why do humans believe without proof

[jfoldbar]

i am new to this forum ( see me thread in general chat) and one thing i find myself thinking is :

why do humans believe something without proof. or simply a question mark. almost all humans believe some kind of thing, whether its god, or Buddha, or ghosts or aliens. according to psychology studies it is in our genetic make up to have a desire to believe in something.

in this thread i dont want to discuss what you believe or dont believe, but the question im asking is:
how can we believe something if it has a question mark or disproof? or just simply doesnt add up.

many of the things we as humans can believe can be argued either way. we cant prove we are alone in the universe and we cant prove we're not. but surely if there are ifs and maybys, then why do we still believe. this can go for so many topics, but in a religion debate forum then the subject matter is religion.

so, people who believe in god (we all have our own personal reasons to believe something), how do you justify in you mind believing something that is not 100% black and white.
so if, for example, we can see that the great flood could not have happened because of things like ""; ark can not hold all the animals,australia has different animals to africa,antarctic ice core dates back much further etc etc :"" why does something like this not make you question your faith. in a world where 2+2=4, why are some people ok with 2+2=4.000001.

this thread is not to discuss the flood or any of the proofs,disproofs, but to discuss the "why do we still believe" part




me personally, i will stay completely on fence about any subject unless it is 100% proven.
we could argue though, do we have 100% proof of anything at all.

an example could be this:

im a tradesman. i go to work each day. leave about 6am and get home bout 4pm.
my wife does not "KNOW" for sure that i am a tradesman. shes sees me leave, and sees me come home dirty. she knows i get calls from clients and my friends are tradies. she knows i know how to do the work of tradesman when i work on our house, but because she doesnt come to work with me every day, she couldnt be 100% that i actually go to work.
but in her mind, everything must add up, and it does. if i was to sometimes come home freshly showered or with golf clubs in the car, this would be a slight question mark on the evidence that she has, and only a fool would dismiss this as "nothing" if they saw it. everything must add up for us to conclude that we are not fooling ourselves.


to me it seems that Christians could " see a pair of golf clubs " and dismiss it as "the lord works in mysterious ways", then continue to believe 100%.
why???










i hope i have conveyed my question in a way that makes sense to others, please ask if you dont get what im asking

[Divine Insight]

You posted this in philosophy but you seem to be focused mainly on what Christians believe.

to me it seems that Christians could " see a pair of golf clubs " and dismiss it as "the lord works in mysterious ways", then continue to believe 100%.
why???

I agree that Christian apologist will make the most outrageous and unreasonable apologetic excuses for obvious self-contradictions in their Bible. I think this is basically a purely defensive reaction based on the idea that it's extremely important to their religion that their Bible be defended at all cost.

I tend not to believe in anything 100%, however, I do see valid reasons to reject some things 100%, and the Bible is one of the things I personally reject with 100% confidence. I do this for basically the same reason I reject that there can be a rational solution to the square root of 2 with 100% confidence.

And now to move on to the more general philosophical questions you've asked.

why do humans believe something without proof. or simply a question mark. almost all humans believe some kind of thing, whether its god, or Buddha, or ghosts or aliens. according to psychology studies it is in our genetic make up to have a desire to believe in something.

I find it strange that you would include Buddha on your list. Buddha did not ask anyone to believe anything. In fact, he even suggested that people should not believe anything just because someone else says that something is true, including him. He taught people to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

We could even philosophically argue that there might never have been a man named Siddhartha Gautama. None the less, someone wrote the tales of Siddhartha and we can consider what Siddhartha is said to have taught, even if he was nothing more than a fictional character.

It's simply not required to believe in the Buddha to understand the ideas being taught. And there is much to learn from those ideas whether we accept them or reject them. So Buddha isn't someone you "believe in". Buddha is simply a model that proposes a way of thinking, and even suggests that you should take whatever is meaningful to you from this. So you don't need to "believe" in anything to find the teachings of Buddha to be useful or meaningful. In fact, the Buddha did not teach reincarnation, for example. The Buddha was simply raised in a culture where reincarnation was seen as being self-evident and for this reason the Buddha himself accepted this. But this in no way means that the Buddha was teaching reincarnation. In fact, this is way some modern forms of Buddhism, like Zen Buddhism are far more like Taoism than traditional Theravada Buddhism. And Taoism is viewed by many as a fairly secular notion.

in this thread i dont want to discuss what you believe or dont believe, but the question im asking is:
how can we believe something if it has a question mark or disproof? or just simply doesnt add up.

I don't necessarily believe in anything. But I do feel that there are things that have a far higher probability of being true than others. And so I give those things with a high probability of being true more likelihood of actually being true.

And some things can be disproved. Two examples that quickly come to mind is that there cannot be a rational solution to the square root of two, and that the Christian Bible cannot be true as it is written. Both of these things can be proven beyond any shadow of a doubt.

many of the things we as humans can believe can be argued either way. we cant prove we are alone in the universe and we cant prove we're not. but surely if there are ifs and maybys, then why do we still believe. this can go for so many topics, but in a religion debate forum then the subject matter is religion.

