We seem naturally to be prone to over-interpret our environment and to see natural events as the results of intelligent agents at work. And you can see why our evolutionary history should have led to this cast of mind: it was much better for our ancestors to be too quick to diagnose potential agents around them (predators or other dangerous creatures) than to be too slow! So, we seem to be hardwired to be over-ready to see signs of agency in the world and to be susceptible to crediting supernatural explanations of natural events. And so it doesn't take much dedication on the part of those caught up with stories of the supernatural to keep them propagating. For more, much more, on these lines, see Dan Dennett's very readable Breaking the Spell . Now, Mark Collier and Eric Silverman both gesture towards this sort of answer to the original question, but they also both remark that this doesn't settle what to believe about God. Well, yes, not settle . But still, if you do come to think that the...

It isn't right to say that Christianity, per se, advocates a god that values what you might call blind faith, i.e. faith which is not grounded in reasoned argument. Perhaps that's true of some sects, but certainly not all. Catholic tradition has it that the existence of God is rationally demonstrable (and that God wants us to use the reason that we have been endowed with). So those atheist critics who argue that the supposed arguments for God don't work -- whether purely a priori arguments or partially empirically based arguments -- aren't point-missing, but are directly engaging with a major strand of Christian thought which holds that there are rationally compelling arguments for his existence. But suppose you do posit some god that goes out of its way to hide itself and give no rational evidence for its existence (even though it wants us to be credulous and believe in it). Then to be sure, the empirical state of the world is the same whether or not such a being exist. By hypothesis, we have no...

If you want to try something rather more accessible than the heavy-duty books that Eric Silverman suggests, then try Richard Dawkins The God Delusion . Sure, it's shallow in places, and a bit crass in others, but it will certainly be an enjoyable read that gets you thinking hard.

I'm not as confident as Peter Fosl about the testability issue: perhaps we need to know a bit more about what counts as " the theistic hypothesis". After all, a lot of theistic hypotheses look perfectly testable by ordinary scientific standards. Take, for example, the claim that Zeus exists. I take it that no one now reading this site believes that that claim is literally true! But why? Well the existence claim, taken literally, is bound up with a range of stories about how the world works; and we now know the world just doesn't work that way. Mount Olympus is not populated with gods; bolts of lightning are naturally caused discharges of electricity; clouds and rain are not gathered by supernatural agency; burnt sacrifices to Zeus do not increase the chances of better crops or victory in battle; and so it goes. Science -- in the broadest sense of our empirically disciplined enquiries into how things work -- has shown we have no need of the Olympian gods to explain anything. Of course, that...

No. But that's no limitation on such a god's power. We're not saying that there is some possible task that this god fails to be able to pull off. We're saying that there isn't any task that is coherently describable as "making a square triangle". For consider: what could possibly count as making a square triangle? To be a square requires having four sides. To be a triangle requires not having four sides but only three. So nothing can possibly count as being both a square and a triangle. Hence whatever the god (or anyone else) does, it couldn't correctly be described as "making a square triangle" for that isn't a coherent description of anything. Take a mundane case. I pass you the cookies. You can take one. Or you can take none. Both are within your power. But you can't simultaneously both take one and not take one. But saying that plainly isn't to say that there is some limitation on your powers of choice vis-a-vis cookies! The point is that nothing could count as...

Note, desiring something isn't needing it. I may desire a villa in Tuscany, but I don't need one. And, whatever is the case with needs, plainly it isn't the case that for every human desire there is a way of fulfilling it (especially given other people's desires). Maybe lots of us would love a villa in Tuscany; but we can't all get one. And in fact we often desire flatly impossible things. Lots of humans would love totime-travel: but of course that desire doesn't make itpossible. And maybe lots of us would love to live for ever: butthere's no reason to suppose that merely having the desire makes eternal life possibleeither.

The Bible tells us all sorts of things -- e.g. that wheat ripens later than barley (Exodus 9:31-33). Now, when farmers arrange their work so the barley gets harvested first, then I suppose you might say that they are acting according to what the Bible says about crops. But of course, they don't arrange their work thus and so because the Bible says wheat ripens later, but because it actually does ripen later. The Bible also tells us that we should help each other out -- for example "If you see your brother's donkey or his ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it. Help him get it to its feet." (Deut: 22:4). Now, again, when I stop to help a broken-down motorist on a country road, for example, I suppose you might say that I am acting according to what the Bible enjoins. But I don't act that way because the Bible says that it is the decent thing to do, but because it actually is the decent thing to do. (After all, there are plenty of things the Bible enjoins that I don't think decent at...

It might very well be that you have had feelings that you have interpreted as feelings of the presence of God (you didn't imagine having the feelings that you interpreted that way). But the question, presumably, is whether you were right in so interpreting them. The fact that, given your cultural setting, you found it very natural at the time to interpret the feelings in a certain way may be hardly surprising. But presumably that is in itself not a strong reason for supposing that the interpretation you put on your experiences was actually correct. After all, others brought up differently -- e.g. in a cheerfully atheistic environment -- are no less prone to various patterns of exalted feelings from time to time: but they will no doubt want to interpret the experiences in a very different way. Though actually, things probably go deeper than mere patterns of acculturation. Dan Dennett has argued that our tendency to over-interpret certain experiences as betokening the presence of...

Discussions of the status of theological claims can suffer from a restricted diet of examples. It is worth remembering that lots of theological claims are in fact uncontroversially true or uncontroversially false, and their epistemic status (and their relation to science) is pretty clear. Take, for example, the claim that Zeus exists. I take it that no one now reading this site believes that that theological claim is literally true! But why? Not, I'm sure, on the basis of fancy philosophical arguments. Yet rejecting the existence of Zeus surely isn't irrational prejudice either. For the existence claim is bound up with a range of stories about how the world works; and we now know the world just doesn't work that way. Mount Olympus is not populated with gods; bolts of lightning are naturally caused discharges of electricity; clouds and rain are not gathered by supernatural agency; burnt sacrifices to Zeus do not increase the chances of better crops or victory in battle; and so it goes....

You are quite right to be suspicious. This has nothing to do with philosophy. In fact you should be more than suspicious. Peddling dingbat fantasies to children according to which "a person who suffers misfortune in this life is paying for past misdeeds" is simply child-abuse.