Home→Forums→Spirituality→Do you believe in God?
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August 15, 2016 at 9:40 am #112407Mangesh ParadkarParticipant
Your question has two parts. Belief and God.
Lets take belief. Believing means we do not know for a fact. Thats why i need to believe. Else what is the need to believe. For e.g there is Sun rise and we all see it shining daily. So you will not say i believe there is a Sun. So is belief the truth? It cant be. For truth has to be universal. So your question should not be about belief in God. Some may say they believe. Some may say they dont. But both will be beliefs which is not the truth. They have not yet found out.
Now you may say that it means everything has to be proven. Like Science. And hence only what science says can be true. Because scientific laws apply to everyone and they dont deviate. But science only deals in matter. That which is tangible. So only science cannot be an answer.
In any experience there is outside and the inside. What you experience is related to outside. But what you are is the inside. Science does not deal with the inside. The inside can be only known by you. It cannot be measured by science.
So my suggestion would be that you need to find out for yourself. If i tell you there is God, its not going to help you. Because you will again take this for face value and make a belief out of it. And the same thing will happen if i tell you that there isnt any God.
But what i can tell you for certain is that it can be found out. For that you need to know who you are? You need to know your own Self. Only then can you find out the truth about God.
August 19, 2016 at 2:01 pm #112867TraceyParticipantYou ask “Do you believe in God?”…..which God? I for one believe in the Goddess and her consort the God but then i also believe that ALL Gods are one God (Divine, higher power ect)
We all travel up different paths on the mountain but the destination is the same.
Like Anita said we can’t know everything and if there isn’t anything after solid form life then we have nothing to worry about because we will never know, we will just cease to exist.
My belief keeps me going and motivates me, just like everyone else’s does, no religion is right , no religion is wrong
religious belief, practices and idols ect are all based on a countries history, culture, living conditions ect which is what makes them all so different, but the heart of all religions is peace, love and harmony and although our bodies and lives are different, our souls, spirit and inner energy is the same. ALL Gods are one God, believe with your heart and soul in something more than bodily form not in mans
written manuscript, for everything that is written in all religious books is purely chinese whispers.
belief is felt in the heartAugust 24, 2016 at 11:55 pm #113233BobParticipantIf you don’t believe in God you either haven’t researched the evidence well enough or you don’t want God to exist .
There are many lines of evidences for Gods existence . One of the more powerful new ate ndes or near death experiences .
Even though I haven’t read his book yet dr Jeffrey longs God and the afterlife is a great cure for atheism . Ndes don’t prove one religion right over another but they provide powerful evidence against atheism in that in dr longs research one common core element shared amongst nders around the globe is that they see a being of light who they recognize as the creator and this is irregardless of cultural or religious upbringing .
Even children ages 3-5 who aren’t yet indoctrinated into religion describe the same being of light .
Nde science is becoming more solid every year .
As Francis bacon said a little philosophy makes a man an atheist but a lot of philosophy brings him back to belief in God .
September 1, 2016 at 8:32 am #113911JoshuaParticipantI do not believe in God, however I am an Administrator on a Christian Forums.
I will help anyone regardless of faith.September 20, 2016 at 9:06 am #115698TannhauserBlockedI would say that those who devoutly believe in God haven’t seen life as it really is yet. They haven’t suffered enough. It is constant, unmitigated suffering that makes a mockery of the idea of a benevolent, interventionalist God. Suffering and loss makes you realise that prayers are utterly futile. It makes you realise that there are no such things as miracles, aside from the miracle of science and modern medicine. Then you realise that essentially all you are being offered by belief and religion is ‘jam tomorrow’. You are going to suffer terribly in body and mind on this earth, and no God or saviour is going to save you from that. The idea that you get some badge of merit for suffering which allows you into Heaven is gross and turns our existence into a pissing contest.
Best wishes.
September 21, 2016 at 12:17 am #115765XenopusTexParticipantDo I believe that in the vastness of the universe, there are beings sufficiently advanced that they would appear as gods to us? Absolutely.
