Stephen T-B

Some thoughts on Belief:
There is a paradox at the heart of religious faith: the believer constantly looks for evidence to prove the reality of the god he/she believes in, but if ever if it were unambiguously supplied, belief would be made redundant, and the need for faith extinguished.
What all believers do is to confuse the reality of their belief with the reality of what they believe in, and this leads to fierce disagreements because the mind's construct of a god is just that and has no external reality.
This being the case, there is nothing an arbiter can refer to as a universal model. The function of religious leaders, therefore, is to fix the god of their belief by precise definition so that their followers have a shared idea of what to believe in.
The followers' duty is to accept that definition, even though it conflicts in some small degree with their own.
Indeed, by overcoming this conflict they know they are being obedient. A significant sacrifice is being required of them, and "obedience" and "*sacrifice" being esteemed elements in much religious teaching, they are therefore rewarded with a sense of worthy achievement.
If the conflict becomes too great, however, cohesion is broken and schism results, often followed by the violent antagonisms which arise between people who know the truth but cannot agree what it is.
Religious belief remains strong and ubiquitous because it performs a number of still-relevant functions.
It addresses deep-seated insecurities by claiming the ability to put all-powerful beings on our side; it stimulates emotions which some people find highly pleasurable; it seems to explain unsettling imponderables like When did it all begin? What are we here for? and Why do we die? it supplies an exciting, mysterious, highly-attractive dimension to otherwise prosaic, cause-and-affect ruled lives, it gives the individual the rewarding sense of being special to a supernatural and an almighty being, and it satisfies the yearning to serve, this being a deeply-embedded element of our psychological make-up as a social animal and is arguably associated with the requirement among all such animals to cooperate with each other and to a greater or lesser extent subordinate purely selfish interests to those of the community.
In this context it is worth mentioning a less widespread impulse but one which nevertheless derives from the same historical background: the need, within strictly hierarchical social systems, to obey. Religion in most of its manifestations is also hierarchical and holds out the promise that obedience shall receive due recognition and reward.
By acting as a conduit between the people and their gods, the priestly caste exerts a sometimes malign influence which has and does inflicted immeasurable misery upon humanity.
And non-believers, sad to say, are doomed to rail against them in vain.

d

kat10

I've been under the impression that believers, or theists if you prefer, have faith and believe because they *need* to. Of course, there are those that just follow blindly and do so because it's what they were taught. Those are the easiest to convert I think. All they are lacking is knowledge, or as you put it, finding a new leader. There are those however, that are intelligent beings, they've studied the facts and choose to believe anyway.

****Disclaimer, these are all opinions and my own observations, I am not trying to assert them as FACT**********

For them, there is an inherent need of some sort for religion, or a god. For some it is a need to blame the other; for example, if something goes wrong. When you are your own leader, when your actions are determined by your own logic, your own sense of right and wrong and not because you have someone else to answer to; if you mess up, you have no one to blame and responsibility lies within you. That's too much to bare for some.

Others use religion as a crutch. For example, I know we can all agree that the infinite mysteries of the universe have not all been answered. We, as a species, do not have all the answers and can't prove everything. Someone help me with this quote, because it's one of my favorites and I always forget who said it; the more you learn about something, the more you realize you know nothing. Well, for some people, they see the burden of proof lying in one camp, and us atheists feel the burden of proof lies in another. For some theists, it lies with science, read: "until science can explain it all, I'll have faith in God". For many athiests, "Until science can't answer something, I'll believe in science." The difficulty, and the disagreements, usually stem from opinion, which of these is better? I still have so much to learn...

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: kat10 ]</p>

case

Thoughts:

I don't know that I would classify this as a paradox, but I do think it presents theists with a problem. Let us suspend reality for a moment, and imagine the impossible: God comes down from the sky, performs impossible miricles, proved beyond a doubt that he is indeed the all powerful diety that Judeo-Christians have been railing about for all this time.

We have no doubt that there is a God, we are his creation, he is the reason we are here.

Now, what if there are still those who reject him. Faith is no longer needed, as you stated, to believe. We know. We don't have to be converted. We already know. We just choose not to accept his doctrine, or his will, or his love. What if we say, "I know that you are real, you are responsible for all that has happened, including countless atrocities. I do not wish to follow you".

Now, as many theists love to argue in light of the problem of evil, God gave us free will. So we can still choose to ignore him. Now what do theists do? (Or, in this case, followers, since there is no longer a question of belief.) They no longer need to convice us of his existance. We know this already. But we still choose to ignore him, perhaps even wage war against him. Because if God were to come down right now and prove to me that he existed, that he was all powerful and all knowing, I'd probably beat the living crap out of him.

Or at least try...

JL

Well spoke Stephen.