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?

Saving to read later...

The thing that makes It different than a pink elephant, or a fairy at the end of the garden, or an evil dwarf floating in a teapot around the moon, etc, etc, etc, is (to me anyway) that those are very specific things, whereas a creative force isn't really a tangible or knowable thing.

I'm finding it hard to say what I mean, sorry!

I don't see why religion should be given special treatment, to me religion is the same as believing in the tooth fairy, nice stories but not true. I'm not trying to insult anyone at all, it's just how i see it. I don't see how that's insulting really.

When my mum got cancer, my sister (who is a vicar) asked as many people as she could to pray for her. Which, given her job, was presumably quite a lot. It left me thinking, if someone without my sister's "connections" had a mother with cancer, so therefore less prayers, the implication is God would be less likely to cure them. It just seemed to me that this approach turns religion into X Factor, "The mum with the most number of votes and going into remission is ..."

I don't want to believe in that kind of God.

Mum is in remission and doing very well, but I'd rather "believe" that's because she received excellent medical care.

I don't really believe in that sort of God either, Rollers.

I pray quite a lot, but it's usually just like...talking things over. Like meditating, but believing something hears you, I guess. When I do pray for people it's just like thinking of them in my mind and all the love and peace I want for them. It's not really a "please God, can this happen" kind of thing.

I don't think belief is really a choice people make in that I don't think you can reason people into or out of belief. You either do believe or you don't.

I am an atheist for the reasons others have given - belief is unecessary. Life has meaning and sense for me as it is.

I did have a fairly heated debate the other week about the need for religion to provide a moral framework. My moral framework is provided by the social imperatives of being reasonable and cooperative and recognising individual rights. I know what is right and have a concept of good without religion being superimposed on top.

I am amazed how many people have posted in such a short time.

I'm not. Atheists have very little space to explain themselves IRL - certainly not without being kneejerk branded as 'militants' whatever that is supposed to mean! They tend not to bring up what they don't believe in everyday conversation - I mean, why would one? I was slightly amused by the last line of the OP 'If you know someone who doesn't believe in God, why don't they?' - like this was some rare condition (you probably didn't mean it to read this way) - I'll bet you actually know lots of people who don't believe in God yourself.

A direct question on an Internet forum invites response - (and hopefully you find most of the replys simple honest not 'harsh').

It is hard to believe in God because there is no hard evidence that He exists. I don't believe in God because I have never seen, heard or felt any manifestation of His existence!

all human societies have some kind of religious belief system to explain the unexplained. we now know that there's nothing 'swallowing the sun' when there's an eclipse and we know that sacrificing goats does nothing for the next years' farming... but there are still belief systems (monotheistic and polytheistic) all over the world.
it's clear to me that there are so many different belief systems for different cultures that none of them can be 'right' - they must all be social constructs.
once you start to think like this, it's difficult to see how you could ever again 'believe in god'.

ScroobiusPip, the Golden Rule predates Christianity by quite a long way.

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in God, I suppose it's difficult for someone who has been brought up a Christian (I assume you are talking about Christianity re. confirmation) to comprehend that those of us who haven't can believe this way but I have no reason to believe he exists either

Because religion is the opiate of the people. Ancient peoples invented God to explain phenomena they didn't understand - disease, extreme weather, etc.
These days we have science.
Therefore we don't need a male deity looking over us telling us how to behave.

Hawks - But why do you think father christmas and the tooth fairy are different?

The 'moral framework' question is interesting.

I doubt many of the contributors to this thread have very different basic set of ethics to the OP. Mine didn't change much when I lost faith. Specifically religious 'moral frameworks' though - well, then you start to find all sorts of differences in the details what each book lays down in its dogma as 'moral'. This extra layer is often a lot to do with controlling people - especially women.

Maybe I have always thought that way and still believe in God.

I just think that over time the people in the world have had different ways for explaining It based on their experiences and knowledge at the time.

I can't believe, and for all the reasons listed.

I agree that the garden is amazing enough without fairies at the bottom

Also heaven as a concept just doesn't work. SO you get to see all the people you loved again? The two sisters hate each other, but the mother wants both in heaven? So you have to be in heaven with your bitch sister you can't stand? How's that heaven?

It just makes no sense at all for me believe in god.

I'm not a spiritual person at all, but I have more understanding of people that celebrate the world through Paganism than those that believe in 'God'.

But Nagoo, everyone is happy in Heaven. The bitch sister that you can't stand is no longer a bitch. She's the epitome of kindness and sunshine in Heaven! Tsk, didn't you know that?

