The question I am posting is simply why do you believe or not believe in god. I dont care which one,I dont care if it exists or not. I just want to know why. Also answers like"Because it says so in the bible" wont be accepted. I want a little thought put into it.
thanx. 
Well, for some people “because it says so in the Bible” would be an accurate reason – simply because they regard the Bible as an authoritative reference on the nature of reality.
In my case, I believe in God because I have had experiences that purported to be encounters with Him, and because the consequences of those encounters in my actual life and mental/emotional mindset are not ones that I would have expected (and in some cases even desired) prior to the encounter. In short, if you have an experience the outcome of which changes you so that you find enjoyable that which you did not before, and which you would not before have desired to have that change wrought in you, it’s reasonable to assume that the experience is not hallucinated or self-induced but the result of an outside source. Applying Occam’s Razor to that outside source leaves me with God. I operate on the assumption that the God in whom I believe is that God manifested in the life of, and spoken of by, Jesus of Nazareth, because the identity of character between That Which I Experienced and the Heavenly Father of Jesus seems evident to me – though I am not dogmatic that no Moslem or Taoist has any handle on the truth about God, as many Christians are.
why i am not a theist, as simply put as i can: i don’t have to be.
my world view, so far as i can see, is perfectly consistent with a reality without god. contrary to Polycarp, i apply occam’s razor here, and say why add things to my understanding of the system that aren’t required?
when i was a teenager, right after i concluded that i was an atheist, i was a very dogmatic atheist, and had many debates with theists on the nature of things. when i argued with people who thought of things my way, we tended to differ only on “first cause”. it went like this…for me: “if god ‘always was’ why can’t the universe have always been?” for them: “if the universe always was, why can’t god have always been?”
so for me, it’s simpler.
let me add, though, that when i say god here, i mean just a transcendent cause. the creator that exists outside of all other existence. i have numerous reasoned problems against an omnipotent and entirely benevolent god. i have many misgivings about an omnipotent god that created man, or indeed, created anything. i think it’s very humanocentric to assume that we are created “in his image” and calls into question the abilities of a creator if we’re that like him. but those regard beliefs about the specific qualities of god, not the existence of god himself.
Although I accept that the universe appears an independent entity, not perceptibly requiring the presence of a deity maintain it, I have experienced a number of episodes of (what I believe to be) personal interaction with something that seems to be God. That is why I believe.
There isn’t a reason. If there was a reason, it would be a reason TO believe.
Point taken, ramanujan, but we’re applying the same evaluative tool in discrete circumstances. The evidence before you suggests that God is an unnecessary complication to your (conception of the) universe; the evidence before me suggests that He is an integral part of how it’s put together. I don’t expect you to buy my subjective evidence, but I’ve tried to make the case of how I come to accept it.
I was brought up in the church and it never entered my mind not to believe. I guess that is programming.
But about twenty years ago I unexpectedly had an experience that I couldn’t have dreamed up in a million years. The experience changed my concepts of reality. And it gave me a profound sense of unity with everything, including an ultimate BEing. The Bible made more sense to me than ever before, but I also honor the Truth found in other religious faiths too. To me, it is all the same God. Nothing that I have learned through science in any way contradicts my experience.
Burner wrote:
I believe because of sound reason and because of my personal experience, which leads me to…
Ramanujan wrote:
“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum.” — William of Ockham. For me, denying God’s existence would be subtracting a necessary entity, just as if I denied that I got married Easter Sunday, 2000, at sunrise on a pier at the lake.
Well put, Ramanujan. Ime wot he sed.
“Ockham’s Razor” is only a guiding principle rather than an inviolate law. However, no matter what beautifully elegant and rigorously tested explanations and theories we humans come up with for every observable phenomenon (including, at some point in future, “interacting with God” as in Mangetout’s case), there will always be those like Libertarian who insist that God is still necessary as an assumption in order to explain some phenomena, even though he might he happy with a solely physical explanation for very similar phenomena.
You’re mistaken, Sentient.
I do not insist that God is necessary to explain “some phenomena”. I do not believe in any god-of-the-gaps. God is necessary in my case because — please listen carefully — He is the whole of my experience.
He and I are one.
My sincere apologies for misrepresenting you, Lib. I am going on my obviously somewhat muddled interpretations of past posts in other discussions.
Just to clarify, are you suggesting that there is no aspect of you, your being and your experience which is not directly attributable to God? (*eg. toothache, hunger, hair growth etc.).
