How can anyone justify belief in God?

Great Debates
41

Gah–I really didn’t mean it on the level of “all science is on the same level as religious faith.” But I guess I kind of oversimplified in my post. Sorry.

I think that the vast majority of science is backed up sufficiently by empirical evidence. Certainly, all science that I am familiar with is. The kind of science involved in speculating about the beginning of the universe is a different story, at least in my case.

I am a reasonably intelligent person, yet I will admit that I am almost wholly incapable of comprehending that which is involved in such theories. The math and physics and what-not are completely beyond my grasp. I know nothing about it and am probably incapable of truly understanding it.

Thus, in order to put absolute credence in those theories, I must trust the words of others, evidence I don’t see, and math that I don’t understand. Perhaps I’m paranoid–I don’t know–but such a trust, at least for me, borders on a kind of faith.

Yes, I believe in the big bang, and I believe the theories that other people have come up with. I have no evidence for it that I can understand. I also believe in some sort of divine being/energy/life force/whatever. I have no evidence for that either, at least none that I can understand; I just have the word of others who have claimed to have seen him/her/it/them/whatever. For me, believing that the universe came into being exactly as scientists say requires just as much “faith” as believing in a kind of god.

This is not to say that this is the case for everyone, but I think it is the case for at least some of the population. It sure as heck is in my case.

And, obviously, not all beliefs are equally valid–I think there has to be one version of reality, and anything that doesn’t conform to that reality is, by my definition, wrong. I think we discuss things here to attempt to determine what version of reality we’re working off of; after all, I doubt that anyone Some beliefs, though, are more obviously out of line with the reality that we can see.

42

So, Mister V.

Logic. Well, logic tells me that either what Christ said was true or it wasn’t.

Either He and the Father ARE one, or He was a raving lunatic.

To paraphrase CS Lewis, he couldn’t be both a good and wise teacher unless He was the Messiah.

He couldn’t be good and yet somehow deluded into believing He was God, because then He wouldn’t be wise. There would be no reason to follow Him.

He couldn’t be evil and yet wise, because then He wouldn’t be good.

But, people say that Jesus is a good and wise teacher - the only way He can be both is if He was telling the truth about Himself.

Logic tells me that if YOU, Mister V, told me that you were the Messiah and about to die for the sins of all mankind, I would call you a lunatic.

Unless you were telling the truth. But, quite simply, aside from your earthly relationships, your death doesn’t really matter. Nor does mine. We are relatively insignificant compared to the death of Christ.

Logic tells me that in some way Christ had to PROVE He was God, or else there is no reason to follow Him.

So, let’s look at facts.

  1. We know He was verifiably dead, and seen to be dead by many people - and this is important - not all of whom were emotionally involved. While you might conceivably make an argument that the disciples were deluded by emotion, the Roman soldiers who stabbed his heart and took Him down from the cross certainly weren’t. He was dead. Even Tacitus wrote about Him being put to death by the Romans.

  2. We know that He was buried in a tomb in the rock.

  3. We know that three days later, the body was gone and the tomb was open, despite attempts by the Jews and Romans to guard the tomb to prevent theft of the body. Every single modern scholar of any repute - christian or not - even the German higher critics - all agree the tomb was empty.

  4. Theory one is that the Jews had the body. But, nobody persecuted Christians at first more than the Jews - they had EVERYTHING at stake. If they were wrong about Christ, they would prove themselves to be enemies of God. They had an absolute personal stake in the matter. If they had the body, they would have simply had to show the Christians that they did and their Christianity problems would be over.

But, they never produced it. They didn’t have it.

Theory two is that the Romans took the body. But, they never presented the body, although Caligula and Nero and even Tiberius went to great lengths to stop the spread of Christianity - after all, not worshipping the emperor was punishable by death. Again, there’s an easy answer to the Christian problem: produce the body. Yet, they never did.

Theory three is that the disciples had the body. But, each of them died a horrible death at the hands of enemies of Christ - because of their religion. And not one ever recanted, though they were located all over middle Asia and Europe and no one would have known if they recanted. They didn’t.

