The Curious Thread. Why do you believe or disbelieve?

[Gracie]

Any religion. Any faith. Why do you believe in it....or DO NOT believe in it? Bad experiences? Don't believe a higher power can sit back and watch babies and children die? People get horrific diseases and suffer? Or just suffer, period?
Or do you believe in whatever "path" you are on due to personal experience to that higher power?

Believers and non believers...this thread is for you. Say what you will. It's all just opinion anyway and you are entitled to it. So..do tell. Why? Either way.

No judgement from me, either. Whatever floats your proverbial boats, says I.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Religion is the glue that holds most of humanity together... Without the religions of the world, it would be one big ole fustercluck...

 

[Scottish_Brexiteer_UK]

Any religion. Any faith. Why do you believe in it....or DO NOT believe in it? Bad experiences? Don't believe a higher power can sit back and watch babies and children die? People get horrific diseases and suffer? Or just suffer, period?
Or do you believe in whatever "path" you are on due to personal experience to that higher power?

Believers and non believers...this thread is for you. Say what you will. It's all just opinion anyway and you are entitled to it. So..do tell. Why? Either way.

No judgement from me, either. Whatever floats your proverbial boats, says I.

I do believe in God but I don't feel the need to go to Church and worship him or sit and pray every day/give thanks.

I don't know why I believe in him - I just think there has to be something.

You're probably thinking why God then? why not some higher being alien with his head in a dome and 8 arms like an octopus sitting in Outer Space watching over Earth? and I can't answer that. I suppose it could be anything.

But just to address the point about a higher power that sits and watches bad things happening ;

I think any God/higher being HAS to be a non-interventionist God.

You can't give humans freedom & free will but then step in and correct bad decisions that we make.

Likewise you need to experience pain, suffering, bad and evil to appreciate good.

If everything was all good and perfect 100% of the time cosmetically, then organically humans would get bored and burn it all to the ground. That's kind of in our nature.

Regards things like diseases that kill babies and good people. It's a hard one to stomach but you could also argue that the free will and intelligence that he inserted into humans has meant that in time we have come up with pioneering things that keeps us alive - medicines, organ transplants, life support machines, dialysis treatment, open heart surgery etc etc. I believe that one day all diseases including cancer will be cured thanks to humans.

Of course you could also argue that our creator isn't perfect either and made mistakes when our blueprint was created (if that's what the truth is) and that's why some of our bodies don't develop the same or some of us prone to disease.

I don't think it has to be one or the other regards a higher being or proven science such as the big bang. It can easily be both in that the big bang and human evolution happened exactly as science says - but I can never escape the feeling that someone or something put the energy and particles there in the first place to allow the big bang to happen.

I don't really care what anyone believes but I find atheists some of the biggest bigots going, sneering at people of faith talking about sky fairies and make-believe men when the truth is they don't know for a fact either. They are as ignorant as the people of faith in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Penelope]

I'm an atheists.

what god do you believe in , god is generic.

Scottish_Brexiteer_UK?​

 

[Stann]

Any religion. Any faith. Why do you believe in it....or DO NOT believe in it? Bad experiences? Don't believe a higher power can sit back and watch babies and children die? People get horrific diseases and suffer? Or just suffer, period?
Or do you believe in whatever "path" you are on due to personal experience to that higher power?

Believers and non believers...this thread is for you. Say what you will. It's all just opinion anyway and you are entitled to it. So..do tell. Why? Either way.

No judgement from me, either. Whatever floats your proverbial boats, says I.

I cannot define myself in precise terms. The terms, Theism, Pantheism and Autotheism all partly describe my being and reality. I know that this world can be a terrible place, but I also know but it could be a good and beautiful place. I seek the good, and rejoice whenever I find it.

 

[SweetSue92]

Any religion. Any faith. Why do you believe in it....or DO NOT believe in it? Bad experiences? Don't believe a higher power can sit back and watch babies and children die? People get horrific diseases and suffer? Or just suffer, period?
Or do you believe in whatever "path" you are on due to personal experience to that higher power?

Believers and non believers...this thread is for you. Say what you will. It's all just opinion anyway and you are entitled to it. So..do tell. Why? Either way.

No judgement from me, either. Whatever floats your proverbial boats, says I.

