Why Do You Believe?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The question that the thread starts with is flawed, and not just in the obvious sense: very few people believe in whatever it is they believe* as a result of sitting down and trying to work out which of the various 'options' strike them as the most plausible. It wouldn't even occur to most people to even think about doing this (again, about anything). Personal beliefs typically reflect someones cultural/family background, their education, their experiences, and often their personalities. This is the case even when someone's beliefs are primarily a reaction against the first and/or second of those two things (i.e. a reaction is still a reflection). If intellectualised defences of one belief or another (including the absence of, etc) often look more like the products of mildly pathetic post hoc intellectual parlour games than the actual reason why the person in question believes whatever they do, then that is because they almost always are.

Or at least that's my view: quite possibly this subject looks very different to other individuals. We are not all alike.

_{*And this obviously applies to far more things than religion.}