Frustrated athiest asks why do you believe in God?

[F1fan]

I already covered this.
I never suggested that illnesses are God’s way of punishing humans but they are simply another reality of our living in a fallen world.

Illnesses are a consequence of the world your God created. That is on your God. The Creator is always accountable for what it creates. And that is especially true if the Creator is considered to be perfect and doesn't make mistakes.

I think Job was somewhat wrong though, when he said that he would accept good or trouble from God.
"Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
In Job, it was actually Satan causing the trouble, but God allowed it to happen.

Satan would exist without God creating him. So whatever trouble Satan causes it is tied to god being the creator.

Satan will be locked away forever, but that time isn't here yet, so we continue to live in a broken world.

A broken world that your God designed and created.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I was only bringing it up to show that I agree with you on the point that live miracles are proofs, while past ones are not.

The Guide being hidden is due to the denial of miracles and signs from those performing them resulting oppression to their followers. So as to not destroy the people and give them respite, he hid the Guide so to give a break from public miracles that results in prosecution of believers by their disbelievers.

If people accepted the miracles and accepted the Twelve Successors of Mohammad (s) and supported them, the Guide would not be hidden right now.

More apologetic nonsense. Can you actually support your beliefs? If you can't there is no shame in that. But one should at least be bold enough to admit it.

 

[Link]

More apologetic nonsense. Can you actually support your beliefs? If you can't there is no shame in that. But one should at least be bold enough to admit it.

I have many threads in which I seek to prove my beliefs. I believe I supported my beliefs.

 

[Subduction Zone]

No, in comparison, we are probably a lot less intelligent than a puppy.

Then your God is once again without excuse when it comes to punishing people.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I have many threads in which I seek to prove my beliefs. I believe I supported my beliefs.

Of course you believe that. But that is almost certainly cognitive dissonance again. Have you not noticed how others of all faiths except for yours point out that you have not?

I often ask believers how they would properly test their beliefs. It has to be a method that you would accept if other religions did the same. And they all fail at coming up with a proper test.

 

[Link]

Of course you believe that. But that is almost certainly cognitive dissonance again. Have you not noticed how others of all faiths except for yours point out that you have not?

I often ask believers how they would properly test their beliefs. It has to be a method that you would accept if other religions did the same. And they all fail at coming up with a proper test.

This could work both ways. Why don't people disbelieve in God if there is no evidence and proof for him? You would say ad populum fallacy. But for it to be a fallacy, it's a given human numbers and accepting truth is not a way to determine truth or evidence.

So atheists not accepting my proofs is not a measure of their truth value.

 

[Yazata]

There's no doubt that mixed in with religion are some wonderful ideas, questions, and answers about life, and methods of maximizing the emotional, spiritual/mystic experience.

And I think that can be very important. Atheists who knee-jerk their opposition to anything falling in the heading of 'religion' run the risk of throwing out the baby with the bath water, so to speak. I'm very impressed by Buddhist ethics for example. Meditation and the contemplative disciplines certainly seem to have value. Both of those address aspects of human life that aren't really addressed by science.

I just think we need to jettison the first century world view, superstition, anthropomorphic God, and overall silliness of religion that involves an imaginary friend that occasionally answers prayers.

I don't really have anything against ancient thought. I'm hugely interested in Greek philosophy and in the surprisingly similar philosophical ideas in India around the same time. (Aristotle is my favorite philosopher, head and shoulders above anyone else, even though I disagree with many of his views. He was just so extraordinary for his time. Inventer of formal logic, the first philosopher of science, the first scientific biologist...) People then were just as smart as people today and we still have a lot to learn from the best of them.

While I wrote that I think of Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, Shiva and the rest as something like fictional characters, I don't want to totally dismiss them either. Human beings, by their nature, find it easier to understand and relate to other people than to abstractions. So putting a human face on what might otherwise be metaphysical abstractions might arguably be valuable, if it opens up a whole affective dimension of human life that abstractions can't typically reach.

I really get the sense that many atheists are anti-Christians deep down. As for me, I wasn't raised in a Christian home and have never thought of myself as a Christian. So psychologically, I don't feel like I'm in any kind of Oedipal battle against the Bible.

I think your desire for a higher state of consciousness and your philosophical inquiry is what gives a special meaning to life.

It does for me. It's what motivates my interest in anything that might help shine a light into the darkness. Religion, science and philosophy all seem to offer that in their different ways. I am a lifelong reader of science fiction too, and feel that it is good practice in stretching the imagination. I still remember reading an introductory university philosophy textbook when I was still in high school and feeling like a light had turned on in my head and I'd discovered something like my meaning in life. It's decades later now, but I've never lost that feeling.

