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Philosophy/religion

Join our Philosophy forum to discuss religion and spirituality.

Do you believe in God?

1000 replies

VirtualPA · 21/06/2010 20:45

I am interested to know what the majority of people belive.

I personally believe in a Christian God, Heaven and hell etc.

I raised a strict an athiest

OP posts:
MerryMarigold · 27/06/2010 17:32

I don't think it's that Christians give their rational mind a rest. Just that 'Western' thinking has a particular approach to analysis/ 'rationality' etc. which I don't fully subscribe too (only recently realised I don't!).

I am a Christian but am also quite interested in the way Buddhism approaches spirituality and the mind. Am only just reading into this, do I don't know a lot, but so far...to me, Christianity fits somewhere between 'rational' and Eastern philosophy.

Anyone know more about this?

diplodoris · 27/06/2010 17:33

"I expect to get a simple one-line answer"

Why? It's not a very open question if there's only one type of answer that you "expect".

A one-liner could be "because I have looked at the evidence and that is what I have concluded". That's what a scientist could say, but it's much easier to fully understand if you then read all the research they have done.

robberbutton · 27/06/2010 17:34

Sorry about the biscuits thing UQD, it's hard not to be flippant in this medium! Obviously it was more involved than that.

I don't think anybody "should" be believing anything - it is just up to Christians to present what we believe, and if it resonates with people who haven't heard about it before, if it answers something that is missing from their lives (forgiveness of sins, fulfilment in this life, hope for the future), then brilliant.

If someone can't accept it, then I will feel regret that they will be tragically missing out on, well, "life" (this one and the next) but it is not up to me or anyone else on earth to judge or condemn people's choices. (They might just get prayed for a bit harder, is all )

backtotalkaboutthis · 27/06/2010 17:35

"less" - fewer

At least you can understand it, onagar. That is entirely the problem: to believe in a self-contradiction is to believe that at the same time black can be white, or one can equal zero. That is the problem: you can prove that the Christian God cannot exist. A Christian has to supply the answer to that problem with faith and trust.

It's is not madness, though, plainly: we are not all mad! I can assure you with honesty that I was not trying to say it's praiseworthy by atheists. I made the point becaues UQD made an error in reasoning while at the same time using mockery and ridicule against those whose "reasoning" he decried. I was trying to explain to him firstly, the proof: secondly, how we have to bolt onto that logic something entirely outside any possible experience. Sadly he didn't understand the first and wasn't interested in the second.

Are you saying scientists have greater intellect than non-scientists? I would say that it is less likely for a philosopher to be a Christian than a scientist or a mathematician. However, I don't have statistics -- maybe you do.

The "evil can't be a consequence of free will" -- well that's just another proof. There are four or five, or maybe five or six, proofs, I can't remember.

Not a nail in the coffin though. I explained my reasoning in earlier posts and specifically one to you? Anyway it doesn't matter. I have to give way to football and dh and be off. Just to say: your hippo analogy: sometimes that is exactly what it is is like (for me).

UnquietDad · 27/06/2010 17:45

I know, I am so pesky in insisting on asking for evidence for things. It's so irritating, isn't it?...

Not to insist on evidence before opening the door is, surely, to allow to the table all manner of crazy beliefs. If you don't need evidence - at ALL - what's to stop people seriously claiming the existence of absolutely anything they want? There has to be some kind of rationalist gatekeeping, otherwise what is the point of the rational mind?

The biscuits amused me. They are the least worry.

Loving the fact that backtotalk is back again and still can't change the record. How high does one's self-delusion have to be to claim (a) that a "proof" has been given when there is nothing of the sort, and (b) that people disagree because they "don't understand" her?

I fear she thinks her arguments are so terribly intellectual that they are difficult to grasp. Far from it. They are more flimsy than the England defence.

backtotalkaboutthis · 27/06/2010 17:51

"it's is" dear o lor o dear

Also I would just like to say something about the "emotional need" to believe in God.

I have thought about this quite a lot, and I can see where it comes from. However it seemes to me that many Christians have seen and experienced very hideous things and I can't understand how that would create an emotional need to believe in God. I've seen some dreadful things over the last two years and it's given me an emotional need not to believe in God. As for me, in many ways it would suit me just fine to be wrong, as I'm surely headed for the trickier side of the heaven-hell divide.

I can't see that it would apply to all Christians either at the conscious or the subconscious level: any more than others have an emotional need not to believe in God.

backtotalkaboutthis · 27/06/2010 17:52

Oh my goodness UQD -- it's a proof! ha ha

backtotalkaboutthis · 27/06/2010 17:54

I actually have this huge at the fact that you can't see it's a proof. Intellectual? lol -- see my sandpits quote earlier. It's not difficult or complicated.

