No Evidence For God, Why Still Believe?

So, you look on your life as being either a glass half full or perhaps all full.
Perhaps you are also grateful for the life you have experienced.

I may be wrong here but it almost seems to me that though you have experienced a loving God ~you may not have experienced a God who has given you free will to think otherwise based on how the other side lives, based on less than a tunnel vision and more on a panoramic vision of the reality of the world and life.

There are many who, based on the emptiness of that glass, are incapable of seeing a loving God. How do you explain a loving God to someone who has never experienced love, joy, happiness, a sense of security but only misery, fear and degradation?

How do you explain away a loving God in view of it all? Are some more special to this God and some much less…

Would you put a band aid on it? You believe in a loving God because you believe. Does that make it so?

To the only one for whom it really matters, yes, it makes it so.

If he (I presume your male, Snark) believes in a loving God then it is so that he believes. But what we believe has no effect on what actually exists in reality.

That may or may not be the case. At present, we know so little about consciousness and QM that to claim that what we believe has no effect on what actually exists in reality is premature.

Krauss’ idiocy came to full light when I saw him interviewed on Closer to Truth regarding why is there something rather than nothing. His frustration was apparent when, in effect, he said causation was turtles all the way down.

I see, so only the most aware are able to develop a belief in God - presumably it follows that those who do not believe in God are suffering from a deficit in attention to subtleties.

Would you say that an awareness of the subtleties goes hand in hand with the ability to explain the nature of these subtleties - and how they necessarily amount to what is something of an overt claim that one has (or at least you have) no right to not believe in a specifically loving God, as opposed to something else? There must be something that definitely leads to your claim and not others in order for you to transform subtleties into something so overtly certain.

I think both theists and atheists alike are aware that something(s) other than themselves is/are affecting events beyond what is normally understood to be an individual locus of control. And naturally these forces will necessarily cause events to unfold in the way that they do, such that they bring you to where you are today - they hardly get you to where you aren’t today after all? So obviously you must be referring to subtleties in and around this necessary outcome that point to specifically loving God belief that you don’t have a right not to have - (again) as opposed to something else.

Though you say your belief is personal and does not require any correlation, so perhaps the ability to explain these subtleties is intrinsically lacking in such a style of belief? After all, correlation somewhat helps with explanation, and ease of explanation must surely fall in proportion with subtlety of the elements of such an explanation.

If he (I presume your male, Snark) believes in a loving God then it is so that he believes. But what we believe has no effect on what actually exists in reality.
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That may or may not be the case. At present, we know so little about consciousness and QM that to claim that what we believe has no effect on what actually exists in reality is premature.
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If I believe that when i perform the double slit experiment i will see an interferance pattern, does this belief, the belief itself, dictate wether or not i will actually see an interferance pattern? No, of course not- it depends (apparently) on whether or not i have “which path informstion”.
Just because i believe in God that doesn’t make God exist.

Of course not, but why close the mind to possibilities? Don’t you think it’s a bit self-serving when scientists argue that anything that can happen happens while implicitly meaning with the sole exception of God?

The belief is just the conceptual interpretation an experience. I’m not about to say that it’s factually true.

So am I to take that as confirmation that your belief intrinsically lacks explanatory ease or possibility? There’s not so much going on anymore and you’ve skipped me again…

If that was the case, I don’t think you would really have the right to claim you have no right not to believe in a loving God. In general, not being able to explain something is a good sign that you don’t understand it, which certainly wouldn’t constitute a sufficient ground on which to support such claims as you’ve made - or maybe you’re just busy/not interested.

You’re going to believe what you want to anyway, so not interested in debate. My “claims” are analogies, incomplete descriptors and conditioned interpretations, not truth-statements. Accept what I say as true (for me) or don’t – I don’t care.

P.S. I have a life outside this forum, so when I say there’s a lot going on, I don’t mean in the forum.

Only for some.

