"I am constantly amused by the writers to this forum who are afraid that the church is going to force its view of things on others. Have you had a look at the church lately? Is it conceivable that it could force anything on anyone?"

Umm Sells, you clearly need to broaden your thinking beyond Australia's borders and look at history and what is happening elsewhere in the world. Yes, in Australia the church has largely been neutered, but mention abortion or euthanasia and notice how politicians with an agenda turn up from everywhere, even here.
It is not without reason that the Vatican is considered as one of the major political lobbying forces on the planet. They spend huge resources to enforce whatever they can. An example just in Europe:

http://www.population-security.org/cffc-97-02.htm

The right to a divorce, use of contraception, abortion, gay rights,
euthanasia, etc, all all rights that the church would ban, given half a chance. In Nicargua for instance, Catholics are still trying to force 9 year old rape victims to have their babies, which IMHO is pretty close to child abuse. In Chile, the right to a divorce has only just been granted, the church fought it all the way.

Why people are religious is easily explained. Learn a little bit about neuroscience. The natural state of the brain is homeostasis,
or balanced brain chemistry, neither happy or sad. If you walked through a forest 2000 years ago and the guy 6ft ahead of you was struck by lightning, you would be terrified that it could happen to you. Any explanation would make you feel better, what you want is perceived certainty. Wether its really true or not doesent matter, as long as it makes you feel better. Religion provides easy answers to complex questions, ie. god did it, now burn 3 goats and it won't happen to you. People feel better, they have an answer, no more anxiety. Note how the religious fanatics on here, all have their simple answer, which makes them feel better.

Yabby,
Talk about simple answers. How is this for a sample of a simpleton?

"Why people are religious is easily explained. Learn a little bit about neuroscience. The natural state of the brain is homeostasis, or balanced brain chemistry, neither happy or sad. If you walked through a forest 2000 years ago and the guy 6ft ahead of you was struck by lightning, you would be terrified that it could happen to you. Any explanation would make you feel better, what you want is perceived certainty. Wether its really true or not doesent matter, as long as it makes you feel better. Religion provides easy answers to complex questions, ie. god did it, now burn 3 goats and it won't happen to you. People feel better, they have an answer, no more anxiety. Note how the religious fanatics on here, all have their simple answer, which makes them feel better"

I trust that in this statement your hostile emotions have now been released. FEEL BETTER? Stop talking nonsense and learn where God is revealed, if you are to understand the spiritual mind. God is not a being. God is not a vengeful being up in the sky. God is spirit revealed in his artfull work of creation. Because the design principles of the physical Creation have been put in place from the beginning, Gods primary role today is with relationship with man and man's behaviour. As Christians believe, Jesus demonstrated the very heart and mind of God in relationship; forgiving, reconciliation, serving each other, even enemies, with love and devotion to bring about the order of God on Earth.

Yabby the fact that Sells offers (to further his own argument) a link to his own work says all that need be said about Sells. Reminds me of something Elle McPherson said once, "I only ever read what I have written".

I've taken the time to read Sells “Evolutionary Psychology: A New Hermeneutic”, it uses evolution as a basis for the argument, then tries to refute it with semantics. Its very narrow in its conceptualisation, a perfect example of a primitive mind trying to use semantics to justify a contradictory illusion

A child that's in a household where many languages are used, learns them all equally yet adopts as its first language, the one thats used the most. A sign of learned behaviour, just as animals learn things with the right approach. Life is a learning experience, not a forgone conclusion

This one statement by sells says it all. “However, how does the child learn to distinguish cats from dogs etc “. Sell references for his theory is the bible.

“God therefore thinks, regrets, feels, plans, is angry and is merciful. God also has a ?strong right arm? and a face” Hang on, isn't god an event, not a being.

How can use use secular rational, to support your theory that secularism has duped us. Isn't it the belief in monotheism thats duped monotheists. Doesn't the original letters of Paul mean more than the accepted historical understanding that the new testament is at least 3rd hand knowledge, not written by the attributed authors. Doesn't the evidence that the old testament is heavily plagiarised from earlier works, mean anything, or is rational thinking wrong.

The difference between whats in the bible, attributed to Paul and the actual letters written by him. Surely shows how far from reality the irrationality of believing the bible to be a work of god, and event, spirit, not being, is. But then we are made in the image, isn't there some blatant contradiction and hypocrisy is these statements.

This may seem a bit disjointed, but you should read Sells for a dislocation from reality.

Lol Scout, I read his link and IMHO there are various flaws, but that’s another long story. Evol. Psych will not threaten religion, because people are religious for different reasons to those studying how the mind works. Religion fulfills a need for those who need it in their lives, to take away their fears of death, to give them hope, to give them purpose, to help them deal with anxiety.
So the perceived truth is all that matters, the rest can be rationalized away, people do it all the time in their lives.

Philo, your particular interpretation of your particular religion,
is just that and no more. You are absolutely convinced of your spirits etc, but if we look at global patterns, they tell us something. Every tribe discovered anywhere has had some kind of god or gods. All religions around the world believe with equal conviction that theirs is the one and only and people believe that their particular interpretation of that religion is correct.

So it comes back to how the human mind works. Perhaps you’ve had your head too deeply in religious books to care, but if you really want to understand people, you’ll find that much of the
claptrap about so called free will is exactly that, the brain is far more complex then that.

Emotions matter hugely, those structures of the mind evolved for good reasons. But the stronger an emotion, the less our ability to reason, often we aren’t even aware of it.

If in your old days, you’d like to make a start and learn a bit about your own brain and how it works and why it works that way, here is a good little spot to start:

http://staff.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html

We certainly get some spooky beliefs like what someone here said that "God is spirit and we are spirit beings". Then Peter says that his teddy is "not of the category or being" but "understood as the category of event." Just seems that teddy spookspersons should only spook when spooken to, or else think again if that is possible.

How are we to understand some magical, hippy notion of this teddy where there is an event that is an unexpected occurrence of some sort, unfore-seeable and unpredictable, without causality. For most people this is not at all unusual unless you are someone who has never had any surprises in your entire life. e.g. The Swans winning the Holy Grail last year would certainly be such an event that surprised many because it did not respect the previously in place chain of cause and effects. But to leave it at the unexplainable is to deny reason. So it is whence did this surprise event manifest. What was its cause? What events previously determined this outcome and will this determine its future status?

Many people will take the old way, the mind-first way, and endorse an unexpected occurrence with another particular being like a teddy of superior intelligence. This is the top shelf teddy found in the Bible.

Because an unexpected occurrence only brings into the present in our consciousness, then of itself it require a causal explanation. There is no teddy here at all. There is only a learning opportunity to exercise some testable implications and rational functions of the mind to understand and to avoid any hasty conclusions. Before concluding that we need something more like a magic unveiling, or a transcendence, or gratuitousness, or a mystery of disclosure, or a need to be loved, then just intentionally study what is already here because it is an orderly place. We just need to find a correlation by trying some tests to see the reality of our relationship to the environment, our bodies, and our emotions.

If teddy is to be "understood as the category of event" then teddy don't exist.