re theists and objectivity trajan cwis unomaha edu stephen mcintyre writes can a theist be truly objective can he be impartial when questioning the truth of his scriptures or will he assume the superstition of his parents when questioning i think that if a theist were truly objective and throws out the notion that god definitely exists and starts from scratch to prove to themselves that the scriptures are the whole truth then that person would no longer be a theist it usually all has to do with how the child is brought up from the time he is born the theist is brought up with the notion of the truth of some kind of scripture the bible the torah the qur an etc he is told of this wondrous god who wrote or inspired the scripture of the prophets talked about in the scripture of the miracles performed etc he is also told that to question this as children are apt to do is a sin a crime against god and to lose belief in the scrip ture s truth is to damn one s soul to hell thus by the time he is able to read the scripture for himself the belief in its truth is so ingrained in his mind it all seems a matter of course you re missing something here there are people who convert from non theism to theism after being brought up in a non theist household i don t have any statistics as to how many though that would be an interesting thing to know i think that religion is a crutch people are naturally afraid of the unknown and the unexplainable people don t want to believe that when they die they are dead finished that there is nothing else after that and so religion is kind of a nice fantasy religion also describes things we don t know about the universe things science has not yet described and it also gives people a feeling of security that if they just do this one thing and everything will be ok that they are being watched over by a higher power and its minions this has a very high psychological attraction for quite a few people and these people are willing to put up with a few discrepancies and holes in their belief system for what it gains them this is why i think it s kind of useless to try too hard to convert theists to atheism they are happy with their fantasy and they feel that other people will be happy with it too they can t accept the fact that there are people who would rather accept the harsh reality that they are running from anyway i m getting kind of carried away here but my point is that theism doesn t have to be ingrained into a child s mindset for that person to grow up as a theist although this happens far too often theism is designed to have its own attractions atheist libertarian pro individuality pro responsibility jr and all that jazz nanci if you know and are sure of the author of this quote please send me email nm w andrew cmu edu if you are one in a million then there are and a half of you in nyc