This is an interesting reply, since I am currently only trying to explore what you believe.
I don’t think I’ve even addressed what I believe yet in my conversation with you…

Maybe “you’re going to believe what you want to anyway” was more reflective of yourself? I am not going to assume.

I will accept what you say as true for you or I won’t… I am aware of my options, but I would be disappointed if you didn’t care enough to give me grounds to make up my mind in the first place - you’ve barely scratched the surface in your explanation to me of your beliefs I am sure. Believe it or not, I am actually interested in your beliefs, whether or not they are analogies/incomplete descriptors/conditioned interpretations or truth statements. It’s all interesting to me.

I think you have much in common with everyone here, having a life outside this forum - some more than others for sure. But over 4 posts per day so far suggests you still manage to make plenty of time for this place all the same - I will try to be more patient though - I understand if that cannot continue at that rate. God belief can be very mysterious and I would very much like it if somebody who is so certain of their beliefs could demystify it for me.

Everyone has their own evidence. It is kind of silly to say “there is no evidence”. Of course he means that Science has provided no evidence to the public, nor the horde of loud mouthed idiots. Objective evidence requires the ability to reason, which is beyond the average person (another good reason for faith based religions).

Objective evidence also requires boundaries, but being infinite, God does not have boundaries by definition.

Silhouette:

“You’re going to believe what you want to anyway” applies to everyone, no exceptions. Perhaps you should pay more attention to what you believe. I wonder how many times and in how ways it has to be said that it’s about felt relationships expressed in terms of as if and not about beliefs at all?

Some atheists, for example, don’t want to believe there is no God etc. but they are overwhelmingly compelled to due to evidence and reason - though arguably they want to be authentic and honest with themselves and others more than they wish that a God existed, so as a “net want” they “believe what they want to anyway”. So I’ll grant you your generalisation and agree with you. I think what statements such as yours are usually meant to imply though, is that “you aren’t going to change your mind anyway” - which is very wrong for some people. There are probably more who will stick to their guns and even bury their head in the sand (enough mixing metaphors though) before they change their mind - cognitive dissonance gets the better of most. In certain cases, the scientifically minded such as myself actively try and find evidence and reason to change their mind. That’s not to say I won’t challenge my quarter first - I most certainly will - but only in the honest attempt to evolve or even abandon my beliefs.

Believe me when I tell you I want you to try and change my mind.
I already have an excellent understanding of what I do believe, despite not going into it yet with you.
But enough of that for now.

Are you saying that you believe in God because it is “as if” He must exist, given that things are the way they are? Or am I completely misinterpreting what you’re saying here? I cannot stress enough that I am not trying to mock you when re-iterating your words in my own, I am absolutely withholding judgement until I have a clear picture (and even then I probably won’t judge - just take anything that you might have offered and try to incorporate it into a greater understanding).

I actually happen to agree with the Lucy quote - my own philosophy even holds the point of the quote at its foundation. In my terms I call the “unfathomable scale” continuous experience and the “codified/sketch” with “units of measure” discrete experience. I regard the former as primary and the latter as constructed within and parallel to it - and the degree to which you tend towards one over the other depends on your values and intentions.

I still find no necessary reason that God must be included into the picture, especially such that I have no right not to believe in Him. But that’s where people like you could potentially come in - I have yet to see. But so far I’m not feeling anything to convince me that subtle as-ifs necessarily amount to an overt lack of right to not believe in (a) God.

Rather, the notion of God was invented to compensate for the puzzling fact that things seem to come out of nowhere.
We may interpret “god” as “seed”.
And indeed in ancient times there wasn’t a difference between sexuality and divinity.

In the beginning was the inherent existential crisis.
IF you review the history of mankind, the concept of theism ‘progressed’ from animism, deity worship to polytheism, then to monotheism.

