Here are a few questionable reasons people have given me in favor of religious belief:
YOU’LL GO TO HELL IF YOU DON’T
Firstly, I would have to belief that Hell exists in order for me to care. Secondly, beliveing in something out of fear of punishment isn’t very enlightened.
I CAN’T IMAGINE JUST NOT EXISTING AFTER I DIE
So, basically you are a believer for ego reasons?
WITHOUT BELIEF LIFE HAS NO MEANING
Not very imaginative or conscious of the world around you, obviously.
RELIGION GIVES PEOPLE A REASON TO BE MORAL AND CHARITABLE
If you need an excuse for doing these things, I don’t think religion is enough to fix the problem.
I READ THE BIBLE
So, just reading the Bible is proof that the Bible is correct? So just reading the Koran or about Buddhism would just as easily convert you, then?
Because this is a religious forum? Religion is a good topic to discuss?
Of course, but not many are worth discussing because they are not often presented as viable. These reasons are actually given for religion.
There are strong reasons for believing in anything? What would those be?
Anyway:
I’VE EXPERIENCED JESUS(/WHOEVER) IN MY LIFE
Until I have a similar experience, im gonna reserve judgement but depending on the type of experience you may wish to visit a psychiatrist. Ideas are not true because you find them comforting.
YOU MUST BELIEVE BEFORE YOU WILL UNDERSTAND
Then the idea is incomprehensible and untenable. Question begging at its finest.
SCIENCE IS BASED ON FAITH TOO
Science describes the evidence. Faith is in spite of evidence.
FAITH DOES NOT NEED TO BE RATIONAL
Then it is irrational and stupid.
Religion is a great topic to discuss. Are we going to do that here, or are we just going to bash it? Every…oh, once a month or so, somebody like Miracle comes out of nowhere and starts several threads under Religion for the sole purpose, so far as I can see, of bashing those who may have some belief in God. I can only guess that s/he is trying in some way to validate his/her own thoughts on the matter.
I’ve done the conversation about nihilism before. Not interested. Nothing personal, oreso.
People who start a thread arent in control of who posts on it. People who express a view are far more interesting than folk who ask a neutral question because it gives you a starting ground to argue for or against.
Besides, pro-religious folk also preach.
I (and you) said anything, not everything. Ie. you seem to suggest that for any particular belief there can be a strong reason for it.
Jerry, this a philosophy board isn’t it? These are some of the reasons people frequently give for a belief in God. Philosophy is supposed to be essentially a rational exercise so what’s so troubling about someone attempting to point out flaws in reasoning.
Nothing troubling at all. I wonder at the true motivation, that’s all. Miracle has, by my count, started 5 threads critical of religious beliefs since s/he joined just yesterday. This is a phenomenon I have noticed before in the time I’ve been here. It’s interesting to me is all.
The universe needs an explanation. Science cant give us one so God is therefore necessary. But if God needs no explanation, why should the universe? This argument demands that everything must have a cause then suddenlty drops the demand when it comes to God.
Without the laws of causality, no causes would be operative. The laws of causality must therefore exist before any cause can operate. Therefore the laws of causality cannot be the result of any cause.
Yes, it is an appeal to consequence that can sometimes lead to misleading vividness, however, this response does not disprove or even argue against the assertion that you will go to Hell if you do not believe in God – as opposed to having a religion. The assertion already assumes that Hell exists, and whether you believe in its existence is another issue all together.
It isn’t an excuse really. It is an ethological theory in the same sense that Utility, Virtue Ethics, and Minimalism, are ethological theories.
This seems to be an extraneous objection to an extraneous example.
Oreso:
This does little to attack the reason. It simply shows that you are suspending judgment. The assertion being a [poor] reason has not been addressed. What makes it poor?
This is not necessarily true. It might very well be untenable, which is an opinion, but it certainly isn’t necessarily incomprehensible. There are people who do understand it, ergo, it is comprehensible to some.
No point in arguing against an opinion, but this is just your opinion.
Leda:
It is important to define whose idea of First Cause you are using and to what end. But in many cases theologians do not argue that all things need causes – they argue that all objects need causes. Causation would then be immaterial to God, not being an object. Aquinas and Whitehead immediately come to mind.
Until you disambiguate what your referent is and how your question applies to it, there is little reason for it to be taken seriously as an objection to the generic First Cause. So please, for the sake of argument and interest, elucidate.
REBELLIOUSNESS:
My parents were Christians who made me go to Church and not swear, therefore I will embrace a bunch of hippy New-Age pagan baloney in order to show them I’m ‘my own person’.
THE HIPPY FACTOR:
My parents were free loving hippies and they are “good” people and now, even though I have never read the bible, I condemn religious people based on what I see from the world. I won’t be a slave to religion! We should all just believe in free love, free abortions, free sex, free STD treatment, free health care, free drugs and love, and peace, and freedom to be free, free, free!