Do I believe in a single creator god? No.
Where did such an entity come from? If such an entity is all powerful, why would it take “days” to create the Earth?
If such an entity is all powerful, and created mankind in his image, why are we so biologically flawed? Why do we have no longer necessary vestigial structures such as the appendix? If such an entity is all powerful and is purportedly responsible for the creation of children, how do we get triploid and tetraploid zygotes/offspring?
Further, if such an entity damns people to hell who don’t confess the belief that the entity in their savior, what about those triploid/tetraploid “people” who will either die in utero or shortly thereafter?
There is also the issue of the purported commands to slaughter all enemies, livestock, etc. in god’s name. Doesn’t that sound familiar these days?
We also have the issue of the bible being a product of humankind, with all of the fallibilities that come with it. One that I found was easy to spot is the statement about not eating rabbits because they, among other things, chew their cud. Rabbits can’t, but look like they do because they are always making chewing motions. One would think that the creator of rabbits would know this.
September 21, 2016 at 2:11 am #115769AnonymousInactive‘Believe and you’ll see ‘ – not the other way around. People don’t believe because they don’t see. If you will look deep inside and chose with your own free will to follow the GOD and the universe law God will definitely show you.
I’ve seen God – literally I SAW GOD.
beautiful Blue Entity. You think probably – yeah right – what drugs did you take?!
But on my daughter life I promise to you all I saw inner higher world , where time no mater , where there is a pure love and bliss and peace..Bad event around the world happens not because of absence of God but because every soul has karmic patter to release. If someone hurts someone and continued this path than the bad comes back to this person.. there is no coincidences.
Our job as a Soul and humans is to focus on what we are in our Mind Body Soul if you achieve balance within you and you will be true to yourself and others and kind and grateful. . Simply pure, than God simply can’t ignore you.
Don’t look at the outside suffer like the job of God. All things come to him who patiently waits. But if you not choose to believe you will see nothing.
While there is a life there is a hope.
Xx may God bless you all.September 21, 2016 at 2:17 am #115770AnonymousInactiveI am born and raised as Christian but last few months I’ve started to do my own research on Buddhism and Taoism. . Simply because the church of Christian had incident involving children – which hurts me to the very core.
Months of studying and simply fascinated by it all. Meditation helped me to balance my body mind and soul very quickly – the feeling is just right. Like I was programed to follow buddha teaching. Xxx
Don’t worry be happy – when you worry about your trouble you make it double. 😉
September 21, 2016 at 5:54 pm #115840XenopusTexParticipantThe mind is incredibly powerful and can conjure up images even without the help of hallucinogenic substances. The question is, what is real and what is the product of the mind.
September 22, 2016 at 5:28 am #115875AnonymousInactiveThe mere fact that you are hungry for knowledge and exploring is wonderful. Take your steps slowly and carefully though. There are many slippery slopes, falsehoods and individuals with their own agendas out there.
I am a man of great faith. This is different than religion. People wage wars over their religious beliefs. But faith is personal. Between you and another, greater being. Hold this thought as it may help clarify your exploration. But yes, I am religious, too.
Now, my suggestion is this: VOLUNTEER
You read right. Begin your faith journey by reaching outside of yourself. Too often people are so absorbed that they stumble and get frustrated. Like dancing by yourself, in the dark … with your shoe laces tied together. (smile)
Again, reach outside of yourself. Give your time, energy and talents. You are needed everywhere; a food pantry, free store, homeless shelter … the need is everywhere. You WILL meet like-minded people whose spirits are about giving. Observe those around you. And observe your own behavior with those you’re serving. Give it time. Most of the world’s religions all encourage giving to one another. This is the beginning of your faith journey. Instead of you find the right deity to worship, He, SHE or It may find you.
Blessing to you today!
September 25, 2016 at 4:59 pm #116239manbuddhaParticipant“Do you believe, and how do you know God is out there?”
Yes, I believe in GOD.
How do I know GOD is out there?
