Do any of you believe in God?

Originally Posted by dremodeling

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Yes, I do belive.

I like how this is your only poast.

Originally Posted by Piobaire

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http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/18...ex.html?hpt=C2 Quote: Some interesting and unexplainable items about deathbed visions: • Visions people experience at the end of life are remarkably similar. • The dying are most often visited by their mothers. It shouldn't be too surprising that the person who is actually present as we cross the threshold of life and take our first breaths once again appears at the threshold as we take our last breaths. • Hands passionately reaching upward to some unseen force is witnessed in many deathbed encounters. Disprove this! Disprove this!
I stumbled upon this thread this morning and this post caught my eye. Not sure if anyone else has commented on it, but there is some interesting research going on right now about near death experiences (NDE). I'll try and dig up some links to a few of these studies later, but off the top of my head I remember an interesting discussion on the topic from this podcast earlier this year. It's a long podcast, but if you skip ahead to the discussion, I think you will find it well worth your time. The argument being presented is NDE's may be the result of factors such as the brain being deprived of oxygen. Furthermore that the components of typical NDE's can be induced by medications and magnetic brain stimulation. Nothing conclusive of course, but it does show that there are plausible explanations of the NDE phenomenon outside of anything metaphysical. EDIT: Ok, I skimmed the rest of this thread and it looks like this topic is being discussed. I didn't see anyone link to ay discussions on this specific research so I will leave this in.

A woman I knew told me about an NDE she had as a little girl (during some kind of surgery, as I recall): She had the familiar experience of going down the dark tunnel and emerging into bright light where she met, of all things...Disney characters (Mickey Mouse et al.)! These, instead of the more familiar long-lost parents or radiant beings in white robes, she attributed to her childish mentality and expectations.

She was anything but anti-religious BTW. She was one of the best Christians I have ever known and the wife of a very, very conservative Anglican priest.

Originally Posted by ntwrkguy1

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I'm still on the fence. Like the poster on the wall of X-Files, I want to believe....

At times, it's hard to believe that god does exist, with all of the horrible things done in the name of "religion"....

Seriously. See what I don't get is, if God or 'the gods' let such ****** things happen, why don't they appear to us to apologize? Why keep hidden? If I'm just supposed to follow on blind faith, I'll end up dead and broken like John Locke from LOST. The simplest, Occam's Razor answer is, there is no God...

Originally Posted by MiddleClassDude

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Seriously. See what I don't get is, if God or 'the gods' let such ****** things happen, why don't they appear to us to apologize? Why keep hidden? If I'm just supposed to follow on blind faith, I'll end up dead and broken like John Locke from LOST. The simplest, Occam's Razor answer is, there is no God...

I'm with you as an Agnostic, but can tell you what the answer a Christian believer might tell you would be. All bad things that happen in the world are due to (original) sin and are mankind's doing. God provided a way to be saved from this sin with our eternal souls, but the world itself will always be tainted with this sin till He returns.

Your argument makes perfect sense to you or me, but it won't register with most devote believers in the Bible. I am unable to present the arguments other religions may make because I am less familiar with them and their beliefs in this area.

Originally Posted by JMRouse

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I'm with you as an Agnostic, but can tell you what the answer a Christian believer might tell you would be. All bad things that happen in the world are due to (original) sin and are mankind's doing. God provided a way to be saved from this sin with our eternal souls, but the world itself will always be tainted with this sin till He returns. Your argument makes perfect sense to you or me, but it won't register with most devote believers in the Bible. I am unable to present the arguments other religions may make because I am less familiar with them and their beliefs in this area.
The other thing is some religion's notions that their god is the only god. They have one god and one creation story. But there are how many of these religions that, if they were true, all conflict with the fact that 'OUR god created OUR world', but what about the people on the other side of the planet's who's one god created THEIR world? Doesn't this automatically prove them false? Why would someone's ONE god allow there to be another ONE god that doesn't mesh with theirs? Why would someone's one god create all these other people who didn't believe in that one god? It doesn't make SENSE. Then you get into religions with a sun god, a moon god, a dead god, a sky god, etc. =) In all honesty I don't have a problem with religion per se. I believe people can believe whatever they want, myself included. It's only fundamentalists, or what have you, who try to tell me I'm going to hell (ok that's never happened) or what to do or what I'm doing wrong as a non religious person. As a result if I meet a religious person, I will not insult them obviously but if they start getting religulous on me, I try to escape that conversation posthaste. FWIW I'm technically catholic but I was never a big church going person. We stopped going regularly when I was 4 or 5 and then it was Midnight Mass every Christmas for another 10 years, but after that, the only reason I've been to churches have been weddings and funerals.

