What's Your Reason for Believing God Exists?

[PureX]

Well, we generally need reasons to believe. Otherwise we would just believe in all kinds of pseudo-science or even Tarot reading. We might believe that magicians are actually doing magic instead of tricks. Or we might believe that voodoo works, or that psychics can really talk to the dead and see the future.

That's obviously absurd. We always ask for reasons to believe. If the psychic can't provide reasons, we simply dismiss his funny claims.

So, the question is why do you think this should be different in the case of your religious beliefs?

Two reasons. One is that a great many people NEED to believe in the ideas that their religions espouse. And secondly, when they do so, they find the result to be real and positive evidence that their belief is justified. What I find incredulous is that you can't seem to understand this even as it's been explained to you. Some people also do believe in psychics and voodoo for exactly those same reasons. Just as you believe in science and technology. The problem is that you think only your needs and your evidence are valid, so only your conclusions are valid and reasonable. And therefor everyone else's are just foolishness. It's a huge and blinding bias that many atheists share. And although they think and proclaim themselves to be exceptionally logical, they can't seem to recognize their own glaring bias.

 

[Magical Wand]

Two reasons. One is that a great many people NEED to believe in the ideas that their religions espouse. And secondly, when they do so, they find the result to be real and positive evidence that their belief is justified. What I find incredulous is that you can't seem to understand this even as it's been explained to you. Some people also do believe in psychics and voodoo for exactly those same reasons. Just as you believe in science and technology. The problem is that you think only your needs and your evidence are valid, so only your conclusions are valid and reasonable. And therefor everyone else's are just foolishness. It's a huge and blinding bias that many atheists share. And although they think and proclaim themselves to be exceptionally logical, they can't seem to recognize their own glaring bias.

Sorry, I don't want to be rude, but I asked this question to another person. I want to know his/her reasons.

 

[lukethethird]

What's Your Reason for Believing God Exists?

I'm all out of reasons.

 

[lukethethird]

I don't "believe God exists". I simply choose to trust in that idea for the benefits that I can gain from doing so. It's called 'faith', not belief.

It's a faith based belief. Faith based beliefs appeal to some people and to some, not so much. Whatever floats your boat.

 

[PureX]

It's a faith based belief. Faith based beliefs appeal to some people and to some, not so much. Whatever floats your boat.

For me, it's not a belief. I do not believe that God exists, because I cannot know that to be so. I simply choose to trust in the idea (an idea of my own invention), and act as if it were so. The difference is that I know that it may not be so, but I find the idea and the actions predicated on it helpful in life. For me, to insist on calling it a "belief" when it isn't is belittling it, and mischaracterizing it.

 

[PearlSeeker]

I invite you to give an explanation (not too extensive, btw) of why you believe God (viz., the non-material creator of the cosmos) exists. Let's have a discussion about the topic.

Life and intelligence on our planet in the middle of vast space. Beautiful vew in the night sky and someone who can observe it... All this just a product of pure chance? All this came to existence by itself? No way!

There is randomness and there is order/patterns... This implies an intelligence/mind greater than our.

Personal experience showed me there is something but I can't explain...

Etc.

 

[ratiocinator]

Life and intelligence on our planet in the middle of vast space. Beautiful vew in the night sky and someone who can observe it... All this just a product of pure chance? All this came to existence by itself? No way!

There is randomness and there is order/patterns... This implies an intelligence/mind greater than our.

The problem with this is just that you then end up with more unexplained things than you started with. Where did this 'greater intelligence' come from and why did it create this universe.

Nobody knows why things exist and are the way they are, and assuming a god doesn't help one jot with that question.

 

[PearlSeeker]

The problem with this is just that you then end up with more unexplained things than you started with. Where did this 'greater intelligence' come from and why did it create this universe.

You're right. It doesn't explain everything. But it doesn't matter. It's enough reason for a belief in greater intelligence behind things. Some parts can remain unexplained.

Like Einstein said:
"We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations."

"Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God."

(Wiki)

 

[Muffled]

I experience the cosmos, ergo, something created it.

I believe that does not follow. Our experience of the cosmos is only proof the cosmos exists.

 

[Muffled]

Well, my relating to Shiva could be partly because I've chosen Left Hand Path, a field which may have slightly different ideas on Satan and demons, although I don't mess with Satan and demons because it'd feel like I was subscribing to an Abrahamic mindset to do so. I haven't experienced any Satan or demons yet. They're probably off tormenting the righteous, and not a doomed, hopeless freethinker like me.

I believe anyone can be a target of a demon but I believe a person has to be receptive to spirits to encounter one.

 

[Muffled]

Reason? I had no reason at least at the start.

God came into my life in the same way that a warm breeze rustles leaves. I went from being uninterested in anything spiritual to having a sense that there was more to life than the material. That led to the search for some frame of reference I could accept.

Now reason kicked in. Questions such as "If there is a God and God is all loving, there has to be a loving reason for all the suffering in the world?" "If there is a God, then those who harm others have to reap what they sow, proportionally". And to me that necessarily involves reincarnation.

That eliminated Abrahamic religions especially Christianity and Islam because to me a loving God would not cause someone eternal abysmal suffering that is described as hell.

And it eliminated religion as well because all around me were people paying lip service by going to church etc but their hearts were not touched. Today that's called "spiritual but not religious" but back then we had no name for it.

RF rule 6 does allow me to discuss some aspects of this. But let me say simply that a guy came to our local college with the message that drugs not prescribed for a medical purpose were harmful. And further that they would never lead to God or any sort of realization.

At the end of this process I was firmly convinced that there is something beyond the material that some call God, others see as divine nature and some see both immanent and transcendent.

I believe you are in error. First that Hell is forever even though it is eternal in the sense of being timeless. A loving God makes it easy to escape Hell and He has done that. However for those who love good to have a time without evil then evil must be bound. It is most easy for Christians but the gospel has been told to everyone.

 

[Magical Wand]

Life and intelligence on our planet in the middle of vast space. Beautiful vew in the night sky and someone who can observe it... All this just a product of pure chance? All this came to existence by itself? No way!

Why not? If a very intelligent mind who (according to you) created everything can just exist for no reason, then why can't human intelligence just exist for no reason? Also, I should say "beauty" is in the eye of the beholder. That we may have evolved to see the night sky as beautiful doesn't have any ontological/metaphysical significance. We may well have evolved to see it as ugly. Would you then say the same thing? "This ugly sky must be the product of something intelligent"

There is randomness and there is order/patterns... This implies an intelligence/mind greater than our.

Can you give an example of non-patterned disorder in nature?