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Originally Posted by Akashic_Librarian  I want an intelligent discussion on why people think a God or power external to them, exists. What is the cause of it, and is there anyway to retain these beliefs, but avoid the negativeside effects like Terrorism, unwanted births etc...etc. |
Each person is different. Some of my friends believe because, as they say "I have no option". Not meaning they'd be lost without a divine creature... They saw something paranormal happen (my husband one of them), and they had to open their minds to the beliefs. Educated people don't blindly believe in the God of the Bible, which is a representation of what humans consider it would be. They know that if such a God exists, it would be unfathomable for them. They believe because they've seen things that cannot be explained by physics. One of them, by the way, is a physic investigator in the National Accelerators Centre of my country.
God as in the Bible is a creation of humans. Why some people go back to the idea, I don't know. I think some of them have it inside their genes. Educated believers, even the ones who have been educated by atheists and got to believe later, have something common in their personality... At least the ones I know. I'd call it "inner peace". They are generally extremely good-natured. (I know all believers are not like this, but I'm talking about the guys I know... I don't mix with fanatics, so I don't know many of them).
Some others, the fanatics, I suppose that they feel lost and need to have some compass in their lives, so they give themselves to organized institutions who tell them what they've got to do. But I've never talk with them closely, so I don't know. I don't know why a rich Bin Laden would wake up a fanatic one day; just as I don't know why a rich posh guy in my country would wake up some day and become a priest to go work on a mission in Brazil. But I bet everyone has their own reasons. I don't think you'd find two of them with the same one. That's why I think some people are... prone to be believers. I don't know how to explain it, but I think it's that way. I think most of them had it inside, someway.
Michael Chui, I so much agree with you: I didn't exactly convert to Christianity, but I accepted it due to logic. When I was being taught it mindlessly, I stopped going to classes. When I realized that from the Old Testament, Jesus only saved the Commandments, and added "love each other", I realized that Christianism made sense, whether Jesus was son of God and virgin or not. I didn't know if Jesus was divine, but I gladly accepted him as a great mind and revolutionary, and his ideas as good. I don't say that God doesn't exist, either. As an agnostic, I never close a door.
One thing, to Akashic Librarian: I don't like atheism and sentences like "God is dead", because you can't really prove that. You can say "I don't have proof of God's existence", but you cannot really say it doesn't exist (you cannot prove a negation). In my eyes, the belief that God does NOT exists, is as much a belief as Christianity, since it's the belief in something that can't be proved.
Another reason why I don't like atheism: it closes doors. One of my friends lived in a place where weird phenomena were reported. When he saw something unexplainable, he had an open mind towards it. His sister had to receive psychiatric help because she had a breakdown and a depression when she saw something that laws of physics couldn't explain. I've never seen a paranormal effect, but I don't want to be among the people whose beliefs and way of thinking are shattered by something unexpected. As I said, I leave doors open. I find atheism quite limiting on that point.