Why would a reasonable person believe in God?

[HaRaAYaH]

Prayer invites the Eternal Presence to suffuse or spirits and let God's will prevail in our lives.
Prayer cannot

bring water to parched fields,
or mend a broken bridge,
or rebuild a ruined city;​

but prayer can

water an arid soul,
mend a broken heart,
and rebuild a weakened will.​

A placebo can cure one of symptoms from a disease.

No it can't.

 

[DrZoidberg]

A placebo can cure one of symptoms from a disease.

No it can't.

The Placebo effect is real and measurable. Especially when curing pain. It's been thoroughly studied by now. So yeah... if your faith in something is strong enough it really can cure you. You'll get an up to 30% improvement. It's the same if you pray for something to get healed or are prayed for. The effect of course goes away if you're not aware of that other people are praying for you. So it's basically the power of positive thinking. Positive thinking alone can trigger the release of unidentified hormones in the brain that do good shit for you.

But obviously there are limits. Placebo (or prayer) has never been able to cure a broken bone. It can't even speed up recovery.

But the take-away is that the healing power of prayer can exist and be real even if God (or the supernatural) doesn't exist. So it doesn't help the theist case one bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo

 

[Rhea]

A placebo can cure one of symptoms from a disease.

No it can't.

Really? You didn't know the placebo effect was real?

- - - Updated - - -

If you made a less woolly point, it would be an easier target.

But then, you know that.

WTF is a soul; how does it become arid, and why would it matter if it did? Solving imaginary problems is a waste of effort.

A broken heart is just a common phrase meaning extreme sadness or sense of loss. Zoloft to the rescue!

Motivation rebuilds weakened wills, without needing recourse to prayer; If you find prayer motivational, then good on you - but there is no need to imagine that its motivating power is caused by a supernatural being, nor that others would find it motivating.

First, it's cheaper than Zoloft and it has less side effects.

I disagree. The side effects of religion are huge and far-reaching and harm even those outside yourself. (Gay Bashing, witch burning, Jonestown Guyana; which see)

 

[Tom Sawyer]

First, it's cheaper than Zoloft and it has less side effects.

I disagree. The side effects of religion are huge and far-reaching and harm even those outside yourself. (Gay Bashing, witch burning, Jonestown Guyana; which see)

Also, how many people spend 10% of their income on Zoloft? I know that there are some crappy medical plans out there, but I really don't think the drug is that expensive.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No it can't.

The Placebo effect is real and measurable. Especially when curing pain. It's been thoroughly studied by now. So yeah... if your faith in something is strong enough it really can cure you. You'll get an up to 30% improvement. It's the same if you pray for something to get healed or are prayed for. The effect of course goes away if you're not aware of that other people are praying for you. So it's basically the power of positive thinking. Positive thinking alone can trigger the release of unidentified hormones in the brain that do good shit for you.

But obviously there are limits. Placebo (or prayer) has never been able to cure a broken bone. It can't even speed up recovery.

But the take-away is that the healing power of prayer can exist and be real even if God (or the supernatural) doesn't exist. So it doesn't help the theist case one bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo

I won't bother wasting any more keystrokes. Dr. Zoidberg has made the point.

 

[Underseer]

No it can't.

The Placebo effect is real and measurable. Especially when curing pain. It's been thoroughly studied by now. So yeah... if your faith in something is strong enough it really can cure you. You'll get an up to 30% improvement. It's the same if you pray for something to get healed or are prayed for. The effect of course goes away if you're not aware of that other people are praying for you. So it's basically the power of positive thinking. Positive thinking alone can trigger the release of unidentified hormones in the brain that do good shit for you.

But obviously there are limits. Placebo (or prayer) has never been able to cure a broken bone. It can't even speed up recovery.

But the take-away is that the healing power of prayer can exist and be real even if God (or the supernatural) doesn't exist. So it doesn't help the theist case one bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo

Actually, the now-infamous Templeton prayer study showed that prayer can have a negative placebo effect.

 

[Keith&Co.]

but prayer can

water an arid soul, .​

That's what religion has in common wiht snake oil.
I don't know that i have a soul.
I have no reason to suspect that i have an arid soul.
But there are people all around me that promise me that they have the one and only solution to a problem only they can diagnose. I don't even feel the symptoms.

It's like an invisible splint for a broken bone in my invisible tail. If they can convince me that i need the splint, it's no surprise that they'll also be able to convince me that the invisible splint makes me feel better when it's applied.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

but prayer can

water an arid soul, .​

That's what religion has in common wiht snake oil.
I don't know that i have a soul.
I have no reason to suspect that i have an arid soul.
But there are people all around me that promise me that they have the one and only solution to a problem only they can diagnose. I don't even feel the symptoms.

It's like an invisible splint for a broken bone in my invisible tail. If they can convince me that i need the splint, it's no surprise that they'll also be able to convince me that the invisible splint makes me feel better when it's applied.

