<p>Just to clarify (if garland was referring to me), I never said that Hitler ordered the holocaust in the name of religion. I said that he perverted religious beliefs to support parts of his own ideology. (Then carried out actions & issued commands based on that ideology.)</p>
<p>To me, the truth of any belief system can be judged by whether any of its followers decide that they can kill on the basis of it. </p>
<p>Doesn’t matter to me whether it is “the belief system” or “the followers” who should be called to account.</p>
<p>Others will “believe differently”.</p>
<p>I absolutely believe in God. :)</p>
<p>“Just to clarify (if garland was referring to me), I never said that Hitler ordered the holocaust in the name of religion. I said that he perverted religious beliefs to support parts of his own ideology. (Then carried out actions & issued commands based on that ideology.)”</p>
<p>epiphany - Hitler was an atheist and a vegetarian. Nazism was an equal opportunity persecutor of all religions, they just prefered to start with Jews and Jehova’s Witnesses. They did show a vague interest in a sort of modern paganism/wiccanism but never brought it along too far. I doubt you can make the case that Hitler ever appealed to any mainstream religious beliefs in promoting his ideology. The fact is he held religion in contempt.</p>
<p>“The fact is, God is a stupendously unlikely proposition - much more unlikely than the alternatives.”</p>
<p>Huh? I’d like to see the math behind that statement. How do you measure the likelihood of a singularity? How large is infinity? How unlikely is something that exists? Probably just as unlikely as something that doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>How do you measure the probability of a possibility? The existence of something is either possible or impossible. There is no middle ground. If it is impossible to exist then the probability of its existence is 0 and if it is possible to exist then you would have to know what goes in to its creation to even begin a guess at the probability of its existence. For instance we have a fair sense of what sort of environment generated life on planet eart, of the extent of the univers, number of stars etc so we can begin to guesstimate the likelihood og extraterrestiral life. But God is uncreated so calculating the likelihood of his/her/its esistence and assigning it the probability of stupendously unlikely is nonsensical.</p>
<p>“To me, the truth of any belief system can be judged by whether any of its followers decide that they can kill on the basis of it.”</p>
<p>Then you have effectively ruled out any belief system. Obviously deluded individuals can attach themselves to even the most benign of beliefs and interpret them in such a way as to justify the most dastardly deeds.</p>
<p>I don’t think there was anything in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to justify the Spanish Inquisition or the Protestant Court of Star Chamber. Of course we can’t say the same about Mohammed and Islam. he did preach war on the Kaffir. Nor can we say it about Judaism whose God commanded them to rid the land of Philistines.</p>
<p>“Then, in all the correspondence above, substitute ‘faith’ for ‘love’ and you will likely find, as I do, that nothing changes. We might as well argue over why someone loves the person they do.”</p>
<p>An astute observation Dorothy.</p>
<p>Epiphany–sorry, I’m not being clear. I was agreeing with you.</p>
<p>I think several posters here have blown my comments all out of proportion – ironic since I am not the one who brought up the Hitler topic. </p>
<p>I never said that Hitler was a religionist in the traditional sense of the term. He wasn’t. (But the possibility that he was an atheist is in dispute.) He was, like some other leaders past & present, expedient in his importation of religious references (from 1922 through 1933 and following, in speeches at the Reichstag & elsewhere, in allusions in Mein Kampf) to support <em>some</em>, not all, of his beliefs, and <em>some</em> – not all, of his practices & policies.</p>
<p>The fact that he was a vegetarian is neither here nor there. He was also a dabbler in the occult – less so than is mythologically believed, but mildly so. He was a dabbler in many areas, being somewhat of a lost soul, among other things. There was an astrologer who was an ardent supporter, but that doesn’t mean that Hitler was an actual believer in astrology, as is sometimes assumed.</p>
<p>All of this is off-topic. The principle being argued earlier (again, brought up by someone else) was that if (supposedly) Hitler was a “believer,” that therefore religion and/or God are suspect-- a statement which is an illogical leap. There are also dictators who claim that they head up “democracies.” Does that make democracy as an ideal morally bankrupt? Of course not. Yes, bad people are free to associate themselves (or claim to associate themselves) with good ideas, good people, good institutions. </p>
<p>Again, the question was Do you believe in God? not Do you believe in religion, or do you believe in particular religious authority figures, or Do you believe in political figures who self-identify with one religion or another?</p>
<p>Lots of people believe in God or a god, but have no particular theological beliefs beyond that, yet base that belief not on something intellectual but a personal experience (or several). Some people are particularly receptive to dimensions of experience such as the emotional, the artistic, the spiritual, which for them are paths to God. Not everyone can describe these experiences. And lots of people don’t feel the need to testify to these, engage in empirical “proofs,” lol, or otherwise intellectually justify their belief. It just “is.”</p>
<p>EDIT: Thanks, Garland. I just saw your post; we cross-posted. But I’ll leave my comments for whomever perhaps misunderstood my thrust. I’m actually enjoying the lively debate.:)</p>
<p>Just to throw a variable at this discussion, it’s interesting to consider physiology and religion. I’ve read some books by neurologist V.S. Ramachandran where he touches on some interesting studies in this area. As an aside, my D audited his lectures at UCSD and found him fascinating (after we’d watched some shows featuring him on PBS)…</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=132[/url]”>http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=132</a></p>
<p>I think there is another important concept. Why is it that so many people have a propensity, desire, or need to believe in a god or in multiple gods? Why has religion been just a major part of human culture? </p>
<p>Some would agrue that points to the existence of gods. I think there is a very logic explanation and these reflect a part of our biologic and cultural evolution. Once I understand the innate drives and emotions, I have some choice and ability to move beyond those forces.</p>
<p>Conflict of Interest Statement: I’m a believer. (No, I was not in The Monkees.)
