Are there reasons for believing or not believing in God?

Answer 1

Opinions from our Contributors:

• Because there are many different religions and not every religion follows God.
• People do not believe in a god for many reasons. Often it is as the result of a long period of examination of existing "proofs", discussions and study.
• They have studied religious texts and found them lacking in proof and full of illogic
• observations of the world indicate no control or guidance from a supernatural being
• Science provides a better worldview than religion
• Logical reviews of the abilities of any supposed god are not supported by observations
• The arguments for the existence of a god by "authorities" are often fallacious
• Observations indicate people with or without a belief in a god are equally happy
• Corruption among the godly is at least as prevalent as among the secular
• Some people are just contrary or base their public life positions on shock value.
• Some philosophies (Buddhism, Taoism, etc.) do not have a need for god(s) in their belief system
• Some people don't see a need to care about or believe in god(s) or any religious practices
• Some people have researched the issue and concluded that there is no evidence supporting the existence of any supernatural realm of god(s)
• People from non-theist families have never cared to consider the existence of god(s) as it was not important to their life
• Some people belong to religions with a different god or god(s) and would not believe in the questioner's specific God. In addition it should be noted that belief in a god is not the same as belief in any particular god that others support. Neither does belief in a god translate into any desire to worship, obey, love, follow the rules or care about the existence of that god.
• I believe that that people deny God on the basis of convenience; if there is no God than there is no such thing as truth or as moral laws. A person's denial of God allows them to do whatever they want. I also believe people don't want to be accountable for what they do.
• Non-believers are non-believers because they believe that the evidence most strongly supports a view that God does not exist. This has nothing to do with mocking God, in fact atheists seem to be more tolerant of Christians than many Christians are of atheists. As for me, I studied the Bible carefully, reading much of it several times, and find in it much to prove the non-existence of God. The following is not in itself proof, but I refer you to Ecclesiastes 9:5: "For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten." If the Bible is literally true and Ecclesiastes is a legitimate book of the Bible, this should be a troubling statement for believers.
• No verifiable and replicable proofs. "Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence." However, your wordings (believe) is correct. "Beliefs only requires faith. Facts require proofs.
• The reason why some people don't believe in God is mainly because of all the inconsistencies and falsehoods perceived in religious scriptures. Some religious leaders have used their dogma to oppress, victimize and terrorize those who refuse to subscribe to their particular brand of religion. Jesus and John the Baptist were classic victims of tyrannical bigotry from greedy selfish religious charlatans. Religion seems to have had more to do with human selfishness and greed than with righteousness, piety, compassion and spirituality. Certain apparently evil, vicious, and greedy individuals enjoy success and prosperity from the exploitation of the weak. But some individuals are fooled with false promises of a paradise called Heaven, which can only be accessed after death.
• Because they believe that it is rational to live their lives normally and without "supernatural" interference. Many people use "rational" as the reason for not believing.
• A creator god doesn't exist. I'm as certain of that as I'm as certain that any unfalsifiable concepts (like unicorns, elves, Santa, other gods, and centaurs) do not exist. Just because it cannot be disproven that a creator god exists (which is a logical fallacy of proving a negative), doesn't mean that God exists by default. It's the same way with unicorns. Just because I can't prove they don't exist doesn't mean they do. And it's not because atheists "don't want" God to exist, it isn't an ego thing, and it isn't a "hoped-for" thing. It's an empirical thing. It's accepting reality and refusing to substitute the hoped-for for the actual. Faith is willful ignorance. That's all it is. It's belief without evidence, even without reason. People don't believe in a god because there is none. It's like being in philosophy class and you're asked to write a 5-page proof on "Prove that chair doesn't exist." Peers are going on and on for 5 pages, when really, the only answer is "What chair?"
• If someone is raised in a household where God is never discussed or mentioned, it can be very hard to suddenly accept a new way of thinking, no matter who you are. Also, Religion is based on Faith, which is not a material object. You can't see it, touch it, measure it, hear it or feel it. For people who are used to the term "seeing is believing" meaning they must physically see things to believe they exist, faith can be quite a hard concept to understand!
• To answer the question of why people do not believe in God, first you must define which God? Vishnu, Mithras, Jupiter, Thor, Ra, Quetzalcoatl etc. It is a safe assumption that most people do not believe in one of the Gods mentioned above. Each one of those Gods had or have many that believe in them, their stories or mythology. They believe so with their hearts and minds, and they just know they are correct. Many do not believe in one set of stories, but believe in their own 'God's' mythology. We believe what society wants us to believe and what we are introduced to. This is seen in India, where most people believe in Vishnu but not Thor, Zeus or Yahweh. In the West, most people are the opposite, they believe in Yahweh or Jesus Christ as their God and not Vishnu, and the other religions are thought to be wrong.
• The belief in God means you have to believe in the supernatural. Atheists specifically do not believe in the supernatural so they therefore do not believe in any God. Agnostics believe it is impossible to prove that there is a God (there is no scientific evidence of any God, let alone one particular God) but they also know it's difficult to say there isn't a God since there is likely unprovable, so they just say it's unknowable.
• They cite the lack of any evidence. They think evidence has to support the theory that God exists.
• There are many reasons depending on the individual, of course. First and foremost, many people do not need a belief in gods to be good. They take responsibility for themselves and direct their own lives. They know that god-stories grew from the first attempts by humans to answer questions that we now know the answers to. We are all born atheists. Religious belief is a learned behavior. In order to believe in gods a person must have an unquestioning belief in something as being true in the complete absence of proof. Many people simply do not think that way. They reject a dependence on faith in anything for which we have no proof. They lead ethical lives based on natural, inborn moral standards.
• True non-believers know that moral behavior is an inherent part of the human condition and does not only spring from a belief in gods. There are good and bad believers, and good and bad non-believers. It is absurd to believe that moral behavior can only be derived from a belief in "God". There are a billion people on this planet who don't believe in "God" and who do not need any religious doctrine or clergy to tell them what not to do. Historically, organized religions have induced fear, hate, hostility, ignorance and prejudice for those outside the parameters of their teachings.
• It may be that some people do not believe in God so they can do whatever they want basically. Some people may be influenced by non-believers or may oppress other people with threats, fear, death, etc.
• Because they are rational.
• Because a god does not exist.
• Because most people do not require religious constraints to be valuable members of society. They rely instead on the human conscience, law enforcement, social impressions, etc. all work to prevent a person from doing whatever they want and it is obvious that it is among the religious where threats of death are more prevalent. You are more likely to be killed by a believer for not believing than a non-believer for believing.
• As president of the atheist student organization at my university I would say that a typical reason for non-belief is lack of evidence. There are a lot of arguments for god, but I have yet to find any of them persuasive. There just doesn't seem to be any (observable, testable, repeatable) sign of a personal god that can't be more reasonably explained by natural means (which are observable, testable and repeatable).
• Well, people don't believe in the existence of god for many reasons, A) Even if he's real, there's no proof supporting that, B) There is little chance that any religion chosen by them would be accurate as there are infinite gods in the human culture, C) If you're god is real, we were still born atheists, because at birth we don't even have the ability to control our motor functions, we're not smart enough, we certainly not smart enough to think 'there is a God,' D) All religions I have come across have been contradicted in one or another by a fact, and all have some bloody skeletons in the closet. Let's take for example, Christianity, if you read, and fully comprehend everything the Bible says, then there are many horrific stories of infanticide, genocide, rape, God commanded infanticide, and genocide, and of course, sacrificial killings.
• All people are born atheists. Those who are raised without any religion often stay that way. Personal strife may sway some people to seek answers in the supernatural. They find comfort in a church community where they are taught about god. These are religious conversions, but they are in the minority.
• Most people who believe in god do so because they were taught to when they were very young. They do not know life without their belief. The church encourages this indoctrination by use of various rites of passage -- baptism, bar mitzvah, etc.
• Some people who believe in god give up their belief when they begin to use reason and question religious texts. They soon learn that they have been believing in ancient superstitions perpetuated by modern churches while the rest of the modern world embraces science and reality.

