Why Humans Cannot Believe God Exists or Does Not Exist

The human brain makes strawman arguments

God is such a big question, and I think a question far more complex and impossible to even approach than most people realize, that I tend to question both people who say they believe in God and those who say they don't believe in God. Einstein said the problem of God was the “most difficult in the world,” a problem that couldn’t be answered with a “yes or no,” and one ”too vast for our limited minds.”

I tend to find that when most atheists I encounter say they don't believe in God they aren't even talking about God. They think they're talking about God, but they aren't.

But don't worry, I'm equally skeptical of most theists.

In the picture, which cyclist is going fastest? Most will say the cyclist on our left is going the fastest and the one on the right the slowest.

There are, however, unanswered and unanswerable questions that make it impossible to know. Did they start at the same place? Did they start at the same time? Are they moving forward or backward? Are they moving? I have seen sprint cyclists stay still during a race. Even if it is a normal 1-2-3-Go race, it is possible that the cyclist on the right is going the fastest and the cyclist on the left the slowest at the moment the image was shot. Catching up, slowing down and switching positions are normal parts of all races.

The initial guess was made from a made-up simplified explanation to a complex and unanswerable image.

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Attribution substitution is an automatic unconscious process the brain uses to make speedy decisions needed to function. It contributes to many cognitive biases, misperceptions and visual illusions. It is a heuristic used when someone has to make a judgment about a complex, ambiguous situation and substitutes a different but more easily solved situation.

The substitution is done at the automatic subconscious level and the person does not realize she is answering a related but different question. This explains why many visual illusions still trick the eyes after the person has learned they are visual illusions. This also helps explain why many individuals can be unaware of their own biases, and even persist in the biases when they are made aware of them. 

An example is when you judge the intelligence or beliefs of a stranger by his or her looks, fashion, age, race, sex, accent or nationality. Determining a person’s intelligence and beliefs is a complex problem that must be done at the closely examined person-by-person level. However, everyone makes automatic judgments from their stereotypes before they’ve talked to the person or even when just shown a picture. 

People judge a work of art by deciding what they think it is– how the pieces fit together, what is its intended meaning, genre, et cetera– then judging that. When someone says a work of art is trite and silly, what he is saying is his interpretation of what is the art is trite and silly.

I didn’t say the work can’t also be trite and silly.

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“Do you believe God exists?”

Answering this question “Yes” or “No” is an example of attribution substitution.

Whether or not God exists, God is impossible to define. “God” itself is just a human-made word, religious symbols of God are just symbols, and God is beyond human definition, language and imagination. Asking “Do you believe God exists?” is, as my late science professor father would phrase it, “a non-question.” One hundred different people have one hundred different incomplete and subjective definitions and conceptions of God. 

The person’s response of “Yes” is stating that he believes in the existence of his definition of God that isn’t and cannot be the true or accurate depiction of God. You cannot believe in what you don’t or can’t possibly know or even imagine. Two people may say “Yes” to the question, but, as their definitions and conceptions differ, they do not believe in or are referring to the same thing.

An anti-theist, or someone who answers “No, God does not exist,” is using the same attribution substitution process. She is making up a personal definition of God, or using someone else’s definition, then saying that that does not exist.

“Do you believe God exists?” is impossible to answer. The question itself is nonsensical, or a “non-question.” It is asking for an answer as to the existence of something that the question itself does not and cannot define.

Or as I might respond when someone asks me if I believe in God, “I cannot answer that. However, if you give me your definition of God I’ll tell you if I believe in that.”