I just don't get it

[robvalue]

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?

Pascal's wager, yeah. Totally flawed, but seems to convince a lot of people.

That's interesting about atheists taking more risks... or theists playing it safe. Maybe! That does make a kind of sense.

[Joods]

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...☹️

This. Having the awesome opportunity to raise a special needs child for 18 years then to have her ripped away with no explanation is truly heartbreaking. I get through each day but it's difficult. I cry a lot. I suppose I could fill a lake by now with all of the shed tears.

[drfuzzy]

[robvalue]

I'm so sorry Judi

[Angrboda]

Re: cognitive dissonance. Well, yes, but why do some people resolve the dissonance by abandoning the dissonant belief, and others by compartmentalizing and building up defenses for the belief? I don't get it either, unless it's primarily a random process. Most people being aligned with resolving their dissonance by going deeper into belief, as opposed to a few who are oriented toward reconciling their beliefs with the facts. I just don't get it either.

[drfuzzy]

Re: cognitive dissonance.  Well, yes, but why do some people resolve the dissonance by abandoning the dissonant belief, and others by compartmentalizing and building up defenses for the belief?  I don't get it either, unless it's primarily a random process.  Most people being aligned with resolving their dissonance by going deeper into belief, as opposed to a few who are oriented toward reconciling their beliefs with the facts.  I just don't get it either.

For me, I had to be shaken free by circumstance. When you remove the support and pressure of being a member of the religious group, and take a person out of that social circle, questioning becomes easier . . . at least for some.

[Old Baby]

This might have been discussed before, but I'm really unable to understand it.

Today I've been discussing atheism with my friends (Muslims) and believe me, they're quite intelligent. At any rate, after I gave them plenty of strong arguments and cornered them, all they could say was " I believe deep down that there is a god".

Now this got me thinking (which is strange now that I think about it, since I've listened to this argument countless of times before and this has been discussed very often on these forums)

What kind of process that led me to become an atheist, that for some reason did not occur to them? I'm not a special snowflake for pit sakes.

I think intelligence is not the issue here, I know I can't convince you guys, but these friends of mine are really scientifically versed. Richard Dawkins, and many others, often said that these people are stuck in some kind of "child stage". 

I think it has to do with their "character", but I am very hesitant to say that, since I wouldn't consider myself to be a courageous person. In fact, I've had atheist friends who were particularly shy and introvert.

So what gives?

I was of the same mind at one time.  My mind was just closed.  It's not that I willed it closed or was in denial.  I just knew that I knew that I knew, as Christians said.  Until I eventually stopped and opened my mind up to the possibility that there could be cracks in the dogma, there was no way for any light to come through.  It simply doesn't matter how powerful your arguments are.  I'm finding this out now, discussing religion with a casual Christian friend of mine.  She is interested, but no matter how damning my evidence is, she just files it away.  It seems to prove itself out that those who are deeper in Christianity and have spent more time with the bible, such as clergy or those who are studying to be, are the ones who are able to break free the easiest.  To those "casuals" who are less studied (perhaps less intelligent?), good luck ever getting them to open their minds.

[Brian37]

Re: cognitive dissonance.  Well, yes, but why do some people resolve the dissonance by abandoning the dissonant belief, and others by compartmentalizing and building up defenses for the belief?  I don't get it either, unless it's primarily a random process.  Most people being aligned with resolving their dissonance by going deeper into belief, as opposed to a few who are oriented toward reconciling their beliefs with the facts.  I just don't get it either.

It may seem random but if you could set up a lab experiment you could literally measure the brain activity as people think about certain things.

For most people they ignore change because because our brains evolved to gap fill and once we perceive a pattern as working for us, it can be a totally false perception, but we will protect it as a coping mechanism. In laypersons terms it is simply trying to make sense of what is around us, but for most humans, we don't have the benefit of a PHD evolutionary understanding of how notoriously flawed our perceptions of reality can be. 

It is simply easier for most to go with the flow, and most humans are indoctrinated from birth and since their neurological pathways are still developing growing up so false information is literally stamped in their brains before they can develop adult reasoning skills, so when they do grow up they either fight different people, or they work to retrofit their new knowledge to what they were first sold.

[Red_Wind]

Have you ever had bad or weird thoughts and then just concentrated on making them go away?

It's kinda the same with theists, they go though a great deal of effort to make these thoughts go away because they fear it may break their views on what is normal and what is not (at least that was it in my case)

[Pat Mustard]

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.

According to the Irish catholic bishops conference 10.1% of self identifying Irish catholics don't believe in god. It's the third result on this google search.

Fact of the matter is most people don't examine their religion closely enough to know what they're supposed to believe and are essentially a la carte.