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.

PrettyC you are right. Much has been proven about the power of prayer - as also has the power of the positive mind. There is a great similarity and then you could go on to talk about hypnosis, positive visualisation etc. And maybe about why Islam is so powerful as a faith. I am a practising Christian, but you can't fail to agree that prayer is a positive state of mind. I did hypnosis for childbirth, but a fellow congragation member siad "I don't need that sort of rubbish. I just pray"... Now both are proven to work...

Agree with the internal stuff prettycandles
Also know how powerful prayer is

Although I fundamentally disagree with UQD on issues of religion, I do enjoy a good discussion with him.

Pretty candles:there have been empirical, scientifically controlled and peer-reviewed studies which showed that prayer did have an effect on recovery from ill-health.

Yes you are quite right , prayer made it worse

www.ahjonline.com/article/S0002-8703(05)00649-6/abstract

Here's some

propaganda so bad it's hilarious

Interregnum, that study refers to intercessory prayer, I'm refering to participatory prayer. Ie from the 'personal position'.

how about this:

a) you follow a religion, it turns out to be true, when you die you go to the great afterlife or whatever it prescribes.

b) you follow a religion, it is not true, when you die that's it.

c) you don't follow a religion, it turns out there is a god and when you die you go to hell.

what is the best option here?

it must be a), right?

also, if you don't believe in god, how do you find meaning in the bigger picture?

(have discussed this with mrsSB earlier btw)

That's more-or-less Pascal's Wager, DevilsAdvocaat.

It's as old as the hills, fundamentally flawed and has been debunked many times in many places. Here for just one example. Sorry!

Anyway - don't we get an

option (d) - you don't follow a religion, there's no god, it's all crap, heaven and hell are made up, stop worrying about it.

??

I do apologise PC. I didn't realise there
were two types of prayer. one that worked and one thst didn't, how silly of me.
I know you must be awfully busy so I have taken the liberty of posting on the other thread on here: you know the Christian Prayer Thread where people ask for prayers
for their loved ones. I have told them the good news that basically they are wasting their time praying for people they don't know.
By the way it would be helpful if you could post the links to these empirical scientifically ,peer reviewed studies about the power of personal prayer that you claim, otherwise people might, quite erroneously I'm sure,think that someone might be telling
a load of porkies.

Unquiet Dad and other atheists do protest too much. If there is no God, WHY are they so bothered that some people think there is?

And anyway, option (c) is the worst option and can at least be recitified by believing. The other options leave you in no worse a position than you expected to be anyway, so no 'solution' is called for.

Since I have been up since 3am I don't feel sharp enough to read Pascal's wager in its entirety. But really, no-one knows. Neither me, you, Pascal or anyone else. To me, God is not imaginary. I once asked for a sign that he existed and got one. No doubt many will sneer and write this off as a childish co-incidence - but if you don't believe you could always try doing the same. You might just be shocked if you get an answer!

Another thing about all the scientific stuff. Science answers 'how', but belief answers 'why'.

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Fair enough Pruners, your 2nd para is a good point - I suppose I'd always thought of atheism more as an absence of belief, rather than a belief system in its own right.

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Amazing what a cup of tea will do

interregnum - do you have any idea how smallminded and petty that makes you look?

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I also have an intense dislike of extablished religion, and would like to see a complete separation of church and state to get rid of many of those things.

A "sign" is only there if you want to interpret it as such. More rational people might call it a "convenient coincidence".

I do feel that a lot of my posts on this forum and others can be distilled down to the one simple utterance, "I mean, seriously, people. God? Come on."

Sorry mum you're right I shouldn't have posted on the other thread it upset nice people for no good reason.[BLUSH]

I see Pruners has already explained why atheists must oppose (organised) religion. We don't have the option of ignoring it. It is semi-compulsory now and would be compulsory if our predecessors hadn't worked hard to change it.

That Pascal's wager link is a bit heavy going, but the main point I guess is that being religious and being wrong does have a downside. However if being religious means just 'believing in it' for 5 mins on sanday that's probably ok. Being a truly religious person changes a lot of things.

I do think the vast majority of christians (muslims may be different at the moment and in this respect) are the 5 mins on sunday christians. That's why it annoys me when people/groups with loud voices and demands say "we must do this because this is a christian country" they are including all that vast majority as though they had voted them into some kind of office.

And yes my atheism is simply an absence of belief. Agnosticism is different. I don't understand it and anyway the definition seems to vary from person to person, but atheism is straightforward.

A quick thought about 'signs'. I once called upon god to strike me down. It was to make a point in a debate (someone was annoying me by claiming that of course I did believe really and was just being difficult), but even if I had been hit by lightning it would have proved nothing. Churches have lightning conductors like any building.

Oh, interregnum, please let that be a joke. I hope you didn't post on that thread. Why be nasty? Surely you expect to have your unbelief respected - in which case what gives you the right to mock others' belief?

Praying and being a member of a community can also be presented as aspects of PMA - Positive Mental Attitude. Go on, debunk PMA. Tell me that your state of mind makes no difference to your success in life or to healing in illness. If a belief system helps you to attain a PMA, then what on earth's wrong with that?

Here it's called supplicatory prayer, not participatory prayer. I don't have the time or energy to search further.