Why do so many people believe in a God?

pqdvdplayer

For a moment, I don't want to argue over whether or not a god exists--I want to know why so many people believe that one does. I usually receive generalized answers to this--"it comforts people," or "they were indoctrinated into the belief," and such related answers.

It doesn't baffle me so much that people believe that a god exists, but rather that a lot of people believe that a god exists. I could understand it if a portion of the population were theists, but I'm surprised the theist/atheist makeup of the population isn't at least around equal parts. Instead, the majority still believes in the existence of a god.

To think about why a person would believe in a god just confounds me. Everything about life, everything we know so far about existence, tells me that one most likely does not exist. Even with a fair analysis of the arguments for and against the existence of a god, the arguments against one existing are clearly superior. I'm not belittling the person who believes in a god, I am simply expressing my inability to understand why they believe it.

It is true that belief in a god and religion provides comfort to those people...but surely the understand that, just because you believe something to be true and it gives you comfort, does not actually mean that it IS true? I mean, if people at least considered this possibility, then they would move on to examine the legitimacy of their beliefs. And thus, I would expect more and more theists to lose their beliefs, but instead they maintain them.

Czarcasm

Moral maturity I suppose, or immaturity, depending on your perspective at any given moment in time -

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

Yes, I did. But then I found God and gained moral maturity.

pqdvdplayer

**** off you stupid prick

P_1

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

**** off you stupid prick

Well that's not a very nice thing to say now is it?

Mark Tapley

It's all going well so far.

Czarcasm

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

**** off you stupid prick

Another thread off to a great start!

Insect Overlord

Epic FAIL is epic.

challengemaster

A lot of the older generations just didn't have the same foundations in science or exposure to science that the younger generations now do. Probably correlates well with an age/faith plot.

I'm not specifically stating that science = atheistic views, but if you've got an understanding of it you sort of apply the scientific method to ideas such as "god" and realize just how "believable" it really is. Older generations making up the bulk of believers wouldn't have grown up being able to question such things, and have just believed what's been taught to them from the word go. Others just merely follow the herd, because it's the easier choice not to question.

RB94

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

As a Christian, I think that the legal age should be raised to 21 like in the US. This country is loosing its moral (religous) credibility fast.

:rolleyes:

Knex*

Another, another!

mikom

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

**** off you stupid prick

Is that from the FIRST LETTER OF ST. PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS?

Knex*

mikom wrote: »

Is that from the FIRST LETTER OF ST. PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS?

I think that was the one and only letter the Corinthians wrote back to St. Paul.

robindch

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

**** off you stupid prick

Have a week's holiday. You might want to check out the forum charter before you post again.

Cheers.

JC01

I don't post on here often, but have a browse very now and then and Jesus Christ (excuse the pun) is the Church on some sorta undercover mission or something? This is the second thread today iv notices babbling on about some crac to start a conversation that the OP ( both times evidently a fairy-fearing Bibleist) has no interest in partaking in.

The ironic thing is heaven forbid a dirty foul-living atheist would go to the Christianity forum and start trolling, they'd be banned in minutes?

Knex*

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

To think about why a person would believe in a god just confounds me. Everything about life, everything we know so far about existence, tells me that one most likely does not exist.

I think I can pinpoint the moment where the OP went from absolute certainty, to portraying some doubt and beginning their quick transition to praising The Lord Jebus.

At first confounded by the possibility, only for divine intervention to creep doubt into their mind a mere few keystrokes later.

With this clear miracle, I am no longer a dirty heathen and have been converted. Cheers, OP.

nozzferrahhtoo

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

I usually receive generalized answers to this--"it comforts people," or "they were indoctrinated into the belief," and such related answers.

I think the reason you are not satisfied with the answers you have received to date is that there is no one good or universal answer to the question. Rather there are so many reasons for it that any one believer could be a believer for any one or more of them combined.

Indoctrination is certainly a big factor. We are a species that has evolved to require extended nurturing from parents and as such we are inclined to lend instant credence to much of what they tell us. We are also a species slow and unwilling to change so such indoctrination sticks and we are constitutionally unwilling to drop them later in life, holding on to them stridently and jealously as we age.

Comfort against the realities of death and other such insecurities and fears is certainly another good example which you gave.

But there are others too. For example we have evolved what Dennett and others refer to as "The intentional stance" and "Hyperactive agency detection". What this means in plain english is we are all but hard wired to look at events and things and say "Who did that.... why.... and what is their intention towards me?". As such it is a very natural side effect for this to extend to not just the existence around us.... but existence itself. Who did it? Why? To what end or purpose? It is only a small step from there to "god".

