THINKING ABOUT RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

12.11.2024

I hope these thoughts will be of some value in helping to work out how to see religion

and to decide what to believe. It is obviously a topic on which there is a huge variety

of ideas and many of them are weird, wild and worrying. Some of them have

beneficial effects but many do not; many torment people for a lifetime and many

cause some people to do dreadful things to each other. Following are brief notes on

some ways of analysing aspects of the topic which I think clarify some issues and

facilitate the business of deciding what to believe.

The document is an argument against holding religious beliefs. It puts forward

considerations which seem to me to mean that there is not a good case for believing

in any religion, and further that to do so involves mistaken ways of thinking about the

world. It is written especially for teenagers, to help them work out their perspective

on the issue and hopefully to help them avoid getting stuck in what can be as very

life-costly rabbit hole.

The basic issue: Belief … when is it appropriate?

Religion involves what the philosophers call “truth claims”, propositions about the

nature of things, such as “gorillas exist”, “this is a metal”, God exists.” These set the

question, “Is this claim true?”, and that sets the question, “How should I decide

whether or not it is true?” As I see it there is only one way to try to answer this

second question; you have to ask yourself how good is the case for the claim, what

are the reasons for and against it and what finding do they indicate?

This is basically how science proceeds. You have to collect evidence and reasons

and interpret them. Often the process does not settle the issue, so you don’t end up

able to justify a conclusion, and often you end up with a strong case which is not

conclusive so you have to say that in view of the considerations you are aware of the

claim has this or that probability of being true. In this latter case you cannot say it is

in fact a true claim; you must accept that even though there is a strong case for it, it

might not be true.

The process is often messy. Often it is difficult to interpret the significance of

“evidence” and “reasons”. Indeed, often it is debatable what constitutes evidence.

Does the fact that millions believe Allah is God constitute evidence that he is? Is my

strong feeling that God loves me evidence that he exists and does? But the point is

that, as I see it, one must not go beyond what one’s evidence, reasons, indicate, and

one must hold one’s “belief” only as strongly as the case one has for it…meaning

that usually you cannot say you are certain. It seems to me that especially in the

religious area this means we cannot believe 100% … we should not say we know.

But religious people typically do go beyond their evidence. They typically believe, in

the sense that they have little or no doubt. It could be that they have had

experiences that would convince me, such as a visit from God, but it seems to me

that in general they are not justified in believing at all strongly, if at all.

Note that it is not satisfactory to appeal to intuition or feelings here. No matter how

strongly someone says his intuition tells him the earth is flat or his team will win on

Saturday, that counts for nothing in the business of believing such truth claims. We

do not and should not regard such grounds as constituting good reasons for thinking

the claim is true. But many religious people do seem to assert strong conviction

solely/primarily on the base of impressions or feelings or intuitions.

So it seems to me that we should not be strong believers in religious claims. We

should accept them only in so far as we have “good” reasons to think they are true.

Yes the concept of “good” here is problematic; some would argue that their

experiences do in fact constitute good reasons for thinking God has communicated

with them etc. But you should think carefully about whether you have good reasons

for believing this or that religious claim.

Thus it seems that me that a) we are all agnostics, or should admit to being

agnostics … we don’t know …we don’t have a strong case for belief in religious

claims…, but also b) there are not very persuasive reasons for believing any religion.

That is, it seems to me that there is a very strong case for atheism. As I see it there

might be a God, he/she might take the form Christians or Jews or Kalahari Bushmen

claim for all I know, but I don’t think there are good reasons for thinking so, and

therefore I do not believe any of these claims. I am not dogmatic about it … maybe

there is a God and I would be happy to engage in further argument, especially

because I am quite interested in why people believe what seems to me to be

implausible.

Let’s look briefly at the case.

What are the reasons people give for religious belief? What are the main arguments

for the existence of God that have been given by philosophers over millennia? It

seems to me that these have been remarkably weak. Here are some quick thoughts

on the issue.

For thousands of years gurus have been putting forward arguments intended to

“prove” the existence of God. Just Google it and you will find maybe 30 of them.

They all seem to me to be somewhere between totally unimpressive and silly;

consider “… the elegance of the laws of physics or the elegant laws of

mathematics is evidence of a creator deity who has arranged these things to be

beautiful”. (Wikipedia, 2023.)

