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J3nna
Guest
little g in this case, any god will do. Is there a reasonable answer this question?
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Strydersroom
Guest
Doesn’t matter what you believe, what matters is how you treat other people. Be kind and love thy neighbor.
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Cheiron
Guest
Over the course of millenia, many people have believed in many different gods. I think you should be more specific if you want a good answer to this question. Also, remember you’re on a Catholic forum, so most people will probably talk about the Roman-Catholic concept of God.
I don’t believe in any god myself, so I’m going to watch this thread.
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jane_doe
Guest
Personally, I believe in God because I believe in things which are true.
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1Lord1Faith
Guest
Sure, here are some I can think of:
Almost every culture throughout history has believed.
The best wisdom and guidance comes from people who believe in God. This will give you a lasting peace.
A preponderance of evidence shows you have a soul that will live on after your death. You should care about why that is.
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Entwhistler
Guest
I’m not quite sure what you are asking. The obvious answer a theist will give you is, “Because there is a god.” Or they could say the arguments for a god are much more convincing than arguments against a god. Of course, you might be asking if the arguments for god are any good at all.
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Reuben_J
Guest
My simple answer to that is, why shouldn’t you?
Remind me of an exchanges in one movie, by a Roman captain and one of his soldiers. They found themselves in a dire situation. He was a Christian but this troop ridiculed him for it.
He said something like this, the exact words I forgot, “You and I are the same, we are what we can show, do and speak for ourselves, and not more than that. That is what we are. So who you are without God? Nothing. With God you are still nothing but at least you have something in your belief that can make you more than what you are.”
In other word, I have nothing to lose by believing in God but if I do, I would be more than just who and what I am and could be, and it could do tremendous thing for me, sometimes much more than I think and expect.
I know that answer can be quite lame to you, it is not to me, the reason that I am able to say it. By allowing myself to say it, it is already seen in me as making a difference.
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ricmat
Guest
Why? Because God offers you eternal life.
Because God created the universe, and you.
Because God loves us more than we love ourselves, unimaginably more than we love ourselves.
Of course just saying these things doesn’t prove them. But let’s say you did your research, and come to believe in God. These are some of the reasons to continue to believe in God.
Because God created the universe, and you.
Because God loves us more than we love ourselves, unimaginably more than we love ourselves.
Of course just saying these things doesn’t prove them. But let’s say you did your research, and come to believe in God. These are some of the reasons to continue to believe in God.
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Cheiron
Guest
That sounds like you believe in God because it’s expedient. But surely you also believe in God because you think it’s true?My simple answer to that is, why shouldn’t you?
Remind me of an exchanges in one movie, by a Roman captain and one of his soldiers. They found themselves in a dire situation. He was a Christian but this troop ridiculed him for it.
He said something like this, the exact words I forgot, “You and I are the same, we are what we can show, do and speak for ourselves, and not more than that. That is what we are. So who you are without God? Nothing. With God you are still nothing but at least you have something in your belief that can make you more than what you are.”
In other word, I have nothing to lose by believing in God but if I do, I would be more than just who and what I am and could be, and it could do tremendous thing for me, sometimes much more than I think and expect.
I know that answer can be quite lame to you, it is not to me, the reason that I am able to say it. By allowing myself to say it, it is already seen in me as making a difference.
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Reuben_J
Guest
Yes, I believe in God because I believe it is true, a belief I often struggle with. However, without that belief itself, I would not believe in God.
Speaking to one who does not believe in God, I find that the line is more difficult (to defend) and perhaps less realistic, thus I chose what I said in my earlier post.
In that argument, perhaps more understandable to the unbelievers though not necessary so, and no I do not wish to stereotype them, I thought one can quantify it a bit, in which one can identify with.
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Cheiron
Guest
Thank you. Needless to say, I would have pointed out that things aren’t true just because we would like them to be true.
I appreciate it immensely that you gave an answer that is more understandable to the non-believer. Keep that up. Too many people talk in “Christianese” when they try to explain their beliefs to non-believers.
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openmind77
Guest
You should believe in a god, so that your life on earth becomes more meaningful.
It is all very well to believe that as long as you contribute something to humanity, raise a family, provide for them and support your community, that that fact alone makes your life meaningful. But the fact is, very few of us are that extraordinary that our contribution to humanity makes much of a difference. In most cases (not necessarily in your case), if such a person had not been born at all, it would not make much difference to anyone.
It is the belief in a God that make even the most inconsequential of lives worth living - even a person like that can hope that there is a life hereafter which maybe worth more than the miserable existence here.
So unless you are some kind of hero or great philanthropist, I suggest that you believe in some God and that there is something more after this earthly life is over.
