Why do some people find it hard to believe in God?

[MosEisley]

I believe in God.

However, I am attending an adult confirmation class and we have been asked to consider why some people do not believe in God. DH and I came up with:

• there is no absolute proof of God's existence
• they are rebelling against a strict organised religion that they can't accept as literallly true

If you know someone who doesn't believe in God, why don't they?

Shall I spoil it by saying I'm sure I was delusional before?

But, I suppose having 'been there' instills a bit of humility - I know I wasn't inherently stupid back then, and had I met different people along the way who knows, I might still be happily deluded. I'm extremely grateful for the atheists who did voice their opinions. (Less grateful to the accidental agents of change - the nutters people like Nineflowers ex, the fundamentalists who talked the talk but didn't walk the walk.)

Yes. It makes me pretty cross when I come across people like nineflowers' ex who take it too far and put fervour over humanity. Where is Jesus in that?

I've seen their FB group. They do seem a bit...er... fervent.

Rational - I suppose it's the old respect-for-the-person not the belief thing. I think that's why we can talk reasonably politely - you don't have to agree with someone's belief to like them or even to engage with them in an appropriate and respectful manner.

I am as passionate about my stance as you are about yours, and for that could never 'respect' the belief of atheism, if 'respect' means accepting of the belief and giving it as much credence as mine or any other. However I take 'respecting the belief' simply as respecting the person's right to hold such, as I am a respector of people.

So I can say to Grimma I am happy she feels liberated not because I give credence to her non belief but because I respect her as a person and as such wish her to feel happy.

I really, really tried to buy into the delusion. Really really. With every fibre of my being. (I was young, and on an unrelated note, mentally ill at the time.) I wasn' stupid, but I wasn't thinking

Couldn't do it. It was such a relief when I realised that you don't have to believe that god exists. Not in the way, for e.g. you sort of have to believe in the kitchen table, or the force of gravity.

Like nineflowers and grimma, I have cause to be very grateful to the fundamentalists I met who helped me on the road to atheism. There were a lot of them! (The one incident that was the clincher for me leaving the church was when I brought a friend with me, who happened to have severe learning difficulties. One of the senior people in the church said that they "couldn't stop" him coming to church, but he wasn't to come and eat with us afterwards, because she "couldn't stand watching those people" eat. The pastor told me I was being over-sensitive about that, and that she had a right to her opinion.)

The other thing was that when I left that cult church, I was ostracised, completely. And since they had spent the previous couple of years making sure I was isolated from old friends and family, I had a long lonely road back to rationalism! Good way of keeping people in the fold though, making the alternative losing everything.

I can say now that I never believed in god. I professed to, when I was confirmed at 10, but I didn't. I didn't when I was going to that church. I had a god-shaped hole in my psyche, and I was trying to find things to fill it.

madhairday the speaking in tongues things fascinates me. As such, I used to stand in services and actually listen.

Often the same people, and the same selection of "random" syllables. Each person had a very distinctive style. Whichever person was "called" to interpret also had their own style, which did not change. The messages were never earth shattering, and invariably bolstered the rightness of what the church population were doing.

The "tongues" had no grammar or syntax. Most of the time, they only had 5 or 6 syllables, repeated over and over. It didn't make ANY SENSE.

I believe it is mass delusion/ hysteria. Obviously, there is a small possibility that it was god all along, and for some reason I couldn't see/ hear/ touch/ smell/ taste/ otherwise sense him being about.

Crunchy

I don't blame you a little bit for leaving such a place.

Toxic, ungodly and shameful.

I wonder what Jesus would say had he been at the table.

Hmmmm...oh yes. He was the one who ate with outcasts. See that's what always bring me back, time and again. People get it horribly, horribly wrong, on power trips or whatever it is that is giving impetus. But when churches get it right it can be beautiful, as it was always meant. There will always be mistakes, but when there are such shocking ones that send people away - well, they will need to answer for such, I reckon.

Thing is, if I'd been only a little more "in," I would have accepted it. The other people in the church accepted such stuff as completely fine, e.g. refusing to associate with homosexuals, condemning sex as wrong.

It was infantilising.

The only reason I could get out was because I had never truly believed in any of it. I can see how people get stuck.

I can understand why you think it is mass delusion/hysteria. I really can. That's what the original biblical account says - that people thought the disciples were drunk, until they heard them speaking in their own languages.

I have a friend who was in a remote part of South America (can't remember where exactly) and was praying for someone there. She prayed in tongues for this lady, who became amazed and was able to communicate that my friend had prayed in her little-spoken language. OK, you can say that's one of those urban myths, but I know and know of too many people this has happened to.

Yes I get what you're saying about syntax and interpretations, which has often not convinced me - often someone is just giving a nice happy message. Again, we get it wrong.

OK. I guess I can see that there are many churches that some of you have been associated with that are controlling and toxic in many ways. Not associating with homosexuals? Again, I would point them to Jesus. It just sickens me that some of these rule-bound places keep such a heavy tab and put a heavy burden on their members and indeed some become 'stuck' and trapped by that place.

It doesn't have to be that way. For me faith is about freedom - utter liberation. That is why I am incredibly suspicious of churches such as you describe. They seem to have gone spectacularly off course. Church should be about community, support and caring for the vulnerable, poor and ostracised. If that is not evident then that is not church.

