I have absolute proof that there is no God.

[seeker]

I've just seen in our local paper that a little girl who lives in our town has died. She has been the focus of much prayer since she was taken ill last year. Her parents were thoroughly good Christian people who trusted God absolutely.

The is no way that a loving, omnipotent, beneficent God who notes even a sparrow falling would not have answered these people's prayer.

So, if I had even a scintilla of doubt, it is now gone. There is no God.

God becoming incarnate in Christ is really the whole point of christianity. Its a bit more than god playing beardy mind games. You can't assign human motivations and feelings to God.

Christ comes to bring the new covenant to people which he gives us at the last supper. The promise that all our sins are forgiven if we truly repent. He gives us one commandment to replace all the others - love one another. He also brings the promise that through Christ we can conquer death. Christ, fully human dies on the cross, is resurrected bodily and then taken up into heaven. Gods proof that we other fully humans will also be taken up into Gods presence.

If you believe that your a Christian, if you don't your not.

The comfort Christ gives to the bereaved is that our loved ones never truly die but are in the presence of the love of God. Obviously how comforting that is depends on whether you believe in the first place.

My sympathy to all those on the thread who have lost loved ones.

I suppose people want to feel they have some significance in a grand fashion when you think about it you live you die the vast majority of people having little to no impact. What people want is a point to existence otherwise life ultimately seems pointless.

I have never been a big fan of organised religion because people are flawed and there is no religion that would not eventually be tainted by additional input by people's prejudices, beliefs and interpretations.

^"there is no plan, no one can fix this for us"

You see thats not a comforting thought for me personally.^

It's not a comforting thought at all. But it's an empowering thought. Like when I learnt to ride a bike and my dad would run along behind me holding the saddle, and then one time I realised he wasn't holding on anymore, and actually I was riding all on my own. Terrifying but wonderful.

I was ill and housebound for a long time recently. Thinking "everything happens for a reason" I was desperately trying to work out the reason for this, how could a God possibly let this unhappiness happen, trying to think of what reason would be worthwhile, wondering if the reason was to help me find God, which I thought would be a pretty horrible way for God to treat people. Then I realised that "stuff just happens, but sometimes we can make good stuff out of bad". My illness wasn't part of some horrible twisted plan, but just a thing that happened, and it was up to me to make of it what I would. I didn't have to accept that this horrible illness was given by a loving God, i could in fact be really angry and hate the illness. And in fact we have made some good stuff happen out of bad, I am closer to my family, I've read a lot of interesting books and learnt about things I'd never have had time to think about otherwise. I don't know if it was "worth it", perhaps not, but the universe doesn't make things "worth it". Bad stuff just happens by chance sometimes, and what we make of it is entirely up to us. I find that much more liberating and empowering than some incomprehensible plan.

I don't think you feeble minded at all! It's a hard question, and sometimes I waver towards believing in some kind of God - it's just all the ones presented by mainstream religions seem to cause more paradoxes than they solve.

HolofernesesHead - Great posts, glad someone is on the thread giving a Christian perspective I can agree with.

Sciencelover - how do you decide what bits that Jesus said were for his apostles and what bits are for us now?

amillionyears - I know you mean well with your wish that I find my faith again, so thank you. But I can very categorically state that unless god appears in the sky in a blazing chariot of fire for all to see, I will remain faithless. I am a scientist, a logical thinker, I am utterly convinced that, if there is a cosmic overmind, it cannot be the Christian god. To be honest, the Christian god horrifies me and I want nothing to do with that faith.

All those years ago when I was a lonely teen, I thought I was looking for god. I realise now that what I was looking for was love and acceptance. When I turned to myself instead of some outside source, and found love and acceptance in myself, I truly found peace.

when jesus talks of faith and believe does he actually mean in God, after all most of the population in that time would'nt be questioning the existence of God. Isn't he talking about faith in him as the Messiah, he knows its going to get shitty for them big style and is promising that they have the strength to see it through. I don't think his congregation took him literally as we would have the bible story of the disciples that got bitten by snakes and went home pretty quick.

Sciencelover, for example, Jesus was talking to his disciples when he spoke about the holy spirit coming to live in them. That means the holy spirit was just for them right? So the holy spirit isn't in christians now?

Amillion said - "Occasionally Christians do get the feeling of being alone.But it isnt then to do with God,It is to do with us.
Personally when that happens,I get away from things,and go outside to nature.Nature is God.I look at birds,trees,flowers.And especially the sky."

Problem with that amillion is that it looks like you're being picky with what parts of nature you're looking at. Would you be as happy to sit and look at people in Africa starving because their crops failed after a drought? No? Well that's nature too. Or a worm burrowing out of a child's eye on the other side of the world rendering the child blind? No? That's every much a part of nature as a bluebell wood or a beautiful sunset.

Holy spirit in all of us I'm afraid. When God became like us and that made us like him, we become joined to his divine nature. (thats part of the theology I think ) We dwell in Him and He in us is the words from communion service I think.

Yeah but dream, holoferness said that because jesus was talking to the apostles when he spoke about the great commission that it was just for them, but then Jesus was only speaking to the apostles when he spoke about the holy spirit but you're saying that that bit is for all Christians? Do you then think that the great commission is for you?

