Why do you believe in God?

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Previously I had a thread called, “Well, why?” that asked the question of why we should believe in God without observeable evidence.It was an interesting thread, you could probably find it two or three pages back.

Now I want to approach the question a little differently. Here’s my simple question-Why do you believe in God?
 
Marc_Anthony said:
Previously I had a thread called, “Well, why?” that asked the question of why we should believe in God without observeable evidence.It was an interesting thread, you could probably find it two or three pages back.

Now I want to approach the question a little differently. Here’s my simple question-Why do you believe in God?
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Because it’s obvious. There is observable evidence: the fact things change. You can’t have everything be changing, so there has to be at least one unchanging thing out there. That may as well be God.
 
In this day and age, the laws of God seem like the only logical way of living if you want to be happy. I really do see God in Christians, because they are the only people in the world who have ever treated me like a human being. They have shown me love like none other. In turn, I have become a better person since I returned to the Church. I’m much more friendly and open-minded to people, especially if something is wrong.

I used to be a fallen-away Catholic. When I look back on those days, I was never happy. I was hateful, racist, self-centered, and lustful. Turning away from God got me nowhere. When I returned, I saw how stupid I was and changed. For me to have such a drastic turnaround in only about a year’s time doesn’t seem like a coincidence. God is as real as you and me.
 
Marc_Anthony said:
Previously I had a thread called, “Well, why?” that asked the question of why we should believe in God without observeable evidence.It was an interesting thread, you could probably find it two or three pages back.

Now I want to approach the question a little differently. Here’s my simple question-Why do you believe in God?
Click to expand...
first of all because God has given me the Grace of Faith. beyond that i think everything in this world is put together so perfectly to deny the existence in some kind of architect. also personal experiences in my life that are too numerous to list here point me to the existance of God, but i would have to say that most of it has to do wit that gift of Faith God has bestowed upon me
 
Marc_Anthony said:
Previously I had a thread called, “Well, why?” that asked the question of why we should believe in God without observeable evidence.It was an interesting thread, you could probably find it two or three pages back.

Now I want to approach the question a little differently. Here’s my simple question-Why do you believe in God?
Click to expand...
contrary to what many people here believe, i dont believe that proof of god is obvious. Through my studies of quantum physics and philosophy, i was introduced to the idea of a link between consciousness and objective reality. I found god through trying to understand the source of this link and realized that the Divine is the very essence of the nature of material existance. Through this understanding i have since formed a very intimate relationship with divinity.
 
I believe in God because (in short) “What is prior is nearer to the first principle; therefore where there is no first principle, nothing is essentially prior” and “The totality of things that are caused is dependent, but not upon something which is a part of this totality ; otherwise a thing would be dependant upon itself”

I believe in God because logic demands it.
 
I believe in God because the life, death and teaching of Jesus reflect the fact that everything we consider most precious on earth - truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love - converge in the reality of one loving Father in heaven. It’s as simple as that! The alternative is a barren, empty, meaningless desert of futility…
 
Marc_Anthony said:
Previously I had a thread called, “Well, why?” that asked the question of why we should believe in God without observeable evidence.It was an interesting thread, you could probably find it two or three pages back.

Now I want to approach the question a little differently. Here’s my simple question-Why do you believe in God?
Click to expand...
I believe in God because of several events in my life which have moved my heart and mind.
My “hero” (for dire want of a better word) is Pope John Paul II. I had the privilege of seeing the great man twice.
God Bless,
Colmcille1.🙂
 
Soulewolf said:
contrary to what many people here believe, i dont believe that proof of god is obvious. Through my studies of quantum physics and philosophy, i was introduced to the idea of a link between consciousness and objective reality. I found god through trying to understand the source of this link and realized that the Divine is the very essence of the nature of material existance. Through this understanding i have since formed a very intimate relationship with divinity.
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Funny how people react to “it’s obvious” but ignore the reason.
 
Apollos said:
Funny how people react to “it’s obvious” but ignore the reason.
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well no. i understand the reason, though i disagree with the logic behind it simply because a “first mover” doesnt have to be the only reason the universe exists. There are other possibilities, thus it isnt as obvious as it seems to Christians. Though with the link between consciousness and reality, imo, there really is no other conclusion one can come to. Especially when one has had the spiritual experiences that i was gifted with.
 