I agree. I don't believe that there is necessarily other lifeforms in the universe. Clearly I have no evidence that such a thing is true. However I do believe that it is not only possibly, but that it is also very highly likely that there exists other life in the universe. So if I have to place a bet I would bet there is other life in the universe. I think that's the more realistic bet to make. But at the same time I realize that it could be wrong. Life could be so rare that it only happened once in the entire universe. I just don't think that is very likely considering that the universe appears to be made of the same basic stuff everywhere.

me personally, i will stay completely on fence about any subject unless it is 100% proven.
we could argue though, do we have 100% proof of anything at all.

The only thing I know 100% is that I'm having an experience. I can't even disprove solipsism.

I confess that it is possible that I only just now came into existence and my entire memory of everything I've ever done was also created at the very same time I was created. How could I ever know any different?

Still, most people will agree that it seems pretty reasonable to believe that our memories are real and we actually did the things we remember having done a few moments ago, and into the far past. And most people will also agree that is seems pretty reasonable to believe that all humans, and even animals, are having their own individual experiences. I trust that my cat is having an experience. He certainly let's me know when he wants something to eat. So I assume he is experiencing a feeling of wanting to eat.

I think we all tend to believe things like this. We might even claim that they are "self-evident" just as the Indian culture believes that reincarnation is "self-evident". What we end up doing then is start arguing with each other what constitutes "self-evidence". The problem with this is that we really can't even disprove solipsism. It's not really "self-evident" that every individual human and animal is actually having their own sentient experience. Just because it appears that way doesn't make it so.

[ttruscott]

You seem to be taking believe as meaning to accept its reality when on the Christian side of things believe means to have faith , to trust in someone's definition of reality because we hope for their understanding of the future to be true.

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to post 1 by jfoldbar]

In my opinion, belief is a short cut we use so that we don't go mad. What I mean is, we all like to know things. Not knowing can be hard to deal with if we were to take this stance with everything. Once we learn things, we like to believe those things are true and remain true.

For example:

When we were very young we learned that if you drop something (including yourself) from any height, that something will fall until it hits a hard surface and stops. We later learn that this force is called gravity. We many not know how it works, why it works, or what limitations it may have, but we form a belief about the consequences of this force. If we did not, we would have to question every time we drop something "is it going to fall this time?". So based on past experience and perhaps later on some more formal methods we build a belief about gravity and refer to that instead of questioning everything every time.

This seems reasonable to me as we wouldn't function very well if we didn't build up some 'truths' or 'beliefs' for ourselves. Walking down the stairs would potentially take forever and be very mentally draining if we didn't believe that each step down we can count on gravity to still be working.

Now why do some take this a step further and create unverified 'truths' and 'beliefs' about gods? I think for the same reason as I give above. It's more 'comfortable' and easier to live if we don't have to question anything and simply rely on known beliefs.

Myself, I'm perfectly comfortable having some unknowns in my life. Don't get me wrong, I would be even happier if I knew everything, but I prefer my 'truths' and 'beliefs' to be based on verifiable evidence nowadays. For the things I don't know, I'm happy to either do some research and find out (if possible) or leave it in the category of - I don't know.

[Divine Insight]

You seem to be taking believe as meaning to accept its reality when on the Christian side of things believe means to have faith , to trust in someone's definition of reality because we hope for their understanding of the future to be true.

I totally agree with you on this Ted. I agree that this is the basic idea behind Christian "faith". It's a "belief" that the claims made within the Hebrew Bible are true.

And actually if all Christians would all own up to this then the religion wouldn't be the social and political problem that it is today, and has been for centuries.

Let's accept you definition of Christian Faith as you have described it above. In that case what would be wrong with other people saying things like the follow:

"I prefer to place my faith in the teachings of Buddha and the Eastern Mystical idea of reincarnation and karma."

How could a Christian say that there is anything 'wrong' with that? This person has simply chosen to place their trust a different vision of reality than Christians do.

Or how about the following:

"I prefer to place my faith in the stories of fairies and that the world is actually created and run by magical fairies."

Again how could a Christian say that there is anything 'wrong' with that?

Or what if a person says:

"I prefer to place my faith in the stories of Wicca Goddess who loves me and will protect me from harm."

How could a Christian say that there is anything 'wrong' with that? Yet, most Christians would accuse these Wiccans of "Devil Worship" which is totally false.

Also, what wrong with someone simply saying:

"I too have read the Hebrew Bible, and quite frankly I would much prefer to believe that it's not true. I don't like the patriarchal attitude of the God, and I don't care for many of his rules and commandments, many of which seem quite unjust and even immoral to me. I also don't care to believe that my creator had to have his only begotten Son brutally crucified on my behalf and that there is nothing I could do to redeem myself on my own merit.

Even this simple "rejection" of the Hebrew Bible is considered by most Christians to somehow be a "wrongful act" of anyone who might not see the Biblical story as being inviting.

