• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Frustrated athiest asks why do you believe in God?

F1fan

Veteran Member
Because he will judge you some day soon.
According to some believers. It's not a convincing claim.

I doubt even fervent Christians take any of this seriously. If they really worried about being judged by God eventually we would see believers bending over backwards following Jesus' example of helping the needy and giving away their money. But we don't. We see some good Christians who appear to follow Jesus, but the more conservative a Christian is the less they care about what Jesus taught, and the less they seem to be worried about judgment. That would suggest they don't really believe in the Christian God.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
Because it's the only thing that ultimately matters. Otherwise it's just:
" Shadows and dust Maximus, shadows and dust!"
IOW, you're afraid of there being no ultimate meaning in the universe or your existence so you believe in an implausible story?

You do realize that doesn't mean it's true, yes?
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
Data brother is Ai shared.

Once holy cloud angels cooled constantly told truthful stories. Burnt by science they now lie.

So lying avengeful angels possess man's mind. You caused your own judgements said the angels.

You judged yourself wanting.

What human greed always has caused man's fall from his own kingdoms. Civilization. Your choice.

You were given own freedom to walk. Freedom to move. Freedom to respect. Free will.
 

ppp

Well-Known Member
Because he will judge you some day soon.
That's it? I judge people all the time. I was short a quarter at the hardware store, and the guy behind me handed me one. I judged that good. When a guy was the victim of a hit and run, I judged that action as bad.
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
A sacrificed man forced to have a machine speak for him.

As inventor he once spoke for the machine he used his mind and controlled by physical body. He used his life to control the machine.

He then depended to move by a machine type invention.

I served him in my care work. Disability services.

He said cosmic history was just hell.

You didn't even listen to what he said.

Unlike earth a planet bodies in hell were gone.

Earth had evolved was held.

He told of you.

He went to you and told you.

You don't listen.

You didn't pay taxes as you assisted the poor.

How come many rich men today seem to get out of paying taxes?

Yet none of you seem to assist the poor and starving or in medical need.
If men said I served they didnt serve an army they served healing the sick and poor.

Our salvation army are religious humans who serve. What do you think gods army was anyway?

Humans have to be living to claim I serve.
 

Daniel Nicholson

Blasphemous Pryme
The OT is shadows and types...it doesn't give us the whole nature of God...yes God allowed killing in the OT...he even wiped out humanity once...But what did he desire?
He created man for communion with him and men rejected him completely, except for a handful of them.
His ultimate plan was to become human like those who hated him to save them from what they deserved. But people don't read that far apparently. They get stuck on God getting rid of people who hated him. Only God has the right to judge who lives and who doesn't.
We all deserve death but he offers mercy.
Point is, you said it wasn't in the bible. And it is, along with everything else I said in my previous post.
 

Daniel Nicholson

Blasphemous Pryme
I appreciate the way you are asking and will try to do your question justice.

Well, I don't actually "believe in God", since I'm an avowed agnostic. But like the later Anthony Flew (at one time the atheists' atheist), I do find myself drifting towards something like deism I guess. That probably requires some explanation.

Like George-ananda wrote earlier, one needs to ask what concept of 'God' we are talking about. They aren't all the same. I personally differentiate between the highly personalized deities of religious myth, and the far more abstract object of natural theology.

When it comes to figures like Yahweh, Allah or Vishnu, I think of them as fictional characters in effect. I believe (but not with 100% certainty) that they don't exist in any literal sense. So that puts me close to the atheists in that regard. I don't believe that the Bible, Quran or the Gita provide me with any privileged insight into the ultimate nature of reality. I basically reject most revelation claims.

But I don't totally dismiss these traditions either, since a lot of very good philosophy of religion has been done in the Christian, Islamic and Hindu traditions. I feel lots of kinship with the neo-Platonic strands of Christian tradition for example, and perhaps for Palamite theology in the Orthodox tradition. I am not ready to totally dismiss religious experience.

That being said, as an old philosophy major, I feel myself surrounded by mysteries at every moment. It's the human condition. We can ask "why" about anything. We get an answer. So we ask 'why' about the answer. And without exception we find ourselves at the frontiers of human knowledge in just a few iterations. Try it with your words up above: 'reason', 'logic', 'evidence' and 'facts'. What do those words mean exactly? What grounds and justifies them? Those are all still open philosophical questions and there's a huge literature about each idea.

So human beings find ourselves surrounded by unanswered metaphysical and epistemological questions wherever we turn. Something is going on with all this "reality" stuff, and I don't think that any of us really knows what it is.

One of the traditional ways of conceiving of 'God' is to think of the word as referring to whatever the ultimate answers are. We see it with the ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle. This "God of the Philosophers" would be whatever the ultimate irreducible ground of reality is and whatever the source of the order is that we (and science) preceives around us, and ultimately why there is something rather than nothing. The ultimate answers to the ultimate questions.

I just feel intuitively that there's more to all this than we know and I long to know what it is. (Though I've long been resigned that I never will.) That's what I see religion pointing towards and it's why I don't want to sneer that search, that openness to the unknown, into atheist oblivion.

As an agnostic, I can't be sure that answers even exist. But just emotionally and psychologically, I'm inclined to take the Principle of Sufficient Reason seriously -- For all x, if x exists, then a sufficient reason for x's existence exists. (Yes, I'm aware that it leads to infinite regresses.) Science generally accepts it without acknowledging it, it's what the principle of causality is all about. It's why when we ask how birds fly, we aren't satisfied with 'It's just the nature of birds to fly and that's that'. We want to understand how it's done. It's what separates us from our dogs, we don't just accept our surroundings as givens.

