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?

Talking in the broad sense isn't going to get him an A!!! (I used to be a really* annoying teacher who got all her students to define their terms etc 'Now tell me what youmean bwhen you say 'truth'...)

Yes, religion is unsustained in mnay people. Me incuded, and I'm a card-carrying, God-defending lifelong believer! What does that prove? That people are unreliable? Errr, yes, we knew that already....!

holo

He has his very own beliefs about relgion and what it can mean to people and how it can affect cultraly and socially .

I have alway been open with the dc and let them make their own minds up .He even enjoys going to church/temple /synagouges to look round and chat

He disliked RS when younger as felt it was to narrow now for him he explores more indeapth

he be back to argue the point im sure ,but as something new he wants to read and work out his own thoughts

Why don't you get your son to talk for himself. Or better still share your own ideas

That's great, Human! It's just that if he wants to be a scientist, like Grimma said, scientists refuse to work with baseless allegations, they think things through rigorously and logically - so apply the same rigour to thinking about religion. I would seriously recommend RS / Theology as an A Level subject as it reallty does train you to think!

notfluffy he has said if no one minds a teenage boy posting he may well come do exactly that

Me on personal grounds I dont believe .I watch my own ds3 suffer with sn and wondr how can a God be so cruel to make him suffer same for many of my friends dc

having been told by a friend that my nephew who was not baptised would not go to heaven as not free from sin

Cathoic relgion for me for a lot of reasons . some is relgious some is their moral choices which they pass of as reiligous beliefs

then so many people claim their God is the right one and end up fighting over it .Even when a lot of their beliefs are so similiar.the belief so many people have that their way is the right way and are not willing to be open minded

then relgion is also a mix of morals and cultrual beliefs to all tied uo with the title of reiligion

Where are the agnostics in this debate? I admit I have only read about 15 pages but so far not found any agnostic responses.

To me a belief in god can be totally separate from belief in organised religion.

The first I simply do not know, the second I don't believe in. So I don't believe in the patriarchial, all powerful god as written in many religious texts but perhaps god is a concept that people cannot define nor understand as yet or ever. I really simply don't know.

And I see no reason why science and a belief in god need to exist separate from each other. I believe in evolution etc but why should that stop me considering aspects of the universe that may be something godly.

There is so so much we do not know, I could never declare that I definitively believe one thing or the other. Perhaps that is why I enjoy science fiction so much. And much of yesterday's science fiction is today's science.

"Notfluffy, yes, books like God is Back"

Well, I have no intention of reading this for the time being but thanks

I am aware that atheism is increasing in the US so maybe Europe and the US don't apply. I'm with Marx on this one, if indeed there is a 'huge' (I doubt it's that huge) resurgence in religion then it's not in the developed world.

"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions."

Human, I've been told / heard a load of bollocks in the name of religion in my time. Learning to sift the beauty from the bollocks has been my journey of faith (and still is). That is bollocks, what you were told about your nephew, hurtful, heartbreaking bollocks.

I've also suffered a lot of illness - am right now, hence all the posting on this thread. So finding / discovering God in suffering and illness has been another big part of my journey of faith. What I can say, hand on heart, is that every time I have prayed, I have known great comfort and help. Suffering hasn't turned me away from God, it's turned me more towards God. Also, being part of a church I have known great comfort and help from other people too, people I'd never have anything in common with apart from faith.

And yes, pepole are partisan and violent (file that under 'bollocks' too).

Ah, Marx. Gottaloveim. 'Like your manifesto, put it to the test though' - (Sultans of Ping FC, 'Where's Me Jumper')

Night all - I'm off to watch telly with my DH and scoff Christmas chocolates!

What kind of truth do you think science gives us? Is it a competing truth / meta-narrative than that of Christianity?

Truth as in, this is what is real. This is why I don't see it as a competing truth with Christianity because (while that may include some philosophical 'truths'), there is no reason to suppose Christianity is true at all.

Science does not of itself provide answers to ethical questions (though it may provide supporting evidence.) But that doesn't mean that therefore you need religion for that.

holo

so in your case it brings you a comfort that you need and seek and i can respect that ,

for me it raises more of the why questions.I place my belief in other thing includin g modern medicine and that give me a strength to keep going .So it shows that we all turn to something when we need it be it man /relgion or something else
Is human nature to seek comfort when we are troubled

My question would be 'which God?'; there are an awful lot and virtually every religion has a different afterlife.

Faith is a different matter - having faith in God allows for belief when that is not 'rational'.

yes Define God as who and in whose name .What is in a name .Allah/god jehova . etc?

and who says your god is the right one ask someone else and they will have a differnt take on their god

Talking about the things we now know science can describe to us, and not mythology.... I still don't get why the bible's description of, say creation was, for nearly 2000 years, to be taken literally and absolutely but slowly, as all the 'truths' were eroded and replaced by actual hard knowledge... they then shift to 'parables', or 'allegories' or 'metaphors'. It's evasive and not rigorous thinking - surely you either believe it, 100%, literally - or you don't. If the bits that are now disproved have therefore shifted from 'god's word' to 'metaphor' - then none of it was ever god's word, surely? Science describes reality; myth cycles from the middle east describe something else entirely.

Human, definition of faith

Grimma, if you are around today, is it fair to say that science, as you understand it, is able to observe things and deduce other things from those things that are observed? So it offers answers to 'what' (description)and 'how' (processes), but not 'why' (i.e. what used to be called metaphysics) - science (I think) in and of itself can't speak of why things are, just what things are and how things are. So to say that one prefers a 'scientific' view of the world is to say that one prefers a worldview that talks about the what and how but doesn't ask the why question? Do you think that's fair?

9flowers, are you really interested in talking about this? I can give you edited highlights of my many posts I've alreasy done on the subject if you like - (but not if you are just sounding off about them dirty libruls!

Does there always have to be a 'why'?

No there doesn't always have to be a 'why'. Asking why we are here is like asking 'why is blue?'

There is no answer, there is no purpose to our existence, I'm cool with that. I have no idea why others find it so hard.

I don't find it hard Notfluffy!

'there is no answer' - why do you think that?

Smart arse! I meant to accept there is no purpose to life on earth. To us.

I wondered how long it'd be on this threa before someone called me a smart arse!

But...obv, I don't agree with you. You see no purpose in life, I do see purpose. How do you know you're right? Where does your certitude come from?

Because I am an animal, there is no more 'purpose' to my life than that there is 'purpose' to the life of my dog or your cat. We live, we do the best while we're here, we die. Our personal existence is completely irrelevant on the grand scheme of things, we are a particle of carbon in an infinite universe. I can see how that's scary for someone like you, but it's true to someone like me.

Carl Sagan got it spot on :"We are all made of star stuff." Watch this film, it's amazing

Notfluffy, sorry to push you on this, but again, I want to ask on what you base these propositions. You seem to say that being an animal is related to purpose, or lack thereof. How?

It's not scary, it's just not convincing! I shall watch Carl Sagan in a mo, when I've made a cuppa.