In short Ted, if I am simply being asked to believe in Christianity are pure "Faith". My reply to that would need to simply be, "No thank you". It's simply not a picture of a reality that I would want to be true. To the contrary, I would much rather have faith that it's not true.

Why should I want to believe that I am somehow in such grave trouble with my Creator that he had to have his Son crucified to pay for my horrible attitude and personality, and that there is absolutely nothing I could possibly do on my own merit to vindicate myself from these horrible charges?

I would not "want" that to be the truth of reality. I think that would be a horrible situation to be in. Even if it were true, it would be horrible. It's certainly not a situation that I would want to be true so much that I would care to believe it as a matter of faith.

As I already suggested above, there are other pictures of reality that I would much rather believe on "faith". Buddhism sounds pretty good to me. In Buddhism my spiritual fate will actually depend on what I do. No innocent demigods are harmed in the process.

The fairy folklore and the Goddess of Wicca also sound pretty good to me. At least in both of those scenarios I get to be responsible for my own fate rather than having that ability stripped from me.

I don't see where there is anything attractive about a religious paradigm where I am condemned as being guilty and there is nothing I can do to redeem myself on my own merit short of claiming to "believe" in a dogma that preaches male dominance and many immoral practices as being "The Will of God". I make no secret about the fact that I do not see the behavior of the Biblical God to be attractive or appealing, or even indicative of intelligence for that matter.

So the bottom line for me is that when I am asked if I would like to place my "faith" in Christianity, the answer has to be no. It just not an attractive reality to me. A reality where life was just a pure accident would actually be more attractive. So if I was given Christianity verses Pure Secular Materialism as my only choices to place my "faith" in I would choose the latter. I would rather life is just a freak accident than for Christianity to be true. Seriously.

And the problem I have with Christianity (both the Bible and the followers of it) is that it doesn't just ask people to place their faith in it, but it goes much further proclaiming that those who refuse to believe it are "without excuse" and are all manner of horrible immoral people who "deserve to be damned".

In short, it goes far beyond merely asking people to believe in it. It goes on to condemn those who don't believe in it as if they are guilty of having done something horribly wrong. And that's where it crosses the line of being a "Faith-based belief" to becoming a proclamation of "Absolute truth that must not be denied". And that violates the claim that it should be believed on nothing more than a desire of faith.

[marco]

to me it seems that Christians could " see a pair of golf clubs " and dismiss it as "the lord works in mysterious ways", then continue to believe 100%.
why???

We often see a pattern: 1, 3, 6, 10, 15.... and in this case we deduce the next number is 21. If we're mathematically minded we could explore this pattern and relate it to triangles. If we want to count the number of handshakes in a group of people we can see that with 2 people: 1 handshake
3 people: 3handshakes
4 people: 6 handshakes
5 people: 10 handshakes
and we might even see that 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7...... is related to all this.

So observation and deduction are important. Newton observed and deduced laws that worked for centuries, so that people had 100% confidence in them. It shocked Einstein to discover flaws in Newton's Laws, when speeds approaching that of light were involved.

So our world seems to be built on probabilities. Those who believe in a God see no reason for disbelief; he has provided and they work as good believers. If we adopt the attitude that we don't trust anything then we can lie in a coffin and wait. Our reason does give us a high degree of certainty and in areas where reason lets us down (theology, for example) it hardly seems to matter.

[gordsd]

[Replying to jfoldbar]

Here is my spin on it.

Some people become believers while some are simply raised in a church/faith. Many times both (not always) types of believers' identity and self-worth are wrapped up in their world view. In a way, many become proud of their faith or view of the world. Many people do not like to admit that they have been wrong about something which is so important. It is painful to be humiliated—even if it is only to one's self. I think it is like an ego thing. It is too painful to face the reality of being so wrong about something. It's like die hard Republicans or Democrats; both die hards of both parties have a hard time seeing the faults of their own candidates. Like wise, it is difficult for people of faith to accept there are faults with their holy book or faith.

Added to this, everybody wants to feel and think that they are secure. The greatest security is that which one can control. So, if one can have eternal salvation for simply believing something—why not? No one wants to think about an insecure future—losing a heaven and gaining a possible hell. Like the song says, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die!� It is the same ego thing here. It is too painful to accept the fact that death is the end; death is to real to face for many, so it is easy to accept a tale which provides a way out of the pain.

[GlorifiedOne]

[Replying to post 1 by jfoldbar]

Can you imagine what our conversations would be like if we had to prove every thought that enters our minds?

[marco]

[Replying to post 1 by jfoldbar]

Can you imagine what our conversations would be like if we had to prove every thought that enters our minds?

Welcome to the forum, GlorifiedOne. With your title you should be able to answers lots of questions.

I can't think what scenario would have us "prove" every thought but yes, it might prevent war.

[GlorifiedOne]

[Replying to post 9 by marco]

I can answer questions pertaining to God's creation but beyond that, nothing else matters to me.

I have had many people ask me for proof but I just tell them that it's impossible to prove the thoughts of God whether they are true or not.