To genuinely wonder how or why anyone believes in God?

[ChaosNeverRains]

Genuine question.

I was until fairly recently I think probably agnostic rather than anything else, having been brought up in a very church oriented school where the emphasis was all on sin and retribution and the need to worship this higher being and that if you lived every day then it was through God’s will - you get the picture. Until recently though I was prepared to believe that perhaps there was a higher being out there somewhere, and even now I can see that some could believe that there is a higher being out there or that there was at some point.

But what I don’t understand is why people seem to believe that there is a God who looks over them individually when everything points to that not being the case. People talk about the power of prayer when actually no such power exists. The man dying of cancer is no more or less likely to die if you prayed for him than if you didn’t. I know of some very devout Christians who have fallen victim to the most horrific illnesses and where the church have genuinely believed that praying for them means God will heal them, which of course he hasn’t. But when they die those same people are thought to be up there eternally worshipping the lord. Why?

I can see that a belief in God might somehow make people feel comforted that this isn’t the only life we will have, but what I can’t see is that a God who allows the amount of bad and suffering that goes on in the world, even on an individual level should be so worshipped. If a father treated his children in the way that the supposed Heavenly Father treats his, no-one would want anything to do with him. Yet worshippers of a God go to all and any lengths to ensure that they continue to do things in the name of the father and to not upset him for fear of the retribution they will receive.

I’m not one for dismissing belief as believing in the fairies and what-not (with the possible exception of the dinosaur deniers,) but I am becoming more and more curious as to how it is that people can believe in this individual God and actually believe that it is true when there is no evidence to suggest anything of the sort.

PS: I am talking about any and all religion not just one. My thought process being that if there were one God it would be the same God whether you are Christian muslim or Jewish but that the scriptures are defined by humans to make for the individual religions.

Monday - genuine question: if you met someone from another religion who believes as deeply as you do but did their religion (with its different ideologies, figureheads etc) then how can you not think that the other religion must be wrong/mistaken, but knowing they must feel the same way about yours too?

Not that someone shouldn’t have different beliefs. That’s not what I’m saying/asking at all. What I’m trying to say is - if Christianity & God, (for example), definitely exists, and you believe 100% in it, then aren’t all other religions who dont follow Christianity, mistaken in their beliefs by default?

SundayGirls - Perhaps the greatest difference of all [among religious views] lies in the Christian assertion that none of us can save ourselves and make ourselves acceptable to God, try as we may: all the other faiths assert that by keeping their teachings a person will be saved, fulfilled or reborn.

The difference is simply Christ. Christianity is the only religion that believes God became a man who died on a cross for our sins. This death is the only way to erase our sins. He said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, NIV).

To know Jesus loves me, my life has the forgiveness, grace, understanding, and comfort of Jesus Christ. God loves us so much that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, whose sacrificial death freed us from the sin and brokenness of this world. My faith is a response to Jesus' great love for me.

In the actual area where I live within that city, children from almost all the other areas, let alone the worst of them, wouldn't ever get a look in with the local 'good' schools.

so school admissions are unfair, and the way to fix them is discriminate based on religion?

I am all for helping the poor get a better education. Pretending that that is the goal, outcome or intent of faith schools is disingenuous.

How can living in sin cause cancer? Many forms of cancer have unknown causes. In fact, many diseases and syndromes have unknown causes, so what is going on is that people are dying, we aren't causing it, and god is letting it happen.

Pretending that that is the goal, outcome or intent of faith schools is disingenuous

No one said that is the way to fix the school admissions.
I never pretended anything. I simply said what I see happening.

I do get annoyed by the high moral dudgeon of how unfair faith schools are, given the massive exclusion by post code which is the lot of so many children, and the inclusion by post code that many very expensive house owners' children enjoy.

Faith schools do happen to give some people a chance who would not other wise get it.

Some faiths have a teaching mission, as well as goals such as helping the poor, and historically these aims led to the founding of many of these schools.

