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

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).

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.

What arguments do you have for your belief that God does not exist?

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

I believe in god.

I just believe in God.I just feel that it makes more sense to believe in God. That's just my view.

What arguments do you have for your belief that God does not exist?

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.

Why you don't believe in god?

Oh dear, a lot of people cannot read the thread title.Sadly, Gloria Gaynor is not the God being referred to in the title.Doesn't answer the question.
This.That is the very opposite of the question.Again, if you read the thread title, you will find this irrelevant.
And none of that answers the question. Well done.Again, the very opposite of what this thread is supposed to be about. Well done.

I do hope @Jamie Vardy is actually going to read some of these rather than just ignore a thread they've created as he has a history of doing.

When I get a response from OP, will I give my views.

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.

It wasn't a question, as such. They were stating that the reason why I don't believe in their God, could be applied as a reason to believe in their God. I was simply stating my confusion, as that sentiment makes no sense.

The question, (re-worded) was as follows:

For those who do, why do you believe in God?

Do you not understand that?

To me, any response that does not answer this, is quite frankly pointless.

Of course, but I'm not replying to the OP, thus the quote. I was asking a question to another user, as they did not explain why they hold the beliefs that they do, they simply said "I believe in God". So, thus, I would not consider it a "pointless" post".

By the way, James Vardy is temporarily or permanently banned, so don't expect a reply from him any time soon.

"Nothing comes from nothing. I firmly believe in a first cause"
That's a contradiction.

"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"
The existence of symmetry pointing to the existence of a God is a non-sequitur

"The existence of morals"
Inference to the best explanation- morality is a human construct

"We often have absolutist ideas of right and wrong. Where do our moral laws come from?"
We have even more absolutist ideas about mathmatics and logics- this pointing to the existence of a God is a non-sequitur

"I have experienced things I can't explain"
God of gaps fallacy

"Jesus probably existed"
The existence of Jesus pointing to the existence of a God is a non-sequitur

"Accounts of the crucifixion"
Unreliablity of Biblical accounts + God of gaps

Gödel's ontological argument and something can't come out of nothing.

Hi,
Thanks for sharing your story. I'm an atheist too because I was born and raised in an atheist family and have never seen anything uncommon "supernatural".
I'm a bit curious about is it anything happened in your life makes you an atheist? Or is it just because you learned more about science? If you don't feel comfortable to answer this, just ignore the question. That's absolutely okay

The only factor I'm really aware of is my personality. It's not so unusual on TSR, but among church-going children, I asked a lot of questions. I wanted to understand how dinosaurs fitted into biblical history for example, and about various other things that people had given me conflicting accounts of. I wasn't aware they were awkward topics - I just didn't get very good answers about them.

For a long time I just kind of muddled along not exactly knowing what was what (were dinosaurs killed in Noah's flood? Is evolution real or 'just a theory'? Will the end times happen in my lifetime? Does prayer really work or not?), but eventually I realised something I couldn't really put to the side like the other questions, which was how can people believe in other religions stronger than I believe in mine? Throughout the world there are a lot of religions, and in all of them, people believe them to be true, despite that they can't all be. Therefore, there's a mechanism that lets people really believe things that are totally wrong. That meant that I couldn't trust my own experiences of feeling God, because other people apparently feel other gods that I believed didn't exist.

That revelation was a total hammerblow to my faith, because it meant maybe some totally normal psychological process was the reason I believed in God, rather than him actually existing. After that I started to do research, mostly expecting to confirm my Christianity, but the reality was that I found considerable criticisms, and Christianity's responses to them were to my naive surprise woefully inadequate. Truthfully, there are a lot of problems with believing in God, and I just kept finding more of them.

After a little while of that, I suppose I just realised one day I had probably been totally mistaken with my faith. The following weeks, I tentatively considered myself an atheist, but it was peculiar because of the remaining sensation of God disapproving of me.

Hope this answered your question.

hello Jamie !
as a successful soccer man you know that every team requires a manager on the touchlines. while you are playing hard in the front line or on the wing occasionally, he is following you with a mixture of pride and anxiety. at half-time he may give you a "rollocking" or lavish praise on you and "the lads" depending on what he feels is appropriate to that particular day's performance.
it is the same with God. we are all on his first team, taking on the opponents of the Evil One. the opposition play all kinds of tricks but there can only be one outcome.

i hope that this will help you to understand. it is a funny old game

So Christians take on the opponents of Satan? They are against people who are against Satan? And so, they... support Satan?

Christians are Satanists, illuminati confirmed

Gödel's ontological argument and something can't come out of nothing.

This is actually quite interesting for me, since I am a Christian, but am also one of those people who asks a lot a questions, so I couldn't resist replying. I hope you don't find anything I say offensive; I'm not trying to "convert" you, just saying what my own experience has been here.

The dinosaur problem has always been a bit of an intriguing one, tbh. I think the awkward answers were simply down to the people themselves simply not knowing/not wanting to face the answer. I don't know why nobody asks God, seeing as He obviously knows the answer, except for the fact that we may well find out in Heaven. My own opinion, after going to a lot of Christians in Science talks (I highly recommend them - very hot topics are discussed, so very interesting) and looking into it a lot, decided that both views - the historical view, and the one given in Genesis - were correct, in their own ways. Things like the Big Bang (Let there be light) are pretty clear, and then when you see that to God, one day is a thousand years, etc., the timing begins to make sense. Evolution? Well, from the order given in Genesis 1, it actually seems to agree with the Bible (apologies to anyone who thinks differently - I'm just explaining what I decided on my own). How did something as deep and beautiful as love just evolve? Only under the hand of our Creator. But then, above all else, it actually isn't important. Christianity is about a relationship with God, now and forever - it isn't about small technicalities which God will explain to you some day, anyway.

Once I had figured out that I'd got that bit pretty straight, I went on to the next major issue you raised there - by no coincidence, I think, since I'm sure it's a common thing to worry about - what about other religions? What if another one is correct? I barely touched upon the thought that there might not be a God - one day, when on TSR, I imagined that for about a minute, and everything felt so immensely empty, pointless, hopeless, miserable, uncaring and just generally lacking in meaning that I had to resurface pretty quickly. As C S Lewis once famously said, "Christianity is like the sun - I believe in it, not just because I can see it, but because by it's light, I can see everything else." So that's why I never really considered it. Anyway, to go back to the topic of other religions, that one stumped me for a bit - what if I was in the wrong religion? Somehow, I never quite wanted to try a different on out, but I started to feel insecure. I began looking for ways in which Christianity was different to other religions. At first, it seemed like the basics were all the same - until I realised that they weren't.
-Christianty isn't a religion at all; it's a relationship.
-It's not all about life on Earth.
-It's not just about having good morals, or living life to the full - often, it seems just the opposite.
-It's the only "religion" which dares to claim that God came to us - not for his own glory, or to boast or something, but to save us. Does Jesus ever boast? Or is his main concern other people's faith and wellbeing?
-It's the only "religion" in which God dies. (Of course, being the triune God, He doesn't fully die or the Universe might cease to exist etc., but a major part of Him dies, and remains in that state for 3 days.

And beyond all that, at a more personal level, God has helped me so much, so often, when I really thought I was beyond anyone's reach, that it would just be plain ungrateful for me not to believe in Him. Besides, why would anyone try not to believe in their best friend?