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Reuben_J
Guest
Thanks for your reasonable reply. I consider it is kind of you to say that.Thank you. Needless to say, I would have pointed out that things aren’t true just because we would like them to be true.
I appreciate it immensely that you gave an answer that is more understandable to the non-believer. Keep that up. Too many people talk in “Christianese” when they try to explain their beliefs to non-believers.
I would like to expand on it a little bit but you can ignore it if you wish to.
I would say, what does one want in life? Generally it would be something good universally but to many different individuals that can mean a host of many things.
Mahatma Gandhi by most standard was a good man, for others it may be someone else. We may want to be like William Buffet or Steve Job or Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or just be ourselves, depending on one’s priority in life.
For me it would be, what I would say to my children on what they should be because as a father, I would want the best for them in what I know how.
And because I am a Christian and quite knowledgeable on the belief in God and what it entails, I would want them to be a believer, a good Christian. It builds their character in a good way and would give them peace in their life and even in the afterlife, the latter of course is subjected to argument.
But being a Christian, I mean a believer in God, it does not stop one to be a Mahatma Gandhi or an Abraham Lincoln or a David Gate or even the man Buddha.
But most of all, one would have the strength given by a mighty supernatural God in one’s deepest psychic and the confidence of who and what one is, in living one life in the world or a worldly life.
I think that is reason enough for me.
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ClearWater
Guest
I find it unlikely that everything came into existence and such absolute perfection by a series of random accidents. Random accidents don’t result in perfection. Look at the perfection of the universe, of the human body.
Look at your computer. What would you say if I said it had evolved all by itself? You would know something as complex as a computer couldn’t haved made itself. It’s also too perfect to have come about by a string of chances.
So, when we look at the universe, we see the probability of it just happening is nil. The existence of God as a creator is more probable.
Look at your computer. What would you say if I said it had evolved all by itself? You would know something as complex as a computer couldn’t haved made itself. It’s also too perfect to have come about by a string of chances.
So, when we look at the universe, we see the probability of it just happening is nil. The existence of God as a creator is more probable.
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Vic_Taltrees_UK
Guest
As personal relationship with Him became more broken off and humanity became more fragmented and trauma ridden, and the need felt by some to propitiate the waters etc, beliefs have diversified.
Myths always have a concrete basis, whether geology e.g that the upcoming sea “ate” land, or that land was “created” amongst the waters _ or political e.g Parshurama whose wars displaced many and who was placed among the avatars for his pains. History has been told though in a different format than currently, for several thousands of years past.
Monotheism (Trinitarian or otherwise), a God who indwells, a God who doesn’t indwell, spiritual gifts or absence of spiritual gifts, henotheism, numerous kinds of polytheism, dualism, animism, agnosticism and atheism of every nuance, with or without gruesome and non-gruesome superstitions, and whether associated with tyranny, oppression and bad boundaries or not, all go far further back during our 120,000 years, and were far more respectable (to someone) than is often imagined.
Not many people who claim to believe speak of a compelling relationship that puts some of the glint and the tears in their eyes.
I have read about the Bathou of Assam. Their flag has five stripes, from the bottom meaning birth, suffering, death, marriage and peace. They grow the crown of thorns in their courtyards and their holy day is Tuesday when they make offerings of rice pudding. I know little more than that.
Not believing because you haven’t heard of something you want to believe in, is very respectable in my book. To Blessed J H Newman, belief is assent to degrees of inference. As I see it, the degrees are up to each of us.
I am against churches and other religious assemblies being used as an instrument of political control.
I think individual freedom of belief and non-belief is a higher good that must be defended.
Myths always have a concrete basis, whether geology e.g that the upcoming sea “ate” land, or that land was “created” amongst the waters _ or political e.g Parshurama whose wars displaced many and who was placed among the avatars for his pains. History has been told though in a different format than currently, for several thousands of years past.
Monotheism (Trinitarian or otherwise), a God who indwells, a God who doesn’t indwell, spiritual gifts or absence of spiritual gifts, henotheism, numerous kinds of polytheism, dualism, animism, agnosticism and atheism of every nuance, with or without gruesome and non-gruesome superstitions, and whether associated with tyranny, oppression and bad boundaries or not, all go far further back during our 120,000 years, and were far more respectable (to someone) than is often imagined.
Not many people who claim to believe speak of a compelling relationship that puts some of the glint and the tears in their eyes.
I have read about the Bathou of Assam. Their flag has five stripes, from the bottom meaning birth, suffering, death, marriage and peace. They grow the crown of thorns in their courtyards and their holy day is Tuesday when they make offerings of rice pudding. I know little more than that.