I do get annoyed by the high moral dudgeon of how unfair faith schools are, given the massive exclusion by post code which is the lot of so many children, and the inclusion by post code that many very expensive house owners' children enjoy.

Postcode inclusion goes along a rather obvious criterion for admission: distance. Certainly in London, there usually aren't catchments and admissions are done by distance. But for all the faults of the distance criterion, it is a really natural criteria for school admissions. But certainly, I agree, the distance system can be gamed, and those who can game them are usually those with means. I am all for school reform to raise the standards of schools with a lot of poor children, or make admissions more fair.

But you are implying that faith schools are a solution to this. They aren't. That is not their intent, and I'd be pretty surprised if that was some broader outcome and not just anecdotal. Also, you suggest that some poor kids get into good schools because of faith schools. Well, that should properly be stated as some poor kids of the correct faith do. I have yet to see a faith school that prioritises poor children over faith. All you are saying is that some good faith schools have some poor children. Well, many community schools do as well.

The difference, however, is that we wouldn't tolerate religious discrimination anywhere else in society. Imagine if Tescos said that they were going to prioritise Christian applicants for jobs because they had some rationale that it helped some poor people get jobs. I don't think we'd like that. If you want to help the poor people get a better education, that's great and I totally agree that's something we should work for. but let's not employ some unproved trickle down theory that they'll get it because of faith schools.

marchin1984 yes you have made your self very clear its discrimination when a child from wealthy parents cant get into a faith school because children of that faith are prioritised but when child of poor parents cant get into a tax funded school because they cant afford to buy into the catchment area its perfectly ok because in your own words "The other is richer people get better stuff, well in line with the rest of British life"

As I said up thread people are now demanding that my local RC school should be catchment only rather than give 40% of places to catholic children, but it wasn't a problem 50 years ago when I lived on the local council estate and went to that school, it wasn't a problem in later years when my nieces whose parents still live on that estate went to that school, no its only a problem now because another school in the catchment area the one that rich parents have been paying over inflated house prices to get into now is over subscribed, so these parents have turned their attention to the other good school in the area, the one they couldn't have given a flying fuck about before, the RC school and suddenly their wealth doesn't give them automatic entrance into that school, they have to wait behind other children like my great niece again from the local council estate, who got a place over their children. And of course if it did become catchment the local council estate would not be in it

Jesus Christ, whose sacrificial death freed us from the sin and brokenness of this world.

And how does that actually work?

Because it doesn't in real life.

And is human sacrifice OK with you?

This thread isn't about how logical Christianity is, everyone knows Christianity has no logic. It's about why people believe. Someone helpfully implied it was because people were too frail and meek to deal with reality. However there is probably an evolutionary advantage to supernatural belief. Humans have always believed. Modern day atheism does not fill this need. It is hard for atheists to accept this without insulting religious people.

also some people follow a religion because it confers some social advantage. the poor get a chance to put their children into schools that are not private or grammar but can still give a good education. they just need to act out the rituals of the faith eg go to church, and devoutness is easier to enact practically speaking than having the right accent or dinner party conversation wit.

I'm not even commenting on how " logical" christianity- I am interested in how ethical it is.

Why would you want to accept a faith that has human sacrifice at its core, that the god of this faith is a documented infant killer, a vile temper and jealousy issues?
And yet christians say they love him.

I wouldn't have a coffee with this bloke, never mind worship him.

Well, I'm still baffled and sad . Still have had no answers to my questions and frankly don't think I will now. Have a good day everyone xx

Though think you have a point @tameka and @speakout

Speak out - I'm not a Christian , though from what Ive studied most christians acknowledge the issues with the Old Testament God and base their belief in God on the New Testament which is Jesus- who did none of those things you mention and was quite a moral person. So yes ethically speaking there isn't an issue there.

