I thought we were praying to god to relieve himself.
It’s true that the God that is taught to us as children is indistinguishable from Santa Clause. He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake! This God directly rewards you for good behavior, directly punishes you for bad behavior and doesn’t ever allow undue suffering to happen in the world. If this is the model you believe then everybody is special and everybody has a right to have God speak to them directly.
Personally, I find that model to be problematic. It’s incompatible with the actual world we experience. It’s completely understandable that many people reject God outright along with that model and move directly to atheism. Others dig deeper into the Bible and their church doctrine to seek the answers to the questions you asked. But these answers vary widely.
If you belive in predetermination then everything that ever is, was, or will be is already set in stone. It’s as if God is a film director and we’re simply acting out the part he wrote for us. An individual isn’t necessarily worthy to speak to God but if the part they’re playing necessitates it then God will speak to them. Everything happens because God wills it to happen. A volcano erupts at 10:32 on June 2 2099 and kills Abe Smith because that’s what God decreed would happen at the moment he said “Let there be Light”.
If you believe in Free Will then your model of God will be more like that of a chess master. God created the laws of physics and the universe is trucking along based on those laws. Within those laws he created Man and Man has a purpose so God will occasionally intervene to guide us on the path he wants us to follow. If that same volcano errupts on June 2 2099 it’s simply because that’s what the forces of the planet dictate. It’s bad luck that Abe Smith happened to be nearby. If God deems you worthy to speak to you, or to push you towards a particular action, then it’s because you are in a unique position to bring about some event that he wishes to happen.
If you think more like a Deist, then you believe in a Supreme Being far too large and removed to think of us on Earth. He will never deem you worthy to speak to you.
And of course, if you’re an atheist, then God simply can’t deem you worthy to speak to you.
Theology and morality aren’t mutually exclusive. Why should you love your neighbor? If you believe in the Fundamentalist God it might be because your action will gain favor with God so you can go to heaven. If you believe in the God that more liberal churches believe in then loving your neighbor will teach them to love their neighbor and then we can all go to heaven. If you don’t believe in God then loving your neighbor is something to do because there is a need that must be fulfilled.
Which brings me back to my answer to JohnClay at the beginning. Do what’s right because it’s right. Don’t let the existence (or non existence) of God dictate your actions. If God does exist he’ll reward you because you served with genuine goodness in your heart. If God doesn’t exist then you still did some good things and will be remembered as such.
My two cents.
I’d like to believe in some God and Jesus that are vaguely Bible like (Just imagine the Bible without a bunch of the mean/crazy/contradictory shit).
I don’t but I’d like to but I’m not going to rule out something like that or maybe even some other afterlife thingy either.
So, I’m also not going to rule out that if you are a BAD person you might or might not pay for your bad behavior in some fashion after you die.
And I think God, if he exists, is going to be much more complicated in his actions than we can imagine (by definition).
What I can’t believe and almost refuse to believe is that God would actually punish you for not believing or having doubts about his existence. Now you might argue whether believing makes your life easier or makes you more likely to “do the right thing” and therefore not “get in trouble” so to speak.
If there is a caring loving God I just can’t fathom that. And I’m certainly not going to worry about that part too much either.
My response to the OP is that you can’t make yourself have faith. The most you can do is leave yourself open to faith. If God gives it to you, you’ll believe. If God doesn’t give you faith, then it’s his will that you don’t believe.
You can still live a moral life in the absence of belief. God will judge you by whether you did the things you were capable of doing.
What is so amazing to me is that god is never morally ahead of the people who describe him.
The old-testament god is comparable to the ancient greek gods; vengeful and jealous. He demands genocidal wars and brings plagues and disasters. He needs to be placated with animal sacrifice. Keeping slaves is A-ok and you can beat them as long as they don’t die on you.
The god as described in the new testament is a bit more mellow. Where the old testament demanded an eye for an eye, jesus advises to turn the other cheek. Slaves should still obey their masters, though, no matter how bad they are. And women should not get uppity.
One would expect that a god so allknowing and perfect would get morality right in one go.
Did you try it out? What happened? Did God reveal himself?
And if mere prayer doesn’t do it for you, would you consider trying out more controversial techniques - theurgy, séances, astral projections…?
Certainly there have been plenty of good people throughout history who have given that sort of thing a shot and then returned with strengthened faith - not to mention certitude. (Plotinus, mentioned up-thread, was one.)
Though it does waiver, and though it is often not as strong as it could be, I have my faith now. There have been plenty of times in the past when I’ve had serious doubts, and I realized that it was really a pretty simple problem. I wanted to believe things, whether because it was what I was raised expecting would be the case, or simply because I didn’t understand or like what I thought the alternatives were, and I just couldn’t.
Imagine that your whole family and friends look at one of Rorshach tests and they see a bird. Yet, you look at it and all you see is a cat. You stair at it for hours and hours, and you just can’t see a bird. So, you conclude, there must be something wrong, you see opthamologists, psychologists, priests, whatever, but you cannot see the bird. What then? Do you just assume that they’re all wrong? Maybe they’re lying to you. But neither of those explanations make sense. The only one that really does is just that maybe their experiences and perspectives are just different from yours.
