Struggling With God

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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Hello F(r)iends,

It is my impression that nearly every religious person struggles with their faith.

Reading the religious topics in ILP has been a wonderful experience. I must admit that it has produced a rather odd result within me: I expected to come to a philosophy site and discover ideas about god; however, I never expected those ideas would actually make me doubt the conclusions I had reached years ago. In fact, today I stand very unsure about god. I find myself again asking whether or not god exists. It is a bit scary to admit that I am actually considering that: “Yes, a god exists.”

I find it troublesome that I am struggling with god. A large part of me refuses to accept god’s existence but a small part is beginning to wonder… It’s rather strange but the god bashing actually puts me off nowadays.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Why do you believe in god?

Why do you not believe in god?

-Thirst4Help

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What precisely caused you to change your mind? :astonished:

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I’ve never read a logically compelling arguement for the existence of god(s) at ILP, nor can I whip up the “Kool-Aid-suspension-of-disbelief” required to seriously entertain adopting any religion. I too am scratching my head over just what you may have read here that’s changed your mind. Have the maniacal ravings of PoR finally overwhelmed your defenses? :stuck_out_tongue:

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The thing about belief in anything is that it almost never begins with rationality, and cannot be full-bodied or deeply held just on the basis of rationality. When it comes to existential claims (this is/isn’t such a thing as X), rationality is a confirming process, not a starting point. For example, we don’t believe in our feet through rationality. We believe in them due to the senses. Now, if you were in argument with a particular sort of solipsist, you may find yourself defending your belief in your feet using rationality, which is what I mean by confirmation. It would still be true, though, that you believe in your feet on the basis of something other than a logical argument. Note that this does not mean that believing in one’s feet is irrational.
So, that said, there’s really nothing anybody can say that will directly conjure up a belief in God in your head, at least not a strong belief. You may be argued into a position where you are forced to concede “Yes, well, I suppose there might be a God”, but that’s not belief, exactly. More likely, a person will start to consider belief in God because;
1.) They have some experience in their lives that makes them feel like 'Someone is watching out for me or ‘Someone up there wants me to do something with my life’.
2.) They are surrounded by intellgient, respectable people who believe in God, and find it hard to believe that they are all delusional.
Ultimately, it has to be personal- if you believe in God, you’ll believe like you believe in your feet or in Mars. That’s where religion come in to play.
I would examine the situation, and decide if rationality leaves room for their to be a God. Does philosophy make God (im)possible? What you decide will determine what you ought to do next.

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belief in rationality is not rational either…

-Imp

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Simply choosing to believe something can be problematic- sometimes easy, sometimes not so. For example, a young boy might learn that all of his friends and the cool crowd likes rap music; wishing to blend in among the flock, he determines that he too will like rap. Given his youth and clean slate as far as musical knowledge and experience, it may be quite easy to do. Faith healing, for example, may lie at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Given sufficiently compelling reasons to do so, I could make an attempt to believe in God, but given my peculiarities it would be difficult if not flatly impossible to succeed. Belief in God, while not irrational, certainly doesn’t come as the inevitable conclusion of any rational process. That is to say, it exists outside of any logical reasons.

So my curiousity prompts me to inquire again of The Thirsty One as to just what philosophical zinger was compelling enough to get him thinking of reversing his field.

Ultimately, if I ever abandoned my current, rational outlook and dove into the deep end of religious nuttiness, it would likely be the result of discovering I had a terminal disease or something like that. Perhaps mounting evidence of my mortality and lengthening shadows will one day compell me to attempt to choke the Kool-Aid down. One can never say never…

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I will consider a belief in god the day I see a convincing argument or evidence that such a thing might actually exist.
To this point I haven’t, and not from a lack of research!
In my mind the idea remains silly at best.

