As a functioning, intelligent adult who believes everything written in my religion’s holy book I empathize with how ridiculous it looks from the outside. But to me I have just as much trouble understanding how someone can go through life and not believe that there’s more to it than the natural world, and probably struggle as much to understand that viewpoint as you do to understand mine.

To me it’s a self evident miracle that any kind of universe exists, not to mention that there’s life in it, and even more amazing that the life can observe the universe, explore it, and enjoy it. To me something had to cause all this, and if so then some religion has to be true. If some religion is true then you can’t pick and choose the parts you like and discard what you don’t.

I agree that many of the most powerful religious leaders don’t actually believe everything they teach though. Religion is a powerful tool to get people to do what you want.

Sorry if I was insulting, I wasn't trying to be. That's why I called out my own difficulty as stupid, since in fact such people sure seem to exist (though, again, my problem is that I can't listen to them without a "no, but really, what are you after?" in the back of my head, so am having deep trouble modeling a fairly common kind of person I'm pretty sure is real).

The "this is all so great (though, I mean, at least as Lovecraftian?) that there must be something behind it" or "Buddhist practices do help you find meaning (and Pure Land and saviors and all the stuff about wild miracles are allegorical or else wrong-but-maybe-useful)" is the sort I can understand, actually.

It's the leap from there to "this specific set of stories is right—as in, actually true, or at least much of it is—and the rest are wrong. I've not picked this one to follow because the moral teachings and practices give me comfort and little offense, but because I think a large part of the specific supernatural episodes the faith considers true are true, in a real, actual sense". Supernatural angels and god(s) themselves really actually do stuff in real life—maybe now, and certainly in the past—that kind of thing.

I think the point the previous poster is making is not just a need or desire for a vague answer (i.e. the universe was created and no one really knows so maybe it was God), but then actually going from that step to believe every word of a holy book, or from a preacher.

There seems to be a big leap from a feeling of wonder at nature (essentially, unitarians as I understand it) and structured organized religion.

More specifically: why can't you pick and choose? Christianity has hundreds of sects, each of which adds or removes beliefs both big and small. Belief the Pope is infallible being the most obvious one that caused a lot of bloodshed.

A few hundred years ago the deist option seemed plausible to a lot of people. (Martin Gardner, a writer I admire a lot, developed a contemporary version of a deist view.)

This view agrees with what you described up until "if so then some religion has to be true": it affirms that we have reason to believe in a creator (and in some accounts, in divine providence of various sorts) but doesn't expect a divine revelation, or doesn't endorse any claims that we've received one.

I remember that Descartes argued that the creator was logically required to be benevolent and that part of that benevolence would then entail getting in touch with humanity and letting us know something about the divine nature. But other thinkers took various other angles on this, including the idea that the divine benevolence is already complete even without revelation, or that revelation occurs in a non-public or even incommunicable way, or still other possibilities.

Atheists and deists have both been very preoccupied with the idea that different revealed religions are all extremely plausible to people who are brought up in or around them (in modern times, even different schisms of revealed religions have this characteristic). In the deist account, this might be a reason to doubt that any of them is uniquely intended by the creator to be a revelation to all humanity, since which one people believe is for almost everyone a matter of luck. (Even if one account of revelation is more compelling than others, most people will never have the social conditions to verify this for themselves.)

There are lots of theological accounts about why God might allow only some people to discover the true revelation, but a deist (and atheist) alternative is that it's also reasonable to think that that wasn't God's plan.

Isn’t it much more likely that if a diety exists that it isn’t described by any of the small handful of religions we have concocted here on earth?

This is a sort of "gambit" that doesn't work because it assumes that all religion is created by humans. But most religions claim they are handed down directly from God, so the point would be moot.

Of course anyone who thought their religion was made up by a human wouldn't really believe it. So this won't convince anyone either way.

I guess I just mean to say that I can still have the abject wonder about the world we see around us and have reason to believe that there was something (as opposed to nothing) responsible for the entirety of existence, without having to fall back on saying that MY religion is the reason for this to be the case.

