The Main Reason I believe in God

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lisaandlena said:
Be offended if you like…but consider also…that they might be right.
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Why should anyone think you are right when you haven’t presented a refutation or a logically consistent argument. Lol. Stating your opinion does not make you right. You just seem like a bitter and nasty person who is here to attack peoples faith rather than dialogue rationally with them…
 
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If you edit your first post to use I think I wouldn’t find it as offensive. Still bad but not over the line. If you don’t I’ll be flagging it.
 
Well then, take the Christian concept and dogma out of the equation. Do you think G-d might give you a higher meaning for your existence, others’ existence, and the existence of the universe and beyond? A meaning which transcends even your personal happiness, your own moral values, your logic and reasoning, your sense of justice and mercy, your aesthetics; a meaning which reconciles contradictory notions, a surreal sense of order, purpose, substance beyond your senses, a wisdom that comes from the heart as well as the mind, an inner peace that transcends human definitions of good and evil, transcends pain and suffering, and inspires joy and fulfillment? Would such a G-d contribute to your earthly life and the lives of others by affording more understanding of its essence?
 
Yeah, lisaandlenin, we’re nice people.

HOW COULD YOU SAY THAAAAAAAAT!?
 
Maximilian75 said:
Well, for the opposite of something to exist, the original must exist…
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Yea, I’ve always thought God obeyed his own laws. And one primal law in science (and all other areas) is, “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” If there is a spirit of evil in the world (and there is) there must be a spirit of good, call it a Holy Spirit.
Our world is defined by opposite poles, hot/cold, light/absence of light-darkness, up/down, etc. etc. it keeps everything in balance.
 
lisaandlena said:
The main reason that I don’t believe in God is because the very idea of the Christian concept of a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God, who created everything from nothing, and now sits in judgment over it, is patently ridiculous. …it’s stupid.
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Well, there you have it, then. Guess I should skip going to Mass tomorrow. After all, without any supporting argument, @lisaandlena has declared it stupid. At least I get to sleep in… :roll_eyes: 😉
lisaandlena said:
I just wish that they didn’t have to be so dang obnoxious about it. Being stupid is one thing, but being stupid and egotistically self-assured about it is quite annoying.
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I agree. Pot, meet kettle. 😉
lisaandlena said:
Sorry if I offended anyone, but I was just being brutally honest.
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Well… close, but not quite. You were just being brutal. Big difference. 😉

p.s., if you’re suggesting that you have some expertise in human nature, then I bet you already know that it’s a lot easier to rationalize that one’s position is correct if you demonize your interlocutor and call him an idiot. It doesn’t mean that he is, of course, and it definitely doesn’t mean that you’re right in your beliefs… it just makes you feel a lot better about your position if you convince yourself that you’re superior. 🤷‍♂️
 
lisaandlena said:
Fair enough, the supporting argument has been presented.
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It has been? All I can see are claims that people are illogical and stupid. Maybe you can point to the 'supporting argument"? 🤔
lisaandlena said:
And I’ll ask you the same question, how is that you’ve come to believe that Catholicism is true?
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I’ve examined the claims of Catholicism, the documents of the Church and the books of Scripture, and come to the conclusion that they’re reasonable. Is there really any other rational answer? 🤷‍♂️
 
This is going to be a pointless argument that helps neither of you.
 
lisaandlena said:
Okay, let’s hope that IWantGod has a better answer.
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Umm… what’s a better answer than “I find it to be credible”?!?

I mean, that’s the one answer – short of a dissertation on why I find it to be credible – that should inspire confidence in a rationalist, shouldn’t it?
 
lisaandlena said:
But at the same time it’s an answer that a rationalist would find quite troubling.
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Indeed! It is troubling to learn that one applies the same rules of logic as others, but reach different conclusions!

It’ll be a real test of whether your go-to response is “idiots!”… 😉
 
lisaandlena said:
Perhaps IWantGod will be able to understand why.
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Why a hardened materialist or skeptic would like an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing so long as God wasn’t involved?

They can’t stand the idea of Christians being correct i imagine. They can’t stand the idea that theists really do have a rationally acceptable defense of what they believe, and so they really don’t seek a genuine understanding and reject arguments out of hand. That’s why they often produce straw-men. And in their arrogance they suppose that all Christians by definition are gullible idiots or insane. That’s preferable for some people. After-all, who wants to be judged, who really wants to admit that they are sinners, and who wants to bathe in the irony that in reality the all knowing and rational atheists were the ones that were ignorant.

There are some Atheists out there that take the qeustion of God seriously however and wouldn’t go around calling Christians stupid for fear they might be wrong. And even if they did think that Christians were wrong they would at least understand the principle of treating people how you want to be treated.
 
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IWantGod said:
Because there really is such a thing as evil.
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I think the crucial word here is not “evil”, but “really.” Once a man realizes (pun intended) that something is real - that it has existence independent of my thoughts or feelings or perceptions or desires, but it IS - then true faith in God is not far away. The correlation in the modern world of disbelief in God, with the love of “virtual reality” is no mere coincidence. When a man wants to see everything in the light and being of himself, himself the definer of all good, of all reality, of all value, of all moral judgment, then a real God has been moved out of his universe into the void of irrelevance.

BUT when things are seen to exist, whether he likes it of not - when the universe is seen to be whether he lives of dies or ever existed - then his hubris, his vain self-centeredness, is defeated; the journey to reality has begun, and has humbled him to see Truth.
 
The argument for God from the principle of sufficient reason should be sufficient reason.
ba dum tss
 
As a thought you might try reading the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is one of the pope’s favorite books…


It has a chapter or so on exactly this question. One of the significant characters is “hallucinating” (or maybe not) a conversation with the devil about this very subject. Basically, the chapter asks is it enough to know there is evil to believe in God. I found the book to be heavy, some of it I related to…other parts I had to read online to figure out what it was trying to say. In some ways the book was a very different way for me to think.

Part of some people’s faith can come from a darker place. This includes me. People talk about a great joy that brought them to faith. It’s not always like that. Sometimes you see yourself or others going down a bad path. Perhaps you see something that others are doing that just comes across as wrong to you on a deep level. It just hits you in the head one day and you find a way to reject that path.
 
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jack63 said:
Part of some people’s faith can come from a darker place.
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I too was not given miraculous visions or scented welcomes. It was my experiences, my experience of evil in other people, events, and even myself, that lead me to God. It was being in the presence of darkness and realizing what it was that compelled me. And even when i was in the church, my faith was something i had to fight for. My faith was and is a war, and the idea of not being with God, being imperfect, falling short of what is right, plagues me with great sadness and psychological torment. Even when i fall away from the church and fall into what you might call a “mere-theism” the presence of evil eventually sickens me and draws me back towards the faith.

I have never really related to “happy Christianity”, and while there may very well be happy and content Christians in the world, i have never quite understood it myself. I feel like i am behind enemy lines. If i were a saint i would very much be one with a bleeding heart.
 
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