I have noticed that there is a lot of angst directed towards believers and non believers so I thought I would make a thread explaining how it all works from my own perspective. The reality is that neither believers nor unbelievers are right or wrong, they simply are, if that makes sense. To better understand the perspective ideologies I have constructed a map so to speak of how it all works.
The fact is that we are ALL products of our environment, we CANNOT escape this at first, but we can eventually, but first we have to ACCEPT that we were first a product of our environment. Only after this acceptance process can you start to make choices on your own as opposed to having your life decisions and ideologies chosen by some mysterious external force of nature.
A good example would be a Jehovah's Witness child. This child will grow up believing things that are extremely far fetched and not easy to explain to other people. Instead of straining their brain on confusing doctrine they will simply accept what they are told. Eventually the child will develop a sense of identity apart from what they have been taught, however, and this is when they will have to make a decision that will alter the entire course of their life. The Watchtower understands that their members will eventually come to a crossroad in their life and they hope that they will have done "enough" to control that decision and keep their subject within their environment. That crossroad is unbelief.
At this point of realizing one's own identity the JW child will develop incentive to remove beliefs from their psyche that they discover were never theirs to start with. The best course of action upon approaching this life crossroad is to completely clean one's slate. However, this is not the way most JW children do it. Most of them only clean their slate partially because of emotional attachment to certain sets of doctrine. This is why the Watchtower doctrine plays so heavy on everlasting life on a paradise earth because home is where the heart is. They are hoping that the child will make the choice to remain emotionally invested when such is the worst thing to do at the crossroad of personal identification. The best thing for the child to do is to clean their mental slate completely even of ideas they are emotionally attached to. This will make them an unbeliever which serves as a perfect foundation for creating one's own identity.
Unbelief is the first step to true belief. If one never makes this venture then one's belief is not founded on anything substiantial. Unbelief provides the energy to fill the void that it naturally creates, it opens up the world where it otherwise was not available. This is an empowering process and sets the stage for the rest of the choices that follow it. Some set up camp within this neutral mental state because it's so powerful and provides the energy for one to absorb knowledge like a spunge because their preconceived ideas have been cast aside. This is where atheism comes from. Some generally decide to mold their identify from unbelief which comes with a wide range of flavors and progress for mankind in general. However there is a next step that requires yet another mental hurdle and that is what I call Deism.
Deism, like unbelief, is an acceptance process. Albert Einstein discovered many truths about the universe through his scientific mind, but he didn't call life bad, he called life beautiful, another word that could be used is "good." Unbelief directs you to this crossroad where you have yet another choice. The choice is how to approach life as a whole, do you consider it good or bad? If you consider it good you are embarking upon a spiritual journey and you are leaving the position of unbelief. Many take a neutral stance on the good and bad of life and this will keep them within the realm of unbelief or indifference to life in general. The people who take a stance that life is inherently good are implying that there is some sort of directed purpose to life and therefore they become generalized deists.
The beautiful thing about deists is that they don't give up on their unbelief, they just have developed a new perspective on it. They see it as a tool now instead of the foundation that it once was. They see purpose in the world and not only seek to understand that purpose, but also create connections with others who have also accepted that life has some form of purpose or direction. Many set up camp in this stage because they are able to see the immense value in such a stance as it is the best of both worlds of unbelief and belief. However, there is yet another crossroad that deism will bring you to and that's when one asks the question, "Do I have a specific purpose?" Because before they were accepting of a purpose in general, but that leads to the question of what the purpose of specific individuals are. This is what theistic frameworks attempt to answer.
Going from deism to theism is an arduous and dangerous venture. Unbelief and deism in comparison are friendly and non confrontational ideologies. Theism on the other hand is the assertion that the purpose of existence directly applies to the individual instead of the whole of humanity and beyond. This directly threatens anyone who decided to set up camp in the stages of unbelief and deism. To those people the one's moving forward are selfish because they see that all is answered in the first two stages and that the third stage is a delusion making it counterproductive. That's why the debate between these two ideologies is so fierce.
Often times people will make the jump to theism because of a personal experience which is subject to confirmation bias. This is a dangerous crossroad and it can fling you back into the chaotic ways of before you cleaned your slate in the first place. You can end up back where you started which means that you will be inching toward unbelief yet again which can feel like you are going in circles. That's why upon embarking on a theistic journey you must accept the fact that you are probably going to have to clean the slate once again when new information comes to the table. It's also important to keep in mind that the vast majority of theistic frameworks are based in emotional attachment to doctrine which is what you purposefully directed yourself away from in the first place. That's why it's dangerous because you are exposing yourself to a vulnerability that you know has previously been exploited. In the end theism is a highly volatile theory and requires extreme care, yet in no way is it obsolete, it's just widely misued because in the end we all want to feel good about what we are doing, but such should not be used as a foundation for life choices.
The search for God is eternal, so when you stop searching for Him because you like some theistic framework, you have just jumped into a vicious cycle that has been going on for milenia, so it's important to know exacty what you are doing or else you won't have a chance to retain personal identity, which is the only thing we really have.
-Sab