Well, prayer can come up with a poetic metaphor, so you really have no choice but to bow down to whatever god this person wants you to follow.

 

[Tigers!]

I don't agree with premise 1 which is the hinge of the whole discussion. That's why these discussions have been raging for > 2000 years.

Now you know how my line of reasoning went. I have no interest in trying to convince you of it.

Then why did you start the thread unless you were inviting comment? Unless of course it was just non-theist comment.

If you have stopped listening to theist arguments then why bother wondering why there are so many theists?

Because it's interesting why so many so badly want to believe something that is clearly false. The logical backflips and self deceit required to maintain theist beliefs are quite astonishing. That means that the pay-off for holding theist beliefs must be very high. Or that's my hypothesis at least. I would like to understand what that pay-off is.

If you have stopped listening to theists arguments then you have no apparent interest in what the pay off might be.

 

[Tigers!]

Pray tell, you know all that precisely how?

By "you" I mean Christians in general and I conclude this based on what I see them do. Praying at football games, praying for jobs, praying for gays to not get marriage rights. And, conspicuously, NOT having big public prayers to stop child abuse and child rape. IF I were a goodhearted person (which I believe most people are) and IF I believed, truly believed! that prayer got results, I would pray to stop the horrors. I would not stop praying. Holy shit, if all I have to do is really believe it - and if I already did - and that would move mountains into the sea! I would not be able to get off my knees until abuse was stopped by prayer.

But not you, huh? What do you pray for? What is it that you truly believe will come to pass so much that you ask for it?

An end to child abuse is certainly something worthy of much sustained prayer.

 

[bilby]

By "you" I mean Christians in general and I conclude this based on what I see them do. Praying at football games, praying for jobs, praying for gays to not get marriage rights. And, conspicuously, NOT having big public prayers to stop child abuse and child rape. IF I were a goodhearted person (which I believe most people are) and IF I believed, truly believed! that prayer got results, I would pray to stop the horrors. I would not stop praying. Holy shit, if all I have to do is really believe it - and if I already did - and that would move mountains into the sea! I would not be able to get off my knees until abuse was stopped by prayer.

But not you, huh? What do you pray for? What is it that you truly believe will come to pass so much that you ask for it?

An end to child abuse is certainly something worthy of much sustained prayer.

So does it persist because God doesn't answer prayers; or because nobody bothers to pursue this worthy cause?

 

[DrZoidberg]

If you have stopped listening to theists arguments then you have no apparent interest in what the pay off might be.

Sorry. I was unclear. I'll rephrase that. I've stopped listening to theist arguments for god (because they'll inevitably always turn out to be shallow and stupid). But that doesn't mean theist faith is shallow or stupid. My going theory is that religion has a lot of depth and wisdom to offer us. Especially insights into the human psyche and tools to help us manage life. That's why I'm asking and what I'm trying to explore/learn. Religion is a hell of a lot more than just an exercise in finding out whether god/gods exists.

 

[rousseau]

If you have stopped listening to theists arguments then you have no apparent interest in what the pay off might be.

Sorry. I was unclear. I'll rephrase that. I've stopped listening to theist arguments for god (because they'll inevitably always turn out to be shallow and stupid). But that doesn't mean theist faith is shallow or stupid. My going theory is that religion has a lot of depth and wisdom to offer us. Especially insights into the human psyche and tools to help us manage life. That's why I'm asking and what I'm trying to explore/learn. Religion is a hell of a lot more than just an exercise in finding out whether god/gods exists.

It is and it isn't. Christianity is more than just God, it's also a moral system, but more than just that it's a power structure with religious adherents as it's customers. It's a system that's dependent on people's faulty faith and so in it's history it's done everything it could to ensure that faith of people continued. Even today, when almost the sum total of human evidence points toward Christianity being a fairy-tale, instead of putting out the fuse, the Christian church only shifts toward more modern viewpoints to stay relevant and continue to exist, because without Christianity suddenly the pope is working at McDonalds.

So in a sense, yes, religion is more than an exercise in a belief in God, but at it's outermost definition it's at worst an un-noble, out-dated organization, and at best severely misguided. Yes it has psychological utility in it's adherents, but the problem, as mentioned, is all of the social side affects that it's blatant, out-dated ignorance causes. So even if you want to give religious people the benefit of the doubt and say "ok maybe it kind of sort of has a purpose", that purpose is still completely detrimental to political and social progress, and so religion needs to die.

Move outside of organized religion and you can still be a theist, but logically the closest you can really come toward theism is agnosticism, or maybe theism that posits a cause but not an agent.

 

[DBT]

An end to child abuse is certainly something worthy of much sustained prayer.

So does it persist because God doesn't answer prayers; or because nobody bothers to pursue this worthy cause?

The idea of sustained prayer seems quite odd. Odd because it implies that an Omnipotent God, a God of Love, is not willing to protect innocent lives unless cajoled into action. And even then, even with sustained prayer, nothing actually changes for the better.

