A False Sense of Security

@fmf said
Christians, Muslims and Jews are groups of people based on their religions. This does not negate the fact that they are individuals too. In the post of mine you are replying to, I am talking about religions and their followers. If you like to avoid thinking about people in terms of the groupings they wish to put themselves in, I am not sure why you are replying to my post about religious groupings and their doctrines.

@petewxyz said
To what extent are we experiencing our inevitable decisions and to what extent do we decide our decisions. How easily can we run against personality to the point of changing it through sustaining novel preferred positions?

@fmf said
What's a "novel preferred position" in the context of what we are talking about?

@petewxyz said
Pretty much any preferred self you are trying to steer your real self towards, be that by evolving your religious or spiritual philosophy or any other aspect of life.

@petewxyz said
I'm just saying that if you truly believe those are your final seconds you should allow whatever beliefs enter your head that give you comfort.

@dj2becker said
With all the experience you have as an attention seeker.

I need to get on topic, apologies FMF.

@petewxyz said
Perhaps like many things in life the beauty is in the ambiguity.

@fmf said
Why on Earth would I want to treat religious people with medicine?

@divegeester said
No, with my experience of recognising gay looking avatars used by trolls.

@petewxyz said
Yes, but perhaps as our dialogue has developed I have started to wonder whether 'experiences' would serve my purpose better than 'decides'. Of course fatalism and what we decide unconsciously and to what extent we are passengers with an illusion of personal agency is a whole other complex discussion. To what extent are we experiencing our inevitable decisions and to what ext ...[text shortened]... we run against personality to the point of changing it through sustaining novel preferred positions?

@divegeester said
I nice platitude, but just that. You were doing quite well Pete 🙂

A “false sense of security” is an interesting concept within this context of theism and atheism.

I believe in God and it certainly does give me a sense of security, and one which I am unbothered by an atheists perspective of it being false. I look at the atheist and I see at least some of them as also having, an albeit different, false sense of security in their assurance and confidence that no God or Gods exist.

For example: Many atheists are ex-theists and of these many were brought up to believe in hell and eternal torture etc. To therefore find that they do not believe in God at all (as opposed to just not accepting the God of hellfire) can offer a sense of security from those early indoctrinations.

@petewxyz said
You never know, if you keep fighting the new boy in the playground you may even end up friends 😮

@divegeester said
To be blunt (I’m always blunt), I think you would find improved progress in this discussion if you just backed away from (I.e.. acknowledged it was wrong) your earlier assertion that a “true atheist” is one who finds a belief in a God on their deathbed. I say this only because the statement is blatantly wrong.