As a child, it is natural the psychological security is covered by the parents but for adults who do they turned to?
It was this existential crisis that compelled the early humans [adults] to seek some higher power than their own to give them that psychological security. At this point, no one was thinking of ‘things seem to come out of nowhere’ so there must be a creator.
Therefore what is fundamental is that inherent unavoidable existential crisis that is embedded deep in the pscyhe of humans.

With that permanent inherent unavoidable existential crisis as the substance, the forms that humans came up with to deal with it vary with time and human consciousness and intellectual progress.

That thinking, ‘something cannot come from nothing, therefore it must be God’ is a very recent thought relative to human history. The fundamental of it is still the inherent unavoidable existential crisis on the psychological basis.

The fact is when the inherent unavoidable existential crisis [mother of all dukkha] is dealt accordingly based on its ultimate psychological roots, there is no need for theism. This is why Buddhism [& others of the like] are non-theistic and so do have the negative baggage of theism.

Sorry, but no.

I don’t think so, especially since you’re so convinced that you do.

You’re still concretizing “God.” This is not unusual. “God does not exist but is existence itself” is so simple to understand that that it eludes “intellectuals.” Maybe it was for this reason Paul Tillich famously said it is as atheistic to affirm God’s existence as to deny it.

Where are you looking? With what are you looking?

That, Snark, is the nature of belief.

It is possible that even Jean-Luc Picard, when he uttered the phrase, “Make it so!” while standing on the Bridge of the Enterprise, realized at some level sometimes those words, that mandate, would not come to fruition.

But I do feel that faith is important when it is a reasonable and intelligent faith and not paradoxical.

How do you explain the other side of the coin?

Ah, a theist of little faith :wink: You’ve never come across it before, so I’ll grant you your belief. “You’re going to believe what you want to anyway”, right?

Is the sign of someone who has an excellent understanding of what they believe that they do not believe they have an excellent understanding of what they believe? Knowing that you know nothing, right?
It is of course often the case that people who don’t have an excellent understanding of what they believe think they do because they don’t understand why they don’t have an excellent understanding of what they believe. But having an excellent understanding of what one believes doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t also have an excellent understanding of what it is like to be confronted with new evidence or reason to change your beliefs, and to proceed to do so accordingly. But it sounds like you lack the faith to believe that can happen.

Ok, so I am to understand that concretising God is a common mistake. This makes me think that you conceive of God abstractly - and this fits in with your equation of God with existence.

I ask the question though: if God is the same as existence, and the neutral word “existence” says neither too much nor too little about what it signifies, and even a God believer equates the two, why have two words for the same thing when the other word “God” carries with it so much baggage and association with religious texts that “existence” doesn’t need in order to do the job that even a God believer finds it sufficiently does?

In equating God with existence without that extra baggage and association with religious text, then you are just a Deist who holds onto the idea of God without actually needing it. But if you are a theist, I would expect that instead that you are saying that “God is existence” but “plus x”. In this case we just need to find the language to explain “x”, no?

An excellent pair of questions.

I believe I have the same “looking” faculties as anyone else, atheist and theist alike. So unless there is sensory experience that you have no right not to believe is God that atheists simply haven’t seen and theists have, it must be a matter of interpretation of the same sensory experience that’s open to anyone that makes the difference. I have no reason to believe that I’m not experiencing what theists do, so I expect the difference is in “making sense” of the same sensations. So to answer your questions, I’m looking at what I assume to be the same sensations as anyone else and I’m looking at them with the same tools as anyone else.

How am I interpreting them? With logic. Is there anything to “this experience” that requires more or less in order to be what it is? If there’s more than necessary to any experience, I remove what is not necessary and check if what I’m left with is still sufficient for that experience to be that experience. If there is not enough, I keep looking. Each case requires constant revision, and so far I’ve not found anything needs God, but I will continue to look and consider that it might do. You say it’s subtle, so maybe I am being too coarse and I’m missing something. I assume, however, that someone who isn’t being as blunt as I am ought to be able to explain to me what it is that I am missing. I can see you’re trying and hope you continue to do so.