TheFallenMadonna · 27/06/2010 18:07

But again you are missing the point. I agree with you that there is no objective evidence for the existence of any god. I'm not asking you to believe in any god. I'm saying that religion is never going to provide you with evidence, and it is more baffling than irritating that knowing that as well as I you continue to ask for it. I have no idea what it is meant to achieve.

I'm not sure what the door and gatekeeping bit is about really. I have a rational mind. I also have an non-rational one. As do you. Some things we are happy to experience rather than rationalise. For me, faith is one of those things. For you, clearly, it isn't. So be it.

MerryMarigold · 27/06/2010 18:16

A quick qu...UQD and SGB et al - are you saying that ALL those throughout history who have believed in God/ gods were wrong? I believe we are created with a spiritual 'thirst' and that's why people seek to fill it (in many different ways). It strikes me as a wee bit arrogant to assume you are somehow more 'advanced' than those in other countries (where spiritual belief is predominant) or even other centuries and milennia.

FallenMadonna you summed up my thinking exactly.

allbie · 27/06/2010 18:47

People probably started to question belief in a god when they became better educated and many other countries have a higher proportion of less educated folk. I have no idea why educated people believe in a god and ultimately there are no answers till we die and find out.

onagar · 27/06/2010 18:50
ZephirineDrouhin · 27/06/2010 18:54

UQD, in answer to your earlier question, no, it's quite dumb enough thanks.

I agree with The Fallen Madonna.

MerryMarigold · 27/06/2010 18:55

I'm not saying that every belief they had was 'right', but that the need for a belief is instilled in us - which is why people have believed in something throughout time.

onagar · 27/06/2010 19:02

TheFallenMadonna, since you personally don't try to make us live by your rules you have no need to prove anything to us.

Those who must provide proof include the following:

Anyone who claims a moral superiority because of their religion and/or wants to be respected for it.

Anyone who wants to force it on us or our children.

Anyone who wants tax relief for their club on the basis of it.

Anyone who wants special laws to apply to them (I see the Vatican is in the news again because they don't think suspected abusers should be questioned by police if they are priests)

Well you get the idea

Also forget about proof. ANY evidence. Not enough to convict in a court of law, but any at all. the slightest little trace of a possible reason (other than "but I want to") to believe god is there.

MerryMarigold · 27/06/2010 19:04

(Maybe atheism is a 'fashionable belief' ?). I guess we won't be around long enough to see if stands the test of centuries.

permanentvacation · 27/06/2010 19:05

All this talk of evidence and standards of proof does lead me to query what planet most of you are on. There are plenty of important decisions we all make on less than conclusive proof. And some life decisions we make with only limited evidence and without any possibility of logical verification.

For example, when DP and I decided to get married we did so assuming that long into the future we would rather be living together than living apart. We couldn't empirically prove how we would feel many years in the future, and a logical proof that getting married would be better than not is impossible. But we couldn't remain marital agnostics forever, putting off the question because of a commitment to Cartesian radical doubt. Life had to be lived, so we looked at the best evidence available and took a step of faith. I suspect that most people choosing to get married are making a similar step of faith, committing to a particular person in spite of an uncertain and unknown future.

As a Christian my belief in God and decision to live my life informed by my understanding of God is the same sort of thing. I can't prove (in the mathematical sense) that there is a God, just as I can't prove there isn't one. And I can't sit on the sidelines and pretend that it doesn't matter as, for me, it does.

There are things which, to me, are admissible as evidence (e.g. the existence of the universe rather than no existence at all, a belief in objective morality, the historical record of the life of Christ, personal experience, etc.), but I recognise that these would not meet the standards of evidence of others. There is even the methodological problem of deciding what would count as evidence, as this would probably be done by appealing to other evidence, and before long you are in an infinite regression of reasons. At some point in epistemology you have to acknowledge your assumptions and proceed from there.

And because I recognise that my decision is one based on reasonable assumptions rather than the certitude of logical proof (just as all other belief positions about the existence or non-existence of God are) I recognise that there are limits to the ways that I live out my beliefs in respect to others.

Let's not divide the world into those who believe in God and are stupid and those who don't and only live according to strictly provable criteria. We all make decisions in life based on incomplete evidence and gut instinct. The important thing is to recognise the factors underlying our beliefs and the limitations we need to observe as a result.

onagar · 27/06/2010 19:08

MerryMarigold, I'm not an expert in psychology, but I'm sure there is a need. I think part of it is the need for a strong father figure which you miss when you leave home.
We probably also have tribal instincts that make us want to follow the strongest male etc.

That doesn't make god real. It just explains why people wish he were.

Psammead · 27/06/2010 19:12

Not sure why people keep calling for evidence that God exists. If there was evidence, it wouldn't be called faith. By definition you cannot absolutely prove something you believe on faith. Atheists may walk away, shaking their heads muttering 'how convenient' but that's how it is.

Continuously asking for evidence is as pointless as trying to convince someone to take something on faith in which they have no belief at all.

