Why do so many people believe in God? (Serious Question?)

Religious people, in different terms, supernaturalists, bent on preservation or whatever choose to fight this. Science education enlightens. It points to a mechanistic universe as surely as it points to biotic evolution.

What some fail to grasp or perhaps better fail to respect is that when it comes to facts, some beliefs are correct in regard to how the world works, some are incorrect.

Similarly, the elitist premise that souls, innocent or not, who fail to accept Christ inherit an eternal lake of fire....while the "saved" become heir to Grace and Heaven on the merits of ...faith, with or without good works....and by praising God with their lips .....is an irreconcilable rent in the fabric of Christian dogma.

Whichever system you adhere to, it by definition excludes all humans who died before that religion started. (The Mormons have a transparently clumsy work-around for this one.) Why should someone be denied salvation just because he/she died before the founder of the one true religion got around to showing up? Millions if not billions of humans are thereby arbitrarily excluded from being saved.

"There is a gaping flaw in all religions."

In Mormon theology, what happens to the souls of those who died before Joseph Smith, Nauvoo, etc?

I don't consider myself a member of any elite or an "elitist" but I have been called worse so...

"...He also felt that Old Norse mythology provided a model for what one might call "virtuous paganism," which was heathen; conscious of its own inadequacy, and so ripe for conversion; but not yet sunk into despair and disillusionment like so much of 20th century post-Christian literature; a mythology which was in its way light-hearted."

Kalam Cosmological Argument
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument

The Kalām cosmological argument is a variation of the cosmological argument that argues for the existence of a Sufficient Reason or First Cause for the universe. Its origins can be traced to both medieval Christian and Muslim thinkers, but most significantly to Islamic theologians of the Kalām tradition.[1] It has been revived in recent years most predominantly in the works of Christian philosopher William Lane Craig.

The argument

William Lane Craig has formulated the argument as follows:[2]

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Craig argues that the first premise is supported most strongly by intuition, but also experience. He asserts that it is "intuitively obvious," based on the "metaphysical intuition that something cannot come into being from nothing,"[3] and doubts that anyone could sincerely deny it.[4] Additionally, he claims it is affirmed by interaction with the physical world. If it were false, he states, it would be impossible to explain why things do not pop into existence uncaused.[5]

The second premise is often supported by philosophical arguments and scientific verification for the finitude of the past.[6] One philosophical argument is that the number of past events must be finite and cannot be infinite, meaning that the universe must be finite and therefore have begun to exist. This argument is established by the following syllogism:[7]

1. An actually infinite number of things cannot exist.
2. A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things.
3. Therefore, a beginningless series of events in time cannot exist.


One way that Craig supports the first premise is by referring to Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel, a thought experiment that shows how paradoxes and absurdities would result from an infinite number of existing things.[8] Next, after taking the second premise to be self-explanatory, he states that the universe is indistinct from a "series of events."[9] Thus, the conclusion can be read as "a beginningless universe in time cannot exist," which is equivalent to, "The universe began to exist."

Another philosophical argument for Kalām's second premise is that an infinite collection cannot be formed by subsequent addition. If events occurring one at a time cannot ever reach infinity, the past must be finite and so must the universe. The argument is formulated as such:[10]

1. The series of events in time is a collection formed by adding one number after another.
2. A collection formed by adding one member after another cannot be actually infinite.
3. Therefore, the series of events in time cannot be actually infinite.


Craig argues that premise one is confirmed by the sequential, forward movement of time.[11] Premise two is argued for by the contention that no matter how high one counts, one more number could always be counted.[12] Likewise, no matter how much time passes, one more moment could always elapse. Hence, when supplanting 'universe' for 'series of events,' the conclusion logically follows and supports the main argument's second premise.

The scientific confirmation for Kalām's second premise focuses largely on the Big Bang theory, which states that all matter and energy originated in a cosmological singularity roughly 13 billion years ago. Craig interprets the Big Bang as the temporal beginning of the universe, and discounts the Cyclic model, vacuum fluctuation models, and the Hartle-Hawking state model that would suggest otherwise.[13]

With Kalām's conclusion logically following from its premises, Craig concludes by arguing that impersonal, scientific causation exterior to the universe could not cause a finite universe. He gives the example of the temperature being below zero infinitely, and thus any water, although caused to be frozen by the subzero temperature, could not begin to freeze; it would be frozen infinitely.[14] Similarly, any condition that could cause the universe to exist would have to be infinitely, and thus the universe would also exist infinitely. The solution, Craig posits, is that the cause of the universe's beginning to exist must be a personal agent.[15] Craig has extended this argument to conclude that the cause must also be uncaused, beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, enormously powerful, and enormously intelligent.[16]

"jan is one wise woman. i hope fructose learns to listen to her."

"many who have studied the paranormal haven't reached your conclusions"