"Semantics" are how we understand the world.

I agree, it's just not the point I was making.

Ciarin wrote:I agree, it's just not the point I was making.

Then I offer you a "?" you may use as you see fit.

A far more useful question is - "why are you not any atheist".

Now there's a real tough one.

Agrippina, your questions were lost in the middle of the other, parallel discussion.

Agrippina wrote:Those of you who didn't grow up without religion but who lived in a religious environment as children, how did you make up your mind that what you were hearing was lies? ... it simply didn't make sense to me.

It was very similar for me and much more gradual than for many others here. The procession for me, was something like this:
- It all sounds too dogmatic. I'm not convinced.
- The Old Testament makes no sense and completely contradicts the New Testament. Ignore it.
- Jesus was an exceptional man. No more, no less. Filter out the crap from the gospels and figure out what he said. Try to make sense of the whole soul-judgment thing-divine plan thing.
- If a God exists, he's nothing like what I was tought. Reduce the definition to something similar to a human scientist with the ability to create a universe.
- Jesus was either heavily misinterpreted, or simply said the things people wanted to hear, just to get across how important it is to respect and love one another. Keep the love idea and ignore everything else.
- Religion provides easy answers. Most people need it, so it makes sense that they would have to invent a God. I don't need any of this to be happy and decent.

Of course there was a lot more to it and science did play its role, but it was mostly that it didn't make sense to me either.

Agrippina wrote:
... sometimes you just 'know' that something is right or wrong.
... They said "it was a miracle" so is it not possible that there are other aspects of our world view that we can just 'know' are right or wrong? ... for everything that we accept as 'truth' why does there always have to be 'evidence.'
... But I was right wasn't I?

Well, you put the word 'know' in quotes for a good reason. You 'strongly believe' is more accurate. The trick is that you can never claim it is a 'fact' that X is right or wrong. Everything you've seen may say it is, but you can not possibly hope to prove it. Even science does not claim to be the holder of 'the truth', but its method at least guarantees that it will approach it as much as is humanly possible. Saying that you know (=it is a fact) something is wrong usually means that you will never question it, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. If you are not closed minded, then you have to accept that at some time in the future, what you 'know' will change along with you and you will 'know' something different.

Agrippina wrote:
So maybe I'm right about other things that just make sense to me as well, and maybe there are millions of other people who just "know" that something is wrong or right and who aren't hurting anyone by simply having personal "knowledge."
... does it really hurt if people just "believe" that they will go to heaven when they die? If they're not sending people to blow themselves up, or not blowing up abortion clinics, etc, if they just believe in it and feel better for believing it, what harm is there?

Anyone is free to believe in anything they like. It's when they believe they know the facts that problems begin. If religious belief was open to constant revision, if logical discourse determined which tenets were obsolete, it would no longer be religion. It would be philosophy. Philosophers may disagree with each other, but when one criticizes another's position, the other must defend it logically, or be forced to amend it.

It's this lack of constant revision that no reasonable person can accept. Dogma provides simple answers for simple people. One could argue that the benefits of religious morality historically outweigh the damage done from the bigotry, wars, sexism etc. that religions promoted and one could even be correct (you really can't prove either position). But my view is that the damage done from centuries of purposeful stifling of critical thinking is far greater than any benefit, since critical thought would have provided at least the same benefits. Just read this thread to see how the 'amoral' atheists have actually reasoned our way into very admirable moral positions.