/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12717670]

What exactly are the practical reasons to belief in God? If you wish to lead a moral lifestyle, why not just be moral without wasting time on meaningless customs and delusional thinking?

[Anonymous No.12719087]

>>12717670
>If you wish to lead a moral lifestyle, why not just be moral without wasting time on meaningless customs and delusional thinking?
A lot of people can't manage that.

[Anonymous No.12719112]

>>12717670
By “practical” do you mean material? Because asking for reasons to prove something within a system (materialism) that a priori negates belief in a supernatural being seems dumb.

[Anonymous No.12719119]

>>12717670
>practical

[Anonymous No.12719640]

>>12717670
Religious people are less prone to anxiety and depression. Of course, it's pretty cynical to justify a religion like Christianity that's all about personal sacrifice in favor of the next life based on the idea that it makes people feel nice in the moment.

[Anonymous No.12719657]

>>12719640
>Religious people are less prone to anxiety and depression
not true

[Anonymous No.12719680]

>>12719087
Why do you think this is? I've always failed to grasp it. If you need a concept like God to be moral, why do you care for that concept to exist in the first place, if the latter product, morality, isn't something you value by itself? I'd understand someone who secondhandly desired society to believe in a God, recognizing many people needing such a concept to remain moral, but not someone who firsthandedly needs God for themselves to be moral. Why do people need God to be moral at all? Like OP said, doesn't it just convolute things? Can you or someone try and explain the psychology behind this? Is it based in a reward-mentality? That if there's nothing out there watching your deeds, and providing recompense for those who behave better towards others, there's no point in being good to others at all?

[Anonymous No.12719685]

>>12717670
>morality without God

No. One of the problems atheists have is the unbelievers' assertion that it is possible to determine what is right and what is wrong without God. They have a fundamental inability to concede that to be effectively absolute a moral code needs to be beyond human power to alter.

On this misunderstanding is a supposed conundrum about whether there is any good deed that could be done only by a religious person, and not done by a Godless one. Like all such questions, this contains another question: what is good, and who is to decide what is good?

Left to himself, Man can in a matter of minutes justify the incineration of populated cities; the deportation, slaughter, disease and starvation of inconvenient people and the mass murder of the unborn.

I have heard people who believe themselves to be good, defend all these things, and convince themselves as well as others. Quite often the same people will condemn similar actions by different countries, often with great vigour.

For a moral code to be effective, it must be attributed to, and vested in, a non-human source. It must be beyond the power of humanity to change it to suit itself.

Its most powerful expression is summed up in the words 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends'.

The huge differences which can be observed between Christian societies and all others, even in the twilit afterglow of Christianity, originate in this specific injunction.

[Anonymous No.12719830]

>>12719657
I'm sure it's a factor in a healthy society or community, but merely following a religion and having faith has little to do with it.

[Anonymous No.12719996]

>>12717670
Joh 15:1-10 KJV
1) I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
2) Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
3) Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4) Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5) I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
6) If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
7) If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
8) Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.
9) As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.
10) If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

Joh 14:21-26 KJV
21) He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
22) Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?
23) Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
24) He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.
25) These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.
26) But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

[Anonymous No.12720002]

>>12719657
Gal 5:16-26 KJV
16) This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
17) For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
18) But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.
19) Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
20) Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
21) Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
>22) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
23) Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
24) And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
25) If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
26) Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.

Joh 3:3-8 KJV
3) Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
4) Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
5) Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
6) That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7) Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
8) The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

[Anonymous No.12720007]

There are no practical reasons. We believe because it's true. We're willing to be tortured and killed for our belief because it's true.

[Anonymous No.12720011]

>>12720002
Okay, but it was about religious people in general.

[Anonymous No.12720018]

>>12720007
>because it's true
Do you have solid evidence to back this up?

[Anonymous No.12720046]

>>12719685
I think you can make moral codes without God but they end up with strange answers to problems, like allowing people to kill you instead of hurting them by fighting back.

[Anonymous No.12720049]

>>12720011
>religious
Jas 1:26-27 KJV
26) If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.
27) Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

there is religion and belief. religion is a practice, and serving the Lord is not without anxiety, though He grants us peace by the edification His Holy Spirit. i can testifies to the anxiety of knowing the Lord in 2019, when the scriptures would seem to imply this age shoudnt be. He is real though, the grace is real , the forgiveness is real, the baptism is real.

