Why don't you believe in a god?

[Armads]

Soleron said:

theARTIST0017 said:

vlad321 said:

So I have yet to see a good answer as to why we should listen to God and belive in him and not fairies and unicorns and cyclops and other such creatures which have exactly as much evidence as any god in any religion.

That's ok. Nobody's forcing you to believe in anything. You choose to believe in what you want that's sorta how free will works. If you don't believe in God now, most likely you're not going to believe in him later. Most people don't change.

Why does God creating the universe mean we should do what he says though? Because of the threat of hell if we don't?

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@Armads

What happens to that statistic if you remove:

- Those changing from one type of Christianity to another, since the belief in God and Jesus remains so it isn't a change of faith as much, more a change of approach to worship.
- Those changing in order to get married, since it's probable they didn't do that freely.
- Those changing immediately after leaving their parents, since it's likely they believed the other thing all along and didn't want to admit it.

At a guess, that would remove a lot of changes. I'm speculating, but I think free-choice changes of religion are quite rare.

 

I'd have to get back to you on that and find a more specific source that separates them accordingly.  However I still believe I am correct in my judgement that his statement is wrong about people most likely not questioning their belief in a god/gods.  I don't think that the atheist population has been growing so rapidly (and it has been growing quite quickly) because of a sudden burst of atheist family reproduction but rather I believe that most atheists converted from other faiths.  Out of all the atheists I've ever met in my life I only know of one who was raised by atheistic parents and was never introduced to religion, but anectdotal evidence doesn't count for much I know. (funnily she decided to take a course at a community college about the Bible as literature and was astounded at the zealotry and fanaticism that was displayed in her christian classmates who did not come to the class to discuss the Bible as a piece of literature but rather to discuss theology [and did so quite adamnatly despite the teacher's assertions that was not the point of the class])

 

Once people are shown the light so to speak they will change their views, some remain willfully ingorant but most just haven't been educated in the areas of philosophy, physics, geology, and other fields of study that question the beliefs they've been fed.  There are many stories out there of people who were adamantly believers who then later came to question and eventually abandon their faith entirely when they were made to truly think about it.