{"id":871,"date":"2002-10-01T15:47:32","date_gmt":"2002-10-01T23:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/10\/01\/isnt-belief-in-god-just-an-accident-of-birth\/"},"modified":"2002-10-01T15:47:32","modified_gmt":"2002-10-01T23:47:32","slug":"isnt-belief-in-god-just-an-accident-of-birth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/10\/01\/isnt-belief-in-god-just-an-accident-of-birth","title":{"rendered":"Isn\u2019t Belief In God Just An Accident of Birth?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boundless.org\/\">Bound\u00adless<\/a> there\u2019s a real\u00adly great <a href=\"http:\/\/boundless.org\/2002_2003\/regulars\/office_hours\/a0000655.html\">dia\u00adlog between a stu\u00addent and a prof on the rea\u00adson\u00adable\u00adness of the\u00adism<\/a>. The stu\u00addent is won\u00adder\u00ading if he believes just because he was raised to believe.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s an excerpt:<br>\n<i>[stu\u00addent] \u201cI was talk\u00ading with my friend Don. You know him.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n<p>[pro\u00adfes\u00adsor] \u201cSure. It\u2019s through him that I know you.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, the oth\u00ader day he asked whether I believe in God, and I did\u00adn\u2019t know what to tell him.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t know whether God is real?\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not that. I don\u2019t know whether I believe in Him.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIsn\u2019t that the same thing?\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo. See, I do believe in God. But I don\u2019t see why my belief should be true. So maybe I don\u2019t believe in Him, if you see what I mean.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe you\u2019re try\u00ading to say that your belief does\u00adn\u2019t reflect real knowl\u00adedge, so even though you believe in God, you also think maybe you should\u00adn\u2019t. Am I get\u00adting warm? <\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, that\u2019s it. See, one of my oth\u00ader pro\u00adfes\u00adsors said that the only rea\u00adson I believe in God is that I\u2019ve been brought up that way. If I\u2019d been brought up by pagans, prob\u00ada\u00adbly I\u2019d believe in lots of gods. If I\u2019d been brought up by athe\u00adists, prob\u00ada\u00adbly I would\u00adn\u2019t believe in any god. So I have this belief \u2014 but so what?\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/boundless.org\/2002_2003\/regulars\/office_hours\/a0000655.html\">rest of the dia\u00adlog<\/a> gives a very satist\u00adfy\u00ading answer to that ques\u00adtion!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over on Bound\u00adless there\u2019s a real\u00adly great dia\u00adlog between a stu\u00addent and a prof on the rea\u00adson\u00adable\u00adness of the\u00adism. The stu\u00addent is won\u00adder\u00ading if he believes just because he was raised to believe. Here\u2019s an excerpt: [stu\u00addent] \u201cI was talk\u00ading with my friend Don. You know him.\u201d [pro\u00adfes\u00adsor] \u201cSure. It\u2019s through him that I know \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/10\/01\/isnt-belief-in-god-just-an-accident-of-birth\" class=\"more-link\">Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cIsn\u2019t Belief In God Just An Acci\u00addent of Birth?\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reasonable-answers-to-honest-questions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-e3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}