How do you know God is real?

I would love to believe in God, even though my brain thinks its a total crock. My question is - what makes you really believe he's there? - and please don't say "I just feel him" or something vague. How do you believe in God even though science/other religions/the situation of this world (people dying and starving to death everyday despite their prayers) seem to negate his existence?

I don't ask this facetiously, I really wanna know. I would love to find faith in God, but I haven't found a single shred of anything that points towards a loving Gods existence.

 

i don't

 

I wouldn't worry about it to much, I would consider non belief in such credulous nonsense to be a good thing!

Now go enjoy a guilt free ham sandwich!

 

I don´t believe, I know he is. Just from my childhood.
Firstly I remember things when I was only some months old and I know I wasn´t stupid nurseling but soul with some knowledge. I had a nightmares as a child, it was some sleeping sickness or how to say...awakness during dreaming and saw third eye in these dreams who talked to me. Then lot of sprititual experiences during my life. It´s hard to talk about it...hard to explain. It´s something like written information in your body when you have an open mind. I have never understand why were people talking about believe/not believe thing...for me it was always very natural.

 

But about sciene...there was some TV discussion about God existence with scientists and one mathematician said "I believe cause I enumerated it."

Tho, every person could see absolute perfection in every science department. If you have a knowledge how are things working.

 

I've never been one to feel guilty.

Nirali - Yeah, but I'm guessing you were raised in a religious household. I feel like people's realities are entirely shaped by what they believe - so people that believe in the supernatural tend to have plenty of supernatural experiences. People like me that don't never do. Once I dropped a sandwich and I couldn't find it after wards - like I seriously looked everywhere and it was nowhere to be found. But that's my only "paranormal" experience.

Thing is very few scientists believe in god - I think Richard Dawkins says the number is like 85 to 95% of scientists in the large scientific organizations are agnostic or atheist.

 

When I doubt God's existence..I look at nature and all things non man made..marvelous and beyond comprehension..God is who created these things..

 

To feel guilty for your acts? Or your living without religion?

I agree with you people influence each other very strongly. In my case, my father is atheist and my mother believe in God also strongly but during her life she didn´t found satisfaction in any of Churches, so she studied religions a lot. My other family are Christians, but I´m not very into earthly statutes.

For me it´s same like in science. Scientists are compelled to understand things by their brain abilities. But God is something you need to understand by spiritual knowledge. When you need to measure capacity of water tank you will not use a hammer. There are not too much people who understand that.

 

I think you need to tackle what "God" exactly means.

God aint a being. God has no gender, no moods. He doesn't perform favor people, punish others, and perform miracles. Heaven, hell, being "saved".

You're probably talking about the Christian God. Lol, if thats what you're debating then you'll never understand God.

I've had direct conscious experiences with "God". The experiences I've had could be matched for matched exactly (sensations, how I made it happen, feelings, emotions) exactly with spiritual practices thousands of years old. There are also many modern spiritual systems which teach the same things.

 

Your brain thinks God is a total crock? You haven't found a single shred of anything that points towards a loving Gods existence? How do you believe in God even though "somethings" seem to negate his existence?

Why do you believe anything? What is proof to you?

Once you define what proof is needed then sometimes that proof can be given you.

Then it all depends on whether you want to listen to it or not.

 

By OWB's reasoning the Tooth Fairy cannot be considered credulous, the same goes for Santa Clause, if you substitute faith in place of proof you wind up believe some very odd things.

 

What reasoning would that be?

So far, all I've done is ask a few questions and make one statement.

Are you a seer of the future and already know what reasoning I will use? If so, I'd like you to please state it, it would save me a lot of time.

Also, I don't believe I said anything about substituting faith for anything, so what's your point?

 

You (not specifically you) are still making a metaphysical leap by saying "there is no God".

 

Richard Dawkins is a pretentious asshole who likes the attention he gets from decrying popularly-held beliefs in the most offensive way possible. The title of his book, The God Delusion, makes this pretty obvious. And he teaches at Oxford, which makes me weep for the state of academia.

Honestly, I have to be an agnostic. I would like to believe in a God, but I can't see any evidence that one exists. That being said, the idea makes sense on some level, and I do think it's possible. Even Dawkins says that it is unscientific to make a claim like 'there is no God.' While he probably says this just to somewhat placate scientific minds (a title which I'm not sure he can be said to share), it is nonetheless true. There are many things which can be known (I would argue that anything can be), but it seems obvious at this point that we are a long way from understanding them all. The universe is a very complex place.

 

I don't believe It's a he (at least not exclusively.)

What makes me know is that knowing produces evidence.

 

Care to elaborate?

 

To be fair, he's a shameless showboater and populist, but he's not an idiot. He tailors his message to whatever market it's going to. In the major media, he dumbs it down beyond recognition, but his academic work is more thorough and less inherently antagonistic. He does, for example, address non-religious memes, positive memes etc. in his weightier work, but tends to leave it out when he's on TV, because it doesn't hold people's attention.

Personally I think that that's a very bad thing, that it's misleading (because people think he's got his reputation from saying "God doesn't exist and religion is dumb", and thus believe that that's an intelligent opinion), and also condescending (because it suggests a belief that dumb people can't handle complex ideas). I don't think he's an idiot by any means, but I think he can come off as one as a result of things he is very consciously doing to maintain his popularity and media presence.


As you go on to say, no sane scientist would dismiss outright the possibility of a god (not necessarily the God of Christianity). The sensible ones realise that the abstract concept of god includes unprovability, and thus don't bother to touch the subject. At the end of the day, if you deal in physics, and physics don't change, it doesn't matter to you if God is willing the motion of every particle in a remarkably consistent way, or if he just set everything working and buggered off, or if he doesn't exist at all. But specific ideas of a god, I think, can very easily be dismissed.

 

Are you seriously claiming not to be predictable?

You answered a question with a load of other questions which very clearly implied your position. If you want people to go through the motions of politely inquiring what you might be getting at just to see if it is indeed exactly what they were expecting, you might want to change your username.

 

I am not making a metaphysical leap by claiming I don't believe god exists, I have never found proof of its existence nor have I "felt" his presence as some believers claim to have done.

If I were to claim in his existence without experiencing these things then I would be making your "metaphysical leap."

Does lack of proof for a negative make it a positive?

 

How would you go about disproving the existence of a child's imaginary friend who the kid said was responsible for burning down his parents house when the two of them were left alone one day?

Or how would go about convincing an Islamic suicide bomber minutes before he set off on his mission, that it wasn't god commanding him to martyr himself to his religious cause?

I'm generally curious.