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Why do so many people believe in a God?

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    #92
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,722 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
    Perhaps. But in defining terms context is everything :P and last time I checked we were having a religion conversation, in a thread about religion, in a forum about religion. :)

    Part of the context in this occasion was akrasia having faith in his wife. Now while akrasia may well consider her to be a Goddess in other contexts, I rather doubt that was the point he was making in his previous post, which makes the non-religious use of the word faith fair game.

    I would suggest that your attempt to limit the use of the word faith on this occasion is in itself a form of obfuscation.

    Re: Ngarric, you guys should really get a room :p


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    #93
    Akrasia
    Registered Users Posts: 22,242 ✭✭✭✭Akrasia


    It's funny. When someone uses the word 'trust' 99% of the time people agree on the meaning of that word. Faith is almost the same thing as trust, but opinions differ wildly on what it means.

    I think us atheists are partially to blame for this when we often define 'Faith' as 'belief in spite of the evidence'. and the we say things like 'I don't have faith, I just accept the evidence'.

    While this may often be an accurate description of what having faith looks like, it is not an accurate description of the thought process of the person who holds the Faith position.

    Lets give an example of George Hook, he was debating with Michal Nugent and that guy from Trinity who wrote that article in the Irish times. He has said many many times that he believes in god for two reasons. 1. He can not understand how the universe could have come into existance without a god
    2. He hopes that when he dies he will go to heaven and ditto for his loved ones.

    No matter how many scientists explain to him how the universe can arise without the need for God, he has an alternative explanation which is not in conflict with his Hope of an afterlife.

    He trusts in religion because of his hope. If he was brought up to believe in a religion where every single person goes to hell when they die, then George would be an atheist because he would hope that there is no god and he would trust the scientists who give him a reason to continue to hope this.

    Hope routinely triumphs over reason.


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    #94
    nozzferrahhtoo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,338 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    smacl wrote: »
    would suggest that your attempt to limit the use of the word faith on this occasion is in itself a form of obfuscation.

    Yeah because defining a religious word by its religious definition in a religion context is obfuscation. For sure. Did you take an over injection of comedy juice today?

    Those injecting the non-contextual versions of it are the ones going off topic. Excuse me for staying ON topic, but I intend to do so on any thread I post on.
    Akrasia wrote: »
    I think us atheists are partially to blame for this when we often define 'Faith' as 'belief in spite of the evidence'. and the we say things like 'I don't have faith, I just accept the evidence'.

    While this may often be an accurate description of what having faith looks like, it is not an accurate description of the thought process of the person who holds the Faith position.

    Agreed. That is why I defined faith as "The willingness to assume your conclusion as part of the process of proving your conclusion". Because as you suggest.... these faith heads do think they have evidence and have been considering the evidence.

    So when atheists come along and tell them they have belief with no evidence, this instantly destroys discourse because the theist simply known this to be untrue.

    The fact is theists have LOADS of evidence. Evidence abounds for them. The issue is that this evidence is flawed by the fallacious methodology of confirmation bias. The evidence only proves the conclusion IF you assume the conclusion is true.

    Which essentially means they have no evidence and have belief without evidence..... but that is not the reality THEY think they occupy..... so spelling it out to them in THOSE terms is not going to achieve anything alas.


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    #95
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,722 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
    Excuse me for staying ON topic, but I intend to do so on any thread I post on.
    Ngarric has made a career on this forum for example over obfuscating discourse by merely equivocating over the meaning of terms while simply saying nothing at all of any substance.

    And here was me thinking your main reason for visiting this thread was to blow a kiss to an old friend. Mea Culpa ;)

    Pass me my needle Doc, looks like I'm due another injection.


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    #96
    Akrasia
    Registered Users Posts: 22,242 ✭✭✭✭Akrasia


    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
    Those injecting the non-contextual versions of it are the ones going off topic. Excuse me for staying ON topic, but I intend to do so on any thread I post on.
    It was more of an attempt to decontextualize the term rather than introduce a non contextual version.

