What is your reason for believing?

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

I wonder if one knew a way to alter other people’s beliefs without saying a word, who would do it and who would not?

[Vinnie]

@Christy

Moderation note: Thank you all for sharing your testimonies and experiences. Since this thread is essentially requesting people’s very personal spiritual musings, maybe we could not argue about whether other people’s experience or explanation of faith is correct enough or not here. (There are plenty of other threads for that.) If you have a genunine, “what did you mean by that?” clarifying question, by all means, ask away, but if you are feeling a knee-jerk need to tell someone else they are wrong, how about we not do that here? Thanks.

Being more specific might be beneficial.

I jumped into a discussion between two individuals only because I thought my comment would be beneficial to the OP who seems to suffer from a mild case of scientism based on the 22 other threads he created this month. I certainly wasn’t trying to convince Mitchell of anything. We have had enough discussions over the past few years and I’m okay with not seeing eye to eye on various issues with him. But the OP is a young, impressionable Christian struggling with doubt. My personal insight is he doesn’t need to be told nonsense about science being magically a cut above everything else. I see that as part of his struggles to begin with.

But it would be easy to offer a reply that addresses such issues in the context of one’s own personal views without actually specifically replying to other individuals. “Whereas some might think this, I feel..” Would that be a preferable?

@MarkD

I wonder if one knew a way to alter other people’s beliefs without saying a word, who would do it and who would not?

How does this add to the primary purpose of this discussion?

Vinnie

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

No one is in trouble, I was just throwing the request out there before things devolved the way they sometimes do. Carry on.

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

@Vinnie

@MarkD

I wonder if one knew a way to alter other people’s beliefs without saying a word, who would do it and who would not?

How does this add to the primary purpose of this discussion?

Well in thinking about why anyone should be arguing with anyone else when people are only sharing why they believe, I wondered what I asked.

[St.Roymond]

@MarkD

I wonder if one knew a way to alter other people’s beliefs without saying a word, who would do it and who would not?

That depends on what is meant by “beliefs”. I would happily use such a power to alter people’s belief that just because someone on the internet says a given person is a worthless slimeball then that is true.

But I wouldn’t want such a power to be available to anyone who regards anyone else as a slimeball in the first place.

[Jay313 (Jay Johnson)]

@BuffaloMax17

I was wondering what your guy’s personal philosophy on faith was. Where do you guys get resources? How did you go about bringing your knowledge of God and science together?

Sorry I’m late to the party. My personal philosophy of faith is that everyone’s journey is different, as the testimonies here show. Like @mitchellmckain , I consider myself a Christian Existentialist, which simply means actions speak louder than words. What you truly believe is shown by your actions. In other words, a person with perfectly sound doctrine may be a total jerk, and a person with “defective” theology may be kind and loving and a true follower of Christ. Your life is the sum of your actions, not your beliefs. Personally, I think that’s what Jesus meant when he talked about having other sheep not of this fold.

You’ve come to the God-science discussion at a much younger age than I did. (Again, everyone’s journey is their own.) Like @SkovandOfMitaze , I was raised in a Christian environment, but it wasn’t YEC or literalist, so I never had a problem with science. I was drawn to the science-faith discussion because I’d observed that my children’s friends and my students were less inclined to believe than previous generations. I started looking into the reasons and came across Dave Kinnaman’s book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church … and Rethinking Faith. BioLogos has a good article from 2017 summarizing the six reasons. High on the list is the Church’s perceived animosity toward science. That’s what brought me to BL 10 years ago in my mid-50s, and that’s when my journey of learning the science of evolution began. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

https://biologos.org/articles/six-reasons-young-christians-leave-church

• Reason #1 – Churches seem overprotective.

• Reason #2 – Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.

• Reason #3 – Churches come across as antagonistic to science.

• Reason #4 – Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.

• Reason #5 – They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.

• Reason #6 – The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.

As for myself, I’m constantly filled with doubts because I think too much for my own good, but I’m still a Christian because I’ve had certain “spiritual” experiences in my life that make it nearly impossible for me to abandon the faith. Plus, I just love Jesus. What a compelling character!

Your own journey is vastly different. I’ll offer just one piece of advice based on my experience. In my teens and twenties I was obsessed with apologetics and eschatology. I experienced exactly zero spiritual growth during that time. So my advice is to spend some time outside your current obsession with science and faith. Read some stuff about spiritual growth and the spiritual disciplines, just as an example. Cultivate more than just the life of the mind.

[Jay313 (Jay Johnson)]

@MarkD

I wonder if one knew a way to alter other people’s beliefs without saying a word, who would do it and who would not?

