{"id":399,"date":"2004-08-15T19:17:43","date_gmt":"2004-08-16T02:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=399"},"modified":"2004-08-15T19:17:43","modified_gmt":"2004-08-16T02:17:43","slug":"three-questions-for-the-conventionally-religious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2004\/08\/three-questions-for-the-conventionally-religious\/","title":{"rendered":"Three questions for the conventionally religious"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am an atheist, though this does not mean that I am not interested in the idea of God (I am not an apatheist<\/a>). Opportunities for debate, however, are lacking, as I lead an improbably shielded existence — improbable, because while for the overwhelming majority of the world’s population the idea of God is the foundation of their world view, almost all my friends are either atheist, agnostic or apatheistic, rather than conventionally religiousBy “conventionally religious” I mean those who see themselves as belonging to a particular religious denomination, such as Protestantism, Catholicism, Reform Judaism, Sunni or Shia Islam, and who subscribe to its dogma.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Recently, I’ve noticed from comments left on my blog that there are likely more conventionally religious people among readers than I can find among friends, so I’m going to take the opportunity to pose three questions concerning religious belief that I’ve pondered. They’re asked in good faith, as it were, and they’re there for the purpose of stimulating debate, if you’re so inclinedUnrelated side note:<\/strong> I’m on the lookout for a new apartment to rent starting September 1. If you know of something in Stockholm, up to 6,000 kr\/month and with bredband, email me<\/a>. It needn’t be large, though it should be furnished, as I live like I travel: light. Anything longer than three months will do.<\/s>
Kungsholmen, here I come!<\/span>.<\/p>\n

1. Is it possible for an atheist to be a good person? Is a belief in God a prerequisite for goodness, or for the rewards of goodness? Are equivalent good acts more or less good depending on the beliefs of the doer? Should good people be denied (some or all) rewards in the afterlife if they don’t also first make a correct decision regarding their religious belief? If not, does it remain important to belong to the correct denomination, or even to believe in God tout court<\/em>?<\/p>\n

2. Those born in Ireland do not, in the main, grow up Shia. Those born in Iran do not grow up Catholic. It seems evident to me that for almost all conventionally religious people, the denomination of their religion is not a matter of choice but the product of environmental factors. If one’s religious belief is an accident of birth, what are the implications for those who, through no fault of their own, subscribe to the wrong denomination? What about those who belong to the correct denomination, though not by choice but accidentally, by birth?<\/p>\n

3. If you are Jewish, Christian or Muslim, you accept some religious texts in the Islamo-Judeo-Christian canon as being divinely inspired, but not others, just as you accept some of the historical accounts of miracles or divine acts as being literally true, but not others. How do you justify the varying levels of skepticism you hold towards the claims of respective religions? For example, Jews, Christians and atheists are all skeptical of claims that the Koran is the word of God, though Christians abandon such skepticism when it comes to similar claims about the New Testament, while Jews abandon it when it comes to the Old Testament. To an atheist, this seems inconsistent — shouldn’t you be equally skeptical towards all such religious claims, or else equally accepting (and become a Mormon)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am an atheist, though this does not mean that I am not interested in the idea of God (I am not an apatheist). Opportunities for debate, however, are lacking, as I lead an improbably shielded existence — improbable, because … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"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,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-6r","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}