DrZoideberg I think people are born with belief in God and culture wont let them express it for themselves. There is a perfect vehicle there already and it has writings so trippy that it is easy to fit any of a person's smaller beliefs into it and bend them to Christ. I think it is an inescapable thing in some places of the world.
They have it written very strangely and it fits EVERYTHING> sit down anybody and they will have their own little ideas about things but they can all be bent and shoved into the same vehicle that only appears to move because apparently that is all that is necessary.
It really is a shame that people can't just think for themselves but that is how things are set up. At any rate it is all the same energy and I believe it goes to the same place, which is a kind of God that should be fully understood by now but it is forbidden to think in some places. It creeps people out. Just not a good thing.
A mere interest in God is sending energy to the same well where total belief lies, so no difference in anything. I think that fact should be explored but I can't get an opinion on it no matter how I state it. There is a place in the brain that should be observed going by that notion. It wouldn't be a hard thing to figure out but I don't have any MRI machines and technicians on hand. Can't even find my ash tray. Don't hold your breath, but hey there may be a link out there with exactly what I'm saying.
This is simply not true, at least, not universally. For all I know, some people might be born believing in Gods of one kind or another, but all the evidence suggests otherwise.
If belief in God is something (a large fraction of) people are born with, then we would see people born and raised in animist and atheistic cultures (eg Native Amazonians, Buddhists) spontaneously develop theism without contact with missionaries or other cultures. But we don't see this happening - people rarely believe in Gods unless told about those Gods by others; and they never develop a mainstream religious belief to which they have not been exposed - Nobody grows up in a 100% Buddhist village, and then suddenly becomes a Muslim or a Christian without having first been approached by a Christian or a Muslim, or exposed to their texts/TV shows/Radio broadcasts/etc.
My parents (both atheists themselves) decided before I was born that they were not going to indoctrinate me into any religion or superstition. That's not to say that I was not aware of these things - At school we were required by law to participate in a daily act of Christian worship, and of course such myths as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy were endemic in society in 1970s England, and my parents made no attempt to obstruct my access to information about these things in any way - but they were always scrupulously honest with me and my siblings, and never told me that these things were real - only that some people think that they are real.
It wasn't until quite late in my life - about the age of 9 or 10 - that it really sunk in to me that some ADULTS believed any of this religion stuff. I figured that the Jesus character, like Santa, was just a pretense that adults indulged in to keep their children in line - Don't be naughty or Santa won't bring you presents; Don't be bad or you won't go to heaven.
I still find it passing strange that grown people still haven't worked out that it's all just make-believe.
My only interest in religion is to care about the negative influence it has on the society in which I must live. I think about Gods only when debating their existence in fora such as this one; And I have always been aware of them as purely fictional constructs - there are no real Gods, just as there's no real man in the moon, or Jack frost, or Santa. They exist as metaphors, and are a convenient mechanism to impart ethical behaviour to children - and to limit their questioning without having to admit ignorance (and thereby risk loss of power over them).
It is completely understandable to me how someone born and raised in a community where almost all adults really believe in a God, would come to think that belief was something people are born with; But even a fairly cursory examination of societies where God belief is not dominant - or where multiple incompatible God beliefs are common - should be sufficient to show that this cannot actually be the case.
As a teenager, and as a young adult, I was asked many times, by people of various faiths, to examine their religion - with the expectation that doing so would lead me to convert to their belief. But every time, an examination of the religion showed its core tenets to be nonsensical. In my experience, the bits of religion that are worth keeping (the best of the ethical and social rules) can be derived without reference to any Gods; and the core teachings (the information about who God is, what He wants, why He wants it, and why I should care) are an illogical mess of contradictory nonsense, that invariably is invalidated by observation of the real world, and frequently is invalidated by other parts of the same religion's teachings.
I have no recollection of ever believing in any God or Gods; Nor of ever being asked to abandon my faith (quite the reverse, I have frequently been asked - and occasionally TOLD - to take up a faith); Nor of ever deciding to give up on my faith of my own accord. I have no more abandoned belief in any God than I have departed from Beijing - I have never been to Beijing at all.
I can understand how someone who was born and raised in Beijing might have the misapprehension that everyone was born in Beijing, and that those who don't live there now must have left at some time. But clearly that would be a mistake - just as clearly as it would be a mistake to imagine that everyone - or even most people - was born believing in a God. The evidence says otherwise - unless you are restricted to examining only a very small patch of the world, where everyone you know is a native Beijinger.