Hello,

I've had the advantage of growing up in an atheist family and visiting a humanistic school, choosing ethics and philosophy over religious education. Any form of superstition (such as theism) is so far from my world view now that I have absolutely no understanding of how one can believe something without evidence (faith).

I've made the experience that religious kids mostly chose religious education over ethics/philosophy and thus never were instructed in the basics of critical thinking and logic. Their path seems to be laid out quite some time before that, starting with bad religious parenting, baptizing etc. I feel that, for a person of faith, it might be as hard to understand naturalism and rationality as it is for me to understand the exact opposite - faith.

Through this course, they never learned to fully question everything they take for granted. It is not a part of their mental skill set.

Do you think it is possible to learn late in life about this mode of thinking and adopt it? How would this be possible, especially considering the intricate mechanisms of protection that religion offers from the inside? The complete questioning of one's beliefs is already such a damnation that, once a religious person engages in debate, he usually does not consider the change of these beliefs a possible outcome of the debate. It is such a fixed part of one's world view that it seems completely impossible to come to rational conclusions about it.

2 of my friends were brought up religious (1 Christian, 1 Muslim) and also took up ethics/philosophy in our school that was fairly secular anyway. Sure enough, both became atheists. They weren't brought up fundamentalist, but certainly as strong practicing believers.

Then I've seen TV debates between atheists and theists and the theists getting their ass handed to them. In these cases I'm really not sure. Does the theist have to maintain his position for reasons of cash flow, might and job or is he really so oblivious to the atheist's arguments because he didn't consider a change in belief as a possible result when he entered the discussion?

I really feel that many times religious people go into such a debate, not to question their beliefs, but to represent them as truth, no matter what. Surely, this is not the case for atheists, as they have no beliefs to defend. What would be a possible strategy to actually make it possible for a strong believer to question his faith on a very profound level? Is this even possible?

Opinions?