I find it more useful to look at this from the other side ? why do I believe in God, when from a purely rational sense that belief is difficult to justify. Part of it comes from a stong sense of the presence of God. It?s hard to ignore something that I experience as being present. However, I?m well aware that my dh, an agnostic,, doesn?t have this sense at all, and the existence or otherwise of God just isn?t an issue for him. I don?t know whether this difference between us is something genetic (like being able to taste the bitterness in sprouts), or something learnt (like the way different cultures perceive colours differently).

As to which God - I don?t believe in Thor, but I believe that the people who did, sensed the presence of God, and tried to articulate it, along with other things they did not understand (volcanoes, thunder, earthquakes, the seasons etc,) through their own stories, and there is something of the truth of all these in the myths. Personally I come from a Christian perspective, but I don?t think any of us has a perfect understanding of God ? we cannot catch and measure and categorise God - I imagine God as a light in a great house with many windows ? all of us on the outside looking in from difference angles seeing different aspects of the light, according to our different religions?and all of us to some degree seeing ?through a glass darkly? (to throw in a biblical quotation!)..

I'd like to pose a question for the OP - perhaps thinking about her answer to it will give her some ideas for answering her own OP.

Why do some people find it hard to believe that crop circles are evidence of alien vists?
If you know someone who doesn't believe that crop circles are created by aliens, why don't they?

Re harsh comments - I think that on a forum people are more inclined to say what they feel.

I have many friends who do believe in God. They go to Church, pray etc but I would never tell them that I don't believe or the reasons why, because it would be like rubbishing their beliefs.

I was brought up to believe but as I have gotten older I've found it harder and harder to.

I am aware that I am the biggest hypocrite going as my DD1 goes to a Church school (it was the nearest best school in our area) and she believes in God because of School and my Mum. I haven't swayed her either way, she'll probably make her own mind up as she grows up.

Like others have said, the suffering of innocent people seems to be pretty strong evidence against an all-loving all-powerful god in my opinion.

I don't understand why an all-loving christian god would send a good person to hell just because they were a hindu or muslim etc.

I don't believe in the right-wing US view of God because apparently He thinks my sexuality is morally wrong.

I do find it hard to justify morality without God, which has pushed me to consider religion. But believing in God just leads to different things that don't make sense. And if there is a strict moral framework in the universe which comes from an all-loving Ibrahimic God, I wonder why He didn't communicate it more clearly - for example, the old testament seems to jump between highly important moral laws and things about types of fabric and dietary restrictions that most people ignore. In particular, if being gay is wrong, why didn't He say so more clearly, and if being gay is fine, why did He leave it ambiguous enough to give ammunition to religious homophobes.

Hello again.

Replying to Grimma at 8.47, yes, I can see that the last line could be read differently to how I intended it. Of course I know lots of people who don't believe in God (some of the people I love most).

By and large I think the answers have been honest and not too harsh! Maybe you're right that active atheists don't get a lot of chance to air their feelings in RL and need to vent!

It is interesting that lots of people have explained why they don't believe in organised religion, Christianity or tooth fairies. Personally I don't see those things as synonymous with God at all. I know many people who believe in God without believing in any of them.

I don't see organised religion as necessarily bad, but I agree with the many posters who have said that it has been and is a method of social control which has frequently been abused by powerful human members over the course of human history. Their failings don't make me question my faith though. Humans repeatedly screw things up in lots of areas of life, regardless of faith or lack of.

One of the interesting points for me has been the issue of 'why would God allow so much suffering?' Hammy I am so sorry to hear about your son. This is certainly a question I will raise on the course, although I expect others will get there before me as it is a recurring theme.

Of course prayers are not like votes on the X factor, but I do think it is good that people offer to pray for the sick. I think it equally good if an atheist or indeed anyone of any faith says 'I will be thinking of you, and wishing you well'. I would take such a thing as kind and well meaning, but can see that pain and grief and fear would make you less tolerant to well meaning strangers of any sort.

MMM Just to clarify, I am with you 100% on your 2nd and 3rd points. I don't think God cares one bit about whether a person follows one religion, or another, or none, and certainly not about people's sexuality. That is another example of human beings manipulating organised religion to push their own agenda.

acorn You have put it beautifully. Yes, that is how I see it too.

The thing is, the way your question is phrased makes it sound as though believeing in god is a thing one would and indeed should try to do (why do some people find it hard to.... stay organised, bond with their babies, say they're sorry). It's not that I've tried and it's too hard for me: it's that I think the idea is risible, so why would I?