ARGUMENT 1: All cultures are religious.
No culture has been discovered which do not believe in some deity. This is because, no matter how far man have fallen away from God, there remains, no matter how minuscule, a remnant of the image and likeness of God in the soul of every human being.
REBUTTAL:
I really find this argument funny. Religion is not synonymous with god belief. In that statement alone, the argument fails. Also, the existence of religion doesn't prove that a certain god exists. When we talk about gods and religious belief, it can be a lot of ideas - it can be many gods, or even a goddess. There are even religions which worship animals with anthropomorphic qualities as gods.
Religious belief is also a cesspool of traditions and different views. The diversity of religious belief doesn't even have a singular conclusion. Note that religious believers don’t even agree with each other, even on the most basic points. There is no consensus on what to believe: God's name, how he/she should be worship, his/her laws, his/her creation process, salvation, eschatology, what to wear in church, what food to eat and not to eat, what festivities to celebrate, etc. The argument just tells us that a lot of people believe in supernatural claims without any support of evidence - in simple words, a lot of people in this planet are considered to be gullible.
It fails to provide a good evidence of the existence of a certain god (Example, the Christian god), but it does provide a good evidence on how humans can create many gods and how some people can easily be persuade to believe it. You learn what you believe, you don't discover it. Parents teach their children their religion that they also learned from their parents. Friends, or a certain influence (it maybe from TV or radio, a fad, a certain well-known preacher, or some kind of a book or pamphlet) teaches a person to leave his/her religion and join a new one. That's why we have so many religious believers and different form of religious beliefs. Humans keep producing gods by the dozen! It's really not about "a remnant of the image and likeness of God" but more of the images and likeness of gods concocted by someone that you choose to believe.
ARGUMENT 2: Atheism is not natural. Atheism is not normal.
No one is born an atheist. You have to intentionally, deliberately force yourself to un-believe in God. You have to go against the grain of your humanity to be an atheist.
REBUTTAL: “It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are Atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds they would remain so.” - Ernestine Rose
When a Christian used this argument, what does he mean when he talks about "natural" or "normal?" Does this mean believing in a god/gods is a basic human function?
If god belief is normal as the Christian argument claim, then why does a Muslim parent need to teach his children that there is only one god and that the Christian concept of the trinity is wrong? If god belief is natural as the theist suggested then why the many interpretations? Why the relative truths when talking about religious belief? Why the religious killings and religious wars?
Humans eat. We breathe air. Whatever culture or religion you have, well...you still have to eat and breathe. Now, that's normal.
Something considered as natural compliments other natural act. Eating for example compliment that natural tendency of humans need of energy. God beliefs on the other hand, do not complement or support one another. Islam's belief doesn't support a Christian belief on the issue of Christ's divinity. Hinduism's polytheism doesn't complement Jewish monotheism.
It is normal for humans to breathe air because our living cells need oxygen. God belief in the other hand all claimed to be true and accuses one another as false. You call that normal?
According to this argument, "No one is born an atheist." Really? So, are babies born Christian? Christians are pissed when an atheist say that babies are born atheists. Yet, technically speaking no baby born into the world arrives with specific religious beliefs or knowledge. Haven't heard of the word "tabularasa?" Newborn babies are born without any belief - even religious belief, like a blank sheet of paper. By the age of 3 to 6, the frontal lobe began to developed, so does cognition - mental abilities concerning processing and storing information and all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. In this time, religious belief are acquired when parents teaches the child what religion to believe. That is the normal state of affair.
According to sociologist Phil Zuckerman if belief is "natural" then why is it that there are as many as seven hundred fifty million people (Zuckerman 2006) who don't believe in the existance of a god in the world?
Consider Britain (31%-44% atheist) compared with Ireland (4%-5% atheist), the Czech Republic (54%-61%) compared with Poland (3%-6% atheist), and South Korea (30%-52% atheist) compared with the Philippines (less than 1% atheist). It is simply unsustainable to argue that these glaring differences in rates of atheism among these nations are due to different biological, neurological or other such brain-related properties. Rather, the differences are better explained by taking into account historical, cultural, economic, political and sociological factors. (Zuckerman, Phil. "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns.")
Until next time.
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