Why would a reasonable person believe in God?

[DrZoidberg]

Simply calling theists stupid or ignorant is too simple. Sure, we're a dumb-ass species. But we're not that stupid. I refuse to believe that belief in God isn't psychologically useful somehow. I'm talking use. Not a crutch. The belief acting as a tool in order to strengthen the believers life somehow. If not, I can't see how this belief could have possible survived.

Is it the community surrounding religious faith?
Is it the rituals and traditions giving a sense of security?
Is it the fear of eye of God in their supposed Godly police-state keeping them focused on what is important?
Are prayers a way to help the believer formulate goals in their lives?
Does the illusion of Godly love give the believer a genuine feeling of love?
Something else?

I'm talking about belief in a false God in purely functional terms. What is the function of theism? No, I'm not talking about it as a tool for those in power. I'm talking about religion in the bottom up sense.

Just to make it clear here. This is not an opening for apologetics. I still think the God hypothesis is stupid. It's just all out ridiculous, retarded and preposterous. I posit theists don't spend much time thinking about the existence of God since it's not important for them. They jump straight to whatever boon they get from the faith itself, without bothering about whether the hypothesis is true or not. We have plenty of evidence for that in this forum. Whenever a theists comes and tries to argue for the existence of God, they without fail fall back on arguments they could have dismissed themselves if they spent a couple of minutes googling ancient Greek philosophers. So they didn't. Ergo, they don't really care.

So what is the benefit from holding this false belief? The actual benefit.

 

[bilby]

The common cold virus doesn't provide a benefit to its host; all that is needed is that it doesn't weaken the host to the point of death prior to being passed on; and that the benefits of immunity are not so great as to allow such immunity to dominate the gene pool faster than the virus can develop ways around the immunity.

I am not sure that there is no benefit to being religious; but neither am I convinced that there is.

 

[Tigers!]

As a theist I give it a burl for you

Simply calling theists stupid or ignorant is too simple.

Thank you for that. An all too rare approach.

Sure, we're a dumb-ass species. But we're not that stupid. I refuse to believe that belief in God isn't psychologically useful somehow. I'm talking use. Not a crutch. The belief acting as a tool in order to strengthen the believers life somehow. If not, I can't see how this belief could have possible survived.

The belief, as you call it, is a tool for strengthening our life's but also the reason why we continue to be theists.

Is it the community surrounding religious faith?

The community is very important to theists. It reminds us that we are not alone, it is a means of encouragement, a place to learn and teach, a sense of belonging.

Is it the rituals and traditions giving a sense of security?

The traditions/rituals are a reminder of what we believe and why we believe. They are a link to the past, an anchor in the present and a bridge to the future.

Is it the fear of eye of God in their supposed Godly police-state keeping them focused on what is important?

It is extraordinary that atheists always assume that theists are theists out of fear. the possibility that we are theists out of a sense of love, reverence must be considered to be so absurd as to be discounted out of hand.

Are prayers a way to help the believer formulate goals in their lives?

Prayers are indeed a way of discerning what God wills (goals as you call them). But is also the way we communicate with God and enhance and continue our relationship with him.

Does the illusion of Godly love give the believer a genuine feeling of love?

Naturally I will quibble to your use of the term illusion. God's love is as real to me as my wife's or my daughter's. As scripture ells us 'we love because we are loved'

Something else?

I'm talking about belief in a false God in purely functional terms. What is the function of theism? No, I'm not talking about it as a tool for those in power. I'm talking about religion in the bottom up sense.

Fixed it for you

Just to make it clear here. This is not an opening for apologetics. I still think the God hypothesis is stupid. It's just all out ridiculous, retarded and preposterous. I posit theists don't spend much time thinking about the existence of God since it's not important for them.

If the existence of God was not important to me I would not be a theist.

They jump straight to whatever boon they get from the faith itself, without bothering about whether the hypothesis is true or not. We have plenty of evidence for that in this forum. Whenever a theists comes and tries to argue for the existence of God, they without fail fall back on arguments they could have dismissed themselves if they spent a couple of minutes googling ancient Greek philosophers. So they didn't. Ergo, they don't really care.

So what is the benefit from holding this false belief? The actual benefit.

See above

 

[Underseer]

Short answer: lots of reasons.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If the existence of God was not important to me I would not be a theist.

