Why Do You Believe?

[DavidB.]

My question to the Theist people of this board is: Why in the face of overwhelming evidence against your belief do you choose to believe?

That's quite a lot of assumptions. I don't see any particular "overwhelming evidence" against my beliefs, nor do I "choose" to believe. I choose to keep certain commandments, but I don't choose to believe. If I didn't want to believe, I probably still woud.

[DavidB.]

There is also the problem of people of different religions who think that only they have the correct one. It doesn't make religion look good.

But that's not relevant to the perspective of someone who beliefs. The fact that many are wrong doesn't mean that I cannot be right. This "pluralist" criticism of religion is solely relevant for non-religious people.

[DavidB.]

Also not all secular people are pluralists; I think that that goes without saying, since some atheists do criticize religion.

Oh, of course. My point was only that this particular pluralist critique of religion is only relevant to (some) non-religious people, but won't convince religious people.

[DavidB.]

Obviously "believing" is a concept that's more of a "condicio sine qua non" for Christianity than for Judaism.

[DavidB.]

(Let's start by saying that I don't think "belief" or "religion" aren't really adequate terms when describing one's experiences in Judaism: these terms are firmly rooted in a discourse that was originally Christian-centric. I'll use them anyway in my reply because it seems fruitful in the discussion, but I don't think these words entirely cover the "Jewish experience".)

Anyway, as someone who "believes" (but didn't exactly grow up as religious as I am now), I think Sibboleth is exactly right on this. My belief in G-d and my Jewish observance don't stem from a rational choice, they probably stem from my "package" of background, family, education, experiences during one's youth, political preferences, developments in society, loyalty preferences, and most of all life experience. Sure, I think it was "meant to be" (in a "religious" sense) that I would eventually come back to Judaism, but the combination of the previous factors enabled me to do so. That's also why I think elaborate debates on this issue are post-hoc rationalizations of processes in which rationality is often quite limited.