Why do religious people try to prove God exists?

Great Debates
182

I’m in Alberta, and it IS kind of the bible belt of Canada - especially in the south and in rural areas. Southern Alberta has a huge Mormon population, and also a lot of Mennonites and Hutterites. Mennonites have integrated into the normal population, and can be considered similar to Baptist congregations in my experience, except that Mennonites tend to stay out of government affairs and politics. Hutterites still live in colonies, and also avoid government as a rule.

But there are plenty of Christian-right activists in Alberta as well. They are a uniquely Canadian version of the Christian Right, but they share many of the same beliefs as their U.S. cohort.

183

Sam Harris has an interesting theory as to the difference between how the Christian Right sees Islam as compared to the secular mainstream and secular left. He thinks that secular people simply don’t understand the depths of religious devotion, and as a result make a category error in assuming that there is a real, underlying problem that fits their model of behavior and which can simply be fixed with social policy.

For example, you will hear people saying that jihad and Islamic terror are simply the result of past oppression by the west, colonialism in the middle east, the Palestinian issue, or poverty and despair that leads to radicalism. So the fix is to provide more aid, solve the Palestinian problem, show good faith, negotiate a lot, and jihad will cease to be a problem.

They really can’t understand religious fanaticism. But devout Christians know what it is like to be completely devoted to God, and when they see that devotion in the eyes of people with suicide vests strapped to them, they are terrified. And they know there’s no easy political fix to the problem.

I would also add that many if not almost all protestants have a strong affinity for the Jews because they are God’s chosen people, and because they are the stewards of the majority of the holy places the protestants care about. They also see Islam as being hostile to Christianity in general, and therefore take the side of Israel reflexively in any conflict with the Muslim world.

184

In all the Reform services I’ve been to, he has come up. My issue is in praying to someone you don’t believe exists just to get the chopped liver on Friday nights.

185

I see analysis as a rational process, and dissatisfaction as an emotional one. To use a blunter example, when I get aroused by something it is not from rationally considering the hotness of that thing. I have a concept I call theoretical sexiness - someone who I can see as being sexy but who doesn’t do anything for me. Now I can analyze why someone does appeal to me, but that is different from the initial emotion.

Atheism just means the lack of belief in any god. It does not mean not being spiritual. An atheist could be mawkishly spiritual about the wonders of nature and the universe and still be an atheist. So it depends on where your spirituality takes you.
I have like zero spirituality, but I’m an outlier and don’t pretend that my situation is all that common.

186

The fundamentalist ones seem to like us because we can rebuild the Temple which seems to be required for the end times, during which we all get sent to hell or whatever. So I’m less than impressed by their support. Other Protestants are different.

187

But what if, to continue your analogy, your goal is to find someone you’re sexually attracted to? Listening to your emotional response* is* a rational response.

If the goal is satisfaction with the answers you find about life, then recognising your dissatisfaction and acting on it is rational.

There’s nothing inherently un-analytical about an emotional response. If you read a statement and examine it logically to judge it, you have done analysis. If you read a statement and examine it emotionally to judge it, you have done analysis. You might put greater weight on one or the other, or consider that one is more appropriate to a situation than another, but that doesn’t make it not analysis.

Good point.

188

No, Jews aren’t going to hell, because they are God’s chosen people, and therefore get a pass on the whole Jesus thing. They see Jesus as the one who came up with rules for non-Jews to also attain the heaven Jewish people are already destined for, or something like that.

And at least in my old community, affection for the Jews had nothing to do with end times. They just think Jews have a special place in God’s plan, and therefore the Jews are to be treated as fellow travelers and are to be defended against threats to their existence.

189

I believe this is exactly what Einstein meant when he said, ‘My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the universe’ - A quote widely taken by some to mean that Einstein was a believer in a literal god, albeit of the deist stripe.

190

The usual criticism of athiesm is that athiests claim there is no god, but if God can’t be proven, categorically saying he doesn’t exist is just as much a religious statement as saying that he does.

The problem with this is that athiests do not say that at all. They simply say, 'I see no evidence of god, nor the need to invoke a god to explain the evidence we have, so the null hypothesis is that god does not exist. Furthermore, supernatural claims require extraordinarily strong evidence because they are so far outside of what we already know about the universe.

The last sentence is essentially a Bayesian statement. New evidence always has to be evaluated against the weight of prior evidence.

That’s it. No faith required, no dogma required. Just a belief that claims as to the nature of reality needs to be backed up with evidence, and that if the claim would invalidate large swaths of prior results, its evidentiary backing must be very strong. That’s what keeps us from wasting our time evaluating every whackdoodle theory, or making wholesale changes to our worldview every time some experiment with dubious protocols or tiny effects claims to change the way we think about the world.

191

It’s also a bit of a dunning-kruger effect. The critics of atheism think that atheists believe in science in the same way that they believe in the bible. They think that scientists just decree that things are a certain way, and everyone just accepts that. A preacher in a pulpit has as much authority on matters as a scientist behind a lectern.

