Why Believe In God?

[jimmoyer]

Notice that mere 9% for Americans? Everybody else is well up into double digits. You have to go into Islamic countries to find levels of religious belief that match those in the United States.
-------------------------------------------------Dexter Sinister----------------------------------------------------

I only got anecdotal evidence, aka observations.

I've long observed most Protestant congregations and Catholic to be not as ideological
as atheists and secularists. Interesting. Not too many atheists are as lax as most church goers.
It is an irony to ponder, n'est pas ?

Most people are far less ideological and rigid about any of their beliefs. They are certainly
not as intent on delineating their beliefs as some of we posters are.

Dexter Sinister is one of the more brighter lights on this board, but he as well as I and many others
fall prey to thinking like an outsider looking in a glass darkly.

The stat is meaninglessly artificially compared to Islamists who do pray 5 times under the blare of
a horn urging them to do so.

And that's a subject for more inspection....

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Dexter Sinister is one of the more brighter lights on this board, but he as well as I and many others fall prey to thinking like an outsider looking in a glass darkly.

Why thank you. With me, flattery will get you everywhere. ;-) For what it's worth, I was on the inside of this faith business for about the first 25 years of my life. It's darker inside than it is outside.

 

[jimmoyer]

For what it's worth, I was on the inside of this faith business for about the first 25 years of my life. It's darker inside than it is outside.
-----------------------------------------Dexter Sinister-------------------------------------

LOL !

That's so scary, it's gotta be true.

I wasn't thinking of so much the clergy, the real insiders, but rather the church goers, the ones
rarely as ideologically committed as your average atheist. To put it another way, most church goers
really aren't as rigid in their views as your average atheist or secularist demanding an 80 year old
ten commandments plaque off a courthouse wall finding it more offensive than a rerun of Seinfeld.

 

[Tonington]

That's very true Jim, I've pondered this myself. Personally I find the rigidness very frustrating, many atheists cannot see how they have become alike those they would call intolerant. It gives thoughtful atheists a bad name.

I wonder if it is those rigid atheists which raise the most fuss over Christmas trees and the like, we have so few traditions here in Canada and they oft times seem to take the brunt of some disgruntled atheist...

 

[hermanntrude]

another answer to "why believe in God?"

I believe this came from a greek philosopher, i forget which one.

If i believe in god and he exists, i get a reward. If i dont believe in god and he exists, i get punished.
If I believe in God and he doesnt exist, nothing happens, If i don't believe in God and he doesn't exist, nothing happens

Therefore the logical conclusion is that if i believe in God, the possible outcomes are better. therefore i shall believe in God.

This is very rational, and yet I still don't go to church. why is that?

 

[selfactivated]

another answer to "why believe in God?"

I believe this came from a greek philosopher, i forget which one.

If i believe in god and he exists, i get a reward. If i dont believe in god and he exists, i get punished.
If I believe in God and he doesnt exist, nothing happens, If i don't believe in God and he doesn't exist, nothing happens

Therefore the logical conclusion is that if i believe in God, the possible outcomes are better. therefore i shall believe in God.

This is very rational, and yet I still don't go to church. why is that?

LOL cause your a philosopher not a hypocrite.

 

[hermanntrude]

i think it's more like the other way round. or i'm just lazy.

i try to be nice, maybe that's enough

 

[selfactivated]

i think it's more like the other way round. or i'm just lazy.

i try to be nice, maybe that's enough

Being nice is always enough. And quite refreshing

 

[Vereya]

I've got a quote for all the atheists, and I would like to hear what they have to say. It is a quote from a very famous Russian novel "The Master and Margarita". The novel describes the visit of Satan to Moscow, and what happened during that visit. In the first chapter the Satan meets a couple of writers and starts talking to them. As the events take place in the 20ies, the writers are atheists. And here are a couple of questions the Satan asked them:
"
- It is, indeed, - confirmed the unknown, his eye sparkling, and continued: - but if there is no God, who then controls people’s lives and everything on earth?
- The people themselves do, - Berliose hastened to reply to this, to tell the truth, rather vague question.
- Pardon me, - the stranger responded gently, - in order to control, you need to have a precise plan for a more or less lengthy period. And let me ask you, how can people control anything, if they are not only devoid of the ability to make up a plan for some ridiculous period of time, - say, a thousand years, but can’t even be sure of their lives in the day to come? And really, - and the stranger turned to Berliose, - imagine, for example, that you start giving orders, controlling yourself and the others, start enjoying it, so to say, when suddenly you get… umm… lung sarcoma… - and the foreigner smiled sweetly, as if the thought of sarcoma pleased him, - oh yes, sarcoma, - he screwed up his eyes like a cat and repeated the sonorous word, - and you are done with controlling! No one’s fate, but your own, interests you anymore. Your relatives start lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you first rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes even to fortune-tellers. And everything is quite useless – you understand it yourself. The end is tragic: the one, who but a short time ago thought himself to be controlling something, finds himself lying in a wooden box. And his people, realizing that they won’t benefit from him anymore, burn him in a furnace. And sometimes things are even worse: a man would decide to go to Kislovodsk, - the foreigner screwed his eyes and looked at Berliose, - an easiest thing to do, as it seems. But he can’t even do that, because for no apparent reason he would slip and fall under the wheels of a tram! Would you say that he has controlled it himself? Wouldn’t it be more correct to suppose, that somebody else has controlled him? – and the stranger gave a queer laugh."

 

[jimmoyer]

Wonderful little atmospheric story.

But it presumes a false assumption.

Control ?

The question of control presumes control to be an issue.

Why must someone or something or God be in control ?

