Do you believe in God?

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Regrettably I do not, and I doubt that will change. I was raised Methodist, but early in the 2010s, I began to question things; I became agnostic and eventually atheist. I'm more of an apatheist, where I do not care if God exists, but that's besides the point. I lost my faith due to some unforeseen events that unfolded that could pretty much be equal to a Monkey's Paw wish. Perhaps some day I will return to Him, and restore my faith, but for now that seems bleak.

My advice to those questioning: Try not to lose faith, because that's a part of you that will be arduous to reclaim. If you do, try not to act like a jackass about how enlightened you are for being above theists. That is euphoric-tier shit that you see on Reddit.
 
I do. I can't really explain it. I've always felt it, even during my most faithless moments. Even when things were really shitty in my life. I still believed.

Faith is weird. It doesn't make me better than anyone. But it's something rare and fragile and remarkable. I don't want to let that go.
 
I do thanks to a brief stint in Epistemological studies I did a while ago.

Let's start with some of the characteristics of God (or Gods) that get brought up.

God in several of the abrahamic religions and religious discussion throughout the centuries is described as a perfect being. A perfect being would have the best of every trait, being the strongest, fastest, biggest, most powerful etc etc etc. Existence can be considered a trait as a delicious chocolate cake that exists is naturally superior to a delicious chocolate cake that does not exist. From this we can include the positive aspect of existence to be part of the all encompassing "perfection" trait. Thus a perfect being must exist, as the fact it it exists is part of what makes it perfect.

Now there has been counterarguments brought up to this specific logic in the past, the most popular ones being Gaunilo's perfect island and various variances on perfect (noun), where surely the perfect island would be present in front of the speaker as they speak, as it's presence in front of them would be the best positive trait when concerning it's distance. This argument being hundreds of years ago already has a rebuttal towards it made by Anselm of Canterbury, talking about Necessary Existence. This however is not my argument as I can't really remember how it goes and my further arguing for the perfection leads into my third paragraph on the topic;

The Aspect of Transcendence. This is attributed to god in the Abrahamic religions (once again I go for them as they are the closest to my thoughts on what "God" is). The Transcendence of God means that he is above and beyond our world, he is much more powerful than what we know exists. I argue that this also applies to logic here. As God is a Perfect being, he would be transcended beyond the reasonable logic that we have as humans. Like how a frequent riddle is if god could create a rock so heavy he could not lift it himself. I argue that because God is beyond our reality and is the most perfect thing it is how he is both able to create said rock and also lift it. A perfect being would naturally be able to do anything illogical, as a perfect being would be able to do anything.

This thought is no doubt Circular Logic and also a case of Special Pleading, however a logical fallacy does not mean the argument is automatically wrong before anyone jumps at me with the criticisms that I am well aware of. However my faith in the concept of Perfection leads me to believe there is a God, as by definition he exists.

At the end of the day it is just a question of faith, however I am glad to say I earned this faith after first really thinking through these topics during my studies.
 
I do believe in God, but I also sometimes wonder if that the true nature of reality is that it's infinite, ie you could never have a total picture of "reality", there would always be another layer, just like you have the atomic structure of things, then the subatomic and then the quantum and so on, you could keep splitting things down layer by layer forever.

So to some degree I find the idea of God too simple, but I guess we could also be talking about the same thing, the mind of God is infinite, just like reality is infinite.

But is the answer to the mystery that is life precisely that it is a mystery?

At the end of the day though, yeah, I do believe in God.
 
I believe in the simple and indivisable idea that there is a perfect good.

I'm alright with calling this God. This is what many of the churchfathers of christianity principally believed.

Of course they may well have thought or believed things that I don't, such is the complex nature of our differences.

I think prayer and expressing gratitude are very valuable, whether you believe or not. Those that believe find it easier to do it habitually, much like Mohammed Ali's belief in himself as a good fighter helped him to act and train like one (or add any sportsman). Belief and hope are very important to the spiritual health of a person.
 
I question if the beliefs of desert barbarians which have since been translated multiple times is the literal word of God but I am sure that a creator exists. I believe a clean life is better both physically and mentally for you. I believe that the plans of this creator is beyond our comprehension and doesn't consider our happiness or comfort. I believe in showing gratitude for what you have, and compassion for those who have nothing.
 
Whenever I start to ponder existence, I think about how 99.99999% of the lifespan of the universe will consist of nothing but black holes smashing into each other in totally empty space. Then I stop pondering and get on with my meaningless little life.

If there's a higher power out there we're not a very big part of any of its plans.
 
A Welsh Cake dijo:
This thought is no doubt Circular Logic
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Everything boils down to circular logic at the end of the day, that's the hilarious irony and paradox of it all.

