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?

Do you really believe there is any truth in the Bible stories - that’s all they are - myths and stories shared by word of mouth crudely recorded and translated by people who could write many centuries later. Numerous people input their version of events without collaboration. Individual interpretations without evidence.
So many of the stories are an impossibility, there is no credibility.

Thanks for clarifying your question—I really do appreciate you taking the time to spell it out.

I think what you’re asking gets right to the heart of something that’s often misunderstood about Christianity, and it’s worth unpacking if I may: The gospel isn’t a “rule.” It’s not some arbitrary regulation someone invented. It’s a remedy for a condition.

Let me try to explain what I mean:
Christianity starts with the idea that sin isn’t just about breaking rules; it’s about a fundamental rupture in our relationship with God. The Bible describes humanity as alienated from God, spiritually dead, and under judgement—not because God invented a problem to solve, but because we genuinely are in rebellion against our Creator.
So the real question isn’t “Who made the rule that someone had to die?” It’s more like: “How can a holy God justly forgive sinners without compromising his justice?”

God’s holiness means he can’t simply ignore evil. His justice requires that sin be dealt with. But his love moves him to provide a solution. That’s why the cross isn’t arbitrary; it’s the place where God’s justice and mercy meet.

Why did it have to be Jesus specifically? The Bible’s answer is that the problem required a solution no human could provide. The writer of Hebrews explains that Jesus had to be “made like his brothers in every way” so he could represent us, yet he was also “holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners”—meaning he wasn’t corrupted by sin himself. Paul puts it even more starkly: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

We needed a perfect substitute… someone who could bear the judgement we deserved whilst being entirely innocent himself. Only Jesus, as both God and man, could do that. He lived the life we should have lived and died the death we deserved.

Christ’s death wasn’t required by some external rule forced upon God. It flows from who God is: his justice, his love, his decision to save. And here’s what I find remarkable: God didn’t make a rule; he made a way. He’s both the offended party and the one who provides the atonement. In Christ, God himself bore the penalty so we could be reconciled to him.

So there isn’t an arbitrary “rule.” There’s a holy God, a real problem (our sin and separation from him), and a costly, gracious solution (Jesus Christ).

I realise this might not satisfy you if you don’t accept the starting point—that we’re estranged from God in the first place. But I wanted to clarify that Christianity doesn’t present the cross as ticking some cosmic box. It presents it as God’s own loving initiative to rescue people. I do apologise that my previous posts didn’t set this out satisfactorily; thank you for your question.

Thank you! Yes, you put it so helpfully, I appreciate it.

We have the same, it takes a while but I do find it a useful exercise. And questions are so important! Great post, thank you.

I appreciate you sharing your perspective honestly. You’re raising questions a lot of thoughtful people have asked about the Bible’s reliability, its transmission, and whether its claims are credible. These are fair questions, and they deserve more than dismissive answers.

I’m curious though, where are you drawing some of these conclusions from? When you say the Bible was “crudely recorded and translated by people who could write many centuries later,” what sources or scholarship are you basing that on? And the claim about “numerous people input their version of events without collaboration,” are you referring to specific books or the Bible as a whole? I ask because these are common assumptions, but they don’t actually match what we know from historical and textual scholarship.

The New Testament manuscripts, for example, are extraordinarily well-attested compared to other ancient documents. We have fragments dating within decades of the original writings and thousands of manuscripts that allow scholars to reconstruct the text with remarkable accuracy. The Gospels themselves show clear signs of eyewitness detail and were written within the lifetime of people who could have corrected false accounts if they were being invented.
For the Old Testament, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 was a game-changer. These scrolls included copies of biblical texts that were about a thousand years older than any manuscripts we previously had. When scholars compared them to the later manuscripts, they found the text had been preserved with stunning accuracy. This shows that the scribes who copied Scripture treated it with meticulous care, not carelessness. This isn’t crude transmission; it’s some of the most carefully preserved ancient literature we have.
The Bible wasn’t assembled haphazardly either. It was written over centuries by multiple authors, across different cultures and contexts, yet it tells a unified story pointing to Jesus Christ. That level of coherence, despite the diversity of human authorship, is one reason many find it compelling.

