How can you believe in God, an honest question.?

Question

ok, for starters, You NEVER hear ANYONE tell you something their god believe that they disagree with. people claim to be all sorts of denominations from all sorts of different sechts, and yet, they disagree with certain church rules. This world started out with people making up gods to explain what they couldn't, Water flows because of this god, the sun rises because of this god, science has whittled it down century after century, and now we are a mostly monothesitc earth that has 1 god to explain everything we can't... How can religious people not see that they are JUST MAKING THIS CRAP UP!?!?!

I have read the bible, COVER TO COVER... Obviously you haven't... It BLOWS ME AWAY how many people claim to be christian, and have never picked up a bible...

@marmo_1
"because you do not know that for sure. when u have proof that there is no god, then come back. how did everything start? right. you dont know for sure. So it's nice to assume that a God created all this. Now go to sleep. "


Really? Thats your best defense? I cant prove you wrong? I also can't prove you don't molest children... Does that make it any more true? Do you feel you will be granted a special place in heaven by blatently bashing those who "question faith"

I have nothing against people of faith. It IS a personal thing. but people need to accept that it is FAITH and nothing more, and stop telling me how to live because of it..

@mojo2093

We "atheists" (as though we are orginized) ask these questions because when you figure out you are an atheist, life becomes much more valuable, and who has killed more people in this world than this "god" guy? More people have died in his name than anything else in the history of the world... Im not tortured, there was no bad experience, I just don't believe, and I get sick of people trying to tell me how to live my life, because their imaginary friend said so...

@George
How can you have any sort of proof for this garbage other than YOU ARE JUST MAKING IT UP

@Judithlyn

I am being tolerant, I Dont care if someone wants to worship a toaster, but the second they send my countries army to war because of it, I get mad... The second they tell me or anyone else how to live because of their toaster, I get very very mad...

@Gus

Really? You really cant understand why this question would be in Religon/Spirtuality? Where does it belong? The Baked goods section? I love your long winded response, but at the same time, you need to accept that what you believe is FAITH and nothing more, and to impose your beliefs upon other people is wrong...

ELDEEDER REPENTS! Ok, I AM WRONG, I SEEK FORGIVNESS FOR MY SINS... I WANT TO COME TO GOD! I BELIEVE IN GOD! But which one? SHlT! ok, fight that one out too...

Answer 1

I agree 100%. You state the point exactly as I would.

Answer 2

You almost had a reasonable argument until the last sentence. Yes I disagree with things in my religion. Do you have any proof of Gods being made up? If so, why would they make a God up that didn't do anything? I can tell you are saying this out of a bad experience possibly or arguments you have had in the past. I think if you or athiests really believed in nothing you wouldn't be so hard pressed to ask these sort of questions. If I have offended you in any way I apologize, but what many fail to see is the missing piece of the puzzle. It is why you say "how in the world could anyone believe in something they can't see?" Even the smallest degree of faith and I think your mind would be opened to it. There are so many intangibles in any religion. The real question is can you honestly say you have enough proof for the nonexistence of any higher power? My question to you is: What do you gain by creating strife and trying to pull something away from people in this day and age where war abounds and the very fabric of our morals is being challenged? Even if you don't believe in God or any higher power do you even have the decency to agree to disagree. I am completely fine with athiests views, because I know that if they were really to come to God it was meant to be and only by love can this happen. The only unfortunate things I can see for athiests ultimately is:
1.) Many are so incredibly cynical that their very being cannot trust anyone and end up living a shell of a life.
2.) If you are wrong and never believed in anything beyond the physical world do you really think if there is a higher power you will be rewarded?

Answer 3

Tradition mostly. People raised to believe in a superstition will likely believe it long after their cognative skills have developed. It creates a kind of blindness in them, making them unable to see the contradictions, logical paradoxes, and irrational nature of their faith...whatever their faith happens to be.

One of the reasons the Abrahamic faiths have lived so long is that they have long ago developed excuses for nearly everything. Find physical proof that something is not what their Books claim it was, and they'll tell you it was metaphorical or spiritual. Find physical evidence that shows that events did not happen as the dogma claims it did and you will be faced with a thousand rationalizations, each more desperate than the last.

Then there are the people who have genuinely convinced themselves they are talking to an imaginary sky-fairy. Never mind the fact that their invisible friend has never once told them anything they didn't want to hear or didn't know before.

Prayers? Show me a study that has been repeated and tested that confirms that the percentage of prayers answered is any higher than events of chance. Miracle healings? Show me an amputee who has had their limbs restored to them--regrown entirely. I know a few war veterans who would love to see their arms and/or legs again.