This is the one that nearly did it for me. I still believe in God, but I will not hold a concept of Him lower than that of some psychopath earthly tyrant. I cannot believe He will destroy and torture most of his creation for not submitting uniformly to a religion. That’s just nuts. Hitler had concentration camps. Stalin had a gulag. Are we to believe that God treats his opponents, or even just those skeptical of Him, in an equivalent manner? Worse still, are we to praise Him for it?
People often say “I’m just warning you, I’m not the one that will pull the trigger”, but that is the same excuse that a Mafia enforcer gives.
To those who hold that those who do not believe deserve hell, that it is right that we suffer endlessly, I offer the following moral exercise: Douse your non-believing neighbor in gasoline, light him on fire, then ignore his screams of agony. There is no reason to shy away from doing this - you’ve already explained why it is perfectly just. If you cannot bring yourself to do this, you don’t need to be worshipping someone who can. If you can bring yourself to do this, then you’re a psycho.
That is, at root, why people struggle against the doctrine of hell - it is evil.
Do you watch the news? What is your God like, that He would never ever allow something like Hell, but He [i]would[/i] allow something like AIDS? I can respect the idea of someone wanting to worship a God that's [i]so [/i]loving, and [i]so[/i] conforming to modern notions of justice that hell becomes obselete. But then, how do you explain the world in terms of this God?
Do you think people living several thousand years ago, in the days before penicillin, anesthetic, and refrigeration found it easier to believe in hell?
However, it’s still a rather miserable reason to follow a religion. The “just in case hell is real” premise. The fear of hell has been used for centuries to persuade people to remain in the church, so I think it’s a reasonable point to make.
It might be opinion that it is stupid, but it is true that faith doesn’t require rational thought.
I’m referring to the popular cosmological argument which has been around since Aquinas …ie: the idea that the universe must have been caused by something which was itself uncaused. ie God. The following rebuttals apply whether God is “objectless” or not, but if you have any exciting new developments to add to the cosmological argument I’m only too willing to hear them.
*Again if God requires no explanation, why should the universe?
*It presupposes the thing it attempts to demonstrate. That is, that God exists.
*Even if the cosmological argument was sound, it doesnot prove that God still exists, only that he was a cause of the universe.
*Nor does it imbue the First Cause with any characteristics which justify the term “God”. It simply names it as God.
*It is possible the universe is eternal and thus has no cause. But if the universe did have a cause, that cause need not be God. It could be the Big Bang for example and that could just as easily fit the First Cause definition of God as any other.
I said what I said, if you have to create a straw-man to deal with it, fine.
And yet, God allows people to be immolate each other. In His name, from time to time. Not to mention earthquakes, wasting disease, and Chronicles of Riddick. My point is two-fold:
1.) In the face of the above listed atrocities which occur on God’s watch, the idea of hell doesn’t seem so far fetched.
2.) An understanding of God as the “sort of person” who wouldn’t allow there to be something like Hell is harder to mesh with reality.
Well, because the Universe is a set of contingent objects that all 'come about' for reasons, persist for a little while, then go away again. It's in the very nature of the material universe for things to have explanations. Not so with God.
I’ve never seen a formulation of the cosmological argument that did that.
It doesn’t prove that He talked to Moses on Mt. Sinai either. How much work do you expect one little argument to do? For that matter, who believes in God on the sole basis of the cosmological argument anyway? I’ve never met anybody who did. They may think the argument is sound, and use it to refute atheism to to defend their own theism, but to say it’s the reason they believe is quite another thing.
Well, that’s a reliance on human culture. The argument shows that there is an Eternal, timeless, causeless source to the Universe. A hidden premise might be that it’s no coincidence that religions all over the world have always proclaimed this.
Actually, according to the argument is what’s not possible. The whole thrust of the cosmological argument is to say that since the universe we know isn’t eternal (on the grounds that none of it’s components are eternal, and also on the grounds that an infinite regression is impossible) there must be something responsible for the Universe which shares a number of significant propteries with the traditional concept of God.
Likewise, who says this:
"Why do you believe in a religion? "
“The Hippy factor”
Its not a reason that people give or a critique thereof, but an accusation.
Heh, the bar was set pretty low with this thread. If you think it's a worthwhile passtime to criticize the sorts of Christians who believe because THEY READ THE BIBLE or YOU'LL GO TO HELL IF YOU DON'T, then surely it's worthwhile to criticize the sorts of New Age folks who believe out of rebelliousness. And yes, I have been given this reason for people being Wiccans and so on, though of course I phrased it slightly different. If you must have it phrased in the form of how such a person would say it in order to know what I mean, how about:
BECAUSE I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE WHATEVER I WANT.
This doesnt seem like a reason for having religious belief, rather a reason for not being constrained to a particular belief.
Anyway, what is it that you actually object to about that reason?
as for the low bar thing, already its got people involved in defending and attacking the various reasons, what more do folk want from a thread about religion?