God convinced me he doesn't exist. What did he do to to convince you he does or doesn't exist??

[ChristineM]

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

I am about as atheist as they come, not anti religion, people can believe whatever they want, though there are times that i feel the world would be better off without religion.

I was christian but the hypocrisy i found amongst "good" christians drove!e from the church.

After i left i read the bible, actually read all of it, not the selected bits our vicar doled out. What i found was equally horrific and illogical.

I've never seen any evidence for a gods existence. On the contrary there is much to persuade me that belief in gods can only mean deluding yourself.

I have seen enough unnecessary suffering to know a caring god cannot exist.

I know enough science to understand that a creator god is not required.

I know enough maths to realise that an omnipotent god cannot exist.

 

[The Hammer]

It wasn't intender to come off as an accusation. I am sorry if I phrases myself poorly. I am just talking about the nature of knowledge.

No offense taken.

I was just stating that I don't consider my personal views as a statement of knowledge, except to myself. (Knowledge to me is universally applicable).

 

[sayak83]

I had believed in God for 60 years. For the next 10 years I reverted to believing it was some kind of deistic god or higher power, but most certainly this higher power was NOT the Christian pagan god, Yahweh (Yahweh in case you didn't know was a minor Canaanite god in a collection of Canaanite gods that included Asherah, Baal and headed by chief god, El. The early Hebrews living among the Canaanites picked up Yahweh and made him their chief god). Recently I've decided to just go full atheist. I've never had any proof God exists; I've never had any prayers answered; the world is cruel unjust place filled with violence and death; the Bible is riddled with errors and inaccuracies; there's no proof a Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. It just makes more sense to me that it was natural selection that created this marvelous universe. We are a tremendously complex accident and we are now destroying the earth with our avarice. In 100 years global warming will have killed off most of the earth's population and rendered everything but the north and south poles uninhabitable.

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

Cool.
I do not think one should believe stuff without evidence. So do not. That is perfectly ok.

 

[The Hammer]

I'm glad for you. My God keeps His distance.

Why? Wouldn't you want a personal relationship with Him?

That's supposedly important in Judaism for instance. ( I know your not Jewish), but it's central to Abrahamic faith as far as I've seen.

 

[YoursTrue]

I had believed in God for 60 years. For the next 10 years I reverted to believing it was some kind of deistic god or higher power, but most certainly this higher power was NOT the Christian pagan god, Yahweh (Yahweh in case you didn't know was a minor Canaanite god in a collection of Canaanite gods that included Asherah, Baal and headed by chief god, El. The early Hebrews living among the Canaanites picked up Yahweh and made him their chief god). Recently I've decided to just go full atheist. I've never had any proof God exists; I've never had any prayers answered; the world is cruel unjust place filled with violence and death; the Bible is riddled with errors and inaccuracies; there's no proof a Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. It just makes more sense to me that it was natural selection that created this marvelous universe. We are a tremendously complex accident and we are now destroying the earth with our avarice. In 100 years global warming will have killed off most of the earth's population and rendered everything but the north and south poles uninhabitable.

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

I believe God does exist. Perhaps I'll go into reasons in detail why I believe that. To present this, however, I'll say that I did not question whether God exists while growing up. I still believed in God (sort of, but did not understand anything about God) also while I was in college. It was not until later that I learned about Him. So now here's a question for you or anyone who might care to answer:
Do you believe the earth was always there, without beginning?

 

[YoursTrue]

To me, it doesn't matter if God exists or not. If you want and God to exist, they are easy enough to create. If you don't want God to exist, you can get along fine without one.
Interesting power people have over Gods. To create or uncreate them.

I just figured that I'll leave whatever Gods there may be alone and they'll leave me alone.

I have a question -- and this relates to whether you believe God does or does not exist. Was the earth always existing? Were you around before you were born? Those questions are related, by the way.

 

[YoursTrue]

Why? Wouldn't you want a personal relationship with Him?

That's supposedly important in Judaism for instance. ( I know your not Jewish), but it's central to Abrahamic faith as far as I've seen.

As far as Abrahamic faith, I was just thinking about Moses. He presumably knew his history from his mother and upbringing, even as the child of Pharaoh's daughter rescued. I am pretty sure from the account that the Egyptians didn't keep his incorporation into the Egyptian royal scene hidden from him. And, like most people, he would have some thought about what his history was insofar as his family relationships were concerned.

 

[Truth in love]

In short far too many events for it to be random. I don’t share specifics of my own experiences in settings like this, but a great many times things have happened that defy any answer other than God. From small things to major life changes events, awareness of things that had not yet happened, to feeling a deep peace in the midst a major problems.

