How can you not believe?

Question

Does anyone believe in God anymore? How can anyone look at the sky on a starry evening and not believe? The rainbow is beautiful, thunderstorms are awesome and a winter storm is a most unspeakable beauty. How can you look at your precious children and not thank God? Please, I really don't understand.

Answer 1

i do believe in God and thank him everyday for the life i live and the children and family who love me. i don't pay attention to those who don't believe in Him. He gave us free will, which is true but it seems when a member of the non-believers family is deathly ill the prayers begin as "If there is a God..."Why do you call on Him in a great time of despair but never believing in the small miracles you lived before that?

Answer 2

I feel joy and wonder for all of these things too. But I am convinced that the God of Abraham is a myth, and belief in that God is holding back our abililty to really understand this amazing universe.

There may be a supreme intelligence that created this universe. If there is, I expect it has almost nothing in common with the mythical God of the Hebrew Bible.

Its also possible that there the universe was not created as an intelligent act, and that the only intelligence in the universe has evolved. In this case, there is the possibility that a god-like intelligence has evolved, or that more than one has.

If we assume for the moment that the universe was created by a "one and only God", I personally think it is unlikely that God would be so petty as to damn us to "hell" for all eternity because we didn't worship it in just the right way during this lifetime. I have to believe that such a God would be more generous and compassionate, and would judge us by how we lived and treated each other.

I'll leave you with a quote from Richard Feynman, nobel laureate and one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century:

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?"

Answer 3

That's very sweet of you to focus on all the pretty stuff. But seriously, have you thought about the bad stuff?

Seriously

I want you to imagine that you were born in Rwanda in 1990 as a little black girl. In your early teens you would have seen probably 1/2 of your family raped, mutilated with machetes, or killed. Your little brother could have had a hand chopped off, or a foot. YOU might have been raped at age 12 or so. Now if someone walked up to you and asked you to look at a rainbow and said "Isn't that lovely? Isn't god just great?!?" How do you think you would feel?

Female hyena pups kill all of their siblings as soon as they can walk. Baby birds push their smaller siblings out of the nest. Some sharks eat their siblings IN THE WOMB. Up until 80 years ago, 50% of all human children died before age one.

Don't forget all of that when deciding how lovely everything is.

Answer 4

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder..you must have heard that. For example you might see a beautiful majestic mountain....I see a waste of real estate. Seriously though, you are not suggesting that we forget all about logic and reason just because some things are pleasing to look at are you? Oh yea, I never did want to bring up kids in this environment and I 'Thank God' that I didn't have any.

Answer 5

Good question. I agree that nature is beautiful; but that only means that nature is beautiful. It does not follow that god exists. There is no evidence for the existence of any supernatural being or force.

As for children, I agree with the answerer above who observed that children are proof of sex and nothing more.

It's really not that hard to have no belief in god. Think of it this way: You don't believe in Zeus, or Thor, or Isis, do you? Neither do I; _and_ I also don't believe in the god of the Abrahamic religions.

See? Not difficult at all. I simply believe in one less god than you.

Answer 6

A rainbow has a scientific explanation, as to the stars. Thunderstorms also have a scientific explanation.

I'm sorry. I don't believe in God.

But I do find the stars and rainbows beautiful, and knowing how they work does not take away their beauty.

There is a lot the human mind can't at this time explain. Some of us think that in figureing out how they work, we will discover their inner beauty.

Answer 7

Because I have seen what blind faith does to people. I am very happy as a Buddhist, and I neither believe nor do I disbelieve in any higher power. This leads to attachment to a belief and obstructs the path to Nirvana. Perceiving beauty in nature proves only that the mind of the beholder is beautiful, nothing more.

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thought. With our thoughts, we make our world"
- Buddha -

Answer 8

You believe in God, and that's all that matters. Don't look for others to believe, because this is not your job or my job. When you see something beautiful, you know that it is an emotion of God that you are wittnessing. Be happy with that, and be at peace in the knowledge that God (whoever God is for you) knows that you appreciate Him/Her. Don't allow other people's lack of vision or open mindedness trouble your heart.

Answer 9

very easily..
no no one believes anymore, they have moved beyond the need for an entity to try to explain how things work. they have moved beyond the need for a simple answer to a complex problem and finally want the complex answer to the problem at hand.

Answer 10

I have been working the astronomy profession for more then 10 years.

I have never seen god, but have been amazed by the wonders of the universe.

Addition:

If beauty proves god, then a rotting corpse proves the non-existence of god.