Only saints could do it. Francis of Assisi is attributed with saying, “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.” It’s accurate, whether he actually said it or not.

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

@Vinnie

You are saying, “Everything is based on blind faith at its core but I blindly believe my blind faith is more than reasonable than yours because I blindly believe this stuff is more important than that stuff and I’ll make an arbitrary and untestable reason why.”

You are saying, “You can dictate what other people are saying.” I reject this as untrue.

I am certainly saying nothing similar to what you are putting in quotation marks, which also looks dishonest in this context. And I do not agree with this paraphrase.

The difference between faith and blind faith is that blind faith is willing to ignore and disregard any evidence to the contrary. I think it is plainly evident that logic starts from premises accepted on faith and goes from there, and therefore no conclusion is based on logic alone. At most we can concede that some premises look reasonable for the simple reason that we see no evidence to the contrary and accepting such a premise is the most meaningful way of living our lives. My usual example of a reasonable premise is that the universe did not simply start this morning with all our memories as they are. It is more reasonable and meaningful to take our memories as informative about a yesterday that existed. Likewise, science proves itself by its abundant utility in the living of our lives and makes it clear that going contrary to this is less reasonable.

[BuffaloMax17 (Friend of science and God)]

@Jay313

As for myself, I’m constantly filled with doubts because I think too much for my own good

I relate too much to this

[Terry_Sampson]

• Max, Don’t accept that description of yourself too quickly. Thinking a lot is not the problem. In fact, it’s usually a strength. The issue is not that you think, it’s how your thinking is structured when you do. There’s a difference between: productive thinking, i.e. working through ideas, weighing evidence, clarifying distinctions and looping thinking, i.e. circling the same concern, second-guessing your own reasoning, then second-guessing that second-guessing.
• What you’ve described elsewhere earlier: the worry that you might only be seeing the evidence you want, and then doubting even that, falls into the second category. That’s not “too much thinking,” it’s a feedback loop that doesn’t resolve.
• So it’s not that you think too much for your own good. You just need to get better at recognizing when your thinking is actually helping you move forward, and when it’s just looping. That’s a skill, not a flaw in who you are.
• And for what it’s worth, the fact that you even notice the issue and ask about them is a sign that your thinking is working, not failing.

[BuffaloMax17 (Friend of science and God)]

Thank you for that, Terry.

[Roy (Roy (Listener twice correct))]

@MarkD

I wonder if one knew a way to alter other people’s beliefs without saying a word, who would do it and who would not?

There are people who believe I should be locked up or even executed for my worldview.

Some of them refuse to listen.

So there’d be a lot of incentive, and I can’t say I wouldn’t use that ability.

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

Now I find myself wondering what could possibly be so alarming about your WV. I checked your profile but found almost no about - information. Have you made any introductory post I may have missed? I’m guessing you might be in the sciences in some capacity because of the nature of the forum though I’m not.

[Roy (Roy (Listener twice correct))]

@MarkD

Now I find myself wondering what could possibly be so alarming about your WV.

Nothing, really.

But atheism is still illegal in several countries.

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

Been there, done that. I’ll never be a proper theist but there is absolutely nothing about being an atheist which improved my understanding or quality of life. But when I finally figured out what God/gods is even about, I could see the value in it. Not a thing, not a genie nor an engineer. Not measurable nor testable, belief in God confers no advantage apart from possibly improving self knowledge. But I have no steel with which to back that up.

[knor (Kai)]

@Roy

But atheism is still illegal in several countries.

AI told me that atheism is effectively illegal in some countries that follow the laws or strict cultures of Islam: Saudi Arabia (atheists labelled as terrorists), Afghanistan (apostasy punishable by death), Iran (non-believers have less rights), Malaysia (for those counted as Muslims, apostasy or converting is punishable), Indonesia (not technically illegal but anti-blasphemy laws may be used against those who publicly criticize recognized religions) and United Arab Emirates (restrictions against non-religious expressions).

These restrictions seem to hit those who are active atheists in the sense that they publicly criticize the recognized religions (in practice, Islam). Atheists may have the possibility to just keep their lack of belief in gods without trying to advertise it publicly to others in these hostile countries. I do not think that an atheist is considered to be a threat as long as the person is not publicly criticizing the dominant religion (Islam) or blaspheme the ‘religiously Holy values’. I assume that many ‘officially’ Muslims are only ‘cultural Muslims’.

I support freedom of religion, including the right to not believe in any gods. Yet, compared to the followers of Jesus, I assume that atheists are not seen as comparable general threat and target of persecutions. It does not make the persecution of atheists acceptable.