Christians cannot prove their claims beyond citing a bunch of books written by desert nomads in the days before we learned how to investigate the world around ourselves properly. Their "proofs" lie in two forms: 1; Incredulity that the universe exists by "accident". (Problem 1 is that their incredulity does not make it so, problem 2 is that while there is random chance involved, nothing is entirely "accidental".) 2; Personal testimony...like the "dream" one previous poster had. As if an unsubstantiated claim is at all convincing. They might as well claim they were abducted by aliens or spoke to Elvis for all the evidence they have.

Answer 4

God has replaced my existence a lot. i might want to be a fool to imagine that mere people did that. I easily have tried to describe my adventure on right here earlier; i got here upon out it cant be performed. this is too spectacular. My heart change into completely replaced. The Holy Spirit runs each ingredient of my existence. i'm a real soldier for Christ <3 and no, i do not have self assurance merely because im frightened of consequences. I easily have considered what some consequences are, and thats unlucky. I make blunders always, yet I easily have God residing in my soul, and the guilt holiday i'm getting after sinning is more suitable than ever. i regulate after i have self assurance that, i dont merely get scared and run and hide, and have self assurance because I easily ought to. My believing in God is an complete decision. He can provide my a lot love, have self assurance, protection, compassion and forgiveness. It cant get any extra effective =] God Bless

Answer 5

Several reasons, including:

Because humans in general still have a need to believe in someone (or something) which has ultimate control over everything.

Because it is much more difficult to believe that everything we see came about because of a long series of cosmic accidents.

Because some people see belief in God as a way of achieving a better life than one they are currently living.

There are more, but these will do for now.

Belief in God has nothing to do with what religion someone belongs to. It has to do with how any given individual sees the world and his place in it. All a religious denomination does is provide a specific framework within which the individual learns more about the God he believes in.

In closing, let me say that although I am not a Christian I do not dispute the existence of some being(s) that are superior to me -- which is what a God is. Whether that being is called Jehovah, God, Mohammad, Buddah, Beelzebub, or R2D2 is, to me, irrelevant.

Answer 6

The belief in God comes from God. At least, for those that are drawn in by Him.

As far as all the denominations; we make up our own minds, but most of us Christians try to prove what we are by what it says in the Bible.

If you ever had a difference with anyone on any subject, it comes because you have made up your own mind on what the truth is. Christians do the same.

"ok, for starters, You NEVER hear ANYONE tell you something their god believe that they disagree with."
Some choose to conform to Him as they understand Him. I thikn that the important thing to do is to be able to recognize when I am wrong. In this way, I subject my personal opinion to what I think is the right way to discern what the Bible says. Sometimes it comes through inspiration. In other instances, I can get down into the scripture and reveal to myself what the actual Hebrew or Greek says.

Through it all, I remain flexible. If someone proves that God meant something that I do not expect, then I delve into it further through the Bible, as deep as I can go, and discover whatever the issue was and then decide to apply it to myself.

"people claim to be all sorts of denominations from all sorts of different sechts, and yet, they disagree with certain church rules."
True. And if you don't go along with that church for certain reasons, you have the choice of leaving it. Like I said, we all get to decide what the truth is.

"This world started out with people making up gods to explain what they couldn't, Water flows because of this god, the sun rises because of this god, science has whittled it down century after century, and now we are a mostly monothesitc earth that has 1 god to explain everything we can't... "

Well, you see? You just gave away you bias. You have already decided to think that people made God up according to what they wanted to believe. IF that were true, the Jewish religion would have been long extinct. We might be reading about it in the history books. You said that you read the Bible, and I believe you. But reflect a bit on Exodus and the Levitical book. Were those people doing what they wanted? They wanted to kill Moses at times, what held them back? They couldn't even judge Moses without suffer something from somebody! Who was the somebody? You can't tell me that over a million people in the desert were happy not to strike out for anywhere else! Something else was there. Something else was going on. You'd have to discount the whole story in order to think that there were many good reasons to stay in the desert where there was little to eat. ( Little to eat if there wasn't something coming down for them!) If you do discount the whole story, then why waste so much time here on the subject?

As far as God being the explanation for everything we don't understand:
What knowledgable Christians are saying is that none of this would be here without God. Not us, not the clouds, not the solar system, there would be nothing! What Christians are saying is; We owe it all to Him. That's why we say, "Glory to God."

"How can religious people not see that they are JUST MAKING THIS CRAP UP!?!?!"
Because we have been convinced. The questions that you are asking reveal that you haven't been convinced. I'm sorry to say that most people in the world that have ever lived will not understand. That's of course IF you believe in what the Bible says about things. I didn't make it up, it's in the book. I believe that the book is what has been revealed about God, and about history, and about the future.

