Hi im new and im just wondering, why do people believe in god ? If you were not told as a child to believe in god would you still?
faith… some strange overriding sense that there is something out there… i think in the end rational efforts to prove or disprove the existence of God (or anything non-material) are doomed to fail… i probably have some more to say on the subject but i’ll hold off for now
Sebeax,
welcome to the board. I hope you find our posts interesting. I hope you learn from them and become a changed person, for the better. Even more so, I hope that what you have to share with us will also be interesting and I hope that we may all also change for the better from having read your posts.
Pertaining to your question, why people believe in God. It is a rather difficult question, but I will do my best to shed some light on it. I wish not to go into too much detail, as my time is precious, but there is an article that you can link to that will do a pretty good job of answering your question…
kuro5hin.org/story/2003/6/20/44736/2173
As for me and a few others here, there is a saying that “God is the name we give to our ignorance”. I am of the opinion that people believe in God because we have to answer everything, we are uncomfortable with ignorance. So when we don’t know something, for instance how fire works, or what the stars are, or how the universe began…instead of racking our brains as to any possibilities we may come up with, the majority simply plug in the word GOD.
What’s your take?
Glagfly I completely agree with you. I personally don’t beleive in god… I think that he/it is exactly the way you put it… fills in the blanks. God is a symbol of our ignorance. Humans have longed to know why we are here, why bad things happen to good people, why do people die… all things we cannot understand. I am personly content not knowing the answers to all of these questions. GOD does fill in the blanks. We are so caught up on trying to know everything we have to use something to fill it in that is really hard to beleive. I mean, do you beleive somethig as absurd as that people can have mind reading powers? Do you beleive that people can have magical powers? Can you really beleive that there is powerful being in the sky that controls all things? The thought though is way more comforting than to just think that we are here for no reason and that we are alone. God truely just fills in all the blanks. People need this in some way, people need to understand/to know why.
Rather a deity. He repents our sins. If there was no God who would make me feel guilty to kill, steal or even rape? Sure you’re going to try to put me in jail but the feeling of being losed is missing. God shows mercy trough Messengers who each time try to warn us about:
– this is good
– this is bad
– There is no God but One.
– etc etc.
If we didn’t knew this we would be in total loss because human will decide for themselves what is good or what is bad. Who knows better than the Creator Himself? Nay, many people reject him and don’t even acknowledge His existence.
See my signature
We can choose between believing in our Creator or not. If we choose to believe in Him then it would be rational to also abide by His laws. If you refute Him you take the chance encountering God after you die and He will surely punish you for not believing in Him after clearly seeing His Signs.
The reason for being here, on earth. Is as simple as a test:
– You study well (His Signs) and make the test (Life on earth) you will succeed (Heaven)
– You don’t study at all (making own laws) and eventually you will fail the test which will result in a loss.
First of all, you must say “I don’t understand” because we, muslims, do know why those things happen. The simple reason: people have the will to chose between good and bad and bad decision can affect others.
Living without reason or objective is like an insects who walks in circles.
I am sympathetic to Hadj’s way of handling a couple of the problems you raise.
I don’t agree with him outright, though.
My take on these problems is quite simply that the more time spent musing on these issues, learning about religion/others and attempting to understand and approach ‘big questions’ will put you in closer touch with answers.
Hence,
I’m not going to tell anyone that they will ‘fail a test’. If there is a God, that is for him to judge, not me. However, I do agree that learning about religion/philosophy/history is the surest way to approach God as well as the surest way of making yourself comfortable with considering important questions.
Good luck.
“Rather a deity. He repents our sins. If there was no God who would make me feel guilty to kill, steal or even rape? Sure you’re going to try to put me in jail but the feeling of being losed is missing.”
I don’t beleive in god and would never hurt anyone… never kill or rape! These are choices you make yourself. Why do you need something to tell you not to? These are not decisions that you should need to be decided for you! Do you really need something to make you feel guilty to kill something or rape? That just means that you have the urge to kill something but are only held back by “god”. People who have killed have been religious people as well. Not all murders beleive as I beleive. And just because I beleive the way I do doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have guilt to kill or rape! And I don’t live without reason… I have reason, I just beleive that god is a false reason… an imaginary reason.
I’m starting to like this girl 
lol Thanks Dan!
Well the mechanics of a chain letter are pretty simple.
One guy tells 12 guys that by sending this message on they can have great rewards if the pass the message along, and will suffer terrible punisment if they don’t. So these people not be risk takers by nature send it along. And so it is with the next 144, and so on…
Now, normally Microsoft takes these things out, but sometimes they don’t. Like for instance if the chain letter says something like, “Hey you should pay for your operateing system,” or something like that.
Oh, wait you wanted to know about religions. I’m sorry, but I have to sleep now. Maybe I’ll have something tomarrow.
But the biggest crime to commit is not acknowledging your Creater and for that only He will punish you. But if you say at any moment of your life: “I was clearly in err and I believe in One God.” He will clear all your previous sins.
I agree.
We call that obeying God. And only God can forbid or make lawful.
I’ve plenty of other reasons why you should believe in God and one of them is protect yourself for the Day when He will ask you:“Why didn’t you believe in Me after people invited you?”
I agree but it does help and that counts.
If that is your choice so be it.
