Matters of Faith

I've always been interested in matters of faith and why exactly people believe what they do.

It's an interesting topic because, from my point of view, the faithless and the non-believers have the easiest position and stand for the most benefit. "I don't believe you" and "Prove it" are the two easiest stances to take with regards to getting someone who has faith to try and explain their position.

The one's against faith can easily appeal to deductive evidence, or lack thereof. There's no concrete proof of so how do we know it's ?

I think the problem lies, for me, in that a lot of people take the infallibility stance. "Well, my parents, grandparents believed in and they couldn't be wrong." Believe or appealing to the fact that it was good enough for preceding generations. Which is really weird, man. Because appealing to the past in a progressive, forward thinking society as ours is just strange. I mean, you could use those same types of arguments to justify crucifying people, or anything else that was "good" for us in the past.

I guess I'm needing something to point to in the here and now. Give me evidence, give me something! Don't leave me with that whole "If you don't believe you go to this bad place." I can't handle that. It doesn't work for me. That whole you'll go to hell if you don't. That's the exact opposite of appealing to the "good enough for the past" argument and asks that we believe for the sake of some future well-being.

Dig this, that's even CRAZIER. If I don't believe in now I'm going to some place bad? That's appealing to some kind of fear, or phobia. And that doesn't seem the right way to draw me in. I won't do anything because I'm forced by fear of "scared" into doing it (we're talking about beliefs, if you want to say "What about if you get robbed at gunpoint?" Then, okay, you've got a point). But isn't that what the whole nonbelievers go to this bad place argument is? Putting a gun (or future harm) to my temple and saying "Believe or else"?

Personal faith it's harder to trample on. It's personal. It doesn't require one to go to church or even believe in nonsense. It requires one just to believe based on what works. If it's personal faith I buy it, I dig it. It's that whole "Come on down to the official faith building or burn forever eternally" (which is impossible, because if you burn "forever" then there'd be no need to go to the building, you'd already be burning).

So, what makes up faith? What draws people to these institutions and makes them believe in a lot of crackpot schemes? I can answer for my agnostic self what makes up my world, but I don't get what draws people into these other worlds, these set of beliefs. Is it that people are joiners? Or are they really afraid of punishment at the hands of some vengeful, nutty God? do they really believe an all-loving being is capable of punishment?