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Hi thirst4metal,

I am in the same boat as you. I’ve been “Agnostic” since I was a preteen it seems and when I began getting involved in philosophy, I started becoming more of an Atheist and thinking the philosophy and rational thinking provided me with proof that religion is all just made up. So I started reading the Bible and the Qur’an in order to strengthen my argument against faith, but when I actually read these two books and used my own interpretations, a lot of answers that religious people never could provide for me before I was able to answer. All philosophy has done is actually put me back on the fence about religion and God’s existence instead of making me completely Atheist.

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What questions are those, Lazybird? I’m curious. It seems to me that studying religions only reveals more contradictions. That said, religion utterly fascinates me, even though I don’t believe a word of it.

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Hi T4m

Why struggle? We can say we believe or do not believe but really it means very little since experience is lacking. Could we just be open to the question without worrying about believing or disbelieving but just admitting that we do not know? Then the question becomes if we want to feel meaning beyond the conception of our self importance? If we do, then how can we drop our preconceptions and become open to experience that which is beyond them? The real struggle then is how to become open

This is why I like God described as “meaning” since it is relative and we can get a glimpse of a scale of meaning. Our God becomes relative. The term “meaning” cannot offend simply because it is hard to find someone in whom nothing has any meaning whatsoever even if it is only the denial of meaning and the feeling of purpose through rejection. When we can let our defenses down long enough to become open to the relativity of meaning, it can lead to a greater experience of objective meaning beyond our normal conditioned subjective responses. Then it is not a matter of believing but of knowledge similar to knowledge of fire being hot. Its not belief but experiential knowledge. If we come to experience meaning higher than the normal experience of ourselves, how can we become able to remain open and build on the experience without concern for belief or disbelief?

I’ve always liked the following description of God as “meaning”

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Hi T4M,

I struggle with belief in God as well. Years ago I explained my lack of faith to the headmaster of my Christian high school (as he was presenting me the school’s highest award no less). He told me that I was concentrating on the details too much, and that I should first consider the “big” questions about God. He didn’t explain to me what the big questions were, so this is my list so far:

  1. Did something create the world?
  2. Is that something like human beings?
  3. Does that something love human beings?
  4. Has he revealed himself to human beings?

I believe the answer is “yes” to the first three questions – but I am not so sure about the fourth.

I think it’s so amazing that people can understand the world and live in it. There’s this great big scary existence, and it humbles itself such that these ignorant, weak creatures can subsist and even thrive in it. That is so amazing that I think it demands an explanation along the lines of a personal creator God.

To put it another way: we are allowed an opportunity to pursue happiness on this earth. This opportunity is given to us freely. It makes the most sense to me if somebody made the world and cared enough for us to give us that opportunity.

Of course it’s logically possible that I’m wrong, and there simply is no explanation for this amazing fact. But it’s also possible that this floor will cave in and I will die. By this I mean that I can’t consider every possibility; practically, I have to go with my feelings about things, and my feelings tell me that something did make this amazing world so we could be happy in it. That just makes a lot more sense.

As for the revelation part I’m not so clear. It seems to me like a god who loved us would reveal himself to us so that we could love him back. But there’s so much weird scary stuff in the revealed religions (genocide in particular seems popular) that I find it hard to believe any of these religions is really from god. So maybe god reveals himself to each individual or something. But on the other hand man is social, and I think god should account for that by giving a public revelation. And the public revelations I’ve seen don’t seem to be from god.

Maybe god has a decent reason for not revealing himself and we shouldn’t worry ourselves too much about it.

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The reason seems obvious to me… :unamused:

Sorry- couldn’t resist! :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hello F(r)iends,

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I have changed my mind… But to answer your question there is no one argument that produced such an effect; in fact, more than anything, the posts inspired ideas/notions about god that were more favorable to allowing god’s existence… though I am far from concluding in any direction.

