Why should God be any more believable than the Tooth Fairy?

BIG NIGE · #1 05-24-2007, 03:41 AM

Seriously, what's the difference? The tooth fairy was made up to make kids feel better about losing teeth; God was made up to make adults feel better about their purpose in life and their reason for being. However the bottom line is that they were both made up and anyone who employs rational thinking should have little trouble figuring this out. Only little kids believe in the tooth fairy; adults know it's just a made-up story. So how is God any different? The stuff in the Bible about creation and heaven, it all defies rational explanation, just like the tooth fairy, so why do people belive in it?

SNOWBALL · #2 05-24-2007, 04:23 AM

How do you explain consciousness? Or the big bang? God is a decent explanation of both of these things. The tooth fairy isn't. I don't think god necessarily exists, and still less do I think that the jewish or christian or muslim versions of god are likely to be true, but to compare god to the tooth fairy is to make a tenuous juxtaposition at best.

Sure, yahweh is clearly man-made, and so is the tooth fairy, but at least if god DID exist, then certain things might make more sense. If the tooth fairy existed, things would make less sense.

JussiUt · #3 05-24-2007, 04:25 AM

I've come to the conclusion that the feeling we can get when watching a beautiful scenery or listening to beautiful music is often interpreted as "religious experience" and religious people claim they could felt God's touch in that moment. Of course, the fact that you interprete your feelings that way doesn't actually have any scientifical value it has still significant value to people who have been brought up in some religion.

It'd be interesting to know that if you have never believed in God, not even as a child, and you experience this feeling of awe how do you interprete it compared to those who have been raised as a person of some faith. I bet the difference is huge. So therefore I also bet that if people would stop teaching or "brainwashing" their children with religion, the number of religious people would drop significantly. This isn't of course anything new.

There are many many reasons for why people have religious feelings and ones are the psychological ones you mentioned. The point I'm making is that people couldn't believe in something like Christianity without "empirical evidence". Many believers are sincerely saying that they have proof God exists based on their previous experiences.

PairTheBoard · #4 05-24-2007, 05:03 AM

Existence is a Mystery. The nature of existence and our place in it is a Mystery. Science cannot explain this Mystery. But people want to grasp some understanding of it anyway. So they meditate on the Mystery and in looking for the Source of it they often come to conceptualize what they call "God". "God" is a Mystery word that incorporates a Faith that resonates with validity for them.

The tooth fairy is something entirely different. You may not understand this process, and in your lack of understanding you may choose to belittle it. Nevertheless, the evidence is it happens for people. Why does it happen? Is there any validity to it? Who knows. But you can't conclude from your place of Not Knowing that it is equivalent to belief in the tooth fairy.

PairTheBoard

BIG NIGE · #5 05-24-2007, 08:52 AM

[ QUOTE ]
How do you explain consciousness? Or the big bang? God is a decent explanation of both of these things. The tooth fairy isn't. I don't think god necessarily exists, and still less do I think that the jewish or christian or muslim versions of god are likely to be true, but to compare god to the tooth fairy is to make a tenuous juxtaposition at best.

Sure, yahweh is clearly man-made, and so is the tooth fairy, but at least if god DID exist, then certain things might make more sense. If the tooth fairy existed, things would make less sense.

[/ QUOTE ]

Based on what? God is nothing more than a jack-of-all-trades Tooth Fairy who can do anything. Like the Tooth Fairy, God is just something people to use to explain away anything that they do now know how to explain using normal means. It's just an artificial way to fill a void in someone's understanding of the world, but I don't see how anyonne who is truly interested in answering questions like the ones you proposed could possibly find the explanation of "God" to be satisfying.

"Why are we conscious? How did the universe start? Hmm....OH OF COURSE because GOD made it so, that has to be it." No, I don't think so. People only attribute those things to God because they don't know how to explain it any other way.

BIG NIGE · #6 05-24-2007, 09:03 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Existence is a Mystery. The nature of existence and our place in it is a Mystery. Science cannot explain this Mystery. But people want to grasp some understanding of it anyway. So they meditate on the Mystery and in looking for the Source of it they often come to conceptualize what they call "God". "God" is a Mystery word that incorporates a Faith that resonates with validity for them.

The tooth fairy is something entirely different. You may not understand this process, and in your lack of understanding you may choose to belittle it. Nevertheless, the evidence is it happens for people. Why does it happen? Is there any validity to it? Who knows. But you can't conclude from your place of Not Knowing that it is equivalent to belief in the tooth fairy.

PairTheBoard

[/ QUOTE ]

First of all, you didn't mention one difference between God and the Tooth Fairy, other than that the Tooth Fairy is something "entirely different" without explaining why. Second, yes, I do operate from a position of ignorance that's why I'm asking this question And third, you say that "the evidence is it happens for people." Well, guess what, the tooth fairy "happens" for little kids too, and they believe it just as fevently and unwaveringly as many adults believe in God, and parents do everything they can to perpetuate this myth. The difference is, the kids will eventually find out about the tooth fairy being made up, but God has been defined in such a way as to make it impossible to prove or disprove, because it has literally become synonymous with anything that currently cannot be explained by any other means. It's just a default explanation to artificially fill a void for some people who can't handle being in the dark about anything at all.

Metric · #7 05-24-2007, 09:59 AM

Intelligent beings create model universes all the time, which could lead one to believe it to be a reasonable way for a universe like ours to come into existence. At least a more reasonable way than "it came from nothing."

The Tooth Fairy is useful for discussing nothing that can't already be explained with much greater reliability by other means.

Phil153 · #8 05-24-2007, 10:20 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Intelligent beings create model universes all the time, which could lead one to believe it to be a reasonable way for a universe like ours to come into existence. At least a more reasonable way than "it came from nothing.

[/ QUOTE ]
More satisfying? Yes, if you don't think too deeply. More reasonable? No.

revots33 · #9 05-24-2007, 11:17 AM

I think you are ignoring the payoffs for the belief. Belief in tooth fairy/santa is nice for kids but hardly essential to an adult. We can deal with losing a tooth just fine as an adult.

Compare that with fear of death and our eventual non-existence, our need to understand the unexplainable, and existential doubts about our place and purpose in the world. These are much deeper needs and the tooth fairy doesn't really cut it.

BIG NIGE · #10 05-24-2007, 01:16 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I think you are ignoring the payoffs for the belief. Belief in tooth fairy/santa is nice for kids but hardly essential to an adult. We can deal with losing a tooth just fine as an adult.

Compare that with fear of death and our eventual non-existence, our need to understand the unexplainable, and existential doubts about our place and purpose in the world. These are much deeper needs and the tooth fairy doesn't really cut it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Understanding the unexplainable is impossible by definition. Just inserting "God" in all the blank parts of the script doesn't explain anything, nor does it give us understanding. Anyway, I think you make my point perfectly. The only reason that God exists in some people's minds is because they can't handle the fact that some things are presently unexplainable, just like with little kids and losing teeth. Why don't people just be honest with themselves and face up to the fact that they can't explain why we're here? I mean it doesn't make sense for people to lie to themselves over and over their whole lives to the point where they don't even realize they're doing it anymore.