I’m interested in learning Why someone would Believe in a God. Feelings, Faith, and the Bible are not rational reasons. I contend that the foundation for most believers is that of Fear. They are afraid to Not believe lest they incur reprisals. Does anyone feel they have a Rational Reason for belief?
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This is an atheist forum, you’ll likely get more results if you try a theistic or religious forum.
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After being on this forum for years, belief in God comes–in my mind–from wishful thinking. We want to believe, so we do . . . and we figure out how to justify this with a lot of twisting, mental gymnastics.
I hope this helps.
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Howdy, Little Joey. (Mind if I call you “LJ”?) There are MANY different reasons a person believes in a god or gods. However, one of the first things that comes to MY mind when somebody asks that question is geography and indoctrination. Born in the U.S.? Likely to be indoctrinated as a Christian. Born in the Middle East? Likely to be indoctrinated as a Muslim. India? Hindu. Japan? Maybe Buddhist. And so on and so on. In this case, though, you seem to be talking specifically about the bible god, so we will deal with that. Plus, I have PERSONAL experience in that particular area. And that brings me to the next thing that comes to mind: FEAR.
Along with Christian indoctrination comes a very (un)healthy dose of fear coercion. And MOST of the time, that fear in instilled into a child at a very early age when the developing mind is defenseless and most vulnerable. Like I said, I have PERSONAL experience with that. Grew up in the middle of The Bible Belt, in a small town that was DOMINATED by Christianity. Church every Sunday, most Sunday evenings, and often on Wednesday evenings, with vacation bible school every summer. Baptized at age 8. However, even at the age of 7 or 8, most everything I was taught during the sermons and in Sunday school NEVER made sense to me. And every time I asked questions, most of the answers I got from the adults left me even more confused. If I kept asking, I was eventually told the standard, “Well, we can’t always understand god. He works in mysterious ways. We just have to have faith.” Even worse, though, whenever I became way to persistent for comfort, the response would be something along the lines of, “If you are doubting and questioning god, it is a sign THE DEVIL is trying to trick you and have you sent to hell.” To a little kid who hasn’t even reached 4th grade, that is some terrifying shit, to say the least. As such, the questionings became less and less over the years, despite the fact the doubts and confusion became worse and worse as I grew older and better educated.
I “believed” in god simply because I was told I HAD TO in order to keep from going to a terrifying place to be tortured for eternity. As a result, I spent over 40 years of my life playing Pascal’s Wager before I was finally able to escape my indoctrination. So, while there are multiple reasons for people to believe in a particular god, my personal opinion is that fear is the primary reason many folks are afraid to cut loose their religion stranglehold, despite whatever doubts they may be having.
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Having recognised myself as atheist for over thirty years (I was probably one before but wasn’t really aware of it), I agree that there are no rational reasons to claim one exists. My basic attitude to religion is, by all means believe, just keep it to your fucking self and stop trying to covert proud heathens 
Welcome to the forum from a sometimes attendee
UK Atheist
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As a former Christian who recently became atheist, I concur with the reasons listed above. I was born to a nominally Christian family but then converted when I attended Young Life as a teen.
WANTING : I wanted to belong, to make friends, I wanted to believe there was a special plan for my life. Who doesn’t want to think some supernatural being thinks they are special?
FEAR: I didn’t want to go to hell. It was presented as a logical place for everyone to go who didn’t measure up. As a teen with low self esteem, it wasn’t a huge leap to believe a I was inherently sinful.
INDOCTRINATION: There is a reason religious groups target young people. The front temporal lobe isn’t even developed yet! They make it sound pretty logical and good for a young kid who hasn’t had enough experience to know all the other options out there.
After you are in it for awhile and are heavily into the community and have made it the center of your life for so long, even with all the logical flaws, lack of evidence, inconsistencies and double speak, it can become very hard to give it up after investing so much. Thankfully I finally let go.
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I’m hoping that all of my grandchildren will come to the same conclusion as they get older.
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There are no rational reasons to claim your religion is true or god is real as not a shred of evidence exists and it is just pure ego.
People usually become brainwashed due to being indoctrinated at a young age and/or living in a region where your social connection is based on following the religion.
Many religious organizations and money hungry individuals just use religion as a way to collect tax benefits as well.
@Coffeplease is an atheist, it’s in his profile if you click on his username. I think he was talking about reasons that some theists give for theistic belief.
Got it.
Some reasons I’ve heard from my theist family include
- the world came from nothing…. You expect me to believe that? You really think the Big Bang happened? Science can’t explain everything.
- Major events in the world thaf happened were predicted by the books, so god must be real.
- we are the chosen people and it’s been passed down from generations orally and therefore written down all the miracles that our god has done.
- Jews are very smart people and my rabbi who went to Harvard law tells me the books are accurate. You think all these Jews would just be hoodwinked so easily?
Would love to hear your feedback adding to the ways I already disprove their points.
That one is called a false dichotomy fallacy, it is also a straw man fallacy of course, since atheism is not a belief that the universe came from nothing, nor need one hold such a belief in order to disbelieve a deity exists.
Well you can tell them yes and yes for those two questions, neither answer requires a deity though.