HeadinHands, yes, it's too easy to idealise 'nature' and come over all Wordsworthian . My understanding is that Christians, and all people are responsible for looking after the world, treating it with love and respect as God's good creation,a nd doing all that we can to put right what is wrong in the world. So the truly Christian thing is not to look at a starving child and say 'Well there's obviously no God then' but to do whatever we can to aid the suffering of others. One thing that atheists often overlook is the great responsibility that Christianity puts on people, esp. the rich, the healthy, thoes with resources. I don't think CHristianity eve really has been about God zapping people from heaven, meeting their immediate need and that's the ed of the story. It's always been about communities of people, worshipping Jesus as God and trying to live the life of Jesus by 'serving one another in love' (as St Paul puts it).

Dreamofwhitehorses - thank you Yy to being joined to the divine nature of God! 'We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.'

I didn't mention the Great Commission . But since you ask, I believe that is as, and is, for all Christians - it was for the first apostles to pass on to their people, who pased it on, who passed it on, and so on down the ages. Same with all the biblical tradition - which, obviously, needs careful handling. But the basic spirit of it s still the same.

HolofernesesHead - I hope you didn't mean by your post that atheists don't care about starving children, and don't feel any burden of responsibility towards them. A solid moral compass is not the sole preserve of Christians.

Really good post, MMM. Your point about people choosing what to make of their lives - the good bits and the shitty ones - is a very important one to me (being as how I'm trying to make the most of shit, etc).

A believer, in the same boat as me, might think everything happens for a reason; god's trying to teach me something. This is not fundamentally different from my independent view that the raw materials of my life have changed, so I need to see what I can make of it now. I would not be comforted by the thought that an entity I loved more than anything had fucked me over to teach me a lesson! Worse - were I of a moralistic persuasion - I might believe I was being 'taught' to suffer more, give more, sacrifice more, etc. Which would have landed me in a mortuary already.

the maxim of 'real religion' is 'Fear not; the things that you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of.'

As in my paragraph above, Holo, why do I need a controlling entity - or the promise of an afterlife - to stop me being afraid? If it works for you, great. But you can take it from me that inner strength is a human given. We don't, in fact, need to be free of fear. Fear is a healthy instinct. Overcoming it is life-enhancing.

In worse times - as in worse places today - most people lived with the knowledge that truly ghastly things were quite likely to happen to them. Disease; starvation; violence; mutilation; bereavement: sometimes all at once. Life was suffering. Submissive acceptance may have been one's best hope of muddling through, so the promise of a better life after this may have helped with that. All the same ... we know how sustained abuse keeps the target in place. If people were less 'subject' to the cruel whims of God and others, might they have found more strength to change things?

Course not, Annie. Of course atheists have the same moral obligations as believers. But (and herein lies the rub) I'd say that the reason this is so is that all people rea created by God whether they believe in him or not, and therefore have something of God's nature in them, which compels them to love and care for others. Historically, Christians have done loads - and where I live, still are - to alleviate suffering and poverty. But it'd be a strange religion that said 'the rest of you can be as selfish as you like.'

He gives us one commandment to replace all the others - love one another.

He most certainly does not. Jesus quite expressly says that he has not come to change the laws one iota. They will remain in place as long as the Earth is here.

I wish more Christians would read the actual Bible rather than books written by apologists about the Bible.

Has it occurred to anyone at all, that until you can actually demonstrate that a) Jesus existed b) that he was God and c) that the Bible is reliable historically then we may as well be discussing how big the pumpkin was that took Cinderella to the ball.

Historically, Christians have done loads Er yes - but that's because historically it's been a crime not to be a Christian, so everyone was.

Historically it's been Christians eating lunch too. Is eating lunch therefore "Christian"?

I don't really see God as a 'controlling entity', tbh, garlic. More as the source of all life and of all wisdom and love, who invites me to see life from the perspective of that wisdom and love.

Your para re. the suffering of previous generations - yy, absolutely. Odd conclusions you seem to draw, though. 'Cruel whims' - it is only so if we think, as I said in my (admittedly, rather long) post earlier, that God must logically = us living long, healthy, happy lives. That's not my belief in God. But your very last point - that we are approaching these questions from a vantage-point of priviliege - is very interesting and right, I think. That's an interesting one to ponder...

HolofernesesHead - Well I'm confused as to why you think that Christianity places a burden on you that atheists wouldn't understand then.

And as a biologist I'm afraid the reason I would give for humanitarian instincts is survival of the species, not being made to have the nature of god. Especially since that god apparently made all the things that are causing the suffering in the first place.

all people are created by God whether they believe in him or not, and therefore have something of God's nature in them, which compels them to love and care for others. - says Holo.

I say all people are created by evolution and therefore have a genetic imperative to create & maintain healthy, functioning societies. Human are physically crap compared to most would-be predators. We have strength in groups.

Crikey, what I mean is that Christianity has compelled lots of people to alleviate suffering etc. THat's different to just being nominally 'Christian' by birth.

Btw, I have read the Bible! Once or twice...without wishing to out myself, I'm a bit of a Bible geek. Okay, very much a Bible geek.

Annie, sorry if I'm unclear - I was talking baout the contours of discussions such as this one, where the questoin is always about whether God answers prayer and therefore whether God's existence can be surmised. I'd just want to re-frame the discussion a bit by reminding us that, as I said, Christianity is about people being sent out to do the work of God. In the feeding of the 5000 Jesus said to his disciples, 'you give them something to eat.' That's still our obligation today, I believe.

Garlic, yes, I can see how that works as an argument. I don't believe it's the whole story about what it means t be human, though!

But, Holo, the god who causes the deaths of little children (and zillions of other torments) is a controlling entity surely? It has mysterious reasons for hurting people. It awards random joys and suffering. It never explains itself, and rages if required to. Sounds remarkably like a human abuser to me ...