Were the majority of atheists once religious?

[Zetesis Apistia]

I raised this question in another thread. It is my contention that a bad religious experience and not a lack of evidence is the basic cause for atheism. I also believe that the majority of atheists came from either a catholic or a protestant background. What I would like to do is add a poll to the thread so we can get an accurate count. If you desire to add anything with your vote feel free to have at it.

[help3434]

[Replying to post 316 by Zetesis Apistia]

What do you mean by horizontal service?

[Zetesis Apistia]

Religion is a vertical service that seeks to please God. Islam is a horizontal service. That is the difference in a nutshell.

Your words are interchangeable with any faith. See my above emboldened portion.

No islam is not a horizontal service. Muslims are bent on pleasing Allah. Allah is vertical. They place little value on human life.

Really? It is way more devoted to Allah on the horizontal plain. You don't wanna please God or Jesus? They place huge value on human life. If a woman messes around, they stone her like the bible says. This is in order to keep human life pure for Allah. If anything, Islam is the ultimate Christianity. You guys don't even know the meaning of true worship. Did you know that they keep women inside the regulations of Pauls regulations.

Christianity is not about serving God it is about serving people. By serving people we honor God's command to serve people....

Matt 20: 28 even as the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Joh 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
Joh 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Joh 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
Joh 15:17 These things I command you, that ye love one another.
Ro 13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

You see, religious people jump through hoops hoping to please God. That is the great error of religion. Christ jumped through a hoop to please God for me so i wouldn't have to. I serve people not God. In doing so God is pleased...

Romans 4; 4 But to him working, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt.
5 But to him not working, but believing on Him justifying the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

[help3434]

[Replying to post 321 by Zetesis Apistia]

According to the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment Jesus said that loving God with all your heart was the first and greatest commandment. Loving your neighbor was only the second.

[10CC]

[Replying to post 321 by Zetesis Apistia]

According to the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment Jesus said that loving God with all your heart was the first and greatest commandment. Loving your neighbor was only the second.

Yeah what's with that?
Every ounce of love you have belongs to god, what are you supposed to use to love your neighbour?

[bernee51]

The vertical approach is that god is somewhere out therea goal to be achieved. The horizontal realizes that god is in here. Communion cannot be achieved, only realized.

This leads to an understanding of your god is not pleased comment. Many (if not all) non-theists would ask how a perfect transcendent being could be either pleased or not pleasedsuch human emotions.

In the end you realized that the vertical approach was not fulfilling. Fulfilment, god being pleased, can only come about with an understanding of the nature of beingit can only come from communion with the divine which is part of our very nature. It is then that the joy arises.

There are a number of things that factor in that keep people from experiencing God.

IMHO the major factor is that the concept does not reflect an extant reality other than as an experience.

The main problem is, the impulses of human nature are very deceptive.

The greatest deception being that of self as an individual entity. i.e The hallucination that we are a spate ego enclosed in a bag of skin " as Alan watts put it.

I am writing a book and the name will be metamorphosis.

Kafka took that title in 1915. A wonderful book.

In my book, metamorphosis is a sequence of doors that one must pass through in order to arrive at ones desired utopia. The sequence of opening the doors cannot be altered and none can be left unopened or else metamorphosis cannot happen. The reason religious people never reach their utopia is because of the deception of human nature as it creates mental obstacles and then it sends wrong impulses on how to remedy them.

The doors and what is behind them are part of the hallucination referred to above.

There are fundamental psychological voids that keep us from realizing a sense of completeness as human beings. Each of us instinctively attempt to fill those voids daily. I think we talked about this before. But voids such as happiness, love and or acceptance, purpose, validation, and so on. these are all things we are born without and they are things that all of us try to satisfy. What I found on my personal journey was how and why i had tried for years to fill these voids and why my attempts were all in vain.

1. A void, by definition, can never be filled.
2. Seeking to fill it from out there is always going to end in failure. All out there is impermanent.

There is an answer to this conundrum.

