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?

Madhair - don't bother reading up on ID. Your position is the respectable one for a theist. Just remember it stands for Intellectually Dishonest and be wary of anyone touting it.

"It's only impossible to provide positive proof for things that don't actually exist" Not so, my friend. Positive proof of anything is impossible to provide. It's impossible to provide positive proof that the sun will rise tomorrow, or in David Hume's example, that if you toss a coin from your hand that it will come down again. We assume that it will, but just because it has always happened before, this provides no positive proof that it will happen the next time.

I agree it's possible to work out a set of ethics without reference to an absolute standard of good (which is what God is). But nobody's actually done it yet. The ethics we live by were formulated by the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Everyone practises moral relativism. Look at what you wrote earlier -

Christians believe some different things, but I think we are all agreed on the essentials. We are all followers of the risen Christ, we all believe in the triune God, we all believe in the forgiveness of sins, we look forward to the coming of God's kingdom of love and justice.

Let us assume that you're right and that those are the main bits that all Christians agree on and that there is a lot of disagreement over the rest. Now, those things are lovely things to believe in but none of them are anything to do with morals. They're simply beliefs. They're not even enough to build a moral structure upon as they say nothing about ones relationship with other humans - they're all about your relationship with god.

Instead, you have to look at some other source for inspiration for your moral structure. I could be wrong but I understood that that source for Christians is, utimately, the bible. And so a given Christian will pick and choose which bits of the bible they think are important, which bits are allegorical/metaphorical and so need re-interpretation, which bits only applied in the society at that time and which bits are the result of human embellishment or interpretation and so can safely be ignored. And then there is all the centuries of later apologetics that further re-interpreted the stories of the bible until their claimed message can be used to support current social situations. And you may well read other, more modern books about Jesus and god and ones place in creation and those will further influence your personal morality.

Once you start picking and choosing which of the rules you think you should follow and which ones you shouldn't then that is moral relativism.

Anyway we do all, ultimately, do what we want. If we choose a particular course of action because we think it's what god expects of us then we are making that choice because we want to follow god's rules (or, depending on our belief structure, we want to avoid being sent to hell). If we choose a particular action because it fits in with our own personal morality and we believe it is the right thing to do, we do it because we know we bear responsibility for our choices and we want to be able to look ourselves in the mirror.

I would turn the OP question around and say why would anyone believe in god

And as for "If you know someone who doesn't believe in God" that bit made me snort. Instead of these non-believers being such rare creatures (Imagine! Knowing someone who doesn't believe in god!! ) Well I can say I hardly know anyone who does believe!

Well notfluffy, I like to think I make some kind of senes. Kind of.

Today words are swimmign. Off to sit down.

oh heck. bloody codeine

I think you have got the wrong end of the stick about what moral relativism is.

Moral relativism means that there is no absolute standard of good. What is good is purely situational. So, for example, my good might be that I should have everything I need, or that my anger should always be expressed, or that my sexual desires should always be fulfilled.

Now, there's a problem with that, isn't there, because my good might not be your good.

Judeo-Christian ethics (and indeed all other ethical systems emanating from particular religions) are based on an absolute standard of good. God is absolutely good, and nothing about him is not good. So he gives us our standards of what it is to act well. You might not have to have God as your standard of absolute good, but you need to have something that enables you to know with certainty what is good and what is not good.

Nothing you have said (about doing what you believe to be right, bearing responsibility for our actions, and being able to look at ourselves in the mirror) is not, ultimately, derived from Judeo-Christian ethics.

Everytime I hear about murders, rapes, peodophiles I wonder how can there be a god. After all these centuries, after all this suffering, surely someone of higher being would say enough already. Many of those suffering have not even had time to live, having suffered all their short lives. The fear and unimaginable pain some have gone through and still go through, makes me struggle to believe.

"Well notfluffy, I like to think I make some kind of senes. Kind of.

Today words are swimmign. Off to sit down."

Aw Madhair, I was just trying to make you laugh, you're obviously too stoned today

"After all these centuries, after all this suffering, surely someone of higher being would say enough already."

Shit, don't wish for that. Remember the Noah Story!! When god says 'enough already' he picks a couple of holy arse kissers and their kids, picks out a few animals he likes (not dinosaurs they're too scary) and drowns everyone else including the poor animals who surely never sinned.

