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?

Is there any other area of your life that you choose to completely suspend all reason?

Um...yes. I believe that one day I will shed this "baby" weight (DS is 4) and become sylph-like and gawjus. :o

"Um...yes. I believe that one day I will shed this "baby" weight (DS is 4) and become sylph-like and gawjus. "

I can guarantee there's more chance of that than ever finding evidence for god, so I'll even allow you a little faith in that one.

Oooh, oohh! Then can I also have: I believe that one day I will work around my ADD and laziness and clean my house like a normal person, so that people come in and say "What a cozy little house, Cheerful, I feel so relaxed when I walk in" ?!

Actually I'm already working on the weight thing, because my beloved little cousin is getting married this spring and I'm going to Michigan for the wedding. Also attending will be my bitch of a dear, dear Grandmother who likes nothing more than to comment on how fat her granddaughters are getting. My self-esteem just can't take that right now. :(

I think some people just don't have a feel for religion. It cd be a matter of genes. Nothing follows about the validity of religion: some people can't see the difference between red and green. Nor do I think there is any question of their being punished for what they were not aware of. It's just a fact of life.

Not that simple. I used to have a 'feel' for religion and if you knew my family you'd think I'd be 100% genetically destined to faith . For me the validity of religion falls irrevocably on 'Is it true or not.

Religion has worked for me, or not, based on the people I have met. I don't think it's genetic exactly, apart from what I have been saying about religion being made by humans for humans, so therefore it is bound to be able to fit our needs at least in some ways.

What do you mean 'religion has worked for you'?

Common sense usually gets in the way of me believing.

HolofernesesHead, it isn't my criteria it is the criteria set in your holy text, that you and other denominations decide which bits are devine and which bits or not strikes me as a cop out.

I'm comfortable talking about the writers of the Bible current thinking is that virtually no biblical text is contemporaneous with the events it describes, and every part was subject to revision by later authors. The oldest surviving Hebrew Bible manuscripts date to about the 2nd century BCE.

On cherry picking.

The vast majority of Christians believe - at the very least- that gay people should not have sex.

However, the vast majority of Christians do not believe that menstruating women are unclean and should not go to Church.

There is, unless I am wildly wrong, similar Biblical support for both standpoints. How is that not cherry picking?

HolofernesesHead, so if I understand you correctly you view the bible as a collection of transcripts of oral history of things that may have happened interspersed with mythology and other traditional stories that, together, give some kind of an account of man's journey to understanding god and his works but that shouldn't be regarded as the Literal Word Of God. Am I right?

If so, and if we can't rely on the bible (and I think you make a very convincing case as to why it's unwise to do so), how do we know for sure that (eg) we can only hope to get to heaven by his grace, or that Mary really was a virgin before she conceived, or that Jesus really did rise from the tomb?

Essentially, if we can't rely on what the bible tells us about god and Jesus, what can we base a Christian faith on?

Snorbs, you stole my next post you have hit the nail on the head.

You see I can't really understand why anyone believes in god, I kind of accept however that there are unanswered questions about the beginnings of the universe that people feel the need to say goddidit. I'll even kind of accept their need to attribute all the 'awesome' 'wondrous' 'beautiful' things around them to god. I can't understand how they then reconcile that with the poverty, disease and natural disaster around them but hey ho, cherrypicking's their thing.

What I can't and won't even begin to accept are adults, educated adults, accepting the virgin birth and resurrection stories, then I really begin to lose any notion of acceptance. This is just a delusion too far. I can't take this seriously at all.

Morning all!

Zideq, please read my post again. It is very clear! Just to summarise though, I'll repeat: My faith does not require me to believe in the literal, 'scientific' factuality of the Bible. It is not a science book.

the reason that this simple statement causes you such problems is something I said upthread - because we live in a western culture in which science is the 'Queen of the Sciences' (in its mediaeval sense), so that we are conditioned by 300 years of post-Enlightenment thinking to subject the Bible to tests that are completely foreign to it. Which, Snorbs, is why you have concluded that the Bible is unreliable - because you are judging it according to a set of criteria which its writers would have found baffling. It's like saying that fish are stupid because they can't run very fast or drive a car - do you see what I mean? The Bible writers inhabited a different world to you.

I go with the POV that talks about a 'long winding quest' for God to which the Bible writers bear witness - and I also believe that just as humans reach out for God, God reaches out to humans- so what we have in the Bible are writings borne out of true encounters, or wrestlings, with God.

Snorbs, not all Bible writings are oral in origin - some are very obviously literary. Could say more about that if you like.

Zideq, where did you hear that the oldest Hebrew texts date to 200BCE?