Answer 2

Christians have had two thousand years to prove his existence. They have devised any number of supposed proofs, including the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the moral argument and the argument from religious experience, yet none of these arguments has come close to proving the existence of God. The Bible is cited as sufficient proof of his existence, yet we now know that before the seventh century BCE, the Hebrew people were not even monotheists. The Bible was written by well-intentioned people, but not by divine inspiration.

If there is no proof that God exists, there is no reason to believe. Fairy Tales about the fiery pits of hell are for little children, not for people making a rational choice.

Answer 3

There are tens of proofs for God's existence. These have been recorded for centuries and are easy to look up. However, this subject ultimately becomes one of personal belief, since our possession of free-will mandates that it be possible to put forth arguments (fallacious or not) against every one of the proofs.
Here are a few.
1) Teleological Argument: The universe has definite design, order, and arrangement which cannot be sufficiently explained outside a theistic worldview. (This is how Abraham, without benefit of teachers, came to reject the chaotic world-view of idolatry and the possibility of Atheism). For example, theoretical physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies (whose early writings were not especially sympathetic to theism) states concerning the fundamental structure of the universe, "the impression of design is overwhelming" (Davies, 1988, p. 203).From the complexities of the human eye to the order and arrangement of cosmology, the voice of God is heard. God's existence is the best explanation for such design. God is the designer.Is there evidence against Evolution

God's wisdom seen in His creations

More about God's wisdom

2) Anthropic Principle: The laws of the universe seem to have been set in such a way that stars, planets and life can exist. Many constants of nature appear to be finely tuned for this, and the odds against this happening by chance are astronomical. Professor Russel Stannard (a particle physicist) states: "The universe has been bent over backwards in order that intelligent life should exist...must have known we were coming."