Why do people never find true happiness when they invest all of their energy on trying to be happy? Why do people remain self conscious even though they are well liked? Why are people self condemning when they try their best to be "good"? These are questions I found answers to through my own metamorphosis.

The answer lies in the word self

I said all of that to say this. Most people think their problem is vertical so they neglect the horizontal. Within that statement lies the problem of the whole human race.

On this we agree.

You call the horizontal experience of god.

I call it something else all-together. And regard the god concept as an attempt to fill the void.

The question must be askedwhy do Christians proselytize at all?

Some out of a sense of duty. Some out of concern. Some for self glorification. Some for monetary gain. And so on.

An attempt to bring meaning and legitimacy to lifei.e. to fill the void

I take much of my guidance from this man.a battle hardened soldier.

There is a video which is very worthwhile

Exactly. But most atheists form their conclusion via intellectual knowledge which is inconclusive because Christianity must be confirmed through intimate knowledge.

Religion, by definition, means relinking. But relinking to what?

In order to relink there is a requirement for experience of that to which the relinking is to occur. Christianity holds that relinking can only occur through Jesus " John 14:6. Already there is an attempt to put boundaries around the boundless.

I see truth as being a pathless land. It is not a destination to be reached but a journey to be travelled. Discovery happens along the way.

I suppose since we can never reach a point of omniscience there will always be room to learn more. Hence you are correct that it is not a destination because it is a destination that can never be attained. So we gather things along the way.

Jiddu Krishnamurti wrote a book, available on-line, Freedom from the Known, which has been part of my gatheringand letting go.

Sort of like a reverse of the questions you asked in the OP?

But the darkness you seem to be describing is not what I meant. One doesnt lose ones taste for it. It must be embraced and through that embracing a transformation takes place.

I lost my taste for the darkness which caused me to ponder the light. My journey had brought me to a crossroad. One I knew was a path to destruction and the other appeared to offer some hope. I chose the latter at a time of desperation in my life. It was by choosing the particular fork in the road that I stumbled across the answers I was looking for.

If you come to a fork in the roadtake it.

Again I dont think you quite understand the darkness to which I refer, or perhaps I do not understand you. It is not a secular darkness, not a darkness of action.

As I have stated previouslyI see three sources of knowledge: scripture (the oral and written testimony of the spiritual experiences of others), logic and personal experience. Of these the last is the most important.

In fact the former is confirmed through the latter. I say that the experience of a born again experience confirms the existence of God. You cannot reflect on the experience so you deny it by referencing your intellect. Tell me how you are qualified to deny my claim when you lack the experiential knowledge that is required to confirm it.

I dont agree that the former is confirmed by the latter. I would suggest that scripture can set up certain expectations and, should those expectations meet the needs of the individual the experience can arise to confirm. IOW a self-fulfilling experience.

I hold that there is no self to be fulfilled.

That said, I dont deny your claim, nor would I try to.

I am merely stating, in the words of an old Hindu saying There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading in the same direction, so it doesnt matter which path you take. The only one wasting time is the one who runs around and around the mountain, telling everyone else that their path is wrong."

[Zetesis Apistia]

[Replying to post 321 by Zetesis Apistia]

According to the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment Jesus said that loving God with all your heart was the first and greatest commandment. Loving your neighbor was only the second.

Jesus is the lord our God and love requires volition not emotion. We love the lord by promoting his cause, which requires action. That action is horizontal not vertical. The Father is vertical. Jesus pleased him for me. All vertical attempts to "please" God are religious acts. Love is a horizontal act.

[Zetesis Apistia]

[Replying to post 321 by Zetesis Apistia]

According to the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment Jesus said that loving God with all your heart was the first and greatest commandment. Loving your neighbor was only the second.

Yeah what's with that?
Every ounce of love you have belongs to god, what are you supposed to use to love your neighbour?

Well apart from the love of God you cant love your neighbor. Not really.

