I just don't get it

[Chad32]

It's likely a combination of factors. I'm a much more trusting individual, and have had to learn over time not to just take people at their word. It took me longer to get out of it than some people I know about, and some people might never get out of it. My sister is smarter than I am, and had the same upbringing, but she's still a theist. She even enrolled her kids into a christian school.

[robvalue]

Asking questions. That seems like quite a factor.

As a child, I apparently drove my parents to despair asking questions about absolutely everything, and not being satisfied with any answer. I wanted to know why... and the why behind the why...

Some people seem comfortable with "A guy said so". Some people are always questioning.

[Brian37]

When you approach any religious belief, including Hinduism and Buddhism, it is important to understand our species evolution. Creating groups allows organization, setting up social order, and that organization does lead to more opportunity at access to resources and more opportunity for safety in numbers and ability to produce offspring.

And add to that belief in the super natural in the form of deities, spirits, god or gods, what is really going on is our species gap filling projection of their own qualities on fictional things.

It isn't that humans are "wired" to believe, it is that we evolved in ignorance and our bad guesses evolved to be a coping mechanism. The Ancient Egyptians were successful for 3,000 years centered around the false belief that there was a human like super power that controlled the sun, along with other gods and goddesses.

The word for that is "anthropomorphism", projecting human qualities on non human things.

It is a result of flawed perceptions. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins explains this not as "wiring" but a flaw in our evolution as "the moth mistaking the light bulb for moonlight". Just like it is easy to sell an ignorant child before they can think for themselves with adult reasoning the idea of Santa.

Life evolved to seek patterns, but at the same time life doesn't always have the time to slow down and assess and test what is going on around it. Just like an antelope on the African plane doesn't always have time to assess if the swaying grass is mere wind or a lion stalking it.

Our brains constantly gap fill every day almost every single second and we never notice it. It is why you can walk into a clean glass door because your brain has falsely told you the door is not there. God belief is a misfire, it is nothing more than a human projection a false perception.

Another book equally important is "The New Atheism" by Victor Stenger which says science does have something to say about the unseen, and on top of that goes on in later chapters to explain trough multiple religious examples that our species morality is in our evolution, not the artificial labels humans invent.

[robvalue]

One thing I would really love to study, but the hardest thing to get data on, is how much theists believe what they say they believe.

I'm sure some of them really believe everything. Some I expect believe only parts of it, and some probably don't believe it at all. There are many motivations for professing belief, which have nothing to do with the truth of the statements.

There are probably self confessed "atheists" who really do believe in god. What people say, and what they really think, are two different things.

One last point: our ability as a species to ask questions far outstrips our ability to come up with answers. This causes discomfort in some people.

[LadyForCamus]

For me, given all the shit I've dealt with IRL, I just could no longer believe that such a loving god would allow the continual suffering of certain situations. I asked so many questions and the answers I received were never really answers at all. Maybe people are driven to have faith or believe through some internal fear. Maybe they have questioned it like myself, but are afraid to take that leap into just accepting that there is no god, simply because that fear is stuck in their head and they are focused on the "what if" instead of focusing on the reality.

As for myself, there is nothing in any supposed after life that could be so horrible as the hell I have been put through here on earth. A prime example is the fact that my ex has unjustly used parental alienation for the last 17 months to keep my oldest daughter who is now 20, and deemed incapacitated by the courts, away from me. I cannot get closure from this. Knowing that she is less than five miles away and I have zero access to her, is literally killing me inside. I have suffered the death of my twins, 25 years ago. I have closure from that. But not seeing a child that is still living and not being given any reason for it, you can't get closure from that. There is no relief. This is my hell. Why an "all loving, all powerful" god would let this go on, I have no words for.

I cannot believe in an imaginary creature and I am amazed at the number of people who, despite their own personal struggles with life things, still believe that such a creature is kind and loving. I cannot wrap my head around that at all. So I blame that internal fear they have. Perhaps they think that if they stop believing, their life will somehow get worse? Maybe they can't get it into their heads that because there is no god, they are 100% accountable for everything they do and that there really isn't a "god plan". Maybe it's some sort of comfort issue with them. I don't know. I honestly don't think anyone has all the answers because we are all individuals and for those that do believe, their answers will vary.

I'm so very sorry for your personal tragedy. I can't imagine what it must be like to lose babies. Well, I can imagine...I have an 18 month old. But if only imagining it is indescribably awful, then what you've actually experienced must feel beyond words. If this world were actually governed by some being doling out justice no child would ever suffer, and no mother would ever have to suffer the agony of losing her baby...☹️

[Thumpalumpacus]

I don't think your friends cling to their religion out of childish character, but simply out of fear -- fear of letting go the organizational fabric of their ontology.

I know plenty of religious people who are pretty damned smart, and outside their religious compartment are skilled critical thinkers. But apostasy has dread connotations to the erstwhile believer.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

My opinion is that it all boils down to risk taking. A category of intelligent people find comfort in not taking risks because by nature risks are unpredictable. These people believe it to be a risk to disbelieve god and risk going to hell, so they cling on to these beliefs in the hopes of enjoying a fabulous afterlife.
Afterall a lot of them believe that they don't loose anything from believing so why risk it and disbelieve and risk going to hell for eternity. I guess by nature atheists take more risks and are more adventurous than thesits. Thoughts?

[loganonekenobi]

i totally stole that video to share somewhere.
For me I was raised with lots of indoctination. I can only say that my difference was that i was actually looking for the power of God to change my life. What I found was....nothing. I also saw no real change or difference in the way others acted in the presence of Christianity. If they were good they they were good if not then not. No god inspired actions.

It was only when i started looking within did i find the power to change my life. again no god needed.

[drfuzzy]

1) Early indoctrination
2) Fear of hell/judgement
3) The belief that questioning (the Bible, the preacher, the parents, etc.) is a sin and will send you to hell (a subset of 2, but relevant.
4) Community - - being surrounded by people who share the same belief and support you for your belief.  
5) The belief that this life is only a small test to see whether you will be devout enough to get to heaven - which is the ultimate goal.
          6) - - but not applicable in the case of the OP - - inadequate teaching of science  

When you add these factors together, I think you need something pretty powerful to shake the mindset.  Had I not been forced to deal with homosexuality, I probably would never have questioned the way I was brought up.  I would have ended up a Westboro/Duggar type of wifey, with a bunch of proper little fundie kids, married to a preacher like my Mother always hoped.  
           I always had questions, and was curious about science . . . but if I had stayed in the church, I probably would have just dismissed it all, because it disagreed with what I was told was the "real" truth, and because those scientists were agents of Satan.

[BlackBird]

My family is full of intelligent people who are very religious. In fact, my brother and I had similar childhood indoctorinization, and here I am, an atheist, while he has a big shelf full of Christian apologetics books and recently went on a year long mission trip. He's certainly no less intelligent than me. I have also wondered what it is that makes me different.

I think what it came down to for me is that I allowed myself to ask questions about everything, even the stuff we weren't supposed to question. I can still remember my mom's reaction one day when I referred to the creation myth as a "myth". It was a very disappointed, "how could you even think that" kind of response, and she was clearly uncomfortable with the term even after I explained that I merely meant it as a description of the way the story was written. (I still believed at the time.) The message was clear - we do NOT question the creation story.

It was a theme that ran through my childhood in a much more subtle way than that. There are some things that it was NOT OKAY to question. It took me a long time and disengagement from the church to get to a point where I could look at the questions that I had been sweeping under the rug in an objective manner.