Not believing because you haven’t heard of something you want to believe in, is very respectable in my book. To Blessed J H Newman, belief is assent to degrees of inference. As I see it, the degrees are up to each of us.
I am against churches and other religious assemblies being used as an instrument of political control.
I think individual freedom of belief and non-belief is a higher good that must be defended.
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josh987654321
Guest
In it’s simplest form, take a look outside, all this supposedly came about by blind chance? no designer? no intelligence? Not a chance.
(Which also explains why there are so many different deities that people believe in and that most people believe in a deity, once we have reached the step of an intelligence behind the universe ‘deism’ than we can look at the claims behind each of them such as ‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘Odin’ or ‘Zeus’ etc etc.
In Christianity, we believe in God who made and upholds all that exists, however, many things have gone wrong with His original design such as the fall of man (Garden of Eden, Genesis) and original sin, which has corrupted the design, which is where Atheists on one hand argue there is no design (due to the corruptions) however, I believe it’s only a half truth, because I believe there is clearly design and intelligence involved, which is where I believe Christianity fits and explains perfectly.
I hope you don’t mind if I share the following arguments which have resonated with me -
I believe to follow the concept of a purely material universe to it’s logical conclusion, pulls the rug out from under the New Atheists. As John Lennox say’s, If as they claim, there is nothing in the universe except matter and energy, some of which blindly and randomly evolved into the human mind, then how can we rely on our minds in the first place to arrive at this conclusion? Our minds are themselves, according to this Darwinian view, mere random purposeless movements of atoms, unable to recognize truth, or beauty, or goodness, to know anything, or to do science for that matter.
And yet other scientists of undisputed intellectual stature with diametrically opposed views concur that, ‘The reason why what is in my little mind can understand a bit of what is out there is because both of them are traceable back to the same grand designer.’
C.S. Lewis I believe also explains it very well.
“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.” - C.S. Lewis
“The theory that thought is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction but of which it would be meaningless to use the words true or false.” - C.S. Lewis
And I believe John Lennox also explains it well.
“The very fact that we do science, means we believe that the universe is rationally intelligible. Why does a scientist believe it is rationally intelligible? Atheism tells us that the human mind is the human brain and it’s the end product of a mindless unguided process, why should I believe anything it tells me if that’s the case? Whereas theism tells me that there is intelligence behind the universe and behind the human mind which fits perfectly with science. In fact the rise of science in the 16th and 17th century came about because people expected law in nature, because they believed in the Law giver (God). So science and faith in God fit perfectly together.” - John Lennox
“I believe in God because I believe in free will. If all we are is matter, then all our actions are due to the laws of physics and random movements of particles. The concept of an immaterial soul allows for the possibility of free will. That’s what really allowed me to grab on to faith in God. I made the decision to decide that I had free will. If I am wrong, then nothing really matters and I can’t control my thoughts and ideas anyway.”
- Anonymous
God Bless You
Thank you for reading
Josh
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thephilosopher6
Guest
Because gods belong to superstition, and God belongs to reason. Read Saint Augustine.
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josh987654321
Guest
And how you treat other people is influenced based on what you believe.
Be kind and love thy neighbor - Luke 6:31, Matthew 22:36-40
What do you think of these 4 quotes? doers it matter which one(s) people believe?
*In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music. *
- Richard Dawkins
- Adolf Hitler
- Matthew 22:36-40
- Matthew 16:27
God Bless
Thank you for reading
Josh
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Divine3
Guest
Well God believes in me and the second he does not – I won’t exist!
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Divine3
Guest
Gosh! Just look at that picture of a camel – now who would ever have thought of such an animal? Then look at the person sitting on the camel. How did humanity get here ?
Even the humility of a child in a room of pitch darkness will ask Is anybody here? God is not hard to find if we really want to find him. But if you fill your mind with lots of noise and are afraid to ask that question in the dark, then you will either stay in one place in your mind and never move for fear that there just might be someone in that dark room. Just asking the question in the stillness of your heart and there will be an answer but if you do not have the humility of a child who keeps calling out into the darkness — well the room of your mind and heart might get even darker. God is light and in him there is no darkness.
Even the humility of a child in a room of pitch darkness will ask Is anybody here? God is not hard to find if we really want to find him. But if you fill your mind with lots of noise and are afraid to ask that question in the dark, then you will either stay in one place in your mind and never move for fear that there just might be someone in that dark room. Just asking the question in the stillness of your heart and there will be an answer but if you do not have the humility of a child who keeps calling out into the darkness — well the room of your mind and heart might get even darker. God is light and in him there is no darkness.
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