Why not? The existence of God is a question of fact. If you find the evidence for existence to be compelling then you should believe he exists and if not, not. How important his existence may be to you should be an entirely different question than the one of whether or not he exists in the first place.

 

[rousseau]

The concept of 'God' exists to validate people's belief that their life isn't meaningless, which would theoretically provide intrinsic motivation to make it from end to end.

Being able to reason doesn't mean we are reasonable about everything. Someone who has great logical skills can still fail to connect dots in certain contexts.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The common cold virus doesn't provide a benefit to its host; all that is needed is that it doesn't weaken the host to the point of death prior to being passed on; and that the benefits of immunity are not so great as to allow such immunity to dominate the gene pool faster than the virus can develop ways around the immunity.

I am not sure that there is no benefit to being religious; but neither am I convinced that there is.

Ok, so the religious-people-are-too-stupid-to-see-what's-going-on-argument. Hard to disprove. But a mental virus needs to grab onto something to take root. What is the religious meme grabbing onto? What is the illusory benefit? I'm talking emotionally.

 

[bilby]

The common cold virus doesn't provide a benefit to its host; all that is needed is that it doesn't weaken the host to the point of death prior to being passed on; and that the benefits of immunity are not so great as to allow such immunity to dominate the gene pool faster than the virus can develop ways around the immunity.

I am not sure that there is no benefit to being religious; but neither am I convinced that there is.

Ok, so the religious-people-are-too-stupid-to-see-what's-going-on-argument. Hard to disprove. But a mental virus needs to grab onto something to take root. What is the religious meme grabbing onto? What is the illusory benefit? I'm talking emotionally.

I am not saying religious people are stupid; I am drawing an analogy with evolution, and saying that an observed feature need not imply benefit - it need only avoid being too detrimental to survive.

The religious meme piggybacks on positive traits of social beings. We evolved in a world where seeing agency where none existed, was more beneficial than seeing none, where agency was in fact present.

Religion is superstition writ large; and many animals are superstitious - pigeons will become superstitious when presented with a lever that randomly provides either food or no food, for example; they remember some irrelevant thing they did just prior to a reward, and repeat it each time thereafter, convinced that it is helping, despite purely random rewards being presented.

I find this eerily similar to people praying for a parking spot, or playing one-armed bandits.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Sure, we're a dumb-ass species. But we're not that stupid. I refuse to believe that belief in God isn't psychologically useful somehow. I'm talking use. Not a crutch. The belief acting as a tool in order to strengthen the believers life somehow. If not, I can't see how this belief could have possible survived.

The belief, as you call it, is a tool for strengthening our life's but also the reason why we continue to be theists.

Is it the community surrounding religious faith?

The community is very important to theists. It reminds us that we are not alone, it is a means of encouragement, a place to learn and teach, a sense of belonging.

Is it the rituals and traditions giving a sense of security?

The traditions/rituals are a reminder of what we believe and why we believe. They are a link to the past, an anchor in the present and a bridge to the future.

Thanks. All valuable answers to me. I've grown up in atheist Sweden. I've had zero real contact with any religion my entire life. So all my knowledge about these kinds of things are strictly theoretical. You've been a great help.

Is it the fear of eye of God in their supposed Godly police-state keeping them focused on what is important?

It is extraordinary that atheists always assume that theists are theists out of fear. the possibility that we are theists out of a sense of love, reverence must be considered to be so absurd as to be discounted out of hand.

But you don't need a belief of god for that. If your motivations are to love your neighbour and show reverence to the world, in what way would you benefit from a belief in god? In this scenario god seems redundant.

I've never understood why Christians trust god. If God was in fact smarter than all humans, it would easy easy for it to fool us, believing it was good when it would be evil. There's no way of knowing what god's intentions are. Without or without the Bible. Human emotions are easily manipulated and inherently untrustworthy. But that's a bit of a derail.

Are prayers a way to help the believer formulate goals in their lives?

Prayers are indeed a way of discerning what God wills (goals as you call them). But is also the way we communicate with God and enhance and continue our relationship with him.

I'm an atheist. So I of course operate in a world where prayers stay inside the praying persons head. What I need to explain is why the theist keeps saying prayers even though nothing external is listening. And whenever god answers I see it as nothing but the believer supplying themselves with an answer. We can all have an internal dialogue. That's just normal operating procedure for a human brain. Hearing "the voice of god" from time to time proves nothing.