Occasionally we see events which are well documented (cokeville miracle leaps to mind) and don’t fit the laws of physics. It’s not a story from 4000 years back that can be written of as just a fairly tail. Such events don’t answer all the questions about God, but they are clear evidence of God.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

Thrillobyte, I completely understand your sentiments towards God and being a Christian. I believed in God years before I became a Christian when I was 17, and I was a devout Christian for 30 years. I'm no longer a Christian, but I'm not an atheist either. I am an agnostic when it concerns whether God exists or not, because I cannot provide empirical and verifiable evidence that he does or doesn't exist. If God doesn't exist, then my faith and hope in him was in vain, and I prayed to the air. If God does exist, then I think of him as a cold-blooded and abhorrent monster who allowed me to be severely abused while I was growing up because he didn't think I was worth the trouble to save. However, I still believe in other gods and goddesses despite the fact that I despise God and feel like he screwed me over. As a Wiccan and a polytheist, I'm perfectly content to keep my spiritual beliefs at arm's length and not allow myself to become emotionally attached to another deity and be hoodwinked by another religion, as I feel like I was with Christianity.

 

[Trailblazer]

Why? Wouldn't you want a personal relationship with Him?

That's supposedly important in Judaism for instance. ( I know your not Jewish), but it's central to Abrahamic faith as far as I've seen.

It is not about what I want, it is about what I believe is possible.

I know believers in other Abrahamic faiths believe they can have a personal relationship with God.
Baha'is believe we can have a personal relationship with God, but not directly, only through the Messengers of God, by reading the scriptures and praying and meditating.

I do not desire a personal relationship with God since I do not feel love for God, so probably that is why I do not have a personal relationship with God.

5: O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.
The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 4

 

[Clara Tea]

God convinced me he doesn't exist. What did he do to to convince you he does or doesn't exist??

I had believed in God for 60 years. For the next 10 years I reverted to believing it was some kind of deistic god or higher power, but most certainly this higher power was NOT the Christian pagan god, Yahweh (Yahweh in case you didn't know was a minor Canaanite god in a collection of Canaanite gods that included Asherah, Baal and headed by chief god, El). The early Hebrews living among the Canaanites picked up Yahweh and made him their chief god). Recently I've decided to just go full atheist. I've never had any proof God exists; I've never had any prayers answered; the world is cruel unjust place filled with violence and death; the Bible is riddled with errors and inaccuracies; there's no proof a Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. It just makes more sense to me that it was natural selection that created this marvelous universe. We are a tremendously complex accident and we are now destroying the earth with our avarice. In 100 years global warming will have killed off most of the earth's population and rendered everything but the north and south poles uninhabitable.

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

Historically, Jesus did exist, and a few people wrote about Him and His miracles. However, it is a stretch to say that He is the son of God or that He is God (or both).

Jewish prophecy said that a Messiah would come from the House of David. Though Joseph was of the House of David, Joseph was only his step dad. God was his dad. Unless David was also related to God, Jesus was not related to David. Remember, Jewish houses pass patrilineally (down the father's side of the family). Thus, a father, grandfather, great grandfather, etc., all along the male line, would have to be related to David, and Jesus (if you believe he was the son of God) was not of the house of David. Thus, Jesus did not fulfill the prophecy of a Messiah.

Look at all of the wars that were fought in the name of Jesus. Even Reverend John Hagee (in modern times) was saying that we need to pray to Jesus to win the war in Iraq (that is, kill more effectively). Remember, God said "thou shalt not kill."

Today, Christianity is the religion of hatred. They hate Gays, many hate Jews (though there are some organizations giving aid to very old Jewish Russian holocaust survivors). Gays are deprived of marriage (on the pretext that it ruins marriage for Christians), and thus are deprived of inheritance and child custody.

The world is a mess, and the Religious Right, having mixed religion and politics, made it so.

All this begs the question "why is God hiding?" It is possible that God insists on free choice (good go to heaven, bad go to hell). If God makes his presence known, that eliminates free choice. Who, in their right minds, would blaspheme God or do bad deeds, if they knew that a giant hand would reach down from heaven and squish them?

But what is this free choice and heaven and hell all about? I think that it is possible that God is not one entity (though the bible seems to indicate that He is one entity), but, rather, a collection of trillions of spirits. If so, the human race might be a purification system for God's spirits. God might put one spirit in each person, that guides him to do good or evil, and the evil ones are held in prison in hell, while the good ones are free to be part of God again.

I agree that mankind's influence on Global Warming is real, and it is currently killing species, melting poles and glaciers, causing droughts and fires, and intensifying hurricanes (which also causes floods). The W. Bush administration loved mammon more than God, so he sent is lawyers to rewrite the nation's environmental report, allowed the woman who wrote the report to resign, then appointed obsequious stooges to write what he wanted written in the environmental report. W. Bush then denied that Global Warming was intensified by human actions. Having made a phony environmental report, W. Bush argued with legitimate scientists. This falsehood is so pervasive that President Donald Trump, with W. Bush's phony advisors misleading him, still insists that the Global Warming issue is a hoax. And they say that Trump is smart.

 

[Clara Tea]

It is not about what I want, it is about what I believe is possible.

I know believers in other Abrahamic faiths believe they can have a personal relationship with God.
Baha'is believe we can have a personal relationship with God, but not directly, only through the Messengers of God, by reading the scriptures and praying and meditating.

