I don't want this to turn into a contentious debate, even though I know that this is a contentious subject matter...

I don't want this to turn into a contentious debate, even though I know that this is a contentious subject matter. I have never been able to understand how people could believe in god and subsequently follow a religion. I have just never felt that believing in god made any sense, and it seems so incredibly illogical to me, it's unfathomable how anyone could believe in something which I see as utter nonsense. Again, I'm not trying to be contentious here, I'm just trying to understand what it is about people that gives them these feelings, what makes them actually believe that such things exist. I also don't want to hear the old "I've seen things which can't be explained" thing, because that's so annoying, I am more interested in knowing why exactly some people believe in god, not some pointless anecdote which means nothing to anyone but yourself.

Other urls found in this thread:

apa.org/monitor/2010/12/believe.aspx
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

You could have literally googled "arguments for the existence of a god" instead of shitposting, fucktarded tumblrcunt.

Fuck off. At least make some dumb equivocal statement of a failed attempted at making a point instead of trying to drag the thread down and devolve it into an aimless nihilistic abyss.

I'm not looking for arguments on the existence of god, I'm looking for why people believe in god, because there's literally nothing but bullshit equivocal arguments for the "existence of god". I'm looking for the psychological reason of how someone could be retarded enough to believe in god. Fuck your precious little dogmatic beliefs, destroy them, stop holding them in your hand, like a little piece of glass ornament that you can't stand to let shatter and drop on the ground. It isn't real, you're protecting nothing, just give it up.

>At least make some dumb equivocal statement of a failed attempted at making a point instead of trying to drag the thread down and devolve it into an aimless nihilistic abyss.
Do you even know what half of those words mean?
Fuck off, retard, we aren't going to spoonfeed you Kierkegaard .

See kys or go back to

There's no reason why someone would believe in something like a god, when there's no evidence for once existing, unless there were something physically wrong with their brain. When you think about it, it makes you really question whether any mental illness is valid, when there's people walking all around you who have a brain disease which makes them delusional enough to believe in something which doesn't exist.

Holy fucking bait
Pick up an intro to book before posting or fuck off

I like how you didn't answer my question, because you're probably too dumb to even comprehend what the fuck it is I'm asking.

t. someone who's never read any philosophy

I like how whenever you ask a christian something they can never answer you directly, they're just like oh go read the bible or something, or at best they'll give you equivocal statement that they saw something which only they saw, which they can't explain. It's so dumb, I'll never understand how people can believe in something which is essentially their imaginary friend, all of it's imaginary and yet somehow they're mentally ill enough to think that it's all real. How the fuck could someone be so dumb?

You can't even answer me directly because you're too stupid to even realize that you don't have a fucking answer to the question. You're probably just an atheist who's pretending to be a Christian who's trolling me though.

>people won't spoonfeed me :'(
bait harder
>pretending to be a Christian
Not even, that's how much of an idiot you are.

>Not even, that's how much of an idiot you are.
I can't see you, I don't know anything about you, all I know is you're saying stuff which I have to assume is either honest or dishonest. So what the fuck are you on about? You're so fucking dumb, if you really just said that earnestly you're really a dumb fuck.

>anime
Typical

>I don't want this to turn into a contentious debate

Yeah, it would be better if the Christians stayed out, because the people with mature minds want to have an actual discussion. I am looking for a real, scientific explanation of why people believe in god, not what god is. I am looking for why people would believe in god, not an explanation of "what god is", just to be double clear.

>scientific explanation
>scientific
>explanation
heh

Yeah man, all that computer that I'm typing on right now, all those rocket ships, all that internet and science crap is all a belief system. It can't actually prove anything hurrrrrrrrrrrrr.

...

The belief in God is intuitive; we're natural dualists and are set up to apply function and purpose to the world around us.

When children are asked why rivers exist, they typically reply with something along the lines of 'for fishing' or 'for boats'.

It is not logical, as it has no logical basis or premise.

Human intuitions are often wrong and we have verified this by discovering a great number of cognitive biases and heuristics, which distort our already limited perception of reality.

However, the belief in God cannot be tested and thereby falsified; although it is irrational, it lies outside of the scope of science by default and therefore cannot be directly addressed, merely dismissed along with the tooth fairy.

Religious claims relating to the existence of a God can be falsified; therefore, the inability to falsify the existence of God does not mean that religious claims are untouchable.

In fact, the majority of them have been contradicted by science over the past two centuries.

Unfortunately, there are no logically viable arguments in favour of God.

All are either logically flawed or are deductive in nature and begin with an a priori statement, i.e. there is a God.

>I have just never felt that believing in god made any sense, and it seems so incredibly illogical to me, it's unfathomable how anyone could believe in something which I see as utter nonsense.
>I'm not looking for arguments on the existence of god, I'm looking for why people believe in god
sorry not everyone decides their worldview by feels OP

>Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard's argument can be boiled down to: if there isn't a God the world seems meaningless and trivial which makes me sad; therefore, I'm going to take a leap of faith/indulge in delusion and denial so that I can feel better.

