Topic: Why do you believe God exists? - page 4. (Read 7963 times)

We only truly believe your god doesn't exist. The one from the bible. In general some sort of god could be possible.

Be at peace af-newbie I am not accusing you of making those particular arguments. They are just the typical arguments I have often seen in some form or another.

Your argument is that the evidence for God's existence is not sufficient to compel you to believe in God so you don't. I understand your position. I also understand why you keep calling me delusional. I simply think you are mistaken.

You are correct that question ultimately has very little to do with evidence. It goes deeper then that and is related to how the available evidence is interpreted in the context of an individuals existing knowledge including the assumed axioms he or she applies when interpreting incoming evidence.

If you truly believe that God does not exist you will find confirmation for your disbelief everywhere. There is not sufficient data to compel you to abandon disbelief. Similarly if you truly believe in God you will find evidence supporting the glory of his existence every day.

The question is like a Bayesian inference that diverges to completely different conclusions when fed the same data set. This is because data itself is not ultimately separate from consciousness. Our knowledge is shaped by new data but new data is also shaped by our existing knowledge.

Given this reality no one will ever be able to prove God to you. However, that inability does not mean God does not exist. Thus instead of approaching the question from the perspective of looking for proof to reject disbelief I recommend instead trying to look at the world holistically from the perspective that God does exist examine how that changes your perspective on things. Then compare that worldview to your current one in its entirety.

Bruce Charlton who is a more eloquent writer then I expressed this in the following way.

The Big Decision about Life...
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-big-decision-about-life.html?m=1

Yea, specially on the last page: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=737322.9880

Where you still couldn't answer.

Haven't you seen the thread, Scientific proof that God exists? - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/scientific-proof-that-god-exists-737322?

The proof for the existence of God is all around us. You simply need to accept it like you accept other science.

This is said well.

Jesus came from the Father, spiritually, to inhabit an earthly, human form. When Jesus accomplished perfection, and the punishment for the sins of mankind, and the following resurrection, He essentially did away with the imperfection of mankind.

Even though man is stuck in his imperfect genetics at present, He has the ability to choose like God does. So, there is nothing that can coerce a man from his choice to accept God or not... just like nobody can coerce God. Enticement, encouragement, invitation, maybe. But no coercion.

Mankind is, and is becoming like God. God is doing this. We simply don't see it, yet. In the resurrection we will find out if we used our God-power to accept God or to reject ourselves.

Then I won't answer how I determined that. =)
Your wish is granted.

Ultimately people need to decide for themselves what is worthy of worship and why.

Yes they do usually with illogical emotionally laden arguments that typically fall into one of three categories.

1) Nature is cruel thus I decry God.
2) Humans are cruel thus I decry God.
3) I enjoy (insert vice here) and God forbids it thus I decry God.

The arguments are flawed, but to fully appreciate this you must first answer the question of what makes something worthy of worship. Then you can apply that assessment to God. Ultimately each individual needs to decide for themselves.

I found the following book an interesting read. It addresses the common arguments above and others and does so with a very logical approach and structure.

https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Bible-Exodus-Dennis-Prager/dp/1621577724

The same way you feel about science and yourself.   

This argument is what atheists use for God.

Atheists believe that God is not worthy of worship

Because Zeus is not worthy of worship.


Yes I have and your comparison is poor. A better comparison would be to comparing them to the Amish. Did you know that Judaism is decentralized? Each synagogue and rabbi are not bound by the decisions/interpretations of other synagogues. Similarly individuals within Judaism are free to change to a different synagogue if they wish though this might require moving. The different denominations of Christianity provide a similar function.

No one intelligent wants a state church. That is a terrible idea and a recipe for religious oppression as history shows. A population that is largely and voluntary grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition is not a state church.


It's not about psychological comfort that is tangential. Ultimately understanding God is about accurately understanding reality and bringing our lives into alignment with said reality.

Cool, so it is not "what" you believe but "how" you use your belief to benefit humanity.

I like this take!

What doesn't?

That's not a real argument here. All distractions, education... Human activities in general do that. It's just that it fits your moral code and your views of society but why should your point of view be superior to others?

Some people use science to improve mandkind, others to create horrible products they can sell for their own sakes. Some people use religion to get power and abuse the weaks, other as a path to make humanity grow.

L'Abbé Pierre is a French Resistant who created one of the best association completely devoted to the poors, and he did all that because of the stupid religion that doesn't solve anything...

Religion is a path and it's up to you on how you walk it.

Why is it that when a Muslim goes on rampage it's all "He's not real muslim" or "that's not Islam" but when a Christian does something bad everyone forget all the positive things Christianity has brought to us?

Yes this is my position.


I am unaware of any other organizing framework that appears capable of sustaining the necessary cooperation over time without collapsing into tyranny. Certainly if our goal is only maintaining order there are lots of dystopian options available. Absolute tyranny is good at order.


If you understand the a priori of God you understand that God is infinite. Thus it logically follows that the God of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and any other branches of monotheism are the same God. Infinite by definition means all encompassing.