You’re right that the Bible contains accounts of miraculous events, things that don’t happen within the normal course of nature. But here’s the key question: If God exists and if He created the universe, would miracles be impossible? Or would they simply be God acting within His own creation? The real issue isn’t whether miracles can happen. It’s whether God exists. Christianity doesn’t ask you to believe impossible things for no reason. It centers on the resurrection of Jesus, a historical claim that can be examined. The earliest Christians were willing to die for their testimony that they saw Him alive after His crucifixion. That doesn’t prove it happened, but it does show they genuinely believed it. Hardly the behaviour of myth-makers or liars.

Every worldview requires faith in some foundational beliefs that can’t be exhaustively proven, whether that’s naturalism, materialism, or theism. Or even atheism! Christianity claims that God has revealed Himself in history, supremely in the person of Jesus Christ. The question isn’t whether the Bible contains stories (it does), but whether those stories are true. I believe they are, not because I’ve abandoned reason, but because the evidence, the internal consistency of Scripture, the transformation it brings, and the person of Jesus all point to something real and trustworthy.

I don’t expect to resolve all your doubts in a short exchange, and I respect that you’ve clearly thought about this. If you’re genuinely open to examining the evidence, books like The Reason for God by Tim Keller or Can We Trust the Gospels? by Peter J. Williams lay out the case in accessible ways.

I’m not asking you to shut off your brain or ignore your questions. Christianity invites scrutiny. Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Truth doesn’t fear honest investigation.

A very good, practical post. Thank you. 👍🏻

What catastrophe fell upon humanity?

The change from the original state of creation (including humanity) to what it is now.

edited to add
If it helps one can read my first sentence -

“The change from the original state of creation (including humanity) to what it is now was the result of the first man's dislocation from fellowship with God and the subsequent entry of death into the world.“

@ByLovingTraybake forgive me for being cynical, but your explanation of Christianity and the Bible sounds to me very like a marketing ploy. You create a problem (humanity is disconnected from God) and then you prevent the solution (voila! Here is the book that has all the solutions, do everything it says and everything I say and you'll be fine).

It's really no different from the marketing for wrinkle creams after women are told they should fear natural ageing.

As an atheist, I believe the vast majority of humans are good decent people who go about their lives doing little selfless supportive things every day whilst also being imperfect. There's an adage: Perfect is the enemy of good. When I see religions touting the idea that perfection is possible if only you subscribe to the brans, that's what comes to my mind.

I appreciate you engaging with what I said, though I think there might be a misunderstanding. I never claimed perfection is possible on this earth, and Christianity doesn’t either. In fact, the whole point of the gospel is that we can’t achieve perfection, which is precisely why we need Jesus.

The comparison to marketing wrinkle cream doesn’t quite fit because Christianity isn’t inventing a problem to sell a solution. The disconnect between humanity and God isn’t manufactured. It’s describing something most people intuitively recognise: that despite our best efforts, we fall short of the standard we know we ought to meet. We hurt people we love. We’re selfish when we want to be generous. We know what’s right and still choose what’s wrong. That’s the human condition, not a sales pitch. And of course, this isn’t all the time, and the vast majority of people are often trying to be decent. But we can even see it when supposedly young and innocent children do hurtful things despite not being taught selfishness, for example. To Christians, this is the human condition. But it is something we have a beautiful solution of grace for!

Christianity doesn’t say “do everything the book says and you’ll be fine.” That would actually be the opposite of the gospel. The message is that we can’t do everything perfectly, and that God has done for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves through Jesus. It’s not about achieving perfection. It’s about being reconciled to God through what Christ has already accomplished.

The Christian answer isn’t “try harder.” It’s that God offers forgiveness and relationship as a gift of grace. That’s hope for people who know they’re not perfect and never will be. I also hope in my previous posts I, and other Christians, have described a personal relationship with Jesus — this is established not by following rules, to attain eternal salvation!

I know we hold different views on this, but I just wanted to clarify where I’m actually coming from, because I don’t think what you described is what Christianity teaches or what I’ve said about perfection (unless this wasn’t directed to me?)

Sorry I don’t understand. Humanity hasn’t faced any catastrophe other than the usual wars, natural disasters etc which have always happened and always will.

quote : “The change from the original state of creation (including humanity) to what it is now was the result of the first man's dislocation from fellowship with God and the subsequent entry of death into the world.“

What change of state ? From what to what ?

Where is this change of state explained ?

