AIBU to ask your opinions on God?

[Violetduck]

Do you beleive there is a God? I would like to, but how can he exist alongside modern science?

Aibu to believe in something more?

@MaryMashedThem

In threads like this there are always a few people who make the point that you can't prove a negative, so the burden of proof rests with those who do believe in God. But you can prove a negative. An ultrasound of my empty uterus will prove there's no fetus in there. Drone footage of my road will prove there's no swimming pool in my back yard. A photo taken out the window will prove there's no snow falling here at the moment. The courts use CCTV recordings to prove that an accused person wasn't at the scene of a crime. We prove negatives all the time - I don't know where people got the idea that it can't be done, or why that idea is so prevalent

Your comment doesn’t make sense. Your uterus exists, as does, I presume, your back garden. Therefore, we can prove you aren’t pregnant or that there is no snow in your garden. How can we prove God doesn’t exist if the place, i.e. ‘heaven’, where God aledgedy resides, does not exist?

The burden of proof rests very heavily on the person making unempirical claims.

Bertrand Russell explains this better than I can in his ‘Russell’s Teapot’ analogy.
“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time”.

@80sForever

People who say God is a narcicisst, selfish, psycopath have issues....i feel sorry for you...

But why does he apparently require people to gather together in specified buildings and at specified times and tell him how wonderful he is?

First of all it is not made up nonsense, second it is not to control people, the universe is governed by spiritual laws whether you believe in them or not so you might as well read the bible to learn what those laws are so you can avoid the pitfalls of life

The only god for me is the god of parking spaces, in his manifestation as a giant hand from the 70s traffic information films.

When I remember to call on Colin I always* find a parking space

*Because I've mentally primed myself to do so, in the same way that setting up lucky charms gets your brain in the right frame to ace an exam. It works - might as well use the effect for parking spaces good

Just to add further the coronavirus began because a certain group of people disobeyed those said spiritual laws and now we are all suffering

Modern science as in evolution? I believe in God and believe that he created the world and created and controls evolution. The big bang theory doesn't make sense without some conscious driving force behind it. Although, modern science does offer supportive evidence of the existence of God. For example, they discovered that millennia ago, the world was once completely covered in water, consistent with the great flood. They have also discovered that we have lost a day, in the sense that thousands of years ago, the sun went up and didn't go down again for 48 hours, which goes along with one of Joshua's battles where God made the sun stand still longer so that he could win. Archaeologists have discovered that there was a mass exodus from Egypt at around the time it is believed Moses to have lived.

I believe in God, and ever since I started believing, I have seen/heard/experienced many things that modern science cannot begin to explain. Some things are nothing short of miraculous.

If you want to ask me anything, feel free to DM me. I won't try to force my faith down anyone's throat, but if you want to get a Christian's opinion/perspective on something then feel free to do so.

I believe in God, I try to follow Jesus and His teachings every day. For those unsure about how to reconcile science with God I would highly recommend reading Lee Strobel’s book A Case for Christ. I also adore C S Lewis book Mere Christianity. There are heaps of Christian podcasts out there too, my favourites are Daily Grace, Risen Motherhood, She Proves Faithful and The Otherside by Jamie Ivey. They are free and often on specific topics such as suffering and so forth.

But why does he apparently require people to gather together in specified buildings and at specified times and tell him how wonderful he is?

Let’s assume for a minute that God exists. Let’s assume He made everything, from the virus to exploding nebulae. Worlds, solar systems, galaxies.

IF all that is true, wouldn’t it make sense to see yourself as someone who might not understand His requirements? To admit that you are not capable of critiquing His requests of you, and you should just follow His commands?

First of all it is not made up nonsense, second it is not to control people, the universe is governed by spiritual laws whether you believe in them or not so you might as well read the bible to learn what those laws are so you can avoid the pitfalls of life

The invisible flying pink elephants outside my window say you are talking rubbish, and whether you believe them or not that is the truth.

People who say God is a narcicisst, selfish, psycopath have issues....i feel sorry for you...

But much of this is god's words himself in the "holy" bible.

He describes himself as jealous, wrathful, avenging.
His works in the bible give tesimony to that- acts of murder, spiteful retribution, genicide.
Even half of the 10 commanments are given over to his narcissistic nature.

