Why do so many people believe in God? (Serious Question?)

I have seen the exact opposite work so many times in various recovery groups that I remain amazed with how it all works. And I'm talking about black out drunks that have no capacity to stop drinking or using at all, and having their craving arrested entirely.

An amazing part of this is that if "God" is not working for them, they are instructed to "design" a God that will work, and to go with that. For many, their "God" is the group itself. Either way, the results are incontrovertible providing a person nurtures a belief in something bigger than their conditioned/evolved brain.

The amazing thing is that it is not, IMO, the belief that creates the results, which is standard materialist thinking. rather, the belief facilitates the results. And for non believers, the results are equally effective so long as their actions are in line with what a "higher power" is being called to do. A great example of this is rrrAdam, who while a non-believer, has pulled countless soon-to-be terminal users right off the brink, and still does every single day. The guy's a saint, I'm sure.

Here, in this Judeo Christian culture, we see the standard creator God, as described in the Saint James Bible, is often the only one considered relevant. Anything outside of that box is "ga ga mysticism."

What's more - and this is key - once a negative judgement is decided in a person's mind per "God," that judgement is as fixed as a knifeblade with a sledge hammer, and you will never see any tangible effort to uproot or challenge the fixed negative save the mental patterning that contrived the negative in the first instance. Such people do not actually have a "position," rather the fixated decision owns them. They cannot budge away from it - and here you look at the behavior, not the justifications and rationalizations for staying stuck.

As I've said, this is more of a psychological condition than a spiritual matter, having to do with the mind's inability to work with paradox. The first step to any spiritual path is giving up the idea that you are going to think your way to knowledge. It's really a matter of what you do.

the KKK was the terrorist wing of the Democratic party in the reconstruction south. The bylaws exclude Blacks, Jews and Republicans.


Are you going to tar all Democrats with the same brush?

A bit of a flaw in the logic there.

You better do a bit more research on some of your other statistics as well.

The Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan: Formed in 1985 by Virgil Griffin and based in Mount Holly, North Carolina. The Christian Knights are active in North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. A suspect in two June 1995 arsons of predominately Black South Carolina churches-part of an apparent epidemic of church arsons occurring throughout the country since January 1995-carried a card identifying him as a member of the Christian Knights.

Christian terrorism is religious terrorism by groups or individuals, the motivation for which is typically rooted in an idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible and other Christian tenets of faith. Christian terrorists draw upon Christian scripture and theology to justify violent political activities.[1]
. . .

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, white supremacist Ku Klux Klan members in the Southern United States engaged in arson, beatings, cross burning, destruction of property, lynching, murder, rape, tar-and-feathering, and whipping against African Americans, Jews, Catholics and other social or ethnic minorities.[36]

"What a joke... nobody's convincing anybody..."

I don't think everyone on this thread is out to "convince" others or to "make" others believe as they do.

Residual effects of the decision to separate from other Baptists in defense of white supremacy and the institution of slavery have been long lived. A survey by SBC's Home Mission Board in 1968 showed that only eleven percent of Southern Baptist churches would admit Americans of African descent.[17] African Americans gathered to develop their own churches early on, including some before the American Revolution, to practice their distinct form of American Christianity away from attempts by whites at control. Within the Baptist denomination, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans established separate associations.

During the conservative resurgence, the Southern Baptist Convention of 1995 voted to adopt a resolution renouncing its racist roots and apologizing for its past defense of slavery.[18][19] The resolution repenting racism marked the denomination's first formal acknowledgment that racism played a role in its early history. By the early 21st century there were increasing numbers of ethnically diverse congregations within the convention. In 2008, almost 20 percent were estimated to be majority African-American, Asian or Hispanic and there were an estimated one million African-American members.[20]

Yes, TL7, I did mean St. Matthew, as according to tradition, he is the earliest of the Gospel writers.