Further one of our most powerful capabilities as humans is to personify things. We do this in problem solving and art and literature and more. We simply have a powerful penchant for personification. And so good is this personification capability that often the personifications seem more real to us than their real life counter parts. We can also in this way represent the minds and intentions and rationale of others in our own mind, almost like running virtual computer servers. And again these can be more real to us than reality. As any teenager sneaking home after curfew will attest as the parents we represent in our heads waiting for us at home with anger and recriminations in our eyes are often more terrifying than the real ones who are waiting when we get there.

It is no surprise again therefore that humans personify not just the reality around them but reality itself. In the form of a "god" or some such. And again the step from such internal personifications to actually believing those personifications REAL is not as large as one might expect.

Yet another example we can point to is simply human ignorance and lack of education. Education has been shown to at least correlate with lack of religiosity in many ways. And it is no surprise why. The "God of the gaps" argument is as powerful as it is insidious and many people fall for this canard. Education and knowledge push back the frontiers of the playing field of ignorance in which "god of the gaps" can play.

Emotions have a big part to play in things too. People often will believe arguments or positions from emotion even when all the evidence, or lack of it, undermines any such belief. The work of VS Ramachandran on Capgrah syndrome is massively informative as an example here. This syndrome is where due to a lack of a given emotion at the correct time.... patients are willing to construct and maintain the most fantastical conspiracy theories..... to justify their emotional state...... than face simple reality about what is causing that state. And so patients will actively believe someone has, for example, entirely replaced their mother with a near perfect but fake replica...... than accept the simple and demonstratable fact that they have simply got damage to one neural pathway. The sad fact is our species is happier to have belief systems that conform to our emotional state than have belief systems that conform to actual reality.

There are only some examples and I can lay out many more, but that should suffice. The point really is that a quest to understand why people believe such things is not going to turn you up some neat and simple answers. Rather than answers are legion and they work in isolation or in combination on each believer out there.

Penn

Simple answer is that it promises probably the greatest rewards one could wish for (eternal life, seeing loved ones after you/they die, deity watching over you and protecting you, comfort in death etc) without ever having to fulfill any of them. You only get these things once you die, which means when you die and it's not true, you'll never know. You still hold it to be true until the second of your death, and then nothing.

It's the reward you'll never get but will never know you never got.

blinding

Coz God if he exists might kneecap you if you don't show him respect bro !

Duggy747

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

**** off you stupid prick

I laughed out loud here in work when I saw this, wasn't expecting that so quickly :pac:

Obliq

Another simple answer is that people like to have answers to their questions and they don't really want to get an answer that leads to more questions.

"I can't fully answer that because I don't really know" is a common atheist answer to life's big questions such as where do we come from and where are we going. I personally can't answer with any great authority about the big-bang/abiogenesis, etc. and I generally have more questions than answers myself. All I can ever say is that I feel fine about not having the answers.

Theists have answers to those questions that are much simpler to give and can be easily passed on by rote learning within families, backed up by large authoritative organisations and a few ancient books, and while I personally don't believe their answers, an awful lot of people maybe prefer to believe them because they don't require (in fact, actively discourage) further questioning.

Maybe most people are not fine about not having the answers and are prepared to stop asking questions even when they hear an answer that isn't supported by any proof?

Gordon

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

Why do so many people believe in a God?

God knows.

Paramite Pie

The simple answer is that a lot of people don't spend much time thinking about it. It's uncomfortable to question everything you believe in so most people bury those thoughts.

My dad left school at the age of 12, so trying to explain the concept of evolution to him is difficult, especially when he's so skeptical of 'scientist's and 'experts'. At least he admits that Adam and eve is daft, but he doesn't stretch his thinking much further.

Cabaal

In short, people don't like to feel small and unimportant... But that's what we are as a species in the greater scale of things

Nothing wrong with that, it's just how we are. But it scares or unsettles some people.

The universe will keep on ticking just fine for billions of years after our species is dust just like it did for billions of years before we existed.

We won't be missed by the universe no more then we miss a clump of algae on some rock in some sea.

Jim Rockford

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

**** off you stupid prick

Well that escalated quickly.

The stock answer, to be unquestionably learned off by heart, is that theists are a combination of less intelligent, been mentally abused by their parents, have poor education, are irrational, have been brainwashed, and are all round thicks.

Brian Shanahan

challengemaster wrote: »

I'm not specifically stating that science = atheistic views,

I wouldn't be too suprised if the correlation between a person's lack of religion or belief in god (more people today admit to a lack of belief in any god than to atheism, despite both things being the same) and their working in a scientific field, to be indicative of correlation, especially when you consider that the lack of belief is more prevalent in the hard disciplines (like physics) than in the soft disciplines (like psychology).

