Do you think personality impacts spiritual beliefs more than facts or faith?

[Jayson1]

I think it does with most people. I know it proably does with me. I consider myself Agnostic that sort of believes in a god but not to the point were I fell certain of it or that I would have faith in the idea. Basically I see reasons for there to be a God and reasons for there not to be a God and sort of just accepts the uncertanity.

I also can see how my personality sort of shapes that perspective. I can be pretty wishy washy on things because I doubt everything, including myself. I also have trust issue's which makes it hard for me to really trust in anything whether it is facts,religon or anything. I mean some facts are ovious but to me they is so much unknown it seems impossible to every really know anything for certain.

Also it seems to me a lot of religious people tend to be conservative or unimaginitve or fearful enough that they need something bigger than themselves to believe in. Aiithest sometimes feel rebellious and feel the need to be cool or have some kind of knowledge that. only they are smart enough to get and if you don't get it , that means there is something wrong with you. I also think they tend to be more imaginative and curious about things that makes them move beyond the more conservative aspects of religion.

Seem the only one real thing both have in common is the need to somehow win the argument about GOd and i'm not sure why that is. Whatever the truth is we will never find out until we die so basically people are just investing so much of their self-worth into a belief that doesn't matter because we can't change anything about the real truth. I means it is fun to speculate about but beyond that, does it matter who is right about GOd?


Jason

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Pascal's Wager?

Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).

However, Pascal didn't offer any advice on which religion one should choose. Choose the wrong one and you might well lose anyway.

I think the wiring or electrochemistry of some people's brains might predispose them to have religious beliefs. I'm not sure whether other people can be similarly predisposed to be non-believers, however.

How to wire your brain for religious ecstasy
The Neuroscience of Religious Experiences

 

[cultcross]

However, Pascal didn't offer any advice on which religion one should choose. Choose the wrong one and you might well lose anyway.

You have to put more thought into it than Pascal. You want to select a hardline turn-or-burn one in case they're right. The more progressive ones will forgive you if you're wrong. Careful study is needed for the best odds.

 

[Jayson1]

The biggest flaw I have with the belief in a God or afterlife is the asumption that God and a afterlife will be a good thing. If there is a God then that will a lifeform so beyond anything we can conceive that it's hard to trust that he/she/it will be motivated by human emotions or human logic. Also if there is a afterlife then maybe living forever isn't a good thing. Everytime you see imortality depicted in movie's or tv it always ends up being a bad thing. It's scary to think about what you would be like 500 bilion years in the future. It means you have proably changed so much your not even you, anymore. Also I don't like the idea of been altered to be able live in this new kind exsitence. Living forever in some kind of Stefford Wife type of exsitence sounds horrible. That's why even though I sort of believe in a God there is part of me that doesn't want it to be true, but the part of me who fears death desperately wants it to be true.

Jason

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Isn't Christian heaven just floating around, playing harps, praising Him, and singing Hosanna? In one deluded version of a major world religion, you get 70 virgins if you kill lots of innocent people. Seems like a twisted relationship between sin and reward going on there.

Even the following version might eventually be terrifying:

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[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Yes. 100%.

 

[thestrangequark]

Yes. There is a lot of evidence to support this too. While nothing is as simple as coming down to just brain structure, people with more activity in certain areas of the brain tend to be more or less religious/spiritual. Hyper-religiosity is even a diagnostic criteria for temporal lobe epilepsy, and patients report having "religious experiences" during seizures (notably, these experiences are culture-specific, so a Christian might have visions of Jesus and angels and a Hindu visions of Ganesh, etc. ). Stimulation of the temporal lobe (electrically or pharmacologically) can also cause religious experiences. Traumatic brain injury has been documented to change people's faith, increasing or decreasing it.
Further, suppressing brain activity in certain regions can result in experiences people might interpret as spiritual. It's pretty simple -- there is a part of your brain that lets you know where your body ends and everything else begins. If you suppress that function, you will experience transcendence or "oneness". People can do this with drugs or meditation.

There's a lot more evidence, especially when you get into brain function and perception and extrapolate from there.