1)
All life and things I see around me are the product of conscious design and building/creation OR reproduction from one or two conscious living things. Thus to me, it seems there must have been a conscious starter/creator of the universe.2)
In the past, scientists believed in a steady state universe – i.e the universe just always was – no beginning or end. This was not compatible with the creation story since in that story, there was a point at which the creator said “Let there be….”
Now, by calculating back from the current position of bodies in the expanding universe, scientists believe that everything in the universe started from one point. As you can see, this is compatible with the idea of God’s conscious creation of the universe.
“Let there be…”
The start is now called “THE BIG BANG.”Thus, if life and the universe is finite, and everything comes from a conscious creator, the initial creator must be infinite.
Think about it, if the “first” creator was finite, then it wasn’t the first, there was one before it to create it, and so on and so on backwards, if the creator is finite.
Thus it is impossible to be first creator and finite at the same time.
I may be wrong, but I think the initial creator must be then infinite.Thus, logically I can start to understand a conscious, infinite creator which I believe in as GOD.
I don’t know so much about GOD, but I am trying to learn more about GOD.As Ninja said, blessing to all of you today –
In life, it seems virtually all our problems with others originate from one person’s expectations of how another should act.
I see that virtually all atheists are so at least in part because they have some particular expectations of how GOD should act. When those expectations are not met, they choose not to believe. It is very interesting.Please, Kristin123, I just want to beg you not to put your own human expectations on GOD who we barely know and who we do not, and maybe cannot, understand. It just doesn’t seem wise.
- This reply was modified 8 years ago by manbuddha.
September 27, 2016 at 8:27 am #116402PeterParticipantIt is in times of doubt when we discover faith.
Fear is to courage as doubt is to faith.
Doubt is a door.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Abre la puerta
Her name is Hope and she’s 12 years old,
going on 20 to life. She is god at 5 feet tall.
Abre la Puerta, open the door
and let her in, give her food.Old Florence lives in the parking garage
at the university with her bags and packs
on the floor all around and she washes
her 84 year old body in the sink at the library
with a piece of flannel from her deceased husband’s pajamas.
Abre la Puerta, she’s god.
Florence is God, there’s a God named Florencia.Remember that old abuelita, your grandest grandmother?
How she staggered toward you on legs so thin?
You were just a baby then and she smiled all over your infant self
and when you rose young and steaming from the void
that was God in her abuelita form, crying with joy just to see you,
“Que, que, que babybita” she’d say to you.
“Oh look at you, you babybaby you…”“Look,” says God, “she talks.” God talks baby talk.
She opened a door in her belly for you.
Your grandmother is God. God is a grandmotherAnd you remember that red room where you grew? That was God.
And remember the warm hands that received you? That was God.
And you remember your father’s hands holding your face,
as though it were some kind of jewel that might break?
In that moment, he was God.Your mate who snores, well… God snores, you see.
Your mate is God, who can never find his socks.
And your lover who burns for things you cannot give,
that is God also.Your mate is God.
God is a housewife in mudface and hair curlers
at the door waving goodbye in a housecoat.
God wears a housecoat.And, oh, the world that is young and has loved so deeply
and been betrayed, whose skin hangs like rags
and whose arms have no muscle and whose eyes have lost luster;
open the door of your heartaches and step through the door of your betrayal.
Pass through the hole that is left in your heart.
Pass through because it is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.Do you remember that your legs are el anillo, the ring that circles the lover?
Your legs make a door, pass through the door,
Abre la Puerta pass the bulb through.
Open the door, the most sacred of doors,
the trail through your belly and the road up your spine.Remember, fire is a door.
and song is a door. A scar is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.The forest on fire is a door
and the ocean ruined is a door.
Anything that needs us
or calls us to God is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.Anything that hurts us,
anything that needs us opens the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.All of these years of seeming indestructibility,
the grandfather of your world dies
and his heart explodes
and yours breaks into a thousand pieces.
These are doors. Open the doors.
Abre la Puerta. Pass through these doors.The world is a tribe of one-breasted women.
Walk through the door of the scars on their chest.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.Over the edge of the world you go,
into the abyss. You march in time.
