It was true a couple of centuries ago even with China included. It’s true now.
There seems to be a lot that you aren’t aware of, even apart from the religious demographic of the world’s population. You really should take a few seconds to check such things before posting - and it really does take less time to check whether you are correct than it does to post such mistakes.
But you’d first have to accept that you may be wrong.
I wouldn’t want anyone to mistake your false claim as factual, or to give you more credence than you deserve.
This is a question where the answer depends on how we define ‘believes in God’.
If it means belief in one supreme God, the Creator, then all Abrahamic religions would count and really, most people do believe in God. There are almost 5 billion people that belong to this group.
In addition, there are probably more than a billion that believe in gods.
If we define God as the God of Christianity, then the Christians that believe in God do not form the global majority. There are ‘only’ about 3 billion Christians and that includes the westerners that are nominal (‘statistical’) Christians, although they are agnostics or cultural Christians, rather than believers.
Anyhow, if the reference group is the European Christians, that does not give a true picture of what Christianity is today. Christians in Africa, Asia or South America truly believe in God. Even in North America, the percentage of statistical Christians that believe in God is much higher than in Europe. Europe has degenerated to a point where we can only hope that God would send a wide revival that would wake up and save the nominal Christians.
The future ‘hot spots’ of Christianity are in Africa and possibly in Asia, also South America is likely to remain as one stronghold. A large proportion of Christians in these regions have suffered because of their faith, so they would not be Christians if they would not believe. Especially in Asia, many of the believers are not ‘official’ Christians because they belong to underground churches or want to avoid persecution.
For example, in China the number of ‘official’ Christians is somewhere between 40-50 millions but the real number of believers is likely to be 100 millions or even above that.
In India, the proportion of Christians in the official statistics is probably also lower than the true figure, which may be good because a growing percentage would provoke extremist Hindu groups and increase persecution.
But that excludes Hinduism and other faiths. You claim that they do not beleive in God, ust because their view and culture is different>
Even so, the numbers you band about are guestimates at best.and ignore peole who are not on the radar.
It would probably be fair to say that mst people have thought about God and may v=even think that there might be one, but it is only a passing thought.
Christianity plays on the minds of people who “Fear” God both in this life and the next. However, I would claim that “fearing God” is not the Christian message. You do not fear a loving God, only an all powerful and domineering one.
The message is tht God sits and waits, not that He is Hell bent on judgement and condemnation.
But that seems to have been lost n all this Original Sin malarky.
Okay. I am not very well versed on this and we may be using the word human differently (more on that later). From what I hear there were multiple “out of Africa” migrations and they go back pretty far. It seems that genetically we might all be related only to the latest one. In my limited knowledge I am not sure if this is 100% true for every person on earth nor am I certain a lot of this data will not change. I always seem to see new articles popping up questioning what scientists know about “human” evolution. I am guessing legitimate experts have a few different models and the popular ones are most likely not without problems and it’s an ever evolving story as more evidence comes along.
As narrated en toto it certainly is not and draws on older ANE myths ( e.g. story of Enkidu). The only reason to accept the one mythological anachronism ( @RichardG ) is because of Paul, subsequent Church tradition and of course you could point to empirical observations (the world looks fallen). I would not accept that “one mythological anachronism” based on the Garden story alone. I would actually just see it as a pre-scientific attempt at explaining why bad things happen when a good God runs the show and later on I would see at as an explanation for the exile.
But we may be making leaps in assuming “Every human being has been down that path.” Why? Because they all choose that path? How do we know that? We can’t know that outside revelation. Because Paul says “for all sinned”? Is he talking about Jews and Gentiles or every person who ever lived (all 50-100 billion of them or more). I made a thread here long ago asking why everyone chooses that path and gave the analogy of myself as a school teacher. If one out of a class of 20 falls then okay, no eyebrows raised. If 5 out of 20 fail the admins may have some questions. If 20/20 fail every time and every class I will soon be out of a job. Sooner or later the teacher or person in charge bares the responsibility. So you say:
Because humanity as a whole reached the point of moral maturity and made a selfish choice. It’s not hard to understand. Every single human child since the first has reached that point decided exactly as ha’issah (the woman) did.