I was somewhat concerned that someone would think about this but your joke triggered a thought: do a lot of agnostics/atheists feel compelled to build (even unconsciously build) defenses to prevent the entertainment of certain ideas? Which leads me to…

Uccisore’s argument reminded me of something that also produced an odd effect: Dr. Satanical’s posts have influenced my recent revaluations… no, clearly not about god… however, Dr. S. once discussed Free Will with me; he made some pretty compelling arguments… though in the end I rejected them perhaps because I just can’t conceive of the lack of free will. Thus, Uccisore’s post is very accurate. Admittedly, Dr. S’ arguments left an impression and once I started reading all of the recent threads (that damn Dunamis) on free will I have started to doubt it as well. Again, I am far from concluding in any direction…

Phaedrus, stick with me while I try to explain something…

Well, to make it clear, I am not convinced god exists yet… though I am closer (maybe on the cusp). Perhaps I am struggling with accepting purely rational argument… perhaps I am looking for more reason to confirm my tendency to reject god. Or perhaps, much like with free will, I am simply reconsidering the once “infallible” arguments for its existence. In other words, from my standpoint, god’s existence has seemed so foolish that any plausibility that leaves room for god has been rejected outright.

Nick, changing the definition of god to “meaning” doesn’t really solve my problem… Your quote pretty much states that “if you say there is no God you are saying that there is no meaning in things.” Doesn’t this simply create the same problem on god’s existence? Is there meaning? Does god exist? My previous answer would have been a quick: “No, and No.”

An interesting thought I have recently been contemplating: If god gave mankind free will, then there should be no direction; consequently, no organized religion.

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God exist only as a word, a word that needs our lives to exist.We in the other hand, do not need that word to live.What is behind that word is a Illusion
because it can not be explained or prooven.Books of Old testament are
Prophecies, metaphores.They are 100 % truth only for those that can feel the truth.Everyone else can just believe how those stories actualy happened.
Man was created from dirt, and life was BLOWn into his NOSTRILS by “God”.
That is a Belief in every “organized religion”, there is only 1800 different "organizations ", who like to Call themself Christians.
All books of old testament are Prophecies, which means,their truth is placed in the Future, not Past. Time does not exist, just like sense in fact that everything that lives must die.Born in one day,live one day,and die in one day.And thanks to truth that time does not exist, we are reliving same day over and over.Only because earth is spinning, we have day, night, seasons
and life and death, just like any other organism, as part of Nature.
Six days, six thousand years, six billion years, six infinities, who cares.
According to Moses and Genesis,Creation of that Eternal first man (adam)is not sixt day but six thousand years after man was created it happened again, deja vu, because time does not exist, I can almost feel it, it was comming in the air that night when Men got something BLOWn in
His NOSE,and He started Feeling truth and true love, that gave him life.
Because time does not exist Genesis is just what happened after Revelation.
That’s bible for those who know there is only One Life.

          much life !
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Hi T4m

Thirst, this is why it is written in the Bible that we must begin to see as little children. This is not some cutsey pooh expression but relates to the desire to be open without preconception.

Meaning is something we can only verify emotionally. We either feel it or we don’t. By equating it with a preconception of God it is easy to give a quick “No”. But this is an intellectual decision based upon preconception. I know from reading your account of personal loss as a result of that horrible accident that you are sensitive to meaning and do not deny it since something very meaningful was lost which you deeply felt.

Arguing meaning from the intellectual becomes non productive because meaning is an emotional experience that can only be translated into intellectual thought and unfortunately, during that process of transformation, is very open to self deception that justifies what we seek to hide having become accustomed to the idea that it is too painful to experience.

I’m convinced this is why AA has become helpful for addiction in ways modern psychology cannot comprehend. It helps a person to hit bottom and surrender the need to protect and justify a psychological wound. This “opening” allows a quality of help, of real “feeling”, to enter into the psych replacing the surrendered negative emotions revealing a new sense of “meaning” taking the place of the addiction.

All these misconceptions of old gods with white beards and dogmatic right and wrong replacing the natural psychological urge for understanding has created something very natural to deny. But denial is one thing and being able to become open to verify our existence, to know ourselves and our relationship to the universe, requires becoming open to its experience.

I may be wrong but I believe that that the initial warm approach of pondering meaning free of preconception is more attractive towards becoming open then trying to shove God down people’s throats.