According to Fox’s Book of Martyrs (which is online), Thomas had his skin flayed off with a Brahmin sword. Peter was crucified upside-down. John was boiled in oil and exiled to Patmos. Paul was beheaded. They were run through with spears, imprisoned, starved, whipped, beaten, left for dead, stoned, and hated.

Yet not one ever recanted. That is powerful evidence that they did not have the body. Men don’t die like that for something they know is a lie.

  1. Only fifty days after the Resurrection, the gospel message in its entirety was ready to go and preached consistently throughout the world thereafter.

Crooks don’t tend to be this good with their stories. That’s more of a human nature type opinion.

My conclusion is this: the only logical conclusion is that the tomb was empty because He resurrected. Provide a logical alternative with proof and I might listen to it. You can’t argue that men don’t get up from the dead - Christ said He would do it and then He did.

It proved Him to be the Messiah. And if that part is true, if I can believe that, I can believe all the rest of it.

YMMV. No matter how much you might mock faith, it is a gift from God and He gives it to whomever He chooses. You do not control if He has given you faith. If you see enough to know that you need it, ask for it. Otherwise, be very careful talking down about something you know nothing about. It may just be the thing that turns out to save you.

Peace,
MG

43

I vow this will be my last post of the night! I should learn not to start threads like these in the evening.

I was kidding about the hallucinations.

No, I am starting from the principal that things with no proof to back them up which go against other things with proof to back them up are most likely not true.

44

Mister V,
On reading your OP, I was fairly convinced it was either intentional flame-bait or simply inane. I wasn’t, therefore, surprised to see you receive an enthusiastic response from theists and nonbelievers alike.

But something in your tone made me look back.

I reread the OP, looked over your responses, and checked your post history. My conclusions:

  1. Your OP was incautiously worded. Not plain enough? It was crappola. It came across as demeaning theist belief, and as the kind of ill-considered stuff seen too often in this forum. My own reply was not really directed to you, but to others who might have read the thread with serious intent. I’ll add that a significant percentage of such posts originate from your particular age group, though maybe not as many as we fossils would like to believe…

  2. You’ve begun about a dozen other threads, and I saw nothing inflammatory in my parsing. This is, I believe, your first foray into metaphysics.

  3. After the expected napalm attack, you rephrased and apologized perfectly appropriately. Props to Opal.

  4. In short, I seem to have misread your tone and intent, and I apologize. I’m guessing some of the others who scorched you did the same, but won’t speak for anyone else. I was at about your age when I really got interested in these types of questions, and I wish I’d had a resource like this board to help me back then. Good luck, keep an open mind, and get the goods on as many belief systems as you can before/as you make your mind up. Then, remember to keep it open.

And be more careful next time, ya punk! :wink:

45

Hmmm… If that’s a reason then I’ll go for Islam. That way I get wine and virgins!
I call this the “what’s in it for me” method of determining the true nature of reality. In all respect, this doesn’t strike me as being a very reliable method. Say what you want about science, but it’s got this method beat by a mile.

46

Ok, so it’s generally agreed that the OP should have been a lot more diplomatic in his query. If I were to have asked the question, I certainly wouldn’t have worded it that way. Still, the question is an interesting one, and one that deserved a serious attempt at an answer.

First, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page - Just because someone asks for a logical reason to do something doesn’t mean they want a formal deductive proof. They may be using the word “logic” in a slightly informal sense, or they may be refering to a form of logic that is not deductive.

Similarly, the word “reason” can be slippery. Pascal’s Wager offers a (in my opinion flawed) reason to believe that God exists. However, I don’t believe that is what is being asked. (I could be wrong.) I believe that what is being asked is more like, “What epistemic justification is there for believing that ‘God exists’ is a true proposition?”

Also, it’s a shame when such questions get rebutted with, “Well, prove absolutely so that nobody can disagree that X.” That’s not what is being asked. What is being asked for is the type of evidence that would lead a rational person to believe that the proposition “God exists” is true.

