I am MAD! Mad as hell! And I’m NOT gonna take this anymore!
Things are terribly wrong with this world.... and we (including myself) allow it to happen. Doesn't that piss you off? It pisses me off...
God is most likely in our heads
Indications for the existence of God, I’ve met plenty of people who are convinced that God exists, but clearly that’s no proof that God truly exists. In the course of centuries many evidences of divineness were made up but the decisive argument against it is that the thinking does not decide over the being. You can get a conclusion out of reasoning, whether if that conclusion exists you should take a look at reality and in reality the existence of God cannot be proven. Why is religion so obstinate? That question should be asked in reversed order: Why is it that we’re living less and less with religion? Almost every community – perhaps even all the communities in the World — always had some form of a religion, often very differently, but you can’t find a tribe of savages or they have an idea of how the transcendention works.
Only since the French Revolution people figured out that it perhaps works without a God and even that we could understand the world better if we do not explain it out of an idea of God. Gradually that continued, science is very involved in that – we unriddled all kinds of riddles that were previously explained as an act of God, that’s one of the reasons why people find the idea of God becoming less likely. Secondly is probably that after the French Revolution the concept of equality and democracy aroused while religion always has been a part of hierarchical communities, where not only God stood above the people, but the leader of the community with all his power and influence acted as an extension of God. So authority was connected with God and therefore it got a divine status, confirming the hierarchy of the community. As communities are getting less hierarchic, in western societies that clearly changed after the 60’s, is the plausibility of a God which all people are subordinated to less obvious.
For the cohesion of society it’s necessary that people have as much common belief as possible, you have to pump that into people and that’s what happened. Nearly all beliefs, whether if it’s Catholicism, reformed religions, communism, fascism or national socialism, they all taught their children from the moment they could understand something they was told indoctrinated with these beliefs. The consequences are that later on in life when the children become adults still believe in what them is taught as a child. All children in western societies are raised with
the concept of Santa Claus, and that never gets entirely erased. When you come across a Santa Claus it’s for most people impossible to say “hello sir”. In stead you have to say “hello Santa”.
That’s the indoctrination of believing in Santa Claus, people are actually content with it, one finds it always great if coming across a Santa, even still. The glory, the beam of pleasure of Christmas eve, for a moment you re-live that once again. And I think that with religious people, people who are raised churchly, it works pretty much the same way, the symbolic, the magnificence and splendor of the church, the teachings, it all maintains some form of emotional value, even for those who are disconnected from their religion, something that unbelieving people will never get to know. You only believed in Santa Claus for two years on average, so having faith in God is even stronger anchored. Santa Claus proves how little is needed to change the mind of a child, permanently.
Can that indoctrination also have damaging consequences, religion for children? That depends on what you teach them. For example it’s known that reformed religions who are teaching that mankind has only evil tendencies and no good ones, that within these reformed communities more depressions occur than within the average western population. It’s also more or less a depressing apprenticeship, so the amount of damaging within children depends on the type of teachings. Are there also other aspects with religion that can cause that? When for instance is taught that homosexuality is a mortal sin and you are born as a homosexual, you’re suffering under that religion. When you are a woman with a energetic character who wants to make it in this world but you learn that women are subordinate to men and have to take the second place, you’re suffering under that religion.
It also turned out with the emancipation of women that how many women suffered because of the place they got through religion and society within their families. Something as celibacy, what consequences could that have for a human being, the association with sexuality, the oppression of it? Sexuality has been a big central problem within many religions, that had to be leaded properly and activated in order to conceive souls, within marriage, what also was, and still is a God given institution.
People have a need for the absolute truth, there has to be an answer to everything. Since mankind is able to think it finds it very difficult to see the problems where there’s no answer for, to be felled subjected to a world with bad endings for people and powerless to do something about it. So making up a helping and supporting God is useful for that, religion has a very distinctive function for individuals. How is it possible that
people stubbornly keep on believing while it rationally conflicts with everything logical and real?
