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.

I used to be very religious. I think largely as I was born into it so culturally from a young age assumed a God to exist and interacted with what I called God.

I'm no longer religious however I still interact with what I call "God" and maybe it's merely my intuition or maybe it's a higher power, fuck knows... I'm not bothered, it brings me comfort and without the fear of being burned in hell by this same source - I take refuge and comfort now in the existence of something beyond my 5 senses that guides me

I think it's quite easy to believe in God if you're experiencing something you attribute to being God interacting with you

If you don't have that, then I can see why it wouldn't make sense to believe

Why are you so concerned about it being a religion or not?

A belief in nothing is a belief, nonetheless.

The problem of the existence of natural evils seems to be the biggest issue here.

Why does a 'good' God allow earthquakes, diseases, disasters etc to happen?

Im interested to hear the religious justification for this...

Not having a religion is not a religion.

It's so desperately try-hard to suggest otherwise.

It requires faith that the thing doesn't exist.

Maybe we have different interpretations of the word 'faith'. I don't think it requires much in the way of faith to not believe in unicorns, for example. But I'd put the existence of god and ghosts on about the same level of likelihood as unicorns, which many people wouldn't.

And not having a religion is not a religion!

It's so transparent when theists pull that one out, as if they secretly know religion is bollocks and are trying to drag everyone down to their level.

Pat Robertson, the evangelist, said that hurricane katrina, that wiped out new orleans was caused by god being angry about abortion

Indeed he moves in mysterious ways

Taby Tiger. Forgive me but I cant agree with your argument. Its not just people who have done terrible things in the name of religion God did terrible things in the name of religion. He did terrible things to gay people in the old testament. He wiped out two cities where they supposedly lived. The christian right In the US know and exploit these kinds of stories of course.. The bible is in itself very ambiguous and contradictory and you can use it to support almost any argument you chose.

TIRF, I think Catholicism is one of the cruellest most fucked up religions around. I could weep for my Catholic friends.
Glad you said one of the most, i can think of much crueler, Islam perhaps?

No idea. It’s baffling to me.

@Ragwort you have put it perfectly for me. Thank you.

Why does a 'good' God allow earthquakes, diseases, disasters etc to happen?
Why think earth is meant to be a paradise? surely that's the next life (if we are to believe in God)

Patriarchy: god is not 'good' in the fluffy caring sense of the word according to large parts of the bible. He is only only 'good' in the Hollywood version of it.

Logical

Eh? Asking for God to prevent hundreds of thousands of people being killed in natural disasters isn't demanding that Earth is a 'paradise'.

try-hard
What an odd thing to say.
This is why I avoid all religion, including atheism. It has the potential to turn otherwise reasonable people into morons.

God did terrible things in the name of religion. He did terrible things to gay people in the old testament. He wiped out two cities where they supposedly lived. The christian right In the US know and exploit these kinds of stories of course.. The bible is in itself very ambiguous and contradictory and you can use it to support almost any argument you chose.

I understand qualms with the bible, I struggled with many aspects of it greatly when I first became religious.

However I don’t take the bible literally. I take it as a literary text - it is analysable, and some of the views it portrays are conducive with its time of writing. But society has developed, and I know everyone in the three congregations I attend view it in a similar way - I couldn’t attend a church that supported aspects of the bible’s content. Like any literary text, you take from it what you want. I understand the damage that has caused, but do believe that people who choose to take hatred from a text that is also full of love would find hatred with or without the bible.

I know I don’t share the views of all Christians - I am just sharing with you my views

I see what you are saying.

For me personally, it saddens me that are natural ways and ritual to respect the land, and the masculine and feminine qualities were both celebrated, were erased and replaced with this 'god' figure. Thats why I dont believe because it was basically a form of control and wiping out the ways people had lived for years. There is so much proof of people just living for the seasons and it makes much more sense to have more power in our psyches than praying to a 'god. It's like teaching people we can't have the power or the answers are it's all transcendent, when it's not.

This is where my disbelief Is, because so much of it was not even original, just replacing what the people already did in a free way and turning it into a outside power.

Also the sexism and 'bad lilith, eve and poor Mary Magdalene. Yawn.

People can and DO have morals without religion of the Abrahamic kind.

I have no problem with people believing in God/religion as a personal belief as long as they keep it to themselves in the same way that I keep to myself my personal belief that we are descended from aliens.

I don’t know. I don’t.

I believe in God, but I've stopped going to church because I have never felt so unwelcome. You don't have to go to church to believe. But I think the church needs to be more friendly to those who do go and actually practice what they preach.

The reason how or why anyone believes in God is because they choose to. Nobody can know if God exists, you can't know, you can only believe. It is always a leap of faith. Someone has to make that choice. I believe in God, knowing that there is no empirical proof.

I grew up being taught about God and the Bible, went to church occasionally with family and friends but not regularly. But I made a choice when I was older to believe - once I was old enough to realise that not everyone believed and that it was rational not to believe.

Tabby Tiger. Very interesting post. Thanks.. I don't have qualms about the bible. It is like you say of its time. I do have qualms when people use it as a social/political weapon But..because I have actually read it, (and haven't forgotten my reading of the OT) I am finding the 'Why does God let bad things happen?' question running through many of these posts quite puzzling. God lets bad things happen because this is what he has always done

.Nearly every war in the world has been down to religion. I find that hard to accept that a God could be accepting of. I'm very happy to sit on the fence with it.

From the American Civil War onwards this isn’t true.

Neither world war was about religion. Nor was Korea or Vietnam. Unless you think communism is a religion, I suppose.

It's an atheist's belief that there isn't a god, but there's no way to prove they're right. Just as there's no way to prove atheists are right. There are things that atheists and theists present as irrefutable evidence that god doesn't/does exist which is sufficient evidence for them to believe this personally.

I am sorry but that is nonsense and a classic example of the local fallacy of false equivalence. As an atheist I am not saying there is no god, I am saying that I don't accept his existence. It is upto the person making the positive claim to provide evidence, and there is no reasonable evidence to support the existence of a god. Atheists don't claim to have all the answers, I don't know is a perfectly reasonable position to hold. If is theists who claim to have the answers, usually based on some ancient book of dubious provenance.

In terms of your original question OP, I'm with the existentialists. Religion is ultimately comes about because of fear of death and because it's really hard to acknowledge that life ultimately no meaning.