I agree with your logic. Believing something made the world doesn't necessarily mean one religion reveals that something. In the journey of my life experiences I have found a compelling case in the Bible and Jesus. I understand that it sounds strange (incomprehensible?) to others with different experiences. But the best I can say it in short form, logic opens the door for belief, beauty guides me through that door. By "beauty" I mean that aesthetic sense of rightness. The same feeling that makes me know a painting is good is the same feeling that makes me feel that the story of revelation, fall, redemption presented in the Christian religion is True.

What I can't understand is atheists who balk at the possibility of any kind of god, but happily entertain the notion that we are in a simulation. What exactly would be the difference in a created reality and a simulated reality?

I appreciate your comment, despite not relating to it very well and it seeming a bit strange to me.

I know that might come across a bit odd, but it's refreshing to actually try to understand other viewpoints and to do so inoffensively.

> To me something had to cause all this, and if so then some religion has to be true.

The 2nd part of your statement doesn't follow from the first.

I get it. This is exactly how I ended up self-identifying as an agnostic theist. I firmly believe that by definition it is impossible to obtain evidence of metaphysical questions. And because of that, humans simply cannot confirm nor deny truth value of these questions. So this is heavily integral to my internal definition of the word faith: That I choose to believe, with the understanding that I will never "rationally" know.

> Like, your average priest: how many actually believe? Is it really most of them?

Mother Theresa's personal diaries, anecdotally, complained about her frustration with her own lack of faith.

I personally think that the people who believe active supernatural intervention is a genuine possibility are comparatively rare in the halls of power, and that this has been true for millennia. To copy/paste from wikipedia's article on "god helps those who help themselves",

> The sentiment appears in several ancient Greek tragedies. Sophocles, in his Philoctetes (c. 409 BC), wrote, "No good e'er comes of leisure purposeless; And heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act."

> Euripides , in the Hippolytus (428 BC), mentions that, "Try first thyself, and after call in God; For to the worker God himself lends aid." In his Iphigeneia in Tauris, Orestes says, "I think that Fortune watcheth o'er our lives, surer than we. But well said: he who strives will find his gods strive for him equally."

So even back then, there was the attitude of "whether they exist or not, you'll have to live your day-to-day as if you're on your own."

Look no further, I am one of them here, AMA!

I can start by stating that beliefs are built on other beliefs up to a point. When you truly believe an all powerful and omni-present Creator designed all things,further beliefs built upon that foundation which you seem to have a hard time with make perfect sense. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to suspend critical thinking to believe in a Creator. And also,yes, to varying extents most peope in history and in the present actually and truly believe the things they profess to believe.

I think this will get downvoted severly but I hope you understand my intentions, understanding how and why someone makes a decision to believe something is better in my opinion than dismissing them as uneducated fools without asking further questions

I'm not especially interested in the "uneducated fools"—prod your average Christian, say, and it quickly becomes clear they barely understand the core tenets of their own sect and the sources of their beliefs, let alone even basic apologetics. "Become more knowledgable about the foundations and core beliefs of [faith] than the average adherent" is usually the work of a few days of casual research. Those folks believe because they just don't ever question it at all, which I find kind of dumbfounding seeing as they also profess their belief that it's all of actual no-BS cosmic importance so you'd think they could at least be bothered to read a book or two, but it's not hard to understand why they believe. Their actions are baffling, but not their belief. Then again folks of all sorts believe tons of stuff they don't act on particularly well, so maybe that's all it is. The above about how it's easy to become more knowledgable than the average faithful is true of most stuff people believe, not just religion—but then again, climate change, to pick an example, doesn't claim to have significance to one's eternal soul, so I'd say the stakes of even that are somewhat lower. But anyway, this part's not that interesting to me.