 

[Rhea]

Now you know how my line of reasoning went. I have no interest in trying to convince you of it.

Then why did you start the thread unless you were inviting comment? Unless of course it was just non-theist comment.

I would say because it's a separate question. "What do you get out of it" is a question absolutely separate from whether a god exists, and none of us want to waste our time talking about the truth of fairy tales when we are trying to understand why people like fairy tales. Ot doesn't matter how true you think the fairy tale is when we just want to know why you like them.

Unless... what you get out of it is some excitement that fairly tales are true?

- - - Updated - - -

By "you" I mean Christians in general and I conclude this based on what I see them do. Praying at football games, praying for jobs, praying for gays to not get marriage rights. And, conspicuously, NOT having big public prayers to stop child abuse and child rape. IF I were a goodhearted person (which I believe most people are) and IF I believed, truly believed! that prayer got results, I would pray to stop the horrors. I would not stop praying. Holy shit, if all I have to do is really believe it - and if I already did - and that would move mountains into the sea! I would not be able to get off my knees until abuse was stopped by prayer.

But not you, huh? What do you pray for? What is it that you truly believe will come to pass so much that you ask for it?

An end to child abuse is certainly something worthy of much sustained prayer.

So do you spend days doing it or not? If not, why on earth not? If you really think you can make a difference in something by praying about it, what makes you STOP praying when abuse still occurs?


You dodged the question. What would make you do that? Hard question? Embarrassing answer?

Do you or do you not spend most of your waking hours praying about child abuse since you believe prayer makes a difference?

 

[doubtingt]

Reasonable people believe in God, because they have motivations to want to believe in God other than applying reason or being objectively accurate. God is never a reasonable belief, just a belief than otherwise reasonable people can and do delude themselves into accepting. So the question is what are the psychological motives that prompt otherwise reasonable people into setting reason aside when it comes to God?

A reasonable approach to figuring out the function that something serves is to look at the things most central properties, and then ask how those might be useful.

Since we are talking not about any possible God, but the most "successful" (i.e., widely believed in) Gods, lets look at what properties those Gods have, in particular the God of Abraham that is essentially the same God for Islam, Judaism, and Christianity which have successfully survived centuries and spread over the globe.

This God is simple answer to very complex questions. That feature would serve the function of providing that comfort of thinking you understand the answer to these questions whose real and accurate answer are either unknown or too difficult for many to grasp. This is not the same as being too stupid to realize God is a silly idea. It is being too stupid to grasp the real answer, so you go with a simplistic one that you can grasp, and maybe you're not stupid at all but that the real answer is just really fucking hard.

This God is an unquestionable authority. While this feature makes him attractive to those seeking to lord authority over others, it also makes him attractive to most people, because most people want to be told what to do, how to think, and how to feel. Deciding for ourselves is too much work, and we don't feel confident when we do. People look to either authorities or the masses to tell them what to do, then they make jeans commercials that amazingly use slogans about freedom and individuality to make people conform to buying the jeans because they want to be an "individual" just like everyone else.
Oh, and in addition to telling us what to do, authorities tell us who and what we can hate. People have fears, anxieties, frustrations, and related anger. Having something or someone you can take these feelings out on is convenient, which makes it convenient to have God rubber stamp your victims as deserving of your ire.

This God is intolerant. People are intolerant and want to stop others from doing things they don't like. God gives them an excuse to magically transform their selfish intolerance into pious obedience and "just doing God's will". This feature of God is also useful for justifying taking other people's stuff and enslaving them. All you need to do is con yourself that those people are of the sort that God does not tolerate, and then you can treat them inhumanely.

This God is basically a super "human" for whom humans are his favorite creation. The obvious function this feature serves is egocentric self glorification. God worship is really just a form of self worship. It make oneself special more than just the temporary insignificance that everything else in the natural world seems to be.

This God is beyond the material world and we are of him. These features serve the function of letting us believe that ourselves and our loved ones exist and happier than ever after bodily death, thus it is a way to cope with fear and sadness related to death.

These functions are more than sufficient to explain the bottom up widespread psychological appeal of God. Belief in God is not neccessary. However, it is extremely convenient in helping to serve as a tool/weapon to create a sense of self-importance, purpose, righteousness, certainty, permanence, and simplistic certainty that in turn facilitate self serving actions.

 

[rousseau]

.

I think I need to save this one to a txt.

 

[DrZoidberg]

.

I think I need to save this one to a txt.

I have to agree with that. That's pretty strong arguments.

 

[Perspicuo]

Reasonable people? We're not calculating machines, we're primates governed by Darwinian psychological mechanisms that have worked in the past for survival. Which brings ego defenses, sucking up to deities and other hierarchies, being wary of things that go "Pop!" instead of quieter and frequently greater dangers, and so on.

What were you expecting?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Because to the reasonable person belief in God by itself is harmless.