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.

The reason how or why anyone believes in God is because they choose to.

I don't think it's a conscious choice for everyone. I think it's different from, say, choosing to be vegetarian.

I've known people to really struggle with a lack of faith when they desperately want to it so I don't think it's as cut and dry as that in lots of cases.

People might choose to attend a place of worship, do more reading about their faith, read their sacred texts and pray/mediate on it, but much of the time I don't think the faith part is something people can actively choose.

Brahumbug. Very interested to read your post. As an occasional theist, I do not claim to have the answers. I am not able to provide evidence and have no desire to do so and it would never occur to me to use the bible as evidence. For me its very subjective. If you can feel the presence of god you can feel it The kind of 'evidence' which scientific rationalism might require is not the point at all for me. I hope you can believe that I am in no way disrespecting your views; I'm just stating that I feel comfortable wandering outside the paradigm of scientific rationalism.

hahaaa this Thread is hilarious.... thanks OP I needed a laugh today

I don't think it's a conscious choice for everyone. I think it's different from, say, choosing to be vegetarian.

I am not sure what this means. you can make it a conscious idea by directly asking a person what they think and why they think it.

I don't really 'get it' but I wish I did. I envy those who have strong faith and who really believe.
However, I was raised to think that when you pray for someone, it's their soul you're praying for, not a recovery of their physical body. That God calls people back to him when he sees fit.
Similar for all the bad people in the world, He isn't answerable because when he created humankind he gave them free will. It's people who have gone wrong along the way.

Going somewhere after the death oral not hasn't no bearing on whether life has meaning or not.

I don't believe anything happens to us after death, life still has plenty of meaning for me

I dont believe and i have no desire to

The universe is awesome enough as it is

Believing in God is not a choice for millions of people.

It's only a choice if you have been raised in a non or bi religious family, then your interest is piqued, you read or are drawn to an faith.

Being brought up in a religion.. And carrying that on is not choice.

I think this is a debate about do you chose beliefs or do the beliefs chose you??

some people still believe that the world is a mysterious and beautiful place. - indeed many humanists feel exactly like that.

The key to life is accepting the "not knowing." Scientific knowledge (provable by the testing of a hypothesis) has provided answers to many things that were attributed to divine intervention; and as knowledge progresses, I have no doubt whatsoever that many things we do not yet understand will be explained.

Those who have a religious belief need to find an instant explanation to those things that we do not understand - so they all get baggaged into god as the explanation for everything.

We should embrace the not knowing as simply being part of the human condition. Anything that simply requires faith in order to believe in it is a fantasy.

So...why does anyone believe in god? - I have no idea. I can only assume that for them faith overrides logic.

Not believing in god does not mean that you do not have a moral compass.

Being brought up in a religion.. And carrying that on is not choice.

it's a choice in this country, or at least it is according to the law. I was brought up in a religious family but I am no longer religious.

Here any adult should see people of many different religions. there is no hiding that there are different points of view. Anyway one can seek out information on any of them if they are interested.

Faith and doubt go together though, so people who have faith are ina position of not knowing, just as when a rationalist does not yet have an explanation.

Why does God allow suffering is a very common, old question

Indeed it is and, in spite of 2000 years of trying to answer it, no sensible answer has ever been produced

If you look into the concept of reincarnation, I think you'll find it's explained very well

Haven't rtft but in my view it really depends on what your idea of 'God' is... old man with long beard sitting in the clouds seems silly to me. As does a vengeful or otherwise anthropomorphic being.

Having said that I do have a faith and find it a great inspiration to me.

Belief in God is the logical thing to do.if there is a god you have covered your bases,if there isn't, well nothing lost.

if there is a god you have covered your bases

I'm sorry but that's daft. What if you've got the wrong god. And how could he be satisfied that you feel your belief is about 'covering your bases'.

it's not quite that simple though, is it? you may find yourself in hell with all the christians, jews, atheists and muslims only to find out that the jains were right. To say nothing about the fact that some religions regard worshipping a false god is worse than keeping your mouth shut on the whole topic.

it's really difficult to play roulette properly when the house tells you to turn around while they spin the wheel and they'll tell you the result.

The single event that really helped me realise I didn't believe was when our RE teacher stood up in front of the class and said that we had to believe in heaven and an after-life because it was literally impossible for him to imagine himself dying and completely ceasing to exist.

That's a sheer lack of imagination right there. Maybe you should have asked him to think about all the people in other towns and cities around the world, and how they're getting on with their lives not knowing that he's even on the planet. I think that's about as close to not existing, as a person can possibly get.

However I don’t take the bible literally. I take it as a literary text

Jesus took the OT literally. When he quoted it he never added the proviso that it was fiction. Why wouldn't he seeing as it's been used so much to discriminate.

Good old Pascal!

I for one truly hope God exists.

I would take great pleasure in having him/her cast the bullying bastard (who takes such delight in making my life a miserable existence) into the wilderness.

But if that mindset is what born again Christianity is all about? Then count me out. I have had a lot of things shake my world. This person, and their actions, destroyed the little bit of faith I had left.

much of the time I don't think the faith part is something people can actively choose.

But faith doesn't just happen to someone. Not without their choice. Someone who desperately wanted to believe but struggled with their faith is having trouble with the belief, that leap of faith. But without wanting to believe and choosing to believe, I don't think someone can have faith.

Although I understand that CS Lewis was an atheist and then found his faith against his better judgement, so to speak.

From googling: ^C.S. Lewis left his childhood Christian faith to spend years as a determined atheist. After finally admitting God existed, Lewis gave in and knelt in prayer to become what he described later as “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

Lewis’s long journey away from, and back to, faith began with his mother’s death from cancer when he was a boy. Disillusioned that God had not healed his mother, Lewis set out on a path toward full-bodied rationalism and atheism.

The road back to faith was cluttered with obstacles Lewis once thought impossible to overcome. His conversion to a robust Christianity required years of intellectual struggle and came only after being convinced that faith was reasonable.^

Hi Bolokov
I fully accept that people sincerely believe that they can feel the presence of a god. The trouble is that we can accept numerous different, mutually contradictory positions on faith making faith a very poor way to determine truth.
Religious belief is not like an atheist saying I don't know, a theist is asserting that there is a god but without justifiable belief.

For those who see the bible as an ala carte pick and choose, if you can ignore the parts you don't like then what is the point of Jesus as a personal saviour?
Why did god come to earth to sacrifice himself to himself, in order to circumvent rules he had created in the first place, when he could have just amended the rules.
Most of the good people on here are morally superior to the biblical god, after all we would condemn slavery, rape, mass murder and human sacrifice without hesitation, which the bible singularly fails to do.

I’m a (very) ex-catholic.

Religions came about for understandable reasons. Before modern science, people could not explain the existence of the natural world, the stars & planets, the diversity of life, conception, weather, seasons, death, etc etc ad infinitum.

Religions provided explanations for how the world works which were superficially plausible and understandable by ordinary people. They also fulfilled a useful social role by organising ceremonies to mark births, marriages & deaths. They still do.

We no longer need religions to explain stuff, because we now have real, evidence-based, testable scientific theories which work much better. Most people in developed societies understand this and either don’t do religion at all or pay lip service to it.

It annoys me how the change over to patriarchy created this male god. Ugh