Among all the things that cause arguments, religion and God are pretty near the top of the list. It seems like most people at least want there to be a God, or something like that. Then you have the Bible scholars who seem to know it all...they can destroy every possible reason one would have for doubting His existence with Scriptures and/or historical citations.
BUT!
What about the ones on the other side? You know, the millions of people that can equally argue against God's existence? One of my friends, Matt Koch, is a staunch atheist, and boy can he argue. In fact, he would've shaken my faith to the point of complete destruction had I not already had first-hand experiences with God. But even that doesn't prove He exists to everyone that hasn't experienced Him...and how do I even know that those experiences were God and not some stupid fluke?
I'm glad you asked!
Let me just tell you what I know:
I know that when I praise God (for the sake of objectivity, let's say there's not a God, but just an idea of Him and that's what I'm praising), I feel different. When I glorify His name, the status of my senses changes. It's sort of like being high, but with no negative effects. You might be wondering what I define as praising God. Well, I don't personally like praise and worship songs. You know, the stuff they sing in church...when I talk to God, I don't speak in simple and repetitive rhymes, so why would I when everyone else is singing in that way? It would be fake coming from me. I actually kind of hate praise and worship music, but I'm not discrediting the connection it seems to give so many people to God; that's awesome. For them. But for me, I praise God in my own language, sometimes while listening to a very select few bands (Showbread, mewithoutYou and Thrice) as those three bands have lyrics that are in my language, Showbread especially. But that's a whole other story.
Please don't get bored reading this; I'm trying to keep it as brief as possible. I just want to hold your attention long enough to make this point: the only reason I can say with a maximum amount of confidence that God is real is because I have experienced both His presence and His miracles.
Miracles?
Yeah. I've seen someone's fingers grow back after being prayed for. I've seen my friend's mom's backbone straighten up after people laid hands on her. I myself have had minor sicknesses like a cold immediately leave when someone prayed for me. Were the fingers just a product of special effects? Was my friend's mom just a really good and flexible actress? Was my cold vanishing at the exact moment someone prayed for me a coincidence? Maybe, maybe, maybe. But I don't believe so.
The bottom line: people that believe in God will tell you He is real for the following reasons:
-The Bible says so
-Prayers being answered
-The mere existence of life and the Earth
-Evolution hasn't been completely proven to be true
Here's the thing, though, guys: all of those can be demolished at the hands of a good debate. I can't even say that I believe everything in the Bible. Why? Because I wasn't there when it was written...I can't say for sure that all of it is divine and it happened literally in the way it says it did. I know that if I'm a Christian, I should believe the Bible is completely divine, but I can't legitimately believe in something unless I have unmistakable evidence.
So how can you know if God is real? Here's the only way I know: ask Him. He may show up to you immediately. He may show up somewhere down the line. I don't know. I'm not God. But I do know that He's real. All you have to do is keep looking.
lol
Something I struggle to understand is how can a Muslim say that God saved his life, and then a Christian say the same thing, and then maybe a Hindu?
Who is lying?
atheism's plain reductionist aim is stupid and so is the idea that god necessarily exists because of the observations you're talking about.
read Jung, you'll probably learn the exact mechanism your subconsciousness is using to validate these ideas, and also a great deal about concepts like (e.g.) synchronicity, which "maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by their meaning. Since meaning is a complex mental construction, subject to conscious and subconscious influence, not every correlation in the grouping of events by meaning needs to have an explanation in terms of cause and effect" .. science consistently 'confirms' this as a basic ideaââ,¬â€œÃ¢â,¬â€œthe real psychological/psychoanalytical or physical implications are far more complexââ,¬â€œÃ¢â,¬â€œ by finding that consciousness is intrinsically linked with the expression of reality we observe. in other words, the common perception of our role as passive observers of reality is closer to the inverse of what's really happening, and you're equating this discrepancy to proof of god's existence.
on another note, of course you're not reading 'literally what happened' in the Bible. even if you magically had the best English translation from the best Bible scholars in the world who had all the original documents, you still wouldn't be reading the original Hebrew (in the case of the old testament, aramaic/greek for the new), which is a complex language far removed from ours. for instance Biblical Hebrew does not include vowels, and there are not 'words' as much as strings of concepts (like many Asian languages). because of this you can translate every passage tens of different ways with various meanings, and the lack of vowels means you can even sometimes divide the words differently and extract completely unrelated meanings. basing any deeply spiritual belief on literature like the Bible, where 99% of the original manuscripts don't even exist to trace its evolution, is very much like trying to build a comprehensive cosmology from the information contained in Harry Potter. we have no fucking idea what the original overtones of the Bible were like.
