The logic behind believing or not believing

Great Debates
21

To be a logical intelligent critical thinker I would start with “what is the origin of religion?”

Religion is either man made or God inspired. In either case this place we live in must have been a pretty brutal place for there to be a need for rules to which we should live by.

This pretty brutal place either caused God to begin to reveal himself to limited numbers of people, or it caused various groups to make up stuff to try to get people to live a more peaceful life.

The critical thinker has to decide whether eyewitness accounts of a couple thousand years of miracles are believable or hoaxes made up to strengthen man made religion.

If you can come to grips with either side of the argument you have to make a big leap of faith.

22

You can be perfectly rational and still believe there are things we don’t understand or don’t know. The rational person admits there is no scientific evidence of the existence of God, and that belief in God is based on faith and not science. Being rational does not mean disbelieving anything you don’t understand, only those things that can be proven false with a high degree of certainty.

23

One anonymous person writing that a hundred other people saw something doesn’t even count as one eyewitness account.

24

In what category do you put God?

25

Not necessarily. His belief could in fact not be an unreasoned asumption but a conclusion after a study of the information available. In that case his assertion is consistent with logic. Rather than taking the OP’s friend’s statement as a ‘no true scotsmen argument’ then, it could be taken as an expression of confusion over the idea of a logical person believing in god. A perfectly reasonable interpretation of the phrasing used.

He might also point out the studies which show that a positive correlation between education and religiosity is due more to economical factors and less to intelligence, and of course the many studies which show a negative correlation between logical thinking and religiosity.

26

Yeah, unless the category in question is ‘Logical, intelligent rational thinkers who have access to sufficient information and specifically applied that logic to their belief system and accepted the result’, there’s still always room for believing contradictory things. Humans are good at believing contradictory things, they do it all the time.

27

No scientific proof of the existence of God. After that it doesn’t concern me much.

28

UMMMM…what form do you want it in from say a couple thousand years ago? How many do you need, 100 people reporting similar miracles? 1000? How many have there been?

By the way, that is the leap of faith I am talking about…again on either side of the argument.

29

You believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing eternal invisible “god” just thought up the Universe. I believe that if I drop a bowling ball it is more likely to hit the floor than the ceiling.
Does this mean that we should equate the two beliefs?

30

You brought it up:

So what would fall under the category of “those things that can be proven false with a high degree of certainty.”?

31

Didn’t think we were debating evolution or whether the Bible is literal or any of the other paths you are trying to pursue. Those are definitely problems for those who believe to reconcile.

Those who do not believe have to reconcile that there have been thousands of accounts from biblical times to present day of miracles and other events that suggest God is real. They have to reconcile the drive to create a God by individuals, small groups of people and whole societies who were isolated from each other and came up with very similar stories. Brush them of as coincidence, conspiracy or loony if you like but that is a decision that has to be made along the way.

My point is the intellectual, logical critical thinker can have either view based on where they start with the beginning of religion.

32

There have never been accounts of miracles. There have been accounts of unusual occurrences.

33

I can go with that. There have been thousands of unusual occurances that suggest God might exist.

34

I think a critical thinker can believe in god – they just need to avoid applying their critical faculties to that aspect of their lives. Unfortunately this kind of compartmentalization is something many are able to do.

If the question was: “Would someone thinking rationally, and objectively, who critically checks their own reasoning for logical fallacies, come to the conclusion that god exists?” My answer is no, never. It’s just not a rational conclusion to come to.

35

Which “god”?

36

Which one unusual occurance of the supposed “thousands” best suggests the existence of a particular god?

37

Go ahead and pick one. If you don’t know where to look you have not considered the possibilty that God exists according to critical thinking principles.

38

It was your statement-you pick your best example. I can’t do it for you.

39

And I can’t make you an intelligent logical critical thinker.

40

I don’t know about the believer side of the argument, but there’s no leap of faith necessary for my side (not believing). God goes in the same category as grey big-eyed aliens, unicorns, and fire-breathing dragons for me- something that many people believe in or once did, but I see no reason to.

As far as evidence from thousands of years ago- eyewitness accounts require eyewitnesses, and all the eyewitnesses from long ago are dead. So there are no eyewitness accounts of events from long ago- only written reports about claims by eyewitnesses.