HolofernesesHead, what has western culture got to do with something being factually correct or not, the Bible is contradictory and requires interpretation how do you know that the path you follow is the correct one? The following Wikipedia links are a great start fro learning about the Bible.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible#CITEREFBernstein1996
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markan_priority
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Bible
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_document

HolofernesesHead, first off apologies if I was a bit vague. I wasn't trying to imply that all the bible is oral in origin.

But to your main point, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to play dumb here but I genuinely don't see what you mean about how we should regard the bible.

There are a number of bits of the bible (eg the Song of Solomon, Paul's epistles, the book of Revelation etc) that are clearly not to be taken as factual and that's fine. We'll leave those aside.

But significant chunks of the bible appear to be written as stories of things that are supposed to have actually really happened. If we are not supposed to judge the bible's writings in terms of deciding whether they're representative enough to base my faith on, how should we view these passages?

To take an example off the top of my head, there are the multiple accounts in the gospels of Jesus' internment in the tomb and his subsequent resurrection. What criteria should I be applying to these stories? How should I understand them? Should I view them as more-or-less verbatim accounts by different people of a miraculous event that actually happened? Or should they be viewed as recycled resurrection myths from earlier religions? Maybe they are parables for our own journey to being born again?

Again, I'm genuinely not playing dumb here. I simply don't understand how you think the bible should be viewed. How do you view the accounts of Jesus's resurrection?

Oh Zideq, how I wish I could bring you into my home, make you a (pretty darn good, I must say) coffee and talk properly about all this!

So...western culture matters because reading is a two way process. We bring our assumptions, experiences, beliefs, values etc to the text as we read.This is true of all reading. What we notice in a text, what questions we think are the best ones to put to the text, say as much about us as readers as they do about the text - more so in some cases.

That you want 'scientific' factuality from the Bible says more about you than it does about the Bible, because as I said, you are conditioned socially to value a certain reading strategy. One that, I feel, misses the point of the Bible entirely. It's like saying that violins are useless because you can't cook your dinner on them.

As for your wiki links...Q, yup, no problem. Markan Priority, yup, no problem. Bernstein needs v. careful handling - who else have you read? Have you done any reading of the dating of the Psalms? (Not Wiki!!!) Have you read much about the Documentary Hypothesis? If so, do you accept any of the arguments against it?

Erm without the Bible there is no notion of God in humans....NONE. It is because of the Bible that people, in 2012, believe in God. It is the language people use about God and the history they believe...so I am alway when people talk about their own interpretation.

I think you need to do a lot of historical and anthropological study to verify that claim, Posie!

Sorry, Snorbs - I wrote an answer to your post then my internet cut out. Must be the weight of this thread!

Okay - think of the Bible as a library of different books, written in different languages (3 of them), over generations. Think of it as a vast, sprawling, centuries-old family tree. What genuinely amazes me is the high level of agreement and engagement with older texts that we get in the Bible. So finding a reading strategy for this is not going to be simple. Identifying the genre of any given book is an important starting point. Trying to understand when it was written and how the original audience would have heard it is v. important IMO, as it stops us from making crashing errors. That's what a lot of my academic work is about. I did a previous degree in English Lit, so am v. 'readerly'.

Of course, Christains use the bible devotionally, and that's great - they ask, 'what is God saying to me through this text?' I believe in God enough to believe that Gos speaks through the Bible even without the above. I'm v. Ignatian in my faith, and one v Ignatian strategy is to imagine yourself in a Bible story. That's a wonderful and entirely apropriate way of reading the Bible IMO.

Reading the Bible 'from the outside' is going to be tricky, I think - like I say, I think you have to try and enter the world of the Bible, otherwise it won't make sense / will fall short. (see above about fish driving cars and violins).

Back in a mo to talk about the resurrection, if you like.

Sorry, meant family history, not family tree.

ds2 said well if god onvented Adam and EVe and animals etc then how comes chimps and humans do share charastics more so in early eviloution days

also if he created ADam and EVe where did the others come

he gets annoyed when people can not answe r his questions and say well because thats gods plan

I wont go into the catholic church questions he has asked .

Ds 2 will decibe himselfas an atheist and is comfortable enough to expain why asked but he is intrested in relgion is currently doing gcse Rs studies as option and everything he has learnt has convinced him more

I would very much appreciate it if you could talk a bit about how you see the resurrection stories. Given that context/genre/audience seems to be everything, I think an example of how you would approach one particular part of the bible will help me to understand where you're coming from.

I have read countless books by scholars and find the whole thing fascinating, the problem with your standpoint is religious scholars, Ministers etc would disagree with your approach knowing and understanding the composition of the Bible the only conclusion I could come to was that it isn't divine therefore it's claim have little if any meaning.

Human Catapult, if he's that intersted, he'll know that you don't have to and should not read Genesis as a science book (see above). So what's the problem with going to church?

Encourage him to read Theology at university, by the way. It's a brilliant subject!