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?

Awww.....well hello notfluffyatall I never thought you were arrogant, but I tend to look past user names at the person behind them anyway - but yes I can see why you'd change if you were getting abuse.

And I am always Rational too in any case

Gosh well, nineflowers. My dh is a CofE vicar.

That's it. We just all want your money

Really, though. I'm sorry you've had that experience, and I've no doubt that there is something of this going on - as I keep saying, we all get it wrong.

However, my contention about caring for the vulnerable is that we are called to care for the vulnerable. Whether they come to church or not, whether they are interested or not. We seek justice for the poor and needy because they are poor and needy and because we believe everyone has value and worth and everyone deserves to be cared for.

If vulnerable people often appear to 'be suckered in' then that may be because they have finally found something that gives them life, that fills that great yawning need, that transforms their life and often their circumstances. Surely part of being a Christian is to tell others - should we not tell people who are mentally ill in case it is seen to be 'jumping on the vulnerable?' - even if we believe it could make for something amazing and wonderful in their lives?

It's not about money. Money gets in the way sometimes, particularly with these old money pit buildings, so can appear to come down to that at times. But for those truly seeking to follow Jesus it's so not about money you couldn't even go there. It's about freedom. Pure and simple :)

What are you free from that I'm not?

One of my relatives is a c of e vicar and she is someone I like a lot but I can't believe anyone educated can believe the fairy stories she believes. Her parish is some sleepy village and not what I was talking about there. My ex is in one of those happy clappy urban churches that aims for a young (more disposable income?) audience, and as I say, my concern is the C of E seems to have been infilitrated by the extreme right wing American style of evangelism that is the Alpha Course. I think no-one can trust the integrity of the C of E until that dodgy stuff is rooted out.

Some of those 'happy clappy urban churches' are doing a great job of reaching out to their communities, and ime have a wide range of ages, from the very young to the very old. I have no doubt some people have a range of bad experiences, but that happens in every community, everywhere. The C of E is not 'infiltrated', it is merely existing in the form of many different expressions that suit many different tastes and ways of worship. I am glad that there is such a breadth - I'd be pretty pissed off if there was one rigid way of being church or worshipping - rather narrow and tedious in the extreme, I imagine. Look at the Chinese church - the government have endeavoured to do just that and the underground church has exploded in this huge way there with many different expressions.

Alpha isn't right-wing. If we're getting into fundie right-wing speak we're not talking about a course which gets people talking about the meaning of life. Yes the aim is to introduce what Christianity is all about, because as I have said before, what would be the point of being passionate about faith and believing it can transform lives for the better and then never sharing this - of course if invited to share. I fervently don't believe in pushing views on those who do not want to talk about it. If invited, then I will do so, only within the sensitivities of how much that person wants to discuss stuff, and how the conversation is going.

notfluffy I cannot answer that really, I don't know you and your life and what your hopes and dreams and fears are. But for Christians freedom means living in the light of their true worth, of being worth dying for, of being of this intrinsic value and of being set free from all the crap that comes with being human and all the stuff we all get wrong all the time.

to all those out there who have answered the question, what about God as a creator......someone, something must have at least created everything!....shall we just call him God for now???

Picking up random thoughts:
Funny the way 'speaking in tongues' which is any recognisable human language always happens in South America or the deep past. In Birmingham it was always gibberish (suppose that's the tongues of angels?). Been there, done that, realise now the cognitive dissonance has gone that I was faking it.

niminypiminy: welcome! Good place to jump in

Notfluffy - did you twirl? Yeah, 'rational' sounded a bit arrogant even though IMO your posts generally aren't.

Nineflowers - and you know what they want the ££ for? To buy up all our schools. Except once they've got their hands on one their proportion of funding starts to come from parents' 'voluntary' contributions and the PTA. No joke.

......someone, something must have at least created everything

false assumption. The 'someone' anyway. For the 'something', the laws of physics suffice.

Why must someone/something have created everything?

Think about mould. Who creates mould? No-one, it just happens after a period of time.

Humans/nature/animals - it's all just complicated variations on the same idea.

Very few see creation in the traditional sense nowadays, far more common in the USA though. Nowadays ID or Intelligent Design is much more fashionable. Find William Lane Craig on YouTube, he just talks waffle but throws in a lot of scientific waffle to make it sound like he knows what he's talking about. He truly is a twat.

I can't even comment on the speaking in tongues malarky, all I cam say is, why? Wtf is that all about?

Grimma - I'd like to have been judged on the content of my posts but some saw it as, and I quote "a red rag to a bull"

someone, something must have at least created everything!