Which is a legitimate summary of what faith for the intelligent is all about.

>this post
how to make a Thomist cry

>sorry not everyone decides their worldview by feels

It it relates to a belief in God, then they do.

>the first cause is the a priori argument they think is a posteriori

OP, why did you post this in Veeky Forums? Anyway, you know the answer: people believe because they were brought up/indoctrinated from a young age.
As St. Francis Xavier supposedly said: “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man."
Even those not raised to a specific faith are in a society completely framed by the idea of pastoral power, being watched, and obeying higher authorities. Add to that the innate human impulse to seek some higher "meaning" in their brief lives and to long for importance on some imaginary cosmic scale, and our inability to face the prospect of true death of our consciousness, and it's hardly surprising that those comforting fairy tales that make one feel important, accepted, and superior to their neighbours remain popular. We all want to feel we hold special/secret knowledge that comforts us: some take that to silly extremes and convince themselves they know the wishes and personality of the that "force that through the green fuse drives the flower."
Yep. This is true for all religious people who have ever lived, even ones I otherwise respect like Eliot and Lewis and Tolkien. The ontological "proofs" for God are fucking hilarious, especially the ones that mistake the pathetic limits of human intelligence with ultimate cosmic realities.

People use God and the afterlife to forestall their fear of death. They get to avoid a lot of other fears in the bargain, but it's about death: if God's got your back, you can put those fears on the back burner until you die, and then there is no more back burner.

Indoctrination (helped by human biases, fear of the unknown, confirmation bias, etc)
Desperation
Inability to accept the irrelevance/randomness of life

>When children are asked why rivers exist, they typically reply with something along the lines of 'for fishing' or 'for boats'.
Who the fuck replies like that?

Yes, which essentially translates to It's all about feels.

>Who the fuck replies like that?

Children do.

>Young children, for example, tend to believe that even trivial aspects of the natural world were created with purpose, according to a series of studies by Boston University psychologist Deborah Keleman, PhD. If you ask children why a group of rocks are pointy, for example, they say something like, “It’s so that animals won’t sit on them and break them.” If you ask them why rivers exist, they say it’s so we can go fishing.

apa.org/monitor/2010/12/believe.aspx

Does it come from adults telling children bullshit and bringing "the reason is X"

Doubt a child who didn't see adults fishing or animals drinking water from a river would come to the conclusion that it's the purpose of rivers.

you aren't going to have a productive thread because you've set no parameters. You haven't defined God, you haven't stated why you can't wrap your head around the concept only gone on and on that your so flabbergasted, haven't explored atheism, agnosticism, pantheism, panentheism, etc., haven't even stated the basis of your own beliefs. What the fuck makes you think this is going to be a productive discussion with just
>why do you believe in God, I don't understand how anyone can be so dumb
this is literally a reddit-tier discussion.

anyways I'm panentheist. I personally find the idea of atheism to be a bit silly.

Not OP but from his/her post it seems obvious that the God is something along the lines of "powerful being caring about human affairs" perhaps we could add "created the universe" to it.

No, children apply purpose to natural phenomena.

It's how humans make sense of the world and essentially constitutes cognitive biases and heuristics that aided our ancestors over their evolutionary history.

Those children become adults.

It's just something that humans do.

Sounds too simplistic, I never gave purpose to shit like rivers or the sun as a kid, they were "just there" and I doubt I am that special. Grew up in a semi religious family too (going to church to celebrate shit, dad loved to read the bible on the shitter) Even my more religious granny was more into "animals are Gods creatures" instead of "the bee is there to produce honey" stuff.

The thought of purpose never accused to me and was pushed in the context of the ecosystem "mosquitos are there so birds got something to eat" Sounds like kids who grew up without parents giving them shitty explanations should have similar views.

>my subjective recollection of my psychological disposition as a child, which itself amounts to anecdote is more reliable than systematic reviews and meta-analyses of cross cultural studies relating to child psychology and belief formation

Cool story, user.

Well, link to the study, I wonder how cross-cultural it really is and whether it included kids from educated families.

95% of religious people were born into it and they DON'T THINK ABOUT THIS

> ay lmao church and praying makes me feel good and shizz

Fucking kek'd
Thx user u made my night

>ad hominem

God reading this post was like chopping onions and getting a whiff of the worst ass stench imaginable. I can't define what god is BECAUSE THERE IS NO FUCKING DEFINITION, YOU FUCKING MORON! It's not definable, no one can define god, because it's all a person thing and made up. God fucking damn it, if someone could quantify what god is, don't you think it would have credibility. Wake up you stupid fucking animal, there's no evidence for the existence of god, the fact that you're a "panentheist" means absolutely nothing. Go stick your head in a fucking blender, you insufferable, stupid waste of space. You don't have a single transparent statement.

Theism = god exists and and made the universe
Atheism = we don't properly know what the universe is or how it was created. God is not a definable concept therefore it is not of use to us (beyond feels).