How Did You Decide Your Religion?

Muffled said:

If you mix a Pomeranian with a Daschound would lyou get a Pomerdasch? That may very well be an evolved dog.

I believe there is no present day evidence of evolution in the sense of one species becoming another but that is the problem isn't it. If one could really figure out what happened over millions of years that would help but we don't have that perspective only God does.

However the world does change. It was one thing and now it is another. Bohemia is now the Czech Republic. Silesia is now Slovakia.

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Muffled, you are not even criticizing Evolutionism, but rather a fantasy caricature, a straw man.

Muffled said:

This seems like a convoluted way of saying it but I believe you ae saying that there is objective evidence that religion exists. That was basicly the idea that I was trying to convey.

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...of course religion exists. We follow certain ones.

However, I was not saying that there's objective evidence that Gods or anything else supernatural exists. There isn't. The only evidence we have is experiential, which is subjective, and thus has no place in the scientific consensus. I was saying exactly what I said: religion can very much involve things that are known to exist.

The only way I can describe it is that it felt right to me.

For me it wasn't about finding religion, it was more like the religions I've observed lost me. The incredible amount of hypocrisy and background hate that Thayer I've noticed turned me off so I ended up being an atheist.
The simple process of elimination brought me to seeing science and scientific method the most reliable source of gathering truthful, accurate information.

Al of Bundy said:

For me it wasn't about finding religion, it was more like the religions I've observed lost me. The incredible amount of hypocrisy and background hate that Thayer I've noticed turned me off so I ended up being an atheist.
The simple process of elimination brought me to seeing science and scientific method the most reliable source of gathering truthful, accurate information.

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I follow a religion and still believe that about science.

The trick is to not conflict the two. Science can deal in facts and figures, while religion can be more about the way one relates to the world.

Growing up hearing about Jesus, I always liked what he stood for.

LuisDantas said:

Muffled, you are not even criticizing Evolutionism, but rather a fantasy caricature, a straw man.

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Well, I believe if evolution does not say that one species evolves into another that would be news to me.

Riverwolf said:

...of course religion exists. We follow certain ones.

However, I was not saying that there's objective evidence that Gods or anything else supernatural exists. There isn't. The only evidence we have is experiential, which is subjective, and thus has no place in the scientific consensus. I was saying exactly what I said: religion can very much involve things that are known to exist.

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I believe science is performed by people and therefore subjective ie I haven't performed those experiments so I have to look at the experiments objectively.

I beleive for instance I have never split an atom so I have to take soemone's word for it that an atom splits. Objectivesly it makes sense to me that an atom made of different components may be held together by a force and that a force can separate those components.

When it comes to a spirit I am alraedy subjective so I am not sure it would be easy for me to be objective but I will try. If I theorize that a spirit exists then that explains why there is a voice in my head that is not my own yet is a part of me. It also makes it more rational to believe that the spirit can separate from the body and return to it as in the Resurrection of Jesus and it makes sense that a spirit can return in a new life as in re-incarnation.

Thirza Fallen said:

Growing up hearing about Jesus, I always liked what he stood for.

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I believe, surely, but you could have been Jewish and done just as well. Christianity allows one to put those things into action.

Muffled said:

I believe science is performed by people and therefore subjective ie I haven't performed those experiments so I have to look at the experiments objectively.

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You can't. No single human being can look at anything objectively. The peer-review process is designed to reduce that human subjectivity to absolute minimal levels, and there's still always the understanding that, no matter how often a single theory is supported by independent studies and experiments, there is always a chance that in the future, new studies and experiments will end up demonstrating that the theory was wrong all along.

That is to say, you could read a scientific report on an experiment, attempt to replicate the experiment yourself, and submit your own report: that's the peer-review process at work. Anyone can do it.

When it comes to a spirit I am alraedy subjective so I am not sure it would be easy for me to be objective but I will try. If I theorize that a spirit exists then that explains why there is a voice in my head that is not my own yet is a part of me. It also makes it more rational to believe that the spirit can separate from the body and return to it as in the Resurrection of Jesus and it makes sense that a spirit can return in a new life as in re-incarnation.

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This is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, you're not theorizing anything; your making a hypothesis. That's the second point of the scientific method (the first point is asking a question). You're not adequately exploring any other possible sources for this voice in your head, in order to see whether that hypothesis is the correct reason, or if there's something else going on. Human memory is capable of recalling audio, and so these "voices" could be part of that: memories of conceptions being worded creatively by your subconscious self, in a voice that you heard before but can't remember the source of.