|
Religious people, generally speaking, don't believe what they believe because they've been convinced by a long and incredibly consistent line of scientific evidence. There are some apologists out there who do believe in God because of the evidence, but I'm fairly sure they're in the minority. It's about a lot of other things. For some, it's about community. For some, it's about a connection to history. For some, it's about a sense of belonging. For some, it's about ritual and tradition. For some, it's about hope. For some, it's hate. It's a huge combination of things for different people.
I've been an internet atheist ® for going on 5 years now. I've not only been out, but I've actively sought out religious discussions to try and understand religion better from an outside perspective. I'm even an admin of one of the more popular atheist forums, so I'm sure you can imagine that I get to talk about this a lot. While some theists get trapped into arguing the facts and are at a disadvantage, most of them don't. There's a particular epistemological theory known as fideism, for example, which is extremely popular in Christianity. It asserts that faith can be and in fact is wholly independent of reason. Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, once said something like, "Reason is the greatest enemy faith has." By taking this philosophical position, one creates a sort of different perspective on reality, a perspective in which reason is incapable of achieving certain kinds of truth, namely religious truth. I don't find this personally compelling, but it makes arguments of the kind you mount difficult to say the least.
Let me offer you some advice: don't worry about what other people believe. By all means, be concerned about what others say and do, but if what they believe doesn't hurt you, you're probably just wasting your energy trying to argue with them.
|