Rationalising The Irrational - Hardcore Theists Apply Within

Even if that were true, it still doesn't get you any nearer to believing in the Christian God. You still require blind faith for the equation "intelligent designer = Christian God".

If I saw a large meteor, I suppose that might lead me to believe that there are such things as...err...large meteors. It wouldn't occur to me, having seen a meteor, to start believing in a thing called a God (unless Gods are meteors).So, meteor or no meteor, you would still require blind faith to believe in a God.

But the subjective rat will not find the end of the maze merely by deciding to believe that he's there when he isn't, will he? This rat realized long ago that he wouldn't get to the end of the maze, and that there probably is no end to it, so he restricted himself to exploring the explorable; his immediate environs.Good to see that smiling, running phat man is still around!

You may believe that, but it would require blind faith in order to do so. Tell me, did the people living around where you live now 500 years ago require faith not to believe in your God? Surely they had never heard of him. And what about the 70% of the world today who do not come from Christian cultures? They probably never bother to think about your God, and neither would you if you had grown up in a non-Christian area of the world, son of parents of another religion. Or, in other words, the would be believer creates his own God. I've known many Christians, John, and when questioned closely, all their Gods seem to be slightly different; sometimes very different. It's just as if each one has made up his or her own imaginary friend.That is not the effect one would expect if a real God was revealing himself to all these people.In answer to the O.P., you seem to be one of those Christians who believes due to subjective experience, rather than due to objective evidence. Is that correct?

Your stats are much closer than Huntard's. Certainly, the majority of the world are theists. A century ago, the proportion of the world that had no religion was negligible, and we infidels are by far the fastest growing sector. Islam has kept second place due to population explosion, but we will overtake it soon, because of growing apostasy in the Islamic world (they become us!!!).However, you are wrong to describe the different religions as believing in "God". It should always be plural. Gods. Even within religions, there are so many different interpretations that we should refer to the Christian gods and Muslim gods, always in the plural.It's a mistake to think that people are actually believing in the same thing. Rather, lots of different gods have been invented. Perhaps there are as many gods as there are theists, because none of you are actually believing in something with an objective existence.

I'm glad we agree on something. Perhaps the nature of religion is falseness, and "Faith" really means "self-deception", (but you won't agree with that, of course).However, I'm not really on topic. It seems that you're in the school of belief that doesn't expect evidence for your God outside your own internal experiences with him. For example, you wouldn't have to believe that prophecies were coming true, as Buzsaw does, in order to reaffirm your faith.Do you think that Christians who look for such things, perhaps things like seeing the shape of Jesus in a stain on the wall type of thing, are perhaps lacking in true faith?

Such evidence would have to exist before I can accept or reject it. You seem to think that it's a question of desire. Complexity is objective evidence for complexity, not for anything else. It does not require faith to have no faith in any Gods (by definition). Do you and I require faith not to believe in Scientology? No. But the scientologists certainly require faith to believe in their mumbo-jumbo. So it is a matter of desire in your mind. You are willing to believe, so you receive the "subjective evidence" for your beliefs. The scientologists are willing to believe in scientology, so they receive the "subjective evidence" for their beliefs.Now we're beginning to understand how it all works, and why there are so many different religions and gods in the world.

Now that's an interesting statement, ICANT. I think that Straggler might be very interested in discussing that with you, as it relates very well to the topic.It could be argued, then, that apologetics missions like Answers in Genesis are very misguided from a Christian point of view.

Indeed, just as birds have evolved to make nests and termites have evolved to make termite mounds, we have evolved to make all those things. In your previous post, you claimed that the universe was infinitely more complex than anything humans could make. Now, you seem to be implying that the universe couldn't produce a Swiss watch naturally. First, you glorify your god's universe, and then you denigrate it while contradicting yourself. I have seen no evidence that any gods have given us a creation story. The Muslims claim that the Koran is the word of their god, but they have no evidence for this claim, so we are not exercising faith in not believing them, but they are exercising faith in believing in such an unlikely proposition. Is your faith in your god dependent on the faith that the Bible wasn't authored by ordinary human beings making stuff up, like the Koran or the writings of L. Ron Hubbard (scientology)?More on the topic, would you believe in your god even if you thought that there was no objective evidence for his existence?

Really? Why make assertions that you can't support? If complexity can't exist without creative design, then your god must either be simple, or he must have been designed. But what's interesting in the light of this thread's topic is that you now seem to be attempting to present objective evidence for your god. Do you need these (weak) arguments because your "subjective evidence" is doubtful? So now it seems as though your belief in your god comes from what you see as evidence (complexity and fulfilled prophesies), not from faith. I thought that Christianity demanded faith. Interesting.

Wrong. It does not require Faith to lack Faith in any evidence-less supernatural propositions. Not believing in gods is not the same as believing that there are definitely no gods. I've explained to you that you do not require faith not to believe in all the many religions and gods that you do not believe in. Lack of faith is not faith, by definition.And as for your comment about not knowing what Christian faith is about, that could be said of Christians. There are many different Christian faiths and there are many different reasons given by Christians for believing in their many different gods.This thread is about how different Christians rationalise their faiths in different ways.

I'm not sure if they'd be completely unthinking. They could be described as more honest than those in your other categories.What about a special category for: "I believe in God because most other people in my country/culture do"?And another honest one: "I believe in God because I was taught to do so as a child".If there are any honest theists around who are capable of a bit of self analysis, they should realise that those two cover most of the ground.