How do you convince people god exists?

Nobelium

jobeenfitz wrote: »

Maybe god had a mental breakdown? If I was responsible for the human race I might feck off to another universe n pretend it wasn't me. So mental breakdown or just had enough of yee Cu***.

Well as far as I recall genesis does say God regretted making man . . .must have foresaw all the whining on social media, boards.ie, realty tv and the kardashians I reckon.

uck51js9zml2yt

Peatys wrote: »

Childhood cancer is all i need to know about your god

Why blame someone you don't believe exists? Sounds a very irrational argument.
You need to blame evolution since you believe in it.

uck51js9zml2yt

smacl wrote: »

You'd think an omnipotent deity might've just said 'shush!' in that case rather than resorting to genocide. Not so much a vengeful God as a grumpy all powerful psychopath. And the Christians are afraid of the Devil, makes you wonder whether they've backed the right horse there?

What makes you think we're afraid of a created being?

Nobelium

smacl wrote: »

And the Christians are afraid of the Devil, makes you wonder whether they've backed the right horse there?

Didn't have down as one of them Satanist dudes. Makes about as much sense as getting working up about one Leprechaun being better than another.

smacl

Santino Ancient Disk wrote: »

What makes you think we're afraid of a created being?

A rather large part of the horror genre serving a Christian audience seems to rely on devils, demons and such like as the scary bad guy. Then you've got more vocal Christian types telling all and sundry that they're going to burn in he'll, which I gather is the devils domain. Are you suggesting that Christians by are indifferent to the devil?

uck51js9zml2yt

smacl wrote: »

A rather large part of the horror genre serving a Christian audience seems to rely on devils, demons and such like as the scary bad guy. Then you've got more vocal Christian types telling all and sundry that they're going to burn in he'll, which I gather is the devils domain. Are you suggesting that Christians by are indifferent to the devil?

Never suggested that at all. But then much of what claims to be Christianity isnt even close to the real thing.

smacl

smacl wrote: »

Santino Ancient Disk wrote: »

What makes you think we're afraid of a created being?

A rather large part of the horror genre serving a Christian audience seems to rely on devils, demons and such like as the scary bad guy. Then you've got more vocal Christian types telling all and sundry that they're going to burn in he'll, which I gather is the devils domain. Are you suggesting that Christians by are indifferent to the devil?

Why do you think that is?..they seem to be way more prevalent of late too, when like, no right thinking person should believe in that sort of carry on anymore..

Here we go

Not super religious but you don't your not supposed to it's an act of faith I belive in something not sure it's the Bible version or a god who created everything all knowing omnipotent and omnipresent would care if we worship or not or would leave the church as it's envoys you either belive or you don't and you shouldn't need to be convinced if you do do you really belive or you just belive the argument to belive

smacl

Nobelium wrote: »

Didn't have down as one of them Satanist dudes. Makes about as much sense as getting working up about one Leprechaun being better than another.

God, Satan, Thor, Kali. One mythology is as believable as the next, which for me is not at all. That said, never had a school teacher tell my kids that Thor or Kali exist and are due respect.

To converse with someone who in all honesty claims belief in a deity, you need to take their belief at face value if not the belief itself. You can't engage without that. It is also worth remembering that very many people hold such beliefs. They also act on those beliefs, often to the detriment of those that do not share the beliefs. Saying it is all a load of bull is fine and dandy but there invariably comes a time where you have to explain why it is bull, notably when they're using their beliefs to excuse the inexcusable. At that point, you need to be able engage.

I honestly don't care what anyone believes until such time they tell me what to believe, at which point I'll give them my honest appraisal of what I think of their belief system.

wiggle16

smacl wrote: »

You'd think an omnipotent deity might've just said 'shush!' in that case rather than resorting to genocide. Not so much a vengeful God as a grumpy all powerful psychopath. And the Christians are afraid of the Devil, makes you wonder whether they've backed the right horse there?

The Devil gave man free will, and receives all of God's fallen children with open arms. Two concepts that the various churches and most religions find distasteful, leaving little doubt as to why people are taught that the Devil is bad and to be feared and despised

I don't believe in anything myself, but I have no problem with the idea of an impersonal prime-mover. The idea that the universe was created by an intelligence which is not concerned by human affairs is no more or less likely than any other explanation and if there were evidence for that, then fine, I could be a deist. It doesn't answer anything though, it just becomes yet another contingency to explain, and so it's not useful as a supposition.

The idea of a theistic God is a terrifying idea, as is the concept that a God who designed a world with so much needless, limitless suffering should be thanked and worshipped and praised, cares about you, and intervenes in your life. In spite of the total absence of evidence, the logical contradictions and the intellectual somersaults needed in order to contrive him, people still believe in a personal God. Not only that, but a foolish one, a God susceptible to prayer.

