Synesthetic said:

Get over yourself, man. Better yet, go take 7 dry grams of your favorite hallucinogen and compare the ideas of metaphysics and science in your brain.

---

What if you favourite hallucinogen is LSD?

Silversoul said:

Mr. Mushrooms said:

Religions have to have some similarity in order to be religions.  However, there are some pretty wide variations among them.  Some are preceptorial; others are not, some are credal; others are not, some are cosmological; others are not, some are theistic (poly or mono); others are not, some are revelatory; others are not.

Is the primary difference one of metaphysics?  Or do you have something else in mind?

---

Well, my premise was that every culture has developed religion, and these religions share certain common features.  They don't tend to have winged dragons from Neptune because they all work from the same template.  Perhaps I was being a bit overly simplistic.  What I see is an evolution of religion from animist tribal religions to more complex polytheistic concepts to monotheism, or in some cases a sort of nontheistic supernaturalism such as in Buddhism or Taoism.  My point is they all seem to build on the same starting template, and each development transcends and includes its predecessor.

---

OrgoneConclusion said:

Is there some truth to this observation? Yes.

As an atheist have I ever asked for divine help? Yes.

So where is the fallacy? It is quite simple really. I was born and raised a Catholic, went to Catholic schools and was indocrinated until I was 18. This is powerful brainwashing stuff. Even after my change of view it is not possible to erase such programming. I am near certain that ALL atheists in foxholes also had a large exposure to religious and cultural pressures.

I doubt that it would ever occur to one not exposed (if that is possible in today's world) to the idea of a personal and responsive God to even consider prayer. As cultural contamination is so wide-spread, my hypothesis may not be able to be tested.

---