Brian Shanahan

RB94 wrote: »

:rolleyes:

Wow three days from expressing christianity to expressing total disgust at anything with any association with christianity. Is that a new record?

iDave

I think a lot of people are told its true at a young age, accept it, get on with their lives, become lapsed and don't ponder it too much after as career, mortgage, World Cup etc are more important.

Tomblyboo

I'm a Christian now. The things that drove me crazy growing up was how everyone works at fault-finding with different religions. The people I don't understand are atheists. I go surfing and snow boarding and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away.

Brian Shanahan

Jim Rockford wrote: »

Well that escalated quickly.

The stock answer, to be unquestionably learned off by heart, is that theists are less intelligent, been mentally abused by their parents, have poor education, are irrational, have been brainwashed, and are all round thicks.

So you don't like vulgarity, but you are perfectly happy with vicious and untrue stereotyping?

Not very edifying of you is it?

Vivisectus

I think religion is so pervasive because we are essentially a story-telling ape, and we fear what we do not understand because we cannot predict what we cannot understand. This is logical: the unknown is scary. The unpredictable could kill you. So if we create a story that seems to explain everything by simply stating that supernatural powers control the things we do not yet understand, then we gain the feeling that we have some control. It is comforting and psychologically attractive to give ourselves a central place in this narrative.

All religions depict a universe that is not just ordered and governed, but one that is ordered by something that cares about us humans specifically. They may sometimes be demons and devils as well as good spirits and gods, but at least our actions are of some import to them, and often we can even influence their decisions through ritual, prayer, or sacrifice.

By re-imagining the universe as human-centric and governed by anthropomorphic intelligences we dispel some of the fear that comes with living in an unpredictable universe.

Vivisectus

Tomblyboo wrote: »

I'm a Christian now. The things that drove me crazy growing up was how everyone works at fault-finding with different religions. The people I don't understand are atheists. I go surfing and snow boarding and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away.

There are nice things that I find amazing, therefor God?

Tomblyboo

Vivisectus wrote: »

There are nice things that I find amazing, therefor God?

Well Richard Dawkins sure didn't make them

TeddyTedson

I think really it comes down to people not liking unanswerable questions. You see it in kids all the time, no matter what you tell them they'll continue to ask why. Adults are perhaps hard wired from childhood to always want to know why, and God really gives you those last few hundred jigsaw pieces

Brian Shanahan

Tomblyboo wrote: »

I go surfing and snow boarding and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away.

I go cycling a lot, and I think to myself, when I'm not admiring the beauty of nature something along these lines as expressed by Richard Feynman:

I find looking at something and saying "that is great because goddidit" is a deeply unsatisfying experience. I would much rather admit not knowing why something is the way it is, and then going off and finding out, because as the great Feynman said in the video, "the science, knowledge, only adds to the excitment and mystery in the awe of a flower. It only adds, I don't know how it subtracts". But by putting everything in the hands of an invisible being, you are essentially doing just that.

Delirium

Tomblyboo wrote: »

Well Richard Dawkins sure didn't make them

I'm not sure you understand what atheism is :P

Jim Rockford

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

So you don't like vulgarity, but you are perfectly happy with vicious and untrue stereotyping?

Not very edifying of you is it?

What vulgarity and what stereotyping ?

Tomblyboo

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

I go cycling a lot, and I think to myself, when I'm not admiring the beauty of nature something along these lines as expressed by Richard Feynman:


I find looking at something and saying "that is great because goddidit" is a deeply unsatisfying experience. I would much rather admit not knowing why something is the way it is, and then going off and finding out, because as the great Feynman said in the video, "the science, knowledge, only adds to the excitment and mystery in the awe of a flower. It only adds, I don't know how it subtracts". But by putting everything in the hands of an invisible being, you are essentially doing just that.

So everything is a mistake? and science is the (wonderful) explanation of it?

Tomblyboo

SW wrote: »

I'm not sure you understand what atheism is :P

Not sure i understand your understanding but i'll give it a go:

negative reductionism to a point

Baked.noodle

I believe in God but I did not always believe. I don’t subscribe to any traditional concept of God but assume that no one faith doctrine sufficiently encapsulates the diversity of the world and its people. I think the ordered reality of the universe leans more towards a belief in design than chance. It’s just a speculative point of view I admit, but when we look for meaning and purpose in unknowable things nobody can categorically say what is true; so in my view everybody is speculative in this instance. You will not be proved either way. With the emerging scientifically skeptic point of view of our times I understand peoples reluctance to make one’s mind up without evidence and I think this is in many ways a responsible position to take. So much has been achieved by scientific methods and it deserves everybody’s respect.