I’m not sure how to take that. I can see a nation as being considered depraved or even a society. Take the flood story for example. It describes EVERYONE as evil. If the flood actually happened, am I really going to think EVERYONE was actually evil? No. I see this as hyperbole. But the truth is sin has repercussions for those around us. It affects our neighbors and our children. Traditional church interpretation is that humanity fell from grace based on our first parents (monogenism or polygenism). It seems more likely or at least just as plausible that God chose two humans to represent all of humanity (just as Jesus does) than saying every person who ever lived just chooses themself over God. To me that just says the entire game was rigged by God from the start. This is just a product of evolutionary development we had no control over. In the other interpretation, humanity at least had a shot to maintain that state of grace. But since humanity fell out of grace, that is why resisting sin is so hard. If anything can be salvaged from the Genesis account, it’s that humans are responsible for this state of affairs, not God, and I don’t think your view adequately accounts for that.
As long as by rational scrutiny you don’t merely limit the discussion to “what methodological naturalism says” I am fine with that. Science is a wonderful tool But it finds what it sets out to find. Natural things that can be modeled mathematically. There are plenty of other ways of arriving at truth in our world.
Of course all humans are human. But I am not using a scientific definition of human. To me, to be truly human is to have a soul. If Neanderthals had a soul, they would fit my definition of human. If they did not they wouldn’t, despite looking like us to some degree. I don’t know if all bipedal primate mammals had souls or not and the truth it, neither do you. You also don’t get to determine the only acceptable interpretation of Genesis 1-2 which you are conflating as one unit. These are two different stories by two different authors. As I said above, your view seems to have the unintended consequence of blaming God for our sin because I cannot see how it is anything other than proclivity to disobey God via evolution. 100 billion people choosing to disobey God and counting? An actual fall from grace that changes the nature of reality (whether just spiritual or not) is a better answer.
Genesis 1 tells us humans are distinct and made in God’s image. We are a special part of creation. It says nothing about whether that included Neanderthals or other groups. We have no idea and no way of figuring that out. It is solely God’s discretion and prerogatives to instill souls in his creatures when he sees fit and he has not told us when such and such happened.
It’s all speculation. We seem to agree on this.
That is a hard yes. When I said animals that looked like humans this is what I mean: If Neanderthals did not have souls they are animals to me despite looking like humans (which I roughly envision as advanced bipedal primates having souls). If it doesn’t have a soul it’s not human how I define and use the word. I’d guess you and some scientists might use the word human in a different sense and this is leading to confusion.
No one is saying the soul (part of which includes rationality) is not tied to the physical world. This is just Cartesian dualism on your part and overreaching with materialism. I’m not an atheist. Such thinking does not sway me.
I disagree with a lot here. I find the existence of God quite provable from change as Feser does so in his Five Proofs book. I think cosmological arguments, when formulated properly, are correct. Two, I feel sorry for people who get drunk off the materialist’s wine and think they can completely explain the mind and life with bottom up physics or biology. Science is a tool that finds a certain kind of truth, essentially one that can be mathematically modeled. Limiting things to science would be like saying there are no bones buried in the sand on a beach because a metal detector didn’t detect them.
I think he is defending only the view is there is no reason why the intellect could not survive the death of the body. No one is denying the brain’s role in learning. Maybe how intellect is being defined is not agreed upon so it is creating problem and I may be mixing up terms. I am certainly not a professional philosopher. Feser says:
The intellect is that power by which we are able to entertain concepts, to affirm the truth or falsity of propositions, and to assess the cogency of arguments.
In a later chapter he says and not the bold:
This is in no way an ad hoc collection of claims about the intellect, but rather the picture that one is naturally led to when taking account of all the relevant metaphysical and empirical considerations. On the one hand, metaphysical arguments demonstrate that the human intellect is incorporeal and carries on beyond the death of the body as an incomplete substance, and that as a substance it retains the rational and volitional powers that are characteristic of it. In those respects it is like the mind as the Platonic- Cartesian tradition conceives of it. On the other hand, empirical considerations reveal that we are intellectual substances of the kind whose natural condition is to be associated with a body, and which, in particular, require sensory experience and imagery for the acquisition of concepts, and a have a natural inclination to make use of imagery even after they are acquired. In those respects, the human intellect is unlike the mind as the Platonic-Cartesian tradition conceives of it.