The thought that humans are rational creatures is a mistake, people are in fact animals and they live forward by feelings, their impulses and preferences. If they have to make something up along with it, they will do it then, there are theologians to explain the antithesis’s. Those theologians explain from the immovable assumption that the explanation has to come from a God. There are very few theologians who say “that’s not correct, therefore God does not exist.”, and they are no longer theologians then. Animals also have a consciousness, it’s clearly visible on every dog that it knows what’s going on in his world. Animals have principally a different kind of consciousness than a human being, the difference is naturally also intelligence, but primarily it’s a given that humans have a consciousness of their consciousness, a human has reflection, a dog does not and a dog lives – in the ideal of eastern teachings — in the here and now, even though this is with humans, with the exception of certain moments, never to be completely shut down.
People are very gullible, that shows when you take a look at what people have believed throughout the centuries, in a hundred gods or one god, a god that is sacrificing his son, that women are subordinated to men, that mankind is good, that mankind is evil, you basically can think of just about anything and people have believed it convincingly. The difference between superstition and religion is that superstition is the religion of someone else, every religious person thinks that other religions are superstitions, not a single religions concludes out of it that their religion is probably also superstition. An unbeliever sees the spectacle and wonders how it’s possible that their religion is also a superstition, at least that’s my personal opinion as an unbeliever. Religion scares a lot of people, yet people don’t renounce their selves from it.
Religious people who are afraid of God choose the path of submission, else they’d be vanished out of religion. Submission to God is also encouraged by religions, that’s the way how to deal with God, so handling the fear for God can be done by living according these rules, then you’re an honest believer again. If the religion is very strict you’ll make mistakes very quickly, then you can only pray for forgiveness, believers already have answers for it, we don’t have to worry about that, they got everything under control. One of the problems with believing in God is that in a social sense it often presents itself as being the one and only truth, and that truth is supposed to apply to all people, throughout the centuries people who couldn’t accept the truth were murdered by fire and by sword. There were religious wars, heretics were burned, unbelievers were banned out of the community, the absolute claim of truth has lead to great misery for those who didn’t quite agree.
We are our brain, so everything we do and think is controlled by our brain. The rest of our body is merely to move our brain around, to supply us with food and oxygen and to make through our sexual organs new brains. What already is determined in the womb is for instance the gender and also questions at hands – transsexuality, children who are born as a boy and knowing from the age of 5 that they were born with the wrong gender. Our sexual orientation is also determined in an early stage in the womb. I see the spirit as the product of hundred billions of brain cells we have, that are working together and are connected, every brain cell has contacts with about thousand to several hundred thousands other cells and the whole machine is functioning and provides as a product the spirit. Our brain is particularly excelled in recognizing patterns, processing images and associating information. That can go wrong. In fact, that goes wrong all the time. You make connections that shouldn’t suppose to be there, our brain just keeps on trying to make connections and those connections are often false. Children grow up with making connections and even experience magical connections by associating walking three footsteps and things that are happening in the outside world. Then they’re trying to walk three footsteps again thinking the action will repeat itself again. We are built on that.
The brain is forming during our development, our brains form under influence of information from the brain itself, information from our body like the sex hormones of the child, information from the mother, nutrients and other materials that are circulating, materials from the outside world provided through the mother, they all have influence on the developing brain and when the child is born the social environments are influencing the brain then. For example it forms the spoken language, you are born in a certain language environment and that forms the brain in such a manner that you’re speaking the local language, often even with a dialect. As for religion the same applies as the language development, that forms within a social context, the social environment where someone gets raised and basically it gets imprinted in the brain circuits. Much like a language it’s very difficult to get it out, if you’ve always learned that the world works in a manner as the religion has told you so, then principally it’s that very baggage you’ll carry for the rest of your life.
There are syndromes where epileptic activities are caused between very local electrical brain activities, that can lead to an epileptic attack. But when that happens in the area of the hippocampus then there are people who have extremely religious experiences. They see God, they
speak with God, they get messages from God and therefore we think that it’s an important marker in religious movements, the experiences
regarding religion are manifested within the hippocampus.
