Why should people believe in God?

Ever thought about the possibility that believers don't have a choice in "Belief".


Read my thread "Forced atheist, Forced Belief" and prove my theory wrong if you think belief is a simple choice.


Peace
 
YoYoPapaya said:
Yes i kinda agree. BUT you can use Pascal's Wager for something. Namely to find out which religion is the best one to choose game mechanically. The right religion to pick (as they all have the same chance of being right), would be the one with most to gain by believing it and most to loose by being non believer.
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Except that we cannot really calculate the gains and losses in advance, we can only make some estimations and predictions, and we must also somehow calculate the strain that such a "religious choice" would have on our life.

IRL, rationalizations/intellectualizations tend cause a lot of stress, people become neurotic from using defense mechanisms a lot.
We might somehow calculate which religious belief pays off the most, but unless that belief comes naturally to us, we will be under a lot of strain and will live in misery for the rest of our lives - thereby making it much more likely that we will sooner or later abandon the belief we have adopted based on such a calculation. Which brings us back to the beginning, but with less time, energy and opportunities available.
 
Signal said:
Except that we cannot really calculate the gains and losses in advance, we can only make some estimations and predictions, and we must also somehow calculate the strain that such a "religious choice" would have on our life.

IRL, rationalizations/intellectualizations tend cause a lot of stress, people become neurotic from using defense mechanisms a lot.
We might somehow calculate which religious belief pays off the most, but unless that belief comes naturally to us, we will be under a lot of strain and will live in misery for the rest of our lives - thereby making it much more likely that we will sooner or later abandon the belief we have adopted based on such a calculation. Which brings us back to the beginning, but with less time, energy and opportunities available.
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Could you please add some input in my "forced Atheism" thread, you seem to understand the point im trying to make, maybe you can articulate to certain people in a way I cannot.


Peace.
 
Signal said:
I don't understand this.

What do you mean by "then the reason becomes the individuals"?

For example saying "I believe in God for my own sake"?
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Yes.
Or;

because I don't want to go to hell
I want to go to heaven
I want to be a good person
I want liberation from this material world

ect...

jan.
 
Mind Over Matter said:
I believe in God because the life, death and teaching of Jesus reflect the fact that everything we consider most precious on earth - truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love - converge in the reality of one loving Father in heaven. It's as simple as that! The alternative is a barren, empty, meaningless desert of futility...
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I recognize truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love without god. How is that possible?
 
EmptyForceOfChi said:
The creator is the only god, just because you give some-thing a name and a back story doesn't make it a god.

The creator has many names but he isn't a divided house he is absolute in his rule/


Peace.
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Why are you any more correct than the millions of polytheists before you? Just acknowledging the possibility of something doesn't mean you can know it's attributes.
 
Dywyddyr said:
Agreed.
So how do you justify this:
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Ibelieve that many people have tried to use god's to explain things they don't understand, people create god's for near enough anything For example Greek culture and Japanese Shintoists for example there is a god for everything, even a god of local farming produce, sometimes family's even invent their own "personal god's"


I attribute God to the creation of everything without ant dicision, Strict un adultered Monotheist without any exceptions.

I do rexognize and understand your opposing position and that you can just say "Isn't that just another god but now he created everything instead of just one thing" I don't give this god an image though I don't claim to know anything about what he looks like, I Simply acknowledge his art and his creations and considermyselfone of his creations justlike a planet or a tree is.


Peace.
 
spidergoat said:
Why are you any more correct than the millions of polytheists before you? Just acknowledging the possibility of something doesn't mean you can know it's attributes.
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Because I believe that god has sent down messengers and prophets, I also believe what certain prophets have said regarding god's thought on polytheism, he is not blind to what we do and he does have opinions and he objects to us associating partners with him because he says he is an undivided house and there is no debate that he is alpha and omega without competition.


Peace.
 
Dywyddyr said:
EmptyForceOfChi said:
Since you recognise this argument:

Then why this particular one:




What do you mean "acknowledge"?
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Because after studying all the scriptures and after my life experiences and also upon many days of meditations over years I have come to conclusions. I understand my conclusions are not your conclusions and the one I worship is not the one you worship.


By acknowledge I mean I have under-stood Beauty and what it is, I have given credit to the un -een creator for this artistic beauty, I have visual and vibrational confirmation of this artistic existence of the universe and it's orderly functions.

peace.
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Dywyddyr said:
Why do you believe?


Nonsense.
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I trust in the messages of the prophets and the wisdom they have all brought, Im not just talking about the middle eastern prophets either, am talking about every messenger who has come bearing words and pearls of wisdom tog uide humanity into being moral good people who stand by justice and good intentions.


I don't think I speak nonesense, maybe you do not feel what I say is true and you are your own man with your own mind If you do not believe what I say to be true then so be it.


Peace.
 
YoYoPapaya said:
Yes i kinda agree. BUT you can use Pascal's Wager for something. Namely to find out which religion is the best one to choose game mechanically.
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You are going to encounter a problem with "best" there. The Pascalian argument seems to be ignoring the question of whether or not a candidate object of worship is suitable, whether it really deserves our devotion. (More on that below.)

There's also going to be a problem with the idea of "choosing" a religion. Can we simply will ourselves to believe something as easily as all that? In Pascal's case, I don't think that he was really trying to create an argument that would convince anyone to convert. He was trying to justify the rationality of his own already-existing Christian faith.

The right religion to pick (as they all have the same chance of being right)
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Do we really know that all religious beliefs have the same chance of being right? I don't think that it's true. Some religious systems are kind of generic (perhaps proposing an unknown "higher power" that may or may not be reflected very imperfectly in all religious traditions) while other religious systems stoutly claim the inerrancy of tremendously involved mythologies and make very specific and testable claims about origins, cosmology, the etiology of things like disease, and miraculous historical events of all kinds.

would be the one with most to gain by believing it and most to loose by being non believer.
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A major problem with spinning things that way is that it favors the most crude and savage sorts of religion. According to this hard-Pascalian argument, it would be most rational for us to believe that unbelievers receive the most merciless and abominable tortures in hell for all of eternity without any hope of respite, because that sort of vision would give us the most to gain by believing whatever it takes in order to avoid it.

I think that we see that kind of 'hit'em-with-a-club' rhetorical strategy being used over and over again in the history of religion, in hopes of scaring people into faith.

Unfortunately, it also has the effect of reversing God and Satan, turning Satan into the most sympathetic figure in the myth. Satan knows that he's a created being, he knows from the very beginning that his rebellion is doomed to failure, but he nevertheless takes the moral stand and says "NO!!!", refusing to bend a knee and worship omnipotent evil.

That's tremendous nobility, a kind of nobility that God could never understand.
 
Jan Ardena said:
Yes.
Or;

because I don't want to go to hell
I want to go to heaven
I want to be a good person
I want liberation from this material world

ect...
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Would you say that believing in God on the grounds of reasons is inferior to "just believing"?
 
EmptyForceOfChi said:
By acknowledge I mean I have under-stood Beauty and what it is, I have given credit to the un -een creator for this artistic beauty, I have visual and vibrational confirmation of this artistic existence of the universe and it's orderly functions.
Click to expand...
Vibrational? :wtf:

EmptyForceOfChi said:
I trust in the messages of the prophets and the wisdom they have all brought, Im not just talking about the middle eastern prophets either, am talking about every messenger who has come bearing words and pearls of wisdom tog uide humanity into being moral good people who stand by justice and good intentions.
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Trust?
The same sort trust you had when told that Mecca is the centre of the Earth?
Ah right: you chose Allah because of all the "prophets" of all the religions. :confused:
 
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