Why do you believe in God?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why do you believe in God?

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

Describe the religious experience: what happened, how did you differentiate it from an everyday event or a coincidence, and what about it pointed you toward a particular god, rather than some nebulous cosmic force (assuming that is indeed what you came to believe)?

I would add "some sort of perceptual error" to the everyday event or coincidence list.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2016 20:26

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:37

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Slightly Toasted posted:

This was a neat post to read and helped me frame the issue more rationally for when I encounter people who think things based on religion that I don't about gays in the future. I've enjoyed reading your posts in this thread, thank you.

Here's the formalism for that belief:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_command_theory

# ¿ Jun 12, 2016 05:25

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Vorenus posted:

worst case scenario is upon death I cease to exist as a consciousness.

If you're the kind of person who thinks it's possible to continue to exist after dying, the worst case scenario should be something like "I was wrong, but there is a true religion, and it thinks I deserve infinity torture".

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 20:13

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

bitcoin bastard posted:

This is something I can comment on. My feeling is that pain is necessary to enjoy pleasure*, if you don't understand how bad poo poo can suck, how can you possibly understand how good you have it right now?

*I rewrote this like 5 times, this was the least Shades of Grey wording I could come up with

If it's the case that humans can only enjoy X combined with the presence of Y, surely that's fault of whatever designed human psychology, and not an excuse for the presence of Y, if the designer of human psychology has the power to eliminate Y? (Alternative approach: I can't speak for you, but I know personally I have no idea just how bad poo poo can suck, but I still prefer to avoid ultimate worst case outcomes, even if that's limiting my ability to appreciate less than worst case outcomes)

# ¿ Jun 27, 2016 00:48

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

I Like Jell-O posted:

This is a question so cliché that it has its own Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

So if you want to know how a given religion approaches the problem of evil, refer to the nice tidy Wikipedia entry and stop wasting our time in this thread.

Isn't this the opposite of what you are encouraging here:

quote:

We start with a good premise, "Share your individual experiences".

I'm always interested in how someone deals with the problem of evil, because as the Wikipedia page shows, all arguments I'm aware of that it isn't a problem have been thoroughly dealt with.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2016 21:54

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

I Like Jell-O posted:

It HAS been dealt with, in many different ways, by many different religions. Look, if the problem of evil is central to your belief (or lack of belief) in God, then share that. But don't argue about it in some kind of "gotchya" tit-for-tat. We can all acknowledge that there are a range of logical ways to approach Evil, and while you may find some more convincing than others there are answers out there. Personally as a Mormon, I thought the article did a good job of summarizing my answer. In the context of my religion, the problem has been thoroughly dealt with.

Going off the Wikipedia page Mormons simply don't have a problem of evil since God is bounded by nature. I understand why you would think the problem of evil discussion boring in that context.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2016 23:48

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

Obviously there is a discussion to be had - for another thread, I think - as to whether certain religious beliefs do more harm than good. My point was simply to articulate that "hey, if it makes them feel good, leave them to it" is a poor line of reasoning.

All else being equal, this seems like a really good line of reasoning. There's a possibility of some undiscovered negative, but that's true of literally all activities.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2016 17:05

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

Really? I know that this is going off topic, but this is a very surprising viewpoint to hear. I don't think the downside to "let people do whatever they want" is at all undiscovered, nor even that esoteric. It seems obvious. That's why we have things called "laws". Surely I'm misunderstanding you?

The standard is "Let people do whatever they want, unless you have a good reason not to". If a person is performing an activity, and you want to decide whether you want to interfere in that activity, and your only piece of information is "They like to do that activity", on what basis can you decide to interfere? Maybe you have more information, but you need to decide whether your reasoning about the totality of circumstances (in which case your characterization of their analysis is reductive, as there's many implicit assumptions like "doing this doesn't light them on fire"), or reasoning about specific facts (of which the only fact presented is "They like to do it").

twodot fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jun 28, 2016

# ¿ Jun 28, 2016 21:18

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

The entire point of contention is that this isn't the only piece of information. The hypothetical discussion would begin with presenting all of the other impacts organized religion makes, understanding to what degree each of them applies to specific religious people in question, weighing the good against the bad, etc. My point with the heroin example was that them enjoying it is not the whole story.

But I'm gonna leave this discussion here. Surely we can at least agree that the conversation about religion's impact on the world is varied and nuanced, and can't be summed up with a simple statement, whether that is "people shouldn't get to be religious" or "people like being religious so let's let them be".