Does the illusion of Godly love give the believer a genuine feeling of love?

Naturally I will quibble to your use of the term illusion. God's love is as real to me as my wife's or my daughter's. As scripture ells us 'we love because we are loved'

Well... again. I'm an atheist. The love you feel from god has, by necessity, to be illusory. In fact, any and all love is illusory as far as the brain is concerned. Our senses feed it with stimuli and if something triggers the right neurons Oxytocin starts pumping out. I'm sure we've all experienced the Oxytocin rush from a text message from somebody we fancy. Technically, that's your brain translating the text into the kind of physical stimuli that would trigger the love response. So it's obviously possible to trigger without god needing to exist.

Just to make it clear here. This is not an opening for apologetics. I still think the God hypothesis is stupid. It's just all out ridiculous, retarded and preposterous. I posit theists don't spend much time thinking about the existence of God since it's not important for them.

If the existence of God was not important to me I would not be a theist.

I'd argue that it can't be true. Simply because the god hypothesis is so preposterous. It's not like theists haven't been given plenty of time to argue their case. We've had religion for as long as we've had homo sapiens, and theology is still nowhere beyond outright assertions contradicting slews of logical paradoxes. It's still based on nothing but because-I-said-so. A child should easily be able to see through the curtains of self deceit theists have to drape around their mind to keep the god faith going. At least I did when I was a child And now I know philosophy. I can explain in excruciating technical detail why the god hypothesis is in every way ridiculous. As can most people in this forum, as the archive shows. My point is that a person doesn't need to be especially intelligent to figure out the ridiculousness of theism.

You seem like a clever guy. So we can discount stupidity. That only leaves that you really don't care whether or not god exists. You might tell yourself that the existence of god is important to you. But I know that it isn't. If you think it is feel free to argue it in yet another thread arguing for the existence of gods. But I'm not going to argue for the non-existence of god in this thread. By necessity, you've just asserted god's existence, and then stopped enquiring further at some point, because it gives you access to a bunch of other stuff. Which is cool and all. But what those other things are, is what this thread is about.

Sorry if I come across as arrogant. But at some point the molly-coddling of silly beliefs, just because we're supposed to respect other's religious beliefs, has to stop. It dumbs down the entire discourse and, I believe, makes us all dumber. So I'm done with it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Ok, so the religious-people-are-too-stupid-to-see-what's-going-on-argument. Hard to disprove. But a mental virus needs to grab onto something to take root. What is the religious meme grabbing onto? What is the illusory benefit? I'm talking emotionally.

I am not saying religious people are stupid; I am drawing an analogy with evolution, and saying that an observed feature need not imply benefit - it need only avoid being too detrimental to survive.

The religious meme piggybacks on positive traits of social beings. We evolved in a world where seeing agency where none existed, was more beneficial than seeing none, where agency was in fact present.

Religion is superstition writ large; and many animals are superstitious - pigeons will become superstitious when presented with a lever that randomly provides either food or no food, for example; they remember some irrelevant thing they did just prior to a reward, and repeat it each time thereafter, convinced that it is helping, despite purely random rewards being presented.

I find this eerily similar to people praying for a parking spot, or playing one-armed bandits.

But there exists social organisations that give us all the social benefits without needing to posit a god. I regularly attend yoga classes. I can sort of see how that yoga school captures plenty of what exists in the religious world. My question is, why doesn't everybody religious just switch to yoga and become atheists. It's so much simpler, and I assume they'd get similar kinds of things out of it? What is it about theism specifically that is so compelling (despite the obvious, ie that god doesn't actually exist).

 

[Tigers!]

The belief, as you call it, is a tool for strengthening our life's but also the reason why we continue to be theists.

Is it the community surrounding religious faith?

The community is very important to theists. It reminds us that we are not alone, it is a means of encouragement, a place to learn and teach, a sense of belonging.

Is it the rituals and traditions giving a sense of security?

The traditions/rituals are a reminder of what we believe and why we believe. They are a link to the past, an anchor in the present and a bridge to the future.

Thanks. All valuable answers to me. I've grown up in atheist Sweden. I've had zero real contact with any religion my entire life. So all my knowledge about these kinds of things are strictly theoretical. You've been a great help.

