Why would any god value belief?

[pocaracas]

Seriously, what is the value of belief?

From the point of view of the god, IT sees this person, this human who was taught about IT by other people. Never mind if IT's actually real. The human believed its elders (or peers) and somewhat unquestioningly accepted that as truth and proceeded to propagate the same idea. How gullible this human must seem.

In time, this teaching gets distorted and this god sees different belief systems popping up. From these, conflicts arise. The initial gullibility has turned into war.

And still god values belief?...

Any minimally fair god would make it so these people would have never relied on belief.

However, that is what we see in the world.
Belief, however, suits the religious elites and the political elites in the absence of an actual god.

As if I'm discovering anything new, here...

[brewerb]

It's more than just belief, you need to include the W word.

No, not whore,...............

WORSHIP!

god is an egomaniac. Evidence would be the first 4 commandments.

It's just amazing what humans can dream up.

[possibletarian]

But..but...but.. free will, omniscience, possible worlds, actualisation, timeless moments, omnipresent, tithing, and all that

[no one]

Because humans are super-duper special! The mostest specially special special in all of the entire everythings!

[jerry mcmasters]

Yeah good point. From the point of view of the god, it's just weirdly irrelevant, or a sick ego trip. I guess I could imagine creating a computer game where the npcs gain consciousness and believe stuff and I take careful note of whether they believe in their Creator or not because...? And if they believe in me I don't really reward or punish them differently than the ones that don't believe in me...? It's all very odd.

[Alan V]

Seriously, what is the value of belief?

Here's how I see the question from a naturalistic perspective.  Humans evolved to be tribal and to attack other tribes to protect their territory.  But without understanding evolutionary theory, we needed some rationalization of our impulses.  How are people different?  They believe different things, therefore our beliefs are better than their beliefs.  And not only that, ours are sanctioned and rewarded by our god.  And our god is not just any god, but The God.  And so on.

In other words, when humans had no scientific information, they mythologized everything -- the origin of the universe, the origin of their morality, and the origin of their beliefs.  And to make sure no one questioned any of it, they proclaimed it all sacred.  Ignorance breeds pride.

[Chimp3]

The Judeo-Christian god is the one that fucked with Job until his entire life was destroyed and then berated him with the longest "god" speech in the Babble. His family was dead, wealth gone, home destroyed, livestock dead. Yet he remained faithful and got god buggered. This god demands more than belief.

[Paleophyte]

Because if you don't believe then you'd probably stop feeding the priests who created Him.

[Minimalist]

Yeah good point. From the point of view of the god, it's just weirdly irrelevant, or a sick ego trip.

It makes no sense for a "god" who presumably wouldn't give a fuck what inferior creatures said or did.  But if you allow for the obvious fact that this shit was invented by very real humans who wanted to cement their position on top of the social/political ladder all of a sudden it makes perfect sense.

Besides, it isn't as if we don't know what flawed beings expect.

[Cheerful Charlie]

Seriously, what is the value of belief?

From the point of view of the god, IT sees this person, this human who was taught about IT by other people. Never mind if IT's actually real. The human believed its elders (or peers) and somewhat unquestioningly accepted that as truth and proceeded to propagate the same idea. How gullible this human must seem.

In time, this teaching gets distorted and this god sees different belief systems popping up. From these, conflicts arise. The initial gullibility has turned into war.

And still god values belief?...

Any minimally fair god would make it so these people would have never relied on belief.

However, that is what we see in the world.
Belief, however, suits the religious elites and the political elites in the absence of an actual god.

As if I'm discovering anything new, here...  

If such a God beasty exists and wants us to believe, that God beasty should make a public appearance.  The OT God made appearances to the Israelites, if we are to believe the oriental tall tales of the OT.  God as a pillar of fire by night, smoke by day.
Appearances to 72 elder of the tribes of the Israelites et al.  So God could do it ignoring the lame excuses from the true believers why God cannot (preserving free will usually).  Of course if those tall tales are all lies......