Faith is very much the same way. If God exists and created existence, it only makes sense that he would be difficult or impossible for us to grasp all aspects of, and thus with countless different perspectives and experiences, there’s going to be different interpretations. Even within a single religion, like Christianity, there’s dispute within different denominations and sects about certain aspects of the nature of God, faith, laws, whatever. Either way, you just cannot force yourself to believe things that are inconsistent with your perspectives and experiences.
So you’re going to end with nothing but frustration until you realize that what’s really in the rorshach test is the blot. God is the same way, if he exists, he is what he is and it doesn’t matter what someone else says they believe. At the same time, it’s not only boring to look at that blot and just see a blot, and it’s also pointless. Believing that a god exists but not having some personal perspective about it, what it means to YOU and how God and your belief affect your life, it’s functionally equivalent to not believing anything.
So, here’s the approach I did. I realized that, if God has a plan, praying for God to change that plan in some way doesn’t even make sense. Obviously, if God intended to impress me by having the lightning spell out the answer to some bizarre question I’d posed, but what’s the point. It’s not the idea that faith is about believing he exists without hard evidence. Rather, it’s about actually wanting to understand my place in creation, pursuing knowledge of creation and in God. So, really, asking God to do some impressive feet to essentially MAKE me believe in him is like asking someone who cares about me to MAKE me care about them too.
Instead, rather than asking God to make me believe in him, I simply asked him to help me understand and accept the path he’d set before me. So, instead of asking my parents to make me love them back despite the things they may have done to me, it’s like asking them to explain why they did them and realizing they were for my protection, for my discipline, part of a larger context, or whatever.
At least for me, it make a difference within a few days, maybe as long as a week or two. There were several major hardships in my life at the time which is exactly why I was having doubt and desperately seeking some solace from God, and things just started to make a whole lot more sense. I just gained a sense of peace around those things. And since then, whenever I’ve felt lost, I’ve sought the same in prayer and meditation, and that’s how my prayers have been answered.
I hope that helps or if you want me to expand more, I can.
Blaster Master I like your Rorschach analogy. Especially how it highlights that we want to seek meaning in everything. Just like splotches of ink can be seen as a cat or an octopus, various phenomena can be interpreted as signs of a god.
There’s no actual cat or octopus on the paper, though.
You’re much smarter than “Thomas”. 
Know who else rejects reason and asks listeners to rely on faith. (No, not him.) Con artists, that’s who. You’d be wise to be suspicious of anybody or any institution which rejects reason in place of faith. It is probably because they don’t have the answers, and so are scared of the questions.
Forget about being robots - ask yourself why God sent a horrible tornado against a town which is probably full of God-fearing people.
I know you think God made us, but my wife and I made our kids also, and we sure wouldn’t treat them like God treats many of us. And we’re neither omnipotent or infallible.
Some churches tell us that God gave us our brains - but that God doesn’t want us to use them. What’s up with that?
I mix my beliefs with things I simply accept for the sake of being able to utilize them in my life without overcomplicating. I visualize spiritual things as a christian yet I intellectualize as a thiest. I have no clue why or how life was introduced to this planet or our universe, I choose to believe it was not an accident but far beyond our means to ever see or explain, it may be so big that our entire universe could pass right through him and not even know he was there.
Why not? He’s one of his beloved children.
Don’t hold your breath…
Catholics no longer teach about “Limbo” – it was mostly just a vague theory. It’s been discarded.
But. . .what becomes of the lil limbo dancing babies?!
Yes Jesus said that those with blind faith are “blessed” but he still gave Thomas the evidence he demanded.
If Hell is real surely the most important thing is to avoid it. I’d rather be saved at any cost than just live a decent life (if Hell is real).
It is still somewhat free. People have a choice even if it seems obvious.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Matthew 18:20
For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.
Also like I said I know someone who believed that they met Jesus when they were a child. Also it is understandable that God will permit suffering in our cursed, fallen, Satan-ruled world but he should be concerned about suffering that lasts forever.
Maybe ask him about all the difficulties I have with the Bible. But in the end if he is real he should be obeyed because of Hell, etc, even if he is very immoral. Perhaps I’d disobey Hitler if there was minimal torture involved but it is different when the torture lasts forever and God’s rule would be certain anyway…
I’d think about God a lot more and how great and holy he is. Almost everyone I know is a Christian including my wife, housemates, work colleagues, relatives, etc. (Some of my wife’s relatives don’t believe though) I’d probably start giving money to the church, etc.
Matthew 10:34
Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
It also says in the OT and NT to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
Actually the eternal reward is meant to come from faith (John 3:16) but a faith without works is a dead faith.
Hell is for non-believers… even people who are very loving and charitable - because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Sinners can’t be in the presence of God - unless they are washed clean with Christ’s blood. And that requires faith. If you don’t believe Jesus won’t save you.
In the Bible God caused many miracles in order to get people to believe. And in the OT that was before the penalty of non-belief was hell… so now it is far more important for people to believe.
It’s about the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. God was crueler to people on Earth in the Old Testament but on the other hand my sister thinks that hell didn’t really involve suffering then so actually the New Testament is much worse because it involves eternal suffering.
In the Bible there were several dozen miracles that caused people to believe… maybe even more… In the New Testament faith is encouraged. In the Old Testament people are usually given signs or miracles to get them to believe. There were also signs and miracles in the New Testament a lot. The penalty for not believing in the Old Testament was often death. In the New Testament it is Hell. It is weird that going to Hell involves “perishing”… but I thought that word meant ceasing to exist rather than suffering for an eternity.