I appreciate you engaging with this! I think there might be a misunderstanding about what Christians mean by “sin” and the biblical account of the Fall.

When the Bible talks about sin entering the world, it’s not describing a physical catastrophe like a war or earthquake. It’s describing something more fundamental: a rupture in humanity’s relationship with God that affected our very nature.

The Christian claim is that humans were created for fellowship with God, but when we chose independence from Him, it fundamentally changed us. We became spiritually alienated from our Creator. The evidence isn’t mainly in geological layers or historical events, it’s in the human condition itself. We all experience a gap between who we want to be and who we actually are. We know we should love selflessly, yet we constantly choose self-interest. We lose our tempers with people we care about. We say things we regret. We know what’s right but find ourselves doing what’s wrong anyway.
And here’s the thing: we don’t just do these things, we feel the weight of them. We carry guilt and shame. We lie awake replaying conversations, wishing we’d been kinder or braver or more honest. We long for reconciliation when relationships break down. We ache for justice when we see cruelty. Suffering and death feel wrong to us, like intruders rather than natural features of existence. That deep sense that things aren’t as they should be, that craving for restoration, for wholeness, for peace, that’s part of what Christians mean when we talk about being fallen. We instinctively know something is broken, even if we can’t quite name it.

This is what Christians mean by the “fallenness” of humanity. It’s not about being worthless or irredeemable, quite the opposite. The Bible says we still bear God’s image, which is why human life has dignity and why cruelty is evil. But we’re also broken, capable of remarkable good and terrible evil, often simultaneously.

Sin, biblically, isn’t just “bad behaviour.” It’s a condition of the heart that expresses itself in rebellion against God and harm towards others. To call humanity sinful isn’t to say we’re monsters, it’s to say we’re sick and in need of healing, lost and in need of rescue. And the symptoms are everywhere: in our inability to consistently love well, in our fractured relationships, in the gap between our ideals and our actions, in that restless longing for something more.

I know that might sound harsh at first, but from a Christian perspective, it’s actually the most hopeful diagnosis possible, because if sin is the problem, then Jesus is the solution. He came not to condemn, but to heal and restore what was broken.

I realise you don’t share that worldview, and I completely respect that. But I hope this at least clarifies what Christians mean when we talk about sin and the Fall. It’s really about acknowledging brokenness and pointing to hope….

No, but think the Christian message of forgiveness, tolerance, love thy neighbour is an ace mindset!👍

@ByLovingTraybake and @LeaningOnTheEverlastingArms

So nothing to do with Adam and Eve and 2 trees then ?

You both seem to be avoiding any mention of them ?

So basically being a Christian doesn’t make any difference to behaviour - their conduct is no better or worse than an atheist.

But not in anyway unique to Christians

I think this was asked above in this thread; feel free to read above as it addresses this very question!

I think I quoted Adam and Eve in a previous post above?

My assumptions are based on science, reality and basic common sense.

As Queen Elizabeth once said “recollections may vary”.

Miracles don’t happen - walking on water, turning water to wine, and a resurrection.

I know the answer - just stating a fact.

Yes

We now seem to be increasingly rehashing previous points.

I love that you’ve quoted the late Queen! She was actually a committed Christian who spoke openly about her faith in Christ. She once said, “For me, the life of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, is an inspiration and an anchor in my life.” So yes, recollections may vary, but hers certainly included belief in those very miracles!

I appreciate your scepticism. If reality is purely material, then miracles are impossible by definition. But that’s actually the question, isn’t it? Whether reality is purely material, or whether there’s something beyond the physical world that can act within it.

Christians aren’t asking you to abandon science or common sense. Science describes how the natural world normally operates, but it can’t tell us whether there’s a God who might occasionally act beyond those patterns. Many founders of modern science were Christians who saw no conflict between studying natural law and believing in miracles.

But here’s what interests me: even setting miracles aside, the things I mentioned earlier about the human condition, the gap between our ideals and actions, the weight of guilt, the longing for restoration, those aren’t based on miracles. They’re based on observable reality. You don’t need to believe in the resurrection to recognise that something feels deeply broken in the world and in ourselves.

I asked earlier whether you think humanity is fundamentally good, just sometimes mistaken, or whether you recognise something deeper that needs addressing. It seems like you’re more interested in asserting your position than actually engaging with the questions or trying to understand where Christians are coming from.