Poll: Why do you believe in God?

[Remté]

I have no idea. I just always have.

 

[wellwisher]

I believe that we have natural human instincts. I also believe we have higher human potential in terms of additional things the brain is capable of doing. The question becomes, how do you access these extra things?

Religion is the natural way to do this. Belief in God, if done sincerely, appears to be similar to a password and command line, triggered by faith and feelings, that unlocks additional doors of the mind.

One of the main complaints of atheism, is how religion, over the years, has motivated people for destructive behavior. If you look at this from the POV of a science observation of species behavior, certain neural buttons are pushed by religion, that tap into a drive, that is not otherwise easy to induce.

Destruction is not the best use of higher human potential. However, it is an example of how command lines can induce behavior, that goes beyond the norm. Religion and the creativity of its art, is a positive example. The command lines open doors to the unconscious mind, from which the creativity vents.

Atheists also assume religion and the Gods are imaginary. Even if we assume this is true, there appears to be command lines that can fool the DNA based hardware of the brain, such that sensory input can have an altered impact on the brain and consciousness. This is part of the higher human potential. Seeing what is not there now, does not mean it cannot exist in the future; innovation.

All in all, consciousness has an interface to the natural computer called the brain; willpower. This interface allows us to induce and control brain input and output to some extent. There is an interface common to humans.This is similar to the clickable interface on this web page. Religions know the coding behind the interface. In terms of this web page, if you know HTML, you can add code for some additional types of output, that are not part of the basic interface.

Religions often seem harsh in terms of controlling behavior. However, with extra powers that are not part of the normal interface, comes extra caution and responsibility. One needs to learn self control, to make sure what you let loose, does not get the better of you and/or lead you to destruction. Humility is a way to create self checks and balances.

The Devil and Satan, in terms of Christianity, is a subroutine that one will come into contact with, as you go deeper into the operating system. It is real in the sense of autonomous coding; AI, and is there to place limits of how far we can go, until you can trigger the update in the operating system.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

A loaded question. Upbringing and environmental factors for one, personal predilection and philosophical attraction to the given concept being another.

I certainly don't think a 'Supreme Creator Being' is necessary for making sense of the universe. In and of itself, the Standard Model of physics has proved largely adept at doing that. The physical world is mechanistic (in terms of classical Newtonian physics/general relativity) and probabilistic/indeterministic at the subatomic, ‘quantum’ level. It is not teleological. God isn't needed here.

Natural selection is entirely sufficient for explaining the diversity and origins of organisms, and it is not a guided, directed or goal-driven phenomenon. No God needed there either. A magical hand from above breathing a vital force into the earth is definitely not required or consistent with the evidence.

So, why do I believe in God?

While I believe that science is all we need to understand the cosmos and biological life (and religion should stay out of it), I don't submit to the notion that it is all we need to understand us, by which I mean not the muscles, DNA and matter of our physical constitution but rather our conscious awareness as purposeful beings, capable of leading meaningful lives, in a universe that is seemingly devoid of any purpose.

I'm talking here about possibility spaces. Human beings are capable of leading meaningful lives or finding purpose in their experiences yet we have to accept, nonetheless, that the natural world (viewed as separate from the world as experienced by conscious beings) is not itself guided by any purpose.

All of human history is characterized by purpose - our love, hate, war, progress, regress, culture - which has come into being in the universe through our species.

I would argue, being a theist, that the reason purpose comes into existence is because it is possible for purpose to come into existence and the reason why there is this possibility of purpose coming into existence is because the laws of nature which we have are not brute facts (i.e. eternal, immutable, universal, precise, pre-existing mathematical axioms that we just have to accept as a pre-existent given) but rather emanate from a real space of 'abstract' existence, distinct from physical existence, which I view as hailing from a supreme intelligence who willed to create a universe with physical laws that made the emergence of purpose-driven conscious life possible.

How does purpose and meaning and awareness and qualia just emerge from purposelessness, meaninglessness and consciouslessness inert matter, unless the possibility for this to be so first exists somewhere in the abstract along with mathematical objects and the laws of nature themselves? We are the universe, inert matter, aware of itself - able to reflect on itself, study itself and relate to itself. This is only so because we live in a universe with laws of nature and fundamental constants that allow for the possibility of beings like ourselves to emerge from mechanistic physical processes and natural selection. They needn't have had to. Theoretical physicists have used modelling software and their own knowledge to conceptualize innumerable ways in which the laws of nature or constants could have been different, with just a few minor tweaks in values here and there, resulting in no possibility of complexity of any kind emerging - like stars, planets and galaxies, let alone conscious life - other than clouds of hydrogen and helium floating around eternally in a vacuum.

As the great theoretical physicist Professor George Ellis stated in an interview a few years ago:


George Ellis

"From my view point, existence isn’t just physical existence: there’s these abstract existences. That space of abstract stuff (i.e. truths of mathematics, world of ideas) was sitting waiting to be discovered and eventually minds reached a sufficient complexity that they could discover it."​

There are many other reasons, but that's my first one.

You are making an assumption that no religious person believes in an ordered universe and that no religious person believes in things like natural selection or the Big Bang.

Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic priest came up with the Big Bang using a depiction of the Creation. The so-called Standard Model is a misnomer as until the rise of secularism, the standard model of science was compatible with religion.

Yes, these are natural phenomenon. But natural does not necessarily mean without God.

Yes, quantum mechanics seems to work. But you should probably revisit this notion.

I'm gonna pick apart everything you say. Sorry.

Natural selection is based on seemingly random standards, but this is not the case. Ancient cavemen had no way of knowing that breeding with attractive women, and women breeding with strong men could have improved the race as a whole, and brought them from using stone tools to writing on computers and using nukes and such. Further, the frequency of human wars has worked to cull some of the dumber brutes, resulting in choosing smaller smarter males. So not only are there healthy mixes between strength and beauty but also the intelligent "smaller fish" continue to mix into the population as post-war second choices. In fact, if we want to see an example where disordered breeding produces nothing of worth, look at deer. They're adapted well to the forests yes, but they stare blankly at automobiles and get hit despite cars having been around for about 70+ years. Birds and squid on the other hand are well-bred, able to solve puzzles and they've already figured out how to adjust to cars. Natural selection is not a random event, everything that happens (a bird watching another bird get hit, or a thwarted student who failed math becoming motivated to learning physics and coming up with a theory of relativity) helps along larger plans. Random events only produce confusion. Seemingly random events cause domino effects that create other events.

Likewise, the Big Bang isn't what many scientists believe it is. Depictions of the Big Bang have matter before that as the size of about a pin. Got it? Now read this.

World egg - Wikipedia

The Vedas, Zoroastrian myth, Greek myth, Norse myth, Egyptian myth, Taoism, and so on. All these religions depict the universe as coming from a sort of superatom, a centralize point. With the exception of Taoism (mostly atheist) these are all theist worldviews.

(Reads down. Ah, you're a theist. Nvm then.)

 

[74x12]

Choice selection is unlimited, so select any choice that applies to you.

God intervened in my life

 

[Shaul]

Other.

Because He said He exists.

 

[lukethethird]

Other:

Because I never learned science.