Why do you believe what you believe?

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...Our individual beliefs are a choice based on evidence presented to us.

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I disagree with this. People don't have complete control over their beliefs. I have once or twice challenged people to choose to believe that the earth is flat. Not simply state the earth is flat, nor act as though they believe the earth is flat, but to actually, sincerely believe in their heart that the earth is flat. I doubt that many people can actually willfully do this.I never chose to be an atheist. I fought against the loss of my faith. If I had my choice, I would probably still be a Christian today. But all the "facts" that supposedly supported the existence of God turned out to be false; nothing in the world required a belief in God to explain it; the world is pretty explanable without a belief in God. I was simply forced to confront the fact that "God" is simply an unnecessary addition that explains nothing -- I was forced to confront the fact that the only reason I ever accepted that there was a God is because people just told me. I was pretty much forced to accept that I don't believe that God exists.

I suppose that it is possible to exert some control on one's beliefs, mainly by refusing to examine deeply opposing facts or arguments. But anyone who engages in this sort of willful ignorance must already be plagued by some kind of doubts, in my opinion.

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There are only 2 answers as to how the universe exists:

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1. It has always existed

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2. It was created by something or other. If pixies, then pixies are god.

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You forgot a third possibility:The universe exists without a cause, even if it hasn't always existed.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 27-Jul-2005 01:09 PM

Why not? This is one of the classical arguments that supposedly prove that God exists, that the universe needs a creator. The arguer needs to prove two premises: (1) that the universe had to have a beginning and (2) that everything that exists must have a cause.(1) was traditionally argued by an infinite regress type of argument, which never seemed convincing to me. Current scientific knowledge is much more convincing that the universe had a beginning, although still not definitive.(2) is traditionally argued by personal incredulity. Some people cannot imagine something happening without a cause, and so they claim that this must be reason enough to assume that the universe must have a cause. This, too, is not very convincing.Another way to argue (2) is to claim that everything we observe has a cause, and so the universe itself must have a cause. Even if everything we observe does have a cause, one cannot simply assume that the unverse has a cause; this is the fallacy of composition -- assuming that the whole has the same properties as its constituent parts. Even if everything within the univese does have a cause, the universe as a whole is unique enough that it does not have to share that same property.(This is also ignoring that some people will bring in virtual particles as evidence that some things may not have causes.)

I guess I don't understand what it is that doesn't make sense. That the universe may have existed forever? I don't see the logical impossibility of that. That the universe may have "begun" without a cause? Again, there is nothing about that which strikes me as nonsense.

Hi, Parasomnium.It's not quite a sophistry; since time supposedly began at the singularity, I can't make sense of what it means for something to have caused the universe to come into existence. To be a "cause" seems to imply existing "prior", but there is no "prior".

Well, I have a reason for rejecting the hypothesis of God. If there were a God who created the universe, then I would expect some evidence of this God interacting with the universe in some way. Since I have never seen any good evidence that some God is interacting with the universe, I conclude that God, like pixies, is an extraneous entity.

I guess I prefer to simply state "I don't know" than to postulate the existence of an entity whose sole purpose for existing is to "explain" this one event. It still seems extraneous to me.

Uh-oh. We seem to have come around full circle.Are you are using "god" to mean the unknown, and perhaps unknowable, origin of the universe? Because if you are, then I don't have much objection to what you say. I feel, though, that it may be a bit misleading; when most people talk of "god" and the origin of the universe, they are referring to an intelligent entity that is consciously creating the universe.At any rate, we still haven't determined that universe needs a "cause", even it has only existed for a finite amount of time.

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Because if I do not believe, then everything that makes my life full and real and good is dead. Without God, my life is hollow, my feelings mean nothing, and what I percieve as real is not real.

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I can sympathize with this a bit. Although it wasn't quite as bad as you're saying here, losing my faith was not at all a pleasant experience. Which is one of the reasons I have no respect for the claim that somehow people choose not to believe in God.

Nor was I accusing Robin of committing any fallacies himself. I was merely giving a brief summary of an old argument that seemed somewhat similar to Robin's post.

I guess maybe I've been thinking about these things for a long time, but I have no trouble imagining something beginning without a cause (in fact, don't very young children have to be taught that nothing happens without a cause?), nor do I have much trouble with the concept of something, like the universe, having existed for an infinite amount of time.What I do have a lot of trouble with is the concept of something existing "before" time began, or the concept of something existing without time or space.

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Also I thought the 'cause' of the universe was the big bang.

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Uh-oh.I thought the popular conception of "Big Bang" is that it is the origin of the universe as an event, not the cause of that event.At any rate, I think a more satisfying and more scientific accurate conception of Big Bang is that it is simply the description of the early universe -- hot and dense and rapidly expanding space.I think you know more about this than I; am I being inaccurate?