Sorry. No winner in "Tell me why you believe in God" contest.

Well, the first entries are in, and I'm not impressed. 

Four days ago I invited visitors to this blog to leave a comment on my "Tell me why you believe in God" post. 

I said:

I'm defining "God" as a conscious supernatural being with miraculous powers. If you're a believer with a markedly different definition, include that definition in your comment.

The responses were decidedly underwhelming. Some were interesting, but none were directly related to what I wanted.

Why someone believes in God.

This is surprising, since it sure seems like quite a few regular readers of this blog do believe in God. And in many or most cases, the God they believe in sure seems to be along the lines of how I defined God.

So why the vague, meandering, disjointed responses?

Hard to say. 

Since I'm an atheist, my #1 hypothesis is that since God almost certainly doesn't exist, no one has a good reason to believe in God, for the same reason no one has a good reason to believe in Santa Claus.

If I asked Why do you believe in the moon?, a reasonable response would be "Because I can see it in the sky and there's solid evidence that humans have landed on the moon and brought back rock samples."

That's a simple declarative sentence.

Yet no one provided a similarly simple declarative sentence about why they believe in God. I expected that someone would say, "Because a holy book says God exists," or "Because a holy person says God exists."

That's pretty much the reasons I would have given during my believing days. They aren't bad reasons.  They're the reasons most Christians would give, I suspect.

Instead, the main theme of the comments on my blog post was "I'm open to the possibility that God exists and am searching for the answer to this." 

OK. But most atheists would say the same thing.

Take me. I'm open to the possibility that God exists and I'm searching for the answer to this. So far I've seen no demonstrable evidence for God, so I strongly lean in the direction that God is a fantasy.

Another theme was "Words can't capture God, so there's no point in talking about why someone believes in God." 

OK. But words can't capture anything else either.

The word "strawberry" certainly doesn't capture the nature of this red tasty fruit. Yet if I ask a store clerk where the strawberries are, they can point me in the right direction.

Words can't capture a dream. Yet if someone asks me if I dreamed last night, and I remember my dreams, I can describe them. Not perfectly. Not completely. But imperfectly and incompletely. 

I don't tell the person, "I can't say anything about my dreams because they can't be captured in words." I use words as well as I can, then add the caveat, "But what I just said isn't how the dream really seemed to me."

Nothing is. Eating a strawberry is way different from saying "strawberry." However, we can do our best to describe what eating a strawberry is like, because strawberries are real, as is eating them.

So the non-responses to my question about why people believe in God helps solidify my view that good reasons for believing are rare not because God is beyond description, but because no one has had an experience of an actually-existent God.

Comments

[Dungeness]

@ BrianJi: I don't tell the person, "I can't say anything about my dreams because they can't be captured in words." I use words as well as I can, then add the caveat, "But what I just said isn't how the dream really seemed to me."

I don't believe any words can backfill the gaping hole left by mystics
who describe god as "not this, not this". But, if pressed, I would say
I'm drawn to some beautiful, indescribable fragrance within. So god
is just a shorthand for whatever it is. Maybe it's love or beauty or
bliss or just consciousness itself.

It's fleeting though, like a dream that ends too soon. Chase it and
it fades. Describe it and you don't say enough or you lurch into
excess. You go silent in embarrassment. All you know is that, if
god is a conspiracy theory, you want to hear it again. If it's a
banned substance, you want another little taste. Like an addict,
you nod and whisper "whatever dose you give, the more I crave".

[albert]

Brian, you crack me up! If you can have an experience of your own awake beingness, your own self, then you have experienced God, in degree.

Get real, man! You are IT!

Much love with everything said, my friend.

[um]

Maybe it is worthwhile to read the whole of W. James' "Varieties of religious experiences" or at least its conclusion as can be found on the page 366 on this site.
https://csrs.nd.edu/assets/59930/williams_1902.pdf

From memory ... James says somewhere in that book that mystic experiences are experiences that can not be had by any other way and have effects that can not be attained by any other human activity. .... again from memory!!

In his days there was no or little debate on NDE's as an by effect of medical activities.
But today the phenomena is not alone studied but its effects have been described by many in books.

Often it is found, that when people recover from their illness and the experience, they are no longer seen by their family and friends as the person they used to be. That estrangement can lead to the end of a marriage or other relations.

That is what James suggested ... these inner experiences are life-altering experiences and for those who have to deal with them issues of scientific proof, belief etc have no meaning whatsoever.

The rest just talks ... empty talk .... as empty as talking about birth, death and giving birth by men that never will have the experience of giving birth.

In the economic world if there is a debt one can fill that financial shortage by engaging in a new loan Concepts are like these shortages, lack of shortages in experience. More abstract concepts and ever more abstract concepts can be build with them ... making the intellectual debt all the more severe.

Most religious understanding, based on hearsay, is for that reason ..empty

[Appreciative Reader]

"That is what James suggested ... these inner experiences are life-altering experiences and for those who have to deal with them issues of scientific proof, belief etc have no meaning whatsoever."

---

This is all very interesting, and absolutely, worth checking out --- but as far as the latter, whyever not? Any phenomenon at all, your gut level evaluation of it might be either right or wrong. I'm not saying it's always wrong, it may, entirely by happenstance, happen to be right. But if you test it using the scientific method, then you end up arriving at the most reasonable explanation, the explanation that is most likely to be true. (And what would follow from that is the kind of intervention --- or non-intervention, as the case may be --- that would be most likely to be of use.) So why would that not be meaningful, no matter the kind of underlying experience?

[Um]

@ A.R.

