To Christians: What makes you keep your faith?

[speaker-to-trolls]

I understand if noone wants to answer this, but:

In light of the similarly titled thread in this forum I've been wondering, why do Christians who are exposed to arguments against their religion all the time still keep believing?

Actually, if you're not a Christian but are religious and have an answer feel free to give it. I would change the title but am short on time.

Please lock this thread if the other one makes it redundant. Thankyou.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I understand if noone wants to answer this, but:

In light of the similarly titled thread in this forum I've been wondering, why do Christians who are exposed to arguments against their religion all the time still keep believing?

Actually, if you're not a Christian but are religious and have an answer feel free to give it. I would change the title but am short on time.

Please lock this thread if the other one makes it redundant. Thankyou.

Any religious belief is in its core an irrational feeling that is not based on quantifiable or falsifiable evidence. Many Christians for sure can site many examples on how God has answered their prayers and so on, but of course no statistical analysis done on healing through prayer etc. has ever shown anything but random chance at work. Nevertheless the feeling that God exists, loves you and wants to help you is dominant over any rational arguments or evidence. All humans are prone to irrational behavior in some form or other and emotions contribute to our actions more than reason in most cases.

Therefore, my theory is that losing your religion is simply loosing the emotion that makes you believe in God or gods. Once you no longer have that feeling you have no reason to believe. Naturally the prevailing culture has significant impact on our emotions. In cultures where everyone believes the religious feelings receive continous reinforcement and loosing you faith is much less likely, since we are not only emotional but social animals as well.

The question that arises next is whether it is possible at all to lose your faith on the grounds of rational arguments alone? I think that reason can contribute, but the process of losing one's faith is a long one and in nearly all cases involves emotional changes as well. These may even be coupled to physical changes in the brain.

[Coyote]

Myself? Jewish.

I keep my faith because I don't feel it is challenged. I have no problem with seeing the Bible as metaphor, and Judaism has a lot of commentary and analysis allowing for a multitude of interpretations-- even leaving open the possibility that we may have completely and totally mis-interpreted everything from the get-go.

I reconcile the fact that religious practice makes no sense; in fact I think that's the whole point of it-- you do things that don't make sense, because you have faith that it means something in the long run.

[Invictus ChiKen]

I am just stubborn and refuse to believe there is nothing Supernatural out there.

[Kanastrous]

A vote for the emotional crutch, a vote for blind inertia, and a vote for wish-fulfillment.

No wonder believers are so impervious to reason.

[Superman]

A vote for the emotional crutch, a vote for blind inertia, and a vote for wish-fulfillment.

No wonder believers are so impervious to reason.

On this topic, I've always found a particular quote by Freud to sum up my feelings about religious folks.

Religion... comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form nowhere else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.

For the life of me, I can't seem to wrap my brain around the idea that an educated person, one who should probably know better, can still have a need for religion. I know that people can and do, but my mind can't seem to reconcile it. Personally, I couldn't make myself believe that the "miraculous" kinds of stories you find in the Bible, Koran, etc., are anything other than obvious fairy tales written by primitive Bronze Age societies that viewed their world in terms of magic. These are people who practiced all sorts of fun things like eating poop for its "curative" properties, drilling holes into their own skulls so that the evil spirits could escape, and/or draining the sick of their own much needed blood because they thought it was a good thing to do. Almost no one ever lived beyond 30 years of age. Is there really any possible way at all that these ritual poop eating folks had some kind of knowledge, whether it was about god, healing sick people, religion, burning bushes, ark building, magical forces, superpowers, etc., that we, with our scientific method, computers, medicine, laboratories, etc., just can't seem to grasp now? Could this even be remotely feasible in the most parallel mirror Star Trek universe? I'm thinking no, so how the hell can an educated Christian really believe something as silly and absurd as that?

Things like this really make me wonder if more educated religious folks really just force themselves into a state of denial to "go along with it." I have an extremely hard time believing that the "non stupid" religious folks can honestly believe some of the bullshit you find in the Bible, and hear from the pulpits. Maybe I'm wrong, but if that is indeed the case, then I almost feel sorry for them. Maybe they're keeping their faith because of some fucked up psychological need that's powerful enough to make them sacrifice reality. Like intentionally living in a state of mental bullshit.

[Surlethe]

Splitting tangent to its own thread. If it goes too much further, it can be more easily HoSed.

Edit: Fuck that, HoSed.

As for me? I have heard too many good arguments against Christianity, which is why I am hovering on the brink of not being Christian anymore.

[Tiriol]

There's, coldly speaking, the emotional crutch that faith provides: the idea of someone above and beyond the ken of humanity who watches over us, protects and guides us and finally judges us like a parent or a teacher would do. It may be the ultimate fulfillment of a need for a parent figure, but that's how it goes.

However, there is also some part of me, some irrational part certainly, that somehow feels and thinks that there is a greater presence than "mere" mindless and personality-lacking universe. And the hope that my faith provides me - that ultimately, we are all children of God and that His love is indeed given to all mankind, not just those who are more powerful, more important or more intelligent than others - is also tied closely to this perception.