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I believe God does NOT exist. Someone who does, please explain why you do?

Open up people.

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Reply 1
I just believe in God.I just feel that it makes more sense to believe in God. That's just my view.
At first I was afraid, I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong
Original post by Jamie Vardy
Open up people.


Well i believe that this universe could not off happened by chane its far too complex . I also believe in god because it helps me not to get depressed over death because there is an immortal life to look forward to
Too many coincidences that even scientists can't explain. I wonder why...
I believe in god.
Reply 6
Because I've felt His power upon my head many times!
Even though it might sounds like a joke it is not!
Original post by Trichakra
I believe in god.


Why?
Original post by Jamie Vardy
Open up people.


What arguments do you have for your belief that God does not exist?
Original post by benandjerry
What arguments do you have for your belief that God does not exist?


Have you never encountered an atheist before? It's always the same. "There's no empirical evidence that he does exist and it sounds a bit fanciful so I don't believe it" is the short version.
Original post by Retired_Messiah
Have you never encountered an atheist before? It's always the same. "There's no empirical evidence that he does exist and it sounds a bit fanciful so I don't believe it" is the short version.


Yes sadly lol. I am hoping this will be different
Original post by benandjerry
Yes sadly lol. I am hoping this will be different

I can't imagine any other argument against God one would make, unless they do some weird Ayer-esque bs and decide religious language means nothing at all...
Reply 12
I know you want people who believe in god but **** you <3

OT: I'm an atheist, I've not had a faith probably because none of my family are religious and my experiences go to show me that I don't believe in a God. However, if there is a God then I'd still not like him very much, I don't understand what kind of God would want to be 'loving' to his creations in a way of telling them that they must worship him and not do x, y and z.
Original post by _gcx
Why?

Why you don't believe in god?
If there is a god he/she/it is either completely incompetent or an evil capricious monster who takes delight in the suffering of others.

Why should I worship someone of this description? Or why should I devote my life to a god that may/may not exist, it is just one explanation for the origins of the universe out of an infinite amount of possible explanations. There is just as much evidence for a flying spaghetti monster, should I devote my life to that instead?

I'd rather just live my life trying to be a decent person, rather then trying to be good to appease some entity that may or may not exist.
Original post by Trichakra
Why you don't believe in god?


That doesn't make sense. I don't believe in God due to lack of evidence (it is the responsibility of the party making the claim to evidence the claim), and lack of overall feasibility.
Original post by _gcx
Why?


Why you don't believe in god?
Gödel's ontological argument and something can't come out of nothing.
Original post by Jamie Vardy
Open up people.


Well, there may be a secular counter to these things, but these are the reasons why I personally believe.

1. Nothing comes from nothing. I firmly believe in a first cause and an unmoved mover. Doesn't directly prove my Christian God, but it does indicate that something caused everything else. Set the cogs in motion, if you like.

2. The beauty found in nature. Nature does have some pretty nasty bits (bugs that eat people's eyes and all that stuff) but it all works in perfect harmony (even those bugs have a function, albeit a gruesome one) and if you look at a sunset, or a snowflake fractal under a microscope, or even the arrangement of the stars, it all seems to point towards a designer. Doesn't directly prove my Christian God either, but the richness of this world points to it.

3. The existence of morals. "But Darwinism" yadda yadda. Darwinistic "morals" are primitive and selfish, serving to keep the species moving along in its quest for survival. Jesus's "love your enemies" doesn't make any sense at all in the Darwinistic perspective, yet a lot of humans do feel empathy for people they don't like or shouldn't like on principle. In the animal kingdom, that'd cause carnivores to die out or herbivores to jump willingly into their jaws. You don't see lions lying down with lambs. Overall, I think there is a sense of goodness that is in all us humans. We often have absolutist ideas of right and wrong. Where do our moral laws come from?

4. Religious experience. It's funny how I, a die-hard atheist, changed my mind almost overnight, and it still bothers me to this day. I like to think I'm a logical person, yet it really does feel like someone flipped a switch inside me. In a more direct fashion, I have experienced things I can't explain. For example, a guy in church the other day stood up to say "I think the Holy Spirit is moving me to say that there is someone in this room who has been experiencing discharge out of their ear... their left ear, and it might have happened this morning? If that's you, go to the prayer ministry at the back after the service" and after the service, there was an old man having hands laid on him. True, the guy could have been acting and he could have known about this old man. But if the old guy had said something to him beforehand, he'd have known they weren't the words of the Holy Spirit, and others might have been suspicious. Also, the guy seemed genuinely nervous since he wasn't accustomed to coming to the front of the church and speaking publicly about something which he could have been wrong about.

5. Jesus probably existed. There are a number of religious and secular accounts which mention him -- many are making fun of him and his followers but they do have in common the fact they saw him as a real person.

6. Accounts of the crucifixion. The sky went dark for several hours after Jesus was crucified, which various records by Roman and Greek writers say was the result of a solar eclipse. However, totality never lasts several hours (a fact which seemed undisputed, right down to the timeframe) and solar eclipses only happen at new moon. Jesus was crucified at Passover (Nisan 14, if we accept the unanimous account of the Gospel writers). Passover happens at full moon... therefore not a solar eclipse. It's not concrete as we only have the second-hand quotations of older historians to go by (original manuscripts having been lost) but it's reasonably persuasive that there may have been something more to it.

Just a few of my reasons why I believe. However, I'm outlining my personal case, not seeking to convince or convert anyone else. If you're interested, you may be able to find an unbiased source (sadly most sources have their agendas, atheist ones just as much as Christian ones) and decide for yourself.
Reply 19
I used to be religious, although I'm not any more. There were causative factors for me to begin to believe, and then there was at least one reason that made it difficult to stop believing.

The causative factors were that I was raised to believe in Christianity and surrounded by Christians my entire childhood. I went to church, I was taught to pray before bed, went on Christian group holidays organised by the church, and so on. It was unusual to meet someone who didn't believe, except at school, but there everyone was a kid and hadn't really thought about it.

Once you do believe, you begin to see God as integral to your world view. You see his actions in your daily life and attribute causes to him. If something unusual happens, it's very natural to think it happened because of God (especially if you had previously prayed for something), or at least that it happened with God's permission. You feel a feeling of being watched - that if you sin, God will immediately know. Because you have experiences that you believe God helped you with, and because you actively feel him in your life every day, it becomes very difficult to be dissuaded from your beliefs by rational argument, because it's not a rationally held belief in the first place - it's your everyday felt experience.

I was somewhat of an outside case, since I became an atheist despite still feeling God's presence in my life, and had questioned the veracity of my entire life experience. That's not such a common approach to deconversion I think, but it had the effect that for a while as an atheist, I still felt God watching me, but now it's been so long that that feeling's just a memory. I think deconversion usually occurs when someone loses the feeling of God (e.g., God feels unresponsive).
(edited 7 years ago)

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