Why do so many people believe in a God?

Tomblyboo

Vivisectus wrote: »

There are nice things that I find amazing, therefor God?

Well Richard Dawkins sure didn't make them

TeddyTedson

I think really it comes down to people not liking unanswerable questions. You see it in kids all the time, no matter what you tell them they'll continue to ask why. Adults are perhaps hard wired from childhood to always want to know why, and God really gives you those last few hundred jigsaw pieces

Brian Shanahan

Tomblyboo wrote: »

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.

I go cycling a lot, and I think to myself, when I'm not admiring the beauty of nature something along these lines as expressed by Richard Feynman:

I find looking at something and saying "that is great because goddidit" is a deeply unsatisfying experience. I would much rather admit not knowing why something is the way it is, and then going off and finding out, because as the great Feynman said in the video, "the science, knowledge, only adds to the excitment and mystery in the awe of a flower. It only adds, I don't know how it subtracts". But by putting everything in the hands of an invisible being, you are essentially doing just that.

Delirium

Tomblyboo wrote: »

Well Richard Dawkins sure didn't make them

I'm not sure you understand what atheism is :P

Jim Rockford

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

So you don't like vulgarity, but you are perfectly happy with vicious and untrue stereotyping?

Not very edifying of you is it?

What vulgarity and what stereotyping ?

Tomblyboo

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

I go cycling a lot, and I think to myself, when I'm not admiring the beauty of nature something along these lines as expressed by Richard Feynman:


I find looking at something and saying "that is great because goddidit" is a deeply unsatisfying experience. I would much rather admit not knowing why something is the way it is, and then going off and finding out, because as the great Feynman said in the video, "the science, knowledge, only adds to the excitment and mystery in the awe of a flower. It only adds, I don't know how it subtracts". But by putting everything in the hands of an invisible being, you are essentially doing just that.

So everything is a mistake? and science is the (wonderful) explanation of it?

Tomblyboo

SW wrote: »

I'm not sure you understand what atheism is :P

Not sure i understand your understanding but i'll give it a go:

negative reductionism to a point

Baked.noodle

I believe in God but I did not always believe. I don’t subscribe to any traditional concept of God but assume that no one faith doctrine sufficiently encapsulates the diversity of the world and its people. I think the ordered reality of the universe leans more towards a belief in design than chance. It’s just a speculative point of view I admit, but when we look for meaning and purpose in unknowable things nobody can categorically say what is true; so in my view everybody is speculative in this instance. You will not be proved either way. With the emerging scientifically skeptic point of view of our times I understand peoples reluctance to make one’s mind up without evidence and I think this is in many ways a responsible position to take. So much has been achieved by scientific methods and it deserves everybody’s respect.

However, to decide God does not exist without evidence that it does not exist seems to me to be premature. I think one is better to be agnostic in such circumstances. Nevertheless, I think our ability to not only think (and think rationally) but also to feel indicates a depth that isn’t necessarily purely functional in an evolutionary sense. The beauty and horror we experience so naturally as a consequents of our human life experience of the world raises in me an overwhelming appreciation of this ‘creation’. It is both beautiful and horrifying and this in my view this is the wellspring for our meaning, the importance’s embedded in living at all. Who would care at all without feeling? For me, God values the witness. For if it is truly God then it is unequalled and unaccompanied. Why create at all? In my view it is to escape the solitude void and be witnessed.

Dades

Tomblyboo wrote: »

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.

Lucky you getting to travel and enjoy the great outdoors!

I wonder if you walked around a village in the Congo, or Haiti after their earthquake or even the Gaza strip would you think the same. While a Christian is content to enjoy the beautiful parts of life - and thank God for them - an atheist finds it hard to reconcile these with the gritty reality of nature. If God can make all the nice beaches and mountains... why are millions of children starving or working down gold mines 12 hours a day or working as sex slaves?

JC01

Dades wrote: »

Lucky you getting to travel and enjoy the great outdoors!

I wonder if you walked around a village in the Congo, or Haiti after their earthquake or even the Gaza strip would you think the same. While a Christian is content to enjoy the beautiful parts of life - and thank God for them - an atheist finds it hard to reconcile these with the gritty reality of nature. If God can make all the nice beaches and mountains... why are millions of children starving or working down gold mines 12 hours a day or working as sex slaves?

Pretty much what I was gonna say. To add just a little to it;

How can anybody reconcile themselves with worshipping a deity that allows these things to happen?