By far the “best” argument seems to be, “The world has been created, so

someone/something must have created it.”  However none of the possible answers to this question we can imagine is at all

satisfactory. All set huge difficulties. One answer is, no it wasn’t created, it was

always there. Another is that it was created by some thing/conditions, but not by a

God. And to conclude that there is a God who created everything solves the puzzle

at the cost of generating a bigger puzzle …i.e., who created God. So going down this

rabbit hole also doesn’t seem to explain anything at all satisfactorily, let alone show

that God exists.

The issue is not just one that reasoning cannot resolve, it is one for which we cannot

even imagine plausible possible answers. There are many issues like this, such as

whether the universe has a boundary, and what consciousness is. I think one just

has to park such questions in the “haven’t got a clue” box, accepting that one has no

reason to accept any conceivable answer. So don’t worry about it, just get on with

other things.

The Catholic Church insists that reason can show the existence of God. Kidd (2006),

referring to the Vatican Council pronouncement says, “… God, the origin and end of

all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason, through

the things that he created. (Dei Filius 2.) But he says, “But the Church has never

offered an actual proof…”

Many give us considerations which might appear to indicate the possible existence

of God, the second best try being that nature is so complex, involving things like the

eye, that it must have been designed by a conscious being. But none of these is very

impressive to me, and there are always far more impressive reasons for an

alternative explanation. ... such as evolution provides a good explanation for the

complexity of nature; for instance the fossil record shows how it produced an eye

about eight different times in different species.)

“But you have ignored faith; faith goes beyond reason!”

This claim is central to religious belief and doctrine. Reason is commonly thought to

be confined to a domain that cannot deal with other domains, including the

“supernatural”, and while it can take us a long way to knowledge and grounds for

belief in various fields there are others in which it cannot take us anywhere They say

that in the religious field it is necessary to take a “leap of faith” to arrive at belief.

This is highly problematic, and in my view utterly confused and a serious mistake in

thinking. It is irrational.

As I see it one can only believe a truth claim to the degree that one has reasons supporting it. I have argued above that with respect to religious claims reason can at times take one some of the way to a case for believing but never clinches the case; at best you end up with a case that does not show the claim to be true. Now what on earth can justify you in going beyond that position to say you believe, are convinced, have no doubt that the claim is true? What reason can you give for going beyond where your reasons and reasoning has taken you? To say you can indeed go beyond is a nonsense, it is illogical, irrational.

Yes, reason has its limits, there are questions it cannot possibly settle (e.g., what is

the meaning of life), but it is not acceptable to hold any belief that is contrary to

reason, or for which you do not have good reasons … and that’s what the religious

believer is doing. S/he is saying “… reason does not show that God exists, but I

believe he does … I cannot give any reasons for that step beyond where reason

leaves me, but I have taken it.”

As I see it, that is not just logically wrong, an unjustifiable step, it is very dangerous.

It is like me saying “You should pay your taxes, there are good reasons for that ...

but I need not. I can’t give you any good reasons why not but that’s what I believe.” If

you go around the world adopting beliefs like that you will soon run into trouble.

So it seems to me that faith is a huge mistake; it is seriously wrong to have faith, or

have a faith, given that this is to believe beyond where reason has taken you. This is

quite different from saying things like “I have faith in my team.”, which is just saying

something like I support them or think they will win. Yet vast amounts of religious

rhetoric and doctrine take it for granted that not only is it in order to have faith but

that you must make a leap of faith to be a true believer, and there is nothing wrong-

headed about this.

This is the basis on which maybe two billion people believe claims like, … if I stick

pins in an image of my enemy he will die… if I pray to God he will intervene for me

… this water is now holy … God loves me … it is right to kill non-believers…there

are two levels in hell … god wants me to be celibate …there is life after death …

heaven exists … there is a devil … there was a virgin birth … the ark held all animal

species …

The puzzles and implausibility.

Religious doctrines typically involve many huge claims and theories that are

stunningly difficult to accept, and puzzles to do with why on earth God would have

organised things that way. These instances seem to me to show that many religious

claims simply do not make sense. As I see it this supports the view that the doctrines

are the bits and pieces, stories, additions by popes and gurus that have accumulated

over very long periods, but mostly originating several thousand years ago when myth

and superstition and gods and spirits were everywhere. Here are notes on a few,

mostly arising from Christianity.

Why doesn’t God make the situation clearer?