I don't find comfort or seek answers in the "God of the gaps", but rather in the great scientific revolution and latest scientific knowledge made possible by human collaboration and hard work.

I agree that many of the more technical scientific questions, its internal "gaps", will eventually be filled in by the methods of science. But I have a very intense feeling of the sea of unanswered questions in the middle of which science floats. What are logic and mathematics? What are the 'laws of physics'? What is causation? What are necessity and possibility? What is 'reality' in the first place? Where did all of these come from and why does reality display the order that it seemingly displays and not something else? What is knowledge? What is truth? What are we trying to accomplish when we 'explain' something? And on and on and on.

It isn't so much that science has a few remaining gaps between its more solid bits, it's that science is floating in the middle of an uncharted void, the mother of all "gaps".

For example, comfort and spiritual experience through minfullness, music, literature, cosmology, meditation, deep conversation, etc. I find answers to big questions by reading philosophy and learning about new scientific discoveries.

So do I.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Ahh, so you believe God causes everything? You don't think humans bear any responsibility?
This world as portrayed in scripture is broken by sin. Sickness and pain are the result. This world isn't the end of the story, it's just the test.
And yes the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Karma doesn't exist. Good people and bad people get sick. We aren't living in heaven or hell... we are in between.
All will be made new. The girl will live on somewhere, hopefully in a perfect world where she will never know pain or loss again. All it takes is a little trust that God is good even though we can't see him working sometimes.

We have zero evidence that young girl will live on anywhere or that there is any perfect world waiting for anyone.

The Bible is the story of a bumbling God who can't seem to get anything right.

 

[Subduction Zone]

This could work both ways. Why don't people disbelieve in God if there is no evidence and proof for him? You would say ad populum fallacy. But for it to be a fallacy, it's a given human numbers and accepting truth is not a way to determine truth or evidence.

So atheists not accepting my proofs is not a measure of their truth value.

No. You do not understand the standards for rational thought. One does not believe in tings until sufficient evidence is provided for that belief. Atheists lack a belief because believers cannot supply any evidence.

You might want to work on some basic logic skills here. This was a very strange post on your part indeed.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I would not. Which just proves my point.. if the ants get in my house I'm going to take them out, but apparently God doesn't have the same right?
And yet he became one of us ants in order to save us from self destruction

Except that didn't work either and we apparently still aren't saved 'from self destruction."

 

[Link]

One does not believe in tings until sufficient evidence is provided for that belief.

So why do believers believe in God?

 

[Subduction Zone]

So why do believers believe in God?

Most of them because their parents believe. And that goes pretty far back. And just like new languages naturally evolve, so do new religions. They all appear to be man made.

 

[Yazata]

This is not necessarily true.

I agree that it isn't necessarily so.

There doesn't have to be a reason why or a cause to everything.

There doesn't have to be, nor must the reason be comprehensible to human beings even if there is.

Sean Carrol explains this in the video linked below at about 15:10

Or at least Sean Carrol gives his own opinion on the matter.

I'm inclined to think of the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a heuristic principle rather than as a fact about reality. It's like the "Scientific method" in that it's a strategy for addressing questions. Science's "methodological naturalism" might be a similar kind of thing.

 

[Wildswanderer]

broken world that your God designed and created.

I'm pretty sure you are capable of understanding that free will has a price.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Most of them because their parents believe. And that goes pretty far back. And just like new languages naturally evolve, so do new religions. They all appear to be man made.

Hundreds who never heard of Jesus are converted every month. It's not just passed down by parents.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Except that didn't work either and we apparently still aren't saved 'from self destruction."

You are saved from self destruction through the blood of God's son. This life with it's struggle is an eye blink in the bigger picture.

 

[Wildswanderer]

We have zero evidence that young girl will live on anywhere or that there is any perfect world waiting for anyone.

The Bible is the story of a bumbling God who can't seem to get anything right.

Oh he gets it exactly right.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

 

[Wildswanderer]

Then your God is once again without excuse when it comes to punishing people.

We are capable of knowing when we do wrong just like my dog is. That doesn't necessarily stop her from doing it again just like us.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Hundreds who never heard of Jesus are converted every month. It's not just passed down by parents.

Go back and reread my post. Did I say that all of them are a result of that? Even more appear to be leaving the faith than joining it so the "people are convinced" argument is not a good one for you to use.

 

[Subduction Zone]

We are capable of knowing when we do wrong just like my dog is. That doesn't necessarily stop her from doing it again just like us.

Sorry, but a weak understanding of right and wrong is not enough. Your God also appears to play hide and seek and when he wins he punishes those that he hid from. How is that just?