If anything the world would incline me to believe in the Christian "devil" long before "God" all over the world the evil
flourish whill horrific things happen innocent people every single day since the beginnings of mankind. To ramble on a bit more, would God not have thought the world a far more just and peaceful place if he didnt stick Adam and Eve ina forest to do the nasty? Just leave it as the birds and bees and the natural beauty of the world?

TeddyTedson

Gordon wrote: »

God knows.

God knows I want to break free
You being the warden and what not I thought that was appropriate

morebabies

I was brought up in an "indoctrinated" faith environment - we went to church, we went through all the rituals, I was essentially told what to believe in - but all at a very superficial level. As in, I went through the external practices while under age 18 but understood very little and didn't have any kind of personal relationship with God. Hence when I was 18, I stopped going to Church and my "faith" as it was took a back seat.

However, weirdly enough I would have still called myself a Christian - even though my behaviour went totally against my faith. Ten years later I decided that since every other decision in my life had been taken after serious rational reflection (career choice, etc,), I owed it to myself to examine my faith from a rational point of view and decide once and for all whether I was a Christian or not. I totally expected at this stage that my faith would not stand up to any type of rational enquiry - it seemed to me then that faith and reason were completely incompatible and that the faith handed on to me was more superstition and duty than anything else. I was right on that last point - my parents' faith was of a type that questioned nothing.

So I questioned everything, read widely and waited for all the Christian beliefs to collapse in the face of Reason. I was horrified. They didn't. Christianity made perfect rational sense, believing there was no God didn't. Serious life changes followed, not easy ones, but ones that now fitted with what I believed. And practices that had previously meant nothing to me took on great depth.

I'm sure this'll be torn apart but just to answer the OP's question, that was my own pathway to belief.

swampgas

morebabies wrote: »

I was brought up in an "indoctrinated" faith environment - we went to church, we went through all the rituals, I was essentially told what to believe in - but all at a very superficial level. As in, I went through the external practices while under age 18 but understood very little and didn't have any kind of personal relationship with God. Hence when I was 18, I stopped going to Church and my "faith" as it was took a back seat.

However, weirdly enough I would have still called myself a Christian - even though my behaviour went totally against my faith. Ten years later I decided that since every other decision in my life had been taken after serious rational reflection (career choice, etc,), I owed it to myself to examine my faith from a rational point of view and decide once and for all whether I was a Christian or not. I totally expected at this stage that my faith would not stand up to any type of rational enquiry - it seemed to me then that faith and reason were completely incompatible and that the faith handed on to me was more superstition and duty than anything else. I was right on that last point - my parents' faith was of a type that questioned nothing.

So I questioned everything, read widely and waited for all the Christian beliefs to collapse in the face of Reason. I was horrified. They didn't. Christianity made perfect rational sense, believing there was no God didn't. Serious life changes followed, not easy ones, but ones that now fitted with what I believed. And practices that had previously meant nothing to me took on great depth.

I'm sure this'll be torn apart but just to answer the OP's question, that was my own pathway to belief.

At least you actually thought about it - kudos! My own questioning led to complete atheism, but I respect your position far more than that of all the cultural catholics out there.

Rezident

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

For a moment, I don't want to argue over whether or not a god exists--I want to know why so many people believe that one does. I usually receive generalized answers to this--"it comforts people," or "they were indoctrinated into the belief," and such related answers.

It doesn't baffle me so much that people believe that a god exists, but rather that a lot of people believe that a god exists. I could understand it if a portion of the population were theists, but I'm surprised the theist/atheist makeup of the population isn't at least around equal parts. Instead, the majority still believes in the existence of a god.

To think about why a person would believe in a god just confounds me. Everything about life, everything we know so far about existence, tells me that one most likely does not exist. Even with a fair analysis of the arguments for and against the existence of a god, the arguments against one existing are clearly superior. I'm not belittling the person who believes in a god, I am simply expressing my inability to understand why they believe it.

It is true that belief in a god and religion provides comfort to those people...but surely the understand that, just because you believe something to be true and it gives you comfort, does not actually mean that it IS true? I mean, if people at least considered this possibility, then they would move on to examine the legitimacy of their beliefs. And thus, I would expect more and more theists to lose their beliefs, but instead they maintain them.

This is a good question, I honestly cannot see how billions of people with the amazing brains that we have would believe in a non-existant, invisible deity. The 'comfort' argument sounds a bit weak unless there is something inside us that knows more than we consciously do i.e. that there is more to life than this, then the comfort argument would make sense.