Mat 6:25-34 KJV
25) Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
26) Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
27) Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
28) And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29) And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30) Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
31) Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32) (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
33) But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
34) Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

[Anonymous No.12720062]

>>12717670
Why is there something rather than nothing?

[Anonymous No.12720073]

>>12720018
Four detailed, separate accounts of it happening?

[Anonymous No.12720082]

>>12720073
And we know they're accurate because?

[Anonymous No.12720089]

>>12720082
Why do we know that the Battle of Thermopylae actually happened? It's about as well-recorded as accounts of the Resurrection.

[Anonymous No.12720100]

>>12720089
>Why do we know that the Battle of Thermopylae actually happened?
We can never be sure of course. But even if it were made up, it would be inconsequential in my day to day life, while the gospels are about the Son of God, so I find it much more crucial to determine their authenticity.

[Anonymous No.12720121]

Salvation

[Anonymous No.12720424]

>>12719685
If humans are expected to interpret and work with said God-given moral code, subjectivity is still present, and all the problems of the ordinary moral debate remain. If we were still following the Bible to a tee, slavery would still be around, which was promoted within the book. The people you described as considering themselves "good", I consider to be sociopaths, if not psychopaths, and I consider many politicians to fall somewhere on that spectrum. We ourselves already know what it means to be "good", and that peace, compassion, love and growth are better than war, hatred, and destruction. The only object, now, is to actually achieve this in our societies, on the political-level. There are many people who have no belief in God at all and are highly moral, there are many people who do believe in God and are highly immoral. A person needs to be accountable to themselves first and foremost, since one could clearly believe in an external arbiter and still not live up to what is expected from them.

[Anonymous No.12720469]

>>12720424
>there are many people who do believe in God and are highly immoral
Most of them only pretend to believe in God.

[Anonymous No.12720501]

>>12720424
>If humans are expected to interpret and work with said God-given moral code, subjectivity is still present,
Rom 7:7-25 KJV
7) What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
8) But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.
9) For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
10) And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.
11) For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.
12) Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
13) Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.
14) For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
15) For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
16) If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
17) Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
18) For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
19) For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
20) Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
21) I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
22) For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
23) But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
24) O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
25) I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

[Anonymous No.12720513]

>>12720424
>>12720501
2Co 3:3-18 KJV
3) Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
4) And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward:
5) Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;
6) Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
7) But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
8) How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
9) For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
10) For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
11) For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
12) Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:
13) And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:
14) But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.
15) But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
16) Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
17) Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18) But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Rom 10:4 KJV
4) For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

[Anonymous No.12720629]

>>12719680
because then you don’t fall in a frame that accepts relativism

[Anonymous No.12720634]

>>12717670
The practicality of believing that things work a certain way (i.e., that there is a divine connection between things) is that it helps you persevere towards finding the most fitting solutions to challenges you face, and life is about facing challenges. The downside to it is that you can get hung up on perfection and fail that way.

[Anonymous No.12720652]

>>12720629
If the God you accept is bound to a specific culture, which is the case if you follow any of the world's religions, then you'll still fall into a frame of relativism in the sense that your God is not what another's might be, though both of you consider yours to be the Absolute.

I was also asking moreso why some people won't even behave morally unless a God is involved, and why they can't be moral for morality's sake.

[Anonymous No.12720733]

>>12720501
Doesn't really address what I said. How do you judge what is righteous or not, from the law in front of you? If we still followed the Bible perfectly, slavery would still be here. Do you support slavery? Following Leviticus, homosexuals and adulterers would still be stoned today. Everything will always, always require human judgement, and this will always require ourselves to listen to the moral codes within us that allow for morality in the first place. You will never be able to escape this fact, whether you place commandments from an external arbiter like God before us or not. And if the problem always requires our own judgement, then we should remove the pretense of a middleman and make the judgements for ourselves.

[Anonymous No.12720756]

>>12720002
so you're trying to prove a scientific point by using the bible????
well done but no

[Anonymous No.12720779]

>>12717670
Those meaningless customs have the meaning of whatever community practices it
It’s not that delusional to believe there’s a higher entity considering the philosophical diaelema of it being unprovable and infalsifiable.

