Why would anyone believe without evidence?

Question: Why would anyone believe without evidence?

The article by William Lobdell stirred up some discussion on the internet. Here are two related comments...

Comment July 21, 2007 at 3:35 pm
In my experience, most believers are like this. They have a powerful moral sense, a need for answers and no powers of rational analysis at all.
To read this is to feel a strong sense of empathy for a decent human being struggling to reconcile the irreconcilable, yet also to wonder why anyone would ever let their beliefs be determined by such vacuous crap? He drifts into religious belief with no evidence, and drifts out again with no coherence.

Comment July 21, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Is faith a weakness or a mechanism to cope with hardships?
When the emotionally vulnerable endure some genuine personal tragedy then faith becomes a useful 'skill'. I mean, who hasn't ever wished really hard that there is a chance to see loved ones once again?
Of course most of us do sober up after a while and learn to move on.

If you are a believer you may find these comments hard to hear but it is important to listen to what is being said. If you are not a believer you may want someone to seriously answer these objections. Can I ask both of you to listen in for a few minutes.

There are several statements made but the question is still the same. “Why do people believe in God, Christ, the Bible without evidence or a well thought out foundation for their religious convictions?” The assumption behind the words is that we could avoid a crisis in our life if we were just a little more thoughtful and this would be accomplished by not believing or having a solid foundation for our faith.

Answer: We have a need to believe.

The irony of these comments and the question is that I often wonder myself why people don’t take more time to think through the most important question of their life, the existence of God and what that means to me and all of humanity.

I spent most of my life pondering that question and people amaze me with how shallow we approach this foundation of an eternal life with God. Many of us spend more research on football teams, and cars than we do on the question of our mortal souls relating to an immortal God. The comments were insightful, and misinformed.

We believe because we need to believe. Faith is the normal way of living and anyone who is really honest will admit that they use faith all the time. Faith is another word for trust. We place our trust in things, peoples, and systems on a minute by minute basis. In an interconnected world you cannot fail but use faith constantly. Religious faith is placing some of that trust in a god. A Christian faith is placing most of that faith in our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Now why would anyone do that? You are going trust someone, why not Him? His track record is better than most and you have put faith in less trustworthy things in the last twenty four hours. Why not believe in Christ since you are going to believe in something and hope for the best anyways.

Faith, in comment two, is called a useful skill to help us cope with life and its unexplained tragedies. That is a big reason why the modern American adopts faith as we do many things. We adopt faith because it works, but we also drop faith when it doesn’t seem to work. In others words we value people, things, and God only when it is working for us. Unfortunately that is not a high quality faith, but a self absorbed life.

The amazing thing about Jesus Christ was that he elevated this conversation to a whole new level and said faith is not just believing, or acting religious. He said that faith should be a day by day relationship with Him. The Christian faith makes no sense at all if it isn’t more than religion and ideas. The coherence of faith is in the relationship. Therefore if we have no relationship, or if it is all about us, then we don’t have a faith that Christ would endorse. That is not what it means to be born again.

Please see the previous posts that discussed this topic.