{"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&nbsp;Birth?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boundless.org\/\">Boundless<\/a> there\u2019s a really great <a href=\"http:\/\/boundless.org\/2002_2003\/regulars\/office_hours\/a0000655.html\">dialog between a student and a prof on the reasonableness of theism<\/a>. The student is wondering if he believes just because he was raised to believe.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s an excerpt:<br>\n<i>[student] \u201cI was talking with my friend Don. You know&nbsp;him.\u201d&nbsp;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>[professor] \u201cSure. It\u2019s through him that I know&nbsp;you.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, the other day he asked whether I believe in God, and I didn\u2019t know what to tell&nbsp;him.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t know whether God is&nbsp;real?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not that. I don\u2019t know whether I believe in&nbsp;Him.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIsn\u2019t that the same&nbsp;thing?\u201d&nbsp;<\/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&nbsp;mean.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe you\u2019re trying to say that your belief doesn\u2019t reflect real knowledge, so even though you believe in God, you also think maybe you shouldn\u2019t. Am I getting warm?&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, that\u2019s it. See, one of my other professors said that the only reason I believe in God is that I\u2019ve been brought up that way. If I\u2019d been brought up by pagans, probably I\u2019d believe in lots of gods. If I\u2019d been brought up by atheists, probably I wouldn\u2019t believe in any god. So I have this belief  but so what?\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/boundless.org\/2002_2003\/regulars\/office_hours\/a0000655.html\">rest of the dialog<\/a> gives a very satistfying answer to that question!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over on Boundless there\u2019s a really great dialog between a student and a prof on the reasonableness of theism. The student is wondering if he believes just because he was raised to believe. Here\u2019s an excerpt: [student] \u201cI was talking with my friend Don. You know&nbsp;him.\u201d&nbsp; [professor] \u201cSure. It\u2019s through him that I know&nbsp;you.\u201d&nbsp; \u201cWell, \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/10\/01\/isnt-belief-in-god-just-an-accident-of-birth\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cIsn\u2019t Belief In God Just An Accident of&nbsp;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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"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}]}}