If God cleverly presents us a world where there is to all appearances no God at all, it makes God look like a trickster God not to be trusted.  We have a theologian's WTF God.  Waggling their ears, rolling their eyes, waving their hands around while feebly uttering nonsense to try to explain all of this away.

All amusing until you read of the latest Islamicist atrocity where God believing Moslems slaughter entire small villages in Africa in the name of Allah.  One would expect God to make some sort of appearance to say "Stop that!".  That God does not do that gives these extremist the idea that God approves their atrocities and murders.

[Cheerful Charlie]

It's more than just belief, you need to include the W word.

No, not whore,...............

WORSHIP!

god is an egomaniac. Evidence would be the first 4 commandments.

It's just amazing what humans can dream up.

Worship has nothing to do with any God's desires. It has to do with organizing religion to keep individuals in line.  It means keeping people in their place as part of a society run by priests in conjunction with kings and nobles and army commanders.  It is sobering to realize that for centuries, worship, regular church going was mandated in Christian societies with stiff punishment for not showing up in church on Sunday, or going to the wrong church.  Worship was and is a tool for controlling populations.

That is why even today in America, there is a burning urge of many theists to turn every sporting event, every public political function into a prayer session, and pledge bleating for all, and woe those who do not stand for the pledge.  Worship is a control mechanism.  And woe to those who don't like their strings being jerked by religious idiocy.

This is why "worship" rubs me raw.  It means "Submit to our theocracy!  Or else!".  Me:  "No!  I will not submit to you idiots!"  Worship is a dangerous theological brainwashing program, or failing that, intimidation tactic.

[brewerb]

It's more than just belief, you need to include the W word.

No, not whore,...............

WORSHIP!

god is an egomaniac. Evidence would be the first 4 commandments.

It's just amazing what humans can dream up.

Worship has nothing to do with any God's desires. It has to do with organizing religion to keep individuals in line.  It means keeping people in their place as part of a society run by priests in conjunction with kings and nobles and army commanders.  It is sobering to realize that for centuries, worship, regular church going was mandated in Christian societies with stiff punishment for not showing up in church on Sunday, or going to the wrong church.  Worship was and is a tool for controlling populations.

That is why even today in America, there is a burning urge of many theists to turn every sporting event, every public political function into a prayer session, and pledge bleating for all, and woe those who do not stand for the pledge.  Worship is a control mechanism.  And woe to those who don't like their strings being jerked by religious idiocy.

This is why "worship" rubs me raw.  It means "Submit to our theocracy!  Or else!".  Me:  "No!  I will not submit to you idiots!"  Worship is a dangerous theological brainwashing program, or failing that, intimidation tactic.

What makes you think god's desires are not really man's desires with a puppet added for effect?

Without worship, and all the manipulative control it brings to the table, religion may not exist.

[SteveII]

Seriously, what is the value of belief?

From the point of view of the god, IT sees this person, this human who was taught about IT by other people. Never mind if IT's actually real. The human believed its elders (or peers) and somewhat unquestioningly accepted that as truth and proceeded to propagate the same idea. How gullible this human must seem.

In time, this teaching gets distorted and this god sees different belief systems popping up. From these, conflicts arise. The initial gullibility has turned into war.

And still god values belief?...

Any minimally fair god would make it so these people would have never relied on belief.

However, that is what we see in the world.
Belief, however, suits the religious elites and the political elites in the absence of an actual god.

As if I'm discovering anything new, here...  

A few comments:
1. God does not value nor desires simple 'belief'. He desires a specific response, then a relationship, and then acting like you are in a relationship with God.
2. Christians don't rely on 'belief' for their justification of their belief. That would be circular. The belief is justified through their experiences of God. So, God does not "rely on belief."
3. Is it the fact that the Christian teaching is distorted or that people have distorted it? There is a huge difference.

[Cheerful Charlie]

Exodus 24
9 Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. 11And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.