    My 'faith in my wife, SMACL's 'faith' in his Brakes, our collective 'faith' in the scientific method and religious faith can all be included in the 'hope + trust' definition without doing any injustice to any of them

    I trust my wife and hope my trust is justified = I have faith in my wife

    SMACL trusts his bicycle maintance and hopes that someone didn't tamper with them = 'Faith' in his brakes

    We collectively 'trust' the scientific method and 'hope' that individual scientists and collective bodies of scientists are honest and dilligent in their methods and approach = 'Faith' in science (note, this is in general terms, and one would need to be mad to have excessive trust in 'science' in all circumstances)

    Religious people's hope that their beliefs about God are true, and then their trust in evidence that allows them to believe in God = religious faith


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    #97
    nozzferrahhtoo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,338 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    smacl wrote: »
    And here was me thinking your main reason for visiting this thread was to blow a kiss to an old friend.

    Because of one throw away sentence out of the many many I have written on this thread.... you mistook my entire motivation for posting on the thread? You are.... easily distracted I guess :)
    Akrasia wrote: »
    It was more of an attempt to decontextualize the term rather than introduce a non contextual version.

    And as I said I merely wonder at the utility of that. It is hard enough to pin doen the meaning of some of these words and phrases even WITHIN the context.... that is how slippery some of them are. Even the word "god" seems to have as many meanings as there are people subscribing to the concept sometimes.

    So further obfuscation of it all by introducing extra-contextual definitions too is not something I predict will end at all well. Then again what threads here do? :)
    Akrasia wrote: »
    My 'faith in my wife, SMACL's 'faith' in his Brakes, our collective 'faith' in the scientific method and religious faith can all be included in the 'hope + trust' definition without doing any injustice to any of them

    As I said though I just do not feel "faith" sits right in those areas, where other words like "trust" and "choice" and more make more sense and seem to apply more correctly.

    In fact we can even call our faith in our wives, or trust, or whatever.... a judgement call based on the data set too really. It is not like we are blindly putting faith and trust in them. Rather our judgement call on this is updated iteratively over time and validated. I would have some sympathy for someone who had to put "faith" in this when there are many who get little looks, actions, commitments, gestures, words, overtures and much more that each day mean we do not have to put "faith" in any of this, but simply judge the data set available to us to make a valid conclusion.... just like with the brakes on your bike.

    Sometimes the blind faith, trust and love we so cherish is not actually as blind as we think it to be but is more informed by an evaluation of the available data set than we might think.

    Contrast this, as I did which was my point, to the "faith" in the existence of a god. This is not based on a data set per se. Rather it is based on the fallacious move of assuming the conclusion correct as part of the process of evidencing the conclusion. And it is that distinction I draw my personal definition of "faith" on..... and if you go back and read it..... it was only my PERSONAL one I was offering here. Not some diatribe on what the real definition is or should be.

    Those kinds of "faith" are massively different to me. This religious kind of "faith" is simply not comparable to my mind with any of the other types your post described.


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    #98
    Brian Shanahan
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,232 ✭✭✭Brian Shanahan


    Akrasia wrote: »

    Hope routinely triumphs over reason.

    As evidenced by the many people who believe the Lady Hope "I reconverted Darwin on his deathbed, and he denounced the religion of evilution" story, despite it having been proven to be a pack of lies for a long time (the lady had a habit of saying she converted many people she never met to her brand of christianity).


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    #99
    PopePalpatine
    Registered Users Posts: 11,844 ✭✭✭✭PopePalpatine


    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
    There is some group of people who seem to think that everything and anything, all events and life and so forth, is somehow connected to the number 23. It is called "The 23 enigma".

    There was a Jim Carey movie about it and William Burroughs was said to be a believer.

    The thing is it works. As I said above, if "faith" is the willingness to assume your conclusion as part of proving your conclusion, you will find 23ism works. You will see 23 every where or, like Carey in the film, find some multiple of it, or of 32 which is just 23 backwards, or numbers where the digits add up to 23 like for example 9563.

    If you WANT to find 23 you will find it. So 23ism is true.

    I guess they'd avoid Nissans then, as 23 is "ni-san" in Japanese.


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    #100
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,722 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
    Those kinds of "faith" are massively different to me. This religious kind of "faith" is simply not comparable to my mind with any of the other types your post described.