Worship him?

I wouldn't even have a coffee with this dude.

@Cygne because he is wonderful. He made you didn't he because he wanted to and chose you. I'm not into religion and hanging out with church folk

He made you didn't he because he wanted to and chose you.

Quite a self serving thing to do.

Or was he bored that day?

I believe in God in a philosophical sense rather than a religious one. I believe God is part of us, that God is the third eye, that God is a power we ultimately find on our own terms. That said, I believe there are spiritual people who are wonderful at delivering insight and love without ramming their ideas down our throats. I've met a few.

God is our higher consciousness and once you learn to tap into that higher consciousness, you feel silly for ever rejecting God in the first place because you are only rejecting yourself and the power of being alive with love. What you're rejecting- and rightfully so, imo- is the traditional, old-school Judeo-Christian concept of God who is depicted as some fickle father figure with superpowers who works on a rewards-based system, storybook stuff full of symbolism. It has its place and its own beauty, but it's not for me, personally.

In my view, God is not 'who'. God is not the answer or the reason. God never asks for exaltation. God is not a concrete idea. God is a movement within, I believe, fluid and glorious. As our physical selves rely on our circulatory system to stay alive, so our spiritual selves rely on God to stay awake.

God is you, letting go of want and need and replacing this with one thing: love. And once you summon the power of enlightenment and deeply understand how to utilise love's power, then you have, I believe, found God; found the power within you to truly face life's lions in the den, of which there are many, and overcome many obstacles. When you live in this way, you deliver goodness and light to the world while you are in it and you understand that our seasons of sorrow are not 'God's plan', 'God's will', or 'of God's doing'. Nor are our fertile times, those times when life is choc-a-bloc full of sweet fruit on the verge of being overly ripe about God rewarding you for being a good egg. Life is what we ourselves make of it. If bombs go off, it's leaders of men, not God, at the helm. If I win the lottery, it's not God's will. I just chose damn good numbers. It doesn't make me less grateful or less humble.
If I am broken and walking through decimated streets of Aleppo, for example, unable to see the corpses for the tears blinding me, then I am anointing myself in love for humankind and utter sorrow for the devastation we insist on perpetuating. I don't ask God why. I ask humanity. God has nowt to do with it. It's on us; the good, the bad, and the ugly. But God, that light within, centers us as we muck about in all this order and chaos, and balance is restored from time to time.

My belief in God, on my terms, allows me to see and feel that there is another side to life's sorrow, another side aglow in love. There is the light and the joy, the celebration of love for the people I cherish, the people I grieve and miss. God helps me remember that the light of love burns continuously when I am struggling with sadness. That brings me great comfort. I would not have reached my various points of peace without that divine light. So yes, I deeply believe in God. I believe in myself and the love I am capable of living in and delivering during my brief time taking a few trips around the sun. I believe that life has no meaning. It's all chaos and a bit of order peppered here and there. But life, your life, is full of meaning, full of love, and that is what matters. Live it in truth.

If people believe that Jesus was the Son of God - and other people believe in the Abrahamic God - but that Jesus was not his son - and other people believe in Hindu Gods, and other people believe in the Norse Gods and other people have other Gods they believe in - there is just one question

WHO'S RIGHT? WHICH GOD IS THE REAL GOD?

@speakout things are being taken out of context, of course he has to raise his army out to kill evil people, why wouldn't a good God do that? Haven't we done that with Hitler? So why is that not a good thing to do? God is always good

The universe is truly astonishing, absolutely mind-blowingly vast and if God exists then he is surely interested in more than just our little planet and the creatures that inhabit it.
There is so much apparent design, so much beauty and symmetry that one's first thought would be that there must have been a someone, or something, of great intelligence behind it all.
So there may be a "god" that existed or still exists but perhaps not the God of the Bible. He seems to me to have been created by people, to fit their needs and fill gaps in their understanding - and to create rules and laws for the civilisation and control of society.

A woman I know had a baby who needed really complex heart surgery about a week after it was born. The baby was very sick, the surgery was very complex and there was a high risk the baby would pass away.