Mark 1
10 And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him:
11 And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

If God wants belief and a relationship, he can have it. He just has to prove his existence in a dramatic and unmistakable manner

[pocaracas]

Finally!

Seriously, what is the value of belief?

From the point of view of the god, IT sees this person, this human who was taught about IT by other people. Never mind if IT's actually real. The human believed its elders (or peers) and somewhat unquestioningly accepted that as truth and proceeded to propagate the same idea. How gullible this human must seem.

In time, this teaching gets distorted and this god sees different belief systems popping up. From these, conflicts arise. The initial gullibility has turned into war.

And still god values belief?...

Any minimally fair god would make it so these people would have never relied on belief.

However, that is what we see in the world.
Belief, however, suits the religious elites and the political elites in the absence of an actual god.

As if I'm discovering anything new, here...  

A few comments:
1. God does not value nor desires simple 'belief'. He desires a specific response, then a relationship, and then acting like you are in a relationship with God.

So... Tell me how that specific response comes about?
How does one learn about the "question" that breeds the response?
Feel free to use a book written by people as the source of that teaching... only for me to then ask how did those people come to possess such knowledge in order to pass it on to paper.

2. Christians don't rely on 'belief' for their justification of their belief. That would be circular. The belief is justified through their experiences of God. So, God does not "rely on belief."

But is it not entirely within the realm of possibility that what Christians interpret as "experiences of God" are actually just a psychological self-reinforcement of the pre-existing belief?
Belief informing the interpretation of the world (experiences) to people who are not at all equipped to understand it in the first place (aka, most of humanity) - and then this interpretation informing upon the belief. What do you know?... it does look circular!
God, if there is such an entity, is on the outside just facepalming itself at this circularity.

3. Is it the fact that the Christian teaching is distorted or that people have distorted it? There is a huge difference.

Curious that you assume that "Christian teaching" is the one original religious teaching... I wonder where you got that from...
But I sort of see it, given that I implied the existence of a single divine being in my text.... I don't remember giving that being a name, though.

Let's see what we have from the annals of history...
First written mythology - Babylonian, with a cast of multiple divine entities.
Then we see Egyptians... more or less in parallel with the Hebrews, the first Jews.
Later... much later... we get Christianity, shortly followed by Islam.

So, which message got distorted?

[Alan V]

2. Christians don't rely on 'belief' for their justification of their belief. That would be circular. The belief is justified through their experiences of God. So, God does not "rely on belief."

Our contention is that it is, indeed, circular since your experiences derive from your beliefs.

[Minimalist]

1. God does not value nor desires simple 'belief'. He desires a specific response, then a relationship, and then acting like you are in a relationship with God.

Oh, Stevie.  You are still trying to be sooooo special.  Grow up son.  Right now you are short-bus special.

[Chas]

Seriously, what is the value of belief?

From the point of view of the god, IT sees this person, this human who was taught about IT by other people. Never mind if IT's actually real. The human believed its elders (or peers) and somewhat unquestioningly accepted that as truth and proceeded to propagate the same idea. How gullible this human must seem.

In time, this teaching gets distorted and this god sees different belief systems popping up. From these, conflicts arise. The initial gullibility has turned into war.

And still god values belief?...

Any minimally fair god would make it so these people would have never relied on belief.

However, that is what we see in the world.
Belief, however, suits the religious elites and the political elites in the absence of an actual god.

As if I'm discovering anything new, here...  

A few comments:
1. God does not value nor desires simple 'belief'. He desires a specific response, then a relationship, and then acting like you are in a relationship with God.
2. Christians don't rely on 'belief' for their justification of their belief. That would be circular. The belief is justified through their experiences of God. So, God does not "rely on belief."
3. Is it the fact that the Christian teaching is distorted or that people have distorted it? There is a huge difference.

Made-up crap is still just crap.  

[SYZ]

I'm left wondering if Steve is in the queue for a brain transplant?

[SteveII]

Finally!  