The differences between these religions represent different understandings of the optimal human relationship with regards to God not different Gods. The three faiths by and large all acknowledge this.

Similarly if an infinite God exists it follows logically that any possible polytheistic entity must either not exist or exist as a dependent of God a creation of God if you will. This again is simple logical deduction derived from the first axiom that an infinite God exists.

As for Saudi Arabia that is a sad state of affairs. The Quran has numerous verses that emphasize belief in the one universal God who judges people according to their behavior. The Quran also states explicitly that in matters of faith there shall be no coercion. Sadly we know that other interpretations and xenophobic elements often predominant.

Borrowing the words of Dennis Prager:
"Muslims need what most Christians and Jews have experienced - separation of church and state; interaction with other faiths and with modernity; and reform. Islam needs to compete with secularism, not outlaw it, and to allow competing ideologies within Islam. In religion, as in politics, when there is no competition, there is corruption and intolerance."


It's no surprise you feel this way. I have accepted a first axiom that you have rejected. I believe in an infinite creator and you do not.

You therefore feel that I am "full of it" and I in turn feel you are blind.

Wow! You even admit that you are the one who is speehless! And then you think that the education system has failed me? LOL!

Since you know this about religion, get away from you faith-based science that has nothing to back it up other than speculation... before you turn it into a religion any more than you have already.

At the end the day the character of the government is dependent on the character of the people. If a population is greedy, lustful, envious, and slothful they will favor leaders and support causes that pander to these vices. Quality of life and governance in general will worsen and the best a systems of checks and balances can do is slow the decay. Similarly if a population is prudent, just, courageous, and charitable then they will elect leaders and support causes promote these virtues.

The real challenge of improving governance over the long term is how do we improve the moral character and virtue of human beings?  This is no small task. Indeed it is the most important aspect of progress. Technological advancement is secondary.  

There is where the Atheist go wrong. Their solutions here always fail. They sometimes go totally nuts and assume humans are some kind of perfect creature if only the environment was adjusted. Thus leads them to crazy ideas like communism which if you read the actual ideology might work ok for a population of perfect selfless sinless angels but predictably collapses into contradiction, horror, and tyranny when applied to actual human beings.

Or they go the other way and embrace total relativism. They deny the existence of good and evil altogether everything is just preference. There is no value in anything. Anything socially accepted is "good" anything not is "bad". This leads to a willful self-annihilation as I noted a few posts back. It also lead many atheist leaders to favor drastic population reductions as a way of maintaining control. They grow fearful of an unruly population and their dependence on an unsustainable debt bubble to keep that population happy thus they start to desire the extermination of said population. This is a time honored strategy of tyrants and well documented. It is even described in the Bible as widespread at the time of Moses birth.

The answer to the challenge of good governance is that every generation must prioritize the moral improvement of each individual citizen. This is the necessary prerequisite to ensure future generations will be better off then current generations. God is necessary to this process for without God we are lost in a sea of moral relativism. Without God we can't even define objective good and evil let alone moral improvement.
 
How Do We Make Society Better?

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." Winston Churchill

Even far from it!

There is no way to prevent tyranny in a group of different individuals in my experience. Whatever the group and its members, whatever the system, there will always a time where a large majority will say "we do this" ignoring de facto a minority who will get imposed something they don't want.

Democracy is a beautiful word but hiding a complex submissive/dominant reality. People are uprising when you say that democracy isn't perfect and isn't moraly good, that it's just an organization system that has its flaws...

I would say that democracy is a bit better over complete dictatorship but there must be even better forms of organization keeping more freedom directly in the hands of the people.

I agree.

Unfortunately, religious organizations don't know the answers in a logical way. Their faith is logical (because we all live by faith; nobody can see an instant into the future), but they don't use it to logically find out the answers. And they take it out on people who use logic.

The closer we get to micro machines, the more we find out that operations in the universe (and especially life) are super micro machines in the extreme. We use them as such. We are applying DNA to computers to make them "think" better. We are using DNA natural machines with man made machines: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/synthetic-biology-building-machines-from-dna/ and https://www.cell.com/chem/pdf/S2451-9294(16)30111-5.pdf and many more if you search for them.

The question we seem to be ignoring is, who or what made these natural machines and the machine of nature? Evolution and Big Bang are nice ideas, but they are sadly lacking in real life application. The thing we see in machines is, machine makers. So, who or what made the machines of nature and the universe?

Forget the word "God." Forget, also, the silly notion that stuff simply springs into being all by itself. We don't have any example of real spontaneity happening anywhere. Rather, look at science and see the machines, and then apply this kind of thinking to the idea of machine making. Who or what made the machines of the universe. Whoever or whatever made the machines of nature had super-great ability.

If you ignore the machine maker(s) of nature, or that there could be any such thing(s), you are turning away from science and what science is discovering and using... that nature is made up of machines, and is collectively a gigantic machine. In addition, you are turning away from the kind of logic that made you question the nuns.