That said, I don't think everyone is interested in "winning the argument". I know a lot of religious people and nonbelievers who couldn't care less about "winning". I think the case is strong for belief in the supernatural being a fundamentally brain-based phenomenon upon which societies have constructed religions, and I don't personally believe in god(s), but there's no way to scientifically rule out the existence of god because many of the arguments for god's existence are unfalsifiable hypotheses.

Oh, and Pascal's wager is stupid.

 

[psCargile]

If the laws of the universe do not forbid the existence of a deity, then one (or more) could, or will, exist. Would a deity be interested in our affairs? Hard to say.

Possible deity, I acknowledge the possibility of your existence, but don't expect me to kiss your ass.

 

[Spot261]

That said, I don't think everyone is interested in "winning the argument". I know a lot of religious people and nonbelievers who couldn't care less about "winning". I think the case is strong for belief in the supernatural being a fundamentally brain-based phenomenon upon which societies have constructed religions

I'm not sure religion or spirituality is a root cause for this "winning" mentality, especially as the most dynamic examples of the process are more likely to involve alienating or even attacking non members rather than attempting to persuade them. I'm more inclined to read our tendency towards tribalism as being at root here with religion being a particularly strong group identifier.

As you say the biological drive towards some form of spirituality is a strong one and almost as a given we see a tendency for ideas to spread within a group, this is in fact the very definition of "meme". Thus any given group tends to see an internal convergence of ideas and those ideas include those associated with the biological imperative for spirituality. Thus we get communities who identify according to a set of religious beliefs and principles quite resistant to outside influence.

Where two groups come into contact our natural fear of the outsider tends to see us closing ranks. This makes perfect sense, in evolutionary terms we are inclined to form bonds of interdependence within groups and a mistrust of others. We compete for food, for water sources, for access to territory, to breeding rights, in fact to pretty much everything that is both scarce and valuable to hunter gatherer level societies. Thus we haggle, threaten, coerce, we alienate outsiders, we label them as in some manner "less" than us, inferior, not to be valued. Inevitably then we see conflict.

Thus the conflict and the religious differences become intertwined. We fight those we identify as different, we identify that difference in part on their group's internal belief system, their religion.

Et voila, religious intolerance and why humans are essentially rubbish.

 

[psCargile]

On a serious note, I apply the theory of evolution to religion. Religions persist because they are beneficial to those groups that practice them, while not necessarily being beneficial to others of other religions or non-believers. Islam is certainly beneficial to Muslims, less so to Jews.

Also The Ten Commandments can be seen as a guide for successful societies: a single underlining ideology as a cohesive for the group, and a set of behaviors designed to enhance the group's survival.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

I think it's a combination of things that impacts your spiritual beliefs. For me, I was raised in a Christian home and was impacted by experience. And I think it made my faith stronger.

 

[Australis]

While I had little problem with the concept of god/spirituality, I loathe religion, for reasons, and the two should be kept well apart.

I think Big G, as we know him in the west, was probably just a local deity who got inflated in a "my god's bigger than your god!" battle.

Until some sky being comes down and talks to me directly, I remain sceptical. There have been disappointments, TBF, mostly man-made.

 

[Spot261]

I think it's a combination of things that impacts your spiritual beliefs. For me, I was raised in a Christian home and was impacted by experience. And I think it made my faith stronger.

Opposite for me, it was the impetus for doubt.

Seeing how many other religions deliver exactly the same subjective experience and whose adherents are willing to go to such extremes to emphasise even the slightest fundamental differences then led me to believe this is more of an ingrained behaviour and/or cognitive predisposition than any meaningful contact with an outside agency.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Opposite for me, it was the impetus for doubt.

Seeing how many other religions deliver exactly the same subjective experience and whose adherents are willing to go to such extremes to emphasise even the slightest fundamental differences then led me to believe this is more of an ingrained behaviour and/or cognitive predisposition than any meaningful contact with an outside agency.

It was a similar experience. For me it was exposure to the multitude of religions and mythologies I was exposed to growing up. My parents loved mythology and had a host of books about them, from Norse to Greek to Hindu and more. They felt no one can tell you what gods to follow, if any, and any that you follow should come from yourself. My mom thought anyone telling you who or what god was was really setting you on an empty path because it was trying to follow someone else's faith rather than your own. Which was ironic because my mother was such a staunch and devout Roman Catholic. Dad, on the other hand, was closer to a pantheist if anything at all.