Is it the fear of eye of God in their supposed Godly police-state keeping them focused on what is important?

It is extraordinary that atheists always assume that theists are theists out of fear. the possibility that we are theists out of a sense of love, reverence must be considered to be so absurd as to be discounted out of hand.

But you don't need a belief of god for that. If your motivations are to love your neighbour and show reverence to the world, in what way would you benefit from a belief in god? In this scenario god seems redundant.

As Christians we are to go beyond just loving our neighbours. We are called to love our enemies and the unlovely. Sadly we all too often do not do a good job of that.

I've never understood why Christians trust god. If God was in fact smarter than all humans, it would easy easy for it to fool us, believing it was good when it would be evil. There's no way of knowing what god's intentions are. Without or without the Bible. Human emotions are easily manipulated and inherently untrustworthy. But that's a bit of a derail.

If human emotions are inherently trustworthy then I would be reluctant to trust you.

Are prayers a way to help the believer formulate goals in their lives?

Prayers are indeed a way of discerning what God wills (goals as you call them). But is also the way we communicate with God and enhance and continue our relationship with him.

I'm an atheist. So I of course operate in a world where prayers stay inside the praying persons head. What I need to explain is why the theist keeps saying prayers even though nothing external is listening. And whenever god answers I see it as nothing but the believer supplying themselves with an answer. We can all have an internal dialogue. That's just normal operating procedure for a human brain. Hearing "the voice of god" from time to time proves nothing.

We keep praying because we believe and are convinced that God is listening and does care.

Does the illusion of Godly love give the believer a genuine feeling of love?

Naturally I will quibble to your use of the term illusion. God's love is as real to me as my wife's or my daughter's. As scripture ells us 'we love because we are loved'

Well... again. I'm an atheist. The love you feel from god has, by necessity, to be illusory. In fact, any and all love is illusory as far as the brain is concerned. Our senses feed it with stimuli and if something triggers the right neurons Oxytocin starts pumping out. I'm sure we've all experienced the Oxytocin rush from a text message from somebody we fancy. Technically, that's your brain translating the text into the kind of physical stimuli that would trigger the love response. So it's obviously possible to trigger without god needing to exist.

Why does love have to be by nature illusory? If love is illusory then your relationship to a spouse, parent, child etc is on shaky ground. When you say to someone "I love you" are you saying something that is not true ? If so then how can one trust you any in any way?

Just to make it clear here. This is not an opening for apologetics. I still think the God hypothesis is stupid. It's just all out ridiculous, retarded and preposterous. I posit theists don't spend much time thinking about the existence of God since it's not important for them.

If the existence of God was not important to me I would not be a theist.

I'd argue that it can't be true. Simply because the god hypothesis is so preposterous. It's not like theists haven't been given plenty of time to argue their case. We've had religion for as long as we've had homo sapiens, and theology is still nowhere beyond outright assertions contradicting slews of logical paradoxes. It's still based on nothing but because-I-said-so. A child should easily be able to see through the curtains of self deceit theists have to drape around their mind to keep the god faith going. At least I did when I was a child And now I know philosophy. I can explain in excruciating technical detail why the god hypothesis is in every way ridiculous. As can most people in this forum, as the archive shows. My point is that a person doesn't need to be especially intelligent to figure out the ridiculousness of theism.

Alleged preposterousness doesn't know show that a hypothesis is incorrect.

You seem like a clever guy. So we can discount stupidity. That only leaves that you really don't care whether or not god exists. You might tell yourself that the existence of god is important to you. But I know that it isn't. If you think it is feel free to argue it in yet another thread arguing for the existence of gods. But I'm not going to argue for the non-existence of god in this thread. By necessity, you've just asserted god's existence, and then stopped enquiring further at some point, because it gives you access to a bunch of other stuff. Which is cool and all. But what those other things are, is what this thread is about.

Sorry if I come across as arrogant. But at some point the molly-coddling of silly beliefs, just because we're supposed to respect other's religious beliefs, has to stop. It dumbs down the entire discourse and, I believe, makes us all dumber. So I'm done with it.

You noted that you have some concern about appearing arrogant. Your quote "You might tell yourself that the existence of god is important to you. But I know that it isn't." is indeed arrogant. You have never met me (nor I you) and yet you feel obligated to tell me that you know that I know that God is not important to me.