Brian Shanahan

Jim Rockford wrote: »

What vulgarity and what stereotyping ?

Do you like constantly trolling everybody else on the forum? Because every single post of yours has had nothing to add to any of the debates and was only looking to score cheap points and denigrate those that didn't think like you do.

Brian Shanahan

Tomblyboo wrote: »

So everything is a mistake?

How the hell did you get that from what I wrote? Or are you just so indoctrinated in your beliefs that you have to hit out at every answer given that doesn't boil down to "goddidit"?

and science is the (wonderful) explanation of it?

Science is simply the method developed (painstakingly I might add, after intelligent people realised that believing in interfering gods just didn't work) by humans to try and understand the universe and the various processes within it, and to give the species a framework describing reality which is understandable by a bunch of primates whose brains were originally developed to spot lions in the grass, fruit in the trees, and shout others out of their territory. Given its limitations it has worked pretty well over the years, a hell of a lot better than any god-centric way of thinking.

Brian Shanahan

Baked.noodle wrote: »

However, to decide God does exist without evidence that it does not exist seems to me to be premature.

Fixed that sentence for you to ensure accuracy.

The fact of the matter is that to claim that any god exists is an extraordinary claim, because a) there is no evidence for the existence of any god, b) all of the evidence that we have says that there is no need for god for everything to have happened, and c) the doctrine of least causes says that unless you have compelling evidence to the contrary you must accept the most simple explanation when you have two competing explanations (by rights this should be followed with; "which both equally well explain the evidence available", but the god hyopothesis is actually worse at explaining the universe than one which posits no god). The god hypothesis is not the most simple explanation for the universe because now you've an extra variable to explain.

The evidential onus is on you the believer to prove that god exists, because the fact of the matter is that you are asserting that there is something there which doesn't fit the evidence as we currently know and understand it. Therefore it is on you to bring evidence to the table to support your position. Until you do that your proffession in the existence of god is meaningless.

IRLConor

Tomblyboo wrote: »

So everything is a mistake?

Calling all the wonders of creation a "mistake" carries with it the connotations that a) something else was intended and b) what we have is not what was intended. I don't think it's safe to make either assumption.

Tomblyboo wrote: »

and science is the (wonderful) explanation of it?

An explanation of everything? Not even close.

Casting science as an alternative to religion is a false comparison. It's just a set of tools for helping us get around in the world. Yes, it comes into conflict with religion sometimes but the overlap between the concerns of science and religion is a lot narrower than most people think.

Brian Shanahan

morebabies wrote: »

Christianity made perfect rational sense, believing there was no God didn't.

How?

Jim Rockford

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Do you like constantly trolling everybody else on the forum? Because every single post of yours has had nothing to add to any of the debates and was only looking to score cheap points and denigrate those that didn't think like you do.

Thought as much :rolleyes:

antiskeptic

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

To think about why a person would believe in a god just confounds me. Everything about life, everything we know so far about existence, tells me ..

Precisely. Tells you. According to your worldview, according to the way you assess the puzzle, according to those arguments and influences you find persuasive, according to the model of God you labour under whose characteristics doubtlessly places an obstacle in your path.



Not everyone is you though. And those who aren't you, perhaps only some of those who aren't you, could very well be onto something you're missing out on.

Dades

Rezident wrote: »

This is a good question, I honestly cannot see how billions of people with the amazing brains that we have would believe in a non-existant, invisible deity. The 'comfort' argument sounds a bit weak unless there is something inside us that knows more than we consciously do i.e. that there is more to life than this, then the comfort argument would make sense.

That might hold water if those billions of people didn't all believe in 1000s of different gods. In fact all that's telling us is that people want to believe in something and it doesn't really matter whether it's true or not.

People can ignore all sorts of logic if it helps them hold onto a cherished belief.

Cabaal

Dades wrote: »

If God can make all the nice beaches and mountains... why are millions of children starving or working down gold mines 12 hours a day or working as sex slaves?

God works in mysterious ways.....

Vivisectus

Tomblyboo wrote: »

Well Richard Dawkins sure didn't make them

Let me see if I get this straight: you refer to the sheer wonder and awesomeness of the observable universe, it's marvelous intricacy and complexity, boggling at how all those hard-headed atheists can be immune to the pure marvel of it, how they see all that without being transported by the sheer magic of it all.

But then you immediately resort to "So a magical sky-creature must have done it all by magic"

In stead of seeing all that wonderful nature that you mentioned with all it's complex networks of inter-dependencies at all different levels from the global to the microscopical, your impulse is to immediately attribute it all to some creator-god, and leave it at that.

