Do you believe in god?

[Unicorndreams24]

i have recently been thinking a lot about religion and wondering how many believe in god and also what made you come to the decision of believing?

And in any event if conversion were to be the aim it appears to be failing dismally! 😀

Just read this on a local forum - I don’t live in the UK but discussions take place everywhere

If you put the 2 ideologies together in a courtroom then Atheism would win every time.
Courtrooms operate by rule of law andmake decisions based on evidence. Everything about Christianity is either hearsay, uncorroborated evidence, circular reasoning, personal experience is not trustworthy due to possible biased or untrustworthy witness and no substantial evidence that God, heaven or hell exists.
Atheism is 100% fact based, if there is no evidence to support a deity existing then Atheism wins.
Proof of burden falls on those making a positive claim, Christianity. It is generally considered impossible to definitively "prove" a negative claim, including the claim that "God does not exist," as the burden of proof typically lies with the person making the positive assertion; in this case, the person claiming God exists would need to provide evidence for their claim.
I rest my case

I’m constantly amazed by people who spend their time fascinated by an entity they don’t believe in. The obsession with “proving” they’re ‘right’ (and others are ‘wrong’) is beyond my comprehension.

For the record, I’ve got zero interest in trying to prove anything to anybody.

Have a great day, everyone. :-)

I’m always fascinated when people can’t prove or articulate why they believe in something - not limited to religious beliefs

I can only speak for myself.

In the spirit of this thread’s question I have articulated what I believe and provided my reasons for doing so.

If that’s not acceptable to anyone else reading my comments then scroll on. :-)

I certainly don’t feel any compunction or desire to prove anything to anyone. How and what and why anyone else believes what they believe is their business, and of course they’re welcome to share it too, in a respectful and open dialogue. I don’t expect them to ‘prove’ anything to me either.
Have a great day :-)

Firstly, I would never believe any story written by any person to be necessarily true, unless I witnessed something myself.

Secondly, imagine if all these stories/scriptures were destroyed in fire or flood.

Would future generations still believe in a god?

What @Parker231 just said - and, also, it's not as if it doesn't touch our lives all the time. For me, too, the psychological/anthropological aspects are interesting.

I couldn't debate the nitty-gritty of Sikhism or Confucianism, say, but would be equally interested in what it means to adherents and how it works for them. I'd have a lot of questions and comments for them, as well!

Heck, I don't need to witness something to believe it! I do need to be able to verify it, though, or test it against probability.

You'd have to destroy all the living people who knew of the religions as well as the art, literature, buildings and other trappings.

I've come to believe that a high proportion of people have a need or a strong desire to believe in powerful forces of some sort. The mad rise of conspiracy theories really shook me, and the flourishing of genderism. Actual grown-ups with authority, who have access to the best minds available, telling us that drinking bleach kills viruses, vaccinations contain microscopic transmitters, people can change sex, it goes on ..!

So, yeah, they'd come up with their own. My own half-baked theory is that they're looking for someone/something to fill the role parents fill for young children. We say children see their parents as gods: they have the literal power of life or death over the child, they are the source of all knowledge, the child relies on them for safety and needs to feel she belongs with them. When we realise they aren't omniscient or infallible, perhaps that leaves a gap for some people.

I wouldn't say I'm fascinated by the notion of divinity, and I don't feel any compulsion at all to "prove" anything to anybody or validate my own position. Why I do take an interest though, is because as someone who is entirely secular and wishes to see public life freed from religious interference, I believe it's important for me to be able to articulate why I don't believe, and why I don't accept that it's ok for religion or the religious to try and impose their dogma upon people who do not share their belief.

That's the extent of it for me. I couldn't care less what someone else believes and I have no interest in dismantling their belief system, but where and when religion does intrude into my life, I wont hesitate to express why I will not tolerate it, and why I find it preposterous.

Oh yes, Gentile region. If Mark meant this as reinforcement of Mosaic diet laws, it’s very odd that he later explains that Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19). The New Testament is consistently clear that Christians aren’t bound by food laws (Acts 10; Romans 14; Colossians 2).

So I don’t think the pigs are a hidden dietary command as you rightly say, just part of a story about Jesus’ authority to cleanse and restore people. I had never heard the previous poster’s reading before!

Ok, I guess i don’t need to witness everything, but I would absolutely need sound evidence before i believe some of these outlandish religious beliefs!

It seems wishful thinking rather than truly believing to be true!

If you mean the idea that Legion and the swine was Jesus enforcing Mosaic law, that we me who posted that.

And it's not something I have seen anywhere, I came up with that myself. so it might be original :-)

But it makes sense, to me anyway. Why kill the pigs, then mention the angry villagers ? Then I happened to read an archeology thing about pig bones.

Re pigs being called unclean, my understanding is that is down to them being infested with parasites and so on. Being fed on human waste most likely, So seems easy to see why they were banned as food.

There you go. Even an atheist is saying they can see the point in a mosaic law.

Now for the other 612. Shall we work through them all together ?

:-)

I definitely need evidence - I’m a fact based person!

No idea about the other stuff you mention, but this :"I've come to believe that a high proportion of people have a need or a strong desire to believe in powerful forces of some sort. "..

wait for it..

It might be evolution.

We are a social animal, and we only survive in thrive as a community. A pack. And working together we thrive. So anything that adds to us being able to work together would be an evolutionary advantage.

There is a fair bit of research going on into this. It's worth a search online.

Ironically, it is possible we will find god, or our susceptibility to believe in them. It might be a gene that we have developed through evolution. The same mechanism as our sex drive etc

A god gene.

How mad would that be :-)

That would be galactic scale irony.

why do we enslave ourselves to jesus or the idea of god, but yet will resist when its the govt / ceo of a company ?

Allow me to reluctantly remind you of President Trump and the 'MAGA crowd'.

and let me remind you that if its gods words then explain the old testament ? that's more damning to society than trump

But it isn’t, re: the above, especially as it is a Gentile region…

I was pointing out that people do 'enslave' themselves to governments, CEOs (Musk?), etc. I'd say football teams, too, having been married to a dedicated fan.

Jesus was not a gentile.

Think about what he was preaching. When he was in the temple as a child amazing the priests with his knowledge of the law. And through Mark, when he amazed people with his understanding of the law.

That was mosaic law. If it had been anything else they would have ignored him, or stoned him.

my bad fair points

He later explains that Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19)

Just read it, slightly amused that the argument was about not washing your hands before eating!

I wasn't aware that Jesus had explicitly un-banned forbidden foods. How does that square with the 'not one iota of the law' thing? The world must have already ended before the Pharisees criticised his table manners ...

eta: At school, we rather liked the "jot or tittle" line. Anything to annoy a teacher, eh 😏

No, of course Jesus was not a Gentile.

But the Gerasene region, the Decapolis was. It was Graco-Roman.

In other words the inhabitants of the region didn’t observe Jewish food laws. Nor were they expected to. It was perfectly reasonable for them to keep and eat pigs.

I can see what you're both saying!

No, the gentiles had no problem keeping pigs.
Yes, Jesus may have had a problem with pigs.

Drowning a local's entire herd was a rotten thing to do. And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw Him, they pleaded with Him to leave their region. I bet they did!

The teaching under discussion is found in Mark 7: 14-23
“Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable.”Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

I think that’s fairly self - explanatory.

It’s not what you eat that defiles you.
It’s what comes from your heart.

That’s why the key component of the New Covenant, which Christ instituted at the Last Supper, (as opposed to the Mosaic Covenant, which prescribed the food laws) was the provision of a new heart.