Can you "choose" to believe in God, if you just genuinely don't?

[aquestionwithnoanswer]

Namechanger as this is just a bit too personal.

Basically as the title says. I can't help it, I believe facts. I believe science and proof and things that I can "know."

I was raised in Christianity, can quote the Bible chapter and verse, educated about many religions, surrounded by people who have faith, but I cannot bring myself to believe in God - any God.

The thing is, I want to. For various reasons, I really want to believe in God.

Do you choose it? How can I "make" myself believe it? I certainly don't feel it. If I am honest, it all makes very little sense, it is illogical, it is not rational. My mum answers that with "that's why it's called faith!" but that is not really helpful.

How do you get there from here?

I don't know. When I was immersed in the Church, there was one guy who always asked people to pray for him to have "faith," because he just didn't. I couldn't even ask for that, I just didn't believe it at all. None of it made any sense to me, there were no answers, yada yada.

Believers will generally come up with answers along the lines of "listening for the still small voice," or "really opening yourself to the Lord" etc, which don't actually mean anything. I've also been told that the Lord himself hardened my heart. For some ineffable reason. I hate it when deities don't play fair.

Anyway, the answer I came to in the end is, yes, you can pretend to yourself and the world, but the bottom line is, if you cannot perceive anything there, there chances are, there is nothing there, and you are making yourself miserable for nothing.

Pascal faced this one. His advice was to behave as if you do.

There is no reason, though, why both science and God cannot exist. It does mean that things like the creation story are treated as a story, a myth for explaining truths about relationships, rather than scientific proof. But science can't explain the love I feel for dh and dm and dc, why should it? So it would be unreasonable for it to explain the relationship between God and his creation.

That said, I don't come from an evangelical tradition and all the relationship that people have with their Redeemer means nothing to me at all. From time to time I get a sort of feeling, but very rarely conviction. It's a bit like an onion, I have layers of unbelief and the occasional layer of belief. But I know that if I jettison it all I am the poorer for it. So I continue as if it were true.

Hth

Ps, completely agree, misery just not worth it! Living with doubt one thing, beating yourself up and feeling guilty another.

And also not saying that some people do have that relationship. Just that I don't. And people praying that I did makes me feel claustrophobic.

Science can and does explain love through evolutionary psychology.

headinhands really disagree that evolutionary psychology EXPLAINS love. Surely if that was the only solution then love would be much more straightforward as that would be so much more sensible in terms of reproduction and guaranteed survival of our genes. Evolutionary theory does not explain why the most suitable partner, father of your children great provider, just doesn't 'do it' for you any more and you have an affair, desiring the thrill etc.
Sorry, but love is far more complex than the simplistic idea of evolution. And so is religious faith.

Don't, not do. Darned phone.

Klick. So you agree that science can explain love, but the bits you don't think it explains are obviously evidence for god?

Headinhands- your summary is not quite what I said.
The bits science does not yet fully explain are not evidence for God- but evidence that we need to keep an open mind. There is a place for science and God and love.

It depends what you mean by 'a place'. Seeing as there is no evidence of a creator god who has any interest in me there is no 'place' for it. As for love, I see evidence of love in my life. My husband is good to me and I to him. I understand that many people claim they love god but where is the evidence that a god loves them?

They feel that I believe- they experience a feeling of reciprocal (as established by the evidence of a 'religion' receptor part of the brain found in MRI scans) love, which is as much evidence as they need- no one else can feel the love we share, but we can also see the good people do in the world as a result of religious belief (for example Mother Theresa). Think we are splitting hairs a little here- for those who feel it, God's love is real.

It depends what the definition of real is.
Real; Adjective:
Actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed: "Julius Caesar was a real person".

As for the brain MRI's revealing gods love in action. The same part of the brain is seen responding to images of the Apple logo in new iPhone/iPad users apparently. Wouldn't such findings suggest that that part of the brain just deals with liking and belonging and not some god installed hardware?

You cannot force yourself to believe something that you know to be false. You can pretend that you do, and you can behave as if you do, but inside you'll know you're lying to yourself and others. That's not good for you.

Why is it so important for you to believe in God? Is there a particular form of God that you feel you should believe in or might it be worth exploring other religious beliefs or philosophies to find one that fits with what you want to achieve without the need for forcing anything?

If you want to delude yourself you could convince yourself of just about anything I suppose. I just have no idea why anyone who came to the rational conclusion that god doesn't exist would feel the need to delude themselves in this way.

I do - I mean I choose to believe in God despite the bit in my head that tells me there isn't one. Whether that is enough, I don't know.

I would love to have the gift of faith

Thank you all for your replies so far. Trying not to out myself, but will explain a bit further.

I am going to lose someone that I love. He believes. If it makes any sense, he "needs" me to believe as well. He needs to know we will see each other again someday, in some version of heaven/afterlife/etc. And I desperately, desperately want that. I would do absolutely anything to believe that there is more.

But if I am honest, I don't. It's sort of like that "what you believe...is possible!" thing in reverse. I feel like if I could bring myself to actually believe, then at least there would be this tiny ray of hope of "someday." Does that make any sense?

