Why believe in God?

Why to believe in God? Why not?

That's just faith in science.

No its not. I'm not a scientist, and I cannot properly discuss science with people who know it, who work with it or study it. I suppose in a way this does make me a 'believer' in science as opposed to someone who truly understands it.

I look at it as a matter of reason. Over time people needed answers to questions far beyond their capacities to answer. Religion filled that gap. Now science has offered reasonable answers. Therefore religion is no longer required. Thats how I view it.

I'm worried somewhat by the phrasing of the question. 'Why believe in God' seems to indicate a choice is being made - it implies that there is some motive or reason for believing in God - some expectation of gain in doing so. But surely anyone who 'believes in God' simply for some reason or another doesn't really believe in God at all?

[quote=Cryptic]}

Constantine XI wrote: ...The key word there was convenient: it is simply more convenient and easy to go along with a book you can read in under a week than spend many years taking the classes, exams and practical experiments in the natural sciences which refute claims of the existence of a divinity.

Akolouthos wrote: Emperor Barbarossa wrote: Nice to see you guys again, Omar Northman, and Ako. Also, never really saw you before Parnell (kudos to your name, Charles Parnell is one of my favorite figures in Irish history), but you seem to be pretty cool Irishman. You remind me a lot of Paul. There is no religion of atheism. Sure, some atheists like to think that we are some sort of club, but we are not. Alright, there are some trendy people who think atheism is the new "cool" fad. But the mainstay of us don't believe because we don't believe. We don't believe because God was never actually proven to us, He was taken for granted. We believed in God because our friends did, our families did, basically because we were taught to. Why complicate things? People believe in religions because they want answers to questions that mankind might never know the answers to. Great to see you again too! It's been too long. If your beliefs are still the same as they were when last we discussed the topic, then yes, I do understand where you are coming from here. I would generally characterize your position, for the purposes of simplification and wider understanding, as "agnosticism", but I do understand the sense in which you use the term atheist. Indeed, I believe you use it validly, when reflecting back on our conversation several years ago; I just don't know that it would be understood in the proper sense by someone who hadn't discussed the issue with you previously. My criticisms above are directed more at the people who do view it as a sort of club. -Akolouthos

I'm actually more atheist than I was a couple years ago (I went from 50% chance of divine powers, purely agnostic agnostic, to a more atheist belief through equating it the chances of ghosts, fairies, etc. ~1%). Actual atheism is simply the disbelief in theism, so I think almost anyone that does not believe in a god qualifies.

Cryptic wrote: Sure it does. The environmentalist movement is heavily atheist / agnsotic. The gospels of environmentalism,  global warming and the purported concequences are used to advance political and social agendas. At times, violence is used against blasphamers.  (Environmental terrorism). Some believers make extreme sacrifices (Italian couple that sterilized themselves for the "sake of the planet"). The high priests of atheism / environmentalism continously solicit donations from the faithful using the same psychological leverages as theists.  Some of the high priests of Atheism undoubtably embezzle or misuse the donations sent by their faithful.

How is the environmentalist movement atheist? Al Gore, if you want to call him the "high priest" of environmentalism, is religious. Besides, many religious people are environmentalist because they view destroying this world with destroying God's own precious and special creation.

Constantine XI wrote: You could also argue that the Mona Lisa is more complex than all the books on physics ever written, or any religious text. Not because this is true, but because the substance and nature of the Mona Lisa is determined esoterically and can be reinterpreted so many times as to mean almost anything.

And, in fact, I would argue that -- although I'd probably pick a different painting. I've never seen what the big deal was with that smile.

The same is typical of religious belief systems (hence the vast number of them which exist and compete with eachother). Sure, we could reinterpret the same passage over and over again until it means anything and everything. But people will generally go for the literal meaning of what they read. This is what happens in the natural sciences which compete in providing evidence for creation and the existence of divinity. Plenty of complicated jargon, but the literal meaning of the text is what is important, not whatever esoteric interpretations we wish to attach on extra after we have read it. So at the end of the day we do have two bodies of knowledge, and one is simply more vast than the other, and hence requires more patience and sheer work to properly understand even at the basic level. Of course if we each started ascribing our own personal esoteric non-literal 'takes' on passages written by Darwin and Dawkins, then we could be here until the end of time.