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thirst4metal

 I think ultimately, a tendency to reject the existence of God (with the strength that you describe elsewhere in this post of yours) [i]is[/i] based on something other than rationality, so you already know what it's like to believe something with a starting point other than reason. As far as I can tell, human reason has left the door open for either atheism or theism, depending on other circumstances in a person's life.
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I have to disagree, Uccisore- normally a vociferus repudiation of the possibility of God is based soley on logic and reason, and a lack of any positive evidence of its existance.

As for the rest, I can only guess at the motivations of others- I have enough trouble keeping track of my own. :wink:

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 They certainly [i]attempt[/i] to be, and I would argue that they all fail.  You know an argument against the possibility of the existence of God that  succeeds?
  As to the lack of evidence, that's exactly the kind of extra-rational belief that I'm talking about.  A person who is believing on the basis of something other than reason (say, because something miraculous happened to them) has [i]their[/i] evidence. I agree that the person who has no evidence will be left as an atheist in all likelihood- but only because the only thing they have left to rely on is reason, which is insuffecient to answer the question "Is there a God?".  A person with no evidence at all, shouldn't have asked the question in the first place.
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Thirst,

What ever you do, don’t go dualist.

Existence is immanent but also contingent, it is everything that is, and might be, and it is not for anything…it has no purpose. God is no longer a transcendent possibility, because to be a God a God must exist, and anything that exists is immanent, or has the characteristic ‘existing.’ In other words, there is no meta-existence and all phenomena must exist or it is nothing, or some other kind of existence.

To suppose a transcendent God is troublesome as it requires a positing of the Noumenal. There would have to be a different ontological category for Existence. This means that the experience, as well as the thinking, of/about this world could never produce a reasonable concept of “God,” as God would be the Noumenal, and our experience is of the Phenomena. It would essentially be the reverse of what its idea entailed, or, anything to be thought of existing would be considered a phenomena, and God is not a phenomena. So the noumenal is the positing of Nothing; that which does not exist. Any thing that transcended existence was some other kind of existence, or couldn’t be concieved of except as a negative.

Absence and presence are the only dichotomous relationships that exist for our experience. God as a Noumenal can not have a presence unless it is immanent, but then it wouldn’t be existing if it were noumenal.

The dichotomy of absence and presence has its origins in the Law of the Excluded Middle. “Truth” had a value of either “Is” or “Is not” in logic, and with this the thesis/antithesis was invented. The Law of Identity determined the state of a phenomena categorically by applying the Law of the Excluded middle, from here, the dichotomy between Objective and Subjective was invented. The binary value of a state is given an identity by designating a title, or subject to it. An object or states identity value is the product of these two laws in unison.

  1. Something Is or Is not [insert exclusion].
  2. If it is, it is [insert identity].

What do these two laws ignore all together? Becomming and duration. We have invented the concepts of creation and destruction, or “states” as a consequence of our two laws. These new ideations produce the concept of Immanence/Transcendence and with it, God. Being present to an existing thing meant that it was immanent. Being absent to an existing thing meant that it was transcendent.

Yep, its that easy.

The concept of creation is applied to space and time itself, and reasoning lead to the belief in God; what was before existence and what will be after existence. This is why existence is considered the phenomena, what exists, and cause is considered the Noumenal, or God, what is before and after existence. By reasoning that existence had to start, several implications are made and a new ontological category is needed, the intial cause or ‘that which exists beyond time and space’ is the realm of the noumenal, needed to mark beginnings and endings, needed to establish identities, also subjects and objects.

What is missed entirely here is the immanent change of Existence itself; Identity is a falsification and there is no creation or destruction, cause or effect, to begin with. Without the notion of these laws there would be no reason to divide the subject from the object, or place upon a state some beginning or end. What “Is” is immanent. God is everything at any time, or nothing at all.

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If we look at PoR’s god, he’s alot like the Kool-Aid Man… big (all powerful), crystal clear (perfect), giant smile (full of love), huge eyes (all seeing), etc.

…but when you observe what’s inside the container, all you find is cherry flavored sugar water (sugared-up bullshit).