He and I are one.
I believe because the universe exists, and it is in motion. Either the universe has always existed and always been in motion/set itself in motion, or something else created it and set it in motion. If the universe has always been and set itself in motion, the universe as a whole is divine, is God, and all things are a part of God, a la Hinduism. If another force created the universe and set it in motion, that force is divine, is God, a la Judaism/Christianity/Islam/Zoroastrianism/etc.
I have absolutely no intellectual reason for believing. For more than three decades (since late adolescence) that determined my belief structure. Then one day, I started looking for him non-intellectually, and found that he has always been with me. I didn’t have “an encounter” with God at all, by the way. I rediscovered a continuous contact with him that my intellect had distracted me from, and found a simple message in my heart. It’s the carrying of that message that, for me, determines what I believe.
What I understand about God is determined intellectually, thus is miniscule and insignificant.
(Note to other theists/deists: I don’t capitalize the personal pronoun because I don’t believe God wants me to worship or exalt him, but only to Accept him as absolutely as I am accepted by him, and to do the same for all other persons. I use “he” because “it” would sound like I’m not talking about a person, and I don’t use “she” because I conceptualize God in terms of my own experience. Since I am male, so is God to me.)
originaly by Libertarian
That is what I want to know about. I didnt start this to turn it into a “does god exist” thing. I just want peoples personal reasons for believeing what they do.
I’ll answer both questions in three parts: (1) Why I believed; (2) Why I then didn’t believe; and (3) Why I now believe.
- I was raised in unquestioning belief (Catholic). I believed because I never questioned my belief. Belief was the default condition since I was programmed with a faith before I reached the age of reason, and the faith was an integral, unquestioned part of my being. Part of the context within which I analyzed the world.
Then I ran into someone who tried to prove God existed. Wow; what a concept. Then I started looking for God to prove what I already believed. I reasoned that an faith found by me with evidence independent from my subjective, parental given faith would be a stronger faith. Several years later, I was an avowed atheist, which brings me to…
- To this day, I have never experienced anything explained by supernatural theories which could not also be explained by natural theories. In other words, I never had a supernatural experience of any kind, not just of the God kind. That was my reason for being an atheist. Atheism was the default lack of belief. (Note: I never had a positive belief that God did not exist, just an opinion that the evidence for God was lacking in my life, and there was no reason for me to believe.)
As an atheist, I had my own, self-made morality (which tracked much of my former religious morality–at least as to its consequentialist aspects–since I think there was a lot of independent merit in that otherwise god-based morality). But after awhile, I found myself struggling to obey my own, self-imposed morality. I started to wonder if believing in a God would help me be the type of moral person I wanted to be. Not that all Catholics or other believers are always good, but perhaps they had an angle on having a higher probability of complying with moral rules–I said perhaps. Which brings me to…
- I now believe (in Catholicism) because it sometimes help me be the moral person I want to be. Do I still fail at times? Of course. Do I fail less? To early to tell. There has been a short term gain; it remains to be seen if the improvement will last my lifetime. I hope it does.
Of course, I have to accept some unprovable concepts (which would have been unacceptable to me earlier in life) in order for me to be a believer. I have to believe in supernatural entities and events for which I personally have seen absolutely no evidence. But those unprovable beliefs do no harm to me personally, and so far, recognition of the possibility of such entities and events has been a useful tool to help me live the moral life I chose to live as an atheist.
Odd, huh?
In a weird way, I found morality, and sought God to help me follow the morality, with some slight modifications to the morality to be a believer, and some extra issues I’m still ironing out.
I believe in God because I read about Him, and then I realized it was true IMHO.
I have seen His handiwork in my life and His answers to my prayers.
I have to agree that my belief in God was sparked through the Holy Bible, but it was through personal study and prayer that I experienced the true living God. I find it difficult to explain, but not only do I see the works of God in almost all that I see, and hear the voice of God in almost all that I hear, and feel the touch of God in almost all that I touch, it is the personal experience that grants me the assurance that God is real and God is alive. The Holy Bible only supports my faith, but it is not the reason for my faith.
“Credo ut intelligam” (I believe so that I might understand.) – St. Anselm
How enigmatic.
To fully satisfy the question in the OP, do I now need to explain why I don’t believe in Libertarian as God, (regardless of how much I enjoy Libertarian’s posts)? 