If you are not really interested in what your respondents have to offer why do you start such threads in the first place? Are you just after affirmations from those who think like you or are you really curious?

 

[dx713]

From what I can get from my wife and my in-laws, I see 3 main advantages they get from religion:
1) Resolution of cognitive dissonance about their life. They feel, as our brains are programmed to, that it's not possible they have no special purpose or that things happens for no reasons sometimes. As Bilby pointed out, our brains are wired to look for agency, and find it even where there's none. Religion is a good answer to that discrepancy.
2) Validation of traditions. Our family does things like that because god is easier to maintain than an everything is open to evaluation attitude that might lead to maybe my father was not that good a father after all.
3) Meditation / self reflexion / self improvement time. Prayer can do that. I remember a priest tell he would feel especially enlightened after "adoration" (silent worship of the place where the holy oil is kept, or something like that). His explanation that he connected better with god during that time, my thoughts were duh, of course silent worship is more conductive to thoughts triage than conducting a mass.

There's also the social part. You are right that it can be gotten from other things (as meditation too), but when you come from a religious tradition, it's natural and easier to expand one's social circle through the ones you've been part of since childhood and where your parents think you safe.

 

[Rhea]

here's my take on what they get out of it, based on how they behave in it and what reasons they use to try to convince me to join it.

They can’t access the feeling of contentment and charity without someone instructing them to it – or they think they can’t. The idea of loss of this life comfort is terrifying (“what if it goes away when god goes away?”). The step is huge, the chasm is black and deep to them. So the cost of hanging on to the belief in something they don’t bother prove is much less troublesome than the feared cost of what they think they will lose by exploring that proof.

Purpose – they are not comfortable creating purpose in their lives. Again, I think the fear of finding none leaves the comfort of believing it is assigned to them worth being unexamined. Don’t open that door, you are afraid of what you might find behind it. (turns out there is a plethora of wonder beyond the door, but they are afraid there is nothing)

I took a class in philosophy where we were instructed to write a lengthy paper exploring the thought process of considering yourself to be ”just” an unguided human. I sensed from the teachers rather obvious clues that she felt we would all find god through this exercise. So I wrote my paper with her “voice” in mind, positing that without a guiding force of some kind, the vast indifference of existence would be absolutely unanchored and terrifying. She gave me an A+ on the paper, so for at least some theists, I believe I have verified that yah, this is something they need. Afraid of the dark, so to speak.

But I also believe it involves fear of losing a community. Religion guarantees you an “in” they seem to think. (despite the rather vicious sectarian behavior of religionists) they don’t feel confident in their ability to have/build/maintain a reliable community without a command to be included.

And hope. I don’t understand this one myself because it seems to let them down so often, but they demonstrate a need to believe in supernatural assistance to bolster their confidence. Prayer for sickness, touchdowns, parking spaces, control over women, even abused children; although you don’t see them doing much praying for that as loudly as the other things, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Wait a minute, no I won’t. If they actually believed that prayer actually worked, how could they ever leave their knees until no more abuse ever happened? So they must not believe that prayer is capable of solving that one, otherwise they’d be admonishing each other over the football prayers and demanding they be replaced with abuse prayers by crowds before games, and you just never see that. Which loops back to the OP claim that they don’t actually believe, which I think is true, they get other comforts from maintaining the belief but they don’t care about examining whether they actually believe. Because again, if they actually believed, they’d do different things than they do.

We keep praying because we believe and are convinced that God is listening and does care.

But you choose the least convincing things to pray about. And the difference between what you say and what you do is what you do. You just don’t act the way people who really believe would act.

 

[Sheshbazzar]

One doesn't need to believe in (a) God, or need be much of a prophet to perceive the fact that the 'catholic church' and the 'christian' religion are corrupt from root to branch, fitted for destruction, and foredoomed from the git go.
Only question remaining is how soon, and how quickly its ultimate destruction and dissolution will take place. One could hope John's prophetic vision proves accurate, and it be accomplished in one hour.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

One doesn't need to believe in (a) God, or need be much of a prophet to perceive the fact that the 'catholic church' and the 'christian' religion are corrupt from root to branch, fitted for destruction, and foredoomed from the git go.
Only question remaining is how soon, and how quickly its ultimate destruction and dissolution will take place. One could hope John's prophetic vision proves accurate, and it be accomplished in one hour.

