GOD- how can you not believe??

Question

is there any value left at all in this life? how can so many people not believe in something so good, powerful and loving? how do you even DO that?

HELLO??? this is NOT an atheist question!! I am questioning atheism itself! wow...

Answer 1

i agree with you totally. I have always known this, but after getting more involved in this section, I see that it is more rampant than I thought.

Answer 2

I have no problem with believing in God, except that it doesn't seem to make any difference. Good deeds fail or get twisted into evil. Atrocities are committed and allowed to happen. Good people are punished. Bad people are rewarded. We all know when something is wrong or right, but God doesn't seem to be participating the way he was reputed to do back in the days of the Book. And on top of that, there are some theists who threaten non-believers with endless torture from their all-loving God.

There are Christians who do loving, Christ-like things, but so do some atheists, without benefit of a supernatural overseer. Altruism does not require a divine authority to be recognized as proper. What helps all helps each. What helps few hurts all. The Golden Rule doesn't mention a deity. And if the human justice system is inadequate, will the promise of reward or punishment after death deter anyone from their chosen path? (ESPECIALLY if it's based on belief rather than behavior)

I can recognize and believe IN the value of good. I just don't need to believe THAT there is a "God" as petty, parochial and sentimental as so many theists portray.

Answer 3

More people have been killed in the name of "God" than any other. Sure, you can pawn it off on the idea that they couldn't be true believers justifying killing in the name of God but then it just starts to get silly.

Can you name one thing God has done for you? Birth? Nope, that was Mom and Dad knocking boots. The air you breathe? Nope, you evolved to use the molecule Oxygen which happens to be in the atmosphere of the planet your parents knocked boots on. How about the beautiful things you see? Nope, biochemical reaction to the absorption of varying light wavelengths bouncing of objects into your eye. How about the food you eat? Nope, product of a farmer or rancher's hard work along with the labor of various manufacturers along the way. Where is your powerful loving God that does so much for you? Can you list anything not actually performed by someone else? What gives this life value is we only get one and it is short. Live it like you mean it.

The only evidence you have for God is a book written by men who claim God told them to write it. In the rational world we call that circular logic. A good, powerful and loving God does not exist. Now prove me wrong without using the Bible. Go ahead, I'll wait.

The real question is, how can anyone believe?

Answer 4

~sigh~

Listen, I understand in some sense where you're coming from.

You've found something that brings you joy or gives you fulfillment or in some other way has enriched your life.

Not only that, but you've been told, and probably believe, that this is the "right" way for *everyone* to get what you have, and that there are horrible consequences to NOT following that one "right" way..

But....dear...we're not all the same. And it really does not serve you, or anyone, to expect that everyone will be the same. it serves people even less to try to *make* everyone the same.

***

Not that long ago, a very wise child had a lesson for all of us. When lectured about her adamant refusal to eat lima beans, she looked at her parents and said "If you had the same taste in your mouth when you eat this as I do when I try to, you wouldn't eat them either".

We each have an internal landscape with which we are familiar and comfortable, and that is "right" in our view, and it's difficult for any of us to even entertain the idea that our internal landscape might be repellent to others. It is what is so, though.


If your God created all that there is, then look around you for a moment and consider: God loves variety. There isn't just one "right" way to be a flower...or a dog...or a tree...there are wonderful variations in all living things, including humans.

If your God has a plan, then it's God's plan to have people be different, not just in skin tone and eye color, not just in height and left- or right-handedness, but internally as well; in the way we think, and the way we experience what is sacred..



I do not believe that there is only "one true way".

And the way of Christianity does not fit my experience of sacredness.




Peace out.

Answer 5

Good and loving? Have you considered the Theistic movement of Dystheism?

Value is something humans and cognitive beings give to objects, so it makes no sense to say that no value is left in this life. So long as cognitive beings exist, value will be plentiful.

As for coming to the conclusion that no deities exist, all one has to do is observe the functions of the universe, note the convergent properites it has and apply Occam's Razor to determine that the local fields that give rise to the universe is a much more parsimonious solution than a transcendent being using an entirely new level of dynamics (IE. Supernatural special creation) to give rise to the local fields (IE. Gravity, Electromagnetism, Time, Space, Being, etc.).

Answer 6

Well, as for your statement "something so GOOD, powerful, and LOVING..." that's based on your BELIEFS. And those are YOUR beliefs. Not everyone believes that there IS something good, powerful, and loving out there. What makes you so certain that if there is something out there, it's good and loving? You only think that because that's what you've been raised and taught to think. If you were raised by Scientologists, then you'd be believing in a space alien that put nuclear weapons in volcanoes. (And probably just as stubbornly insisting that your beliefs are right.)
Not everyone has the same beliefs as you. Maybe you can't understand it, but that's just the way it is. I personally can't understand how people CAN believe in an invisible super-being that controls everything and inflicts horrific, torturous punishment on those that don't "believe" in it. I just don't buy it.

Answer 7

I have the easiest time not believeing because there's never any evidence that he exists. And, from what you guys say about him, he sounds like the opposite of good, he sounds like pure evil to me.

Loving? You're kidding right? With all the death and suffering going on? Yeah real nice god to float around up there and not do a damn thing about it. What a joke!

Show me some proof, tell me anything different that I haven't heard out of all you guys before and I'd finally be impressed. But, it's never anything convincing, significant or even intelligent for that matter. It's always some lame verse you cite out of the bible, or threat of eternal damnation, give me a break!

I have no faith in your hell, so I won't go there! You have to believe, right...?!

Answer 8

You're kidding, right?

Doesn't honesty have any value at all for you? Are you really that completely unconcerned about telling the truth?
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"HELLO??? this is NOT an atheist question!! I am questioning atheism itself! wow..."

Er, hello? Everyone knew that.

Answer 9

Because I studied the bible, and that's not what I found there. It took me years to be sure, certainly, as I'd prefer a world with a good, loving supremely powerful being in charge.

But it appears not to be true, however much I might wish it.

Answer 10

There is always value in every life, belief in God, any God doesn't really have much to do with that.
People can be perfectly honest, hardworking, caring people and not believe in God.

Answer 11

It's not a matter of not accepting divinity. Its refusing to accept that divinity is hateful, bigoted, thinks it has created unicorns, that rabbits chew their cud etc. If those who try to speak for the divine would first educate themselves on the subject. Things could go a lot smother.