I'll believe in a God when I see one. Otherwise, it's not even an issue in my life. I think it's a pointless argument. Like arguing about whether Unicorns exist.
Yea I love all of God's little miracles...
(http://static.flickr.com/10/14029664_2e100daf12_o.jpg)
(http://nml.ru.ac.za/files/carterimage.jpg)
is this satire
Quote from: Selkie on August 22, 2010, 02:24:11 PM
Yea I love all of God's little miracles...
(http://static.flickr.com/10/14029664_2e100daf12_o.jpg)
(http://nml.ru.ac.za/files/carterimage.jpg)
those are the forces of evil waging a war with love on this earth
Wow been a long time since there was a religious debate on boyah... I'll just say believe what you like and leave it at that, nothing wrong with feeling one way or the other
Quote from: Selkie on August 22, 2010, 02:24:11 PM
That's free will, god doesn't cause that to happen. That's like blaming the president anytime someone within the nation gets shot.
Quote from: wziard on August 22, 2010, 01:46:29 PM
atheism's plain reductionist aim is stupid and so is the idea that god necessarily exists because of the observations you're talking about.
Thank you sir
Quote from: Aracde on August 22, 2010, 02:02:39 PM
I'll believe in a God when I see one. Otherwise, it's not even an issue in my life. I think it's a pointless argument. Like arguing about whether Unicorns exist.
It is and you win
http://rawrockmilitia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1466
Quote from: Khadafi on August 22, 2010, 03:31:25 PM
http://rawrockmilitia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1466
(http://i443.photobucket.com/albums/qq156/iaminsect/justinbieber.jpg)
LOL.
Quote-The Bible says so
-Prayers being answered
-The mere existence of life and the Earth
-Evolution hasn't been completely proven to be true
The bible was written by man
Prayers not being answered
Evolution
God hasn't been completely proven to be true
Im sorry, but if you are religious, you are stupid. It has to be said
Quote from: Khadafi on August 22, 2010, 03:31:25 PM
http://rawrockmilitia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1466
you found me out
You sound like socks.
I write like
Dan Brown
lol
Lol I knew you were just re-posting something stupid. The best part was him trying to explain miracles lol.
BTW:
"If I Were the Devil"
By Paul Harvey
I would gain control of the most powerful nation in the world;
I would delude their minds into thinking that they had come from man's
effort, instead of God's blessings;
I would promote an attitude of loving things and using people, instead of
the other way around;
I would dupe entire states into relying on gambling for their state revenue;
I would convince people that character is not an issue when it comes to
leadership;
I would make it legal to take the life of unborn babies;
I would make it socially acceptable to take one's own life, and invent
machines to make it convenient;
I would cheapen human life as much as possible so that life of animals are
valued more than human beings;
I would take God out of the schools, where even the mention of His name was
grounds for a lawsuit;
I would come up with drugs that sedate the mind and target the young, and I
would get sports heroes to advertise them;
I would get control of the media, so that every night I could pollute the
minds of every family member for my agenda;
I would attack then family, the backbone of any nation. I would make
divorce acceptable and easy, even fashionable. If the family crumbles, so
does the nation;
I would compel people to express their most depraved fantasies on canvas and
movies screens, and I would call it art;
I would convince the world that people are born homosexuals, and that their
lifestyles should be accepted and marveled;
I would convince the people that right and wrong are determined by a few who
call themselves authorities and refer to their agendas as politically
correct;
I would persuade people that the church is irrelevant and out of date, the
Bible is for the naive:
I would dull the minds of Christians, and make them believe that prayer is
not important, and that faithfulness and obedience are optional;
I GUESS I WOULD LEAVE THINGS PRETTY MUCH THE WAY THEY ARE!