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?

How did you arrive at the conclusion that the words of the Bible should be regarded as much more important to listen to than, say, the words of the Qur'an, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Book of Mormon, the Guru Granth Sahib or any of the other religious texts?

Which god do you mean? There are lots

“Their desire to be separate from Him will result in eternal separation”

What does that even mean? Do we all go to hell as a punishment for not admiring this (supposedly loving) God? Is he really so vindictively petty?

Also, why does this supposedly loving god allow young children to suffer from leukaemia and die??

I have two takes on this.
One is that before we had law, god and the bible were used to frighten people into conformity by putting the fear of god in people who sinned which was just a list of laws to live by or pay for in the afterlife which I don’t believe in because none of us are dead so couldn’t possibly know what happens when we die leaving the only narrative coming from a living person who has never been dead so can’t know themselves.

Secondly when it comes to religion, there are so many that they can’t all be right and usually and I stress usually the religion you believe is determined by what you were taught and that varies from country/culture/upbringing so I don’t believe in god because I grew up in an environment surrounded by people who didn’t so effectively I was taught it wasn’t true which is as valid as those that were brought up in a family where they believed strongly in god and perhaps I too would believe as I once believed my parents when they told me about the tooth fairy and Santa and that the ice cream van only played music to say he’d run out of ice cream.

On day one god created light and dark
On day two sky and sea
On day 3 land
On day 4 sun and moon
On day 5 birds and fish
On day 6 animals, MAN AND WOMAN
On day 7 he rests.

So how did the dinosaurs who lived before man and woman survive with no sea, sky or land?

No. Absolutely not. I am in absolute awe of nature and feel that looking after our planet and its ecosystem is vital- I guess I would say that is what I worship.....

Honestly, I’M not sure. I am agnostic so I suppose I hedge my bets a bit. When my dead was dying I prayed so hard and it made no difference, so it dented any hope I had.

You'd need to know whether the ancients group reptiles with birds, fish or animals. I have more questions!
How did he do the light and dark, when he hadn't created the sun yet?
How can he have done things in a 'day' with no sun to mark a day?
When did he do the stars and other planets?
If he did the sea before the land, was the planet all water until 'day' three?
What did he do on days 8, 9 and 10?
I guess he might have used the next few weeks to create nebulae, black holes, galaxy clusters, dark matter and so on.
If he's going from planet to planet, spending an (indefinable) week creating stuff there, he's probably still at it. 14 billion years doing the same job, week in, week out ...

...and how can an entity that is supposedly outside of time move from a state of "haven't yet created a universe" to "just created a universe"? A timeless entity is surely just frozen in the eternal moment?

My understanding (being brought up in Catholic Church) is that god forgives everyone that repents?

I feel obliged to say I no longer believe and that anyone that judges you for a decision you made which you thought was for the best at that time isn’t worth your angst.

Absolutely fucking not. I’ve just had a big argument with my mother that praying is for the person saying the prayer. Means or does nothing for the recipient. That went well, Irish catholic family, no one still in Ireland would disbelieve.

Haha, yes and no! (I spend far too much time exploring the rabbit-holes of popular physics). The eternal moment is all the moments ever - I was going to say at the same time, but time doesn't exist for a dimensionless & timeless entity.

Still no answer to 'where did it come from', though. Also no explanation of why it did things one after another, when it makes no difference to the time-free.

Totally. I 'pray', only I call it meditation, mindfulness or journalling. Serves exactly the same purpose, without the delusion that I'm talking to an invisible grandfather figure.

Yes

Causality requires the passage of time to go from cause to effect. If time doesn't exist for a given entity then that entity cannot cause any effect to occur. That entity is frozen and completely incapable of doing anything.

No.

I'd rather like to believe in reincarnation - as long as I don't have to live a similar or worse life over again, I'd rather come back as a loved family pet!

However, I'm more inclined to think that there is nothing. And I'm okay with that.

Are you not accepting “I don’t know” as an answer to that question?

I don't know ...

I'm sure God , if he or she exists , can do without my assistance. But , FFS , you are somewhat pedantic and literal aren't you? Augustine of Hippo shot all this down 2000 years ago. It's called 'allegory'

No.

Surely for a timeless entity everything is happening all at once so to speak?

I think to be a proper atheist you'd have to believe in the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics - so we get to live in a Goldilocks Universe with all the right Conditions. And with the massive odds against life magicked away. And of course many scientists do -; although there is no evidence for it. I'd like to believe in it too , makes for great science fiction for one thing.

In the meantime I'll remain a boring agnostic I think.

All Religions are nonsense, IMO. If God existed, they could take over all the TV stations at a given moment and prove their existence. That would covert all the doubters. But they don't because they don't exist.

I just don't think that's true. When people harden their hearts they'll believe anything but God.

No all religion is a cult to keep society in line.

I don’t get this harden hearts bit which has been posted before. My heart works just fine but it has nothing to do with not believing in any gods.