I've always wondered that. A man must've born godless, then discovered it for himself. I'm agnostic, more towards atheism. I haven't discovered anything that would've made me thought "Holy shit, he's really there."

Hence the question, what makes you believe in your religion? Is it just some books you've read, or the people around you, or have you really witnessed something great?

Religion? All lies. Sometimes useful though.

What makes me believe in God? I'm not completely sure...existence I suppose. Reality, string theory, a few years of mild interest in general religious history...

...moderate drug use. Everything has its contribution.

i dont know. i just lost the way of my life! where is MY god?
Is there really GOD existing?
Who knows?

Belief in God doesn't have to stem from religious influences.

As for the evidence? My body. My mind. The universe. Time. Space. And so on and so forth. But most importantly, the flagellum propeller.

Be prepared for a long post....


Religion has evolved (ironically).

Paleolithic
Originally man believed "god" was all around him in the form of mother nature. Even a simple rock was holy. A rock is tough and protected, unlike the fragile human form. Massive mountains, beautiful waterfalls. These are all "miracles", simply because man didn't understand them.

Neolithic
Eventually we did understand things. Then a rock became a tool, you could shape it into a spear head. Around this time we started making tools and growing crops. Then we believed in a God that demeaned sacrifice for providing a crop. Think about what it was like for them. You put a seed in the ground, then a few months later you get food. Thats pretty fucking incredible. Man had to give the back-breaking labor of plow the crop (they didn't have domestic animals). They also had human sacrifices. This is also when they worshiped Goddesses rather than Gods. The Earth "gives birth" to fruits and vegetables like a women gives birth to children. (I'm not making this up).

Early Civilizations (4000-8000BCE)
Now man began to build cities, Mesopotamia and Egypt. Living in a city, you now how control over your environment. You could control the rocks and you no longer had to grow crops or hunt to survive. Plus, they were being to understand how farming works. That's what it comes down to, understanding. We understand rocks, they are no longer holy object. We understand crops, and harvests are no longer miracles. Technology is the new miracle. The longest of the flood poems, Atrahasis, is about how the gods save the human race by telling Atrahasis to build a boat, giving him the technology to keep it water tight, the god Enki saves the human race through technology. We reach an era where God is more withdraw from everyday lives. Before a simple stone was equal to god, then only crops were equal to god. Now gods live in temples, there are entities within themselves, not a part of the world. By now, man know a lot about of the world, so God isn't used to explain them. But things like how the Earth was created and shit like that. They didn't know, we still don't know.

Common Day
Not much has changed since the first cities. God is disappearing more everyday. Religion is just used to expalin the unexplainable. Humans desire an answer to everything, God is kinda a copout answer to everything. They more we learn, then less God is used to explain shit, the less God is used to explain shit, the less God is in our lives.

That is why some people believe in a patriarchal sky god.

For more information, read this book. http://tinyurl.com/yop7dc Its really really good. We read it in my PostModernism English class (best English class I ever took). Meh, you have to read some PostModernism stuff for yourself. Try starting off with The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus (http://www.amazon.com/Penelopiad-Myth-Penelope-Odysseus-Myths/dp/1841957178), Grendel (http://www.amazon.com/Grendel-John-Gardner/dp/0679723110), or Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (http://www.amazon.com/Weight-Myth-Atlas-Heracles-Myths/dp/1841957186).

Just make sure you have read the Odyssey, Beowulf, and understand the Myth of Atlas and Heracles, respectively.

Beowulf, that's another good book. Heh, I'm getting off topic, sorry

Belief in God doesn't have to stem from religious influences.

As for the evidence? My body. My mind. The universe. Time. Space. And so on and so forth. But most importantly, the flagellum propeller.

There are several proposed mechanisms for the evolution of the flagellum, some of which are presented in these sites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_flagella
http://rnaworld.bio.ku.edu/ribozone/resource/transport/Ian%20Musgrave_flagella.htm

However, even if scientists had no idea how the flagellum could have evolved, it would not provide evidence for God, or suggest that one exists. Just because humans are presently ignorant of some scientific explanation, does not mean that it will not eventually be figured out, or that it is caused by supernatural reasons. This is the argument from ignorance logical fallacy, or the God of the Gaps.

This is the argument from ignorance logical fallacy, or the God of the Gaps.

Thats just a misinterpretation of the true meaning of God.

I am not made to do anything. I do what I want, and I want God.

I am not made to do anything. I do what I want, and I want God.

riiiiiiggghhtttt.........


keep thinking that.

One word: ignorance(faith).

riiiiiiggghhtttt.........


keep thinking that.

Why should he not?

Why should he not?

We've gone over this so many times

Your physical make up is based on your genes.
You did not choose you genes.

Your mental make up is based on genes/life experiences.
You did not choose your life experiences.

You have no control over who you are and how you think, therefor you have no control over what you do.

Your physical make up is based on your genes.
You did not choose you genes.

