Why do we believe in God

Warrigal said:
Faith is an attribute in all humans. The only difference is where we choose to place our faith. For some, faith is placed in a charismatic leader, in others it is in own's own self, or in wealth and power. Infants have an instinctive faith in their caregivers.

There is a book by James Fowler that describes the nature and stages of faith in the same way that Piaget and Bruner describe stages of cognitive development. It is helpful in distinguishing between faith and belief. It also describes the angst experienced as with we begin to transition from one stage to a more mature level. His analysis applies not only to religious faith, but to faith in general.

The Stages of Faith According to James W. Fowler |
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I'm going to see if I can check out a copy. Interesting!

Edited to say - no such luck. I'll try the San Francisco library system.
 

jiki said:
Music and a poem is unknown?

You reach out to a music school and learn music. You go to school and learn English. Then you read poems if you are interested.

Nothing mysterious, hidden, or ineffable about music or poems.
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Your experience is your experience so your milage may vary. But yeah, from a certain point of view, whatever some music school or lit teacher has to say pretty much exhausts whatever a piece of music or poem can mean.[/sarcasm]
 

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You seem to be all by yourself. Why should anyone bother debating at length such an odd subject (codes?) just because you want to? This long sloppy thread I've mostly ignored of IMO mostly nonsense posts, is greatly off topic in several directions. Most members only want to read a few ideas and opinions of others with a minor amount of argumentation and leave whatever be. We are not here to convince others or prove ideas although yes, there have always been a few members that act so, especially about political subjects.

As a new member you also don't seem to understand as I've related in posts numbers of times in the past, that most of us here in this small web community are not going to engage in serious debates even if they can, especially science issues, because this SF community is not a forum to do so within. Most members have very limited science backgrounds. Want to do that, go to a site like Reddit or physicforums dot com.

R >>>"...BTW:: Your comparing me to a bulldog rabidly defending a bone, only proves your inability to discuss a matter in a calm and decent way.."

Sorry, trying to bait me into your sand box won't work. I'm not the type. On the other hand you won't let it go, obviously no one has interest in engaging you, hence the appropriate comparison of stubborness.
 
jiki said:
Music and a poem is unknown?

You reach out to a music school and learn music. You go to school and learn English. Then you read poems if you are interested.

Nothing mysterious, hidden, or ineffable about music or poems.
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Yet most people's reaction to any of the arts is very subjective. Why am I, an Australian of many generations, living in suburban Sydney, so moved by Celtic music but completely unmoved by indigenous music? I did learn music, piano to be exact, for 8 years but I never felt the music that I was learning. I passed a lot of exams by the skin of my teeth but couldn't even sing a song in tune if my life depended upon it.

I agree that my appreciation of Shakespeare is the result of having studied eleven of his plays at school and another one at teachers' college.

I disagree that there is nothing mysterious, hidden or ineffable (inexpressible?) about music or poems. My personal reaction to both is a mystery to me. Why some move me to the core, even to tears, and why some people are very affected by material that I am indifferent to is equally puzzling to me.
 
the point I wanted to make fizzled out toward the end of my response.

Carry on...
 
rbtvgo said:
just reach out and then be quiet and listen
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This is good advice for experiencing a poem, music or other art form too. It is minimal instruction for contemplation of anything at all. It gets at the difference between receptive intelligence and the more deliberate discursive kind. Our minds process so much without our even noticing let alone taking charge. Listening is good advice whether you believe it is God you listen to or just the subterranean levels of consciousness going on .. especially where meaning is concerned.
 
Olivia said:
Having had this meta dog I've believe that AI is evil. What kind of life does that kind of human (or dog) have? What about conciousness?
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I must have missed something again. Can you point me to where you described what you meant by “this meta dog”?

Of course I agree with you about consciousness. That is a line organisms can cross but mechanisms never will.
 
MarkD said:
I must have missed something again. Can you point me to where you described what you meant by “this meta dog”?