We believe things (justifiably) all the time without that justification reaching the “absolutely so nobody could possibily ever disagree” level of epistemic potency. It is not helpful to anyone to say “Prove absolutely that X. You can’t, so don’t ask me to do so.” Nobody (so far as I can discern) is asking for absolute anything, and pretending that that is the case is a strawman.

To those who say, “I don’t have to justify my belief to you”: You’re absolutely right, in one sense. You are both legally (in most places) and morally entitled to believe something without having to convince someone else that it’s true. But I don’t think that’s the sense the OP intended. (Again, I could be wrong.) I think it’s generally agreed that we all have an epistemic and/or moral duty to, in general, believe true things and not believe false things. When the title of this thread says “justify”, I took that the mean “justify epistemologically” and not “justify why you should be allowed to believe that”.

It’s late, I’ll probably ramble on more tomorrow. :slight_smile:

47

Religion is UNscientific nyah!.

(You’re trying to apply non-native values and measurements to a system and you’re surprised that the results are poor?)

48

MisterV, I’m curious as to what YOU would consider reasonable evidence of God’s existence.

Apparently you would accept a personal spiritual revelation. But not somebody else’s personal spiritual revelation. Nor, indeed, a multitude’s personal spiritual revelations. But can you accept that somebody else might accept third party evidence?

And why the focus on a first party revelation anyway? Why could it be hallucination on somebody else but not on you?

pan

49

Is it Wednesday already?

50

Ah. So you have a hypothesis that God does not exist, and proof to back it up.

Roll it out, please.

51

I’m having terrible trouble controlling my children; I point the remote control at them, but they won’t respond to the ‘mute’ function or in fact any of the buttons at all; I may have to draw the conclusion that children are uncontrollable; I have checked the batteries and they are fine and it works fine with the TV and video.

This would be bad enough without the added inconvenience of having to visit the dentist every other day; he keeps telling me that eating my soup with a claw hammer isn’t really a good idea, but I’ve told him again and again that this is rubbish; it’s a perfectly good tool - it’s almost new.

And to cap it all I got soaked to the skin on the walk home; the slice of bread that I put on top of my head didn’t seem to keep me dry at all, yet bread from the very same loaf was delicious toasted and absolutely perfect with marmalade for breakfast; how can it be that it I keep getting wet?

What am I doing wrong?

52

cite.

i’d like to see at least two seperate, unbiased primary sources that confirm what christ said. then i want you to show evidence of their credibility.

cite.

(what’s the problem? if you’re trying to prove a religious belief logically, it’s perfectly fair that i should ask for physical evidence)

buh? mister v can’t be the messiah because you don’t believe he is? that’s a bit presumptuous isn’t it?

in all seriousness, though, your argument is incomplete. (for instance - at least cs lewis considered the possibility that christ could have been lying.)

this argument fails. you are saying:

if christ was good and wise, he was the messiah

christ couldn’t have been deluded in his belief that he was the messiah, because then he would not be wise.

(here you make the unsupported assumption that christ is wise)

christ is good and wise

therefore he is the messiah.

(i really wish i could construct logic-thingies properly - hopefully you understand regardless. your argument relies on an assumption - that christ is wise.)
oh, and all of y’all: if you must debate the use of logic in proving the existence of religion, could you just test any argument first by replacing all references to god/jesus/religion with something like ‘the second gunman behind the grassy knoll’

*I believe in the second gunman behind the grassy knoll because I have met Him. I have seen him at work, and I have seen Him do things that can’t be explained by science (As recently as last week).

I believe in the second gunman behind the grassy knoll because I look at the assassination and … I don’t think that it can be adequately explained by science.

I believe in the second guman because I have studied many books and other historical sources and I find them logical and consistent.