The operation was obviously done at a specialist hospital with specialist cardiologists and thankfully the baby survived after 15 hours of surgery.

I remember my friend going in Facebook and positing so much gratitude towards God, thanking him for saving her child’s life, saying she knew that God would keep her daughter safe and that if wasn’t for him she would have lost her baby.

I remember thinking....”And what about the surgeons who operated for 15 hours? And the anaesthetists and theatre nurses, the highly trained staff in ITU and nurses on the ward?

Absolutely no mention of them and the role they played in saving her daughters life: it was all about God having done it.

I remember feeling really angry about it.

I guess that means I don’t believe in God otherwise I may have agreed with her? Who knows.

ThornAmongstRoses

You felt angry at a mum’s reaction to her week old child’s heart surgery? Do you not think that might be something you need to reflect on?

@Againstmachine flying pigs outside your window ? Like i said, you don't see gravity but it is a law i.e. what goes up must come down. Another one is you reap what you have sown..i'm sure you can see evidence of that....there you go, that'a the proof you need

Although, modern science does offer supportive evidence of the existence of God. For example, they discovered that millennia ago, the world was once completely covered in water, consistent with the great flood. They have also discovered that we have lost a day, in the sense that thousands of years ago, the sun went up and didn't go down again for 48 hours, which goes along with one of Joshua's battles where God made the sun stand still longer so that he could win. Archaeologists have discovered that there was a mass exodus from Egypt at around the time it is believed Moses to have lived

Or maybe

These events happened - and God was used as the explanation - rather than there being some scientific phenoman behind it.

Someone could have said that a city was destroyed by God. Then the city gets destroyed and it is written that God destroyed it. Or it was an earthquake

Did you know that some people thought Captain Cook was a God because he said he would make the sun disappear?

When it disappeared on his command, they were astounded.

Can you think how he made the sun disappear?

[quote 80sForever]@speakout things are being taken out of context, of course he has to raise his army out to kill evil people, why wouldn't a good God do that? Haven't we done that with Hitler? So why is that not a good thing to do? God is always good[/quote]
How many people did the Old Testament God kill?

He turned Lot's wife to salt just because she looked back.

That's a red flag.

80sForever

You may call it "taken out of context" I would call it cherry picking.

The great flood for instance- god annnihilated almst everyone on planet earth- men, women, children babies.
So powerful he could have picked out evil people or just flounced his heavenly cloak and put it all right in a flash.
But he chose to inflict pain, sorrow and murder countless people.

Why would you want to worship such an evil beast?

I don’t believe in any god.
To me the idea of a god is preposterous.

To go to heaven you have to die. Death is caused in the vast majority of cases by sickness or accident, both of which are painful and and frightening. Why would a god chose this as a way to end life? Before god created the universe this was a decision that had to be made. There were infinite options but this was the choice.

Why would a god create carnivores? Prey species spend their short lives in fear. What sort of god thought that one up?

For a god to be omnipotent it has to know everything. That included the position of every subatomic particle in the universe (or universes) at every moment of existence. It’s illogical but it has to be so if there is a god.

Why did we have evolution? What purpose does it serve? Why not just create us as modern humans and reveal itself? Why do we have to have blind faith ?

I don’t dislike people who believe, I just find it odd.

@80sForever

People who say God is a narcicisst, selfish, psycopath have issues....i feel sorry for you...

Have you read the Old Testament?

Count the number of people who God kills.
Well - the Abrahamic God*

*Other Gods are available

You felt angry at a mum’s reaction to her week old child’s heart surgery? Do you not think that might be something you need to reflect on?

I didn’t feel angry at her. She’d always been religious, it wasn’t like it was a sudden change and I couldn’t understand why she was thanking God for everything.

I knew she was praying for her daughter etc, I knew she was turning to God for comfort etc, but yes, I did feel a bit angry about the concept of God being held the Saviour, that he was why her baby survived, where of course I believe the medical staff also prayed a big role in in too.

I wasn’t angry that she was thanking her God, I just felt a bit strange that she didn’t show any gratitude toward the real people who had saved her child’s life.

It wasn’t anger at her, it was anger towards the fact that the real heroes weren’t recognised for their wonderful, wonderful act and instead a God was being thanked for what they did.