I certainly can't be sure that the answers to the most fundamental questions can ever be known by beings in this reality. If there are super advanced space aliens out there, they probably don't know either. That's my suspicion.

I don't know whether it all traces back to one Master Answer as the ancient neo-Platonists thought: The ineffable transcendant "One". The Utimate Mystery out of which everything else emerges. Or whether there are multiple independent answers to different questions. Or even whether human concepts would apply any longer. I certainly don't want to think of the answers as human style "persons", that seems to me like the height of anthropocentrism.

I guess that I think of the God of the Bible, Quran and the theistic Indian traditions as very human attempts to put a human face on the ultimate transcendant Mystery that I feel so strongly, so as to make it more comprehensible and emotionally comfortable.

Human beings find it much easier to relate to people than to understand abstractions. Just think of high-school kids hanging out with their friends, vs trying to learn algebra. The former is a far more complex data processing task than the latter. But it's human.

So I often feel some kinship with religious people I guess. I sense that they are on a similar quest.
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. 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 think your desire for a higher state of consciousness and your philosophical inquiry is what gives a special meaning to life. 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. 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.
 

Spirit of Light

Be who ever you want
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. 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 think your desire for a higher state of consciousness and your philosophical inquiry is what gives a special meaning to life. 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. 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.
Isn't it wonderful that we are a people with so much diversity :) your comfort in science and its answers that give you a fullfilment in life :)
And others find their comfort in a form of seeking God :)

Its so important to be happy for others the way they are :)
 

Daniel Nicholson

Blasphemous Pryme
I've explained many times, that we can exist in God's vision and can't anywhere else because only God can truly see us and judge us as we are. Who we are is subject to judgment, it's contingent on judgment defining it, without a perfect judgment there is no exact who we are, and there is no even guessing who we are in this case. It would be an illusion and we would be a made up fantasy by the mind as far as our value and inner image/beauty goes.
That's a view on existence, what is your answer to the OP question?
 

Daniel Nicholson

Blasphemous Pryme
2. For every x, if x exists, then a sufficient reason for x exists.

This is the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the idea that for any x, a reason exists at the very least for why that x is what it is and not something else. Science seemingly embraces it when it seeks explanations for things as varied as the existence and diversity of life on Earth, the origin of geological landforms or of the Solar System itself. Science isn't satisfied with being told 'That's just how things are'.
This is not necessarily true. There doesn't have to be a reason why or a cause to everything.

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

Daniel Nicholson

Blasphemous Pryme
Would you like help from those who practice religion wrt your atheistic anger problem, is that a fair understanding of your position Daniel?
No, I am dealing with anger and frustration (which does not stem from atheism) in a more practical way. It's frustrating talking to faceless, straw-man internet trolls with no brain and therefore no foundation for sound logic and reasoning. It's less frustrating to know I'm talking to real people with hopes, dreams, and ideas. With values and goals, some very similar to my own. People who have very logical and understandable reasons for their actions and beliefs.
 

Daniel Nicholson

Blasphemous Pryme
That question alone shows that you are brainwashed by modern education. Humans don't rely on evidence to get to a truth simply because that's not possible. Today you get truths from our media such as CNN or Fox News, they acquire info subsequently from eyewitnesses. That's how reality works. Before the invention of TV, then people read news from newspapers which is, some human writings from a piece of paper. People in London knew what happened in New York city this way. Do people look for evidence behind each piece of news before they believe so, reality doesn't operate that way. Another example, covid-19 death tolls are listed for over a year on a daily basis, do you have the evidence that those death tolls are accurate?

History is basically made up of human testimonies and mostly cannot be evidenced. So we believe history happened said not by evidence by means of trusting what historians said. It is said in Chinese history books that Confucius (who lived 3000 years ago) had 3000 apprentices. You either believe so or not, it's out of human capability to look into whether Confucius actually had 3000 apprentices or perhaps 3001 or 2999.

God is from the testimonies of eyewitnesses who encountered God historically in Israel. Either you believe so as how people believe that Confucius has 3000 apprentices, or you don't!

Brainwashed by modern education? What does that even mean?
So are you saying you just blindly trust CNN, Fox News, eyewitnesses, and Historians? Are eyewitnesses and implied credulity greater than scientifically proven theories, peer reviewed and falsifiable?
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
So we will be judged by an evil judge. Why should we go along with his wishes?
The ruler of the universe, the one who created you and has the right to do whatever he wants to do with you, can not be judged to be evil by your human whims. He allows you to continue to exist every second and you should have some gratitude for that.
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
That's it? I judge people all the time. I was short a quarter at the hardware store, and the guy behind me handed me one. I judged that good. When a guy was the victim of a hit and run, I judged that action as bad.
The stakes are a bit higher..eternal death or eternal life.
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
IOW, you're afraid of there being no ultimate meaning in the universe or your existence so you believe in an implausible story?

You do realize that doesn't mean it's true, yes?
I don't find it implausible. I do find it curious that you try and persuade people to join your cult of hopelessness.
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
According to some believers. It's not a convincing claim.

I doubt even fervent Christians take any of this seriously. If they really worried about being judged by God eventually we would see believers bending over backwards following Jesus' example of helping the needy and giving away their money. But we don't. We see some good Christians who appear to follow Jesus, but the more conservative a Christian is the less they care about what Jesus taught, and the less they seem to be worried about judgment. That would suggest they don't really believe in the Christian God.
I haven't found this to be true at all. I live among lots of conservative believers and they are some of the most generous people on the planet.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
The ruler of the universe, the one who created you and has the right to do whatever he wants to do with you, can not be judged to be evil by your human whims. He allows you to continue to exist every second and you should have some gratitude for that.
Nope. Might does not make right. You should take a class in ethics.
 
Top