I think what I don't understand is people's need to know why a Christian believes and when they answer it isn't good enough. I have no desire to question a Hindu, Sikh or indeed an Atheist on what they believe or don't believe. I just accept they do. It doesn't affect my faith.
I also can't accept the war argument. I'm sure if religion didn't exist, there would still be war, we would just pick another difference to fight about...their have been plenty of wars just about land, familys, clans etc.
Going by a how argumentative a couple of the atheists have been on here, I don't think atheism is all sweetness and light either. We are all human.

I'm reading an interesting book at the moment that highlights the left over traces of polytheism in the Old Testament and also the traces of God's partner.

"I think what I don't understand is people's need to know why a Christian believes and when they answer it isn't good enough"
Well, the thread title does rather invite discussion!
For me, saying "I believe this-I have faith" is fine. The problem arises when people start trying to explain their beliefs rationally -for example by pointing at the natural world-saying things like "there has to be a God-it couldn't have happened by accident". On a thread like this that invites challenge-and so it should

I also find the denial of Christian privilege completely outrageous. Particularly when coupled, as it often is, with claims of "Christian bashing"-which appears to mean anything but absulute acceptance.

Believe whatever you like. Just don't expect special treatment because of it.

When I was at university I went to a talk on the big bang and evolution and the scientists there even said they get to a certain point before the big bang where they can't explain where the existence of those atoms and indeed the general "space" they inhabit, came from. Someone asked could it be a higher power and they said why not? Anything is possible.
Believing in God and science doesn't have to be mutually exclusive and I have been to sermons in my church that accept that.

figment I've read a few papers on that and it does make more sense and is v. Interesting.

yes you have made your self very clear its discrimination when a child from wealthy parents cant get into a faith school

I am glad I was clear. But it's not only me that's perfectly clear on this. It's also the UN, ECHR, and the British government. Virtually nowhere else in British life can you discriminate based on religion. Why? Because we (a broad swathe of british society) think it's abhorrent. Tescos can't do it, estate agents can't do it, and councils can't do it.

but when child of poor parents cant get into a tax funded school because they cant afford to buy into the catchment area its perfectly ok because in your own words "The other is richer people get better stuff, well in line with the rest of British life"

Well, I guess I wasn't clear enough, so I will clarify.

There is a difference between religious discrimination and wealth "discrimination": one of those is actually a real thing that is illegal in Britain (except for in faith schools!) and the other is not. It's a lovely thing that in Britain you can't (mostly) discriminate on faith. In contrast, we all know that wealth buys better things, and by and large we are mostly ok with that. And furthermore it isn't illegal in most places. it's not illegal at shops, it's not illegal in the school system and it's not illegal in housing.

But, if you also read further in my posts above, you will see that I am not at all ok with poor people getting substandard education, and I am all for helping the poor have access to better education and I am for reforming school admissions to make it harder for the wealthy to game them. However, except for anecdotes above, I don't see at all why faith schools help this at all. Are there studies on this? If you want to help the poor get better education, I'll be right behind. But I see no evidence that faith schools are good at this, or even better than community schools at this. All I see are anecdotes.

This thread isn't about how logical Christianity is, everyone knows Christianity has no logic.
Just Christianity that has "no logic" or do some faiths do?

@walkingdeadfangirl forgive me jogging backwards a little, but I've only just noticed that your school's admission criteria includes "Church Applicants in order of priority"

I'm just wondering how that works - surely if you're a church member it's fairly straightforward, without any need for further "rankings"? (Unless, heaven forbid, it comes down to who gives most at collection / volunteers most often for the flower arranging / gets on best with the vicar, etc )

@logicalmum

None have any logic

Faith is by definition illogical. Otherwise no faith would be required.

Puzzled the local CofE school to us apparently (heard this 2nd hand so can't vouch for its validity directly) does require parental efforts towards the church community, such as volunteers and fundraising and not just Sunday attendance to get an attendance book stamped for school place.