One of the arguments I’ve heard mentioned: There either is a God or Natural Selection selects for an animal that needs to believe.
This sounds like what edad is saying.</p>
<p>On the question of religion causing violence, Anne Lamott mentions in one her books a saying of a Priest she knows. Something to the effect that one way to tell you’re worshiping a god of your own creation is when you figure out he hates everyone you hate. I think this is a good modern description of idolatry as compared to a religion where you are seeking to know God as he is.</p>
<p>"Then you have effectively ruled out any belief system. Obviously deluded individuals can attach themselves to even the most benign of beliefs and interpret them in such a way as to justify the most dastardly deeds.</p>
<p>I don’t think there was anything in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to justify the Spanish Inquisition or the Protestant Court of Star Chamber. Of course we can’t say the same about Mohammed and Islam. he did preach war on the Kaffir. Nor can we say it about Judaism whose God commanded them to rid the land of Philistines."</p>
<p>I have had absolutely no difficulty, experientially, finding belief systems that haven’t been used to justify dastardly deeds. But, that is somewhat irrelevant to my original remark, in which I suggested that the truth of any belief system could be judged relative to the degree that any of its followers kill on the basis of it. (From that perspective, what Jesus actually said - which we’ll never really know - or what Muhammed actually said are entirely irrelevant.)</p>
<p>Perhaps you are living too sheltered a life. I suspect, however, that you would choose not to look for them, and that is certainly your right. </p>
<p>I do wish you would read more carefully what I originally wrote. It was quite a bit more subtle than your reply to it would suggest.</p>
<p>(I still don’t see why creation has to have anything to do with it. When I was 8, I was told that something couldn’t come from nothing, and that therefore God exists. When I asked what created God, all I really got was the equivalent of a shrug.)</p>
<p>Because the question poses no relevance: Why would God need a creator?</p>
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Canadian sci-fi writer Robert Sawyer has played with these questions in several books. I particularly enjoyed Calculating God and The Neanderthal Trilogy. In the latter he creates a parallel universe where Neanderthals not homos sapiens became the dominant species. But unlike us they don’t have a gene to believe in God. (They also believe in the steady state universe instead of the Big Bang.)</p>
<p>I don’t know if we have “a gene to believe in God.” It seems we have a lot of other related social propensities. We also tend to form social and political groups and organizations, many with the own rites, rituals and culture. We are prone to mass hysteria. We are concerned about our social position and peer pressure. We tend to conform to our society and groups and even the “noncomformists” tend to form their own groups with their own signs of belonging. I tend to think it is best if we at least try to understand some of these behavioral influences and can at least occasionally progress beyond the herd mentality.</p>
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<p>I find this interesting because I have often joked (and honestly feel) that I am not religious because I do not have the “spirituality gene.” </p>
<p>I don’t think it is possible for me to become a genuine “believer,” and therefore I do in fact, harbor some resentment towards others who imply that I have somehow made an evil choice by being an atheist.</p>
<p>It is similar to the gay-straight contention. Perhaps some of us were born non-believers and cannot be converted.</p>
<p>“Because the question poses no relevance: Why would God need a creator?”</p>
<p>If you are going to say that, then why not apply that same logic to the universe? If god needs no creator, why does the universe need one?</p>
<p>Because logic has no place in the discussion.</p>
<p>Dauntless, under current scientific theory of the Big Bang there is an identifiable and determinable point of beginning of the universe. That gives rise to the question - what was going on at Big Bang - 1? And assuming a Big Bang also leads to the question: why? The concept of a Supreme Being implies the postulation of eternal existence with an essence which transcends our questions. That’s why the logic is different.</p>