So I don't think the question should be how do you convince people God exists, but instead how is it that people take so little convincing?

kneemos

wiggle16 wrote: »

The Devil gave man free will, and receives all of God's fallen children with open arms. Two concepts that the various churches and most religions find distasteful, leaving little doubt as to why people are taught that the Devil is bad and to be feared and despised

I don't believe in anything myself, but I have no problem with the idea of an impersonal prime-mover. The idea that the universe was created by an intelligence which is not concerned by human affairs is no more or less likely than any other explanation and if there were evidence for that, then fine, I could be a deist. It doesn't answer anything though, it just becomes yet another contingency to explain, and so it's not useful as a supposition.

The idea of a theistic God is a terrifying idea, as is the concept that a God who designed a world with so much needless, limitless suffering should be thanked and worshipped and praised, cares about you, and intervenes in your life. In spite of the total absence of evidence, the logical contradictions and the intellectual somersaults needed in order to contrive him, people still believe in a personal God. Not only that, but a foolish one, a God susceptible to prayer.

So I don't think the question should be how do you convince people God exists, but instead how is it that people take so little convincing?

Quite a bit if not most of the suffering is caused or inflicted by ourselves.
If you want freewill and experience the full range of emotions you're going to have suffering.

igCorcaigh

kneemos wrote: »

Quite a bit if not most of the suffering is caused or inflicted by ourselves.
If you want freewill and experience the full range of emotions you're going to have suffering.

It's the price to pay for consciousness to exist, and it's debatable whether it's worth the price.

wiggle16

kneemos wrote: »

Quite a bit if not most of the suffering is caused or inflicted by ourselves.

Quite a bit, yep. So what about the suffering caused by natural disasters, disease, famines, accidents, the suffering endured by anyone who loses a child, the suffering we experience as people we love get old and sick and die, and the suffering wrought by aging and dying itself?

What do we do with the stuff God is responsible for?

If you want freewill and experience the full range of emotions you're going to have suffering.

I didn't conflate free will with suffering. I have my free will and I suffer like everyone else. But I don't suffer because I have free will. Not seeing the relationship between the two things, even in terms of theodicy.

igCorcaigh

wiggle16 wrote: »

I didn't conflate free will with suffering. I have my free will and I suffer like everyone else. But I don't suffer because I have free will. Not seeing the relationship between the two things, even in terms of theodicy.

I don't see free will falling into that line of argument either, but it does come into discussion though.

Weren't the Christians very divided about this? Calvin etc.

robindch

Here we go wrote: »

Not super religious but you don't your not supposed to it's an act of faith [...]

Yes, religious people do call it an "act of faith" or a "leap of faith", as though one were all the more noble for believing something without evidence.

If the same "act of faith" logic applied elsewhere, would it similarly noble to believe, also without evidence, that your neighbour killed your dog or your spouse were sleeping with your sibling?

smacl

Santino Ancient Disk wrote: »

Never suggested that at all. But then much of what claims to be Christianity isnt even close to the real thing.

One Christian or group of Christians suggesting that other Christians with a different take on Christianity aren't really Christians seems to be a recurring them here, in the Christianity forum and further afield. If one were to believe all such claims there would be no 'real' Christians.

wiggle16

igCorcaigh wrote: »

I don't see free will falling into that line of argument either, but it does come into discussion though.

Weren't the Christians very divided about this? Calvin etc.

Still are. You kind of have to be preoccupied with this, the problem of evil, if you want to think about God in any serious way.

What's fascinating is how many hairs can be split over the one idea or issue. On the one hand, you have the various solutions to the problem of evil, which try to show how the fact that there is evil in the world is still consistent with the existence of God.
On the other hand, you have theodicy, which tries to show how the fact that there is evil in the world makes the existence of a GOD plausible or even more likely.

Commonly Calvin is misconstrued as not believing that people have free will - he did, but he differenciated two kinds of free will. One which was base, which was the free will all people are born with, and Calvin believed that under this form of free will, people will always in variably choose to sin.
The other was a kind of enlightened free will where people would have the freedom "to live as they ought".
Neither of these actually sounds like free will at all and so I wonder if Calvin had failed to define his terms.

Calvin did believe in predestination, which is also misunderstood as denying free will. It doesn't, but the fact that it was necessary for intolerant pedants like Calvin to invent convoluted pseudo-solutions to problems with christian doctrine, such as predestination, also makes one wonder why people want to be convinced of the existence of a theistic God in the first place.

