Question for the religiously inclined

[cestlavie]

Well, apologies if this has been done before (a million times) but it is Friday afternoon and I raise it having had a rather futile discussion with the local vicar.

Background to this, incidentally, is that DD2 is going to be christened (like DD1) at DW's request - DW being a non-practising CoE type person who feels that being christened is the "right" thing to do for a little one. Being an atheist, I really couldn't give two hoots but it is important to DW and she's happy to undertake the obligations associated with the christening. Anyway, having had the vicar round (again) and having had (another) futile discussion with him as to the nature of belief I'm curious whether anyone else out there is better able to articulate things than him. In short, my question is:

What is the evidence for God, or rather why do you believe in God?

My own position is, rather simply, that (a) I do not believe there is any empirical evidence for God more compelling than any other explanation (b) I do not believe that because millions of people believe in God that this is the case and (c) specifically regarding Christianity, I do not believe the Bible to be a complete and accurate reflection of the events it describes.

I'm genuinely curious therefore as to how people end up believing in God, or is it simply, as St Augustine said "a leap of faith"? I would also add that despite being an atheist, I'm certainly not of the Dawkins camp and have no wish to belittle people who do believe - indeed I'd love to believe myself in many ways, which is part of the reason I find the subject so fascinating.

Can I just add though that we aren't talking about "superstition", that is a completely different thing - quite obviously I would have thought.

Actually, I rather think the leap of faith argument holds true, as evidenced by this debate.

In the general absence of objectively veriable evidence, many people seem to use subjective evidence in finding their belief. Their subjective interpretation of facts or events as being influenced by or being derived from a God is pretty clearly a leap of faith, certainly as St. Augustine would have termed it.

But if you experience it yourself, you don't need a leap of faith because you know it is true. Maybe that is why I'm at the believer end of the spectrum, whilst not holding any beliefs as such...

Doin well Dilly ,usually Christians argue
amongst themselves not the atheists.

Well indeed, although at the risk of disappearing up my own bottom, I suspect that the term "leap of faith" is the objective term applied to a subjective decision...

C'est la vie - yeahknow! Get back out yer own fundament.

Although tbh I was thinking more of CS Lewis, who takes that position but doesn't believe it requires a leap of faith.

dilettante - no persecution complex and it's not you, sorry. It's just that this is about the thousandth time this has come up since I've been here!

Why are the claims "not the same" and why is it "not superstition"?

This is where we start to get into special pleading and exceptionalism.

This, I think, lies at the heart of the problem - nobody sees a religion with which they they have grown up culturally as being "extraordinary", and therefore people don't see that they need to justify it with evidence in the same way they would UFOs or invisible dragons or lunar conspiracies.

The Church of England, for example, is so closely woven into English village life that it seems perfectly "normal", until you start to analyse what it actually believes in.

It all depends on the presumption you start with. Some people are happy intellectually with the presumption of faith. I'm not, because I'm not comfortable with the presumption of anything for which I have no evidence - whether that be unicorns, ghosts, demons, gods, or leprechauns.

Good evidence doesn't need to provide certainty. It's not there to "prove" something beyond doubt. Its purpose is to show that, on balance, it's more likely that the thing exists than that it doesn't. Once evidence is there, people can start to have an interesting debate about its provenance, its reliability and so on.

But without evidence, you have to fall back on the default position. And I'd argue that the only intellectually honest position to fall back on is that you presume something doesn't exist until and unless shown otherwise.

UnquietDad - OK, I get the point, that to you, the claims are the same because they all relate to something which it is obvious to you, has no basis in truth. However, the evidence in the claims you've mentioned can all be verified and shown to be false (and have been). Therefore the people making the claims are in some way complicit in the knowledge that the facts they are presenting as truths, are not true, or at least that the evidence is false. Not the case with people claiming there is a god.

To say that belief in god is superstition is just using a subjective term in a pejorative sense, even in the literal sense "not based on reason or knowledge" it just doesn't really fit since loads of theological and philosophical arguments and theories are evolved using reason and knowledge...

(puts fingers in ears and sings la la la)

(leaves thread)

UQD: just to go back to the original post, it is pretty clear (to me at least) that the empirical evidence does not support the existence of God. The aim of the thread was not to discuss this, as it has been discussed on here a zillion times before. What I was genuinely curious to find was to find out how and why people believe in God (without judging them on doing so or trying to explain them why it is just a superstition) - or rather, just trying to listen without passing comment.

Apologies for getting away from cestlavie's original post. That sort of thing tends to happen on these religious threads... We heathens bite our tongues as long as we can, then someone comes along and says something, ahem, in need of comment (I think in this case it was a comparison between god and the wind) and we're off - we just can't help ourselves...