It's the ones who have wrestled with the stuff that I have trouble getting in the heads of. Do they all believe? Do even most of them? Surely not in the same way as those covered above—surely their faith is qualitatively different from that—but then, how? Or those who claim to be devout but hold serious secular power—are they really? Even most of them? And again, my trouble is with specific sets of stories and dogmas, not general "I like to think there's a higher power" stuff, which I have an easier time "getting", and in fact it's hard for me to understand that any significant portion of thoughtful religious aren't more or less of that variety and do believe they've joined a mostly or entirely correct religion, miracles and supernatural occurrences and all being actually true.

And that's before we throw in cultural and time gaps. What was the faith of the abbot or abbess of a 13th century monastic community like? What was it like in their heads? To what degree did a Pope, considering whether to grant one of these communities recognition, see their duty as political versus carrying out the will and protecting the interests of an almighty deity that became a person (only kind of, sort of, but not really—it's complicated, if you want to avoid heresy) then died, then some fly on the wall might have actually seen the dude's corpse re-animate—imagine the sight!—and some real, actual angels push a stone around, and all that really happened. That's where I get lost, trying to tease out motivations based on faith versus those where the faith's something else—social posturing, maybe.

To keep my reply short: You depend on your own ability to understand all subjects to form a belief. When a person accepts their ability to understand how something works,they can rely on a cause vs effect observation.

To many, their faith based actions resulted in effects that are significant enough to them that it meets and exceeds any and all criteria of acceptance of that belief as valid.

I personally think it is fine to be curious and ask questions but it is absolutely foolish for a person to expect they can understand any and all things.

For most of your curiosity, it seems you are attempting to group people and say "these people believe for this reason",I think it's better to try and understand individuals instead of groups if you're curious about motives.

> ...significant portion of thoughtful religious aren't more or less of that variety and do believe they've joined a mostly or entirely correct religion, miracles and supernatural occurrences and all being actually true.

I can't speak for others but I am 100% sure of not only miracles of the past but also miracles that happen in this day and age.

As some say: "There is no argument that can overcome experience". That is to say, if I literally saw legs grow right before my eyes for an amputee as an example,you can't convince me it didn't happen without asking me to stop believing my own five senses which I rely on to percieve reality itself.

Thanks, this has been really helpful!

I started to write out this really long elaborate explanation that had very clever metaphors and illustrations including comparisons between religious language and computer science. But the longer it got the longer it needed to be. One explanation begs another so to speak. So I guess what you really need is a believing friend that you trust, so you can discuss it at length. Since I can't be that for you, let me think of one tiny example to give a glimpse of how someone like me thinks.

"In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth..."

I don't share beliefs with Ken Ham, but what I see the Bible claiming about creation is that it was directed by an intelligent being (or beings, the number is vague in this text). Seven days? Sure. What does the word "day" even mean when there's no sun yet? In that case it means however long it took for the miracles described to happen. There were no words for time dilation or quantum mechanics or background radiation then. I'm assuming there will be more concepts concerning the beginning of time and the nature of the universe that we currently don't have a word for. The people who first wrote down that story weren't stupid. They weren't intentionally writing down contradictions. They knew there was no such thing as a day without the sun. They were describing a miraculous progression of creation. It wasn't science (even such as it then existed) it was religious narrative. The goal is not to get a reader's assent to the facts of the details but to point to a creator with power and purpose.

Your second question could be asked of any human I think. How much of this do you really actually believe is real or important? How often do you act on what you say you believe? I suppose it seems more scandalous for religious leaders because of the nature of their claims, but at the end of the day we're all just people.

Your third question is fascinating to me too. It is fun to read really good authors and historians explain their theories on this, but unfortunately it's all guesswork. The question is good though, because I feel like most people make broad assumptions about the sincerity of other times (and other cultures and religions for that matter). You've even done it to a degree by assuming what was important to the Greeks. Which Greeks? They were at one time a collection of city-states with competing interests. They were at another time an empire lead by a Macedonian. There are so many different peoples and times that we tend to wrap up and summarize as "Ancient Greeks".

I'll end by saying, I got to where I am (faith) by continuing to doubt. I tried to ditch my faith at different times, but I kept having nagging belief I couldn't get rid of. That part I still haven't figured out how to explain.