What if someone were to say: I sacrifice every baby I have birthed to Moloch in a raging fire. I have birthed over a dozen babies and have fed every one to a raging fire alive and that's why my life has been so successful...would you say, hey, "no judgment"?

BTW, in case anyone does not know: people did sacrifice their children to gods and Moloch was one.

Some judgment is good, and some is not good.

And to answer your question: I believe in the God who sacrificed His own sinless Son so that sinners like me can be counted free, and saved. There is no religion like it.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

i ask for guidance and every time God has sent me an answer.

My personal view is if you believe in god you will be given a chance to be saved even if your chosen religion is not the "right' one.

So long as you don't practice evil or sin. Practice is different then just committing a sin. We all fail the idea is to not CHOSE to sin and do evil.

Everyone that believes will be given a chance to accept Jesus as their savior and be saved at Judgement day.

 

[SweetSue92]

i ask for guidance and every time God has sent me an answer.

My personal view is if you believe in god you will be given a chance to be saved even if your chosen religion is not the "right' one.

So long as you don't practice evil or sin. Practice is different then just committing a sin. We all fail the idea is to not CHOSE to sin and do evil.

Everyone that believes will be given a chance to accept Jesus as their savior and be saved at Judgement day.

It is a hard truth but true nonetheless: your name is either written in the Lamb's Book of Life or it is not. Revelation 21:27. Gracie mentions not judging. Here is where it is not my place to judge whose name is written or not written.

 

[Gracie]

Gracie mentions not judging. Here is where it is not my place to judge whose name is written or not written.

NO JUDGEMENT meant from ME.
Twist much? Or attempt to? Fuck off.

 

[Gracie]

some higher being alien with his head in a dome and 8 arms like an octopus

aka the Great Spaghetti Monster.

 

[Colin norris]

Religion is the glue that holds most of humanity together... Without the religions of the world, it would be one big ole fustercluck...

You clearly are under delusions. There is No evidence that cohesion exists because if religion. that is another silly reason for it like you assume morals comes from also like consciencness.
It's absolute rubbish.

As we write this there are wars being fought over and about religion. History is littered with millions of bodies all dying because murderers assumed they spoke on behalf of god. Where's you're cohesion there?

Being a believer doesn't give you instant access to facts. In fact, nearly everything you believe is completely false and based on a 2000 year old book written by evangelist like prophets.

 

[Votto]

View attachment 524644
aka the Great Spaghetti Monster.

I've heard of people comparing God to the flying spaghettis monster, but such comparisons are simply to mock the faith of others and is intellectually dishonest.

There is no evidence for the flying pasta, but there certainly is for those who believe in the God of the Bible. Faith is not blind.

The evidence in my opinion is overwhelming that the God of the Bible is real. In fact, pretty most all faiths in the world derive their faith from the God of the Bible. The rest of the faiths out there, recognize Christ as God inspired. There is no other religious figure that is recognized as such..

Those that discount the Bible as a myth, discount Biblical Archeology that brings the stories of the Bible to life. These folks actually lived. And the prophesies, I think the most influential on me are Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9:24-27.

In both Daniel and Isaiah, you have prophetic works that date will before the time of Christ, yet both are actuate predictions about his life. In fact, reading Isaiah 53 is like reading a chapter from the gospels it is so spot on describing the life of Christ. At best, you could argue that the writers of the NT simply made up the story of the life of Jesus to match the prophesy of Isaiah. But if you do, you are left with a very troubling aspect of Isaiah 53. It is the only scripture where God sets out to destroy the life of a righteous man. Why? All other accounts of God allowing harm on people is to judge their sin, so this case is special. The cross was prophesied thousands of years prior.

But Daniel 9 is the kicker, for here you have an actual calendar for the coming of Christ. At best, you could argue that the writers of the NT simply made up when Jesus walked the earth to match the prophesy. Nonetheless, the calendar is astounding to me, and those who have verified that it points to Christ are none other than Jewish rabbis who deny Jesus as their Messiah as they wrote about it in the Talmud. Think of it, the very people whose interest would be to calculate the prophesy to another time to discount the coming of Jesus as Messiah have recognized that their Messiah should have come when Jesus did come. Their explanation is that the sinfulness of Israel caused the Messiah to tarry. But prophesy strikes again as it was predicted that the Jewish people would reject their Messiah.