We are told that God is very concerned for my welfare and wants me to join him in

heaven for ever, but all this is far from obvious. Most people can’t see that this is the

situation. As Bertrand Russell said when asked what would he say if he died and

was confronted by God at the Pearly Gates, “Why didn’t you give us more

evidence?!” Why would this God who wants me to get into heaven put me in a

situation where there is a big chance that I will not think he exists and will do what is

required, and then end up in hell. He could so easily come down and explain things

in a clear, brief and convincing way?

Why do we need “saving”?

We humans do the wrong thing from time to time and Christians believe these sins

accumulate and need to be somehow paid off. We are sinners and need redemption.

Catholics claim that confessing them to a priest and doing “penance” can balance

the books. I can’t see that it does, or that I need to do anything but compensate for

any harm I’ve done and try to do better in future, etc.

But the big claim is that we humans got ourselves into such a sinful state that God

had to send his only son to earth and organise for him to be killed, in order to save

us. It is impossible to make any sense of this. How does that save us, even if saving

is needed? God is assumed to be omnipotent so could have organised things

differently. And how come the event saved us, wiping out our sin-debt, without us

having to do anything? Did the  event wipe out previous sins, or those we have committed since?

Why does the Bible not contain any of the knowledge we have workedout in the last two thousand years?

As Richard Dawkins says, as far as knowledge about the world goes the Bible gives

us no wisdom beyond that of ancient goat-herders. Why, if God is concerned about

our welfare, didn’t he povideus with  a few good hints like, “Just wash your hands now and then”? That would have saved a lot of suffering.

Prayer.

Why do people pray? God knows what they are thinking. Why ask him for things…he

knows what I want, and why do you think he will be influenced by whether or not you

ask?

Above all, what is the point of praying to God to save you from the hurricane he

organised in the first place, of praying that your sick relative will survive. Do you

think it will make a difference … why?

Why is God such a brutal nasty vindictive terrifying fellow?

Again he loves us humans but the Bible reports lots of terrible things he does to us.

Why does he organise so much dreadful experience? This is the “problem of evil”;

why does he permit or cause disasters, deformed children, disease?

One answer is that God gave us free will, the freedom to make our own decisions

and mistakes. Well, was that a good idea? We don’t just let kids make their own

mistakes, we intervene a lot to protect them and help them make good decisions.

Anyway, many bad experiences are not the result of our decisions, such as

earthquakes.

The contradictions and factual mistakes.

Many Christians believe that the Bible is the word of God and everything it says is

literally true. But there are many works giving long lists of statements in the Bible

which are self-contradictions or just plain wrong, scientifically, geographically or

historically. As Cline (2012) says, “The Bible is filled with errors and mistakes.”

Here are a few examples. More are given in the appendix. They are from a source

containing hundreds of instances; see reference given.

Two of every animal species fitted into an ark.

 Birds were created before land animals (Gen 1:20, 24). – The fossil record

shows the opposite.

The earth has four corners, and floats on water (Isa 11:12, Ps 24:2, 136:6,

Rev 7:1).

Earth is a circular disk (Isa 40:22).

Whales were created before insects (Gen 1:21-24).

The hare chews the cud (Lev 11:5-6).

EX 20:8-11, 31:15-17, 35:1-3 No work is to be done on the Sabbath, not even

lighting a fire. The commandment is permanent, and death is required for

infractions regarding the Sabbath.

NU 31:17-18, DT 7:2, JS 6:21-27, 7:19-26, 8:22-25, 10:20, 40, 11:8-15, 20,

JG 11:30-39, 21:10-12, 1SA 15:3 God orders or approves the complete

extermination of groups of people which include innocent women and/or

children.

DT 24:1-5 A man can divorce his wife simply because she displeases him and

both he and his wife can remarry.

MK 10:2-12 Divorce is wrong, and to remarry is to commit adultery

Earth is flat (these verses were used for centuries by the church to prove this:

  Ps 93:1, Jer 10:13, Dan 4:10-11, Zech 9:10, Matt 4:8, Rev 1:7)

Earth does not move (Ps 93:1, 96:10, 104:5, 1 Chr 16:30).

Death or illness is caused by sin (Gen 2:17, Lev 26:16, 21, 25, Deut 7:15,

28:21, 27, James 1:15).

God himself believes that a house or clothes can have leprosy and he details

the remedy. Lev 13, 14.