Of several people who were momentous figures within religious movements similar epileptically histories are known. Jeanne d’Arc was one of them who had epilepsy. It’s also described with Mohammed. And Dostoevsky described with many details about his experiences that are typically temporary epileptic, and he also says that these experiences are so fantastic and fascinating that he wouldn’t have missed it for the world, that’s how special he think it was. Also epileptics were known from the apostle Paul. It would be a great profit situation for western religions if someone in China or Japan with such epileptic activities would see Christ or Mary in front of their eyes. But that doesn’t happen. It are always experiences that are connected with the environment, culture and the upbringing that people have been going through.
People are afraid of death, they cannot imagine that it’s all over at some point. I think that a lot of people find themselves so important that they can’t imagine that when it’s over the world just keeps on spinning around without them. Also it would be nice to see the people you’re fond of. Tedious would it be to see people you don’t like as well, but you never hear about such things, the disadvantages of eternal life.
There has been spoken about how heaven or paradise should look like, to me it seems very boring to wonder around there for eternity, but if you take a look at all those different religions who are excluding each other with entering paradise or heaven you can be very assured: no one will enter. 
A social chat site
“There are very little theologians who say “that’s not correct, therefore God does not exist.”
All theologians below 3,5 ft in lenght for example? And what do the larger theologians say?
Oh little you know.
Thanks for your notice. I have changed it into few. This is what you get when English is the second language I guess. That shows when you speak of “length” in stead of “height”, for example. With “3½ ft in length” you must be referring to an extremely well endowed theologian, is it not, my fellow Dutchman?!
He he he.
“Why is it that we’re living less and less with religion?”
“The thinking does not decide over the being.”
i.e. the amount or fanatism of believers is basically irrelevant to the question weither a creator exists, just as the negative aspects/consequences of people being (raised) religious do not exclude the possibity of his existance. Too bad you didn’t reconsider this while writing the rest of your publication. Het mes snijd aan 2 kanten natuurlijk, my fellow Dutchman.
“we unriddled all kinds of riddles that were previously explained as an act of God, that’s one of the reasons why people find the idea of God becoming less likely.”
Again, “The thinking does not decide over the being.” and if you actually get to meet quantum physics scientist, he/she will probably be convinced of the existance of a creator or creators. Note, I’m not saying they will be christians or muslims or whatsoever, but mathematical studies show that it’s most likely that we’re created and/or we’re living in some kind of “simulation”. I believe the odds are more then 99% in favor of the ‘believers’. This can (for example) be derrived from the fact that subatomic matter is descrete and noanalogue. You’ll never find those people speaking about it in their profession though, but that’s just because it’s irrelevent for their line of business. Physics is about the ‘how’ and not about the ‘who’ and personal believes are not very relevant (until it’s proven that the ‘who’ directly manipulates the ‘how’). Why don’t you check it out for yourself, there are lot’s of scientific docs on youtube about this subject you might find interesting.
Cheers!
Hey Huflind, we have already discussed the matter in the café, but for our viewers here I’ll repeat more or less what I’ve said to you.
What you’re saying there may be the case, it is not entirely excludable at least as quantum physics scientists may be on to something here. Then in that case we are probably speaking of an abstract force. This is completely different from the God where followers of most forms of (mainstream) religions generally believe in. A God who “created mankind to His own image” as if we are the center of the universe. A God who receives prayers as if everyone can just fax Him. A God who apparently needs to be worshiped every Sunday, on Fridays if the culture refers to Him as Allah. A God who can either send you to heaven or hell. A God who is obviously made up by human beings and thus merely lives in people’s heads. That is the God, a sociological and psychological phenomenon, who is referred to in this article. Also, just as it is irrelevant for these quantum physics scientists to connect a who to their line of business when it comes down to this contingent abstract force, it is in much the same manner irrelevant for all people in life as we know it to connect a who to such thing. Also this knife cuts on both edges.
Cheers mate.
Ik denk inderdaad dat god zit in ons. We creeren onze eigen ervaringen en kleuren die. Ben er alleen nog niet uit hoe het zit met onszelf en anderen. Als alles samenhangt en we alles beleven vanuit eigen waarneming, hoe anders is de ander dan? of zit ik hier stik alleen?