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Do you think there is a God or What makes you think there is?

Why just one? Look around in this world. How many believes and paradigms do you find?
And regarding the question what make sone believe there is a god around (whatever you specifically mean with the term "god"). Just look around again! (and no, this is no advice for believing in intelligent design...)

Ramscha

I believe in God. My belief comes from my observations of reality. God is everywhere you lay your eyes.

Then man said "Let us make God in our own image, after our own likeness: and we shall give him have dominion over the heavens and the earth, and over every living thing that lives within the universe."

Gods are parental authority figures that were first imagined by early man as a means of coping with his anxieties about living in a frightening, dangerous world that he was not fully able to comprehend, causing him to long for the security that his parents provided for him as a child.

"When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things."

George Carlin provides some valuable insight into this question:

Here's the thing - I'm beginning to think God(s) is completely real by observing things a bit backwards. Let me try to clarify this.

What is real? It is how we experience the world around us by our senses, right? For example, if I can take a rock in my hands, smell it, taste it, see it - it is real. If a person next to me says 'look here's a rock' and I can't see it, taste it, hear it etc. - then it's not real. I believe we can all agree with this.

Now, problem begins with emotions and ideas which are not physical, we can't experience it via our senses nor we can repeat thought process in laboratory for scientific purposes. Yet ideas exist. Emotions exist. And furthermore - the whole concepts of ideas exists as well.

Take for example money, with which we're all very familiar with. You have $10 and you want to buy a burger. You grab a bill - a representation of a value of a burger - and buy it. Now, here's the interesting bit - if the guy who is offered money takes it, it is only because he believes in the value of that money as you are. It is not because money has real value. To make myself more clear, imagine giving that money to Bushman, or old Aborigine or anyone in this world who doesn't use the concept of money. Our money suddenly becomes worthless. In insane situation where I end on a desert island with million dollars money is completely worthless. Because it is human currency.

Money has value only if another human believes in it. The same principal goes for economy, politics, religion - any idea concept that is invisible and requires other humans in order to work, in order to become real.

Now, let's take God and let's take a believer - someone who believes in God because it feels something. Our believer prays and thus feels stronger. He feels emotional fulfillment. He feels connected, hopeful and with each prayer grows into a better person. In other words - he believes in God not because of reason, but because of emotions.

Let's put our true believer on an desert island. God is still with him. With Bushmans, Aborigins, in the alien prison, wherever - God is real because our believer feels emotions, and emotions are real. They are not propelled by believing in unicorn but by a very specific entity our believer believes in.
Someone on this forum wrote that true magick is something that manifests itself in material world. I completely agree with this. If our believer is sad because he's on a dessert island and he prays to God and then he feel better, relieved, hopeful, then it all points out to the fact God is real - or the idea of God at least.

This may sound like a straw man argument - not all people believe because of what they feel inside, lot of them are trying to believe rather than believing, kids are forced to and so on. There is, most certainly, a lot of stuff to clean around this. But what I'm trying to say, essentially, is this:

Whatever makes you feel emotions or can induct change of your consciousness or state of mind, is real.

Occum's razor.....

Which is the simplest and therefore the most likely explanation?:

A. a supernatural, all-powerful, all-knowing, non-physical, conscious enitity "God" created the entire universe and everything that lives and exists within it - despite the fact that there was no one and nothing around before God to create God.

or:

B. humans just thought up the concept of an imaginary invisible parental authority figure in the form of God as a way of coping with their emotional and psychological anxiety about living in an uncertain and unpredictable world.

Ušušur wrote:
Whatever makes you feel emotions or can induct change of your consciousness or state of mind, is real.

I disagree.

Delusions make people feel emotions, but that does not mean that the imaginary subject of those delusions (be it God, the devil, ghosts, elves, pixies, trolls, ogres, leprechauns, UFOs, aliens, loch Ness Monsters, Bigfoots, or what have you) is real. The subject of delusions can be (and often is) entirely imaginary, and yet the belief in these non-existent things can terrify, bewilder, or cause people to feel elated, depending entirely how they think about them.

Thoughts are just thoughts, they do not exist outside our own imaginations.

What is real exists entirely independent of our own awareness of (or our thoughts about) it.

God fails to exist independent of the human imagination, therefore God fails the reality test.

God is a substance, not an entity

The only reason we perceive it as singular is because it has to take on singular forms in order to be known.

Force into Form.

How can the question of GOD not be an interesting topic!?

I've found that, of course, every description of God is personal. How could it not be?

