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This is in response to the Why do you believe God exists thread.
Before anyone can answer why they believe in God, they must first be able to explain what God is. So, how do we answer what God is? Can God be experience through the senses? No. So how is God said to be experienced? Through a spiritual relationship. How is a spiritual relationship experienced? Without being able to define spirit any better than we can define what God is, we are left with only psychological, subjective experience. What faculties aid in psychological, subjective experience? Imagination, emotions, intuition, and instinct all allow us to experience things without our five senses. They allow us to form ideas and these ideas allow us to interpret empirical experience through a language that relates to those ideas. This is where the idea God is formed.
So the explaination, "I feel it" is somewhat accurate. But it is not complete. Once we form a hypothesis based on our imagination, emotions, intuitions, and instincts, we can test that hypothesis against our objective experience. This empirical process is what strengthens or weakens our faith in our idea of God. If an individual continues having positive reinforcement for their idea of God, then their faith will continue to strengthen. That is the reason why people continue to believe in God.
OR... the individual recieves negative punishment. Meaning that, their belief in God removes something negative: i.e. fear, insecurity, self-hate, purposelessness. etc. There are also explainations that take negative reinforcement and positive punishment into account as well. Just take a look at nations that are forced to live under Religious Law. Also, being a part of a religion often allows individuals access to a social group, which is both positive and negative reinforcement at the same time.
However, the positive reinforcement aspect, drawn from objective experience cannot be ignored and is the best evidence for a rational belief in God. If a person has a continuous positive experience of God through a psycho-spiritual (psychological) relationship with a consciousness they believe is God, then their belief will continue to be strengthened.
Before anyone can answer why they believe in God, they must first be able to explain what God is. So, how do we answer what God is? Can God be experience through the senses? No. So how is God said to be experienced? Through a spiritual relationship. How is a spiritual relationship experienced? Without being able to define spirit any better than we can define what God is, we are left with only psychological, subjective experience. What faculties aid in psychological, subjective experience? Imagination, emotions, intuition, and instinct all allow us to experience things without our five senses. They allow us to form ideas and these ideas allow us to interpret empirical experience through a language that relates to those ideas. This is where the idea God is formed.
So the explaination, "I feel it" is somewhat accurate. But it is not complete. Once we form a hypothesis based on our imagination, emotions, intuitions, and instincts, we can test that hypothesis against our objective experience. This empirical process is what strengthens or weakens our faith in our idea of God. If an individual continues having positive reinforcement for their idea of God, then their faith will continue to strengthen. That is the reason why people continue to believe in God.
OR... the individual recieves negative punishment. Meaning that, their belief in God removes something negative: i.e. fear, insecurity, self-hate, purposelessness. etc. There are also explainations that take negative reinforcement and positive punishment into account as well. Just take a look at nations that are forced to live under Religious Law. Also, being a part of a religion often allows individuals access to a social group, which is both positive and negative reinforcement at the same time.
However, the positive reinforcement aspect, drawn from objective experience cannot be ignored and is the best evidence for a rational belief in God. If a person has a continuous positive experience of God through a psycho-spiritual (psychological) relationship with a consciousness they believe is God, then their belief will continue to be strengthened.