No matter how hard I try though, I just can't believe it. Science, facts, proof, logic, rationality. It is not in me to just simply set those things aside. But I so want to.

I am aware of how stupid that sounds.

I don't think you can force yourself to believe.

I was raised in a very Christian family in an extremely Christian culture. I went to church every Sunday, church primary school, church secondary school (boarding) where we had church every Sunday, prayers every single day (twice a day on 3 days a week) and compulsory RE.

I just don't believe it. I was the only Christian in my school year to choose not to get confirmed as I was already agnostic by age 13. Now I'm an atheist.

Doubtless my life would have been much easier if I could have forced myself to believe. Where I live it is socially and culturally very important to go to church, and some of my family are quite angry about my atheism, but hey ho.

I think you can definitely pretend to believe, and may be able to pull that off convincingly, but that's different, of course, to actually believing.

I'm sorry to hear of your impending loss.

I wonder if you could look at the Bible story of Jesus' death and resurrection and see if you can accept that as a true, historical story. To me that is the kernel of the gospel: Jesus was a real person, in real history, just as real as Julius Caesar or Napoleon. He did an extra ordinary thing: He died and came to life again. There are numerous documents to attest to that historical fact. It's not a matter of: you'd better believe it, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a well documented fact. There are enough books you can read about it, you can also stubbornly shut your eyes to it and say: yeah right, if you believe that, you believe anything.
But once you have accepted that, once you have accepted Jesus as a historical figure, you can also accept that He said He would go before us to 'prepare a place' in the Father's house (John 14).

How wonderfully tolerant of him. He's ditching you because you don't believe the same things he does, and you think the response to this is for you to feign belief?

No, the respoine is for you to look on it as a lucky escape, someone with such a pitiful worldview doesn't deserve a thinking woman like you. Sorry to sound harsh, but what a loser!

It's HIS loss.

And I say that as a Christian who DOES believe. What a narrow minded person he sounds.

I go to church and I believe but I don't force that on anyone else.

Are you going to lose him because he's going to die, or because he's unable to continue the relationship because you don't believe?

If it's the former, then you need to understand the 5 stages of grief - bargaining is one such stage and this sounds like it. Ultimately, what he believes is between him and God and he cannot force you to believe what he does. He is desperate to be reunited with you because he is frightened which is understandable. He needs to turn to God for his existence in the afterlife, not you. We don't even know if we're reunited with people in the afterlife, if, there even is one.

If it's the latter, then he needs to accept that you should not put this pressure on somebody to believe and perhaps he needs to find somebody who does.

Stubbornly shut your eyes? Is that what everyone who is atheist,agnostic or of another faith is doing? To the contrary, it seems one has to keep ones eyes shut to the realty of life on earth in order to have faith.

Take prayer for example, the abject lack of evidence for any purported supernatural intervention that can not be explained by other means. Not one verifiable miracle. Doesn't that alone set off alarm bells in light of the great commission and other promises of divine intervention in the NT?

I guess it depends on whether you really fundamentally think that there is nothing beyond the here and now, or if you are in more of a doubtful frame of mind. I am an atheist from a very Christian family and my mother tells me that there are many texts I could read that would enable me to believe despite doubting, and that that act of mental wrestling is a good one. She is quite academic, so I can totally understand this, but to me it's not something I have any interest in because I don't doubt. I just don't believe, and probably more importantly I don't want to believe.

Oh my I guess I worded that poorly. The loss I am talking about is a death, not a breakup!

DutchOma's is a good example of something I wish I could believe but don't. I do believe there was a man, Jesus, who did exist, because there are, imo, credible historical references to him - in the same way that I believe that Napoleon existed. But I don't believe in his resurrection or any of those other "miracles" that are so fundamental to Christianity.

The thing is, now, I want to. For him and for me. I want there to be more.

But actually believe it?

So often on MN, I read posts where people genuinely seem to believe things (such as a partner being faithful, or someone doing what they purportedly think is right, etc.) that are so clearly NOT justified or supported by fact. I always think that it must be because they so badly want to believe those things, that somehow, they do.

Well I so badly want to believe there is a God, a plan, a heaven.

A habit I have in difficult decisions, is to try to debate the other side. I can make what is, in my mind, a fairly substantial argument that none of the above exist. I struggle to argue with myself that they do, so how on earth to convince myself of it, I don't know. I'm gathering that it can't be done.

I choose to because I want to. It makes me happy.

I have made that choice knowing there is no evidence whatsoever.

It just makes me happier to believe that we don't cease to exist when we die than it would to believe that when we die, we're dust and that's it.

I'm aware that it could be wrong, but my view is that it doesn't matter. I will have lived my life feeling comforted by the thought that when I die, that's not it, it's not game over, that my children won't one day wink out of existence. If I get to the end, close my eyes and that's that, well so what? The years leading up to that moment will have been happier for the belief.

But I wouldn't agonise over it to try to make myself feel it.

It's really very simple - do what makes you happy.