Of course I agree with you about consciousness. That is a line organisms can cross but mechanisms never will.
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AI will never have a bioengineered cosmic consciousness. But, it probably will have freedoms of thought that are like imagination. It won't be human, but it will have it's own abilities to mimic human behavior and even brain powers, not all, but enough to make robots be able to have houses, and drive cars, go to ball games, play games, and be a companion, or enemy of the human. In 2-3 years AI will probably resemble the human capabilities that we all possess. I think that strict regulation is going to be necessary to keep robots from becoming enemies. The "Jetsons" were prophetic. :)
 
Olivia said:
To me it's a feeling and a certainty at the same time. If l already didn't believe no person could ever convince me to do so. It's not a head thing. It's a heart thing.
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Not by reason alone but there are ways to evoke the feelings and intellect which can result in at least an appreciation for what a living in a universe where the whole is as animate as any of its parts. Reading McGilchrist has done that for me.
 
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Paco Dennis said:
AI will never have a bioengineered cosmic consciousness. But, it probably will have freedoms of thought that are like imagination. It won't be human, but it will have it's own abilities to mimic human behavior and even brain powers, not all, but enough to make robots be able to have houses, and drive cars, go to ball games, play games, and be a companion, or enemy of the human. In 2-3 years AI will probably resemble the human capabilities that we all possess. I think that strict regulation is going to be necessary to keep robots from becoming enemies. The "Jetsons" were prophetic. :)
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I remain doubtful.
 
Warrigal said:
After an experience that I have talked about before I chose to place my faith in something that is both infinite and eternal, and therefore unknowable.
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If you wouldn’t mind sharing a link (by PM if you prefer) I’d appreciate reading what you wrote before.

Warrigal said:
So, what do I believe? I believe in love, forgiveness, hope and justice. We cannot fully understand what these words mean but I know and feel their presence in my life. So it is with God.
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Mature faith must be able to allow that whatever God is is beyond our kenning. As you say you can’t prove, disprove or reason your way to it but you can realize that trust is central. Perhaps God as it is fleshed out in religions us how that trust is fostered and passed on. The answer to the question of who created who is probably both.
 
MarkD said:
If you wouldn’t mind sharing a link (by PM if you prefer) I’d appreciate reading what you wrote before.
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It is after midnight in Sydney and I have so many posts that I cannot search through all of them to find what you seek. If you like I will start a conversation soon and tell you my story. Nudge me if I forget.
 
And then there is this.

Meet LUCA, the 4.2 billion-year-old cell that's the ancestor of all life on Earth today​

The last ancestor shared by ALL LIVING ORGANISMS was a microbe that lived 4.2 billion years ago, had a fairly large genome encoding some 2600 proteins, enjoyed a diet of hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide, and harbored a rudimentary immune system for fighting off viral invaders. That’s the conclusion of a new study that compared the genomes of a diverse range of 700 modern microbes and looked for commonalities to identify which features arose first. Although the analysis doesn’t reveal how life got its start, it suggests a complex cellular organism somewhat similar to modern microbes evolved only a few hundred million years after Earth’s formation.

https://www.science.org/content/art...tor shared by,for fighting off viral invaders.

Could a microbe with a fairly large genome encoding some 2600 proteins be the "made in our image" described in the bible?
 
Knight said:
And then there is this.

Meet LUCA, the 4.2 billion-year-old cell that's the ancestor of all life on Earth today​

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I believe I've read about this early life form, because I remember the description of it "looking like cow patties." Apparently, there is still a close relative living in a couple of shallow seas in the world. One is on the north coast of Australia. I've booked marked your link so I can read it at my leisure.
 