However, to decide God does not exist without evidence that it does not exist seems to me to be premature. I think one is better to be agnostic in such circumstances. Nevertheless, I think our ability to not only think (and think rationally) but also to feel indicates a depth that isn’t necessarily purely functional in an evolutionary sense. The beauty and horror we experience so naturally as a consequents of our human life experience of the world raises in me an overwhelming appreciation of this ‘creation’. It is both beautiful and horrifying and this in my view this is the wellspring for our meaning, the importance’s embedded in living at all. Who would care at all without feeling? For me, God values the witness. For if it is truly God then it is unequalled and unaccompanied. Why create at all? In my view it is to escape the solitude void and be witnessed.

Dades

Tomblyboo wrote: »

I go surfing and snow boarding and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away.

Lucky you getting to travel and enjoy the great outdoors!

I wonder if you walked around a village in the Congo, or Haiti after their earthquake or even the Gaza strip would you think the same. While a Christian is content to enjoy the beautiful parts of life - and thank God for them - an atheist finds it hard to reconcile these with the gritty reality of nature. If God can make all the nice beaches and mountains... why are millions of children starving or working down gold mines 12 hours a day or working as sex slaves?

JC01

Dades wrote: »

Lucky you getting to travel and enjoy the great outdoors!

I wonder if you walked around a village in the Congo, or Haiti after their earthquake or even the Gaza strip would you think the same. While a Christian is content to enjoy the beautiful parts of life - and thank God for them - an atheist finds it hard to reconcile these with the gritty reality of nature. If God can make all the nice beaches and mountains... why are millions of children starving or working down gold mines 12 hours a day or working as sex slaves?

Pretty much what I was gonna say. To add just a little to it;

How can anybody reconcile themselves with worshipping a deity that allows these things to happen?

If anything the world would incline me to believe in the Christian "devil" long before "God" all over the world the evil
flourish whill horrific things happen innocent people every single day since the beginnings of mankind. To ramble on a bit more, would God not have thought the world a far more just and peaceful place if he didnt stick Adam and Eve ina forest to do the nasty? Just leave it as the birds and bees and the natural beauty of the world?

TeddyTedson

Gordon wrote: »

God knows.

God knows I want to break free
You being the warden and what not I thought that was appropriate

morebabies

I was brought up in an "indoctrinated" faith environment - we went to church, we went through all the rituals, I was essentially told what to believe in - but all at a very superficial level. As in, I went through the external practices while under age 18 but understood very little and didn't have any kind of personal relationship with God. Hence when I was 18, I stopped going to Church and my "faith" as it was took a back seat.

However, weirdly enough I would have still called myself a Christian - even though my behaviour went totally against my faith. Ten years later I decided that since every other decision in my life had been taken after serious rational reflection (career choice, etc,), I owed it to myself to examine my faith from a rational point of view and decide once and for all whether I was a Christian or not. I totally expected at this stage that my faith would not stand up to any type of rational enquiry - it seemed to me then that faith and reason were completely incompatible and that the faith handed on to me was more superstition and duty than anything else. I was right on that last point - my parents' faith was of a type that questioned nothing.

So I questioned everything, read widely and waited for all the Christian beliefs to collapse in the face of Reason. I was horrified. They didn't. Christianity made perfect rational sense, believing there was no God didn't. Serious life changes followed, not easy ones, but ones that now fitted with what I believed. And practices that had previously meant nothing to me took on great depth.

I'm sure this'll be torn apart but just to answer the OP's question, that was my own pathway to belief.

swampgas

morebabies wrote: »

I was brought up in an "indoctrinated" faith environment - we went to church, we went through all the rituals, I was essentially told what to believe in - but all at a very superficial level. As in, I went through the external practices while under age 18 but understood very little and didn't have any kind of personal relationship with God. Hence when I was 18, I stopped going to Church and my "faith" as it was took a back seat.

However, weirdly enough I would have still called myself a Christian - even though my behaviour went totally against my faith. Ten years later I decided that since every other decision in my life had been taken after serious rational reflection (career choice, etc,), I owed it to myself to examine my faith from a rational point of view and decide once and for all whether I was a Christian or not. I totally expected at this stage that my faith would not stand up to any type of rational enquiry - it seemed to me then that faith and reason were completely incompatible and that the faith handed on to me was more superstition and duty than anything else. I was right on that last point - my parents' faith was of a type that questioned nothing.

