God as a Basic Belief
OP - October 30, 2014, 06:56 PM
I am taking a philosophy course at my Christian college. We have been reading the works of many Christian thinkers and it seems like nearly all of them seem to think that we all possess an innate belief in God whether or not we affirm it. The students in my class seem on board with this line of thinking. I know Islam has some sort of doctrine where it says we are all born with the belief in a God too.
Obviously I do not accept that everyone has this belief and some just repress it. I remember learning about God when I was like 4 or 5 years old and being super confused with the concept. So some being was watching my actions at all times? Where was this being? Why can't I see it or talk to it? Throughout my childhood, I struggled to understand what the heck people were talking about when it comes to God.
It seems to me that those heavily indoctrinated to hold religious beliefs have it so ingrained into them that a God exists that they can't possibly fathom how it could be to honestly not hold that belief. The way some of these people talk, its as if feeling the presence of God is exactly like using any of their other senses. So while we trust our senses such as seeing, hearing, and touch as the base axioms of our belief systems, their feeling of God seems just as real as anything else they see, feel, or touch. This seems so completely alien to me.
The way I see it, if God actually existed and wanted people to believe in him, everyone would have this same innate perception of his existence. Some wouldn't strongly feel him while others tried their best but could feel nothing. On an alternative hypothesis, people who seem to "feel" God could just be feeling endorphins while worshiping or be predisposed to such a belief by genetic and environmental factors. Others, who aren't so predisposed and understand that what they are feeling is not supernatural would thus not have the same sense of God. It seems this second hypothesis fits the facts more plausibly and more parsimoniously. The first hypothesis I think raises many difficult questions such as why an omnipotent and omniscient god who demands belief would allow certain people no experience of itself. The simpler explanation is that this sense of God is not actually grounded in God's existence, but arises through natural phenomena.
I can't take such arguments seriously because I know inside that I genuinely do not hold a belief in any sort of theistic god. To say that believing in God's existence is as innate as trusting my senses is absolutely preposterous to me. While I can try to debunk it rationally, honestly I know this argument is false from the get go because I apparently completely lack this sense. It seems to me to be just the same as any other presuppositionalist argument.
Thoughts?
"I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
-Thomas Paine
Topic: God as a Basic Belief