[Zetesis Apistia]

The greatest deception being that of self as an individual entity. i.e The hallucination that we are a spate ego enclosed in a bag of skin " as Alan watts put it.

I would agree that we are all made up of the same "God matter" with just a rearrangement of the atoms. But it appears that through consciousness God has granted us our own personal identity. We can confirm that through our own isolated consciousness. Isolated consciousness makes me my own entity.

1. A void, by definition, can never be filled.
2. Seeking to fill it from out there is always going to end in failure. All out there is impermanent.

There is an answer to this conundrum.

I agree that it cannot be filled through personal efforts apart from God. I believe that is what brings people to a state of hopelessness. Attempts to fill a void that never gets filled eventually discourages. Suppose God purposely created a void that only he could fill. In fact that is how we confirm our intellect of God. You say voids cannot be filled because by experience you cannot fill them. But the fact that you attempt to fill them apart from God causes you to conclude that they cannot be filled. Through my personal metamorphosis i was able to fill those voids one by one through God. That is how I confirmed God.

The answer lies in the word self

We are "self" ish by nature. The reason we never fill the voids is because self is an obstacle that hinders our filling it. When we can remove self then we will have found the key to our own utopia.

An attempt to bring meaning and legitimacy to lifei.e. to fill the void

All of us look for purpose, for happiness, for acceptance, etc. Apparently there is a sense of incompleteness when these needs are not satisfied or else why do we bother to search for them? We have voids that need to be filled. We know that from experience. You say they cannot be filled. I say that I know they can. Before my Christian conversion I would have agreed with you though.

Religion, by definition, means relinking. But relinking to what?

Why do people by nature feel the need to "relink" Is it because we have a sense of incompleteness because we are not linked? I suggest this to be the case.

In order to relink there is a requirement for experience of that to which the relinking is to occur. Christianity holds that relinking can only occur through Jesus " John 14:6. Already there is an attempt to put boundaries around the boundless.

Two opposing views cannot be true at the same time. Blaspheming Muhammad by embracing Jesus means they cannot both be paths. It has to be one or the other. We eliminate paths simply because two contradicting paths cannot possibly be true at the same time.

Again I dont think you quite understand the darkness to which I refer, or perhaps I do not understand you. It is not a secular darkness, not a darkness of action.

Darkness of the soul is what I am referring to. Is there another kind?

[Nickman]

Christianity is not about serving God it is about serving people. By serving people we honor God's command to serve people....

Matt 20: 28 even as the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Joh 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
Joh 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Joh 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
Joh 15:17 These things I command you, that ye love one another.
Ro 13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

You see, religious people jump through hoops hoping to please God. That is the great error of religion. Christ jumped through a hoop to please God for me so i wouldn't have to. I serve people not God. In doing so God is pleased...

Romans 4; 4 But to him working, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt.
5 But to him not working, but believing on Him justifying the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

You don't think that this concept is found in other religions?
The Golden Rule is found in almost every religion. Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Babylonion , and religions, Jainism, Scientology, Mohism, and Wiccan. Almost all religions are based on the same concept of loving your neighbor. This pleases the Gods of each of these religions.

[Zetesis Apistia]

Christianity is not about serving God it is about serving people. By serving people we honor God's command to serve people....

Matt 20: 28 even as the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Joh 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
Joh 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Joh 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
Joh 15:17 These things I command you, that ye love one another.
Ro 13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

You see, religious people jump through hoops hoping to please God. That is the great error of religion. Christ jumped through a hoop to please God for me so i wouldn't have to. I serve people not God. In doing so God is pleased...

Romans 4; 4 But to him working, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt.
5 But to him not working, but believing on Him justifying the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

You don't think that this concept is found in other religions?
The Golden Rule is found in almost every religion. Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Babylonion , and religions, Jainism, Scientology, Mohism, and Wiccan. Almost all religions are based on the same concept of loving your neighbor. This pleases the Gods of each of these religions.

I am talking about motivation for service, not necessarily the service. What is the ultimate preference that is motivating the service? What we do has no virtue until we examine why we do it.