terrytnewzealand wrote:
"After 30 pages of contributions to this thread the best evidence for God anyone has come up with is to merely point out that we are here. They consider this proves there is a God. This is not sufficient evidence to convince me. "
Why would you need convincing? Do you feel a need to beleive in something supernatural?
I think this tendancy for humans to be pulled towards religion is purely a psychological one. We, as humans, tend to seek for reasoning in any situation. Even more in situations where science can't explain the situation. Religion is the result of a lack of scientific knowledge. Ages ago, there was no knowledge of gravitational forces so people made up Gods has an hypotisis to explain how stars and other celestial bodies hold in the sky. One hypotisis spreads out from one person to others, people start holding this hypotisis as truth.
It is a know fact that unanswered questions can cause an increase in stress on the mind. The more the stress lelvel is high the more readily someone will accept any answer as the truth. Stress, anxiety and depression, which are all somewhat related, is known by psychologists to make people more vulnerable to suggestions. This is even the basis of some religion or not most relegion. Scientology is probably the best example of a relegion using this to their advantage.
The process is quite simple... bombard someone with a ton of questions that can't be answered easily putting some level of doubt in his mind. This also increases the mind stress level trying to answer these questions. With proper questioning of a subject the stress can lead to anxiety and depression. When the subject is in such a state, fill him with answers and he will gladly accept these answers as the truth.
Relativism can also be viewed as a religion. Einstein made an hypotisis, or theory if you prefer, and people hold that theory as the one and only truth. Beilieving somthing to be true doesn't make it true and infallible.
On another hand, I have personnaly had an experience that could be described as religious and I did believe at one point that it was of religious nature. But that beliefs, just like any other beliefs was not backed by any empirical knowledge. It was only later when I started reading on brain functions and psychology that I found out about drug induced religious experience and the fact that naturaly produced drugs in the brain can cause such experiences. The artificial drug DMT and also the natural drug melantonin produced by the pineal gland are known to cause halucinations closely resembling a near death experience and this is due to misfiring neurons or a power surge in the brain if you prefer.
Here is a couple interesting reads:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_religionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_glandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatoninhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine//What was, still is, and always will be
//that is the truth of the eternal now