I believe in the second gunman because people I know, trust and love tell me about things that they have seen and experienced.*

(paraphrased from robinc308’s earlier post)

now, i do not wish to insult robinc308’s, or anyone else’s beliefs for that matter. what he/she has given are personal, emotional reasons for his/her faith, but they are not ‘logical’.

which robinc308 said:

also, very few conspiracy theorists do not use their belief in the second gunman to do positive things for themselves or society.

are you saying that exclusion of god=exclusion of love? i sure hope you aren’t telling me that i’m incapable of feeling that emotion.

53

Mangetout:

May I suggest the following solution:

  1. Use bread to eat soup.

  2. Use remote control to protect from rain.

  3. Use hammer to control children.

(Hey – two outta three ain’t bad.)

54

Gex Gex:

Yes - EXACTLY! Perfectly put, except that you ignore that my purpose of bringing it up was to show the obvious logical fallacy in people saying Christ was both good and wise, but not God.

Thanks for your input.
MG

55

Wise does not equal never mistaken.
Good does not equal never wrong.

pan

56

I understood that, but he kept insisting on using that word. It’s been my experience that when people ask for “logical proof of God’s existence”, they usually do so with the intent of picking apart your logical argument. Perhaps I reacted unfairly, and if so I’m sorry.

I think the type of evidence is experiential. kabbes asks an interesting question about third person experience, but I think most of us require first person experience. And a rational person would probably approach the question quite scientifically–examining their experience, making hypotheses, leaving themselves open to alternatives, until finally concluding that they’ve reached a truth. Then, they make deductions based on that truth (such as, how is it going to affect my life).

Actually, the thing you really need to trust is that the scientific method is a practical way of eventually discovering scientific truths. At every given time, is everything thought true by science correct? No. Is the scientific method capable of determining every truth about the universe? No. But, like our adversarial system of criminal and civil law, it is pretty effective at what it seeks to accomplish. As Gaudere points out, that kind of faith is distinctly different than religious faith. It gives us a way to distinguish good science from flaky science.

By the way, what is an agnostic theist?

Mister V, I think what UDS is trying to say is that the “thing with no proof” and “things with proof” do not “go against” each other. Our knowledge of the natural universe certainly conflicts with certain kinds of God, but many of use our quite happy driving around with both the Jesus fish and the Darwin fish on our car.

Unless you really are proposing that you have positive evidence that “it is not the case that God exists”.

That wouldn’t insult my religious beliefs, because I am not under the illusion that they are “logical”. When you start using the word “irrational”, I begin to feel put out, because I don’t think that denying my personal experience when it is not contradicted by any other experience is a rational thing to do.

kg m²/s²

57

I would have to say that anyone who claims to “know”, one way or the other, is making an irrational statement.

There is not enough evidence either way.

Religion offers no proof other than books written by people thousands of years ago (mythology to me), and personal accounts of having been touched by God (which exist in the same realm as Ouiga boards to me - as far as being proof of anything that is).

Science has used logic to make some assumptions about the nature of reality, but as of yet, does not have the tools required to determine exactly what everything is or where it comes from. Science, does however, offer progress. It is a means of gaining information as opposed to enforcing one specific version. It can change, so it may one day find the answer (which could be that one religion was correct or -more likely- that existence is something far more complex and beautiful than anyone has ever been able to comprehend). Unless of course a designer made the answer unknowable. . .

The only intelligent decision, in my book, is to accept that you don’t know. Given the lack of knowledge, some may choose to hedge their bets - fearing eternal damnation. Fair enough, but any God who would burn me for accepting my limitations is a God I hope somebody one day finds a way to destroy. I will never worship any entity that tortures anything, and I will do my damndest to end their ability to torture.

Now, picking a religion and saying “I hope this is true” or “I have a gut feeling this is true” is acceptable to me. Life is hard, whatever it takes to make you feel better is fine. But I cannot consider your view logical nor rational if you claim to know for sure.

DaLovin’ Dj

58

You know, I have to appreciate the tone taken in the OP and in most of the responses, in which people of a variety of views on the subject attempt to answer the question as it was asked – which, to me, seems, except for the snipped paragraph (which I am saving for separate response), is fairly neutral in tone.