If we posit that everything must have a creator, then it follows that this creator must in turn have been created by some über-creator. And that über-creator must, in turn, have been created by some über-über-creator and so on.

On the other hand, if we posit that at least some things can come about spontaneously - eg, we permit that there could have a creator without needing an über-creator to create him/her/it - then we don't actually need to invoke the role of a creator at all.

Or, to put it more succinctly, if God could effectively appear out of nowhere, why couldn't the universe?

Grimma! Are you saying Brummies talk gibberish? I am half Brummie, thankyou.

Seriously though. You are implying that all those who do this are making it up. Faking it. I can say that it's real, but I do realise this cannot be proved. However, I remain convinced, and experience bears this out again and again. It's all I can keep saying :)

I'm sure I have heard William Lane Craig somewhere - was it him in a discussion with Dawkins where he blew him out the water?

Grimma, I have to admit I don't know the ins and outs of church schools and funding, despite having taught in one However my old church was attached to a school, and there was certainly no funding source from the school for the church - in fact it was vice versa, if anything - but I guess it works differently for voluntary/foundation? Whatever, I don't think you're right. I don't think they are only after money. It's not what I have witnessed, and I've been around a fair few

Creation - I accept this argument convinces no one. I still think it's beautiful and awesome and amazing and all that though. But I don't think science disproves a creator God. It just doesn't. But neither does it prove it.

Ah. We're back to the beginning again aren't we? Circular. Always the way.

Dawkins refuses to debate Craig, he won't debate with creationists on principle.

Even if "someone, something must have at least created everything," why would we assume that this creator is particularly interested in the activities of every individual member of just one species on one planet, which has existed for a very short time in relation to the universe? There is no necessary connection between God as creator and God as source of ethics. I can imagine that there might indeed be a "Creator", but what that Creator might be is way beyond my mental grasp. "God" on the other hand, as described in various religions, is very human: in the best cases he wants people to be good, treat others with love and compassion... In the worst cases he provides justification for intolerance, aggression and violence. The difference isn't between religions, it's between people: and that, it seems to me, is because whatever an individual considers to be "God" is in fact a reflection/projection of their own values. Nice kind people have a nice kind God :)
Accepting that religions and even God are human creations makes more sense to me than getting tied up in knots trying to explain why supposedly divine texts are so open to being interpreted in different ways.

Ah yes I remember now, he refused to engage with Craig. Craig and Hitchens had an interesting talk IIRC, and Sam Harris I think described Craig as someone who actually debated with firm reason and gave atheists a run for their money. I need to watch more from him before I make any decision on his twat-ness, or lack thereof

I've seen the Hitchens and the Harris debates. Harris described Craig's debating tactics as 'schoolboy', he is a professional debater which is obvious, that is the only concession I'll give him. The content of his material is guff.

I will watch it properly sometime. For now I really should be talking to my DCs, rather than sitting square eyed at the pooter all evening. Poor neglected children

I have a friend who is a very devout Christian and has no use for the Bible at all. Drives my brother insane. She feels that she is a follower of Christ and as such, a Christian. :)

Aren't Christ's teachings written down in the bible? I daresay she'd never have heard of him if it wasn't for the bible.

Nonsense if you ask me.

In my book, 'ID' equates to Intellectually Dishonest. Its almost worse than honest sod-any-attempt-at-rationality creationism. Its a cynical manipulation of scientific words to delude people who want to have it both ways.

Depends what you mean by Intelligent Design I guess.

I'm no scientist but accept evolution as a good explanation with a lot of good evidence.

Doesn't mean there's not a creator behind it all though

Yes, she's a bit of a nut. :o

I adore her.

Intelligent design is a blind alley, and a diversion from the really interesting questions.

Of course evolution by natural selection is the best explanation we have of how life forms have come to be in the forms they are now, and of course it has the best evidence. I think you'll find that most thinking Christians accepted that within a decade or so of the publication of 'On the Origin of Species'.

But the question evolution cannot answer and to which there is no answer given by any kind of science is 'why is there something rather than nothing?'.

There are lots of scientists who are Christians, who don't see a necessary conflict between science and religion. They tend to be physicists and chemists rather than biologists.

God is the reason why there is anything. He doesn't exist like other objects in the universe, because he is prior to it and separate from it. The universe is made out of him, but it is not him. He is in the universe but he is not of it.

Dawkins et al claiming that there is no proof that God exists are simply missing the point -- and showing how philosophically ignorant they are.