And put the best medicine in the worst of the wounds.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.The lake in which you almost drowned, that is a door.
The slap in the face that made you kiss the floor, that is a door.
The betrayal that sent you straight to hell, that is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.Same old story, all strong souls first go to hell
before they do the healing of the world they came here for.
If we are lucky we return to help those still trapped below.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Hell is a door caused by pain.Opening a flower, rain opening the Earth
the kisses of humans opening the heart of the world
these are doors.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.The scar drawn by razors, that is a door.
The scars that are doors are opened, are opened.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.The scars drawn by chainsaws across forests, those are doors.
The poem of new life that comes every dawn,
the soaring of sun, that is a door, the grave is a door.
The door to hell is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.Your grandmother, your grandfather,
your mother, your father have died leaving a hole in your life.
Step through that hole. It is an opening.
That hole is a threshold. That hole is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.Clarissa Pinkola Estes
September 27, 2016 at 10:31 am #116425PeterParticipantWhen asked if he believed in God. Jung replied, “I don’t need to believe, I know”
I’ve often puzzled over that statement of certainty made by Jung. Was Jung certain in his faith? When faith is certain is it still faith? Is there a difference of being certain and acting in the certainty of one’s faith in times of doubt? Do we, should we act with certainty, even when we are not certain?
So many questions. What was Jung’s concept of God, faith and belief… what was mine?
My observations of others as they talked about god became confused as it seemed to me that they were talking about an Alien being with supernatural powers to which we must obey, worship, or else.
Reading the religious texts literally such a being did not appear to my mind worthy of worship let alone obedience. In the face of such a being we could be nothing but play things at its mercy and so like Job must remain silent in its bombast.
I could not believe, let alone have faith, in such an Alien being. Yet my inner most being would respond to the question of G_d with a yes. What did I know? Not much, doubt a constant companion, yet a inner something within answering yes.
In my religious training I was taught to fear doubt, to banish it, to deny it and pretend…. But what if doubt was the door that all seekers must open and pass through. That it is in times of doubt when ones faith is discovered and exercised, open to learning better so that I might do better.
I was saying yes, but what was I saying yes to. What was my experience of G_d
Joseph Campbell study of the stories we tell lead him to an idea that the words used in myth should be allowed to be Transparent to the Transcendent. That the map is not the territory. That the word god is not God but a symbol that points to an idea, experiences, a something that is no-thing. Words as a open window that we are meant to look through and not a wall that blocks the way.
In Islam images of God are not permitted. In Judaism God is often written as G_d. In early Christianly a requirement that anything said about God must also be un-said. The intention I believe to remind those with ears to hear to look pasts the words to that which they point. We use to know this. Today I wonder if for many religious texts haven’t become an idle, a graven image of God, a wall.
“It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” ― Bruce Lee
All words are symbols, windows, that point past themselves and when you begin to allow the words to be transparent, especially those in religious text you begin to see how they all pull in the same direction.
Each story is connected, we are all connected, all part of each other, the all that is one. The life – death – life cycle that is LIFE as it is. LIFE requiring the sacrifice of life for its becoming,
LIFE as it is, every breath, a virgin birth, sacrificed (suffering/betrayal as the moment is not meant to last), death, re-birth. LIFE as it is, LOVE, GOD.
YES
September 29, 2016 at 6:38 am #116660AnonymousInactiveYou have right like anyone else for own opinion. But let me ask you a question:
We are humans right we have a brain right, can you show me your brain because I simply dont believe because I haven’t seen it .. assuming you have a brain is a matter of faith – but you don’t know for sure because you haven’t seen it as well.Simple analogy what do you think about that?
October 15, 2016 at 9:28 pm #118278k eParticipantI believe in something.
I’m not sure what’s out there, but there are things that have happened in my life that I know must have come from some divine power.
I suffer from anxiety/ocd, and I have had some badddddd days, but I can never shake this feeling that something is watching over.
Not everything is an accident.
I don’t think that you need to believe in anything to have purpose or anything like that, but just having faith in general goes a long way. -
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