supernatural/paranormal sort of stuff, and even horror stuff like miracles, angels, demons, ghosts, vampires, etc. . . . but I feel "forced" to not believe it. Or in other words, no matter how attractive I find something, how much I'd like to believe it, I can't believe anything just because I'd like to believe it.

So that's probably what it's like for you, too, just from the opposite side of belief contents.
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Terrapin Station wrote: February 24th, 2021, 1:21 pm Or in other words, no matter how attractive I find something, how much I'd like to believe it, I can't believe anything just because I'd like to believe it.

Why not? Provided there is no counter-evidence, and all available evidence is adequately explained, you are logically and reasonably entitled to believe anything you like.
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Steve3007 »

Pattern-chaser wrote:Why not? Provided there is no counter-evidence, and all available evidence is adequately explained, you are logically and reasonably entitled to believe anything you like.
So like Occam's Razor but with simplicity replaced by emotional satisfaction/comfort? It sounds like you're knocking on the door of Pascal's Wager.
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by baker »

Pattern-chaser wrote: February 24th, 2021, 1:29 pmWhy not? Provided there is no counter-evidence, and all available evidence is adequately explained, you are logically and reasonably entitled to believe anything you like.
Have you studied William James' Will to believe?

He provides a heuristic for how a person can come to believe new things, and what the limits to doing so are.
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

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Steve3007 wrote: February 25th, 2021, 5:43 amSo like Occam's Razor but with simplicity replaced by emotional satisfaction/comfort?
It's about far more than that. Here quoting from James' essay mentioned earlier:
/.../
Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed. If I ask you to believe in the Mahdi, the notion makes no electric connection with your nature,—it refuses to scintillate with any credibility at all. As an hypothesis it is completely dead. To an Arab, however (even if he be not one of the Mahdi's followers), the hypothesis is among the mind's possibilities: it is alive. This shows that deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the {3}individual thinker. They are measured by his willingness to act. The maximum of liveness in an hypothesis means willingness to act irrevocably. Practically, that means belief; but there is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all.

Next, let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option. Options may be of several kinds. They may be—1, living or dead; 2, forced or avoidable; 3, momentous or trivial; and for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind.

1. A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you: "Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan," it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: "Be an agnostic or be a Christian," it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.

2. Next, if I say to you: "Choose between going out with your umbrella or without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say, "Either love me or hate me," "Either call my theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory. But if I say, "Either accept this truth or go without it," I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind.

{4}
3. Finally, if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed. Per contra, the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique, when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise. Such trivial options abound in the scientific life. A chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital harm being done.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26659/2 ... 6659-h.htm


(Read on, he speaks about PW.)
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Steve3007 wrote: February 25th, 2021, 5:43 am
Pattern-chaser wrote:Why not? Provided there is no counter-evidence, and all available evidence is adequately explained, you are logically and reasonably entitled to believe anything you like.
So like Occam's Razor but with simplicity replaced by emotional satisfaction/comfort? It sounds like you're knocking on the door of Pascal's Wager.

Not quite. This is more fun than that, and more formal too. The Razor is just an informal guessing-guide, that has been found useful in the past. But consider this:

We have 10 hypotheses, but only 1 accounts for the available evidence. So we reject the 9, and accept the 1, pending the discovery of further evidence, of course. Nothing radical there. This is how logical scientific thinking goes, and rightly so.

Consider now that we have another 10 hypotheses, but only 1 fails to account for the available evidence. So we reject the 1, of course, but the other 9 are - according to the logical and scientific thinking we are employing here - accepted and acceptable for use. All 9 of them. We can even switch between them, if we choose, without violating scientific or logical principles.

And that's what I was getting at. As long as your chosen hypothesis accounts for all the evidence, you may choose to believe it while remaining wholly in accord with scientific and logical principles. You can believe what you like, within these constraints. Fun, eh!? 😉
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Belindi »

Sneaky Sniper, there is one version of Hell which does make more sense than Hell as a place where sinners are punished.


The word ''hell" comes to us from an old English language that people don't speak any more, and hell originally meant to cover up or to hide. So where I live there is a little watercourse that long ago was buried and runs underground and this is still called "Hell Brook" on the map. In living memory country people in Scotland "hell the potatoes" to stop them turning green.