I've assumed from observation, that most peoples description of God is... a glorified version of themselves. Stop. I know how bad that sounds, but the arguement is sound in that many see God as the Holiest version of themselves they could imagine. It makes sense, and not only is there nothing wrong with that,... it is as it should be.

The process of seeing God in different forms is like seeing a progression in the cards of tarot, and with milestones and initiations throughout our lives.

One in front of the line should not poke at one toward the end, for he was just there. Know your place and where you've been

corvidus wrote:God is a substance, not an entity

The only reason we perceive it as singular is because it has to take on singular forms in order to be known.

Force into Form.

How very dependent upon the imaginations of us humans God is for a supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing, entity.

manofsands wrote:How can the question of GOD not be an interesting topic!?

I've found that, of course, every description of God is personal. How could it not be?

I've assumed from observation, that most peoples description of God is... a glorified version of themselves. Stop. I know how bad that sounds, but the arguement is sound in that many see God as the Holiest version of themselves they could imagine. It makes sense, and not only is there nothing wrong with that,... it is as it should be.

The process of seeing God in different forms is like seeing a progression in the cards of tarot, and with milestones and initiations throughout our lives.

One in front of the line should not poke at one toward the end, for he was just there. Know your place and where you've been

It is good though for those who have stumbled through the darkness and have seen a way out to alert others of their discovery and encourage them to extricate themselves from the darkness that they are lost in.

Absolutely and without doubt.

As an Atheist I wonder what makes you believe there is a God? For Those who believe in God, What makes you think there is a God? What experiances or observation makes you think there is?

Atzmuth wrote:As an Atheist I wonder what makes you believe there is a God? For Those who believe in God, What makes you think there is a God? What experiances or observation makes you think there is?

Having been born into a very devoutly religious (Protestant) family almost half a century ago, I grew up being taught that the God of Israel (Yahweh) was "God" and that the Jew Jesus was God incarnate as his "only begotten son".

I believed because I was taught to believe out of fear that if I didn't believe, that I would suffer eternal torment and never-ending agony by burning forever in the everlasting flames of hell, and the only hope that I had of trying to escape that fate was to believe in this god who would punish me with the most agonizing, excruciating torment imaginable if I failed to believe.

Eventually at about the age of 14, I figured out that when a person dies, their nervous system no longer functions and they are no longer able to feel pain or experience any thoughts or sensations at all, so the threat of one's soul (which has no physical body and thus cannot experience physical pain) being tormented by fire in some subterranean torture-chamber, suddenly lost its sting, and once I got beyond that threat figuring out that all the rest of the God stuff was a bunch of ignorant nonsense just came naturally.

This was around the time that I discovered that my ancestors (who came from the British Isles) once had their own native religion led by Druids and had many interesting gods and goddesses who were part of the same ethnic culture that I belonged to, unlike the Biblical characters who were all a bunch of swarthy, Levantine, Semitic, desert camel-herders, who I didn't like the looks of and who belonged to an entirely different race and culture from myself (something I had been aware of (and put off by) since earliest childhood from looking at images of Hebrews in paintings of scenes from the Bible, all of whom appeared noticeably more primitive and less advanced than the culture that I belonged to, with their gowns and turbans, herding their goats and sheep, and living in ugly houses made of mud-bricks in a barren, treeless, uninspiring landscape that is no different from the Middle East that we see today.

Atzmuth wrote:Do you think there is a God or What makes you think there is?

We need to come up with a few definitions here unless we simply want to preach to each other.

manonthepath wrote:

Atzmuth wrote:Do you think there is a God or What makes you think there is?

We need to come up with a few definitions here unless we simply want to preach to each other.

Being an all-powerful, all-knowing, non-physical, conscious entity, capable of having eternally existed in the void of outer space without a creator to have created him/her/it, seems pretty much par for the course of godhood.

Anything less seems kinda second-rate and not very god-like.

corvidus wrote:God is a substance, not an entity

The only reason we perceive it as singular is because it has to take on singular forms in order to be known.

Force into Form.

manofsands wrote: I've found that, of course, every description of God is personal. How could it not be?

I've assumed from observation, that most peoples description of God is... a glorified version of themselves. Stop. I know how bad that sounds, but the arguement is sound in that many see God as the Holiest version of themselves they could imagine. It makes sense, and not only is there nothing wrong with that,... it is as it should be.

This. This avoids all the problems connected with God. It is a substance, a force.

Right and wrong are it's characteristics, there is no dispute in God being above it - he wouldn't be a God in any other case. To think about god in any terms it to put him in boxes, to limit his nature, and only term that would be close approximation about the nature of God is "all" and "everything".

