Why I believe in God?

[jocky]

Faith should always be private and a free choice of the individual to follow or not. How many times have we heard the sermon, Gods ways are unknowable , immediately followed by , this is what God wants you to do? Athiesm and agnosticism are intellectually reasonable and morally defensible. If we are wrong, yet at the same time have lived a decent life, then I am sure a God of love would be forgiving. I agree that science can never provide all the answers, but blind faith based on a 4000 year old religious text, written by fallable humans is not the answer either. Tennyson also wrote about ' honest doubt ' in his elegy on death. Is humanity a result of a big bang, or some sort of beneficial intelligent design, who knows? No one should pretend to certainty, because that is the worst kind of falsehood.

[The Comedian]

Faith should always be private and a free choice of the individual to follow or not. How many times have we heard the sermon, Gods ways are unknowable , immediately followed by , this is what God wants you to do? Athiesm and agnosticism are intellectualy reasonable and morally defensible. If we are wrong, yet at the same time have lived a decent life, then I am sure a God of love would be forgiving. I agree that science can never provide all the answers, but blind faith based on a 4000 year old religious text, written by fallible humans is not the answer either. Tennyson also wrote about ' honest doubt ' in his elegy on death. Is humanity a result of a big bang, or some sort of beneficiant intelligent design, who knows? No one should pretend to certainty, because that is the worst kind of falsehood.

Well said jocky.

[jocky]

Well said jocky.

Comedian, I wasnt sure if you were still alive after the woodpile, or maybe skulking out in the backwoods, but its great to hear from you. I thought I would never be spotted in a serious discussion, but there you go.

[JuniperWoolf]

Jocky, what you wrote sums up what I've been trying to say about religion in the last three years so perfectly and to the point that I actually copied it and e-mailed it to myself to make sure that I never lose it. You are MUCH more eloquent than I am.

[jocky]

Jocky, what you wrote sums up what I've been trying to say about religion in the last three years so perfectly and to the point that I actually copied it and e-mailed it to myself to make sure that I never lose it. You are MUCH more eloquent than I am.

That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me, however if you check out some of the rubbish I talk on the Blokes thread you may change your opinion.

[virginiawang]

I believe in God because I believe in everything Emerson wrote. Emerson held that all of us must accept fate, which is beyond our power to alter, and that this fate understands itself. At one time I was so obssessed with fortune telling that I actually visited a fortune teller once for about ten days to learn some of the hidden secrets about my fate and some of the things that may happen in the near future. That fortune teller reads palms. At the moment he reads your palm, he delves into your heart and discerns what you are thinking and feeling. I believe there is a part of the universe that has been occult and inexplicable throughout the past centuries, and this mysterious part may give evidence to the existence of God.

[blazeofglory]

But palmists are kind of making predictions that are not done with occult powers and they are not occultists in point. They have certain ideas that work for them. It is generalization and that works.

[blazeofglory]

Faith should always be private and a free choice of the individual to follow or not. How many times have we heard the sermon, Gods ways are unknowable , immediately followed by , this is what God wants you to do? Athiesm and agnosticism are intellectually reasonable and morally defensible. If we are wrong, yet at the same time have lived a decent life, then I am sure a God of love would be forgiving. I agree that science can never provide all the answers, but blind faith based on a 4000 year old religious text, written by fallable humans is not the answer either. Tennyson also wrote about ' honest doubt ' in his elegy on death. Is humanity a result of a big bang, or some sort of beneficial intelligent design, who knows? No one should pretend to certainty, because that is the worst kind of falsehood.

I always advocate that faith should be totally a private thing and religions should never be politicized and today the basic problem with religion is with the idea of fundamentalism and fundamentalists always try to politicize religions and used it as tools for propagating their ideas and they take advantages out of this.

[Odysseus93]

My belief in God is rooted in logic. I believe that the existence of a created object implies the existence of a creator.
If you saw a beautiful chair you would automatically assume that someone created it, rather than assuming that it was created by simple random chance, since human logic states that that is impossible. Since the uniiverse is so much more complex doesnt it follow that someone created that?

In believing this I am simply following the greatest philosophers and scientists of all time who believed in god in some form or another; Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Einstein, Newton, St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas to mention a few.

[blazeofglory]

It is really hard not to believe in point of fact; even if empirical science holds the contrary view, given the vastness and complexity of the world we live it is in reality reasonable that we imagine there is a creator of everything and this is our comfort zone.

[Fat Romeo]

The simple reason that you were brought up with the belief in God does not justify that belief. The belief is not innate - children are born atheists - you acquire the belief from your role models, or whoever instilled that belief in you.



Yes but we have tangible, empirical reasoning for scientific theory. The universe exists, given that we live in it, and the effects of atoms can be seen chemically. God, on the other hand, has no real tangible manifestation. There is no reason why we should belief such a thing exists. Scientists did not come up with the big bang theory for kicks, they are trying to explain the creation of the universe. There would be no reason to come up with a theory if the universe did not exist.

What empirical data do we have that would require the existence of a god?

"Children are born atheist" - this doesn't make sense.They are not atheists neither believers.
I am 99% atheist,but I don't believe in science.I mean...the scientists are going forward and back in one hundred different ways in slow motion,compaired with the complexity of Nature they would explain.They are working by curiosity in a field full of lacunas.We can doubt Darwin and carbon-14 dating being atheists.
You see - was it the supposed first images of atoms? - it is written "I.B.M."
and disagree on how the scientists thought atoms were.Suspect.
At less the LHC is not too expensive.

[atiguhya padma]

Children are born atheists. They have no understanding of monotheism. They are more like primitive or prototype scientists, always questioning. give a child enough freedom to question and they will rarely become religious believers

[Buh4Bee]

This is true. Religion is taught.

[Turtletoast]

I mean, I have been both an Atheist and someone who believes in a God. Neither one is wrong, but, as Leo says in "stones from the river", the important thing is just to be kind.

Just on a side note, I feel as though often people see science and faith at war with each other. This has never been, and probably never will be the case. Furthermore, science isn't one force. A 3 year old who studies the bugs in his backyard is technically a "scientist", which is name for someone who discovers information, usually just for the sake of finding things out. Therefore, are scientists that different from philosophers of religion? They have the same goal, just different, non-conflicting methods.

[Scheherazade85]

It remains a puzzle to me as to which point in our lives we decided to believe or not to believe. Or did we ever?