Can one really call an organization that's lasted almost 2000 years "foredoomed from the git go"? The time that it's lasted has demonstrated some serious staying power. Sure, it's going to end eventually, but the same is true for everything. One could just as well say "Burning fusion power? That's not sustainable. The sun is only going to last a few billion more years tops. Horrible design".

The Catholic Church and the Christian religion have outlasted pretty much anything else humans have come up with that it can be compared to. There's no fatal design flaw in it that makes it an unworkable model.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Inertia. There are millenia of years of religious inertia that becomes hard to ignore for some.
A sense of community. Church for many is a part of family and for others, like a sports team.
Unease about the unknown. The idea of dying and that is that isn't exactly the easiest thing to accept. Additionally, the idea that there is little in control other than physical laws of nature can make some people uneasy.
Desire for a sense of control. This dates back quite a while, the need for heavenly guidance or help. The idea that we aren't in this alone and that my sick friend or family member can have a better shot because I pray.

 

[dx713]

I took a class in philosophy where we were instructed to write a lengthy paper exploring the thought process of considering yourself to be ”just” an unguided human. I sensed from the teachers rather obvious clues that she felt we would all find god through this exercise. So I wrote my paper with her “voice” in mind, positing that without a guiding force of some kind, the vast indifference of existence would be absolutely unanchored and terrifying. She gave me an A+ on the paper, so for at least some theists, I believe I have verified that yah, this is something they need. Afraid of the dark, so to speak.

What kind of philosophy class was that? I thought you were supposed to demonstrate knowledge of history of philosophy and of the main arguments on all sides of the topic, not parrot the teacher's beliefs. (Plus, I find the way the exercise was presented is already a loaded question)

But you choose the least convincing things to pray about. And the difference between what you say and what you do is what you do. You just don’t act the way people who really believe would act.

A lot of religion is borne from tradition. If you have learned that prayers for world peace are the Pope's prayers and that your daily prayers are for your family's health, you do that, and reserve the big prayers for when you attend a mass led by the Pope.
Or at least that's how it is with catholics.

-- more generally --
On the "need to prove" thing, I've noticed two distinct sides:
The people who fully buy into woo and magical thinking, who provide plenty of mind-numbing proofs and you're the close-minded one for refusing to see them.
Or the people who, when challenged, eventually back down to "I believe because I do" (or "want to", or "need to"), basically a fideist position. Those don't need a proof, because they've already decided there's no other proof than their internal feelings to be found.

The second category can try to pass for the first, because they sometime claim the proof is someone else's faith, but in the end, it's the same, only more indirect, it's still a matter of trust in that person or faith in that person.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Well... again. I'm an atheist. The love you feel from god has, by necessity, to be illusory. In fact, any and all love is illusory as far as the brain is concerned. Our senses feed it with stimuli and if something triggers the right neurons Oxytocin starts pumping out. I'm sure we've all experienced the Oxytocin rush from a text message from somebody we fancy. Technically, that's your brain translating the text into the kind of physical stimuli that would trigger the love response. So it's obviously possible to trigger without god needing to exist.

Why does love have to be by nature illusory? If love is illusory then your relationship to a spouse, parent, child etc is on shaky ground. When you say to someone "I love you" are you saying something that is not true ? If so then how can one trust you any in any way?

I'm saying that love is illusory in the the same way as porn is real sex. Pornography can and will make your horny. Your (our) sexual instincts are too stupid to be able to tell the difference between that and the real deal. In the same way, our brain is too stupid to be able to tell the difference between real love from somebody and some stimuli that mimics all the right signals. Imaginary love can feel just as real as genuine love.

Have you ever been in a relationship where you thought your partner loved you, and then it turns out that he/she fell out of love with you a while back, and didn't tell you until just now? It was just your brain not being able to tell the difference between love and another person just being in your vicinity. If you have strong faith in that god loves you... then of course you'll feel all the genuine emotions of love as if god really existed. God existence is in fact irrelevant as to whether or not you can feel gods love.

Sorry if I come across as arrogant. But at some point the molly-coddling of silly beliefs, just because we're supposed to respect other's religious beliefs, has to stop. It dumbs down the entire discourse and, I believe, makes us all dumber. So I'm done with it.

