Why do we believe in God's existence or non-existence?

@jgweed,

jgweed wrote:

This question, then, does not concern itself with emotional, psychological, or historical causes however interesting or pertinent to religious belief in general or to someone's particular belief in a religious credo.

Doesn't it seem that the "rational" (or philosophic) justification for accepting the existence of God depends on a prior conception of truth, ...

... I'm not sure I understand ... the statement that "This question, then, does not concern itself with emotional, psychological, or historical causes" seems to rule out prior conceptions of truth (which are emotionally, psychologically, and historically caused) as well as modern philosophy itself (which has emotional, psychological, and historical causes) ... or am I missing something?

1 Reply

@paulhanke,

Can any of you imagine living in world of ignorance..hoping the sun will return with strength and your son will not die before he is two weeks old that the deer will walk close enough for you to feed your family..We are still slaves to this world and captured by its necessities...A warm fire plenty to eat is all we ever desired but the gods decided those simple pleasures these necessities..
We still live with these fears and we need the gods to smile on us..How you describe those gods has changed by our knowledge but we still need them..our problem is we realise he is not benevolent or even visible but we earnestly look for reassurance..We are base humans with intellect..

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@jgweed,

Thanks again for the interesting responses, sorry I couldn't reply earlier.

Dave Allen and Paulhanke, and possibly xris (I'm not sure if this is what you meant): about the difficulty to distinguish between philosophical and psychological motives or incentives to adopt beliefs - I quite agree that practically, it is quite difficult to tell them apart. However, I do think that in the theoretical level the distinction is possible and even necessary, if we want to rationally justify a belief (and don't we?... J)

Jgweed put this rather neatly:

jgweed wrote:

As I understand the original question and its suggested answer, the question really is about the philosophic grounds for the belief in the existence of God (vaguely defined for our purposes), and further, are these grounds prior (in thought if not in time) to that belief. Perhaps a more congenial and fruitful discussion could begin by reconsidering this, or restarting from the beginning.

This question, then, does not concern itself with emotional, psychological, or historical causes however interesting or pertinent to religious belief in general or to someone's particular belief in a religious credo.

Doesn't it seem that the "rational" (or philosophic) justification for accepting the existence of God depends on a prior conception of truth, and whether the arguments or evidences or warrants for such belief are "truthful?"
For example, the position that the concept of truth can only be applied with legitimacy to analytic propositions and those matter of fact statements about the universe (defined as everything there is but God), then any statement about God or its existence could not be true.

At some point in one's life, the question of truth in relation to religion arises and a decision is required. And even to avoid this question is to make a decision.

[BTW, specifically about our evolution-originated tendencies - I think these are much more cultural than natural (I wrote about this here here), but not to the present debate. J

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@adva,

I dont think you have experienced or even considered the savage nature and our dependance on it for our survival...It may appear haphazard but when you are desperate to survive anything that may improve your chances will and has been tried..Nature for our ancestors appeared fickle and even the sun was never certain to return.Believing in spirits or demonic gods who needed appeasing was a necessity not a thoughtful intellectual discussion around the campfire..Live in the wilds and experience nature with no knowledge of science and your life hanging in the balance every day then tell me its not a necessity. There will be spirits lurking in every tree stone or river the wind will carry your soul away..As our knowledge improved our concept of god or gods changed and now we have that enormous challenge of deciding is there realy a need or is there even one to consider.

1 Reply

@xris,

As for our savage nature - I don't mean, of course, that "culture" is only about manners (it isn't, even in the most refined or well-living societies). What I mean is that since we became reflective creatures, we cannot assume anymore that we even know what our "nature" is. And of course, even people in the most horrible situations don't always forget what they believe in; I don't think they are any better or worse for this reason (I think behaviour in such circumstances is "unjudgeable"), but they are no less "natural": simply, our nature is now a part of our culture, or vice versa, I'm not sure...

Regarding our ancestors, I agree that it seems plausible for them to assign magical powers to natural elements and forces, but the idea of a Creator seems to me way too abstract to arise around the bonfire. Actually, even the idea of monotheism seems to me to be so, Creator or not.

1 Reply

@adva,

This should be another thread.is it essential for the trained philosopher to make debate as complicated and as obscure as possible?

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@adva,

adva wrote:

As for our savage nature - I don't mean, of course, that "culture" is only about manners (it isn't, even in the most refined or well-living societies). What I mean is that since we became reflective creatures, we cannot assume anymore that we even know what our "nature" is. And of course, even people in the most horrible situations don't always forget what they believe in; I don't think they are any better or worse for this reason (I think behaviour in such circumstances is "unjudgeable"), but they are no less "natural": simply, our nature is now a part of our culture, or vice versa, I'm not sure...

Regarding our ancestors, I agree that it seems plausible for them to assign magical powers to natural elements and forces, but the idea of a Creator seems to me way too abstract to arise around the bonfire. Actually, even the idea of monotheism seems to me to be so, Creator or not.

God a creator is not the same thing for our ancestors...A god was a spirit that had control of nature of life and death..they stalked our paths and if they got upset they seeked revenge...they where as real as the wolf or the deer ..god comes by necessity a creator by thoughtful intellect..We had a reasonable control of our surroundings by belief in gods and by our sacrifice we had control of our future..

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@adva,

adva wrote:

... you don't need a formal religion to have a creation myth, and how many cultures don't have one of those? ... even the scientistic culture has various creation myths - theoretical physicists have the big bang; complexity theorists have the universe itself as the engine of creation ... what's interesting is that these scientific speculations of today bear more resemblance to the naturalistic creators of oral cultures ("The Great Mystery", "Mother Earth", etc.) than the anthropomorphic creators of literate monotheistic cultures ("God") ... maybe the oral cultures had it right - time is cyclical Wink

As far as snapshot-in-time theory goes, again, Rescher points out that there is a minimum set of a priori concepts we must simply accept just to get a meaningful conversation going in the first place ... the axioms of sociality are these beliefs ... without referring to the emotional, psychological, and historical genesis of these beliefs, can anything more be said?

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Why do we believe in God's existence or non-existence?

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