Seriously, what is the value of belief?

From the point of view of the god, IT sees this person, this human who was taught about IT by other people. Never mind if IT's actually real. The human believed its elders (or peers) and somewhat unquestioningly accepted that as truth and proceeded to propagate the same idea. How gullible this human must seem.

In time, this teaching gets distorted and this god sees different belief systems popping up. From these, conflicts arise. The initial gullibility has turned into war.

And still god values belief?...

Any minimally fair god would make it so these people would have never relied on belief.

However, that is what we see in the world.
Belief, however, suits the religious elites and the political elites in the absence of an actual god.

As if I'm discovering anything new, here...  

A few comments:
1. God does not value nor desires simple 'belief'. He desires a specific response, then a relationship, and then acting like you are in a relationship with God.

So... Tell me how that specific response comes about?
How does one learn about the "question" that breeds the response?
Feel free to use a book written by people as the source of that teaching... only for me to then ask how did those people come to possess such knowledge in order to pass it on to paper.

The New Testament. Those people heard it from God incarnate. Anticipating your possible responses, here is an inductive line of reasoning to justify the belief that the NT contains true claims:

a. Jesus most certainly was born, baptized, and died in the time period claimed. (other sources)
b. Pete, James and John were known eyewitnesses to both the public and private events of Jesus' three year ministry
c. They presided over the early church
d. This early church instructed Paul
e. As evidenced by Paul's letters, this early church believed the claims later outlined in the gospels (before they where written)
f. Peter, James and John eventually wrote letters emphasizing the themes found in the gospels
g. Luke wrote Luke and Acts with the purpose of outlining the events from the birth of Christ through his present day
h. The editors of Matthew, Mark, and John were all alive during the lifetimes of these people above (it is unknown if the actual people with the pen were eyewitnesses)
i. The editors would have been know to the recipients of the gospels. The books were name by which apostle influenced/provided details for that particular book
j. The early church, who we know believed the claims of Jesus already, accepted the gospels. There is nothing in the early church writings that questioned them.
k. The gospels dovetail nicely with Paul's writings based on his training directly from all the eyewitnesses (completing a loop)
THEREFORE it is reasonable to infer that the events of the gospels are at the very least good representations of what really happened.

In addition to the consistency and connections drawn from above, we can break things into categories of evidence:

- Documentary (both actual and inferred--by careful textual examination). There has been no other set of writings so thoroughly investigated in the history of the world.
- The presence of churches, the growth, the persecution, and the occasional mention in surviving secular works.
- The characters, their actions, character, stated goals, meaning of their words, and eventual circumstances
- Jesus' own claims (explicit, implicit, connections to the OT--some of which the disciples may have never known).
- The actual message: how it seems to fit the human condition, resonate with people, and somehow it does not contradict the OT--which would have required a very sophisticated mind to have navigated that. Over a period of 50 years, at least nine authors wrote 27 books containing no less than 55 major doctrines and 180 doctrinal concepts centered on one figure – Jesus Christ.
- Paul and his writings on application and affirmation of the major claims--done before the Gospels were independently written.
- This one can't be stressed enough: the unlikelihood of alternate theories to explain the facts. I think it is obvious people believed from day one when Jesus was still walking around. I have never heard an alternate theory which could account for most or all of the concrete and circumstantial evidence we have.

2. Christians don't rely on 'belief' for their justification of their belief. That would be circular. The belief is justified through their experiences of God. So, God does not "rely on belief."

But is it not entirely within the realm of possibility that what Christians interpret as "experiences of God" are actually just a psychological self-reinforcement of the pre-existing belief?
Belief informing the interpretation of the world (experiences) to people who are not at all equipped to understand it in the first place (aka, most of humanity) - and then this interpretation informing upon the belief. What do you know?... it does look circular!
God, if there is such an entity, is on the outside just facepalming itself at this circularity.