3) Sensus divinitatus: The innate sense of the divine exists within all people. People and cultures of all time have, by instinct, sensed a need to worship something greater than themselves. No ancient societyever existed that did not believe in a supernatural power.

4) Tradition: There are events in human history which cannot be explained without God. Many people have their subjective stories that bend them in the direction of theism, but there are also historical eventssuch as the Giving of the Torah to over two million people at Mount Sinai, which are underpinnings for the belief in God.

5) Pascal's Wager: Belief in God is the most rational choice due to the consequences of being wrong. If one were to believe in God and be wrong, there would be no consequences. However, if one were to deny God and be wrong, the consequences are eternally tragic. Therefore, the most rational choice is not agnosticism or atheism, but belief in God.

6) Logic. Why is there reality rather than nothing? Aside from God's creating it, there are only five options:
a) The universe is eternal and everything has always existed.
- Even atheists have abandoned this possibility, especially because it would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

b) Nothing exists and all is an illusion. There is no reality; there is only nothing.
- This possibility, it should be obvious, is completely self-defeating. In order to even make such a proposition, the subject has to exist in some sense. If all is an illusion, where did the illusion come from? Even the solipsist, who does not believe in the existence of other minds, has to explain the genesis of his own mind.

c) The universe created itself. This is the idea that the universe and all that is in it did not have its origin in something outside itself, but from within.
- Like with the previous two, this makes a logical absurdity. It would be like creating a square triangle. It's impossible. A triangle by definition cannot be square. So creation cannot create itself as it would have to pre-date itself in order to create.

d) Chance created the universe. The odds of winning the lottery are not very good; but given eons of time, everyone will win. While the odds of the universe spontaneously appearing are not minuscule, could it happen, given enough time?

- This option is a dishonest sleight of hand that, like "survival of the fittest," amounts to nothing, because it implies that "chance" itself has quantitative causal power.
The word "chance" refers to possibilities. It does not have the power to cause those possibilities. It is nonsense to speak of chance being an agent of creation, since chance is not a force. "What are the real chances of the universe being created by chance? Impossible. Chance is incapable of creating a single molecule, let alone an entire universe. Why not? Chance is no thing. It is not an entity. It has no being, no power, no force. It can effect nothing because it has no causal power within it. It is a word which describes mathematical possibilities which, by the curious flip of the fallacy of ambiguity, slips into the discussion as if it were a real entity with real power, the power of creativity." (R.C. Sproul, Not a Chance. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999.)

e) The universe is created by nothing. Simply put, nothing created the universe.
- The problem here is that it is either a repetition of option "a" (the universe is eternal) or fails due to the irrationality of "d." In our current universe, the law of cause and effect cannot be denied by sane people. While we often don't know what the cause of some effect is, this does not mean that there was no cause. When we go to the doctor looking for an explanation for the cause of our neck pain, we don't accept the answer "There is no cause. It came from nothing."

Now, the other side of the Question: why might people notbelieve in God?

1) Peer influence. In high school, for example, the one or two religious believers in a class may be subject to ridicule.

2) Convenience; desires. No one wants "bothersome" rules, or limitations to their personal pleasure. We see how lack of self-discipline has led to epidemic obesity, drunkenness, divorce rates, violence etc.

3) Lack of proper information. People have inaccurate notions about God, religion and belief. They've picked up tidbits, jokes, and "sound-bites," and on such solid authority they dismiss the entire topic.

4) Unfortunate experiences. Many have had personal hardships, or a harsh religious upbringing or education, and as a consequence may retain an unhappy feeling towards belief, without realizing that emotions and proofs are two different things.

5) Many think that science, and specifically Evolution, have proved that there is no God. They don't comprehend that even if Evolution was an unquestionable fact, it would not automatically follow that God isn't there. They also seem unaware that there are a significant number of highly-qualified scientists who do not believe in Evolution.

6) Intellectual laziness. Many people have simply never delved into the subject, to see if God's existence can be convincingly demonstrated.

7) Stereotyping. People call us "religious nuts," "Bible-thumpers," etc.; so the average layperson may get a negative feeling toward all belief, not realizing that he/she should first look into the existence of God in principle, before necessarily looking into religion.