So 'hell' , for religious people, originally meant concealing from God and has nothing to do with fiery punishment for ever and ever. These people who taught you that when you were a child were not bad people they were ignorant people.
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Pattern-chaser wrote: February 25th, 2021, 1:59 pm
Steve3007 wrote: February 25th, 2021, 5:43 am
Pattern-chaser wrote:Why not? Provided there is no counter-evidence, and all available evidence is adequately explained, you are logically and reasonably entitled to believe anything you like.
So like Occam's Razor but with simplicity replaced by emotional satisfaction/comfort? It sounds like you're knocking on the door of Pascal's Wager.

Not quite. This is more fun than that, and more formal too. The Razor is just an informal guessing-guide, that has been found useful in the past. But consider this:

We have 10 hypotheses, but only 1 accounts for the available evidence. So we reject the 9, and accept the 1, pending the discovery of further evidence, of course. Nothing radical there. This is how logical scientific thinking goes, and rightly so.

Consider now that we have another 10 hypotheses, but only 1 fails to account for the available evidence. So we reject the 1, of course, but the other 9 are - according to the logical and scientific thinking we are employing here - accepted and acceptable for use. All 9 of them. We can even switch between them, if we choose, without violating scientific or logical principles.

And that's what I was getting at. As long as your chosen hypothesis accounts for all the evidence, you may choose to believe it while remaining wholly in accord with scientific and logical principles. You can believe what you like, within these constraints. Fun, eh!? 😉


Note 1: Just because a hypothesis is logically acceptable for use does not mean its use is required or mandated.

Note 2: Just because a hypothesis is logically acceptable for use does not mean it is useful. I.e. it may not deliver useful insights.

Note 2 is important, as many of these hypotheses that are logically acceptable for use are of the fairies-at-the-bottom-of-my-garden variety.
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Steve3007 »

Pattern-chaser wrote:Note 1: Just because a hypothesis is logically acceptable for use does not mean its use is required or mandated.

Note 2: Just because a hypothesis is logically acceptable for use does not mean it is useful. I.e. it may not deliver useful insights.

Note 2 is important, as many of these hypotheses that are logically acceptable for use are of the fairies-at-the-bottom-of-my-garden variety.
The process you describe here and in the previous post still looks quite like Occam's Razor to me. But in note 2 you introduce the concept of usefulness/utility. I suppose in that case we have to decide whether theories with fewer assumptions are more useful than those with more assumptions. I'd say it's reasonable to say yes.
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Re: I really can't stand religion yet I feel forced to believe it.

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Steve3007 wrote: February 27th, 2021, 7:47 am
Pattern-chaser wrote:Note 1: Just because a hypothesis is logically acceptable for use does not mean its use is required or mandated.

Note 2: Just because a hypothesis is logically acceptable for use does not mean it is useful. I.e. it may not deliver useful insights.

Note 2 is important, as many of these hypotheses that are logically acceptable for use are of the fairies-at-the-bottom-of-my-garden variety.
The process you describe here and in the previous post still looks quite like Occam's Razor to me. But in note 2 you introduce the concept of usefulness/utility. I suppose in that case we have to decide whether theories with fewer assumptions are more useful than those with more assumptions. I'd say it's reasonable to say yes.

You're still missing the important point...
Pattern-chaser wrote: February 25th, 2021, 1:59 pm
Steve3007 wrote: February 25th, 2021, 5:43 am So like Occam's Razor but with simplicity replaced by emotional satisfaction/comfort?

Not quite. This is more fun than that, and more formal too. The Razor is just an informal guessing-guide, that has been found useful in the past.

...the Razor has no authority; it's just a rule of thumb. What I'm saying has authority. The same logic that tells us to reject theories that do not conform to the evidence, also tells us to retain theories that do conform to the evidence; they are logically-acceptable for use. This is a little-studied corollary of the scientific method.

I introduce usefulness to calm those who think I might be demanding that such theories must be used, which is rubbish, of course. QM, our most successful theory ever, is not required to be used. We use it if we choose to. Because we find it useful. Other acceptable theories, such as the atheists' old fave - "God did it" - often prove less useful. But they remain logically-acceptable for use.
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