It is possible that Christian experiences are not veridical. Is it likely that this happens every day to tens of million stretching back 2000 years? No, that does not seem likely. But I think there is a stronger case than that.

A) Argument from Religious Experience: Religious experiences are in all relevant respects like sensory experiences; sensory experiences are excellent grounds for beliefs about the physical world; so religious experiences are excellent grounds for religious beliefs.

B) If we hold sensory beliefs to be properly basic, then we have to hold similarly formed religious beliefs, formed on experiences of God manifesting himself to a believer (Plantinga calls them ‘M-beliefs’), as properly basic. He proposed that human beings have a faculty—what John Calvin called the ‘sensus divinitatis’—that allows them to be aware of God’s actions or dispositions with respect to them. If beliefs formed by sense-experience can be properly basic, then beliefs formed by this faculty cannot, in any principled way, be denied that same status. His developed theory of warrant (2000) implies that, if the beliefs are true, then they are warranted. One cannot attack claims of religious experience without first addressing the question as to whether the religious claims are true.

A, B from article <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-experience/>

3. Is it the fact that the Christian teaching is distorted or that people have distorted it? There is a huge difference.

Curious that you assume that "Christian teaching" is the one original religious teaching... I wonder where you got that from...
But I sort of see it, given that I implied the existence of a single divine being in my text.... I don't remember giving that being a name, though.

Let's see what we have from the annals of history...
First written mythology - Babylonian, with a cast of multiple divine entities.
Then we see Egyptians... more or less in parallel with the Hebrews, the first Jews.
Later... much later... we get Christianity, shortly followed by Islam.

So, which message got distorted?

Unless I state otherwise, assume I argue for the Christian position.

If you are asking where was God through those years, why think that he was not worshiped? Job is the oldest book in the Bible and he has a grasp on the same God that is referred to in the Pentateuch (the next chronologically).

Or are you asking how to distinguish between religions and which ones are true?

[SteveII]

2. Christians don't rely on 'belief' for their justification of their belief. That would be circular. The belief is justified through their experiences of God. So, God does not "rely on belief."

Our contention is that it is, indeed, circular since your experiences derive from your beliefs.

Why isn't it the other way? Why aren't your beliefs confirmed by your experiences? I know you propose that all religious beliefs are a result of bias. But as the quote from the article notes, you need a reason why this isn't just another skeptical hypothesis because your belief on the matter calls for one. This also applies perfectly to your first post in this thread.

"There are general problems with all kinds of naturalistic explanations as defeaters. First of all, as Gellman (2001) points out, most such explanations (like the psychoanalytic and socio-political ones) are put forward as hypotheses, not as established facts. The proponent assumes that the experiences are not veridical, then casts around for an explanation. ... The proponent of the naturalistic explanation as a defeater owes us some reason to believe that his or her argument is not just another skeptical argument from the veil of perception." From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-experience

[Minimalist]

Why aren't your beliefs confirmed by your experiences?

And what "experiences" are those?  The biggest "experience" I ever have is watching morons like you and dripshit pretend your fantasies are real because of some silly old book.  That is not compelling.  In fact, I think the two of you need a padded cell.

[Drich]

Seriously, what is the value of belief?

Belief= respect. What God does not want respect?

From the point of view of the god, IT sees this person, this human who was taught about IT by other people. Never mind if IT's actually real. The human believed its elders (or peers) and somewhat unquestioningly accepted that as truth and proceeded to propagate the same idea. How gullible this human must seem.

In time, this teaching gets distorted and this god sees different belief systems popping up. From these, conflicts arise. The initial gullibility has turned into war.

And still god values belief?...

Any minimally fair god would make it so these people would have never relied on belief.

only if he wanted to force compliance.
You miss the whole point of this life if knowledge of God was an absolute. It is to seperate those who truly seek to love and worship God from those who do not.

If God is not a variable then self preservation kicks in and people follow God to stave off hell, not out of love.

However, that is what we see in the world.
Belief, however, suits the religious elites and the political elites in the absence of an actual god.