Methinks thou wouldst make a good fundamentalist were you an adherent. Yes, people, if left to their own devices, or what Luther optimistically called "evident reason", will generally go to the most literal interpretation of any given passage of Scripture first; whether or not they choose to remain there is up to them. It certainly doesn't present a very broad application. If you wish to find someone to argue for a basic, literal interpretation of Scripture with you, I'm not your man.

With regard to Darwin or Dawkins, I think you might have missed the dichotomy I was -- albeit in a poorly phrased manner -- trying to establish between the different sorts of questions one might ask. When one is seeking to establish and quantify data, a basic, literal reading will usually suffice. When one is seeking to apply a metaphysical or cosmological system, it will not. Darwin is the former, Christianity is the latter, and Dawkins is somewhere in between, depending on what you read.

As for which body of knowledged is more vast, it would depend whether you were speaking of vastness in terms of application or in terms of assertion.

The transition from primate hunter gatherer to civilised human being was never going to be easy. Hence, even a good belief system would make errors. And in any case, persecution was a feature of a strong and successful belief system. The Abrahamic religions were especially big on persecuting heretics and enforcing dogma, which is one of the reasons they simply defeated the less strict pagan belief systems around them.

I was referring more to the time period at the beginning when the Church did not have the apparatus of the Roman state behind it; when it was, quite often at odds with that state, and often persecuted. I think your explanation holds well for the post-Nicene Church through the Early-Modern era. I think it is less applicable to the period after, and wholly inapplicable to the period before.

As for the modern era, well if you go to church you then have an especially well disposed sub culture to welcome you and make you feel part of something. If you are an atheist.... well, so what? No one hosts atheist dinner parties, or gives random strangers a hi5 when upon learning they are also an atheist. The incentive to be part of a group is still here in today's world, perhaps even stronger since most people in your church are likely true believers rather than simply dragged along by their families to conform as has been more common the case in the past.

Atheist culture in Australia might be different than it is here in the States. Suffice it to say that there are dinner parties, discussion groups, high-fives, and occasionally even quasi-churches formed. This is largely the result of the prosyletizing of individuals such as Dawkins coupled with the fact that, in America, atheists are still existing in a cultural context which emphasizes religious belief -- albeit less so than it has in the past. To these two factors, add the increasing dogmatization of our political ideologies, and you have your separate subculture. I'd be interested to hear a bit of analysis as to how things are over there.

No, we do not need an us vs. them complex for this to work. You want to create stable family units which are cohesive households (easier to tax in ancient times) - tell people god will kill them for adultery. Your enemies are attacking you and you can't raise the cash to equip an army - tell people they will go to heaven if they die fighting for a god given mission. You want to remain in power even though you are a languid and unattractive ruler - tell people that god put you there and defying you means also defying the divine. So you see a control system does not need an adversarial competition going on, it just needs someone who is imaginative and really wants to get people to do things they ordinarily won't do.

I think you misread me here, which is likely a result of my legendarily imprecise writing. I was taking your basic assumption as a given under certain circumstances, and then applying it to the context in which we -- or at least I -- live, where this assumption does not apply. Thus, I was not saying that Christianity requires a certain context to become a system of motivation and authoritarian control -- although this is a broader issue which we could flesh out in another thread. I was explaining the circumstances which need to exist -- and do, in the postmodern era -- for atheism to become a system of motivation and, to a lesser extent, authoritarian control. Feel free to re-read what I wrote above in that light, and ask me for clarification if need be. I don't want to respond yet, seeing as we were speaking past each other, for fear we might get a bit further off track.

Always a pleasure, Cosntantine XI.

-Akolouthos

Cryptic wrote: gcle2003 wrote: In fact I have no idea where you get the idea from. Most of the environmentalists I meet, especially the fundamentalist ones are heavily religious.   The ones I have met are very secular. Likewise the literature that I read presented by these groups did not contain any religious messages.

Cryptic wrote: They have in effect created their own secula religion.

Bulldog wrote: People have always believed in God and always will.