From Greta Christina. She lays it out pretty simply and straightforward.
"As an atheist, I have some really good answers for why people believe in God even though he doesn't exist. The human mind is prone to numerous cognitive errors -- and many of those cognitive errors make people susceptible to religion. We tend to see intention, even where no intention exists. We tend to see patterns, even where no pattern exists. We give excessive weight to personal emotional experience, and aren't good at applying critical thought to those experiences. We don't have a good intuitive understanding of probability, and tend to think events are more improbable than they really are. We tend to believe what authority figures tell us. We tend to believe what we're taught as children. We tend to believe what people we know and trust tell us. We're reluctant to question the things that everyone else in our social group believes. Etc., etc., etc. People believe all sort of things that aren't true... and from an atheist/ materialist viewpoint, that makes perfect sense. Atheism is not even a little inconsistent with the belief in gods who don't exist.
But the belief in God is very much inconsistent with the existence of atheists. I have yet to see a religious believer give a good answer for why God exists -- but not everyone experiences him or believes in him. I have yet to see a good answer for why God bestows the experience of his existence (however inconsistently and contradictorily) onto some people -- but not onto others. I have yet to see a good answer for why God is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good -- or even anything close to all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good -- and still isn't perceived by everybody.
Does anybody have one?
(And if you say "Mysterious ways," I'm going to scream.)"
This is a very good statement. I do not have the answer. I think though that many people, at least in this country, go to church because they feel they should – teach their kids about God, even if they don’t believe, because they think they need to. I was reading a post in a blog I just found – she was saying how horrified she had been when she moved to a small town in Pennsylvania and the public schools sent the kids to a Lutheran church for recess. But then she said that she felt children should go to church anyway and be taught about religion. Here is the site if you’d like to read it: http://goddessoftheconfluence.blogspot.com/2009/04/eye-of-beholder.html.
ReplyDeleteAnother article I read this evening and found interesting was about crucifixes in schools in Italy. Some European countries want to keep these Christian symbols, but for example France is trying to stop Muslim women to wear the veil. Have you read it? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpyn/content/article/2010/07/02/AR2010070203650.html?sub=AR.
Finally, thanks for your answer about the aircraft industry in California, I appreciated it.