As if I'm discovering anything new, here...  

one can only logically reason if they are considering all of the information.

[pocaracas]

Finally!  

A few comments:
1. God does not value nor desires simple 'belief'. He desires a specific response, then a relationship, and then acting like you are in a relationship with God.

So... Tell me how that specific response comes about?
How does one learn about the "question" that breeds the response?
Feel free to use a book written by people as the source of that teaching... only for me to then ask how did those people come to possess such knowledge in order to pass it on to paper.

The New Testament. Those people heard it from God incarnate.

Those people heard it from someone who was born and raised within a culture that already possessed a belief in a god... even more than one belief and most in more than one god... though the prevailing belief at that point in time and space was for a single divinity.

Forgive me if I fail to acknowledge that whoever ended up being called Jesus was somehow god incarnate.

Anticipating your possible responses, here is an inductive line of reasoning to justify the belief that the NT contains true claims:

a. Jesus most certainly was born, baptized, and died in the time period claimed. (other sources)

I'll give you that. Some person perhaps called Jesus was born, baptized and died around that time, yes.

b. Pete, James and John were known eyewitnesses to both the public and private events of Jesus' three year ministry

Jesus as a teacher and those three as pupils, disciples... fair enough.

c. They presided over the early church

If you mean as priests in underground ceremonies in clandestine temples... sure.

d. This early church instructed Paul

Somehow, yes.

e. As evidenced by Paul's letters, this early church believed the claims later outlined in the gospels (before they where written)

Yes, the belief was already floating around at the time of writing.

f. Peter, James and John eventually wrote letters emphasizing the themes found in the gospels

Many other wrote similar letters, not to mention other gospels.
And quite a few of those got a sizable number of followers.

g. Luke wrote Luke and Acts with the purpose of outlining the events from the birth of Christ through his present day

Present day?

h. The editors of Matthew, Mark, and John were all alive during the lifetimes of these people above (it is unknown if the actual people with the pen were eyewitnesses)

This is inconsequential. I am alive at the same time as Boris Johnson and I am in his vicinity. I can write many things about him, but my proximity wouldn't make them any more true.

i. The editors would have been know to the recipients of the gospels. The books were name by which apostle influenced/provided details for that particular book

No, the whole point of writing was to crystallize the story and propagate through copies. The majority of recipients were almost as far from the editors as you are.

j. The early church, who we know believed the claims of Jesus already, accepted the gospels. There is nothing in the early church writings that questioned them.

Depending on how you define "early", one can even say that there's nothing written by the early church.
So, can you clarify what you mean by "early church"?

k. The gospels dovetail nicely with Paul's writings based on his training directly from all the eyewitnesses (completing a loop)

Hadn't we established that Paul was influenced by the previous church teachings? Why would his writings differ?

THEREFORE it is reasonable to infer that the events of the gospels are at the very least good representations of what really happened.

Not at all.
The gospels and all the other texts grew out of a religious background. Belief already existed and was already encouraged. Circularity is still in plain sight.
The pre-existing expectancy of a supernatural force acting upon the world was there and the story of Jesus' divinity only served to enhance this pre-existing belief.
The story itself may have been based on a real person preaching a new kinder variant of judaism, who got on the wrong side of the established religion. But it was then adorned with some supernatural acts feeding the yearning for a miracle by some of the people in the region. This is completely plausible and fits with most (if nto all) of your premises above.

In addition to the consistency and connections drawn from above, we can break things into categories of evidence:

- Documentary (both actual and inferred--by careful textual examination). There has been no other set of writings so thoroughly investigated in the history of the world.

Still doesn't make what they say about the supernatural true.

- The presence of churches, the growth, the persecution, and the occasional mention in surviving secular works.

Temples already existed long before...

- The characters, their actions, character, stated goals, meaning of their words, and eventual circumstances
- Jesus' own claims (explicit, implicit, connections to the OT--some of which the disciples may have never known).

