Why you do or don't believe in God?

[summerbloom]

Interested to hear people's views on why they do believe in God or on why you don't believe in God.....

My grandmother is 89. She has been praying thrice a day to the Goddness Parvati and God Krishna. She fasts Fridays, does not eat berries for three months of the year and prays horizontal on the floor of her room every evening at 7 pm reciting the name of the goddess 108 times. She has done this since she was 4 years old.

She says that these various gods all exist. Because "Ma Parvati has never sent me back empty handed".

When Asked what she means she says -

When my eldest was very ill I fasted for three whole days and bathed in the cold water of the river like the priest said and she recovered on the fourth day.

When you (me) were sitting your year ten math exam and worried you'd not get the top grade I fasted and prayed that you get it. You did.

When your grandfather was dying I felt my whole body shiver the morning he died for Ma Parvati came to me and hugged me I felt her touch on my skin.

What shall you say to that? It is powerful for her, meaningful for her. But it is nothing except her imagination. And if the best answer to that is "how do you prove it's not real" then truly, go fry your head.

That's the thing isn't it- "I have experienced god" is meted out as evidence he/she/it exists and if you question these "experiences" then you're told well but can you prove otherwise?

I am sensing today that my lasagne is calling me by my name. Really honestly. Believe me. Only I can hear it. Can you prove otherwise?

Jaago I thought you were building up to a proper miracle story until you invited people to fry their heads

Lasagne, now there's something i believe in!

you do know that there's a very easily remedy if you're bored by a thread, don't you? Yes, I know, I always come on these threads to see if anyone has anything new to say, sadly 99% of it is the same. I can live in hope though .

I have added stuff myself, also agreed with one other on this particular thread. Very few ever pick up on my points. I follow no religion in particular but believe in the soul, god, life force, one and the same words to use for what I believe.

But that's the thing.

If her family members recover from illness it's evidence that god has created a miracle

If they die of it it was God's wish.

And never utter the Bengali word for snake after 4 pm in the evening. Ma Manasha the goddess of snakes will send a cobra to your Bed.

It's a classic but why hasn't God ever regrown someone's amputated leg/arm? Why does he only do what the human body sometimes spontaneously does or what medicine can do? Why is he limited to those?

The life force creates, it doesn't control.

I do wish people, rather than pray for someones recovery, could pray they didn't get ill in the first place. Would save the NHS a fortune.

And you know the life force creates, how?

I don't know why the life force creates.

Once you stop believing in hell and heaven it all falls apart as you're then creating a pick'n mix god.

I could have written this myself ^^. Was raised to believe, tried hard to, but finally accepted that I don't. The answer to the universe being that a supreme being is magically arranging things seems a very human construct.

thegreenheart Thank-you for answering questions about belief in a lucid and rational way. Can I ask some follow ups to your post?

We have to make a lot of metaphysical assumptions about the world to function in it.

Yes, and one of those is, for want of a better term, cause and effect. Things happen for a reason. Sometimes that reason isn't immediately apparent, so we question, test and experiment so we can find it. This leads us not only to a better understanding of how the universe formed or how a petrol engine works, but why my daughter was cross with me this morning or why the Roman Empire crumbled. It's not just the scientific method, it helps explain history and economics and behaviour.

To not subject religion to the same thought process that we give to every other area of existence (because gods are "mysterious" and "unknowable" and whatever) seems to me to be nonsensical. This is what I don't understand about intelligent people of faith. Why do you give these huge claims about the nature of reality a free pass that you presumably wouldn't give to other, far more trivial, matters?

Faith is what matters, right? Even when faith seems ridiculous? And of course that's exactly what a con man or a charlatan would say if they were concocting the perfect self-justifying system of (false) belief.

So this is why it seems reasonable to me to remind Christians that the basis of their faith are Iron Age and Bronze Age texts (which naturally most Christians don't see as literally true) making extraordinary claims about fantastic/miraculous events thousands of years ago and protected from the normal scrutiny we would give to such events if they happened today.

As a follower of Jesus I have had plenty of religious experience that supports my faith on a good day and loads of doubt on a bad one. But I keep going in faith.

Many people have experiences that they describe as transcendent - brought on by drugs, psychosis, meditation etc. Why do your experiences demand a religious element? Why is it a good thing for you to persist in believing (or trying to believe) in something for which there is no good evidence? How about trying not to believe in God?

If you don't feel the need to believe in God then fine.

This isn't my experience of atheism at all. It's not a conscious rejection of something. I've never believed in a god at all and even as a child found it frankly ludicrous.

Do you "not feel the need" to believe in ghosts or fairies or reincarnation or a flat earth (or whatever you don't believe in) or do you just not believe in them? I would guess the latter. It's the one time in your post where you come across as patronising, I'm afraid.

I think my question is less 'how can you believe in something for which there is not a shred of proof?' (though that, too, obviously, and 'why engage in the kind of mental gymnastics required to reconcile belief in an all-powerful, loving deity who either can't or won't intervene in human suffering?') than 'Why can't you see that quoting the Bible and/or witless fundamentalist websites in support of the existence of God doesn't prove anything except that you are hard of thinking?'

you don't feel the need to believe in God then fine.

Isn't that as absurd as saying ^if you don't feel the need to believe in Gravity then fine.

The desire to believe something shouldn't come into it. It should be where the evidence leads.

Maybe the evidence is there, Humans have trouble finding it though.

You could say that about any belief, ANY. It's a meaningless statement.

If the evidence is "there" it should not be hard to find. Nobody says this about evidence for the laws of gravity, or combustion, or oxygen-breathing, or pollution. It's pretty easy to point out three or four clearly observable things which demonstrate that these things all happen.

The "evidence" also has to clearly point towards the Judeo-Christian God and should not be able to be reasonably explained by anything else.

It's like looking for the Loch Ness Monster. There may be a few blurry photos and unreliable witness testimonies. You can't prove Nessie doesn't exist - it's logically impossible to prove a negative - but at the end of the day the weight of evidence on the other side suggests that it's just a very good colourful story.

I always feel disappointment when someon who seems ok turns out to believe in god.

weeder

Me too.

'someone'!

i don't know why the life force creates

I didn't ask you WHY it creates. I asked how do you know it creates? How?

jaago

You won't get a coherent answer to that question.

it should not be hard to find. Lots of things were hard to find until they were found.

I didn't ask you WHY it creates. I asked how do you know it creates? How? Eckhart Tolle is more articulate in these matters, I'll direct you to him. I believe in what he speaks about.

it should not be hard to find. Lots of things were hard to find until they were found.

But how should we chose what to look for. Shall I dedicate my life to looking for fairies at the bottom of my garden? No, because despite some people having seen them there is no evidence that should lead me to think they are real.

Scientists go where evidence goes. Anecdote isn't evidence.