Dawkins And The Question Of Geography

LysanderShapiro said:
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Where do you get this stuff... :ROFLMAO:
 
PeaceLikeaRiver said:
Richard Dawkins is quite well-known for his comments about the kind of religion you follow being a matter of the time and place you were born. He says:

"Why aren’t you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in in America, not in India. if you had been brought up in India, you’d be a Hindu. If you’d been brought up in Denmark at the time of the vikings, you’d be believing in Wotan and Thor. if you had been brought up in classical Greece you’d be believing in Zeus. if you had been brought up in central Africa, you’d be believing in the great Juju up the mountain."

I wonder at this quote quite often. Most of us here are Christians, but is there something TO this? What if we HAD been born in Iran instead of the USA, would we be Muslims, and practice our faith with the same zeal?
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No one is born Hindu, Buddist, Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Shinto, etc.

These all have to be decided upon. Culture plays a role, but ultimately we are the final arbiters in our lives.

I CHOSE to follow The King. I was not born into it. I made the choice freely as one that had come of age. It was because it made sense to me. It was what I had believed to be true.

I could have chosen neo-pagan. There were many around. Tree huggers, ex-yippies, eclectics. But their rule of do what you will lest it harms none fell dead as a door knob when I saw they harmed themselves with drink, drugs and delusion.

Could have gone athiest. But always desiring to make theists believe that gods were a fantasy was a never ending strife. I had enough strife within my step-family. I needed no more.

Could have just been a "spiritualist". They is something out there I just can't tell what. Just send your wishes out to the universe and it will cause them to be if I believe hard enough. Universe is so old and re only came on the scene in the last ten minutes of its existence. Me singularly within the last minute of those ten. So how would it even know I'm here and what have I done to warrant it even caring?

Pure self-indulgent rubbish.

So I looked to someone that didn't care what I had done for him. Because I could not do even close to enough to repay. One that have placed his faith in me that I would come around and ask for help out of the muck. One that gave me rules easy to follow as they had already made sense before I read them in red letters. One that was faithful and had faith in me.

How could I say no to My King? He's there no matter what the world throws at me. Unlike the other faiths. Or the lack thereof.

No I chose not because it was the "ascribed" to faith in the US. I chose because he stood for what I wanted most in this world. Love, faith, hope, forthrightness and steadfastness. How could I not stand there to?
 
Leaving opinions about Dawkins aside, it really is a fair question to ask in regards to whether or not we (the general we) only subscribe to a certain belief system that we're given.

It's fair to say some do. It's true. Some really are apathetic in regards to what they believe, but that would only make them indifferent with a title. "I'm a Christian because, I don't know, I was raised that way." I've met a lot of people who say this. And then there are some who might say "I am a Christian and I love Jesus -- I was raised into it." Someone might respond, "Did you ever challenge it or look into other belief-systems?" And his answer might be no.

But even if Joe Schmoe was born into a Christian family, raised into it, and didn't get much background on other belief-systems, it doesn't automatically follow that it is wrong. If we were to turn the tables on someone like Dawkins who used this as a reason for Christianity being wrong. However, that would be a bad argument just as much. "You were raised as an Atheist and didn't take any sincere thought into finding out if God even exists, therefore, Atheism is wrong." That would be silly. It doesn't follow that Atheism is wrong because Mike the Atheist didn't do his homework.

But to suggest it's totally true, or even that it is totally false, is a blanketed statement. The truth is some do, but also, some don't. Years ago, I was prepared to claim Atheism had I not reached a sound conclusion for God. I took it seriously and wanted to get to the bottom of it. Would I become aggressive toward religion? Most likely no. I had no problem with religion and even found comfort in people who took their Christianity very seriously--namely my family. But I would have rejected my faith had I found no sound reason to believe in it.

The good news is I did find truth.
 
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