Why do you believe what you believe?

When it comes down to it, our individual beliefs are a choice based on evidence presented to us. Some people choose to believe in the Bible, the Koran, or other holy book, as literal truth. Others interpret their holy books non-literally. Some people don't follow any religion.How did you make your choice? What were your reasons?I don't want this to turn into a Christan bashing or atheist bashing or anything-else bashing thread. Please be respectful and remember that, whatever another person believes, they are entitled to that belief.I would, however, like us to be able to question each other's reasons for their beliefs in a mature and respectful manner.This would probably fit best in Faith and Belief.

I was raised as a Protestant Christian. My family is filled with Biblical literalists, and I was raised as such.As I grew up, I saw a mountain of scientific evidence, observable facts, showing that the Biblical account of history could not possibly have happened without God going through a great deal of trouble to cover it all up. It just seems dishonest for God to create the universe so that it looks, for instance, to be a certain age by all manner of evidence, and then tell us that it's not. I also saw various Christians behaving in a very un-Christ-like manner, using biblical passages and a literal interpretation to justify all manner of horrible crimes. I saw that the hyporitical religious leaders of Jesus' day are still present today.I realized that I couldn't take the bible literally. I still believe in God, but I believe Him to be the loving, merciful God described by Jesus. I believe the atrocities of the Bible were attributed to God by men who needed a justification for their evil actions, and knew that no one would speak out against God's Will, whether it really was His Will or not. Just like Islamic terrorists, or Christians who murder abortionists.So science and atrocities in the name of religion are what swayed me from my literalist upbringing. The root of my beliefs now is a faith in a loving, forgiving God. It's not rational - I have no real evidence for His existance, and I believe the Bible to be just an old book with some really good lessons mixed in with the rest. I choose to believe in Him only becuase of personal experiences, and the fact that the good lessons of the Bible are undeniably real and good, even if the events never happened.

Only on the surface.Yes, the first sea creatures formed before the first land creatures. But according to the Creation story, this is the only time different species were created. New species have continued to evolve since the beginning of life - it never stopped. Whales and dolphins show evidence of having evoloved from land mammals, meaning that some creatures of the sea evolved after the "creeping things" on the land.On a non-evolutionary note that still may be relevant - Genesis states that He created light and seperated night from day before He created the Sun, Moon, or stars.

It is irrational to say that God does not exist. It is perfectly rational to say that there is absolutely no rational reason to believe he does, as there is no evidence of His existance.It's just like saying that purple unicorns don't exist. Science cannot say that they never existed, only that we have no evidence that they did. Because there is no evidence, there is no rational reason to believe they ever lived.This is why belief in God must be a decision of blind faith.

The problem is that you are assuming there was a "before" to the universe. It's not that it didn't exist, and then it existed. Time began with the rest of the universe. There was no "before." Everything that exists has always existed.This may be a poor analogy, but I'll give it a try. Imagine space-time to be a 3-dimentional cone. As you move further down the cone's axis (representing time), the height and width (symbolizing the 3 spacial dimentions) expand. We exist at a specific moment along the axis, and can only move in one direction. Seeing that the spatial dimentions grow as time moves on, we extrapolate backwards and realize that, at the moment time began, the spacial dimentions were all crammed into a single point. The initial moments are called the "Big Bang," becuase the expansion is remeniscient of (though not truly like) an explosion. There is, however, no "before." The axis representing time ends at the singularity point. How could anything "Create" it if there was no "before?"

You can't "cause" time. Again, that implies that something existed "before time." By definition, nothing can exist before time, as time creates the definition of the word "before."Time is just a property of the universe, a dimention like height or width. How do you "Cause" height or width to exist? How do you exist outside of space and time and retain the ability to influence it? By definition, if something is outside of space and time it does not exist.

But if we accept God to be a superset containing our universe with no supporting data to draw that conclusion, we could just as easily ask "What superset contains God?" This argument makes the unfounded assumption that the universe must be contained by an entity. Since the universe can be described without including God, Occam's Razor tells us He is irrelevant and should not be included.Granted, logic can also not state that there is NOT an additional entity containing the universe. We just don't have any rational reason to think there is. Those of us who still believe in Him are forced to do so on blind, irrational faith...which is kind of the point, I think.