Your mental make up is based on genes/life experiences.
You did not choose your life experiences.

That control could exist on a higher level of awareness.

You have no control over who you are and how you think, therefor you have no control over what you do.

Are you a believer in fate then?

wow, i just wish people would read my post on my religion, then you would understand. *sigh* quit being lazy and go read it, and i agree and disagree w/ punk rocker, religion has evolved, and is suppost to evolve, the human mind is suppost to evolve, and because we can do something with science doesn't disprove God, i've never understood how people just think because we figure out something there's no God? i call that ignorance, but me? why i believe in God? i was born into a christian family, though i'm no longer christian, i believe in the abrahamic God, because I've always felt a strong connection to him, and when i pray i feel him, and he's your conscious, that's a part of him given to you to know right and wrong, and he is good and holy, which is why you feel guilt. now, just go read my thread. im getting annoyed because people don't. and if you just want a little eye opening, hey, your right, science and crap doesnt affect religion. go read the last paragraph on my my religion thread. -.- please and thank you.

I think you're silly.:)

I believe in religion because history has demonstrated that it works. Religions motivate people to various ends, a great deal of them beneficial to the species as a whole. Organised religions have a strong tendency to fill in gaps which secular society does not provide for.

There are a great deal of people who will cause harm to the species because they receive no harm doing so, or they somehow benefit (I personally think they are abominations with broken instincts, but that's another argument). This is why we have laws. However, there are people who are intelligent enough to circumvent other people who would enforce these laws, and those who are not concerned with consequences anything short of eternal. However, intelligence and understanding do not have any hold on what happens after death, as these can only work from experience. Enter religion. If you can convince a person that great harm comes to them permanently after death if they harm the species (IE do evil) and great rewards permanently if they help the species (IE do good), then they will work to the betterment of the species, despite their relation to written laws.

One of the strong points of the larger and older Christian denominations is to care for those who would not otherwise survive. I suppose a Darwinistic viewpoint would not recommend this, but genetic diversity does seem to be the way to go (compare lifespans of purebred [see: inbred] dogs to those of mixed breed dogs).

One of the primary reasons for literacy in the western world is religion. The primary source of literary material in Europe and early America was the Christian Book -- thus providing a tool for people to learn to read. Pack mentality (conformism, peer pressure, whatever you call it -- churches have it, and in great amounts) encouraged people to not only own a Bible, but to memorise it -- and thereby (sometimes accidentally) learn to read.

Those are merely a few seeds to sow. I'm sure any of you can see easily where else that kind of thinking may lead. Religion is a powerful tool. Like any tool, it can be used for good or ill. It's been proven to be effective at both. I don't think lack of belief has ever accomplished anything on a remotely similar scale, and I don't see it doing so in the future.

As for God (a very very loosely defined word at best)... I like funny stuff and funny beings, and I have a particularly strong taste for irony. That makes the concept of a creator particularly appealing to me. I don't think there's ever been a better joke than life. These forums support that.

I don't subscribe to any religion or generalized philosophy, but I do believe there's a God, for the simple reason that no matter how you look at it, somewhere, sometime, life came from nonlife. Whether in the form of a primorval soup or on the ass of a comet that hit Earth, it happened. An organism was introduced into our universe that was capable of evolving and adapting. I don't know about you guys, but this sounds batshit insane to me, and by that I mean it's really jawdropping. Believing in abiogenesis requires nearly as much faith as believing in a God, in my opinion. "What makes you think abiogenesis happened?" I've asked people. It always ends up with "We'll figure it out someday" or "It had to." This, of course, requires faith.

Now, by no means am I saying this should make you automatically believe in a God, as that is a personal choice based upon life experience and worldview, undoubtedly affected by the cultures we live in and the things we think we have figured out. And this isn't a comfort thing for me, either. The whole afterlife thing. If God farted down on a cloud today and told me that when my physical body dies, my ego and my soul does as well, I'd still believe in a God. That's a bad example, but you get what I'm saying. I fully believe there's a thinker behind the direction evolution has taken and where it will lead.

I can't tell you what makes me believe in a God. Because I don't. I can tell you what makes me NOT believe in god.


God as a concept is the manifestation of ignorance. We, the humans, are supposed to remain ignorant so that we can achieve "salvation". If it were up to God, we'd still be mental infants in a garden, never aging and never learning. That offends me as a human and as a sentient.
The concept of a god is ridiculous to me. I mean, really. There isn't any logic or reason to existance, its just the manifestation of some super-sentiance that fucks with us humans? No.
Religions are screwed up. They cause nothing but hate, intolerance and ignorance, and I refuse to ally with them or credit them at all.
I do not agree with all of the Bible or any other holy book, and if God wrote those books, than I could not be religious without accepting all of them.
Religious people anger me. They accept their blindness willingly and they disgust me. I refuse to agree with them.

1. The concept of a higher power is Ridiculous

2. The concept on NO higher power is just as ridiculous