It always puzzled me why that is supposed to be perceived as a lovely children's story.

Hello, I'm back!

I've never been that bothered about trying to get involved with evolution / ID debates. To me, ID comes from a woeful misreading of the Bible as well as a refusal to engage with science. IME, people often defend ID because it's part of their church's teaching - so to deny it would be to challenge the authority of the church leader, and potentially put them in disharmony with the community that gives their lives its meaning. So it's not about ID at all, it's about belonging to a community. I once had a conversation with a Christian who, very candidly, admitted that the stakes were just too high for her to question the pastor even though she knew he was wrong. Which comes back , as Madhair says, to Jesus and the way he calls his followers to treat others, with love and acceptance.

Snorbs, I get your point about Christians believing / practising different things - but to me that's part of the variety of the world. How dull it would be if we all agreed with each other! In the church that I went to for many years, we'd go to the pub after the Sunday morning service and argue amicably but rigorously about the sermon / Bible / current affairs. Those pub debates were some of the best 'Christian fellowship' I've ever known! I think that we need each other's insights to help understand a bit more fully God. No one person has the full truth - that's why we need each other (an d why the church is no place for dictators!)

I can't understand how anyone possibly can "believe" in "god"

Madhair, I'm on codeine too. Got my lovely friend to take the dc to school and went back to bed when they left the house at 8.20 - woke up 45 mins ago!

Humans would live quite happily with the Golden Rule, which predates the bible. We didn't need the bible/god to tell man how to behave towards one another. And let's face it, altruism isn't unique to the human species.

Have I just fallen into some philosophy trap for the unwary scientist?

The sun rising tomorrow isn't a thing, its an event. I'm talking about things. Maybe there's no 'positive proof' in formal philosophical terms that a coin in my hand exists but as a scientist I think I have sufficient evidence. The hypothesis I have a coin is testable and has not been falsified. (caveat - I don't actually right now, that'd make typing a bugger )

"Have I just fallen into some philosophy trap for the unwary scientist? "

He he, I was leaving you to that one

I much prefer situationalism (with The Golden Rule, or one of its refinements as one of its bases) to people getting their morals out of an old book which can be interpreted as they please. Where do you find capital punishment? Bible-belt america - so much for 'thou shalt not kill'.

'God is absolutely good' - sorry, again zero evidence.

Sorry, you're wrong. The examples I gave are based on my personal moral standard which is founded upon the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule pre-dates both Judaism and Christianity by a very long way and also stands up to scrutiny in and of itself without need of reference to external standards of "absolute good".

Moreover, given his reported activities in the bible and his continuing apparent enthusiasm for creating parasites and diseases that cripple and kill by the million, I think it's stretching it a bit to declare that god is an example of "absolute good" anyway.

Grimma, are you a scientist (just out of interest?) Bear in mind that post-Cartesian rationalism is a philosophy...

Oooh, Notfluffy, now you've got me thinking - the Golden Rule predates the Bible...does it? Which culture is it first found in? I'm pretty sure it's not Egyptian or Babylonian...I take it you mean 'Do unto others...'

Wikipedia has some useful info on the history of the Golden Rule here. Essentially, though, the sentiment behind it has appeared in ancient Egyptian writings as well as ancient Babylonian. In some form or other, it appears in most if not all religions and belief structures.

Holo - yes, I'm a scientist. I didn't say all philosophy was bunk.

The golden rule or similar is pretty ubiquitous. Here is wiki for starters.

I like Popper's 'Platinum rule': "The golden rule is a good standard which is further improved by doing unto others, wherever reasonable, as they want to be done by"

Hmmm....distinct lack of q literary parallels in that Wiki entry...that would not stand up as evidence in my

Sorry, didn't mean to post then! But the wiki article is a bit 'take it from me', isn't it? I'm used to reading more compelling arguments than that, I'm afraid! I know that lots of Egyptian material is found in the Boble, so it's not implausible though.

The Golden Rule of "do as you would be done by", or variations of, have been found in lots of cultures which predate christianity. If you want to know which was the earliest you can google.

Wiki provides lots of references at the bottom of the page, do a bit of investigation yourself if the page it's self isn't enough evidence for you. You're need for evidence is somewhat subjective Holo.