Nobelium

smacl wrote: »

God, Satan, Thor, Kali. One mythology is as believable as the next, which for me is not at all. That said, never had a school teacher tell my kids that Thor or Kali exist and are due respect.

To converse with someone who in all honesty claims belief in a deity, you need to take their belief at face value if not the belief itself. You can't engage without that. It is also worth remembering that very many people hold such beliefs. They also act on those beliefs, often to the detriment of those that do not share the beliefs. Saying it is all a load of bull is fine and dandy but there invariably comes a time where you have to explain why it is bull, notably when they're using their beliefs to excuse the inexcusable. At that point, you need to be able engage.

I honestly don't care what anyone believes until such time they tell me what to believe, at which point I'll give them my honest appraisal of what I think of their belief system.

Nah man, I ain't going down the route wasting my life and time discussing and becoming obsessed with Leprechauns and those who believe in them. You just become the other side of the same coin. I'm more interested in what i'm doing rather that what others are doing, and if you think it's only Leprechauns, that's just the medium, they'll find some other ism from communism to socialism to capitalism to adopt and oppress others with using whatever current political correctness of the time and place is most advantageous. Twas always so, and will forever be.

igCorcaigh

wiggle16 wrote: »

Still are. You kind of have to be preoccupied with this, the problem of evil, if you want to think about God in any serious way.

What's fascinating is how many hairs can be split over the one idea or issue. On the one hand, you have the various solutions to the problem of evil, which try to show how the fact that there is evil in the world is still consistent with the existence of God.
On the other hand, you have theodicy, which tries to show how the fact that there is evil in the world makes the existence of a GOD plausible or even more likely.

Commonly Calvin is misconstrued as not believing that people have free will - he did, but he differenciated two kinds of free will. One which was base, which was the free will all people are born with, and Calvin believed that under this form of free will, people will always in variably choose to sin.
The other was a kind of enlightened free will where people would have the freedom "to live as they ought".
Neither of these actually sounds like free will at all and so I wonder if Calvin had failed to define his terms.

Calvin did believe in predestination, which is also misunderstood as denying free will. It doesn't, but the fact that it was necessary for intolerant pedants like Calvin to invent convoluted pseudo-solutions to problems with christian doctrine, such as predestination, also makes one wonder why people want to be convinced of the existence of a theistic God in the first place.

Thank you.
And exactly your point.

Some of the convolutions he struggled with are very much with us today in regard of the recent debates about free will, all theology aside.

At the same time, if some of the modern arguments do diminish free will to such ab extent, then I think it does challenge the very idea of a Christian god, I think.

But I'm proposing that the modern crisis of free well actually supports the pantheism I mentioned earlier.

igCorcaigh

Nobelium wrote: »

Nah man, I ain't going down the route wasting my life and time discussing and becoming obsessed with Leprechauns and those who believe in them. You just become the other side of the same coin. I'm more interested in what i'm doing rather that what others are doing, and if you think it's only Leprechauns, that's just the medium, they'll find some other ism from communism to socialism to capitalism to adopt and oppress others with using whatever current political correctness of the time and place is most advantageous. Twas always so, and will forever be.

Yeah, I actually don't believe in belief.
It's the only belief I have.

I can consider things, value things, feel very passionate about things, but I don't believe in anything. I have a problem with the word itself.

It's a language problem perhaps.
But it's just not a word I use in my vocabulary.

kneemos

wiggle16 wrote: »

Quite a bit, yep. So what about the suffering caused by natural disasters, disease, famines, accidents, the suffering endured by anyone who loses a child, the suffering we experience as people we love get old and sick and die, and the suffering wrought by aging and dying itself?

What do we do with the stuff God is responsible for?



I didn't conflate free will with suffering. I have my free will and I suffer like everyone else. But I don't suffer because I have free will. Not seeing the relationship between the two things, even in terms of theodicy.

People suffer because freewill exists.

wiggle16

kneemos wrote: »

People suffer because freewill exists.

Can you elaborate as to how and why?

kneemos

wiggle16 wrote: »

Can you elaborate as to how and why?

Someone makes a decision that affects you negatively.
Somebody starts a war,stabs you in a robbery or deliberately runs over your dog etc.

Nobelium

igCorcaigh wrote: »

Yeah, I actually don't believe in belief.
It's the only belief I have.

I can consider things, value things, feel very passionate about things, but I don't believe in anything. I have a problem with the word itself.

It's a language problem perhaps.
But it's just not a word I use in my vocabulary.

