Hello. I'm new to this forum and I hope that this topic is in the correct forum. But I have a question particularly for nonbelievers, however, by no means it is a challenge question. Also, believers are free to post in this topic too.
So, what I would like to ask particularly to nonbelievers is: What is your view on the psychology/mechanics of religious belief and what exactly do you think that believers in God are technically believing in in regard to their desire, their love, their adherence to what they believe is God?
And the reason why I ask is because there are various versions of Christianity, which have contradictory and conflicting policies and doctrines, but yet, within these various versions of Christianity, there are people who are sincere and very serious about worshipping God and having a relationship with God. However, for the most part, the people in these various versions of Christianity believe that their way or interpretation of believing and worshipping God is correct while often times believing that Christianity outside of their version of Christianity is incorrect.
And to expound upon these ideas, it seems as if in reality, belief and devotion to God (for many) is believing in the highest principles in your mind that make you feel safe and hopeful about life, along with the highest principles in your mind that produce community and caring and good deeds for others and with others. And of course, this would be in contrast to the darkness and the hopelessness that exists in our world.
So, does anyone have any thoughts about this?
In Genesis, the story begins with creation happening in a natural way; divine will, leading to life and paradise. The story changes tone, from awe to disappointment, when Adam and Eve use their willpower and choice to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This causes death to come into the world. The rest of Genesis and even the Bible talks about a world that is more stressful and deadly, as human learn to become more and more unnatural, based on their subjective laws of good and evil behavior; doctrines of man, that try to replace natural instinct; will of God. God, via the prophets tries to intercede but the humans are not listening in whole but only in part.
The Bible and Genesis sets the contrast between natural human and artificial human. Natural human does not need to be taught, since their DNA based instincts are preprogrammed to be attuned to nature. The wolf does not need public school or divided political education to survive and maintain their status as an apex predator. This is all innate to each member; inherent in their brain's natural operating system. The integration of this self propelled internal based consciousness and nature is called paradise. Knowledge good and evil, on the other hand, is hot inherent to each of us, but rarer is learned from outside; culture, and is often subjective and unnatural, thereby breaking away from the natural world. Racism is not instinctive, but is learn behavior; outside based, based on subjective rules of good and evil. The natural man does not have this written in their DNA coding. The unnatural man often does.
In the story of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God first warns them from their outside, not to eat. While Satan, from the outside, coaxes them, to eat. This shows the divergence from natural was based on externally learned knowledge of good and evil. Before that time, Adam and Eve were free to follow their instincts and make any choice possible in paradise, since all these choices were processed internally,integated with nature, via the main frame parts of their brains. Like the wolf all was good since it was innate to them. But once outside influence enters the picture, paradise goes to crap.
The faithful in all religions try to live their lives based on ancient teachings of natural human, primarily because the ancients could better differentiate natural man from artificial man. The division today is far more extreme than when this change in humans started to occur. The mass mind is harder to escape.
The atheists only believe in knowledge taught from the outside, such as science; seeing is believing. The will memorize the consensus of temporal learned thinking, and use that as an absolute. The philosophy of science is suspicious of internal learning to where this philosophy factors this out. But the religious who have experienced their own divine inner voice, are not convinced by the external dogma of the consensus, since it often defines unnatural as natural, based on manipulated fake news external consensus.
Faith is the belief in things not seen. This means the data is not externally materialized so it is easy to see; from the outside. Faith is is based on internal intuitions, feelings and thoughts that only the individual can perceive in the quiet of their minds. This was how natural man went about life, before spoken language was developed. Language, at one time was too crude to express elaborate ideas, that could be experienced by the individual, internally. When the first computer was first thought of, it would have freaked out those who depend on external seeing is believing, since there was no precedent or box to see. Those who trusted their inner voice and who could see the computer in its essence, became the one's who led the externalists who have to see to believe. Now they can pretend they know better.
