The Benefits of Believing in Something Greater

In class last week, we spent some time generally discussing the belief in God or something greater. A theme that I noticed during the discussion was that people had generally negative feelings about the belief in God. I heard many different comments relating to the problematic reasons for believing in God. One comment I heard was that believing in God is just something people do because they are bored with the process of daily living. After hearing other comments similar to this, I felt that people were completely forgetting the many positives that come with believing in God. With that said, I completely understand the problems with believing in God as far as reasoning goes; there is no way to prove the existence of God with evidence, and this is something that we talked about in our last class (I talked about this in my previous post). In addition, I understand that the belief in God could cause problems with a person’s life because they could spend their whole life waiting for something to come after they die that might not happen. Even with these potential problems, I feel that people are wrong when they imply that the belief in God is just something that distracts people from the process of living.

My belief in God relates to the idea that I feel there is something greater than what we cannot discover from conscious reasoning. This idea that there is something greater was said to be a type of faulty reasoning in class, but even if it is faulty reasoning, I do not think that should mean that it is problematic to believe in something greater. I think that people who believe in something greater will many times have an advantage over people who do not. I feel this way because I think that the belief in God or something greater actually empowers people. Every person will go through extremely difficult struggles during their lifetime, and I feel that a belief in something greater can help a person get through these tough times. A great example of this would be something that Laura said in class on Friday. She said that she believes in God because she had some very difficult experiences during her childhood, but she was able to make it through them by praying to God every night. It seems like her faith in God gave her a type of strength that she could not have had normally. When I experience difficult life circumstances, and life just seems completely unfair, my belief in something greater is able to get me through. Even though I cannot prove that God exists, I think that my faith in God is great because it provides me with an inner power that helps me succeed in my daily life. I think it was great that Laura explained how her faith in God has helped her; her story was a perfect example of the ways that the belief in God's existence can make a positive impact in someones life.

Many times, people’s reasons for believing in God or something greater can be problematic, but because of the reasons that I explained, I think the belief in God’s existence can be a great thing. As far as problems with believing in God or something greater, I think it is a major mistake to believe in God simply for the hope of making it into a better world after death. With that said, people need to remember the wonderful things that come from the belief in something greater. I am not saying it is bad to not believe in something greater, but I just think it is ludicrous to say that people who believe in God or something greater do so because they become bored with their normal life. Believing in God or something greater can make an extremely positive impact on a person’s life and it is important that we do not forget this.

Do you think the idea of believing in something greater should be separated from believing in God specifically, or are they the same thing?

Why I Believe

Today in class, we spoke at length about the concept of faith. The conclusion of our discussion was that it is misleading to attempt to explain the existence of God with evidence because there really is none. In addition, using an event as an example of the existence of God cannot be done if there is a more reasonable explanation for that event that does not relate to God. This is why many of the people who believe in God do not try to explain God’s existence, but they have trust in God’s existence without needing proof. These people know that they cannot prove the existence in God with evidence, but they still have faith in God’s existence.

From the way today’s discussion went, it seemed to outline the idea that believing in God is mistake. If Occam's razor is correct, than believing in God would be a mistake unless there were no better explanation for why something happened except for God. I do not think there would be any events that could only be explained as God’s work, and therefore it seems that the belief in God’s existence would be an error. However, I still do belief in God’s existence, and I think that I can explain why I believe in a different way than the things we discussed in class.

I do not try to use evidence of God’s work in my life to explain why I believe in God’s existence; however, this is not saying that I do not believe that there are examples of God’s work that have shown up in my life. I choose not to use these types of examples as explanation because of Occam’s razor. I agree that as long as there are more reasonable explanations for events that I believe are examples God’s existence, I cannot try to use the events as proof of God’s existence. My explanation of God’s existence relates back to a strategy that Freud used to explain his theories. This is the idea that God’s existence or human nature cannot be explained because it does not exist at a conscious level. We cannot label what God is because we can only label using our conscious mind. For me, the existence of God can only be truly understood at a deeper than conscious level.

The reason why this relates to Freud is because Freud described his theories using the basic idea that everything really happened in a persons unconscious mind. It is hard for Freud to be wrong about what he said because he can reply to every argument by pointing out the idea that we do not truly understand the unconscious, and therefore we cannot argue against it. When I brought up a basic idea of my belief in God during class, Dr.J pointed out its relationship to Freud’s ideas;I feel that I was not able to point out that my idea is very different from Freud’s. When I am talking about the existence of God, I am trying to not make the same major mistake that Freud did. I think that Freud made an important error because he tried to explain the unexplainable; he pointed out that everything in human nature related to an unconscious that we cannot understand, but somehow he understood how it worked. When I am trying to explain my theory regarding the existence of God, I am not really trying to explain it at all; I just know that it is deeper than the conscious level. Just like Freud feelings about the unconscious, I feel that small pieces of God existence can leak into our conscious realm; however, I do not think that God’s existence could ever be explained fully with words.

My idea that God’s existence cannot be explained in the conscious realm starts to relate back to the idea of faith, because I think that you just have to know that God exists without the ability of explanation. The only difference that my theory of God’s existence has from general faith is that I think that God’s existence cannot be explained because the complete understanding of God’s existence can only be understood at a deeper than conscious level, but general faith explains that there is no need for any type of explanation for God’s existence. I feel that my idea is different because I am able to give a reason for why we cannot explain God’s existence.

I understand that the problem with my idea is that I cannot really explain the existence of God with something I do not understand (a deeper than conscious level). I would respond to this argument by saying that while I cannot fully understand the existence of God, I think that there are ways of understanding God that on a conscious level that are not fully explainable. It is a form of knowing which no one can explain. My conclusion would be that faith is very important when it comes to my belief in God, but my faith relates to the idea that God's existence is unexplainable because God exists at a deeper than conscious level.

Is the idea that God can only be understood at a deeper than conscious level just making the same mistake Freud did by trying to explain the unexplainable?