I believed in God at first because my parents told me about a God, a Creator, in their own version of Catholicism. I remember going to Catholic school and before that to “catechism.” Catechism classes were dreary and felt to many of us that we were being held in pens against our will in the dingy parrish hall, with the drone of learned and half learned recitations buzzing throughout the room. I always got my requisiet and expected red star next to my lesson, and later excelled in Catholic theology. And though I was convinced I loved God and was duely devotional, missionary-ish, even, when I wondered about Nature it was in terms of science and physics. God was an invisible and seemingly generous Uncle who operated from well behind the scenes.

I also had my doubts: The whole world was covered with water and all the the kinds of animals got in a boat? A star moved, guiding the wise men? A talking serpent? There was a litany of doubts, or at least questions. But there was as well trust in people bigger and surmisedly wiser than me.

Once when I was in my early teens, I was contemplating the connectedness of the web of life as I was walking home from Mass. I was literrally spun around on the sidewalk by the magnitude of a momentary glimps of something so immense that it was intellectually incomprehensible. On arriving home my sister took one look at me and asked “What happened to you? You look different!” That is how powerful it was.

But the stories still didn’t make sense in many ways. Why did two men who allegedly knew Jesus intimately say he was born on two dates ten years appart? Why were so many of my questions answered with “Just have faith!” I persevered and even won competitions in Catholic theology. But then I started hearing other stories, and documented events that made me wonder and wonder. And I heard things from the pulpit that just didn’t go with my experience of how things worked. And I was asked to have faith. And my amazement at the beauty and complexity of the world continued to grow.

I came to view myself as a phenomenon as part of greater phenomena and developed a kind of clinical aspect to my self inquiries. I was the same as and different from other folks. Dimensions of considertion opened up that were hard to relate one to the others, they were so complex. And then one day it happened. I had an experience that forever pulled the rug out from under me as to my understanding of who and what I was and threw the entire consideration of personhood I had had to that moment out the window.

I can’t and won’t say much more than that. It wouldn’t mean anything to anyone who hadn’t had such an experience, and it was mostly ineffable anyway. But that moment informed me of a Reality I had neather suspected nor heard of. I was called nuts and recommended to a psychiatrist, and yet all my mental functions, judging by my schoolwork, had improved. I had a new perspective. And I was very unstable, because I thought I was the only one who saw what I saw about the nature of being human and had to deal with that without sacrificing honesty and integrity.

After years of further very unstatisfying questioning within the Church, I did at last find an accounting for my experience, and the verifcation of my perceptions from several independent sources from the worlds of religion, philosophy, psychology and science. Much of that was through the agency of two remarkable spiritual advisers, one in particular. But relative to the OP’s question, for me God is not a belief. Moreover, belief about God is problematic at best. Nor is God provable by any intellectual means, though it is useful to try. Yet belief in God may yet be useful if not concretized into an adamantine closed canon.

Let us say that it can be Known that God IS. And that while faith is useful for a while as a stabilizing agent or a scaffolding, it is by itself a temporary measure and a hindrance as well. Had I known that from my catechism or the clergy I studied with, I would have saved years of agonizing about the most fundamentally Real experience of my life. I might even still be practicing my “faith,” despite my rather different take on it now.

So to paraphrase a Carley Simon Song, “I know the Church from both sides now.” And maybe that is what it takes. I can’t say for everyone. I am only telling my own story and not advising anyone or being critical. So if you ask me “Don’t you believe in Jesus Christ, or the Resurrection,” or whatever, I will most likely say yes, and mean it. But what I now mean by those is vastly and substantially different than what I understood in my days of catechetical proficiency.

I would also ask Soulewolf to elaborate on his “gift” if that is not inappropriate, given my own shyness to speak of mine. But someone asked, and I think it is important to know that the question can be considered from a position beyond belief or non-belief.
 
Marc_Anthony said:
Previously I had a thread called, “Well, why?” that asked the question of why we should believe in God without observeable evidence.It was an interesting thread, you could probably find it two or three pages back.

