If No One Believed In God...

[Wildswanderer]

We do seem predisposed to the sorts of errors* that lend themselves to theism.



*a bias toward Type II errors (false positives) over Type I errors (false negatives) and an overactive theory of mind that likes to attribute agency to inanimate things, specifically.

Why see it as an error? People that have religion are happier.

 

[ChristineM]

Not in my experience. And I worked with kids a lot.

Kids that have learned their religion from parents etc. A child is born without the concept of god. The god image does not begin to develop until after the child can understand language

 

[ChristineM]

Why see it as an error? People that have religion are happier.

Speak for yourself.

 

[Wildswanderer]

I suggest that the vast and wide range of different gods and god-like beings various people have believed in (or claimed to believe in) throughout human history supports the idea that they're a function of human imagination. Even if some kind of god or gods do actually exist, most (if not all) of these conflicting and contradictory perceptions would still be wrong.

Beside the point. There's something in humans that moves them to believe in a higher power. It's almost universal.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Speak for yourself.

It's a fact, statistically.

 

[ppp]

To believe everything came from nothing isn't logical.

Why tell me? Tell it to the Jews, Christians and Muslims. You know, the people who claim that creatio ex nihilo is rational.

 

[Wildswanderer]

How do you know that?

He has written it in creation and on human hearts.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Why tell me? Tell it to the Jews, Christians and Muslims. You know, the people who claim that creatio ex nihilo is rational.

They believe God existed always, so it's not something from nothing. It's everything from someone.

 

[ChristineM]

It's a fact, statistically.

Yes, selective statistics are so cool aren't they.

Not really, the statistics by pew show that around half the countries polled are happier if religious, the other half not so much but they do promot the happy religious half.

And it is also a statistic that the 10 happiest countries in the world are the least religious

10 happiest countries in the world are among the least religious
Note the report by Christian today.and there comment that according to the UN, the least happy countries are very religious.

 

[syo]

If No One Believed In God...

Would God exist?

What does belief have to do with reality?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Why see it as an error? People that have religion are happier.

Not in my experience, but it sounds like you missed the point.

Do you know what Type I and Type II errors are?

 

[InChrist]

If No One Believed In God...

Would God exist?

If God does exist, then human disbelief would not change that reality.

 

[Heyo]

Not really. Most had specific beliefs.

Yes, but all irreconcilable different. So, no matter in what kind of god you believe, you are in the minority, a very insignificant minority. The vast majority of people don't believe your god exists.

 

[Heyo]

Why see it as an error? People that have religion are happier.

Yes, they also have a lower IQ. So, maybe it isn't the religion that is making them happier? Correlation is not equal to causation.

 

[ppp]

They believe God existed always, so it's not something from nothing. It's everything from someone.

I am afraid that you do not understand what creatio ex nihilio means. It means that God created something from nothing. Not from himself, but from quite literally nothing. And again, this is an Abrahamic belief common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I don't know if Sikh or Druze are similar. Either way you should at least know about your own religion before trying to school atheists.

 

[CG Didymus]

Yet people are born without believe in a god... The atheist state. Only later through indoctrination idoes god belief come

I didn't believe in God until my parents told me about God and took me to church. For lots of years I assumed there was a God. Then people started telling me different and contradictory things about God. Then I learned of people that had beliefs in multiple Gods. And then about Gods that most all people take to be mythical Gods. Then I met Atheists, and although I wouldn't mind if there was a God or Gods, I have to agree with Atheists, that because of zero tangible proof, there is no reason to believe in any of these Gods. All of them could have been created by people.

Actually, maybe that's not totally right, there are reasons people believe in Gods, but it still doesn't make them real.

 

[CG Didymus]

Why see it as an error? People that have religion are happier.

Which people in which religion are happier? Which people in which sect of a religion are happier? I'd imagine, for a while, people in some cults are pretty happy.

 

[CG Didymus]

Isn't it?

It's what makes God a god.

What would God be if it weren't a god?

When belief in a certain God goes away, that God I think does go away, because it was only in the minds of the people that worshipped it as a God.

 

[CG Didymus]

I do not want to misrepresent you, but these two statements taken together seem to imply that belief in God comes only from independent investigation. Am I misunderstanding you?

But what are they investigating? Atheists I'm sure investigated to see if God was real or not. And I'm sure others, like myself, assumed God was real and investigated which religion made more sense. But without assuming that any of the many concepts of God are real, is there anything out there that we can find that would convince us that any of the Gods exist? And, you know, now that I think of it, the number one thing that get investigated are the Scriptures of the various religions. And probably the number one Scripture that get studied and read is the Bible. But, again, without coming into it with any assumptions, are people going to believe the God of the Bible? Really, I wouldn't have without already having been taught, (indoctrinated), that this God of the Bible is real.

 

[CG Didymus]

I disagree. As I mentioned earlier, a god is an object of human worship. I think this means that if something is not worshipped by humans, it is not a god.

Even if a thing would be worshipped as a god once a human being found out about it, it would not be a god until that worship happened.

An analogy: say there was a boulder that, thanks to the natural effects of erosion and whatnot, was just the right shape for someone to sit on. Is that boulder a chair? No, not until someone assigns it to that purpose.

... but what do you think makes a god a god, then?

Yes, just like all the idols of Gods made of stone. They were believed in and worshipped. Had sacrifices made to them. Then some person comes along and says these Gods aren't real and smashes them. But how do we smash an invisible God? The beliefs are all in person's mind that they got from someone telling them about that God and by reading what someone wrote about that God. Sounded good, made them happy, so why not believe? But I'm sure people thought the same way about their stone Gods too.