[user-x]

Interesting point. I also think there is a sense of predestination that comes with a believe in God. This can have a reassuring effect when it comes to worrying about if you're on the right track in life (the track to "meaning"). I have read that some psychologists hypothesize this sense of predestination is what (in part) causes lower suicide rates among religious folks vs. non-religious folks.

Even though I'm aware of these positive effects, I still can't bring myself to believe in any God. I was raised atheist and I've always felt like a believe in the supernatural doesn't mix with an intellectual, scientific view on the world. This is of course completely due to my upbringing; there are plenty of great scientists who believe. I think this is an interesting inner conflict which I'm sure I share with many others.

[robterrin]

There are plenty of religions that offer a more flexible interpretation of "God" that might better suit your world view. You may want to check out Quakerism, the Bahá'í Faith and Buddhism. These are just three that come to mind, but there are many more.

I would also add that predestination is a particularly Calvinist protestant belief. Many religions that rely on good works, such as Jesuit Catholicism and Quakerism can provide meaning and sense of purpose without the offensive belief that one has no self determination or choice about being a good person in life.

[charliesharding]

I think the argument for belief in God from a scientific standpoint is very possible. Science is done because we don't fully understand the world. Therefore, scientists must be humble, and open to the idea that current science paradigms are subject to change and have been constantly shifting throughout time (flat earth, tectonics). Science is all about hypothesizing, gathering data, extrapolating trends, then drawing conclusions.

I believe that the moral system, close community, and redemptive nature of Christianity preach a way of life that leads to happiness and is consistent with so many themes in philosophy, psychology (like you mentioned) and classical literature. Ultimately you choose whether or not you want to believe in God, but it was these emergent themes that turned me into a church goer.

To claim that there is no God is a very bold, untestable claim. I think it is made because of the dire implications of being wrong (hell). The way that I interpret heaven and hell is basically the end result of working towards the best or worst versions of yourself. If you agree that you are constantly met with decisions to make and typically know which choice will be better for you (eating a pizza versus working out) - then you know the basic jist of avoiding "sin". If you constantly give into your hedonistic side, doing what is easy or feels good in the moment, you'll end up with a hefty amount of self loathing. Christianity is all about saying its ok to want those things, but try to resist and it will make you feel better. Admit when you're acting in that "sinful" manner and try to to better next time.

my two cents

edit: dang.. see axlprose for references - he did gud lol

[axlprose]

> I was raised atheist and I've always felt like a believe in the supernatural doesn't mix with an intellectual, scientific view on the world. This is of course completely due to my upbringing; there are plenty of great scientists who believe. I think this is an interesting inner conflict which I'm sure I share with many others.

Yep, this was pretty much me up until a year ago when I started actually studying theology and the philosophy around it more rigorously. What I realized was that this notion of science being in opposition to religion I had, was effectively at least as much of a faith based position promoted to me by modern society, as theism was to religious people. Because when taking a hard honest look at myself, I saw that I had never actually bothered to really study any religious literature to justify coming to such a bold conclusion, in large part because I had prematurely dismissed such an endeavor as being an uninteresting waste of time. But in reality, I should've known my position was questionable ages ago from my long time fascination with the history of science and mathematics. I had conveniently rationalized or outright ignored the fact that the giants upon whose shoulders modern science rests, have all been rather disproportionately theists, because "things are different now"/"we've progressed beyond that". Yet the more I thought about those excuses, the more I realized they were completely unjustified hand waving, because I couldn't find any compelling arguments for why that should be the case, nor why such smart people of the past couldn't have come up with the relatively straightforward arguments for atheism the likes of Dawkins, Sam Harris, et al. came up with (as I had read most of the "4 horsemen of atheism" books already). None of the best arguments for atheism actually hinged on time or technological/scientific progress, so why did many smart people like Leibniz, Newton, and Darwin not only fail to discover such simple lines of thought, but instead often times went in the exact opposite direction and made arguments for theism? Note that I'm not making an argument appealing to past greats being theists, but rather describing my own thought process that led me to question "wtf is going on here?". John Lennox has a lot of interesting books and talks relevant to this particular line of inquiry[0].

But anyways, long story short(er), the watershed moment didn't actually come for me until I stumbled upon a small pastor's YouTube channel [1], and gradually started working my way through several books, including:

- Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl

- Miracles - C. S. Lewis

- The Abolition of Man - C. S. Lewis [2]

- Heretics - G. K. Chesterton

- Orthodoxy - G. K. Chesterton

- Nihilism - Seraphim Rose

- The Experience of God - David Bentley Hart

- The Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant

I'm still technically somewhat agnostic and unaffiliated with any particular religious denomination, but I couldn't reasonably go back to my previous atheism after that rabbit hole. I think it's ultimately this illusury distinction between "the natural" vs "the supernatural" that our materialist society has, which makes it so easy to fall into atheism/nihilism. It lulls us into a false sense of confidence about what we "know" as being "natural", as if it were a well-defined "solved problem", all while the purpose of science itself explicitly acknowledges it's not. What makes the illusive grand unifying theory of physics less "supernatural" than a deity, the hard problem of consciousness[3], or the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics[4], for example? The mere assumption that it's more within reach of our understanding? Seems a bit unsatisfying for a premise to form such a large dichotomy around. In that sense, you could argue theism is partially an analogy of Gödel's incompleteness theorems[5] applied to world views. We might be able to kinda/sorta work around such limitations, but it seems silly to just completely ignore they exist, much less turn around and use them as some form of justification against theism a'la "god-of-the-gaps" argument[6].

[0] for example: https://youtu.be/v0AKUTHcI04

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/paulvanderklay

[2] here's a good series distilling it, since the book itself is a bit dense: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlZfP0L6b41iCKzdQt-Gk...

[3] http://scholarpedia.org/article/Hard_problem_of_consciousnes...

[4] https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.htm...

[5] Gödel of course, was also a theist himself, and thought a lot about the implications of his discoveries. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/

[6] here's a good rebuttal to such arguments which may resonate with HN people: https://youtu.be/CltwD0Ek9Kk