It’s about blending metaphysics with physics (or biological science in this case). Both are adequate methods of learning truth about our world. There is no special pleading or miracles here. Science can’t explain everything and if we approach life like it could, this the only special pleading or miracles I can see being advocated for. Science of the gaps doesn’t get a free pass.
Yes, I think Richard mispoke but I also understand the force of what @RichardG meant. In my world and most places I visit online , it seems like rationalism is pushing God into a smaller and smaller box and there is a lot of anti-theism there. God seems mostly absent in day to day operations and the world. I suspect Richard is also speaking based on his experiences, not offering a survey of the whole world. And while many people profess theism do they truly believe in God? Even the demons believe, but do they truly believe? To ask if most people believe in God, they might say yeah, I think a higher power probably created the universe but that is not equivalent to “following God” or devoting oneself in service to a loving God. In my area, church attendance is way down. I would take that at least as one indicator of the direction “belief in God” is going. Instead of using it to deny the fall like Richard seems to, I would conclude the exact opposite from it.
The point of Christianity is love but fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. I would say don’t put Him to the test or take Him for granted. We don’t complete God in any way. But God came to the earth and people tortured and killed him. And what did He do?He still came back. Christianity teaches that God is with us and loves us. That to me is the great backdrop if Romans 8:31-39:
Romans 8:31 "If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself.34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”[a]) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[b] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Vinnie
Now everyone believes in God? Pick a position and stop waffling. If his numbers are just guestimate what does that make of your statement?
I think some people just like to nitpick and argue for argument’s sake. Read one another charitably and think about a verse I have tremendous difficulty following:
Eph 4:29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
I appreciate your thinking but I also note that you use words in ways that may cause unnecessary misunderstandings. Soul is one of those words.
Cats and dogs are souls if we use the word ‘soul’ in the way how Genesis 1 uses the word (nephesh). I use the word ‘soul’ in that meaning but I assume that I get the meaning of your text.
The assumption that there is something noncorporeal and invisible that remains and keeps our identity, mind and intellect after our body dies is an old belief among Christians. It may be true, or it may just be an idea that slipped from Greek philosophy to the teachings of the early church - eternal ‘spark’ or ‘soul’ trapped within a mortal and corrupted material body is a belief that comes from Greek philosophy, not from the Hebrew Bible. Pity that the translators of Septuagint decided to use the word ‘psyche’ for ‘nephesh’ as the Greek meanings of ‘psyche’ became mixed with the teachings of the Hebrew Bible. Anyhow, if this old belief about the ‘invisible me’ is correct, should we rather speak about ‘my spirit’ than ‘my soul’, if the word ‘soul’ is already reserved for another concept (nephesh)?
If we assume that there is a noncorporeal, invisible ‘me’ inside us, what makes you to assume that only humans (in the modern sense of the word) have it? Why not apes, dolphins or elephants?
I could never prove that they don’t but I will share my rough thinking on the issue that would at least make human souls different from other types of souls if they existed.
Many people feel there are huge differences between humans and the rest of the animals world in terms of intellect, language and morality. I share this view. I do not think naturalism alone can adequately explain this. I find it dubious that naturalism will ever use the mind to come up with a complete description of the mind and every aspect of humanity including truth, morality and value. Science has limits to me.
Genesis 1 considers humans distinct and special from the rest of humanity.
I think Greek philosophy has wonderful insights to offer us in regards to metaphysics. It’s not an intrusion into some pure Hebrew thought anymore than science is an intrusion to the pure Hebrew thought of the garden story. More of an expansion of ideas and thought just like the afterlife was.
I find the arguments for souls difficult at times but ultimately convincing, whether they are in the OT or not.
I think the NT does have the concept of a soul in it thought it is certainly used in different senses.
I think if animals had similar souls as humans, it would be odd for God to have people kill them in a sacrificial system or even to give them to us as food.
The history on the Church and tradition has largely accepted and taught the existence of souls.
