Why do you believe?

[Frenchy100]

This is a genuine question. I'm not wanting to be argumentative or anything, am genuinely interested.

It fascinates me, people believing in a god, I struggle to get my head around how/why people would believe in one.

How do you reconcile the belief in a god with all the horrendous things that happen in this world eg murder, rape of kids etc? I always hear religious say that's just because people have free will. But if god is this almighty being that can basically do anything does that mean he 'sits back' and watches those things happen and does nothing?

As I said I am genuinely not flame throwing. I have just never been able to get my head round it. Am genuinely interested in what makes people believe in a god?

Frenchy100, I don't know. I've asked myself the same question a thousand times, and I have no answer. Except to say that if a see a child abused, I will step up, and I'm one of those bloody awful Christians, so I'm on His orders. But it's still pretty shit because no one protected me when the bad things happened. So yeah. No idea.

My brother is a Professor of Particle Physics and conversations with him on the subject have that effect on me! He can talk for hours on the subject of how the universe began without mentioning god at all

And yes, I totally agree that being small in the vastness of existence, both in the size of everything, and length of time it has existed is both daunting and strangely comforting.

See that is what I struggle with Floral

So what is it really that makes you believe? What made you first believe? Or were you just bought up in the environment? (I actually was, my parents are catholic and still go to church every week)

Do you know what, it IS comforting isn't it? I have just thought about it. The million things I worry about and stress over are really nothing in the scheme of things!

I'm gonna chill more!

Relais - your brother sounds like a very interesting (and highly intelligent) person!

*Surely if a "worthy" god exists then he would prevent any child from suffering at all?

This is what I will never understand.*

Yep. And yet many people still continue to believe in a god.
And surely if you're a god, realistically, you'd want to show it off - instead of hiding behind a belief system aka religion (of many religions, warring).

Your "farming project" hobby of seeing a bunch of ants (humans) prosper to building a globalised civilisation is a huge huge accomplishment of "free will" yet you offer no helping hand what so ever when it comes to modern provable media content for all humanity to see.

Honestly, even if god truly exists, I'd never, ever worship him/it/her under any circumstance knowing the sheer amount of "natural" deaths humans have had to endure, under the entertainment of such a god.

kirstie - very good point you make there at the end and one I have expressed myself before. IF there is a god I really don't hold a high opinion of him, for precisely the reasons you mention

No, I was brought up in an atheist family. Chaotic childhood, abuse, lots of confusion. I discovered Christianity when I was nearly out of my teens and it was the charismatic stuff, which veered very quickly into very conservative evangelicalism. Fundies, basically. Led to a real sense of security after years of uncertainty and fear.

Obviously it led to all sorts of other problems, and I escaped from fundamentalism some years ago, but I found myself untangling the control and the bigotry and believing there was something positive in Christian belief. My own response of hope and a desire for personal autonomy perhaps, I don't know.

So, I suppose it was a desperation thing in the beginning, and now it is a hope thing.

And what about things like 'pride is a sin'

Why?

Why would it be bad/sinful to be proud of your children, for example?

Pascal argued that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God because you've everything to gain if you're right and nothing to lose if you're wrong.

I believe in God because I do. I struggle with the idea of an afterlife and doing good deeds for a perceived reward though.

Floral - thanks for being so open, that's really interesting.

Funny isn't it how your upbringing was atheist and mine was catholic, forced to go to church every week. And now we have the opposite beliefs...mmmm!

However, the end result is we both try to be decent human beings and that is that matters

I've always wanted to ask a believer why they are so convinced that their religion is the correct one. After all most people believe and practice the faith they do due to circumstance and not choice. That is; family,geography, culture etc

I don't think it is wrong to be proud of your children. My own understanding of sinful pride is when I do something and fail to acknowledge others, when I put my own ego first. Being proud of your children is a completely different thing.

Reagan - 'I believe in God because I do.' Does that mean you literally just have this inherent pull/belief that you can't explain why?

Ha, the diversity of human experience and the conclusions we come to is endlessly fascinating.

@Blizzardofbuzzards I grew up with a priest that preached that people will be judged in the weight of their actions regardless of the flavour of their religion. That makes most sense to me. I lost my way with religion when other priests tried to tell me otherwise.

Thanks Floral - you might have guessed, my knowledge is somewhat lacking.

Yep, pretty much. Can't explain it, it's just there.

I don’t know. I was raised as a Christian, went to church every Sunday, Sunday school, sang in the choir, got confirmed and then at aged 14 I lost my nan. She was 56 and had an autoimmune disease. My mum lost her faith overnight. So we stopped going to church.
As an adult with a child of my own I would say that the world was too beautiful, too complex to have not been designed. I have faith in Newton’s third law of thermodynamics ‘energy is neither created or destroyed’ and what makes us distinctly us? What is our soul? What happens to that unique signature of us when we die? I believe there is a higher plane where we meet again, my 7 yr old dd believes we are reincarnated.
No matter what the truth is, whether it’s nothing, heaven or a reborn life I think the most important lesson is to live your life now. Not to put off until tomorrow but to live for today. Look for that silver lining, hug the ones you love, be a better person.

A child being abused by another person is down to "free will".
But a child dying from a natural disaster or disease? - and yet ANYONE still follows a god?
And to top it off, due to political correctness, this message could be considered as religious hate speech. Even after all our grandparents did during WW2 to combat anti freedom of speech aka fascism.

Frenchy, I think you're in exactly the same position as anyone else on this earth. We're all coming to this with the same vantage point, I honestly have no more knowledge than you do about eternity. I can offer my guesses and reasons, but that's all they are in the end. I have no authority whatsoever.

I'm not sure I am, agnostic I suppose, I was raised religious though.

I guess I believed that 1. We existed before this life, we knew what we had effectively signed up for 2. More significantly, that we needed a mortal experience for an opportunity to gain a body 3. And finally the age old free will.

I guess in the large scheme of things, if you believe, than even those who suffered horrendous things, it's just part of the mortal experience. That it doesn't matter if you die as death is just the interval to the next act. I hope I'm making sense.

Now, I've had experiences that made me question all of it and while I have always tried to consider myself open minded and questioning, I've realised that religion does seem to make you a lot more closed minded. I don't think I believe in anything anymore. I'm in a very confused state between being atheist and having all the things I believe I knew.

But back to the question, essentially the letting mortals suffer, I guess it comes from a place of knowing better, god knows that all experiences are for our benefit even painful ones, I guess I would have likened it to vaccines (not wanting to start a debate on that) but that we vaccinate our kids, even though it's horrible and painful and can even make them ill for days, but because we believe that there are benefits to doing so,

mummyhaschanged - gosh I really struggle with your last para. I really couldn't begin to try and explain to someone that had lost a child why it was for their benefit (or any other benefit)?

@ReaganSomerset the problem with the everything to gain and nothing to lose argument is it's not really true is it? Mostly because there isn't just one religion, so how do you pick the "right" one? And secondly, religion can be damaging, in many cases there is a lot to lose if you were wrong.

Just to throw in - I'm really enjoying this discussion and I'm really glad everyone took my opening post in the spirit (scuse the pun!) it was written