Radrook said:
As for the irrefutability of the abiogenesis, there is absolutely evidence to substantiate it, neither observational nor experimental. It is merely a concept treated as if it were a proven fact based on blind faith very often motivated by theophobic tendencies.
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I assume you missed a "no" there? As in, "there is absolutely [no] evidence to substantiate it"

There are things we don't know. Sometimes we have to make the best of what evidence we have. This leads to speculation, debate - but that is at the heart of the scientific process. But if you're going to follow a path of "it is merely a concept", then that leads right back to a God. Where's the evidence? Where did God come from? Where is he now? Why did he design human beings in such a complex and flawed way? etc.

Also, people without a faith in God aren't "theophobic", that just comes across as part of the victim culture we live in. They simple assess for themselves whether there is any veracity given the available evidence. Being atheist simply means a person lacks a belief in a God. It does not mean someone believes there is no God. It's an important distinction.

Anyway, evolution clearly is a thing. We see it in every day life. In fact, WE can see it in ourselves.

Abiogenesis is, it goes without saying, complex. For example - assuming abiogenesis is true - from what we know it wouldn't work in our current environment on Earth. It would have occurred when a very different chemistry made up our planet. In fact, it's almost like it occurred on a different planet altogether as the planet itself has evolved.

See, I personally think it's far more likely that Earth was populated by aliens/seeds from another world, than there being a God. I base this assumption on mathematical probability of life elsewhere. I accept I could be wrong (I actually think abiogenesis is likely the answer).

We simply don't know everything right now. Not having a rock-solid explanation isn't reason to jump to the spiritual. We must accept that, right now, we don't know. Different stages of abiogenesis have been demonstrated, but there's a lot of work to do. Same with the so called Big Bang. It's the best explanation given available evidence, imo. But we can't be categorical on it, and we may never be able to do so. But the inquiring mind of the human continues to search.
 
Radrook said:
Ultimately, dependence on an impossibility leads nowhere regardless of the degree of exploration since such an impossibility will continuously neutralize all human efforts to render the impossible possible. Life has been proven to arise only from life. There has never been any observation of life suddenly emerging spontaneously from water after water came up with information and then decided coding it in DNA form, then decided to provide a molecule machine called RNA read and understand that code. Then decided to assembled other molecules to carry out the RNA instructions, and decided that another molecule was needed to constantly check the code for mistakes and repair it.
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You know what's impossible to me? That there is a God, a man, somewhere out there. You can't see him. He didn't come from anywhere, he's always been. He created EVERYTHING from.......... what? Nothing I guess. He then set in motion all the natural laws we know today, and he decided that what we really needed was the ability to do wrong. In fact, he's going to assume we're wrong and need to repent, or we won't go to some place called "heaven" (or whatever state of being we end up as) when we are no more. Don't get me started on the rib - which if true, is basically a millimeter away from abiogenesis, because we've never been able to grow a person from a rib.

What part of that sounds logical?

Life has yet to be proven to come from abiogenesis. Yet. Not knowing today doesn't make it impossible. There was a time when we didn't have cars to drive around in, they must have sounded quite impossible for quite some time - until they were manufactured. We simply have to go with the best explanation based on available evidence. Magic, which the biblical take suggests (call it miracles if you prefer) isn't going to fly, I'm afraid. I really don't know how I could ever close that gap.

Not to mention, the idea that "life suddenly emerging spontaneously from water after water came up with information and then decided coding it in DNA form" is completely wrong. No-one is suggesting there was a puddle of water, and suddenly life walked out of it. There were millions of different interactions over billions of years, step by step, bit by bit, that led us here. Not a single great event. Not a sudden moment. Just an interaction of infitesimal changes. We just need to understand what they were.

That said, if you can believe that an invisible God can suddenly create, oh I don't know, a talking snake - then I guess all bets are off. I mean, I'm not aware of a single snake that can talk today - where's the evidence to support it?

I think the answer for most Christians is - you need faith. In the world I inhabit I believe we simply need time for all the good work to be done by people smarter than myself. Slowly we are adding to our knowledge-base, learning new things, getting ever closer to the events that created us.

An interesting question for the non-believers would be: What would it take to make you believe? For believers, what would it take to end your belief in a God? I think the former would have an easier time answering, but I could be wrong.
 