To a very small extent, this is true. When I watch a lecture, I am taking “on faith” that he’s not just talking out his ass. I do not possess the knowledge, skills, or tools to verify or falsify the claims that he is making. The difference is that I could. If I took a few decades and spent tons of money, I could do all the same things that he has done, and I will come to the same conclusions that he has. I can feel confident about this because, while I have not done this, many others have, and they would have had no reason not to become wealthy and famous proving conventional science wrong.

This is not something that you can do with religion. I cannot study the fundamental aspects of the universe and come to the same conclusions as a theologian. In fact, two independent devout theologians studying the universe independently would not be able to come to the same conclusion. This is demonstrated by the fact that there are many many Many religions, but only really one science.

192

God is a wonder all on His own. Only God knows our path before we do. I refuse to ask a scientist about God because it’ll do nothing but piss me off.

And a pastor with a degree in science… what he said is absolutely wrong, I’ve seen so many Miracles in my lifetime and have been shown many things by God. I know that some of us are chosen and that others are not. Now this is a debate for a lot of people, but tell me how many of us have seen angles or demons or even demons in people?

How many of us have bipolar, schizophrenia, cancer, dementia, or anything else that attacks the body and mental state or health? These things are demons. And yes I also believe they can come from our foods because we didn’t have things like this happening as much in my day.

How many of us have had premonitions; dreams that have come true or spoke something and it happened just as it was given to you?

I only talk to people when it’s given or I won’t say anything at all. I prove He’s real by living my life as He would have me to.

Madeline3927

193

If this was couched in any context other than religion, it would pass as insanity

194

Where did you get the idea that cancer is a demon? I never ran across that one in the Bible. Or are we just making up a faith as we go along now?

195

No. You are dead wrong. **Atheism has nothing whatsoever to do with science. ** You can have scientist who are devout (The Pope, anyone?) and atheists who think global warming is a scam.

196

Some people believe demons cause all illness.
Don’t forget the story of Jesus driving out the demons from two men and sending them into a herd of pigs.
Matthew 8:28-34

197

Indeed, some atheists say that. but harcore atheists not only say they are sure there is no God but anyone who believes in a God is deluded or worse.

And Strong atheism is irrational.

http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=6487
An unfriendly atheist believes no one is justified in believing that gods exist.
An evangelical atheist tries to persuade others to give up theistic belief.
A positive atheist not only lacks a belief in gods, but also affirms that no gods exist. He is also called a strong atheist or an explicit atheist.

198

That’s one example, but it could also be a metaphor. But you can experience spiritual wonder without being even a deist.

199

You are conflating rational with analytical, but there can be rational but not analytical responses. It is very rational for someone dissatisfied with a situation to change it without doing any analysis.
Let’s not talk about statements, let’s talk about poems. You can read a poem analytically, but you can read a poem for how it makes you feel without breaking down how the poet does it. I listened to Beethoven symphonies and they moved me though I did not have the tools to understand why. Then I listened to the Greenberg CDs about them and understood what was going on a lot better. That let me do some primitive analysis. But I originally had a purely emotional response out of ignorance. And being tone deaf.
Now if you want to define emotional responses as analytical, you are even more into the benefits of analysis than I am, and that’s quite a lot.

200

Einstein is widely accepted to be a type of Deist. But certainly not a atheist. I more or less fall along Einstein’s thoughts here.

201

There are extremists and fringes everywhere. I’m sure there are atheists that say all kinds of stupid things. But that’s not what atheism IS.

Atheism is better understood as a philosophy that says, “The proper way to understand the universe is to apply the scientific method. We must demand proof, experiment, falsifiable predictions, and the other tools we have developed over millennia to help us sort out fact from fiction.”

The reason atheists don’t believe in God is simply because such a belief doesn’t pass those tests. But it’s not a dogmatic belief: If someone came up with a strong proof of God’s existence, and it could pass the tests above, atheists would have to admit that there is a God.

But that gets us to a paradox. If God is defined as a being that transcends the laws of men and the universe, then he’s outside the realm of science anyway, which means we can’t ‘prove’ his existence. And evidence to the contrary can always be hand-waved away as having been placed by God to test us. It’s an unfalsifiable theory, so for people who use reason and science to puzzle out what’s going on around us, it’s becomes a question that’s not even worth entertaining. When come back, bring evidence.

To me, the difference between agnosticism and atheism is that agnostics weight the possibilities of God/no God equally. So an agnostic might say, “There might be a God, there might not. But both propositions are worth equal attention, and I’m keeping an open mind.” An athiest would say, “I have no reason to believe in God, so until someone gives me a reason I’m not even interested in the question.”

Or another way of looking at it: Agnostics have an open mind about the existence of God, but atheists employ an entirely different epistemology that explicitly rules out belief without evidence, so the question of God is moot.

But I’ll bet you even agnostics are atheists when it comes to believing in Valhalla, or volcano gods, or the existence of fairies and pixies. And I’ll bet most Christians are too. Or should Christians keep an open mind and say, “Well, I’m not sure… Baal, Jesus… I’m in Jesus’ corner right now, I have an open mind and am willing to be convinced that I should throw my first born child into the nearest volcano.” I think not.