Is God Real?

kelseykillscliche:

Kaye.:

I do know He exists. Whether people doubt me I do not care.
I've felt Him on so many occasions, I see His miracles everyday, and our whole Earth is filled with His glory.

I find this statement funny, no offence intended, because I've felt an absence of a god on so many occasions in my life...

God has His own ways, His own time frame. God may have seemed absent to you, But like it says in the Footprints poems...when there was only one set of footprints...that was when God carried you. He may have seemed absent through those times...but you got through them.

Still in answer to the original post, there is no concrete proof [unless you count the fact that we exist...but of course...science could explain it away...and again...science can only do that because oif God, but I digress] that God exists...but believers believe because they have faith...Faith is a trust in something which is not seen. But it is not an unreasoning faith. We do not blindly have faith in a Living God. We believe because we know.

Well, carnal proof won't help anyone trying to find out if there is a God. I mean, beside the earth, sky, etc. What else carnal proof is there?
The rest, I would think, is left up to faith.

Um...Actually, I heard a while back that Santa Claus actually was a man named St. Nicholas, who gave away presents to children...or something like that.

Oh, sorry, yeah.

Which is true^ the swedish or dutch or whatever was Sinter Claus...Claus being a shortened form of Niklaus I believe...I could be wrong...Sinter being Saint...so that's how Santa Claus came about but again I digress

Carnal proof?

^I think she means physical proof...

And why are we still talking about Santa? I only brought that up as an example of faith and how it isn't proof :shifty

ahhh when she said carnal i was thinking of the sexual connotations so got confused.

Duh faith isn't proof; it is used to answer those questions and problems which can never have proven answers. We can never know if God exists or not, but we have faith in him because he fills in those gaps in life which we are incapable of understanding.

^Don't say duh like that...it makes you sound unintelligent. And it also makes the people who don't understand feel stupid which isn't nice.

And, also no need to state the obvious. No one here was suggesting that faith was proof.

If it was obvious we wouldn't be arguing about it...
I'm not suggesting anyone is stupid I'm pointing out a major misconception; proof cannot replace faith in certain areas.

Ah, thanks for clarifying your comment. The topic is is God real. Not whether people believe faith is proof.

Because Faith isn't proof. I'm a Believer...but I know that Faith isn't proof. It is reasoned trust. Not proof.

VampShadsOwns:

No one here was suggesting that faith was proof.

On the last page, Cresent_Moon_126 pretty much said her faith in God was proof God exists:

Cresent_Moon_126:

Actually, you're absolutely right. Faith is proof that God is real.

That's where the conversation is coming from :D

Perihelion_:

Duh faith isn't proof; it is used to answer those questions and problems which can never have proven answers. We can never know if God exists or not, but we have faith in him because he fills in those gaps in life which we are incapable of understanding.

Then tell me how faith answers those questions?

Oh, thanks Nose Candy. Well, I personally would never suggest that Faith is proof...:)

Having faith answers those questions in the way that we don't really need answers. If that makes any sense. We have our faith therefore we don't need an explantion.

Xsoteria:

I honestly believe that it is this exact spoon that created our universe. I didn't know how to put this into words up until recently, but now that I've read that post, I just know this is our Creator. I had a dream when I was hitting the rock bottom, my life in ruins, and I had a vision of this, I may now say with certainty, spoon. It really helped me out and now I am a functional member of society, once again. I realize my belief may be subject to ridicule, but I hope everyone soon realize the same thing I have and find themselves in the teachings of the Spoon. (ok the teachings aren't entirely finished, we just need to gather up some followers and sort out what visions and beliefs are truly the words of our Spoon and remove those that aren't)

Christians are not idiots, although people imply that they are, that spoon was -physically- created by somebody at some point, it could not have existed before time. Theologists have worked on the Christian dogma for almost two thousand years now, it's not ridiculous gibberish, people just don't bother to read or learn about it and evaluate everything through prejudices and cliches.

Dancing Caveman:

I think the fact that we can actually alter someone's personality debunks the whole "morality comes from the holy spirit" schtick.

Someone's personality is what really determines how they act around people. Take Phineas Gage. He had an accident where a tamping iron entered underneath his left cheek bone and exited out of the top of his head. He survived, but his personality drastically changed. He was once a nice man, but after the incident, he became impatient and belligerent.

That's like saying that we can change the color of our skin by getting third degree burns, or that we can change or height by cutting our legs off.

Plus, we are moral beings because we have the ability to ask outselves what is right or wrong, not because we all think something is right or wrong.

JustSteph:

Being "nice" was just an example. My main point is that you get some kind of reward for it. If, at the end of the war, there is peace, then that is the reward.

And if doing what is right isn't always what's "nice" then it seems to me that the Bible's teachings are wrong since it's always telling people to be nice to one another, but, as you've pointed out, it's not always the right thing to do.

What about animal cruelty? There's no reward for trying to kill animals in an ethical way, it only takes up more time and resources. Or maybe people with more pets have a better chance at reproducing?

^They're less likely to be "attacked" by animal rights activists if they are humane.

kafka.:

JustSteph:

Being "nice" was just an example. My main point is that you get some kind of reward for it. If, at the end of the war, there is peace, then that is the reward.

And if doing what is right isn't always what's "nice" then it seems to me that the Bible's teachings are wrong since it's always telling people to be nice to one another, but, as you've pointed out, it's not always the right thing to do.

What about animal cruelty? There's no reward for trying to kill animals in an ethical way, it only takes up more time and resources. Or maybe people with more pets have a better chance at reproducing?

It's 2010. We don't need to be nice to each other to get what we need. In the middle ages, and all of time before that, and probably after that, people were very communal, and they depended on each other for food, safety and companionship. You had to be nice. If the only baker in town didn't like you, you had no bread. Now, no one even knows who the baker is, because we have factories that make bread.
We developed morality out of necessity, and it stuck.

kafka.:

That's like saying that we can change the color of our skin by getting third degree burns, or that we can change or height by cutting our legs off.

Plus, we are moral beings because we have the ability to ask outselves what is right or wrong, not because we all think something is right or wrong.

No, it's not. It's like saying that a darker person can become lighter by bleaching their skin. Lobotomies were real things, and instead of having lobotomies now, there are medications which can help people with personality disorders.

So, you think that all our personality does is allow us to say what is right and wrong? I'm confused by what you mean.

Ckaye:

Perihelion_:

Duh faith isn't proof; it is used to answer those questions and problems which can never have proven answers. We can never know if God exists or not, but we have faith in him because he fills in those gaps in life which we are incapable of understanding.

Then tell me how faith answers those questions?

Oh, for example, the totally unprovable belief that inanimate objects follow laws, or that human reason is capable of discovering and understanding those laws, or that our minds can even see reality for what it really is. You know, deep philosophical stuff like that.

Then there are the questions like "why am I here?" and "what is my purpose in life?" Finally, the question of morality which no one agrees on...

Those are some of the things no one can prove, and therefore why we need faith to make up our minds about them.

^ Okay so maybe we can't answer those questions ourselves but I don't see where faith can do anything.

Ckaye:

^ Okay so maybe we can't answer those questions ourselves but I don't see where faith can do anything.

That's the thing. We can't answer such questions with definitive, provable, absolute answers. So either we ignore the questions and pretend there's nothing important about them, or we try to answer them with faith to the best of our ability.

Anyone who's studied Christianity at least can probably see it's not simple gibberish about things like teleporting polka-dot spoons. It tries to make sense. And the reason religion is so diverse is because different people see sense in different theories. No one's going to come up with a simple equation solving the purpose of existence.