I do not desire a personal relationship with God since I do not feel love for God, so probably that is why I do not have a personal relationship with God.

5: O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.
The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 4

Perhaps the atheist, whose kind deeds serve God inadvertently, is more worthy of heaven than the most greedy self-serving pretender to the throne of heaven?

 

[Clara Tea]

To me, it doesn't matter if God exists or not. If you want and God to exist, they are easy enough to create. If you don't want God to exist, you can get along fine without one.
Interesting power people have over Gods. To create or uncreate them.

I just figured that I'll leave whatever Gods there may be alone and they'll leave me alone.

“In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.” (Voltaire)

 

[Trailblazer]

Perhaps the atheist, whose kind deeds serve God inadvertently, is more worthy of heaven than the most greedy self-serving pretender to the throne of heaven?

I think so, given what I believe.

“The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds; he whose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than his life.”

“Man is like unto a tree. If he be adorned with fruit, he hath been and will ever be worthy of praise and commendation. Otherwise a fruitless tree is but fit for fire.”
Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 156, 257

 

[Thrillobyte]

I believe God does exist. Perhaps I'll go into reasons in detail why I believe that. To present this, however, I'll say that I did not question whether God exists while growing up. I still believed in God (sort of, but did not understand anything about God) also while I was in college. It was not until later that I learned about Him. So now here's a question for you or anyone who might care to answer:
Do you believe the earth was always there, without beginning?

I'm coming to the belief that the universe has had innumerable beginnings and endings and is just recycled endlessly. So we're in just one of its many births now and in 10 trillion trillion trillion trillion years it will all burn out and then be reborn in some kind of Big Bang yet again. There's no answer to your question.

 

[Kenny]

It's a catch-phrase. Means that God, if he exists, is working his hardest to convince me he doesn't exist by not offering the slightest bit of evidence he's up there.

Sometime people can't see the nose that is in front of them IMO

Which God or gods are you seeking?

 

[Clara Tea]

I am about as atheist as they come, not anti religion, people can believe whatever they want, though there are times that i feel the world would be better off without religion.

I was christian but the hypocrisy i found amongst "good" christians drove!e from the church.

After i left i read the bible, actually read all of it, not the selected bits our vicar doled out. What i found was equally horrific and illogical.

I've never seen any evidence for a gods existence. On the contrary there is much to persuade me that belief in gods can only mean deluding yourself.

I have seen enough unnecessary suffering to know a caring god cannot exist.

I know enough science to understand that a creator god is not required.

I know enough maths to realise that an omnipotent god cannot exist.

Greedy, self-serving, obsequious people "earn" their way into eternal bliss by believing. But, perhaps generous atheists, who have no ulterior motive to help, are more deserving to ascend the throne of heaven.

Ostensibly, religion should motivate improvement and goodness. Rather, it is a motivation for wars, torture camps, spying on phones, denying rights of Gays, etc.

Theists, who don't require facts or logic to believe, are perfect patsies for unscrupulous manipulators who garner their votes for their evil ends.

The New World Order, touted by President George Bush senior, is run by the ancient rich of Europe (Illuminati), and their mission is to get people to vote away their rights. The Constitution gave us an inalienable right (a right that no one can take away) to redress of grievances (sue). But we have to let HMOs be their own judges now, and we have no right to sue (it was deemed a frivolous lawsuit, and we were told that they could lower medical expenses if everyone agreed to lose their Constitutional rights).

Under George Bush's New World Order, the right will have all of the money and all of the land, and the middle class will be crushed (poor), and all will have to be homeless or rent from the rich. As the song says "another day older and deeper in debt" and "I owe my soul to the company store." This is a New World Order of big brother government spying on emails, spying on phone calls (Google Eric Snowden for more details), and poverty and disease abound everywhere.

The world is about to have serious pandemics with huge populations of the homeless with no place to deficate. Drainage channels will now pollute the ocean with feces.

Prices are rising, and homes are more difficult to buy or retain. Reverse mortages (touted as not another way to take our homes) are another way to take our homes.

 

[Thrillobyte]

“In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.” (Voltaire)

If man, who is nothing but a bunch of jackas*ed morons, is created in the image of God what does that make God?

 

[Clara Tea]

Sometime people can't see the nose that is in front of them IMO

It's not the nose that bothers me. Many people bump along, oblivious to the world around them, and blissfully uninformed.

The New Testament bible makes it clear that we must be informed about the bible.

It is like Mr. Magoo mistaking obvious signs of Global Warming, signs of evolution, and not seeing the benefits of condoms in stopping unwanted pregnancies and STDs. They say that none are so blind as those who will not see.

 

[Clara Tea]

If man, who is nothing but a bunch of jackas*ed morons, is created in the image of God what does that make God?

Lol. God punishes man for being imperfect (as He made us). He made us with genitals than frowns on us using them. He made us curious, then kicked us out for tasting the forbidden fruit. He imposed original sin on us, for the actions of our ancestors, yet aren't we all responsible for only our own actions? Is the son of a murderer somehow tainted by his dad?