 

[Curiosity]

Control is an excellent thought to peruse JimM.....

I think I have had to squash my innate desire to begin arguing with some of the sermons I have had to suffer through and hold myself back from getting up and walking out.

The feeling of not being in control is definitely a negative on my scale of "attendance in religious ceremony" even while I continue to define myself as a believer in religion..... regardless of having never found myself fitting into one.

The orators range from the sublime to the ridiculous.... and I find myself sitting in judgment... no way
to be a good attendee.

 

[jimmoyer]

That story has one thing right. Satan ridicules anyone feeling they have control.
That story does highlight the illusion of control rather well.

But that question, "If there is no God, who is in control ?"

That's a false choice, misleading and useless in our contemplation of the laws of this universe.

How often have we seen that control insinuate itself in the aggregate, like Adam Smith's Silent Hand
in the Wealth of Nations, or trends or patterns (a sort of law or control in itself) when contemplating
an insurance company's bell curve of expectations as so eerily described in any amortization table ??

 

[Curiosity]

Oh my Jim I should have left the forum sooner... you have now replaced a wonderful early morning poster - China - who used to give me brain cramp daily!!!

My humble opinion re control is that we humans like to believe there is control, reason, goal, goodness and all of the other descriptives we choose to include in our time span inhabiting this planet... no doubt our lives would have less meaning if we were considered just another life form.... we are chaotic enough even
when in submission to some kinds of control throughout our lives.

To survive, I think proceeding towards satisfaction, change when possible and desire for good...keeping as much in our lives basic and simple might be a heartier experience than messing it up with trying to make it more than it is. Perhaps the keyword I am searching for in humans is: humility... If this includes worship of a deity - fine - but it might be wiser to leave it to individual choice. In other words: What fits.

 

[jimmoyer]

You hit it, Curiosity.

Humility.

HUMILITY.

Hmmm, word looks better smaller.

Humility is what leads a lot of astronomers into a feeling of awe, and thus
contemplate a being so omniscient as to be omnivorous, inhuman like Old Testament
scary. Is not Nature omnivorous and frighteningly non-human ?


This observation is simultaneously used by both atheists and religionist to
support their views.


It is when either of them presume they have proof against or for the existence
of a God that your point about humility is lost on both of them.

 

[AndyF]

No other religious leader, not ....... Mohammed, ....... has ever claimed to be the Son of God. That is what Jesus did; He claimed to be God in the flesh. He not only claimed to be God, He backed up His claims through His life, death, and resurrection.

And for the piece de resistance, we have the Koran implying that Jesus was the Son of God.

Interesting reading at:

http://devoted.to/truth, then click GO

AndyF

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[AndyF]

;762773]

What evidence would you accept as valid of the existance of God?

AndyF

 

[gc]

Why believe in God? We can feel Him calling us.
Every culture throughout history has been convinced that there is a higher power that watches over them.

Different cultures have different beliefs. Some (many) cultures believe in multiple Gods. How do you know there is only one? By the way, I'm pretty sure thousands of years ago most cultures also believed that the earth was flat.

Why believe in God? The complexity of all life and of our planet
When we look to all of science, we can see that there is order and that there is a definite pattern to the layout and structure of not only the human body, but also the universe in which we live.

The distinguished astronomer Sir Frederick Hoyle showed how amino acids randomly coming together in a human cell are mathematically absurd. Sir Hoyle illustrated the weakness of "chance" with the following analogy: "What are the chances that a tornado might blow through a junkyard containing all the parts of a 747, accidentally assemble them into a plane, and leave it ready for take-off? The possibilities are so small as to be negligible even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole universe!"

What are the chances of molecules coming together to form life? Probably pretty low. But what are the chances of molecules coming together to form a super-intelligent, omnipotent God capable of creating the entire Universe? Much less than the former.

Who put that sense of right and wrong in us?

Evolution.

 

[Tonington]

Evidence of God?

For me, if a person appeared and through some action broke the very laws that this universe is bound by, I guess a miracle in the truest form. Also some knowledge of things that could only be known by myself.

 

[gc]

Why believe in God?

Because it is more rational than believing that life, the universe, and everything is some kind of colossal freak accident.

Sorry Colpy, but I just don't buy that argument. If you want to invoke a creator, you have to explain where the creator came from. Otherwise, it would be like me saying "I came from my parents (instead of God, evolution etc.), end of story, no further explanation required." The problem with that statement is where did my parents come from? I think it's much more rational that us, as relatively stupid (compared to God) beings could be an accident than it is to believe that someone as intelligent as God is an accident. Of course, there are other reasons why someone might believe in God, I just don't buy this particular argument. It's been disscused further in This Thread . Here are some of my relevant quotes from that thread:

Where did God come from? Did he just happen by accident? Which is more believable, that humans, animals, plants, the earth, the stars etc. happened by accident, or that God (an intelligent being capable of making all of these things from nothing) just happened by accident?

God has always been? Sorry, I can't believe this. I can disprove that.
For one thing....if you say God has always existed, then God must have been around an infinite number of years ago. Now, if I said to you "I am going to do something (for example create humans) in an infinite number of years from now", that means it would never get done, because we will never reach infinite number of years. So, going back in time an infinite number of years from the creation of man, God would have created man infinity years from then, which means it never would have happened. I'm not sure if my explanation is clear, but if there is one thing I am certain about, it is that the Universe (by definition that includes everything including God) must have a finite life time.

 

[AndyF]

Evidence of God?

For me, if a person appeared and through some action broke the very laws that this universe is bound by, I guess a miracle in the truest form. Also some knowledge of things that could only be known by myself.

Good answer, and that would be good enough for me as well.

AndyF