    To my mind religious faith is simply a form of blind faith, i.e. faith that is not evidence based, but is no different from other kinds of faith apart from this. We also see blind faith outside of religion, where we take a risk and make a snap value judgement to take a punt on something or someone with no strong evidence to do so. Sometimes this is based on a persons real or perceived credentials, whether it be doctor, plumber, conman or priest.


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    #101
    Akrasia
    Registered Users Posts: 22,242 ✭✭✭✭Akrasia


    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
    As I said though I just do not feel "faith" sits right in those areas, where other words like "trust" and "choice" and more make more sense and seem to apply more correctly.
    I'd be happy enough to never use the word faith to describe anything other than religious faith, but the fact is, when religious people go on the defensive, they often try to equivocate religious faith with other situations where the term faith might apply, and rather than argue about context which never works, It's probably a better strategy to use a decontextualized definition that can be used to highlight the differences between religious faith, and other forms of trust and belief.


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    #102
    Akrasia
    Registered Users Posts: 22,242 ✭✭✭✭Akrasia


    smacl wrote: »
    To my mind religious faith is simply a form of blind faith, i.e. faith that is not evidence based, but is no different from other kinds of faith apart from this. We also see blind faith outside of religion, where we take a risk and make a snap value judgement to take a punt on something or someone with no strong evidence to do so. Sometimes this is based on a persons real or perceived credentials, whether it be doctor, plumber, conman or priest.

    Trust and hope :)

    Often trust is misplaced but if someone has credentials and seems legitimate, then it is not unreasonable to trust them even if they later turn out to be a con man.

    Believing in a pyramid scheme sales pitch is akin to believing in religion. They sell so much hope that you're willing to trust them despite the fact that deep down you probably know it's a scam.

    With religion it's hope and trust. They hope god is real, so they put their trust in conmen who promise to deliver eternal salvation.


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    #103
    Obliq
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,371 ✭✭✭Obliq


    I think faith (in anything) is more like trust and hope gone to a point where you couldn't countenance any alternative position. That you have gone beyond trust and hope to the extent that losing it would be too devastating, therefore faith is the word for the job and you continue to believe despite all evidence to the contrary. Like in religions and pyramid schemes.


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    #104
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,722 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Obliq wrote: »
    I think faith (in anything) is more like trust and hope gone to a point where you couldn't countenance any alternative position. That you have gone beyond trust and hope to the extent that losing it would be too devastating, therefore faith is the word for the job and you continue to believe despite all evidence to the contrary. Like in religions and pyramid schemes.

    That's also very much my take on how religion perpetuates itself in this country. Get children to make the emotional investment at an early age where major decisions are made more on trust of parents / teachers etc than evidence, and leave them in a situation where they typically feel they have to protect and reinforce that investment. Pyramid selling to the vulnerable is a fair analogy.


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    #105
    Obliq
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,371 ✭✭✭Obliq


    smacl wrote: »
    ... and leave them in a situation where they typically feel they have to protect and reinforce that investment. Pyramid selling to the vulnerable is a fair analogy.

    Yes, once you're in the scheme/religion and it has become a part of your life that would be dangerous to let go (rejection of family/loss of roof over your head), that's where trust and hope take on a more sinister edge and faith comes into play.


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    #106
    nozzferrahhtoo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,338 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    smacl wrote: »
    To my mind religious faith is simply a form of blind faith, i.e. faith that is not evidence based, but is no different from other kinds of faith apart from this.

    I think that is the motivation behind the distinction I make and the reason I define faith like I do. Discourse with theists is hard enough and when you tell them they have NO evidence it can close down discourse often. Because they simply know you are wrong. They have loads of evidence.

    The issue is not their lack of evidence, but the flaw in their evidence. Which is that the evidence they offer only works if you first assume the conclusion.

    So religious faith is just that for me. The willingness to assume the conclusion as part of the process of fitting the evidence to it.
    Akrasia wrote: »
    I'd be happy enough to never use the word faith to describe anything other than religious faith, but the fact is, when religious people go on the defensive, they often try to equivocate religious faith with other situations where the term faith might apply, and rather than argue about context which never works, It's probably a better strategy to use a decontextualized definition that can be used to highlight the differences between religious faith, and other forms of trust and belief.