Jesus is a character that begins as a grown man at the age of 30 or so. It is completely plausible that this person could have educated himself in the religious texts of that time and place.
Even nowadays, how many people know the whole bible before they reach the age of 30?... with some even claiming that they were atheist until their 20's.

- The actual message: how it seems to fit the human condition, resonate with people, and somehow it does not contradict the OT--which would have required a very sophisticated mind to have navigated that. Over a period of 50 years, at least nine authors wrote 27 books containing no less than 55 major doctrines and 180 doctrinal concepts centered on one figure – Jesus Christ.

And a stupid amount of literature and other works of art since... So what?!

- Paul and his writings on application and affirmation of the major claims--done before the Gospels were independently written.

Again... hadn't we established that he was educated in the belief?
You know... on the road to Damascus, passing by Qumran, perhaps?... Where a fairly large community had been exploring for over 200 years a variant of Judaism very similar to that which Jesus is claimed to have preached?

- This one can't be stressed enough: the unlikelihood of alternate theories to explain the facts. I think it is obvious people believed from day one when Jesus was still walking around. I have never heard an alternate theory which could account for most or all of the concrete and circumstantial evidence we have.

Well, personal incredulity doesn't make supernatural events any more likely.

I can accept that there was a cult following of this man. I can't accept that he was god incarnate, nor that he made any miracles. And I can see how such additions to the story would have made it easy to propagate the ideas.

2. Christians don't rely on 'belief' for their justification of their belief. That would be circular. The belief is justified through their experiences of God. So, God does not "rely on belief."

But is it not entirely within the realm of possibility that what Christians interpret as "experiences of God" are actually just a psychological self-reinforcement of the pre-existing belief?
Belief informing the interpretation of the world (experiences) to people who are not at all equipped to understand it in the first place (aka, most of humanity) - and then this interpretation informing upon the belief. What do you know?... it does look circular!
God, if there is such an entity, is on the outside just facepalming itself at this circularity.

It is possible that Christian experiences are not veridical. Is it likely that this happens every day to tens of million stretching back 2000 years? No, that does not seem likely.

Care to explain what sort of experiences happen every day?

But I think there is a stronger case than that.

A) Argument from Religious Experience: Religious experiences are in all relevant respects like sensory experiences; sensory experiences are excellent grounds for beliefs about the physical world; so religious experiences are excellent grounds for religious beliefs.

That is akin to saying that dream experiences are also like sensory experiences, so... are they grounds for believing that dreams are true?

B) If we hold sensory beliefs to be properly basic, then we have to hold similarly formed religious beliefs, formed on experiences of God manifesting himself to a believer (Plantinga calls them ‘M-beliefs’), as properly basic. He proposed that human beings have a faculty—what John Calvin called the ‘sensus divinitatis’—that allows them to be aware of God’s actions or dispositions with respect to them. If beliefs formed by sense-experience can be properly basic, then beliefs formed by this faculty cannot, in any principled way, be denied that same status. His developed theory of warrant (2000) implies that, if the beliefs are true, then they are warranted. One cannot attack claims of religious experience without first addressing the question as to whether the religious claims are true.

There is indeed an area of the brain dedicated to the religious experience (you can easily google it). But that is connected to the belief detail. The one I am here questioning. Does it make sense to value belief alone?

3. Is it the fact that the Christian teaching is distorted or that people have distorted it? There is a huge difference.

Curious that you assume that "Christian teaching" is the one original religious teaching... I wonder where you got that from...
But I sort of see it, given that I implied the existence of a single divine being in my text.... I don't remember giving that being a name, though.

Let's see what we have from the annals of history...
First written mythology - Babylonian, with a cast of multiple divine entities.
Then we see Egyptians... more or less in parallel with the Hebrews, the first Jews.
Later... much later... we get Christianity, shortly followed by Islam.

So, which message got distorted?

Unless I state otherwise, assume I argue for the Christian position.