I'm one of those people that truly wish they could believe.

I'm extremely analytical and logical in my thought processes, and wish it could be turned off.

In the end, I can't believe 100 percent, and I'm not sure if the belief I DO have is either:
a) real

or b) Merely me trying to comfort myself.


What I do know is:

1) That the thought that God doesn't exist in any form is truly depressing. (To me)
2) I know I will never be 100 percent convinced of His existence until I see proof.
3) Any "proof" of Gods existence will effectively destroy faith.
a) We "believe" in God. We don't "believe" in the Sun, rather, we know it exists.
b) How can anyone be "good" if they know that it is a requirement, rather then a choice, thus with Heaven merely being a reward, we will never "be" good, rather, we will all act good. (I wonder whether I act, or am, good at times.)

4)Thus, I know my future interactions with religion will be unfulfilling, at least partly depressive, and I shall always question my own motivations in both life and religious choices.
5)This is all ******* depressing.



As for suffering:
The way I would justify the suffering is to say that God would take the long view of humanity. If a child hurts himself, he learns from his mistakes. If there was no pain, there would be no learning process. Now, we're suppose to grow as a species. (I would think at least.... we may have some end goal, but remaining the same as we are now seems pointless). How are we to grow, learn, and advance, if we never know what suffering is, if we never know pain and make mistakes?

Your point #3 above is based on the common misconception that faith is necessarily based on the unknown or unverifiable.

Originally Posted by dah328

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Your point #3 above is based on the common misconception that faith is necessarily based on the unknown or unverifiable.

This is painful to read...

Originally Posted by Magician

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This is painful to read...
Finally

Originally Posted by L.R.

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I'm one of those people that truly wish they could believe. I'm extremely analytical and logical in my thought processes, and wish it could be turned off. In the end, I can't believe 100 percent, and I'm not sure if the belief I DO have is either: a) real or b) Merely me trying to comfort myself. What I do know is: 1) That the thought that God doesn't exist in any form is truly depressing. (To me) 2) I know I will never be 100 percent convinced of His existence until I see proof. 3) Any "proof" of Gods existence will effectively destroy faith. a) We "believe" in God. We don't "believe" in the Sun, rather, we know it exists. b) How can anyone be "good" if they know that it is a requirement, rather then a choice, thus with Heaven merely being a reward, we will never "be" good, rather, we will all act good. (I wonder whether I act, or am, good at times.) 4)Thus, I know my future interactions with religion will be unfulfilling, at least partly depressive, and I shall always question my own motivations in both life and religious choices. 5)This is all ******* depressing. As for suffering: The way I would justify the suffering is to say that God would take the long view of humanity. If a child hurts himself, he learns from his mistakes. If there was no pain, there would be no learning process. Now, we're suppose to grow as a species. (I would think at least.... we may have some end goal, but remaining the same as we are now seems pointless). How are we to grow, learn, and advance, if we never know what suffering is, if we never know pain and make mistakes?
Interesting comments, and indeed the choice to be religious hinges on the unprovable nature of religion, it demands that one reason for faith by a moral imperative of sorts rather than any scientific rational - that God is to be believed not simply because he is "true" but because he is "right" (the belief that the best life is the religious one).

Originally Posted by XenoX101

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Interesting comments, and indeed the choice to be religious hinges on the unprovable nature of religion, it demands that one reason for faith by a moral imperative of sorts rather than any scientific rational - that God is to be believed not simply because he is "true" but because he is "right" (the belief that the best life is the religious one).

As was discussed in an earlier thread, there are two senses of the word "faith" in play here. One sense of "faith" is a belief in something that isn't 100% certain-- eg. "I have faith that after the mid-term elections, there will be a Republican majority in congress." The other sense of "faith" is in the sense of personal trusting, and in this sense, "faith in God" assumes the existence of a personal God.

We can't trust in God to exist, obviously, since if He didn't exist, we'd have nobody to trust. So when people say they have "faith in God", they are not referring to a faith in God's existence, but rather a faith in His other, non-existential traits. His existence is already assumed.

But yes, the God that can be seen under the lens of a microscope that many atheists seem to demand believers produce is not a God many believers would be inclined to worship in the first place. Science examines the world of reproducible results and cause-and-effect, and the personal God is- by definition- above and beyond the causal world.

There you go. What more do you want? It's in fancy type, even.

Originally Posted by tagutcow

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There you go. What more do you want? It's in fancy type, even.

A cuter face.

Originally Posted by MiddleClassDude

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An actually attractive face.

word is bond