So I questioned everything, read widely and waited for all the Christian beliefs to collapse in the face of Reason. I was horrified. They didn't. Christianity made perfect rational sense, believing there was no God didn't. Serious life changes followed, not easy ones, but ones that now fitted with what I believed. And practices that had previously meant nothing to me took on great depth.

I'm sure this'll be torn apart but just to answer the OP's question, that was my own pathway to belief.

At least you actually thought about it - kudos! My own questioning led to complete atheism, but I respect your position far more than that of all the cultural catholics out there.

Rezident

pqdvdplayer wrote: »

For a moment, I don't want to argue over whether or not a god exists--I want to know why so many people believe that one does. I usually receive generalized answers to this--"it comforts people," or "they were indoctrinated into the belief," and such related answers.

It doesn't baffle me so much that people believe that a god exists, but rather that a lot of people believe that a god exists. I could understand it if a portion of the population were theists, but I'm surprised the theist/atheist makeup of the population isn't at least around equal parts. Instead, the majority still believes in the existence of a god.

To think about why a person would believe in a god just confounds me. Everything about life, everything we know so far about existence, tells me that one most likely does not exist. Even with a fair analysis of the arguments for and against the existence of a god, the arguments against one existing are clearly superior. I'm not belittling the person who believes in a god, I am simply expressing my inability to understand why they believe it.

It is true that belief in a god and religion provides comfort to those people...but surely the understand that, just because you believe something to be true and it gives you comfort, does not actually mean that it IS true? I mean, if people at least considered this possibility, then they would move on to examine the legitimacy of their beliefs. And thus, I would expect more and more theists to lose their beliefs, but instead they maintain them.

This is a good question, I honestly cannot see how billions of people with the amazing brains that we have would believe in a non-existant, invisible deity. The 'comfort' argument sounds a bit weak unless there is something inside us that knows more than we consciously do i.e. that there is more to life than this, then the comfort argument would make sense.

Brian Shanahan

Jim Rockford wrote: »

What vulgarity and what stereotyping ?

Do you like constantly trolling everybody else on the forum? Because every single post of yours has had nothing to add to any of the debates and was only looking to score cheap points and denigrate those that didn't think like you do.

Brian Shanahan

Tomblyboo wrote: »

So everything is a mistake?

How the hell did you get that from what I wrote? Or are you just so indoctrinated in your beliefs that you have to hit out at every answer given that doesn't boil down to "goddidit"?

and science is the (wonderful) explanation of it?

Science is simply the method developed (painstakingly I might add, after intelligent people realised that believing in interfering gods just didn't work) by humans to try and understand the universe and the various processes within it, and to give the species a framework describing reality which is understandable by a bunch of primates whose brains were originally developed to spot lions in the grass, fruit in the trees, and shout others out of their territory. Given its limitations it has worked pretty well over the years, a hell of a lot better than any god-centric way of thinking.

Brian Shanahan

Baked.noodle wrote: »

However, to decide God does exist without evidence that it does not exist seems to me to be premature.

Fixed that sentence for you to ensure accuracy.

The fact of the matter is that to claim that any god exists is an extraordinary claim, because a) there is no evidence for the existence of any god, b) all of the evidence that we have says that there is no need for god for everything to have happened, and c) the doctrine of least causes says that unless you have compelling evidence to the contrary you must accept the most simple explanation when you have two competing explanations (by rights this should be followed with; "which both equally well explain the evidence available", but the god hyopothesis is actually worse at explaining the universe than one which posits no god). The god hypothesis is not the most simple explanation for the universe because now you've an extra variable to explain.

The evidential onus is on you the believer to prove that god exists, because the fact of the matter is that you are asserting that there is something there which doesn't fit the evidence as we currently know and understand it. Therefore it is on you to bring evidence to the table to support your position. Until you do that your proffession in the existence of god is meaningless.

IRLConor

Tomblyboo wrote: »

So everything is a mistake?

Calling all the wonders of creation a "mistake" carries with it the connotations that a) something else was intended and b) what we have is not what was intended. I don't think it's safe to make either assumption.

Tomblyboo wrote: »

and science is the (wonderful) explanation of it?

An explanation of everything? Not even close.

Casting science as an alternative to religion is a false comparison. It's just a set of tools for helping us get around in the world. Yes, it comes into conflict with religion sometimes but the overlap between the concerns of science and religion is a lot narrower than most people think.

Brian Shanahan

morebabies wrote: »

Christianity made perfect rational sense, believing there was no God didn't.

How?

Jim Rockford

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Do you like constantly trolling everybody else on the forum? Because every single post of yours has had nothing to add to any of the debates and was only looking to score cheap points and denigrate those that didn't think like you do.

Thought as much :rolleyes: