do you beleive it is built into man to beleive in God?

Question

i beleive it is because the Bible says that ."every man has been give the measure of faith." not a different measure per person but The measure.... and that it's up to us whether we will water it or allow it to be squelched or whatever... i mean like little children don't ask i, "is there a god/" rather they say things like, why did god make the sky blue.... your thoughts.....

i challenge any non beleiver out there to search their innermost being and tell me sincerly that they are at peace without knowing the truth about the existance of God.... i truly beleive there is a pert of us that is missing a void that can only be filled by God.... and that we will always be in a state of unrest until that void is filled ... and only by an intimate knowledge of God....

Answer 1

I think that it is built into man to believe in God. However, I think modern society is driving a wedge between man and his belief in God.

Answer 2

No. Belief in god is not built into a person.

Faith is taught to us just like everything else we are taught as we grow up. eg how to eat with a knife & fork, how to ride a bike, or bounce a ball, or write.

This is why there is such an emphasis on faith in religion. Because your faith is something you must constantly re-assess and protect. Faith and God are not things that you can visibly see, and as a child these are hard things to fully understand.

What children can understand is when you tell them "God created the world". They assume that as an adult you know what you're talking about and take it to be true. Since the premise of "god" is already defined as "who/what made the world" the question of "Is there a god" is pointless. "Why did god make the sky blue" is instead the recognition of what was previously learnt about how the sky was created, and an expression of further interest as to why "god" chose the colour blue.

The ability of a person to exercise faith and believe in God requires of them to:
a) have the ability to trust in something
b) have the knowledge of what God is
c) make a decision to combine the two

This is not something we're born with.

But having said all this, it might be nice to tell the child that the sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering.

Answer 3

Good question, but I don't believe that man has a natural desire to look to God for anything. We can look at the heavens and see the stars and wonder, and we can look at life itself and wonder, but in spite of any evidence for God, I don't think we have a natural desire within us to seek him out. We seek out science instead and look to ourselves for our own explanations of the world around us.

The problem is that even if we do manage to look at God as a possibility, we still look to ourselves for any decision to attach ourselves to the Almighty. And this leads to a belief that both science and a belief in God comes from ourselves and is built in.

I believe the Bible says that this is not true. Faith must be given to a fallen man that does not have this ability. If God must give us our faith and therefore our salvation, it truly does become a grace that is beyond our comprehension because we would simply look to ourselves otherwise.

Your question then becomes an example of this with your emphasis on man's possession of a "measure of faith" where I put an emphasis on "has been given." We don't naturally possess it.

Answer 4

I think it is probably built in to believe in some sort of Divinity, but historical evidence would suggest that polytheism is more natural than monotheism. So it would be more logical to say that it is built in to believe in the Gods, plural, and that monotheism is a fairly recent development. There was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who attempted to introduce it prematurely, but most people recognize that the first monotheistic religion was Judaism. That's "only" some six thousand years old.

Answer 5

Yes, but not in any kind of "God gene".

Our belief in gods comes from inherited tendency to see patterns where none exist, our inability to make probabilistic judgments, our tendency to see agency where there is none, our fear of the unknown, and things of that sort. Religions evolved to take advantage of those characteristics of human nature.
=================
"I challenge any non beleiver out there to search their innermost being and tell me sincerly that they are at peace without knowing the truth about the existance of God...."

I'm at peace, but as you can see, it's because I do know the truth about the existence of God.
(I know how to spell "existence", too).

You, on the other hand, need to work on your arrogance problem.

Answer 6

It is built into man to seek answers and explanations for all of the questions we can envision. For many of those questions the only answer is god. I don't think we will ever know the answers to all of the questions. The more we learn the more questions we find. Someday we may answer enough of them to find god and ask him the rest.

Answer 7

yes ! it was built inside us to seek our creator and coonect to him whatever the way was! the idea of no god is so scary makes us no better than just a mere od dust in the air wither carreid by air or landed in the ground just a dust and am sure we are much more than just a lousy dust1 god is there and we r here and we need him and he wanst us ti need him and be there for us

Answer 8

Yes. Even people who no contact with anyone in the deep jungles wordship something. Atheists worship atheism. The thing is we don't come with operating instructions to worship any particular god.

Answer 9

my personal thoughts are yes, i mena, most churchs or christan religions have children come in the faith since they were babaies...and some churchs dont help when it comes to finding your own way or your own measure of beliveing in god. I have had CCD (religion school) since like kindegarden and they have forced religous nknowledge into my head. But even worse, they FORCED us to go to church, as if God will punish us for not going, or he will punish us for not believing in teh church.

i guess it all depends on where you are, who your with, and how far into teh faith you are. But for the opening question. Everything in built into poeples heads...thats why school is here. We need it, heck, i bet that if you were born into a different religon, you wouldnt believe in God, but maybe the greek gods and what not.

as long as you have faith or belief in something...no one can say you believe more or less then what you do.

Answer 10

Possibly we all have an inbuilt tendency to believe in a deity, but this isn't an argument in favour of that deity's existence: it might be taken quite easily as an argument against.