Either the universe "just exists" or God "just exists", an atheist will tell you the universe "just exists", a believer will tell you God "just exists", both are simply a matter of personal choice, neither is inherently more "logical" than the other because it all just comes down to something just existing just because.

And both are equally strange when you think about it, how can something "just exist"? It makes no sense, but on the flipside to that obviously there has to be something rather than nothing, existence not existing at all makes no sense either, once again it's all one great big paradox.

I go with God though because if you're going to say something "just exists" an intelligence, a consciousness, a guiding hand makes more sense than everything being down to chaos and random chance, but again, we get into paradoxical territory, because the universe is obviously both chaotic and unchaotic in equal measures, it's all a bunch of chaos but behind that chaos is a hidden order, somehow it works, somehow it leads to me and you, it doesn't really make sense, but it's reality.

Your view on God is interesting though and makes sense, in order for something to not be perfect, there has to be something that is perfect in order for "not perfect" to actually exist, you need to have that contrast and one thing I have noticed is how everything works on that duality, you can't have one thing without the other, there's got to be contrast, light and dark, up and down and so on, so if we have beings who lack omnipotence, there would have to be a being who is omnipotent, in order for a lack of omnipotence to have any meaning.
 
I do but that in and of itself scares me. I just can't believe such an entity would do this to people and make us live through these shit times. Either they don't care, or they're malevolent. Either isn't good for us.
 
Deists are gnostic, and gnostics are generally insufferable whether they're atheist or theist.

Personally I'm an agnostic atheist and I get along better with agnostic theists than I do gnostic atheists. I can savvy with people who have faith.

I think whether there is a God or Gods is essentially unknowable and anyone who says they know, one way or the other, are pains in the ass to deal with
 
I'm an agnostic. I'd like to believe there's something greater than ourselves out there, but I just can't fully bring myself to accept that without some kind of proof. I understand this is where faith comes into play, but I'm just not quite there. I've got nothing against people that do believe in God, and in some ways I wish I could have that faith as well. It seems to have greatly helped a ton of religious people I know get through tough times.
 
Well, yeah, I BELIEVE in God. I know a bunch of Atheists that say to me: "Well how do you know? What if you're wrong?"

Then I would retort: "What does it matter to you if I'm wrong? Why does it matter to you if there is, or isn't? Why do YOU think, a mere animal, a highly-evolved monkey, think that you know everything... like there couldn't be something greater than yourself, nothing you don't understand? That's why it's called faith."
 
SojuDrnkr dijo:
Well, yeah, I BELIEVE in God. I know a bunch of Atheists that say to me: "Well how do you know? What if you're wrong?"

Then I would retort: "What does it matter to you if I'm wrong? Why does it matter to you if there is, or isn't? Why do YOU think, a mere animal, a highly-evolved monkey, think that you know everything... like there couldn't be something greater than yourself, nothing you don't understand? That's why it's called faith."
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Does the whole bus clap when you say that?
 
I don't. I was raised methodist AKA the United Church of Canada which is pretty open and there were open atheists who were members of the church who thought the church did good things and the philosophy and community held value. We had a atheist minister for a time and he actually baptized my oldest son.
 
JektheDumbass dijo:
I question if the beliefs of desert barbarians which have since been translated multiple times is the literal word of God but I am sure that a creator exists. I believe a clean life is better both physically and mentally for you. I believe that the plans of this creator is beyond our comprehension and doesn't consider our happiness or comfort. I believe in showing gratitude for what you have, and compassion for those who have nothing.
Presiona para expandir...
Translated multiple times? The old Testament is written in Hebrew with some aramaic for color and the new testament is written in Greek. It's translated once, from 2.1 languages.
 
Yes, but have no use for church or religion. To me, religions are man-made constructs intended to place themselves between a person and God, No, thanks. I see churches as two-(at least)-tier societies. There are the priest/minister/rabbi/imam/whatever's "chosen few", and then there is everyone else, the "great unwashed". Saw that on an epic scale at the last church I attended. Last time I went to church was in 2008. Haven't missed anything. The Bible - only part I find useful are the Proverbs. And I don't believe anyone died on any cross for my sins. I try to live my life doing more good things than bad things. I trust in God.
 
The amount of order in the universe makes it an impossibility to deny that a higher power had a hand in creating it. That philosophical conundrum has even got people like NDT saying we need to be open to the possibility that we're living in a computer simulation (I don't put any stock into simulation theory, I think it's just a way atheists can explain why the universe is the way it is without being accountable to it's creator). Couple that with the fact that the only way theoreticians can explain how the universe came to be and have the laws that it does is that they have to break the laws of physics in order to do it. Something supernatural happened to get us where we are today To say all this came about by chance is some serious self delusion.
 
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