Just to give you a different, outsider’s perspective: I don’t like the emphasis on historicity. I think it encourages unearned certainty and devalues faith and the inward relationship that might otherwise sustain you.
Nah. I’m not conflating them. I just used a dash instead of an ampersand. Both are creation accounts, and both obviously intend to reference the creation of the first humans. Since we know with certainty from population genetics that humanity didn’t start with one breeding pair, the “specially chosen couple” is a special pleading of the first order.
Metaphorically, it’s the philosophical problem of the “hiddenness of God.” If God exists, why doesn’t God make it obvious?
Would it work better if I said “alienation from the divine,” as well as alienation from one another?
The existence (or not) of a literal Adam & Eve have nothing to do with faith. If someone asserts that it is historically true, however, that assertion is open to examination by evidence and reason.
Unless God or some other entity is doing my thinking for me, yes. Thought is self-generated.
You don’t know me from Adam, to borrow the cliche.
We are God’s representatives on Earth, which means we are his ambassadors to demonstrate his goodness, justice and mercy during our short time here. That extends to all creation, not just humanity.
If you’re against that, I’m against you.
Because I prefer to believe things that are true.
God is outside of time. The universe is 13 billion years old, give or take. He appears to have all the patience it requires.
Chimps and other animals have a method of communication but lack language. Chimp vocalizations (hoots and calls) are inborn, but gestures are learned. Language requires grammar.
Self-awareness is essentially the capability to consider one’s own thinking and decisions from the position of a hypothetical outside observer. Chimps aren’t capable of this. Why?
Religion that rejects obvious reality is a cult. No thanks.
My faith can’t be scientifically proven. The existence of God can’t be proven, and neither can the resurrection of Christ. Those aren’t scientific questions. I don’t belong to a denomination or a particular Christian “tribe” anymore. If anything, I’m a Christian Existentialist. Like Kierkegaard, I would say, Don’t call me a Christian.
H. erectus was the earliest about 1 million years ago. They made it as far as Siberia and Southeast Asia and survived on Java until about 100,000 years ago. By far the longest-lived Homo species.
The farther a human population is from Africa, the less its genetic diversity. That data won’t change. Everyone alive today descends from an original African population. No evidence will come along to overturn this fact.
There are way more than one mythological anachronisms. A list:
The snake will crawl on its belly.
The woman will experience pain in childbirth, which happened when we stood on two legs and evolved large brains. Narrow hips + big heads = pain. Other mammals don’t experience such pain in birth. It’s a human thing.
He will rule over you. Patriarchy was the existing social order.
Thorns and thistles existed before sin.
Agriculture wasn’t invented until 10,000 years ago.
Acquiring enough food to survive requires constant labor.
You will die and your body return to the ground.
So the only consequence that I can see that isn’t a mythological anachronism is Gen. 3:23. The man was banished from the Garden where he/they had communion with God. God was no longer a “felt” presence. We were on our own.
We can know that because tons of research on childhood development says we’ve all been down that path to moral maturity.
I’m also a former teacher. Always good to run across a fellow educator.
There’s no reason to view the warning not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge as a test of obedience. God didn’t set us up to fail.
Not true. I follow this quite closely, so you must be reading crap put out by the Discovery Institute if you believe this. Also, why do you put “human” in quotes with evolution. Check my extensive footnotes if you want to know what “legitimate experts” think.
I’m sorry, but I can’t keep up with your blizzard of words. Enough for now.
Addendum: Here ya go, bud. It’s a peer-reviewed article. Take a look and check my “legitimate” sources. See if you can find one instance of mischaracterization, misinterpretation, or cherry-picking the data. Good luck and let me know what you find. Otherwise, you’re talking out your ass.
That is like disliking stripes on a zebra. No one is putting an emphasis on historicity. We are trying to see if we can accept a historical Adam and Eve as our scripture and church tradition teach. It’s a difficulty for many Christians and some of us are trying to resolve it in an intellectually honest fashion. You dislike when Christians take their sacred scripture seriously and examine it in light of what we know from science? Sorry to disappoint but ducks quack, dogs bark and Christians discuss the Bible.
