Do you believe in God

OK, since there have been so many good responses.

I believe in God. I also believe in evolution.

I think it's too crazy to think that this world just happened randomly.

I'm not big on heaven, though. I believe it exists but not counting on it being paradise. I'm not sure we'll even consciously be able to experience it at least as we think of life now.

If I'm wrong, that's a plus.

 

I believe heaven's like a big dish of hummus.
And our souls are like pita.

 

No doubt we have a justification for every action we take in life, even if we're not aware of it. However, trying to justify with oneself is drastically simpler than trying to justify it to someone else, especially when it's something as touchy as religion and faith.

 

Quite frankly, there is a huge, huge difference between those two. For atheism to be valid, it must eliminate every supernatural permutation known to man. How can an atheist <i> not </i> believe in what they've never heard of? It's illogical. You can't just say "well, I don't know anything about religion x, but I know I don't believe in it." If an atheist doesn't believe in <i> any </i> god, don't they actually have to know who all the gods are before they don't believe in them?

Consider a practical example. Say there's twenty rooms. The first 10 have the atmosphere of Saturn - completely inhospitable for life. Would somebody stop after the tenth room and go "well, based on the first 10 rooms, which are complete separate from one another, I know the next 10 are exactly the same." Now that person could very well believe the last 10 rooms are the same, but it's a fraudulent belief. This example, in fact, sides in favor of the atheist, because I'm giving you a finite number of rooms. All they'd have to do is look at the last 10.

By contrast, to believe in one God, and only that God, is completely logical - because that god tells you it's the only god. To believe in other gods would contradict your faith in the one that says it's the lone god.

Atheists are really agnostics. They haven't been given any compelling evidence for the four gods they've heard of, but that's just four gods. A real atheist wouldn't assume the popular religions account for and represent all the world's smaller belief systems.

 

Alma, I'm not sure what happened to you in the interim, but you have been far less logical since your return.

If someone says, "I don't believe in supernatural forces" they are elliminating all potential gods that come along. However, you have declared that the god you worship is the one true god. Yet, you have done little to no research on the others to find their faults to provide justification for your own.

Why would anyone that discounts supernatural forces decide to take legitimately any idea presented?

Using your own analogy...

You have 20 rooms in hallway. Each room contains a chair. You opened the first door and saw a chair. Without opening any of the other 19-doors you have decided that the chair in front of you is the best and greatest chair and you need not open any of the following doors because faith alone has helped you determine that it must automatically be the best.

See, this is what you have done. Yet, for whatever reason have decided that those discounting all faiths are frauds. Amazing.

 

If a person chooses to be an atheist, it could be because they reject the idea of a supreme being, regardless of any being's background, etc. I don't want to eat horse dung, but I shouldn't first have to eat horse dung to know I wouldn't like it. The desire, or lack thereof, should be enough to justify my decision.

I've never been to Los Angeles, but I also have no desire to go there, and I shouldn't have to take a forced visit to justify my choice.

 

Wrong. So long as the given religion claims that the god contained within the religion is the only god, the belief is secure. It may be wrong - for example, I think Muslims are wrong to believe in prophet Muhammed - but it is not flawed. You have no reason to examine another religion if the one you believed preached it was the only valid one.

That's, generally, how cults work. Human God A says "I'm God." Human follower A says "OK." God A says "doesn’t matter what anyone else believes, stay here and drink chicken blood." If Follower A believes God A, they’ll do as told. It doesn't mean they're making the right choice, but you can't say the choice is insincere.

I'm suggesting atheists are. Most have examined a couple religions, discarded them, and called it good. If there's, say, 100 gods, you can read about 4 of them and say "well, ditto the other 96."

 

Since we've taken to quoting George Carlin so much, I remember one bit he did about eating...

"How do you know you won't like something if you've never even tried it?"

"It came to me in a dream."

 

I guess according to your logic, if I say that ghosts don't exist, I must travel to every single location that claims to have a ghost, walk around, experience what the home owner or whatever experiences, and then say "Nope. No ghost here."

Alma, do you believe in ghosts?

 

Precisely. I'm not saying that's what I've done...I'm merely saying that this particular decision, in and of itself, is not insincere.

Your example makes my point even better. Ever went to store and bought the first thing you picked up? I have. Say it's a basketball. I fell in love with this one basketball, I thought it was perfect, and I bought it. Now…that doesn't mean it really was perfect. Maybe another ball in that store was actually better and cheaper. But I didn't buy the ball I bought because I thought it was crappy and expensive. I may have made a bad choice, but the choice, in and of itself, has logic. I liked the first thing I saw, thought it was best, and bought it.

Applying the logic of atheism on the same situation, I'd go into the store, look at one ball, not like it, and decide not to look at the rest on the faith that none of the other balls were any better. Now, in a retail situation, if I went to the most expensive the store had, correlated that to "the best," and found it wanting, this might make sense. But there is no "best" religion to an atheist. A real atheist would never say "well, Christianity, if I believed in it, would be more believable than voodooism." You'd have to examine every religion simply to say "now that I know about that one, I don't believe in it."