You noted that you have some concern about appearing arrogant. Your quote "You might tell yourself that the existence of god is important to you. But I know that it isn't." is indeed arrogant. You have never met me (nor I you) and yet you feel obligated to tell me that you know that I know that God is not important to me.

Even though I don't know you, I do believe I know enough about you to draw this conclusion.

Here's my premises:
1) There are only invalid arguments for belief in god.
2) You're a theist.
3) You're not an idiot.

I can only think of a single valid conclusion that follows all three. Please enlighten me if I've missed something?

I don't like being rude. I detest arrogance myself. But if we keep entertaining the possibility that god exists, we won't get interesting discussions about religion and religious faith. It'll just stay on the current, silly, level. This is de facto an atheist forum. So here I can be as arrogant as I want about my atheism without feeling bad. In any other situation I would be a lot more considerate with how I formulated myself.

If you are not really interested in what your respondents have to offer why do you start such threads in the first place? Are you just after affirmations from those who think like you or are you really curious?

This thread is about why a person would be a theist in spite of gods non-existence. That is what I'm asking about and what I'm interested in. At no point in this thread have I entertained the possibility that theism isn't a false belief.

It's good to have an open mind. But not so open that one's brain falls out. I'm 39 now. I've never heard an argument for the existence of god that isn't retarded. All are just dumb as hell. And it's not like I haven't tried finding them. I like philosophy. I'm well read. My conclusion is that a million flies can be wrong. At some point we need to stop whipping this dead horse. Therefore I've stopped listening to theist arguments. But it doesn't answer the question why so many are theists (in spite of gods non-existence). Hence this thread and my question.

 

[DrZoidberg]

They can’t access the feeling of contentment and charity without someone instructing them to it – or they think they can’t. The idea of loss of this life comfort is terrifying (“what if it goes away when god goes away?”). The step is huge, the chasm is black and deep to them. So the cost of hanging on to the belief in something they don’t bother prove is much less troublesome than the feared cost of what they think they will lose by exploring that proof.

But what if the goal is to achieve as much contentment and feelings of charity as possible? Given that question, ss theism a rational belief or not? I don't think atheists are superior people in any way to theists. We've just somewhat different interests and therefore have received the necessary tools to successfully argue for god's improbability. But are we because of this more content?

And hope. I don’t understand this one myself because it seems to let them down so often, but they demonstrate a need to believe in supernatural assistance to bolster their confidence. Prayer for sickness, touchdowns, parking spaces, control over women, even abused children; although you don’t see them doing much praying for that as loudly as the other things, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Wait a minute, no I won’t. If they actually believed that prayer actually worked, how could they ever leave their knees until no more abuse ever happened? So they must not believe that prayer is capable of solving that one, otherwise they’d be admonishing each other over the football prayers and demanding they be replaced with abuse prayers by crowds before games, and you just never see that. Which loops back to the OP claim that they don’t actually believe, which I think is true, they get other comforts from maintaining the belief but they don’t care about examining whether they actually believe. Because again, if they actually believed, they’d do different things than they do.

Yeah, I've thought about that too. I agree that it's unlikely there exists anybody who truly believes in god. If there are no atheists in foxholes, there's surely no theists at a funeral.

 

[Rhea]

What kind of philosophy class was that? I thought you were supposed to demonstrate knowledge of history of philosophy and of the main arguments on all sides of the topic, not parrot the teacher's beliefs. (Plus, I find the way the exercise was presented is already a loaded question)

It was a sophomore philosophy class for non-philosophy majors. The assignment was to follow a philosopher's thought experiment (can't remember who - Descartes?) of breaking down everything that you know and assuming it might not be real and seeing how that makes you feel and what is left of "self." Every day, deconstruct one more thing about what you think you can "know" to be real and live it that day. Journal it for two weeks and then write a 6 page paper on your experience. Something like that. It was 25 years ago and I'm an engineer so it was a class for fun (required non-major elective type, but interesting), not use. But I knew from the teacher's not-so-subtle comments in class that she could not fathom failing to find god's love at the end of that trail and I had a 4.0 to maintain, so I decided that no matter what I got out of the exercise, she was getting in the paper exactly what she expected so I could get my 4.0.