Is God a learned concept? And, who's teaching it?

[Specially Cork]

My atheism is built on logical reasoning. I don't believe it is a coincidence that this quality is missing from both faith and ignorance.

[OneThirty8]

Nobody beleives in god when they born, jsut as nobody beleives in santa claus or rudolf the red nose reindeer without being told they exist.

Of course men will always be intrigued by life and how it works (and why) and they'll surely always develop ideas to understand or modelize how it can exist. But nothing of the story they'll build will be true. The greek invented gods, so did the perses and the indians, etc..

It's in man essence to be intrigued by misticism, jsut like almost anybody is impressed and attracted by the size of the sea, or the amazing bigger than nature landscapes all around the world. That doesn,t mean god exist. If I took a newborn children and grow him with me in a normal day life and always explain him how things works without summoning any god, he'll never ask me if there's an omniscient spirit(s) taht control and created all he sees.

In fact, I truly beleive that the existence of god is as fantastic as the existence of santa claus.

While I agree that I have as much reason to believe in God as I do Santa Claus, let me just play devil's advocate for a second. Linguists understand that the fundamental rules of all human languages are hard-wired into our brains at birth. We are not born knowing any language, but our neurological pathways give us an innate ability to figure out any human language (given immersion in that language, of course) when we are children, until a certain age (3 years or so, iirc for native-speaker fluency, although there are other rough cutoff ages for near-native fluency and such) at which point language acquisition becomes more difficult. Knowing this, I do not find it too far-fetched to think that we may also be born with a predisposition to accept an arbitrary explanation for those things which we do not yet have an explanation for. I found it really easy to believe in God when I was a kid. God was the answer for everything I didn't understand. It wasn't until I got older and I became more inquisitive that I started to find problems with the answers that the church had to such questions as, "where did God come from?"

[gamedudex2]

i read comic books, but i don't live in fear that lex luther will become president, or the joker will try to take over my city or doomsday will come to earth on a killing rampage. nor do i believe that superman will save the day and solve all of our problems, or batman is patrolling the streets at night.

i just see the bible as a book of morals for a certain time, nothing more. Its just a book of stories, like a batman or spiderman book, except jesus wasn't cool or badass looking.

[FamilyGuy]

While I agree that I have as much reason to believe in God as I do Santa Claus, let me just play devil's advocate for a second. Linguists understand that the fundamental rules of all human languages are hard-wired into our brains at birth. We are not born knowing any language, but our neurological pathways give us an innate ability to figure out any human language (given immersion in that language, of course) when we are children, until a certain age (3 years or so, iirc for native-speaker fluency, although there are other rough cutoff ages for near-native fluency and such) at which point language acquisition becomes more difficult. Knowing this, I do not find it too far-fetched to think that we may also be born with a predisposition to accept an arbitrary explanation for those things which we do not yet have an explanation for. I found it really easy to believe in God when I was a kid. God was the answer for everything I didn't understand. It wasn't until I got older and I became more inquisitive that I started to find problems with the answers that the church had to such questions as, "where did God come from?"

Yeah I understand that, my point was: You beleived, or start beleiveing in what we call "God" because someone (probably your aprents) told you it exists. Some religious fraudulous guys however are saying that the idea of god itself is in our brain at birth, that it is innate. That's ridiculous. When you're young, your brain is in "strong learning" mode, it assimilates more thing in a second than you'll learn in the Universities for a whole session (this is a metaphore, don't quote me on that). So you can learn a lot of things pretty fast, just like you pointed out for language. It'd explain why it's so easy for a kid to "assimilate" the idea of God or any other "superior" spirit, but I'm sure no kid would even think about it without being told.

Our brain likes mistiscm, and that's why we'll always find something to beleive in, Jesus/God/Aliens/Ghosts etc.. But we shall not mismatch fantasy, faith and truth.

My humble opinion btw.

FG

[lackofsense]

You could describe me as agnostic I suppose. I think that it is entirely possible that a god exists. I don't think any god could possibly put forth a moral code to live by. The universe is too vast to contain the experiences therein in a set of rules. I cannot prove that there is no god and I cannot prove that there is a god.
This leads to other questions. Has the universe always been or did it come in to being at some point? If the big bang occurred, what caused it? If something was around to cause the big bang, where did it come from? What was the universe like before said occurrence?
What will happen when we die? What will happen to the pattern of energy in our brains? Will it just dissipate or try to hold its shape? Science has told us that energy cannot be created or lost, but can only change form.