    Indeed, as I said there are people, even on this forum, who make a career out of linguistic equivocation of this type. Perhaps neither approach is "Better" but having some people do one, and others do the other, is best.


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    #107
    Akrasia
    Registered Users Posts: 22,242 ✭✭✭✭Akrasia


    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
    Indeed, as I said there are people, even on this forum, who make a career out of linguistic equivocation of this type. Perhaps neither approach is "Better" but having some people do one, and others do the other, is best.

    You'll burn in hell for being that reasonable


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    #108
    nozzferrahhtoo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,338 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    One can only hope. All the fun people go there. All the celibate bores meanwhile are up in heaven singing Kumbaya on Ukulele living in constant fear of the totalitarian state in which they reside where one can even be convicted for thought crime :)

    But yea, the diversity of voices and approaches in the "atheists community" is definitely one of our strengths. We do not have to conform to one book or doctrine set like Borg who.... lets face it.... always lose in the end :)


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    #109
    lazybones32
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,647 ✭✭✭lazybones32


    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

    But yea, the diversity of voices and approaches in the "atheists community" is definitely one of our strengths.

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057191497

    Sorry to butt in, but it seems you guys are pretty much singing from the same hymn sheet.


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    #110
    Tomblyboo
    Registered Users Posts: 19 ✭Tomblyboo


    Originally Posted by Tomblyboo
    I'm a Christian now. The things that drove me crazy growing up was how everyone works at fault-finding with different religions. The people I don't understand are atheists. I go surfing and snow boarding and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away.

    equivariant wrote: »
    We've had the ontological argument, the teleological argument, the cosmological argument and now ... the argument from snowboarding. Still I suppose its about as convincing as those others

    The question the OP asked at the start was why do so many people belive in God? he doesn't understand why they do. This is someone else (Paul Walker, R.I.P.) that doesn't understand why you couldn't believe in God, given the nature he was around when surfing or snowboarding. It's not an argument, he's just saying it as he sees it. And given the above response the quote proves it's point. As for an explanation of why so many people believe in God maybe it's not a bad one. As another poster said the linguistic equivication seems to be in some cases the end to the means here. maybe just accept that there are other points of view out there and please try not to be too sarcastic, it's making things smoky here in the bunker...


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    #111
    swampgas
    Registered Users Posts: 3,536 ✭✭✭swampgas


    Tomblyboo wrote: »
    Originally Posted by Tomblyboo
    I'm a Christian now. The things that drove me crazy growing up was how everyone works at fault-finding with different religions. The people I don't understand are atheists. I go surfing and snow boarding and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away.

    The question the OP asked at the start was why do so many people belive in God? he doesn't understand why they do. This is someone else (Paul Walker, R.I.P.) that doesn't understand why you couldn't believe in God, given the nature he was around when surfing or snowboarding. It's not an argument, he's just saying it as he sees it. And given the above response the quote proves it's point. As for an explanation of why so many people believe in God maybe it's not a bad one. As another poster said the linguistic equivication seems to be in some cases the end to the means here. maybe just accept that there are other points of view out there and please try not to be too sarcastic, it's making things smoky here in the bunker...

    Believing in God because of a euphoric experience is not unusual, but it is not rational either. The discovery of the parasitic wasp, and it's rather brutal means of reproduction, caused major difficulties for many Victorians as they found it hard to reconcile their concept of a loving God that created beauty and sunsets and flowers etc., with the same God that must have created so many varieties of an insect that paralyses its victims so its young can eat them alive.

    It does shed an interesting light on the affect emotional experiences can have on people's religious beliefs. Quite a few of the men who walked on the moon were deeply moved by the experience, with quite a few of them turning to religion (or becoming more devout) as a result.


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    #112
    nozzferrahhtoo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,338 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    Tomblyboo wrote: »
    maybe just accept that there are other points of view out there and please try not to be too sarcastic, it's making things smoky here in the bunker...

    Of course there is other points of view. No one has once said otherwise, either directly or indirectly.

    Your point of view appears to be that the "sense of wonder" you get out in nature is a reason to think there is a god.

    The point of view of many here appears to be that this is a bunkum non-sequitur not worth the pixels it was written on.