Answer 7

Well, I'm not religious, and I'm not a Christian. I agree with you that there are too many religions, with too many differing sets of rules, traditions, and beliefs, and everyone thinks that they belong to the "right" one. I also agree that historically, people have used their religions to explain things that they did not understand.
So I'm not one of those people who is "making this crap up". But I do know that there is a God, and that he created us. Even people who are never preached to, born in isolated areas, naturally feel the need to develop their spirituality. Even people who have decided not to believe in God still feel the need to visit religion and spirituality forums, apparently, and then try to make believers feel ignorant out of their own doubts and insecurities.
You quote science as a reasoning-the absolute that has somehow disproven an existence. But science, too, is constantly changing and evolving. Different research finds different results. Nothing is certain.
My point is that all of us, even you-who does not believe-FEELS that there is another part of us that is unseen. That is the very nature that was the foundation for all of those religions, no matter how misguided they are. Don't miss the forest for all the trees.....
How can I believe in God? Because I know. Because I am willing to connect with that part of myself in spite of all of the misgivings and false teachings of the masses.
I think that it is just as unreasonable for a person to believe that the complexities of existence-the chains and cycles of nature, the cellular composition of the human body, speech and emotion, love and hate, and the capabilities of our minds are all just the random results of the evolution of a single celled organism or the implosion of a black hole.
Science does have it's place. Evolution is a reality. But if you REALLY think about it.....no matter what you believe-what it all boils down to is this.....that first spark of life, whether it was in a man named Adam or some unnamed amoeba-where did it come from? Science has whittled out no answer for that, and it never will.....it makes some of the same reaches you are complaining about with religion. We are taught in school about elements that existed before recorded history, for which the information is at best educated guessing. Carbon dating is inaccurate, archeological finds are misinterpreted and inconsistent, so why are you so prone to accept science as an absolute?

Answer 8

Why should you care if people believe in God? It has no effect on you. Have you ever heard of being tolerant? You know, live & let live.

Belief in God is a matter of faith; you have it or don't have it. While the various religious denominations may vary in their interpretations, Christians believe in the same God &, except for the hyprocrites, try to lead good lives. If we aren't perfect we are only human.

The Bible is our guide to leading a better life. Much of it is historical in nature. However the Bible also contains parables, folktales to teach us lessons (folktales are called allegories), fables, short stories & problem stories.

You will select as best answer someone who agrees with you yet you have asked a question of Christians & while you don't agree why don't you select a Christian who gives the best answer to your question?

Answer 9

You look at bats. They do not fly by sight. They can barely see in the day but they sleep in the day. They are nocturnal creatures. They do all their activities at night and at night they are blind. They fly by means of sonar. They send out sound waves through their nose as they are flying. If those sound waves bounce off something and come back at them, they pick them up and know that they are heading toward something and need to veer in a different direction. Somehow they know how fast they are flying and they know that sound travels at 723 MPH and as they fly they continue to send out sound waves so they continue to get updated information. Given enough info(and continued updated info) a mathematician could sit down with a pencil and paper and some calculus equations and figure out how far the bat was from the object and with the right info could even figure out if the object the bat is heading toward is stationary or moving toward the bat or away from it. But that would take time and if the bat took that much time he’d be flying into trees and telephone poles other things. We have developed computers that can do that in a second. That's what sonar is all about. The bat has a computer in his head that can figure that info out in a nanosecond. It knows what it is heading for without being able to physically see. It's flying by instruments(as pilots would say). Do you really think that the sonar equipment that is in the bats head just came about by random chance(read....luck) natural processes?
That is only one example of design in the universe. You could come up with million of examples. The whole universe is filled with design. Design demands a designer. There must be a God.

Answer 10

Look at the life of Saul who later changed his life to Paul. He was a Jew born in Tarsus a Roman controlled territory. So he was a Jew and a Roman citizen. His father sent him to Jerusalem to be tought by one of the best teachers of his time on the Jewish faith. obviously a very learned man. When people started teaching that Jesus was the promised Son of God, that God would send, he would have them people put to death. That is an extreme. Well for one to change completely around and start teaching the same thing that he had people put to death for after he saw a vision of Jesus on his way to Damascus, is an extreme in the opposite direction. Paul ended up writing about half the New Testament, which means new promise. Then sped the word throughout the Roman empire. Study the life of Paul with an open mind, may God reveal himself to you. reading and studying are two different things, the word says to study to show yourself approved.

Answer 11

By seeking the truth. Start looking (truly) into the lies of evolution and you will find a Designer/Creator. Then look into the Bible the most factually sound history book ever written.

Where do atheists come up with this as being made up? Have you yourself looked into God or a Creator? I have and found a whole lot of BS stated by people trying to discount a Creator.

Don't just state things that you want to believe look into the truth if you want to make statements based on fact.