I am truly baffled that someone can ask that in the 21st century. I know that some people do believe in (one or other of the many contradictory) God(s), and at least I have some idea of the reasons why - reassurance about life after death, guidance for moral judgments, support etc. etc. Not to be aware that even some Mumsnetters don't believe in any God (the phrasing of the question implied that belief was a condition of membership) is astounding.

There is no evidence for a creator nor any evidence that there wasn't one. There is no evidence that any creator is anything other than completely indifferent to humans. I don't believe in any god any more than I believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa.

But surely if you a a Christian, you have to accept the Bible as the word of God. Or you are not, by definition, a Christian?

Was that to me seeker? Not sure what that was referring to? :)

I am a Christian. I accept that the Bible is the word of God in the sense that it is the word about God (as in, 'do you have news of so-and-so?'). It was written by humans, and bears witness to our struggles to understand God, and of human encounters with God. It tells of how God has reached out to us. It is God-inspired, but it is a human document.

Or do you mean that if I am a Christian I have to take the Bible literally? Not so.

^What she said

So anything you don't like or agree with, you can reject? Like St Paul's teachings about women? Like Leviticus?

Ah now St Paul's teaching on women, that I can happily talk about for too long a good while. St Paul rocks, in actual fact, if you are prepared to dig deep into the context, into the meaning in the Greek, into parallel passages. It may surprise you to know that I think Paul was radically liberating to women...

Leviticus, meh. It was rules for a community living in extremely harsh circumstances which necessitated such laws to live in any way peacefully. Context and all that. Jesus came and turned such around by focussing on loving God and loving your neighbour. And that being the heart of it all. Which was originally what the Levitical laws were in principle about. There was meaning to each one, however daft they seem to us.

So no. There are bits of the bible I just don't get. There are hard bits, odd bits. It doesn't mean I reject them. I engage with them. I believe the bible was inspired by God but still a fallible human work, and so engage with it as such. God gave us reason and intelligence. Surely accepting every word as law would make us somewhat robot like? Things are never black and white

Nope, not at all. Those things have to be understood in terms of the development of humanity's understanding of God.

But, you know, why not try reading Leviticus -- I mean, the whole of it. Because it is really mainly concerned with how a people can be holy. Read Paul's letters. They're mostly concerned with the good news of the risen Christ.

And also, as I said, the Bible is written by humans who are, as we all know, perfectly capable of getting things wrong. The more important, and interesting question about the Bible, is what did they get right?

Your answer, if you are an atheist, may be 'nothing'. That's up to you. But it's unreasonable for you then to dictate the terms on which I might decide what in the Bible is right.

niminy - have we met before? :)

I've lurked around here for a while but only just started posting. Maybe I'll pop across to the chat thread and introduce myself

The thing is, MHD, the church I was involved in was as utterly convinced of its rightness as any other. HOW are so many people getting so much so wrong, while also, at the sane time, being sure as eggs is eggs that they are doing the will of god?

To me, that points to a deity who is capricious, if not downright deceitful. Or else suggests that the whole thing is just stories and garbled history.

I'm not saying we have nothing to learn from the collection of books that is the bible, but I don't see that it has more value than Herodotus or Shakespeare. Or indeed, Twilight (think about how much sociological information there is in that little gem!)

Twilight as a sociological textbook? Quite possibly, if one can get past the fit-ness of Edward Cullen

I know Crunchy. How can I be sure 'I' am 'right' and others not getting it right? The answer is, I suppose, I can't really. I can only keep looking back to Jesus, who I follow, and in whose name I believe the church should be behaving. If they are not following Jesus' teaching, then something is skewed. I follow the creed as central tenets. I believe the church should be caring about the vulnerable. This is what I look at. If churches are in any way controlling or trapping people, brainwashing in any sense then they are not living according to the liberation Christ gave.

No church gets it right, of course. Some are just more right than others

It's 'Rational', I've changed my username as a sort of experiment. Apparently I was being arrogant using Rational as it implied I knew it all. It was a pain in the arse having it thrown in my face if someone believed I was being irrational, which is NEVER anyway

Oh, and my new username is a nod to madhairday and cheerful who are just the fluffiest chicks on MN and are always lovely to me

I think 'caring about the vulnerable' translates in reality as 'suckers the vulnerable'. My ex was clearly mentally ill, but this church had no problem with jumping on him. Now I find that somewhere beyond dirty. Same with my (baptist) step-relative - she got suckered into religion when she was at her lowest, literally just out of a mental hospital. She is a lovely person. Over the years she has got a lot of comfort and friendship from her church and yet - for me, that sticking point is the way they swooped on her at her lowest. (I dunno how they pay their 'pastors' is it? but suspect the congregation have to dip their hands in their pockets?)

My ex was fairly well known to have a lot of money. Stupid amounts of money due to two legacies. He has since written my children out of his will - and some private hospital and this c of e (but actually they're alpha course), in. You can't tell me they didn't know there was money in it, and a vulnerable person is more soon parted from their money.

His very involvement with them gave the courts more evidence of his mental state - yet rather than support him and hep him get better, they have whipped him up into this frenzy of sanctimoniousness presumably because if he got approrprate help and, god forbid, got better - he'd wake up and change his will.

This is the true nature of religion. Let's not pretend it's about owt other than the £.