    More often than not when someone trots out a line like "I have a right to my opinion" or "Everyone has a point of view" it turns out that it is THEM getting upset that someone expressed a counter opinion. It generally goes:

    Person1: Expressed opinion 1
    Person2: Expressed counter opinion 2
    Person1: Gets all uppity and haughty about how everyone has a right to an opinion.

    So in other words those harping on about everyone having a different point of view or opinions.... is actually the one most likely to be upset that someone else has one... not the other way around. Person2 never had a problem with person1 expressing an opinion.... person1 does however.


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    #113
    Akrasia
    Registered Users Posts: 22,242 ✭✭✭✭Akrasia


    Tomblyboo wrote: »
    The question the OP asked at the start was why do so many people belive in God? he doesn't understand why they do. This is someone else (Paul Walker, R.I.P.) that doesn't understand why you couldn't believe in God, given the nature he was around when surfing or snowboarding.
    In response to this point of view. I think that some people live life with a goal to experience as much as possible. For these people, experiences are transcendent things that give them an enormous sense of euphoria.

    There are other people who have a fundamental desire to seek to understand the universe as much as possible. For these people, the understanding or the quest for understanding gives a similar euphoria.

    If one person looks at the northern lights and thinks 'This must be god' this satisfies them. The experience of the northern lights is sufficient

    Someone else looks at the northern lights is equally moved by the beauty, but this person asks herself 'what is really causing this display?'

    For this person, the joy and delight is only just beginning, because every single element that comes together in order to create the northern lights is spectacular in it's beauty. The earths magnetic field is a thing of beauty, how it interacts with the charged electrons in the Solar wind creates a visual display, but to me, the colours in the Aurora are not as beautiful as the mental images I can generate imagining the journey of those electrons as they are propelled from the sun and ultimately collide with atoms in our atmosphere and release new photons of different wavelengths. (this is from an admittedly very limited understanding of the currently understood science and cosmology, but compared to my ancestors, I know more than some of the greatest minds in history could have hoped to understand in their lifetimes)

    The real story of 'creation' when we finally understand it will be many many times more beautiful than any of the creation myths of any religion.

    I count myself extremely lucky to be born in this very narrow window of human history where we have the technology to share this knowledge about the wonder and beauty of the natural universe. I know that If I was born a century earlier, I would have grown up in a world without access to any of the books or lectures or nature documentaries that have hugely enhanced my life, without any understanding of how vast our universe is in both macro and microscopic scales.

    I consider the religious world view to be an impoverished one that stops at wonder and never moves towards true appreciation of what really exists around us.


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    #114
    Vivisectus
    Registered Users Posts: 807 ✭✭✭Vivisectus


    The question the OP asked at the start was why do so many people belive in God? he doesn't understand why they do. This is someone else (Paul Walker, R.I.P.) that doesn't understand why you couldn't believe in God, given the nature he was around when surfing or snowboarding. It's not an argument, he's just saying it as he sees it. And given the above response the quote proves it's point. As for an explanation of why so many people believe in God maybe it's not a bad one. As another poster said the linguistic equivication seems to be in some cases the end to the means here. maybe just accept that there are other points of view out there and please try not to be too sarcastic, it's making things smoky here in the bunker...

    How dare they! Someone has explained why they do not feel a religious opinion is a very good one! Don't they know that because everyone is entitled to an opinion that means all opinions are sacrosanct, especially religious ones? That it does not matter if one holds that opinion for any good reasons - or for any reason at all? After all, they are opinions, and because everyone is entitled to one of those, that means that they are all equally well supported. Apparently we live in such a random universe that there is absolutely no point trying to find out the relative merits of one opinion compared to another.

    Worse: by criticizing an opinion, you somehow stop someone from holding and expressing that opinion. It is surely the action of a bitter and twisted individual, full of spite and bile, to do something so savage and disrespectful as expecting the opining party to support and explain this opinion. Almost as if it is somehow their responsibility to explain why they hold it!

    It is obvious to any reasonable human being that merely by being uttered, a point of view is given this rarefied status of opinion, to which the only appropriate response is a reverential murmur of wonder and gratitude. We should all applaud when someone reveals their opinion, and then kneel down to inspect it closely and savor it's legendary aroma.


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