Please point out all errors in logic found therein.

[Roofus]

We are born with the knowledge of GOD. Atheism is the learned concept, given by Satan.

[Lartrak]

If the big bang occurred, what caused it? If something was around to cause the big bang, where did it come from? What was the universe like before said occurrence?

My favorite hypothesis is that as the Big Bang occurred, time came into being. So, quite simply, there isn't a "before" the Big Bang. It's the start of the line.

Some religious fraudulous guys however are saying that the idea of god itself is in our brain at birth, that it is innate.

I think their terminology is misleading. I listened to the interview, and he more-or-less states that children naturally believe in a creator God. I find that hard to believe.

On a side note, I was raised in an areligious household (I got no instruction in any direction). I didn't, from the points where I can remember it at least, ever find myself ascribing anything to God(s). Anecdotal, but hey.

[Specially Cork]

If the big bang occurred, what caused it? If something was around to cause the big bang, where did it come from? What was the universe like before said occurrence?

On that note, where would God come from? If everything needs to originate from a source, then that source must of originated from something also. If something doesn't need to originate from a source (e.g. God), then the big bang theory is just as acceptable on the same grounds.

[emptythought]

Thanks for the post; my life has been utter chaos lately and I've been needing something to read to exhaust these feelings.

[OneThirty8]

While I agree that I have as much reason to believe in God as I do Santa Claus, let me just play devil's advocate for a second. Linguists understand that the fundamental rules of all human languages are hard-wired into our brains at birth. We are not born knowing any language, but our neurological pathways give us an innate ability to figure out any human language (given immersion in that language, of course) when we are children, until a certain age (3 years or so, iirc for native-speaker fluency, although there are other rough cutoff ages for near-native fluency and such) at which point language acquisition becomes more difficult. Knowing this, I do not find it too far-fetched to think that we may also be born with a predisposition to accept an arbitrary explanation for those things which we do not yet have an explanation for. I found it really easy to believe in God when I was a kid. God was the answer for everything I didn't understand. It wasn't until I got older and I became more inquisitive that I started to find problems with the answers that the church had to such questions as, "where did God come from?"

Yeah I understand that, my point was: You beleived, or start beleiveing in what we call "God" because someone (probably your aprents) told you it exists. Some religious fraudulous guys however are saying that the idea of god itself is in our brain at birth, that it is innate. That's ridiculous. When you're young, your brain is in "strong learning" mode, it assimilates more thing in a second than you'll learn in the Universities for a whole session (this is a metaphore, don't quote me on that). So you can learn a lot of things pretty fast, just like you pointed out for language. It'd explain why it's so easy for a kid to "assimilate" the idea of God or any other "superior" spirit, but I'm sure no kid would even think about it without being told.

Our brain likes mistiscm, and that's why we'll always find something to beleive in, Jesus/God/Aliens/Ghosts etc.. But we shall not mismatch fantasy, faith and truth.

My humble opinion btw.

FG

But the thing about language is that linguists have seen very strong evidence that the rules of all human languages are wired into our brains at birth. It's not just that we're in strong learning mode--we also have the blueprints that allow us to quickly learn any human language if we are immersed in a community that speaks that language. When we learn a language during the first few years of life and use that language, the blueprints for that language take hold while those for other languages fade away. If you ever have the opportunity, take a course or two in linguistics, because it's really fascinating stuff.

The thing I was getting at was that human communities that have not interacted with one another seem to invent the same things very often. Geographically and socially isolated communities have very often invented the dragon, and the dragon is always similar regardless of where in the world you find it. Isolated communities will invent spoken languages that linguists can study and extract rules from, and these languages will always have certain features that every language has. All societies have invented religions, and these religions will usually have an explanation for the creation of the world and the people in it. It can't all be coincidence. Do I think that this means that there is a god? Certainly not--but I do think that there are certain things that are just going to happen. People are going to invent languages if there isn't one already in place. People are going to invent monsters, and these monsters will very often be similar to monsters that exist elsewhere in the world. People are going to seek an answer to the question, "where did we come from, and how did we get here," and when they don't have access to science to help find these answers they will turn to religion, inventing one if necessary. It has to be biological somehow, because it happens all over the world, and so it doesn't seem at all far-fetched to believe that kids will be likely to latch onto religion because it seems to me that it's something that people just tend to do in general.

[Wagh]

gfh