I know what you mean, but there is room for belief for some things, depending on what it is, it's not always a dirty word. If no evidence either way is available, e.g. no evidence to date has been found of actual alien life, yet some people, including NASA believe alien life is probable and worth searching for.

donspeekinglesh

kneemos wrote: »

People suffer because freewill exists.

And how did freewill cause this person to suffer?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48585038

igCorcaigh

Nobelium wrote: »

I know what you mean, but there is room for belief for some things, depending on what it is, it's not always a dirty word. If no evidence either way is available, e.g. no evidence to date has been found of actual alien life, yet some people, including NASA believe alien life is probable and worth searching for.

In that sense of the word ^believe^.
Sure.
But that means, strive.

igCorcaigh

"all life cares about itself ^

https://youtu.be/DzF18bjHvW0

pauldla

kneemos wrote: »

People suffer because freewill exists.

Quite an assertion. In order to support this, one would need to explain what is meant by free will, demonstrate that it exists, and then show the connection between freewill and suffering (and to the exclusion of other sources of suffering, at that).

You have your work cut out for you there, kneemos. Good luck!

smacl

pauldla wrote: »

Quite an assertion. In order to support this, one would need to explain what is meant by free will, demonstrate that it exists, and then show the connection between freewill and suffering (and to the exclusion of other sources of suffering, at that).

Maybe it involves willing that a mosquito to bite you, mosquitoes being responsible for 750,000 deaths per year where humans only manage 437,000. Source.

Then again it could simply be willing yourself to be born into a poor country, from the WHO

More than half of all deaths in low-income countries in 2016 were caused by the so-called “Group I” conditions, which include communicable diseases, maternal causes, conditions arising during pregnancy and childbirth, and nutritional deficiencies. By contrast, less than 7% of deaths in high-income countries were due to such causes. Lower respiratory infections were among the leading causes of death across all income groups.

So while we have ~300,000 obesity related deaths in the USA each year, which are arguably related to free will, malnutrition is an underlying cause of death of 2.6 million children each year. Add another half million or more due to malaria, and free will seems to be a minor factor in most preventable deaths.

Buy hey, there's always the 'mysterious ways' clause, and it looks like the geneticists are on the road to knocking out mosquitoes, inshallah.

nozzferrahhtoo

Deleted User wrote: »

Ah, but, so much of the whole atheist world view is based on a moral philosophy that is Christian really.. like, really, what is to say that killing someone is wrong, really?..many other cultures didn't view it as such..

I think you are mistaking two groups coming to similar conclusions as one groups thinking being based on the others.

This single error alas makes you make others.

Firstly, no, even if theists and atheists were coming to the conclusion that "killing someone is wrong" that does not mean atheist thought is "based on a moral philosophy that is Christian really" or vice versa. Two groups are perfectly capable of coming to the same conclusion, on entirely different rationale.

Secondly however no, I do not think Christian thought really has come to the conclusion that "killing someone is wrong" really. If you read over the Bible much of it, especially the Old Testament, is a doctrine on when and how to kill people. It is less about how killing someone is wrong, so much as informing people when killing someone is ok. Just like the Bible does not admonish us not to keep slaves, so much as it tells us how to keep slaves and how to treat them when we have them.

But as another user told you a lot of our "common sense ethics" existed long before Christianity. Take the Golden Rule that is espoused often in the fables of The Nazerene. The Golden Rule.... aside from being a pretty awful premise..... predates Christ by quite a long period of time.

Deleted User wrote: »

So much of most people's belief in science is based on blind faith too though..

You will have to take that up with those people then. I have yet to meet anyone fitting this description, let alone "most people" so you will have to provide some examples so I can work out who or what you are talking about.

However there is very clear differences between Science and Religion which I think you contrive to gloss over here.

Most notably is that the methodology of Science is based on proving our ideas wrong. You get points in science for proving other people wrong. Hell you get points in science for proving YOURSELF wrong in science. Rather than "Blind Faith" as you describe it, Science is based on assuming you are wrong all the time and doing your best to prove you are.

Contrast that to Religion. The Business of Priests for example does not tend to be to stand up in front of the congregation every week to tell them how they themselves, or other priests, are wrong. Quite the opposite, they have prayers based on asking god to help them with their unbelief.

Deleted User wrote: »

But like, even with the more out there chaotic mathematics for instance.. there's a beauty to it that would suggest a divine creator behind it..

That is just YOUR emotional and subjective reaction to mathematics. That is not evidence for a god. It does not "suggest" any such thing. It is just a reaction YOU have to it.

Deleted User wrote: »

Shur Moses saw him in the burning bush that time..

And Frodo Baggins met a resurrected Gandalf.

Thankfully however the events in works of fiction do not require us to believe nonsense about actual reality.