A question for religious people...

Why do you follow a religion? At least three reasons would be optimal if possible.

Many thanks.

I'm muslim because something/someone must have created this universe, now scientists says the universe was created from nothing.. This is just their excuse of denying that there is a truth and that they can't possibly prove or describe how the universe started. And even so, lets say it was created from nothing, they say we all living things were created randomly in the big bang explosion, now a 6 year old can tell you right now that all this life, humans, insects, animals are designed and created to absolute perfection, we still don't fully know how our brain works just because of how complex it is and you can literally buy a 200 pages book on only about butterflies on how they eat, die, etc. You telling me this all was created by "Random" events from an explosion?? Again a 6 year old will tell you the answer to that question. This earth, sun, moon, how we live, eat, digest, sleep, cannot just happened for random reasons.
Do you really think this Earth and the Sun was placed perfectly apart, and all COMPLEX life to every single molecule was created by just an explosion, for us to perfectly live in?

To those who don't believe in God. I will ask you now, how do you think the Universe was created? That is really the question it comes down to at the end.

But what created this God? Most people would say God has always been there, he is incomprehensible etc, but if God can always exist or come into existence, why can't the universe just exist without God (the middle man).

The universe has existed for around 14 billion years; the solar system was created around 4-5 billions years ago, and humans have been around for around 6 million years (I think). It's not so improbable if you think about the chaos of the big bang going on for billions of years. At some point, out of all the planets and stars out there over billions of years, it is almost certain that at least one would randomly fulfill the conditions for life as we know it.

Most religious people believe in God because they were taught to, they try to justify a belief in God using various arguments, which I don't get. You don't believe something and then justify it, you believe something because you can justify it. It's weird to think that most people believe in a religion when they barely know anything about it: you're encouraged to learn more about your religion. You should be in your religion because you already know everything about it.

I mean no disrespect, I used to be a Muslim and I respect your right to believe in what you want.

But what created this God?

I follow TSRianism because TSR is the joy and love of my life. It gives me sense, it gives purpose, it gives me meaning to my otherwise bare and obsolete life.

TSR transforms my inner soul from the misery of being lost in a barren desert to being in a bubbly urban centre teeming with life and people.

From the trolls to the racists to the hippies, TSR is the place where one can feel the connection between the souls and feel the sensation as it cleanses the heart from unworldly (or rather, worldly) evil from the real life.

TSR is hope, it is unique, it is beautiful.

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I'm well aware of the cosmological arguments having done AS RE.

The person I was replying to didn't use the cosmological argument, they just said that God must have created the universe.

All of these cosmological arguments never prove that this first cause must be the God of theism, nor must it be anything resembling a God. Why must some things necessarily exist? Existence in itself is arbitrary. Why can't the universe be the first cause of itself, as I said, cutting out the 'middle man'. All of these arguments rely on logic, but empirically we simply don't know how the universe started, nor how it works.

Because they have been indoctrinated to believe in that religion from birth.

I'm don't know, I think alluding to God as the cause of the universe is basically as a cosmological argument.

A few points;

The arguments from classical theism (Aquinas' five ways being the most common example) attempt to show that which is pure actuality (or colloquially the unmoved mover) has divine traits like omnipotence etc. You may disagree with these points but that means dealing with the arguments given for 'and this we call God'.

The universe cannot in any way 'cause' itself as self causation is unintelligible. That's why no one defends the idea that the universe itself is the first cause. Rather, the typical atheist response is that the universe is neccessary. Or that the universe has it within the necessity of its own nature to exist.

You talk about logic and empiricism. Generally, the idea of scientism plays a role in the assumptions of many objectors to cosmological arguments. If that's what you mean by highlighting that we need empiricism in order for a cosmological argument goes through, it's not hard to show scientism to be wrong.

Also, science may play a role in the Kalam cosmological argument in whether the universe had a beginning or is eternal, but is almost irrelevant to all other types. The First Way of Aquinas starts from the general notion of change, for example, and is simply something that science must presuppose if it is to work. Similarly, the Principle of Sufficient reason is something science needs in order to work, a rejection of the PSR undermines scientific ideas.

Ofcourse, you may wish to argue that the Cosmological argument from contingency fails or the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics which are the foundation for the Five Ways of Aquinas are wrong, but this is an argument from philosophy.

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