That is the holy nature - oneness. To be one with everything is to tap into the Divine. Unity is Divinity.

EternalReturn wrote:

corvidus wrote:God is a substance, not an entity

The only reason we perceive it as singular is because it has to take on singular forms in order to be known.

Force into Form.

manofsands wrote: I've found that, of course, every description of God is personal. How could it not be?

I've assumed from observation, that most peoples description of God is... a glorified version of themselves. Stop. I know how bad that sounds, but the arguement is sound in that many see God as the Holiest version of themselves they could imagine. It makes sense, and not only is there nothing wrong with that,... it is as it should be.

This. This avoids all the problems connected with God. It is a substance, a force.

Right and wrong are it's characteristics, there is no dispute in God being above it - he wouldn't be a God in any other case. To think about god in any terms it to put him in boxes, to limit his nature, and only term that would be close approximation about the nature of God is "all" and "everything".

That is the holy nature - oneness. To be one with everything is to tap into the Divine. Unity is Divinity.

But all of this begs the question of Epicurus riddle:



Which brings to mind a statement attributed to Seneca:

Master Baphomet wrote:It is good though for those who have stumbled through the darkness and have seen a way out to alert others of their discovery and encourage them to extricate themselves from the darkness that they are lost in.

It's funny that we could copy/paste this statement into the mouth of an Evangelistic Christian and it wouldn't sound out of place.

It IS a good intention. And anyone moved to help others should most certainly do so. But are you sure that is what you're here for?



You've shared with us you have Asperger syndrome. And not trying to pigeonhole you or anyone with AS, it is telling in your beliefs and how you come across to others.

You can come across like a Bull in a China shop... and I wonder if AS is a lesson for you, or just other peoples problem? If AS is a lesson you'll find a collection of very tolerant people here, if they don't feel under attack. If it's other peoples problem then you're probably just gonna getting booted. And maybe you don't care and you are fine without the forum. But you have a lot to offer,.. and if you could just chill a bit [happy2] you might also find community.

I'm afraid not ,manofsands, he's gone and is not welcome to return.

If you want to know more please drop me a pm and I'll be glad to show you why.

93,

I wouldn't say I believe in God, no. The idea of god and gods, certainly. While I find it perfectly plausible that there's some underlying, "divine" aspect to reality (or whatever you desire to call it), I see no reason to believe in most claims of theistic or polytheistic deities, whereas most mystical deities or forces also are generally explainable and not evidence of any objective value. I believe the spiritual comes from the physical and gods come from the mind. However, they still have quite a bit of power even only as symbols.

Dictionary.com

per-son-i-fi-ca-tion
[per-son-uh-fi-key-shuh n]
noun
1. the attribution of human nature or character to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract notions, especially as a rhetorical figure.
4. an imaginary person or creature conceived or figured to represent a thing or abstraction.
5. the act of attributing human qualities to an animal, object, or abstraction; the act of personifying

I see God as All. And that's about it. All of reality and imagination could be seen as Gods body. The laws of the universe, the systems of Gods body. I've known aitheist who have agreed with this kind of view, they just have no reason to follow it. Many deeply religious people I have known could agree with this view, but they also have other attributes they would like to add to the definition.

So I've come to see one of the 'problems' with defining God is personification... or the degree in which one personifies God and attributes associated, for there is, as in all things, a gradient.

There IS usually a parental reflection in personified God beliefs, but that only makes sense. And there are projections of the self. Even within the same congregation views of God vary, and usually in sync with each persons personality.

I prefer minimilist machinery God. God is All, God is the laws of the universe. Why does there have to be a God in this at all? There doesn't, but it fits better with the rest of my beliefs which extend into reincarnation and spiritual evolution.

Master Baphomet wrote:

manonthepath wrote:

Atzmuth wrote:Do you think there is a God or What makes you think there is?

We need to come up with a few definitions here unless we simply want to preach to each other.

Being an all-powerful, all-knowing, non-physical, conscious entity, capable of having eternally existed in the void of outer space without a creator to have created him/her/it, seems pretty much par for the course of godhood.

Anything less seems kinda second-rate and not very god-like.

Whatever gets you through the night man....whatever gets you through the night.
[pray]

I believe in a Creator God, the Grand Architect (as the freemasons put it), certainly. I don't claim to understand it's true purpose but IMO, this is the best explanation there is so far to answer the big ''Why'' concerning the Universe and our place in it. The Western Mystery Tradition is also Theistic in nature, with systems such as Hermeticism, Kabbalah, Alchemy, Spiritism ect. That should count for something. [thumbup]