Now I want to approach the question a little differently. Here’s my simple question-Why do you believe in God?
Click to expand...
Hi Marc,

For me, it is a choice. First, I cannot explain my unique be-ing, my “am”-ness, without God. Evolution may be invoked to explain a cause for change in physical properties of a species over time, but for me it does not explain to me why I should “be”, and have the ability to contemplate my own existence. And even as I contemplate the wonder of my own existence, I am still ultimately faced with a choice – A) to believe in only myself, in my finite state, regardless of how I got here, or B) to surmise that this totally awesome state of be-ing, this state of awareness of existence that is so infinitely cooler than merely the physical substrate of atoms, molocules, cellular machinery and the like, has an author. And that author is so unbelieveably cool that I want to take my own gift of being, the only thing that is uniquely mine in this world, and just *give it up, *in order to be completely assimilated by the author himself.

So in short, I choose to, out of sheer love of being, itself.
 
timotheos said:
Hi Marc,

For me, it is a choice. First, I cannot explain my unique be-ing, my “am”-ness, without God. Evolution may be invoked to explain a cause for change in physical properties of a species over time, but for me it does not explain to me why I should “be”, and have the ability to contemplate my own existence. And even as I contemplate the wonder of my own existence, I am still ultimately faced with a choice – A) to believe in only myself, in my finite state, regardless of how I got here, or B) to surmise that this totally awesome state of be-ing, this state of awareness of existence that is so infinitely cooler than merely the physical substrate of atoms, molocules, cellular machinery and the like, has an author. And that author is so unbelieveably cool that I want to take my own gift of being, the only thing that is uniquely mine in this world, and just *give it up, *in order to be completely assimilated by the author himself.

So in short, I choose to, out of sheer love of being, itself.
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I agree with this. I believe evolution is the answer as to how we got here and that God is why we are here. There’s no rules against that.

To add to your statement, think of the many beautiful things and feelings we experience as humans. God gave us sexual desires so that we can reproduce, and when we want to have sex (for the record, I am not promoting adultery, etc.), we aren’t thinking “oh, I gotta pass on my genes!” We are thinking “this feels good.” God made us so that we could enjoy our existence.
 
Tuno said:
I believed
I would also ask Soulewolf to elaborate on his “gift” if that is not inappropriate, given my own shyness to speak of mine. But someone asked, and I think it is important to know that the question can be considered from a position beyond belief or non-belief.
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i wouldent say that its inappropriate, its just that there are really no words to describe them. i would love to be able to express accurately the emotion and understanding that came with these experiences, but alas, i believe it to be impossible.

I’ve had 3 so far, and the latest was definitely the most profound. The first and last one made me sob with joy in the infinity that was the Divine.

The closest i can come to words in describing these experiences is: everything is one. connected through Divine infinite love. I looked at a tree and i was that tree, and that tree was me. I looked around me and the only thing i can describe it as, is that i saw Divinity in everything.

The first time, i was in a survival camp. I was out in the wilderness learning to survive there with just a knife with a small group of other people. the sun was setting and i had a feeling that i should go watch the sunset. I walked up to the top of the nearest hill but there was an outcropping of rocks in my way. so i climbed up those and there was another outcropping. by now the sun was below the horizon but i still wanted to get at least one last glimpse, so i climbed those rocks and there was yet another outcropping.

Then it hit me. i kinda… gave up (though those words arent accurate to the actual experience) and through this giving up i was overwhelmed with… something. Love… Infinity… Divinity… as i stood under the red sky.

Unfortunately the serenity was broken because some of the group feared i had gotten lost and were calling to me so i had to head back to camp. I never spoke to them about it, but i will definitely never forget it.

That was the first one. the second one was simply that i was dwelling on the philosophy of objective asthetics and i saw everything as being one.

the third one is… too special… and maybe too crazy to explain.
 
Though i will add (though i dont know if this is attributed to my experiance) that ever since my third realization, i’ve been noticing weird number patterns. For instance, after i posted that last post, i looked at the view count on this thread and it was 111. Seems to happen a lot to me.
 
Soulewolf said:
well no. i understand the reason, though i disagree with the logic behind it simply because a “first mover” doesnt have to be the only reason the universe exists. There are other possibilities, thus it isnt as obvious as it seems to Christians. Though with the link between consciousness and reality, imo, there really is no other conclusion one can come to. Especially when one has had the spiritual experiences that i was gifted with.
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Other possibilities? Like what?
 
Marc_Anthony said:
Now I want to approach the question a little differently. Here’s my simple question-Why do you believe in God?
Click to expand...
Because I met him, and other people met him. Same reason I believe anything else. Same reason given in the words of the Bible. Same reason Buddha gave for his stuff: direct experience.
 
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