First, I think that a wide variety of explanations as to why people believe has been given. However, I’d like to examine your methodology for a moment.

By your second paragraph (“A similar question is…”) you seem to be setting the scientific method as the means for assuring oneself of truths. However, this is absolutely not the method by which people learn the majority of what they learn and accept as factual. Almost nobody goes through the complex and dangerous process of isolating elemental fluorine and reacting it with various substances in order to discover its physical and chemical properties; they look it up in references to which they give a high degree of credence, to determine what people who have taken the time and trouble to do so have discovered. They weed out the bizarre and irreproducible by a process of determining to which references credibility may be given. And they accept the results of others on authority.

I likewise accept the Big Bang as the most probable explanation of the physical origin of the Universe, the events reported in histories regarding the activities of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, and so on. Why? Because authorities that I feel I can place trust in report these results and are confirmed by peer review as being accurate reportage of reasonable theory as to what happened in each case.

In addition to this, people are generally equipped with the abilities to make logical inferences from the data they have. For example, there is absolutely no reference which tells me that the northern coast of Greenland is not inhabited by gavials. I am aware that gavials, long-snouted fish-eating relatives of crocodiles, would find a great deal of nourishment in the plethora of fish occupying the immediate offshore waters there. However, evidence indicates that crocodilians generally cannot survive in areas where the temperature remains below freezing for extended periods of time, and I can conclude from this that gavials are impeded by the climatic charactistics of northern Greenland, which I can establish, from establishing an ecological niche there.

I can conclude from this that a reasonable appeal to authority and conclusions logically drawn, by deduction or induction, from available data are equally valid means of obtaining factual data about the world.

Does this mean that a belief in God is totally rational? No. But it suggests alternate means for deriving such a belief.

If, by one’s critical review of the available data, there does seem to be evidence that accurate critical reporters give information that God did in fact at some point in time demonstate His existence, then one would be justified in accepting that as reasonable proof of Him. This is effectively the means that Mean Girl suggests as acceptable.

Now, a great deal of heated prose has been devoted to the question of whether such reportage is accurate and adequately critical to be accepted. I submit to you, however, that such evidence is available, and can be reviewed by the same standards of critical judgment as one would bring to, say, a report that Julius Caesar invaded Britain, or a report that Lao-Tsu flew between the peaks of two mountains by levitation.

More to follow…

59

An agnostic theist, Newton Meter, is someone who believes in a deity (theist), but believes that the nature of that deity is fundamentally unknowable (agnostic).

I’m still curious as to what you consider a “first person” experience. Is it physical or mental? Because either can easily be faked both ways. A god is more than capable of not revealing itself if it chooses not to. And synaptic pathways are more than capable of fooling the brain into thinking it has experienced something that it hasn’t. Your first person experiences prove nothing. They don’t show that God exists and they don’t show that he doesn’t.

It is common in this thread for people to start talking of physical proof via God smiting with thunderbolts or some similar miracle. This is, of course, silly. If you don’t believe in God then there are any number of more plausible explanations for an angry smiting uberbeing than it being God.

The only evidence for God comes from within. Apparently you either feel Him or you don’t. Personally I do not. That which others call “God” I’m more inclined to call my humanity. But this is the kind of God for which one cannot find “justification”.

I don’t see how any “evidence” can convince someone who doesn’t want to be convinced either way. Reasons can always be found for anything. That’s the nature of trying to prove something that exists without the system you are trying to prove it from.

“Proof” is a highly nebulous thing.

pan

60

It would be rather odd for people who genuinely believe that they have had a supernatural encounter with God to be saying “this is bunk, but I’ll believe it because I know it makes me feel better”.

It’s possible to have a rational and logical faith based on subjective personal experiences where these experiences don’t conflict with objective ones. It’s unreasonable, however, to expect a third party to have a logical and rational faith based on subjective personal experiences that are not their own.

I can justify my belief in God, but only to myself, which is good enough for me. If anyone would like to show me something that directly conflicts with the weight and nature of my (subjective)experiences and I will gladly reconsider my position.