Nov 25, 2024
Nov 25, 2024
1. Believer don't want all of life to be rational. They need unexplained phenomena in order to take chances or find ways to heal after experiencing tragedy or loss. The ultimate unexplained phenomenon is God.
2. Belief in God generates a sense of awe. The idea of God humbles believers and helps them see their place in the world. This sense of awe has also been described by astronauts who venture into outer space.
3. Believers feel connected by a shared faith in God. These connections create communities and a common ethical culture.
4. Believers can become reconciled to death, since many look forward to the afterlife.
5. Believers see God as necessary to fround society in order to have a rock-solid basis for a moral value system.
6. Believers are comforted by God because it's appealing to have someone in charge.
7. Believers feel that without God, life would have no purpose or meaning.
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1. There are many things that we don't know for sure. Like the reason for the existence of Universe. But saying “God created Universe” just pushes this question to a level up : “Who created God?”. Recovering from a loss or a tragedy happens in a person's mind and God does not show him the path to recovery but the person himself finds the path because he wants to 'live' his life ahead (this can be seen from the fact that some people never recover from a tragedy). 2. Look around you. in such a random Universe, there exists some order that seem to defy Entropy. If you want to be awed, just look up at the sky and see trillions of stars. Or go to some Nature hot spot. You don't need God for being awed. 3. Belief systems may create Good and Bad cultures (we have seen Islamic terrorism, safron terror, christian missionaries propagating falsehoods, etc.). In such a big world where everyone is connected, everyone wants to imply their viewpoints on the others. And the concept of my God is true and all others are not will only lead to clashes. And accepting that all Gods are indeed the same means my way of practicing the faith is right and others are wrong. 4. It is sometimes said that humans need the comfort of religion. Humanity’s need for comfort is off course real but isn’t it something childish, something infantile in the belief that Universe owes us comfort, in a sense that if something is comforting, then it must kind of make it true. The consolation content of the belief does not raise its truth value. I can’t deny the need for emotional comfort and I can’t claim that the world view adopted by atheists offers anymore than moderate comfort. If you’re afraid of death, for example, you might superficially think that the words of a priest who tells you that you are not really going to die would be more comforting than a scientist who tells you that it is highly improbable that our individuality could survive the decay of our brains. As for eternal nothingness, is it all that frightening? As Mark Twain said : “I do not fear death. I’d been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and I had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it”. We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which vast majority have never stirred. 5. Morality comes from people interacting with each other. You are good to others so that they can be good to you. You want the criminals to be punished so that you don't become the target of the crime yourself. And so on and so forth. 6. I think its more comforting to know that I am in charge of my life. If I can control what I want then I will work for it. I don't think anyone likes the idea that even though I have put so much hard work, outcome of my work may not be right as someone else is in control. 7. Such people are pessimists. One mus feel lucky ha hey are actually born. As we interact with people and as we progress in our life we find new purposes. |
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Yes, blessed are those who have faith. |