CelticBear’s Musings

Normally I try not to post multiple posts too soon after each other. I fear that my two or three readers might miss the earlier post. But I just read something on a blog I just discovered and mentioned in my previous post, that deserves its own space.

Just a moment ago I submitted “Some Fresh Looks On Miracles And Emotive Reasoning,” on a couple of new blogs I started reading thanks to the Skeptic’s Circle. One being Agnostic Mom. I just read an earlier post of hers called:
“Warning” — http://www.agnosticmom.com/2006/07/09/warning/

She starts by quoting a message she received of someone using the common “scare ‘em to God” message. You WILL die, how will you be judged kind of thing. And she discusses how personal tragedy can lead people to and back to religious thinking. How crisis can make a person call on supernatural assistance. Is that reasonable? Is that telling of the existance of a Personal God, or our human frailty and fear taking over our reason?

It’s something I know I’ve debated with myself, well, almost daily. Certainly weekly. I’ve spent the first 19 (well, minus the infant years of course,) in absolute certainly of a Personal God that is always watching and listening and can be convinced with enough earnest prayer to intervene. Then even after age 19, until a couple of years ago, an additional 13 years (oh my God! I’m old!) I still half believed in a Personal God that listens. During the last 13 years I’d stopped asking for things, and simply conversed with God in my head and just gave thanks for things. After all, it’s not completely outside the Deist worldview to believe that positive thoughts and mental thanks doesn’t somehow improve the collective conciousness or, something.

But while I still hold a tenuous belief in the existance of a Deist god, I no longer believe in a Personal God. But 19+ years of very active belief is hard to shake. I still feel a part of my brain, (the God gene?) that wants to believe, and I fear that if something bad were to happen to me or my family, I’d revert back to the belief of earnest prayer. Probably not, but I might, and that really bothers me. How so deeply conditioned I’ve been, so effective my childhood conditioning, that years later I still have trouble shaking off magical thinking.

The Agnotic Mom’s article includes a quote from someone, in response to the “scare ‘em to God” tactics, that I really like, so I’ll reprint here:

Do you really believe there is a Hell…a place with fire and brimstone and eternal agony? If there is such a place, would you send one of your children there?
Do you really believe there is a devil…a being that can influence your thoughts and lead you to do evil?
Would you send your children to a totally foreign place/family after robbing their memory, and leave it solely to chance as to whether they join the right religion, and learn the right principles, and depending on whether they get the test questions right, they get to come home (heaven) or go to Hell?

Well, in case you missed them, be sure to check out my earlier post from today, “Some Fresh Looks on Miracles and Emotive Reasoning,” and while you’re at it, the one before that: “Apologetic Revisionism” which I’m pleased to report has a brief conversation in the comments.