njhartsh

Is Dawkins correct? Do "most people" believe as a result of the Argument from Design, or is there a more popular argument? First Cause? Religious Experience? Moral? Pascal's Wager? Faith ("I don't need an argument")? What?

Yes, yes, of course theist belief is far more frequently a matter of emotional attachment than intellectual conclusion. But that's such a boring answer--let's posit that every theist is pressed by an outsider (or, better, by him- or herself) to explain why (s)he believes in God. What do you think would be the most common answer?

- Nathan

Charles-Matthew

I think that the belief in God is so that people can prolong their existance which is a basic instinct. People are lulled into believing that there is an afterlife, and clergy set up ways for this afterlife to be obtained. (money, political power, etc.)


(first reply, you people are intimidating )

Jet Grind

I agree with Charles-Matthew, most people believe in God because they need to believe that someone cares about them and that they will somehow live on after they die. However, they will usually attempt to validate their belief with the Argument from Design.

Mediancat

Have to go along with Dawkins on this one; some variation on the argument from design is easily the most common "proof' of God's existence I've heard from believers.

Although it's usually of the "look at the glory of the universe" variety rather than the "only God can make an eye" variety.

Rob aka Mediancat

Tom Sawyer

Religion is a way to explain the universe and why things happen without having to use any complicated math.

The reason that it's so popular is that it doesn't take any kind of critical thinking to be religious, all you need is faith. Also, it gives the magic anti-death pill so you'll keep going on and not just end and no matter how pedantic, irrelevent and lonely your life is, there's someone out there waiting to give you something better. It's an extremely powerful psychological effect and shouldn't be left in the hands of people who actually believe it.

Charles-Matthew

Yes, in short, it is a way to believe that there is a place that is infinatly better and infinatly worse than where we are stationed in life. The churches keep their congregations from social uprisings by ruling them through fear. You don't do it this way you are going to hell. In turn they promote their ideals of low thinking and money raising by saying they will have a plot in heaven. So as I stated earlier I think that the main influence behind religion is self preservation.

Mageth

My brother recently told me, when discussing evolution and the origin of life, that he just couldn't accept that this life was all there is. He couldn't accept that there was no afterlife; it would cause him to give up hope, to not have a reason to live. He followed this up with versions of the "there must be a reason/meaning for everything/existence", "first cause", and design arguments.

If you think about it, all these arguments spring from the same well. If you make one, you're implicitly making the others. An afterlife implies a reason/meaning for existence and "design" to the universe/existence (as in a design fit for guiding us into the afterlife, and for giving us evidence of the designer), and who else would be the First Cause of such if not the designer?

njhartsh

No no no--hypothesizing inner psychological reasons for religion certainly has its place on iidb.org, but that's not the thread I was hoping to start here. I'm not asking "Why is religion popular?" That's an old question, though perhaps it's worth another round in General Religious Discussions.

I'm asking: "When pressed, perhaps by themselves [yeah, whatever, just pretend that every believer does so], what argument for the existence of god(s) is invoked most frequently by theists?" Several potential answers are catalogued here, though (as Mageth demonstrated) that probably isn't an exhaustive list.

By my count, we've got two votes (including Dawkins) for Design and one for "all of the above." Anybody else? (Including Charles-Matthew, Jet Grind and Tom Sawyer?)

- Nathan, wannabe Thread Cop

Charles-Matthew

I would say that the most popular argument is that they have been told that it is so their whole lives and that they have faith in God. Even though it isn't really an argument.

But the argument that I get a lot is that our universe had to come from somewhere so God is their resolution. I think their logic here is that matter can't come from nothing, so you have to a creation force that doesn't apply to our laws of physics. So this was made into God, and the rest is psychology I believe.

Spenser

Hold it, hold it, hold it. The most common argument for God is obviously cause 'the bible says so.'

So now you know...