• Question: Do you belive in god ?. Why do people belive in god ?.

    Asked by drpepper2k11 to Alex, Jools, Lynz, Matt, Rika on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by taniya30, yazzi.
    • Photo: Lyndsey Fox

      Lyndsey Fox answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hmm that’s a tough one…. it’s been a while since I’ve had a philosophical debate….

      I don’t know why people believe in God, perhaps “God” was an idea created to explain the things people couldn’t understand, like volcanoes erupting and earthquakes, or maybe god really did speak to moses and mohammed. Who knows! I do think religion provides a source of strength and comfort to a lot of people, and I respect that.

      Personally…I don’t disbelieve in God, I would very much like to think there is something more to the universe than what we can see. But the more I study geology the harder I find it to believe in religious texts like the bible, it’s very clear to me the earth wasn’t made in 7 days, and didn’t start with adam and eve 6000 years ago.

      So I suppose I don’t believe in organised religion, but I’m prepared to believe there is more in heaven and earth than dreamt of in my philosophy.

      The short answer is: I’m on the fence. lol

    • Photo: Chandrika Nair

      Chandrika Nair answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi, this is a really interesting question and I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately… I was brought up Agnostic (no religion) and I’d like to understand what leads people to have faith in God.

      Even though there is no factual proof of God that I know of, I do feel that faith is a really powerful and almost tangible concept – you can feel it when you go into some holy places. For example, some of the churches I’ve been to in Poland are so incredibly beautiful that you can tell the people who built it were motivated by something Big (love for God?).

      I’ve read a Sufi theory (a spiritual branch of Islam) that actually all or most humans do believe in God without realising it. The theory is that everyone has faith in something, such as human goodness, or anything else that we believe in but cannot prove, explain or understand. If all of these things are God (and Sufis believe God is everything, infinite), then everyone has faith in God. (Personally, I don’t know how I feel about this argument though I agree to a certain extend that everyone has ‘faith’).

      Why believe in God? I think believing in God can give comfort. This can be comfort in the knowledge that even though horrible war criminals will not be punished in this life they might be in the next, or conversely that good people who suffered now will be rewarded later. This probably appeals to the sense of justice of a lot of people. There might also be comfort in knowing there is life after death, that your soul will live on forever and you will never cease to exist.

      A far as where I stand… Definitely on the fence, currently leaning towards belief in God but not organised religion (I think a lot of people believe in organised religion because it is how their parents brought them up).

Comments