To me, that takes all the wonder right out of it. It is an anti-answer, a thought-stopper. It takes good old-fashioned ignorance and apathy and celebrates these as virtues.

Does it not strike you as rather lame? As a cop-out? As an excuse to not have to think too hard?

Vivisectus

I think the ordered reality of the universe leans more towards a belief in design than chance.

This always reminds me of the kind of thinking that states that the fact that we have ten fingers is proof of an underlying order in the universe, because ordering numbers into tens works so amazingly well.

Czarcasm

Vivisectus wrote: »

This always reminds me of the kind of thinking that states that the fact that we have ten fingers is proof of an underlying order in the universe, because ordering numbers into tens works so amazingly well.

It works so well, that even you think you have ten fingers!

Polydactyly

Eight fingers, and two opposable thumbs.

I know it sounds pedantic, but the humble opposable thumb is an often overlooked key defining trait in human evolution. If you're going to demonstrate evolution versus intelligent design (very much a Creationist "someone else designs these things" philosophy), it's important that you're not lending credence to the argument against it in the Creationist thinkers mind.

One of the simplest thought experiments you can put forward in a Creationist mind is -

If nature is a demonstration of intelligent design, how come nature is still a continuous work in progress 6,000 years later?

One would imagine an intelligent being capable of creation would be able to get it perfect the first time and leave it at that, or is nature constantly changing, God's way of continuously improving on that design? Because then that would mean that God Himself is an imperfect being seeing as he couldn't get it right the first time!


I've never yet met a Creationist to ask them to explain the circular logic, but I imagine the encounter would be something like Kirk's exchange with Nomad:


Nomad: You are the Kirk, the creator. You programmed my function.

Dr. McCoy: Well, I'm not the Kirk. Tell me what your function is.

Nomad: This is one of your units, creator?

Capt. Kirk: Yes, he is.

Nomad: It functions irrationally.

Capt. Kirk: Sometimes.

I couldn't find it on YouTube, but it's one of the more memorable episodes.

nozzferrahhtoo

Tomblyboo wrote: »

The people I don't understand are atheists.

Whats not to understand. Here I will give you a quick run down:

1) Read a claim X.
2) Check if there is anything at all supporting the claim X.
3) If not then reject the claim X and do not believe it.

Simples.

Tomblyboo wrote: »

'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away.

"Mistake" is likely a poor choice of words. It implies some act of judgement or intention when we have no reason to attribute any such thing to the context.

Atheists are no less inclined to be over-awed by the beauty they find in the world around them. We just see no reason to make the leap from those emotions to thinking the only explanation for them is some kind of deity.

But the thread is not about whether there is a god or not... but about why people think there is one. And you make a good example of yourself. Some people are simply so emotionally moved by their subjective response to the world around them that they simply can not accept the idea there is no purpose and design and intention behind it all.

Dades

Vivisectus wrote: »

I think the ordered reality of the universe leans more towards a belief in design than chance.

This always reminds me of the kind of thinking that states that the fact that we have ten fingers is proof of an underlying order in the universe, because ordering numbers into tens works so amazingly well.

I have no problem with the notion that something might have designed the universe, only when people make the spectacular leap from "the universe seems designed" to "therefore it was my bearded man-like God who demands to be worshiped and watches to make sure we're not touching ourselves under the covers."

The "intelligent design" community have a lot to answer for.

Vivisectus

Czarcasm wrote:

wrote: »

It works so well, that even you think you have ten fingers!

Polydactyly

Eight fingers, and two opposable thumbs.

Fine then, digits! :P

Azwaldo55

Fear of death and for the fate of their children and future generations, the desire for immortality, the desire for injustices that cannot be made right to be made right in the next life, a desire to appease natural forces and the hunger for an unseen big Daddy in the sky to watch their back.

It is too much for most people to face that Planet Earth is just one more speck in a bottomless ocean of space, that the span of human lives might as well be that of grass before the immensity of time, that all human suffering, fears, loves, hates and desires count as nothing since we are lumps of clay given the breath of life for only a blink of the universe's eye.

We want to feel important, we want to believe that the sun and the moon and the stars were set in the sky just for us. We want to believe that God shines on us, our family, our community, our nation, our species and our planet because we want to believe we were chosen.

The truth is nothing notices we exist and if we ceased to exist nobody would notice. Life makes no sense.