Snakes eat dust (Gen 3:14, Isa 65:25).

GE 1:11-12, 26-27 Trees were created before man was created.

GE 2:4-9 Man was created before trees were created

GE 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.

GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before birds were created.

GE 1:26-27 Man and woman were created at the same time.

GE 2:7, 21-22 Man was created first, woman sometime later.

What are we to make of this? It seems to me to show that the Bible is a collection of

ancient stories and claims somehow put together by people who took them seriously

in a period more than two thousand years ago, and in societies that believed lots of

myths and superstitions. Google “origins of the bible” and you will find information

on this process. There seems to me to be no reason to conclude that the Bible is the

word of God.

Appendix; Other instances.

The ostrich abandons her eggs (Job 39:13-16)

Jonah is able to survive three days and nights in the belly of the fish without

oxygen and without being digested (Jonah1:17, 2:10).

Some fowl and insects have four legs (Lev 11:20-23).

If Noah’s ark landed in Turkey, why would marsupials go back to Australia

where we find the majority of marsupial fossils that were deposited by the

flood. Why didn’t marsupial disperse out from turkey?

GE 6:6. EX 32:14, NU 14:20, 1SA 15:35, 2SA 24:16 God does change his

mind.

NU 23:19-20, 1SA 15:29, JA 1:17 God does not change his mind.

GE 7:24 The flood lasted 150 days

GE 7:17 40 days

GE 8:5 Ten Months

GE 11:7-9 God sows discord.

PR 6:16-19 God hates anyone who sows discord

GE 12:7, 17:1, 18:1, 26:2, 32:30, EX 3:16, 6:2-3, 24:9-11, 33:11, NU 12:7-8,

14:14, JB 42:5, AM 7:7-8, 9:1 God is seen.

EX 33:20, JN 1:18, 1JN 4:12 God is not seen. No one can see God's face and

live. No one has ever seen him.

GE 16:15, 21:1-3, GA 4:22 Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

HE 11:17 Abraham had only one son.

GE 17:1, 35:11, 1CH 29:11-12, LK 1:37 God is omnipotent. Nothing is

impossible with (or for) God.

JG 1:19 Although God was with Judah, together they could not defeat the

plainsmen because the latter had iron chariots.

EX 20:4 God prohibits the making of any graven images whatsoever.

EX 25:18 God enjoins the making of two graven images.

EX 20:5, 34:7, NU 14:18, DT 5:9, IS 14:21-22 Children are to suffer for their

parent's sins.

DT 24:16, EZ 18:19-20 Children are not to suffer for their parent's sins.

EX 23:7 God prohibits the killing of the innocent.

EX 21:23-25, LE 24:20, DT 19:21 A life for a life, an eye for an eye, etc.

MT 5:38-44, LK 6:27-29 Turn the other cheek. Love your enemies.

JG 4:21 Sisera was sleeping when Jael killed him.

JG 5:25-27 Sisera was standing.

MT 1:17 There were twenty-eight generations from David to Jesus.

LK 3:23-38 There were forty-three.

MT 7:21, LK 10:36-37, RO 2:6, 13, JA 2:24 We are justified by works, not by

faith.

JN 3:16, RO 3:20-26, EP 2:8-9, GA 2:16 We are justified by faith, not by

works.

MT 27:5 Judas hanged himself.

AC 1:18 He fell headlong, burst open, and his bowels gushed out.

1TI 2:3-4, 2PE 3:9 God wants all to be saved.

Source: The Problem of the Bible: Inaccuracies, contradictions, fallacies, scientific issues

and more. News24. 18 May 2012. This list is from a list created by a former

pastor.: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f6ZewV_Ro5HLixACGE_wgJrnlFNVK

VxTfuVALqARNEs/preview?hl=en_US&pli=1&sle=true

See also, Cline, A., (2019), Scientific and Historical Errors in the Bible, Bible

errors & mistakes overview, Learn Religions,

https://www.learnreligions.com/scientific-historical-errors-mistakes-in-bible-248627

Vatican Council I, (1995), Dei Filius 2; quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church,

2nd edition (New York: Doubleday, 1995) n. 36, p. 20.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God

Kidd, J., (2006), A proof of the existence of god. Catholic Answers.ps://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/a-proof-of-the-existence-of-

god

Wikipedia, (2023) Existence of God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God