I am not meaning to sound mean or obsene… But I think that you are living in a bunch of imaginary thoughts. Do you beleive in fairies? Do you beleive in Santa Clause? Can you really beleive in a being that has powers beyond our comprehension? How is it logical for someone not to beleive in so many clearly wrong ideas, but to beleive in something just as absurd, if not more. The idea of someone that is our creator is hard for me to comprehend. I am not ruling out the possibility of god, of a higher being, but, how can you be so narrow minded not to even consider the idea that we are just here. Maybe we have no reason. What if we are all just lost insects going in cirlces? You and I will never know. Religion is just something for people that can’t handle to think that there is possibly no reason to be here. That maybe there is no reason for you to lose your loved ones. I personally am fine just being here. I enjoy just being here, no reason for it. I am just here, I don’t need a creator, I don’t need a reason not to kill or rape. I am just here!
Neither you or me have clear evidence that God exist. However He have send numerous Messengers who are calling people to believe but he didn’t gave us direct evidence of presence of Himself. If that was the case even an atheist extremist would convert to the religion of God. That’s the test, you choose to believe or not. But no, people want real prove but if that was the case how can we call the believing in God a believe (i.e. faith). It would be a cold fact. But God didn’t send us except to obey Him. I’m not saying I force you to become religious or anything but for the sake of yourself look and read around…read books who are known of their religious content and consider it.
Any god that prefers people to mindlessly obey and gullibly accept what they are told without any rational explaination isn’t a god I’d want to be associated with anyway.
Hail Satan 
Oh no, you’re all wrong. Islam is very rational and encourage people to seek knowledge. I dare you to give one irrational point of Islam!
You can seek all knowledge within the boundaries of Islam, correct? And if you cannot leave those boundaries, the knowledge is there already, no need to seek it. Knowledge isn’t just regurgitating verses of your religious text, it’s expanding and making your own verses.
Sorry, too late.
~Adam.
What I’m trying to state is that Islam doesn’t inforce irrational laws on people and further on the Islamic doesn’t contradict to any scientifical fact. If we are talking about knowledge: no boundries.
lets face it: debate is not going to change anything, not how people really feel about things. God is qualitative, not quantitative. there is an intense anti-religious feeling on these boards which clashes with the intense pro-religious feeling on these boards. so far i have heard better arguments coming from the atheistic/agnostic side. but i want to hear Hadj out, as he may have logical points. i contend, however that his one ‘irrational’ point in Islam is the belief in god. let’s face it hadj, belief in god is an irrational, faith based concept. not that the irrational is a negative: i think rationalism has a lot to answer for. although i hate to be one of those people who smugly aver: the problem with — is…
my contention is that practitioners of religion claim knowledge of a Deity’s character that they have absolutely no tenable basis for. they box the deity in, they limit him. God becomes a human analogue vs humans being a god analogue. belief in this way becomes a projection of a person’s preferred values as absolute. can you refute this, Hadj? is it not possible that rather than believing in a certain set of morals because of your faith, you believe in a faith because it exemplifies your personal set of morals?
It will, many people don’t know a lot of religion or in this case Islam. And most of them have rather a negative image of Islam than a positive one. I’ve been discussing in forums and with christians (even Jehovah Witnesses) and they all say: I didn’t know that.
I’m not trying to convert anyone but I will discuss Islam at a rational level so that people can understand how Islam works and why it’s the fastest growing religion in the world and specifically in the USA. So changes still happen but like you’ve already mentioned I’m not going to keep debating till I can say: “I told you I was right!”. And from my personal experience changes do occur but I must quote from the Quran:
Surah Al-Anfal Ayah [53]
“That is so because Allah will never change a grace which He has bestowed on a people until they change what is in their ownselves. And verily, Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower.”
It’s not irrational to believe in God. Just because there is no evidence of God we can call it “irrational”? His presence is unkown not irrational. Do I have to cite the two definitions again?
Further on the existance of God is fully compatible with this world so rather saying it’s irrational (1+1=5 <— that’s irrational) you could better say it’s not known (1+x=?). If you ask some specific answers maybe I can clear up your questions about Islam.
We don’t claim we have knowledge of Him. We only know some attributes of Him because He revealed exactly 99 names in the Quran which all refer to him.
click for the 99 names of God
We muslims are the ones who refutes the saying of the Christians: “God created man in His own image”. We refute any connection between us, humans, and God. We have little knowledge about let alone we image us trough God. That’s blasphemy in Islam.
No, because I want to live according to the law of God. I’m his server and He is my Master fore He created me. Being convinced of One God will make any person to follow His path to Paradise.
How is possible to “exemply” 1.3 billion people’s sets of morals in one religion, when there is no version of the Quran. There has only been One Quran, no versions. If you don’t believe try google or something. It’s a fact. [/url]
Oh, I wasn’t refering to islam in specific. But all of the abrahamic religions share a god. The definition of such is pretty close to the same in all 3 variations.
My big problem with religion, and trust me I’ve studied a lot of them, is the requirement to just drop your intellect and believe. Faith is something my constantly doubting and questioning mind could never wrap around.
It IS irational to beleive that god exists.
Imagine if you read in a book one day that there was a sandwich on the table. In this book, it says if you believe hard enough there will be a sandwich on your table too.
Are you going to walk into your kitchen expecting a sandwich?
You may refute this by saying the bible/koran is not just a book, and has divine origins. But that is an empty claim untill which time you can prove it, or at least bring reasonable evidence to support it.
Until then, you should make your own sandwich.