If you are asking where was God through those years, why think that he was not worshiped? Job is the oldest book in the Bible and he has a grasp on the same God that is referred to in the Pentateuch (the next chronologically).

Or are you asking how to distinguish between religions and which ones are true?

Perhaps you should start a bit earlier than Job... (sorry for saying it was the Babylonians, before.... it's the Sumerians): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_religion
""Sumerian religion was the religion practiced and adhered to by the people of Sumer, the first literate civilization of ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerians regarded their divinities as responsible for all matters pertaining to the natural and social orders.
...
The Sumerians believed that the universe had come into being through a series of cosmic births. First, Nammu, the primeval waters, gave birth to An (the sky) and Ki (the earth), who mated together and produced a son named Enlil. Enlil separated heaven from earth and claimed the earth as his domain. Humans were believed to have been created by Enki, the son of An and Nammu. Heaven was reserved exclusively for deities and, upon their deaths, all mortals' spirits, regardless of their behavior while alive, were believed to go to Kur, a cold, dark cavern deep beneath the earth, which was ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal and where the only food available was dry dust. In later times, Ereshkigal was believed to rule alongside her husband Nergal, the god of death.
""

Something curious happens when you follow the link for An:
""
Anu was believed to be the supreme source of all authority, for the other gods and for all mortal rulers, and he is described in one text as the one "who contains the entire universe".
...
along with his sons Enlil and Enki, constitutes the highest divine triad
""
What do you know?...a divine trio... where have I seen this before?!


The plot thickens when you find An's queen consort, Asherah
""
Asherah is identified as the queen consort of the Sumerian god Anu, and Ugaritic ʾEl, the oldest deities of their respective pantheons, as well as Yahweh, the god of Israel and Judah.
""

Yahweh?!

""
At that time the Israelites worshipped Yahweh alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal, but in time El and Yahweh became conflated, El-linked epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, and other gods and goddesses such as Baal and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion.

From the 9th into the 6th centuries BCE the Yahwistic religion separated itself from its Canaanite heritage as Yahweh became the main god of the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) and of Judah,[11] and over time the royal court and Temple in Jerusalem promoted Yahweh as the god of the entire cosmos, possessing all the positive qualities previously attributed to the other gods and goddesses. By the end of the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE), the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the one true God of all the world.
""


All this to show you that the belief was pre-existing and had been evolving.

And no, I'm not asking to distinguish which religions are true. I'm asking why would any god value belief, instead of knowledge.

[pocaracas]

Seriously, what is the value of belief?

Belief= respect. What God does not want respect?

First, no. Belief is not equal to respect.

Second, any god made up by people, one mimicking human lords and kings and emperors... those would want respect.
Any actual real god, a creator of the vast cosmos? Would that guy even bother with humans? Tiny blips in a spec of dust floating in this huge Universe... why? At best, it would want these creatures to baske in the creation, to discover all that it is and, if possible, come to discover him.

From the point of view of the god, IT sees this person, this human who was taught about IT by other people. Never mind if IT's actually real. The human believed its elders (or peers) and somewhat unquestioningly accepted that as truth and proceeded to propagate the same idea. How gullible this human must seem.

In time, this teaching gets distorted and this god sees different belief systems popping up. From these, conflicts arise. The initial gullibility has turned into war.

And still god values belief?...

Any minimally fair god would make it so these people would have never relied on belief.

only if he wanted to force compliance.
You miss the whole point of this life if knowledge of God was an absolute. It is to seperate those who truly seek to love and worship God from those who do not.

If God is not a variable then self preservation kicks in and people follow God to stave off hell, not out of love.

What nonsense is that?!

Oh... stuff you've been fed to believe by your peers in a way to keep the belief self-perpetuating in the absense of any god.

However, that is what we see in the world.
Belief, however, suits the religious elites and the political elites in the absence of an actual god.

As if I'm discovering anything new, here...  

one can only logically reason if they are considering all of the information.

All, indeed... and who has access to all information?