Have you ever been on a mountain slope with a companion that froze from fear?
If yes ... you will know that it makes no sense to say ... there is no need to be afraid and other things to that end.

Those who have these inner experiences are also not interested in anything beyond that experience.

[Appreciative Reader]

But that isn't really true. Some, probably, sure; but we do see many who allegedly have these experiences, and who are interested in a great deal beyond that experience. They draw all kinds of conclusions from that experience, they believe that experience means plenty of things, and they often turn teacher and want to foist those conclusions, that they've derived for themselves, on to others as well. All they resent is having their fallacies clearly pointed out.

Sure, if as you say someone is content to simply experience their experience --- regardless of whether that experience is "spiritual" or simply a mundane everyday experience --- and take it no further at all, then that is their wish and prerogative, and one can hardly object to that kind of thing, provided that's what they want to do.

[um]

@ AR

I just gave a simple everyday example of an experience in the midst whereof a person is not able to use his or her normal means of understanding.

Now it should not be that difficult to imagine that this road is open to one side. Meaning that the further one gets on that road the intenser are the experiences and the more difficult they become to describe etc.

Your writing ... if they are content with .... tells the whole story, of not being able or willing to open up to the possibility of an mind blowing experience, experiences that rob the person having it from thinking that the sensitive world is THE reality.

That is what happened to Abraham when an figure in his experience presented him self as an angel of god. From what is left in the bible it is easy to understand that these people having these experiences were once and for all mentally uprooted.

For me, so many years later, not having these experiences it is not that easy to understand that fear and not inflicted with that fear and not infected with an believe also easy to state what I have done several times here ... that if there is a causal forth beyond Abraham, Mozes etc, he certainly forget to inform the rest of the world that he had give an piece of earth to his so called chosen people. What makes it understandable that the those who came to hear of this event are divide in different groups handeling the hearsay ... the hebrews and the gentile.

AND ... AND .... I also am convinced that If any body else been place in their shoes they would have done the same.

Yes I do believe there are mind blowing experiences and if they befall a person they have to go with the flow or be destroyed.

Why do you not enter in one of those mind altering experiences that are still to be found in circles of indigenous Indian tribes ... ayahuasca for example and see for yourself and see what you ratio does with it afterwards.

[um]

@ AR

It is also to be found in that story of Layla and Majun ... his normal, rational friends filled with honest feelings towards the truth, the well being of their friend do their best to convince him that by all standards the girl was not THE best choice on several levels ... but mentaly overruled by ...LOVE ...he said friends you should see her through my eyes ... through the eyes of love and nor of reason.

[Appreciative Reader]

I've considered it, not that specific thing but the general category, yes. The various accounts I've read of this kind of thing, starting with Castaneda's works, that I first chanced on while I was still an impressionable schoolboy, have fascinated me since long back. Incidentally, Brian's written some pieces on psilocybin in these pages, as has manjit in his comments as well.

But no, I never did actually do it. And I don't think I ever will. I'm afraid I value my sanity and my lucidity far too much to risk it in this reckless manner.

You are right, it could be that an experience like that might offer me something concrete to base my ...I don't know, my dilettante's research, my general curiosity, on. On the other hand, what one is looking for is greater lucidity, and greater understanding, and who knows, that kind of a stunt might, just perhaps, result in exactly the opposite. I don't think I'm prepared to take that risk.

I think I'm going to plod on with my meditation, and see where that takes me. I'm open to adventure within that narrow category of effort, and have expanded my initial repertoire of just one tradition to now include three. And I'm prepared to experiment further, if I see good reason to, as far as that kind of thing. But that's about as far as my appetite for adventure goes, I'm afraid, as far as actual action. No acid or super-acid for me!

[um]

@ AR

You research seems genuine to me and your attachment to your talent and the fear of losing it will worce you to proceed on the path you have taken.

What I wrote was not an real invitation for you to take those pathways, if alone for your mentally make up that makes it unfit for such adventures. It was just my way to put before you the impact of inner experiences and their consequences. The farther one goes in that direction, the less the mind is able to process it.

Whatever mystics have to say is just an invitation ... saying that these things exist.

Personally i come to understand that they forget to say that it cannot and should not be had by anybody. There knowledge better be kept secret and only given to those THEY themselves have searched for and found that could digest that knowledge.

The Mnt Everest exists, and those who have climbed it have undergone an impressive experience but ... having said that Imo the Everest does not exist to be climbed and human beings are not made to climb it and nobody should be made to believe that life has only meaning when that mountain is climbed.

But why meditate .... no need to answer that private question

[Spence Tepper]

The contest was rigged! ;)
No description will serve as proof. No description will be acceptable to anyone with a differing view.

So you can say "that was a very fine description of why you believe what you believe". But that is a far cry from saying "I'm convinced." These are two different set of criteria.

I don't recall the request for actual proof.

The justification can be "this is my experience."

That is the justification for most views.

[Slayer]

To put it Simply, organisations and there corrupt leaders require the need for god to get people to submit and for their own existence. None more than desperate Gurinder Singh Dhillon who tries just about anything to keep his ratings in the top ten of YouTube and works hard at portraying that his vessel is the only alpha and omega. He has more YouTube videos than operah and will do anything to keep his brainwashed sangat zombified. So we know where god is not which is a FRAUDULENT baba, a clown disguised as a god.

[Neon]

Every SINGLE question on GSD videos is the same. The other videos are just babling the same things in english for 30-40 min.

[Cassiodorus]

There are arguments for theism. There are arguments for atheism.
The failure of arguments for one side, does not mean that the other position is true by default.
There is no "presumption of atheism" or "presumption of theism"