Christan's what makes you so curtained God is real? Help me see the "light"?

Question

I just want to know what makes you so curtained that God is real and the Jesus Christ existed. When i was 6 or so there wasn't anyone in the world that could tell me Santa Clause was not real. I believed with all my heart he was watching my every move so i was on my best behavior, hell i even swore i seen him in the sky on Christmas eve once. But then i found out the sad truth. What makes your belief in God different then my belief in Santa Clause as a child?

My spell checker isn't the best i meant to say certain there Dimple Girl feel better

A-Theist i once had faith in Santa and Leprechauns whats the difference and whats this proof you talking about

Princess Peabody (by the way what is a Peabody) i could sit her and think and believe my bag of skittles loves me in my heart, do you ever stop and think maybe the love of God is you creating your own emotions

Answer 1

Don't answer her question she will use it against you.

Answer 2

the difference is when you love God, you know he loves you back, it is Something you feel sometimes see, miracles in your every day life that there is no other explanation for. Too many to be happenstance. EVERY DAY is a miracle, and you know as a result.
Edit: in response,
I have, I have done it all There is nothing I can think of besides murder that I have not done, there is, as a result nothing in this life more satisfying than the love of Jesus. It is not something I explain well, but I do try. There is a knowledge in you heart (weird sounding) when God takes over, that that is what life is about. If you never accept God's challenge, you will never know what I am talking about.
I don't know what a Peabody is. I've just called my sisters it since I was a kid. ;-)

Answer 3

I hope that you are being serious by asking this question and not just doing it to bash those who answer seriously...but I 'll tell you why I know for certain that my God is alive and well (even if you do just want to bash me)!!

When I was 4 I had HORRIBLE ear problems...50% of my hearing was GONE in one ear and the other ear's hearing was going as well. I would wake up in the night SCREAMING from the pain. Finally a doctor told my mom and dad that I HAD to have tubes and that my hearing would not return but hopefully tubes would save what I still had. I didn't know what 'tubes' were but I did know that I didn't want them and I also knew that while in Church I had heard that Jesus heals and He is the same yesterday, today and forever. I looked up at my mom and dad and asked "Can't we go home and pray about this?" My dad felt very convicted because here he was the 'adult' believer and there I was a child asking to go to my Daddy God for healing. Well they picked my up and we left that office and then asked our church to pray for not just my ears but also the lost hearing to be restored. Today I have 100% hearing in both ears and I NEVER had tubes. Another instance was when I was in college. I was very athletic and having a lot of problems with my left knee. Every time I walked down my dorm stairs I thought I had a tack in my shoe because of the clicking noise. Long story short I ended up in a Physical Therapists office and he discovered that my left leg was 3/4 of an inch longer than my right leg. Most (about 75-90%) of the population has this problem but it usually affects a persons back and is more quickly diagnosed. I was given a lift to wear in my right shoe and began treatments with a tins unit to strengthen my knee muscles. I went to the local church and asked them to pray with me that my leg would grow out. During the prayer I felt my leg lengthen and was later released from my PT to not have to wear the lift. God healed my miraculously two separate times. I know that He is alive and well and wants to have a personal relationship with us His creation. He has done so much more for me through out my life but these are the two 'biggies' that I so love to share with people.

(And what you wrote about Santa Claus is the EXACT reason why I am teaching my precious little three year old the TRUTH about santa and God...when she grows up I don't want her to have that same doubt that you are facing. God is real Santa is a story. And people think my reasoning for this is crazy. Thank you for reassuring me that I am doing the right thing by her!! Thank you!!)

Answer 4

I am certian God exists because I exist. He made me, and honors me with life. I talk to God and he answers me. He makes things happen in a real way for me. Historically, you can find out that Pilate did as the bible explains. Historically you can see the temples and places Christ was. Historically, locations and cities are being unearthed all the time that are mentioned in the bible. You could use these for proof. God exists. He said it, I believe it, and that is it.

Answer 5

First I would say get a Bible with the things Jesus said in red letters..and just read what He said. That won't take you long. Then read
Cornelius Tacitus
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillas
Flavius Josephus
Thallus
Pliny the Younger
to convince yourself that He did live. You can look up all these on the internet.
Then get a good study Bible you can understand, and read and study it. If still don't want to believe that is your choice.

Answer 6

The difference is that belief has been transformed to understanding. One can say, "I believe," and then fall away as doubt comes in for a landing, but if understanding is there, then doubt can't get a foothold. These words have no value to one who has not at least put their toe into the water yet.

Answer 7

I am an atheist but I have to ask you, what makes you so sure that there isn't? It comes down to faith doesn't it? I don't believe that there is a God either, but do you really expect anyone to give you an answer that you are going to be satisfied with? Can you give an answer to why you are sure that there isn't that a Christian will be satisfied with? Probably not.

Their inability to provide you with an answer that will satisfy you is not evidence that their belief is false and vice versa. They don't have to justify their belief to us anymore than we should have to justify our belief to them.

As I said I am an atheist as well, but I don't understand why so many people have to insist that they defend their position with concrete, incontrivertible evidence when there simply is none to support either belief.

Answer 8

That's why he calls it a personal relationship.... Did you have a personal relationship with Santa? You will never understand until you begin a relationship with Jesus. And there is no sad truth about Jesus Christ. He is ALIVE.

Answer 9

There's historical evidence suggesting Jesus was infact, real. And I beleive God exists because of faith.

Answer 10

We all accept there is something or someone that has more power, knowledge, and is able to restore us. In NA/AA they use the word HIGHER POWER until someone is able to name that power as GOD. We have a conscience when we do wrong and a burst of excitement when something great happens. Who controls that?