[Anonymous No.12720900]

>>12720733
>Think not that I am come to destroy the law, orthe prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
Jesus replaced the laws of the Old Testament. If you're going to complain about the morality of Christianity, use examples from the New Testament

[Anonymous No.12721006]

>>12717670
What exactly are the practical reasons to not believe in God?

[Anonymous No.12721014]

>>12720900
I was providing a larger example, on how things that were once "divine commandments" can still be very disturbing, and that we will always need to use our judgement at the end of the day. The NT, through Paul, fully condones slavery, which I mentioned earlier.

Jesus also to my knowledge said nothing about homosexuals specifically, so we could presume the old statutes regarding them still hold. Unless you get to pick and choose what remains in place from the OT and what does not, which I could similarly criticize.

[Anonymous No.12721021]

I'm not a Christian because the extant Church is fractured along ideological lines and contains a large amount of corruption in nearly every denomination. Pedophile priests in the Catholic Church are a good example of this.
I'm also not an atheist. I believe in a creator and an afterlife because the alternatives (professed disbelief or apathy towards their existence) are, frankly, kind of depressing.
I would much rather live in a world where death is not the ultimate end, and so I choose to believe that it is not. Existential fear is the motivation for my belief.

For me, the question is "since a supreme being's existence cannot be proven or disproven, why *not* believe in one?" If one exists, you are doing yourself a cosmic disservice by not doing the bare minimum of simply believing in it.
I should probably add that the creator I believe in is either omnipotent or omnibenevolent, but not both. I lean toward the latter.

>>12720652
>why can't people be moral for morality's sake
Not him, but I'll give my two cents:
Morality is a social tool, and without it we would all act in self-interest -- to the detriment of any given "society" as a collection of people working together.
If you take it for granted that humans are animals, and therefore prize self-preservation above all else, it is useful for a society's leaders (the religious leaders, in this case) to create an "excuse" for morality ("if you don't help thy neighbor, you'll go to Hell!") in an effort to promote coordination.
You are probably correct in your original assertion that God as an "overseer" who rewards good behavior is a powerful motivator in and of itself.

[Anonymous No.12721054]

>>12721006
There are practical reasons to not believe in the God of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. He is used as a justification for regressive life choices and as a tool of oppression.
There are no practical reasons to deny the existence of a creator deity in general. The fact that its existence cannot be definitively disproven is reason enough to believe in one, but not enough to go the Judeo-Christian route and assume that the creator is all-powerful and infallibly moral.

[Anonymous No.12721087]

>>12720073
I could see the resurrection and every other miracle happen with my own eyes and it still wouldn't convince me it's god's work.
All it would tell me is that there's people that can do stuff that I don't understand. I've only been alive for a few decades, how the fuck do I know those "miracles" aren't possible without the abrahamic god.

[Anonymous No.12721152]

>>12720089
You are comparing two separate events here, one of which centers around a conflict between two nations (something that has occurred millions of times in human history) and the other consisting of a unique, supernatural occurrence, the likes of which has not been recorded since.
It should be understandable to you that the Resurrection inspires debate and skepticism. Most of the nonbelievers agree that Jesus of Nazareth absolutely existed, preached a gospel, inspired disciples to found the Church, and was condemned by the Jews as a false Messiah and executed through crucifixion by the Romans.
The difficulty that we have is accepting that what happened afterward -- the empty tomb, the visions of Jesus seen by the disciples after his death -- is actually the result of his divine resurrection, rather than a combination of human errors in judgment that resulted in a fantastic story being taken as "gospel truth."

[Anonymous No.12721195]

>>12720018
>>12720073
Belief cannot and should not be based on an evidence, for any evidence is of the finite while belief is of the infinite. If your belief requires any factual statement to be true then it's incomplete, it's rooted in the finite and will die with the finite.

[Anonymous No.12721208]

>>12721195
He said "I believe because it's true".
If it's true you should be able to prove it, otherwise you have no place making such wild statements.

[Anonymous No.12721227]

>>12721208
Yeah, and I point that out. He should have said "it's false but I believe it". Otherwise you will spend all your time worrying whether whatever you believe in is actually true, and that's what he surely does.