Who is encouraging any certainty, let alone unearned certainty? What does that even mean? How do we earn certainty in your view?
Who is devaluing faith? People of faith charitably discussing theology and doctrine in a healthy fashion is devaluing faith? Taking science and empirical observations seriously and seeing what they mean for some of our Church most long held traditions and beliefs is a bad thing?
My insider perspective likes seeking truth and personally, I reject empty platitudes.
God is a God of faith, but many humans seem to need the concrete certainty of facts be they scientific or historic. . Reliance on fact or human senses .is a definate block to faith, so I am right with you here.
There are good reasons for God to be a God of faith. You can safely ignore Him. If God was sitting in the Sky like the moon He has two choices
Do nothing and be seen as benign and ignorable
Assert His power and authority
You would not like God to assert His authority.
The point is that however you put it the feeling of inaccesibility is from the human perspective. it is the traditional view of God being remote, powerful, and beyond our reach.
The Christian view is that God is in the wings waiting. he does not impose Himself, but He relates to anyone who reaches out to Him.
I would disagree. Adam and Eve are Biblical Charachters. The Bible is not a historic document, it is primarily about faith and God.
That is not what i meant. The "gift " of speech and intelligence?
IOW where it came from.
If you adhere to the fall, yes you do.
Let’s not get aggressive or confrontational/
That notion is purely Biblical and you are taking it literally.
I do not see why it should matter to you.
Ahh, the mighty science.
Sorry, but science does not dictate reality and neither is it the only source of it.
Yes that an be quite convenient.
Scienr is not obvious. Science is human perception and understanding. God does not need science and neither does faith.
That was a rant.
You have separated science from your faith. I have combined them in mine, but there reaches a point when one or the other takes precedence. My faith comes first. I am a Christian.
I do not care whether you consider yourself a Christian or not, but I do care when my faith is dictated to me by scientists who tell me what is real or not.
Rationalism is definitely growing, but I don’t see anti-theism in it so much as anti-dishonesty and anti-hypocrisy. It’s very rare to see a theist opposed simply because they are a theist; it’s far more common to see a theist opposed because they are a hypocrite, or a fraud, or a liar, or a grifter, or a sex offender.
While I also see an absence of God in day to day operations and in the world, that’s nothing new. It was the same 40 years ago, and AFAICT the same 400 years ago and 4000 years ago. The difference today isn’t in the reduction of activity by god, it’s in the reduction of power in the hands of religious authority.
If demons existed, they wouldn’t need to ‘believe’, because they’d know. It’d be like asking some-one if they believed in the postman. “oh, yes, I believe in him, I talked to him this morning”.
Which raises the usual question as to why is belief even necessary? You don’t ‘believe’ in things that are definitely real, like postmen. You only ‘believe’ in things that you’ve never seen and aren’t sure about, like bigfoot or UFOs or fairies. That you have to ‘believe’ in God is a big concession against existence.
There are many who feel that religion and politics should not meet or interact. You would seem to think that religion should assert itself? There are many Christians who feel that God does not impose so they should not either
As for hypocrisy or other imperfections: Christians are always judged by the famous few, be they good or bad. Paul may think that Christians should be perfect but God would appear not to. Perhaps non believers also expect too much from believers?
That is a much bigger question than a casual remark.
I am sorry but that puts a bit onus on empiricalism and sensory perception in terms of reality. Why must God be perceptable or provable to exist? And have you ever considered the consequences if God was provable or visible? (I have covered that elsewhere several times). Believe me, you would not want that
God is a God of faith for a very good reason. Be careful what you wish or ask for, You might get more than you bargained for.
The Second Coming might be treated as a threat, but God’s reality? I assume you are happy with the choice to ignore God? And/or disbelieve He exists?
What if that choice was no longer available? Are you ready to meet your maker? Right now?
Just think of all the common views of God or gods. The insignificance of humanity by comparison. Do you think that you could stand up to him (them)?
The reality of God is only a comfort if you align yourself with Him. For anyone else it would be frightening beyond your pathetic human invented “horrors”
Still, what do I know, eh?
Ignorance is more than bliss, it is also a haven of security