MarkD said:
Cognizance of our mortality is no doubt part of it.
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Fear of the unknown, and the bitter finality of the absolute end. Think about it, back in, say, the late Medieval period, on average, you were dead by your mid 30's. Death came much sooner, and I suspect the need to understand it was all the greater. As a species, we seem always to have been aware of death. The earliest burial known was 120,000 years ago! Even then, they knew of its finality.
 
I think that in like 40 years, the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran are going to become almost irrelevant. A few people will stay with the books. I think the new generations are going to learn that it might be some kind of intelligent design that does not have a personality. Probably by then there will be fantastic discoveries that we can't even imagine, and the ideas that are born from these new discoveries will shape the "how we came to be" questions.
 
Paco Dennis said:
I think that in like 40 years, the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran are going to become almost irrelevant. A few people will stay with the books. I think the new generations are going to learn that it might be some kind of intelligent design that does not have a personality. Probably by then there will be fantastic discoveries that we can't even imagine, and the ideas that are born from these new discoveries will shape the "how we came to be" questions.
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Actually, if trends continue, Islam will come to dominate. At least looking at it today. So most people will believe in Allah and Mohammad. The world has become so connected, ideas are spinning all around us.

To quote:

By 2040, [in the US] Muslims will replace Jews as the nation's second-largest religious group after Christians. And by 2050, the U.S. Muslim population is projected to reach 8.1 million, or 2.1% of the nation's total population — nearly twice the share of today.

There are now 2.2 billion Christians in the world. Islam is on its heels with 1.97 billion. But due to a higher Muslim fertility rate (2.9 children per woman on average, versus 2.6), Pew Research projects that sometime around 2075, Islam will be the world's dominant religion.
 
VaughanJB said:
You know what's impossible to me? That there is a God, a man, somewhere out there. You can't see him. He didn't come from anywhere, he's always been. He created EVERYTHING from.......... what? Nothing I guess. He then set in motion all the natural laws we know today, and he decided that what we really needed was the ability to do wrong. In fact, he's going to assume we're wrong and need to repent, or we won't go to some place called "heaven" (or whatever state of being we end up as) when we are no more. Don't get me started on the rib - which if true, is basically a millimeter away from abiogenesis, because we've never been able to grow a person from a rib.

What part of that sounds logical?

Life has yet to be proven to come from abiogenesis. Yet. Not knowing today doesn't make it impossible. There was a time when we didn't have cars to drive around in, they must have sounded quite impossible for quite some time - until they were manufactured. We simply have to go with the best explanation based on available evidence. Magic, which the biblical take suggests (call it miracles if you prefer) isn't going to fly, I'm afraid. I really don't know how I could ever close that gap.

Not to mention, the idea that "life suddenly emerging spontaneously from water after water came up with information and then decided coding it in DNA form" is completely wrong. No-one is suggesting there was a puddle of water, and suddenly life walked out of it. There were millions of different interactions over billions of years, step by step, bit by bit, that led us here. Not a single great event. Not a sudden moment. Just an interaction of infitesimal changes. We just need to understand what they were.

That said, if you can believe that an invisible God can suddenly create, oh I don't know, a talking snake - then I guess all bets are off. I mean, I'm not aware of a single snake that can talk today - where's the evidence to support it?

I think the answer for most Christians is - you need faith. In the world I inhabit I believe we simply need time for all the good work to be done by people smarter than myself. Slowly we are adding to our knowledge-base, learning new things, getting ever closer to the events that created us.

An interesting question for the non-believers would be: What would it take to make you believe? For believers, what would it take to end your belief in a God? I think the former would have an easier time answering, but I could be wrong.
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Well, I could share why I no longer accept the Bible as anything inspired by God or God's word (If anyone is interested). As far anything supernatural, I do think there is something more than just random chance, but I wouldn't describe it as God. I could share that as well, if there is any interest.
 

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