A charitable person would assume that someone who said "people like being religious so let's let them be" weighed the other information and found it to be a wash. The conversation can certainly be summed up that way once you've reached a conclusion.
edit:
You can disagree with their conclusion, but you don't have any evidence their analysis wasn't satisfactory.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2016 23:44

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Keeshhound posted:

But if we're assuming an omnibenevolant, omnipotent, omniscient being (even just to argue against it's existance) then you have to accept the possibility that such a being would operate on so much higher a level than us that we can't guarantee that we would always recognize benevolent actions. As the argument goes, an infant doesn't understand that the adults are sticking a needle in it's arm to inoculate it against far worse, it just knows that it's got a needle in it's arm.

What we would expect doesn't matter for dick, because the hypothetical entity whose actions we're trying to second guess dwarfs us even more so than we dwarf a single ant.

The existence of a omni* being is totally unrelated to whether humans have correctly identified suffering as a bad thing which is to be reduced as much as possible. I can imagine an argument the existence of malaria is a net benefit to humanity, because you for some reason value secondary benefits of malaria research super highly for example, but our ability to judge that isn't predicated on whether there are any omni* beings hanging around. If omnibenevolent turns out to be what I consider evil, I suppose that's an out for the problem of evil, but it doesn't seem like an attractive one.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2016 20:23

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Keeshhound posted:

But all a theist needs to say to this is "all of this suffering serves a purpose that we don't understand, and God won't explain it to us yet because our ignorance also serves a greater purpose."

I know you've said you don't like the "God is mysterious" answer to the problem of evil, but unless you can show how it fails as an argument from a logical standpoint, it doesn't stop being a valid counterargument.

I've already said that "God is behaving in a manner you consider evil" explains the problem of evil, just not in a way that makes God look like a cool dude. If you've got a moral system that has rules like "Tornadoes are good and necessary things, but only for as long as humans fail to develop technology to prevent them", I can't prove that's logically invalid, but it won't stop me from calling it stupid.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2016 15:45

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Even if there was, why would an omnipotent being then be unable to communicate that knowledge in a way that we could understand, even if we could not have originally obtained it on our own?

The argument would be that the omnipotent being would have to do something they don't want to do to do it (for instance elevate you to godhood). I'll assert that it takes non-zero time to explain something to a human, some things take longer than others to explain, therefore it's at least conceivable that there is a thing that takes longer than a human's lifetime to explain to that human, so that human can never understand it. I think the burden of demonstrating that any such thing actually exists such that we need to care about it is still on Keeshhound.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2016 21:17

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Chonchon posted:

Kind of an impossible question because for all we know both have existed together since the beginning of time. We don't know if you do or not. We don't know for sure because there is no world where hate doesn't exist that we know of.

But the explanation warms my heart a little.

This seems awkward because there are human beings who definitely haven't experienced hate (babies). Arguably they also haven't experienced love, but this creates an awkward chicken/egg problem. Can you only distinguish the two after experiencing both? And if so, what makes hate bad or love good?

# ¿ Jul 8, 2016 19:41

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Chonchon posted:

Think about it this way. The natural order is built around war and conflict. Things eat other things to survive, and death is the constant companion of existence. The Christian ideal that I believe in is to rise above the natural order of things and leave behind conflict in favor of cooperation.

Hate is a little different from conflict. It's actual malice rather than a simple need to survive. It's the desire to kill and inflict pain for the sake of making another being suffer. With our capacity for emotion, hate comes naturally to us with conflict. Even chimpanzees have been observed to torture and sadistically kill rivals from other social groups.

Hate is inherently self centered. Love is about making a genuine sacrifice that hurts you, is painful to you, but ultimately benefits someone else.

Given this definition of love, I think I can distinguish love from other things without the presence of hate.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2016 19:50

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

BrandorKP posted:

And the other shoe drops.

Implied because they are not rational.

This is an extremely uncharitable reading, the they in that sentence has access to evidence the human being that is being persuaded doesn't. Ytlaya might also believe that someone who is persuaded that God exists on the basis of subjective experience alone is behaving irrationally (and I don't think that's a far out claim), but it's not implied in what was written.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2016 21:13

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

BrandorKP posted:

"No reason for a rational human being to be persuaded by them"

Look, it's problematic to look at the beliefs a person has arising from experiences they have had and to then go no rational person would persuaded by that.

No it's not. I can believe you earnestly believe your uncle works for Nintendo, but the fact you believe that isn't going to persuade me your uncle does.

twodot fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jul 15, 2016

# ¿ Jul 15, 2016 02:34

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

you can't test whether other people are actually sentient though, so this is a pretty ridiculous way of deciding what to believe

To the extent any knowledge is achievable, this is definitely testable. You are a bad poster.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2016 08:56

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:37

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

I think we need to resolve to what extent people make choices at all before you get into whether it makes sense to choose to believe things. I'm not at all convinced what you describe as a conscious effort is something that you can stop doing. You clearly don't want to hold unfounded assumptions, so even if you have a bias creating such assumptions, in what universe would you ever stop fighting them? Also Descartes was not describing his actual belief state (or if he was, he was lying).

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 17:06

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