Answer 11

Why am I certain that God is real? In facing a question like this one it is important on the one hand to distinguish between "what has to exist" (sometimes called "necessity"), and what is "in need of an explanation" on the other hand. Many questions about god, I will claim, are questions about what is necessary. An example will help. There is a formula for solving quadratic equations, which every high school student learns in algebra; but there is no formula for the general quintic. This latter fact is a result that every first-year college algebra student learns. It follows from this that if god were to exist god might know the solution to any quintic, but god would not be able to write down a general solution because it is possible to prove that no such equation exists. Every quintic has a solution (in fact it has 5 of them and for the same reason that a quadratic has 2). This is a necessary feature of algebra; that is to say, it is necessarily true once one discovers algebra. Since this fact is logically necessary does it make sense for someone say, "Well, do you have any evidence for that?" Well, no there is no "evidence" that a formula for solving the general quintic does not exist. Indeed, it doesn't make sense in this case to ask for evidence: the assertion that there is no formula for solving the general quintic is still true because it is necessary. This is a product of how one works through the questions arising from thinking algebraically. Moreover, anyone asking for evidence completely misunderstands what algebra is about.

There are, however, lots of situations where asking for evidence, asking for an explanation, seems to make good sense. Physics, chemistry, biology, botany and astronomy are good cases in point. It makes sense to ask, for example, "Why does the DNA in my mitochondria come only from my mother and not my father?" There is something very different about this question than the question about algebra, and it seems to be of a type where asking for evidence seems warranted. Physicists, likewise, are bent on providing explanations of this sort, and they are careful when they meet questions of the former kind not to confuse the two. So, for example, good physicists will happily assert that everything we see around us is subject to needing an explanation: people, trees, water, the solar system, galaxies, volcanic sand, bacteria, states of mind; all stand in reference to this latter sort of questioning: "Why are things this way and not some other way?" This happens in the Astronomy section of Y!A all the time. "Why is the sky blue," "Why is the sun yellow," "Where does the universe end," "How old is the earth," all these questions and more show up with astonishing regularity! So, why is the sky blue and not red? Why are all large solid bodies roughly spherical in shape? Why is the sun yellowish? Why is the solar system stable over long periods of time?

To move on, care needs to be taken when lumping individual items into systems because not every attribute of a planet, say, becomes an attribute of a solar system. The importance of this will be apparent in a moment. It is not always clear how explaining the individual parts of a system explains the whole system. For example, no good physicist would claim that a wall made of small bricks was, therefore, a small wall; but it would still be a brick wall. A pile of $10.00 on a table isn't an "empty" pile when the money is spent. None of us would assert --except as a joke-- that the world is littered with empty piles of $10.00 dollar bills. So, it makes sense to ask "How did this pile of $10.00 dollar bills get here" without the answer being "Well, the pile was always here, it just has $10.00 dollar bills now, whereas before it was just an empty pile." The pile of $10.00 dollar bills itself is susceptible to the same sort of questioning that the sky is, that the solar system is. There are planets and stars, is there such a thing as a solar system? Sure. Is there such a thing as "the universe as a whole?"

At each step in this process of asking questions we always ask for a set of reasons (sometimes those reason give evidence and sometime they do not) which give us some explanation for what we see. Now for the question that leads to the concept of "god." When do we ever stop asking for an explanation or for evidence? When we cite reasons which are perforce necessary. When the chain of reasons, of lists of evidence finally rests on a reason that is necessary, we are done. For example, there is no equation from which one can derive the positions of the planets of our solar system. This is called, in the parlance of mathematicians, the "n-body" problem. If the solar system were composed of exactly two bodies which were themselves perfectly rigid spheres, and if they were reasonably small and at a great distance from each other, then there is such an equation, which was derived by Isaac Newton. But when the number of bodies is greater than 2 then no such formula exists; and it can be proved that there is no such formula. There are *numeric* solutions which can be quite good over long spans of time; but no general solution. No physicist searches for one; what's the point? Likewise, absolute zero is what it is. Occasionally on Y!A physics, one sees the question "can something get colder than absolute zero?" Asking that question makes clear that the person asking does not understand what "absolute zero" means, nor why it follows from the way one thinks in the process of discovering physics. Questions into the nature of what is necessary have to be asked with great care, or one starts talking nonsense without realizing it. If Einstein is correct, then on cannot travel faster than light. Yet, people persist in posing a question such as, "Well, suppose one could travel faster than light..." All answers to questions that start out like that are nonsensical unless the answer is "One cannot travel faster than light..." It is a necessary condition of General Relativity that one cannot travel faster than light.

So, when one faces all that physicists, biologists, psychologists, chemists, geologists and astronomers have discovered it does indeed make sense to ask, "Is there a reason for all of that?" Is there a reason for the "Universe as a whole?" One can, of course, choose not to face ths question, one can minimized the question, but those are personal issues of integrity; yet as the discussion shows this question still makes sense to ask.

The answer to that question is what Muslims, Jews, Christians, Taoists, Wiccans, and the like refer to when they use the term "god." As a consequence, there is no "evidence" for god, nor does god need further explanation. Quadratic equations have a general formula for their solution, the n-body problem is not solvable, god is the answer to a particular question and there is no "going beyond" these. There is no good way to answer the question, "Well, can you give me some evidence that every quintic has a solution without an explicit formula?" It follows from a whole way of thinking about algebra that it is so. The same is true for the speed of light. It is a necessary consequence. The same is true for god. As I pointed out, god is the answer to, god follows from, a whole system of questioning.

HTH

Charles