As simple as possible to summarize the best way you can, first, please. Feel free to expand after, or just say whatever you want lol. Honest question.
I believe in God because I think its the best explanation for the existence of our universe with it’s laws. A being outside of our current space/time setting our universe into motion just makes sense to me.
That’s essentially the TAG argument.
Interesting, I’ve never heard of that term but I am partial towards the Maliki madhab which is highly influenced by the Asha’ri and I see them listed there.
I’ll be sure to look into this later.
If our universe requires a being outside it as an origin, why shouldn’t that being itself require another being of even further outside as an origin, and so on?
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TAG addresses infinite regress. A transcendent being functions outside of our physical and metaphysical constraints.
Scientists believed this for the longest time, but I’ve recently seen a documentary explaining that, at the very bottom, there’s a giant koala bear. Apparently they’re still trying to determine why it’s smiling.
By nature of being outside of our universe they are not subject to the same constants/restraints or our same concepts of space and time.
But I’m not necessarily saying it’s a requirement. That’s just the line of thought I lean towards personally at this point.
TAG addresses this in the way you describe. A transcendent being is not constrained by our physics or metaphysics.
I feel like religion is so corrupted by governments, cults, and sleazeballs. Not all of them mind you, that it’s just so difficult for a lot of people to put their faith in any religion. That’s why theirs so many atheists.
How is it possible to answer the question until you define what “God” you’re referring to? Christian God?
In my case yes 😁
I have mad respect for Orthodox Christians. My sense is that they typically grok Christianity on a completely different level to other, more modern denominations. When I try to talk about God with my average local Christian, there is this “white man in the clouds with a big beard” image and that’s the level you’re starting with which I find very difficult.
Yes the Orthodox view of God accepts his imminence and his incomprehensibility all in one. It is a humble, mystical, experiential and all-encompassing approach to life. It is therefore extremely difficult for us stubborn humans to adhere too 🙃
I recommend Stalker and Solaris by Tarkovsky. Even though they are secular films the depth of Orthodoxy is present in their soul searching, repentant and deeply ponderous nature. Even the Solaris remake does a decent job just because of the mechanics of the story. I saw it years before becoming Orthodox and it stuck with me. We should all be deeply concerned with the state of our souls.
What does it matter ?
I think it matters because God can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Are we talking about Plotinus’ “το Ἕν” or are we talking about Allah? This is the problem with these kinds of questions. It’s difficult to discuss the nature of what God even could be, before we get on to whether or not you “believe” in it. As other posters have pointed out, even the language of “belief” is generally inadequate as a starting place.
You’re trying to answer a question that wasn’t even asked.
What question am I trying to answer?
“What is the nature of god that people believe in” instead of “why people believe in <whatever they believe in>”. The nature of what they believe wasn’t relevant to the question.
The spirit of the question is to provide an answer if you believe in any god. Could be Allah, Yahweh, Zeus, Loki, etc.
Thanks, it wasn’t clear, I thought it was more meta than that.
It’s not about belief. I don’t believe in Jah the same way I don’t believe in gravity. Gravity just is, and so is Jah. Look around. Breathe. Existence itself is the evidence. I’m not here to convince anyone or convert anybody. Jah doesn’t need followers, He just is. Whatever you call it, it’s all the same current. I walk with Jah because I recognize Him in everything.
I do not and i believe that religions are the number 1 problem in the world. The things people do for their “Gods” are stupid and cruel af
Actually I would say that religions are just a symptom of a human flaw.
The same gets exploited by politics and other things too.
Religion is just so bad because it is based on an intangible mind construct as as lies go, this is one of the biggest ever to keep spreading and going fueled by nothing more than the sunk cost fallacy in time and energy invested of current and past believers. They need to validate themselves by pushing ot onto the next generations because otherwise it would mean their their time invested into it was pointless.
In short, yes because you lose nothing by trying to emulate Jesus.
That said, the church be crazy af
I may not believe in God, but I can definitely respect the man. ✊
If emulating jesus was what the christian church was about I would have less scrupules
Define “Christian Church”. This almost invariably comes from former evangelicals in my experience.
People who say they belive in jesus, would be my definition.
You have to believe in the trinity to be a Christian. Regardless you aren’t going to find any group of people who are perfect. Christianity is all about how people are sinful and must commit daily to emulating Christ even though they will continuously fail. Regardless it sounds like you are opening yourself up for massive disappointment by casting such a wide net. There are many “Christian churches” which are just jokes if not outright scams. Christians can’t control who calls themselves a Christian. I encourage you to investigate the Eastern Orthodox church which has a rich tradition and clear direction for how the Orthodox should live their lives. It is Ancient Christianity that holds in high esteem prayer, fasting and alms giving. There is real spiritual meat on the bone.
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I went to a Romanian Holy Unction service and it was beautiful.
If there is a god or something like a god, it has to be the sun. The sun makes all life possible and has near infinite energy, I can not think of anything more deserving to be god. Will it save us or help us as individuals, i don’t think so, its a god we are insignificant in comparison and will burn when staying in its presence for two long. Also its real.
Another idea I had was from Einsteins quote: “to believe in god you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.” So by that logic you better believe in all gods for maximum gain. There are a bunch more suns aswell ;)
If you look at it very very loosely, many major religions are reaching toward the same general concepts and have enough similarities to suggest a consensus that there’s a “something” up there.
We probably all have an imperfect idea of what that “something” is, but there are enough similarities (or echos of the same ideas) across many religions to suggest they’re looking at the same indivisible thing and interpreting it differently.
That something you’re referring to is just fear. Fear of nothingness fear of death fear of the unknown etc… Fear of this being it. Fear of the end. That’s all it boils down to. Thus they have to create something to answer that fear. But it’s not like there’s a universal truth they’re all circling around. They’re all just creating something to address that fear.
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10
This was a thread for believers. Let them have this one.
And if they had expressed a personal belief I probably wouldn’t have even responded. However they talked about a general phenomenon.
This is my very loose, shower thought level description of my personal belief.
Okay cool.
OP asked for reasons, and I gave one of mine. I didn’t intend or expect it to be convincing to anyone. If I wanted to give a formal argument for the existence of a higher power I would, but that’s not the point of this thread.
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DMT
I used to believe because of how convinced other people were. I thought they had a good reason. Turned out they had not
Upvoting the actual answers here, as some who were not the target audience and haven’t read the question have answered.
Agree.
OP wants to hear opinions from people agreeing with statement X, not those who disagree.
I disagree with the notion of the universe being a probability game, but that’s not asked.
Thumbs up from me too. I’m always eager to hear/read from people who aren’t shy but rather open and reasonable about their beliefs, whatever those may be.
Alright, now that you mention it, the universe is ‘a big ball of yarn’. You can’t see the fabric, because we use the fabric to see. Planets and stars shrink and/or grow, all of them have solid surfaces, thunder isn’t always a local planetary phenomena, but often an exchange between two large bodies, usually between the host star and planet. ‘Neutron stars’ and ‘black holes’ are regular stars completely misinterpreted and dark matter and dark emergy are stop gaps in broken theories.
No. I believe in Stephen Fry.
He’s pretty close!