Really, people, change the record. There are lots of interesting topics up for grabs here, some of which SGB has touched on with regards to feminism and religion. The debate so far could be condensed into about 4 posts. Boooring.

onagar · 27/06/2010 19:13

"we all make on less than conclusive proof."

Yes! "less than conclusive." But tell me the last time you made a serious decision based on nothing whatsoever

But like I said to TheFallenMadonna If you don't want/need us to accept it then you have no need to prove anything to us. It's only those who want something. Respect/power etc

onagar · 27/06/2010 19:14

Psammead, I seem to have answered you with my last post/s

Baileysismyfriend · 27/06/2010 19:23

I'm not sure if I believe in a higher being or not. My first answer is always no as I am more of a science than faith person but when something bad happens that could have been worse I wonder if someone is watching over me, so maybe I am a sub concious believer.

I wish I did whole heartedly have a faith I believed in, I am envious of people that do.

Psammead · 27/06/2010 19:30

onagar I think for many Christians the existence of God has been proven to their satisfaction. Albeit with a chunk still left up to faith. Atheists who want 100% absolute proof are missing the point.

In case anyone missed my earlier posts, I am an atheist. I don't think Christians are stupid, however - just that they think something else to me.

permanentvacation · 27/06/2010 19:32

Onagar, as I acknowledged, there is dispute over what would count as evidence. You choose to see nothing as evidence for God. I choose to se several points as evidence.

For example, the fact that something (our universe) exists, rather than nothing existing at all. Where did it all come from? Given that there is strong evidence of a definite start point for our universe existing, why did it happen? Why do the scientific laws that allow the process of the universe unfolding as it does exist? Could scientific laws governing how matter behaves have created themselves? Our world operates in a predominantly predictable, law-like manner - did that happen as a result of random chance from a position of no scientific laws at all? Or is there something more behind it all?

Second, the general belief in some sort of ethics. I havn't met anyone yet who believed there was absolutely no such thing as right or wrong. We can all argue the toss over different examples, but we all have at least one thing we would declare to be wrong. Not just casually wrong, or wrong for some people, but downright wrong, no matter what your cultural position or when it happened or whatever. In order for that judgement to have any lasting force it has to have some agency transcending human opinion. If ethics were just people's attitudes then you could justify anything if you managed to persuade enough people that somehow it was permissable. Note that I am not arguing in favour of religious moralism here (goodness knows we get it wrong enough of the time), just that for any ethical system to have a stronger validity than the shifting sands of human opinion requires something transcending humanity.

As a third point I could also point to the historical record of the life of Christ and the early church for a specifically Christian argument about God and the nature of God. To go into detail here would take some time (I need to get my kids in the bath!), but it does count as evidence, even if you would dispute it.

I could also start talking about the existence of consciousness, but again that deserves a thread in itself.

The subjective experience of different believers could also be admitted as evidence. And there are a lot of believers (which I will come onto later). But once you recognise that we don't operate solely on objective verification for all decisions we make (see my earlier post), then listening to people's stories and experiences becomes valid. (This form of evidence is obviously to be used differently to logical, scientific, or historical evidence, but it still counts as evidence).

Finally I would point to the fact that throughout history and across the 6 billion residents of the world at this moment, a belief in God, Gods or the supernatural is held by the overwhelming majority. Educated and uneducated, rich and poor, people of every colour. To post up that clearly anyone who doesn't share your view does so without any evidence is a massive generalisation. And a view that I suspect you have formed on very, very limited data. Have you consulted 70/80/90% of the world (depending on your religious census data) on how they arrived at your views, or have you just seen a few rednecks on the TV, a few wide eyed preachers in the shopping centre, a few insecure fundies on a bulletin board and projected from this tiny minority onto the majority of all poeple who have ever lived?

UnquietDad · 27/06/2010 20:02

Merry - my answer to your question is that there is as much or as little evidence for any one of them as for any other. So, yes, the default position is scepticism of them all. Do you find that an awkward idea? Genuine question. I am quite comfortable with it myself. I think it's a testament to the power of the human imagination that we can create these myths.

backtorabbitonoanonandon - you can say it's a proof as often as you like. Doesn't make it right. But even if it is - previously unanswered question alert - why would I want to believe in a logical impossibility? I'll pass, thanks.

Psammead - "Atheists who want 100% absolute proof are missing the point" - indeed, they would be if that was what they asked for. Luckily, most of us don't - we just as for as much evidence as we would for anything else.

Fallenmadonna - I agree, it is irritating of me to continue to ask for rational evidence. I don't think that means it's wrong of me to do so, where as you do. So be it, but I ain't gonna stop asking!! God doesn't get a bye. He has to justify his existence just like anything else - unicorns, fairies, Flat earth, Zeus, Thor, phlogiston... all the other stuff which people have merely "believed" over the centuries.

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