Ask them to objectively evidence the first claim, and I’d bet my house it’s either unevidenced claims, or that the “predictions” are so vague, and the likelihood of such an event so large, that it is meaningless, since this is always where such claims lead when apologists are asked.
However at best, all they have there is an appeal to mystery, theists love these. Who knows why they think they represent compelling evidence for any deity?
yes, another of their bare claims I have seen, and of course this identical claim is made by wildly different religions, as “evidence” for a variety of deities. They can’t all be right of course, but they can all be wrong.
This one is called an appeal to authority fallacy, and of course this claim is again used by countless religions, as “evidence” for different deities.
My criteria for belief is that it must be supported by sufficient objective evidence. If there is none, then I withhold belief. I have never seen an apologist present any objective evidence for any deity.
Maybe science can explain everything, and maybe it can’t.
It sure does explain a lot more than religion, though. Science gave us vaccines, antibiotics, and anesthesia. What has religion given us?
War, genocide, homophobia, child brides, and so on.
I have never had any reason to pretend to believe in any god or gods. I’m not mentally ill so I don’t have any reason to believe in any god or gods. I’m not a weak person so I don’t have any need to hope any god or gods will save me. I’m not a fan of absurdist literature so I don’t have any interest in any god or gods.
They said, “this is completely wrong as all religion has brought to the world is morality/community and a guide to live in the world, while science is constantly changing and has made tons of mistakes. Also, god is the one who created the laws of science and put scientists on this planet to learn science”
I’ve shown them proof through history/archaeology that multiple events in there book never happened and they said, “I don’t care if you can prove it wrong, the rabbi would disagree and I will still follow religion bc it gives me a day off in the week where I don’t have to go on my phone” (sabbath)
This is why I don’t bother debating theists anymore bc it’s like speaking to a psychiatric inpatient doped up
@Sheldon would like for you to chime in here also to comment on there response if possible
They responded saying, “this is absolute bullshit as if we weren’t the chosen people how come there is proof the Jews were the first ones in israel? Also, we are the ones with the Torah, so there is physical proof our book has been handed to us only and not other religions”
I’ve shown them proof through history/archaeology that multiple events the books claim to be true never happened. They said “it doesn’t matter if science can prove it false or history because both are constantly changing and we learn new things all the time, and if it was proven false I would still be religious as I like having one day off in the week where I can be off my phone (sabbath)”
Talking to religious people is like talking to a psychiatric inpatient doped up. This is why I no longer care to debate them.
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It’s still important to refute them.
Sorry I try my best to stay away from oxymoron’s.
Reason laughs at faith. Faith fears reason.
In his Regensburg lesson former Pope Ratzinger tried once again to prove that “catholic Faith” is rational, though the results were miserable as always
Okay, I’ll give it a go.
Not every belief born of fear is automatically irrational. Fear can lead to rational behavior, whereas lack of fear can lead to irrational behavior. Robert Ingersoll was a rational man in most instances, but he clearly didn’t fear cheeseburgers and being sedentary enough. Even if he didn’t want to live longer, some fear put into him would have done humanity and his loved ones some good. I want to see rational behavior. It wouldn’t matter to me if what Ingersoll believed about eating cheeseburgers was rational, I just wished he didn’t eat so many so that he’d have stuck around longer and been in better health to give us more of his works. He was clearly smart, and I’m sure at some point someone told him to stop driving the cheeseburgers into his gut, but cold, secular science wasn’t enough for him.
I’m a longtime atheist, but I have a deep desire to believe that Jah, the god of Rastafarianism is real. An aspect of this desire is born out of fear, but the fear is over something that’s as real as a cheeseburger heart attack. This desire is also born of hope for rational behavior and a rational outcome to the situation humanity is in. The fear is that there’s not going to be secular forces capable of uniting enough of humanity in this era for us to do what is necessary to overcome capitalist class dictatorship, and they are going to run humanity right off the cliff of planetary destruction. Will it matter if we’re all atheists when we can no longer inhabit this planet because we didn’t organize to do what needs to be done in time? Where are the atheists who’re living for humanity, who aren’t concerned with vanity/bling-bling in this world marked by profound inequality, who don’t need planet-wrecking lifestyles and rates of consumption to be content, and who’re willing to engage in self-defense for our Earth and oppressed humanity? It’s a trick question, because I do know some, but there are far too few of us. Cold science isn’t working, and humanity and our Earth need to see rational behavior no matter what’s the source behind it.
Haile Selassie never claimed to be divine in any way, and he was perplexed at how people saw him as such. The fear in the minds of Ethiopians at that time was a brutal occupying fascist/imperialist Italian army under Mussolini. When Selassie gave his powerful speech to the United Nations at a time when every Ethiopian had seen humanity turn their backs on them, pleading for help for his people in the way that he did, they saw in him their only hope to stop the brutality and pure misery they were subjected to, and it led them to extol him in the ways they have. Even though many knew he wasn’t god, they’d know you were the devil if you didn’t believe so. Many other revolutionary leaders have had this happen to them, as we are seeing now with Captain Traore in Burkina Faso (AES). I don’t care if people believe he is a prophet of god or not as long as they extol, protect, and project his leadership because it’s what humanity needs for a rational outcome to the shituation we’re up against.