And there is simply the evidence of how scripture speaks to people. Reading it I feel connected to truth. As Jesus once asked his disciples after teaching them a hard to embrace idea, will you continue to follow me as people begin to walk away? The disciples retorted, to whom shall we go since you have the words of life. The draw is intangible, unexplainable, as the love generated from reading the scriptures is comparable to how you fall in love with a life partner. How can you explain love?

I realize many feel that God is not interested in our affairs simply because humanity has become disconnected with God and we experience suffering. But if God is uninterested in our suffering, then such a God may as well be dead to us even though he may exist.

The God of the Bible came to earth to suffer as we do, to live and bleed with us, and to save us. This is a God worthy of our love and attention, even though the sufferings we experience may make it feel the opposite.

But as I pray for things that don't come to pass, I'm often reminded of Christ praying before going to the cross, asking the Father to spare him the fate of going to the cross as he began to sweat blood due to the stress. He got no answer. Imagine, God seemed to abandon him even as his own followers began to abandon him so that they would hot suffer the same fate as he. I can't imagine a worse feeling.

For whatever reason, we are often asked to walk over the hot coals in faith despite the suffering.

But that is why it is a faith. If it were all explainable, if it were all easy, there would be no faith. Faith is simply acknowledging our need for an all knowing and powerful God. Faith allows us to believe in things we may not be able to comprehend or things we are not privy to. Either way, faith is the only possible relationship to a finite creation to an infinite God, much like a parent and child.

 

[Gracie]

Guess I should read Daniel and Isaiah. Your post interested me enough to go check it out.

 

[Votto]

Guess I should read Daniel and Isaiah. Your post interested me enough to go check it out.

Isaiah 53 is easy enough to understand,, but buckle up trying to make heads or tails of Daniel 9:24-27.

Just reading it you won't understand. There is a lack of understanding the Jewish calendar as is a lack of understanding of ancient Jewish terms to describe the passage of time.

I could show you how Christians use the scripture to calculate from Daniel to Christ, but they have an agenda to prove the scripture points to Christ. It is far more effective to show people that Jewish rabbis who had an understanding of the Jewish calendar and Jewish terms identified the verses as a calendar to the Messiah and calculated it to the time of Christ since they had no such agenda to make it work.

In the 12th century Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, or Maimonides, was one of the most respected rabbis in Jewish history and a man who rejected Jesus as Messiah. He eluded to the seventy week prophesy by saying, "Daniel has elucidated to us the knowledge of the end times. However, since they are secret, the wise have barred the calculation of the days of Messiah's coming so that the untutored populace will not be led astray when they see that the End Times have already come but there is no sign of the Messiah". Igeret Teiman, Chapter 3 p. 24.

Another Rabbi named Moses Abraham Levi said regarding the time of the Messiah's coming, "I have examined and searched all of the Holy scriptures and have not found the time for the coming of the Messiah clearly fixed, except in the words of Gabriel to the prophet Daniel, which are written in the 9th chapter of the prophecy of Daniel" (The Messiah of the Targums, Talmuds and Rabbinical writers 1971)

Some Jews have come to believe Christ as the Messiah from the prophesy, however. An Orthodox Rabbi named Leopold Cohn used to rehearse morning devotions, one of which included saying, "I believe with a perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and though he tarry, yet will I wait daily for his coming" So Leopold began to wonder why he was being told that the Messiah tarries. Why is he not on time? So he began digging and got directed to Daniel 9:24-27. He then began to inquire how Jesus might then be the Messiah, but the more noise he made about it the more he was taken aside and told to either let it go or find another profession. To make a long story short, he forsook his entire life's profession as a rabbi and became a Christian.

Fascinating stuff!!

 

[sear]

Why do you believe or disbelieve?​

Ock·ham's razor also Oc·cam's razor (ŏkəmz) n. A rule in science and philosophy stating that the simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable; for example, an explanation of a new phenomenon should first be attempted in terms of what is already known, without adding further entities or principles. Also called law of parsimony. [After William of Ockham.] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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The big bang, and spontaneous generation / evolution are quite far-fetched enough for me. We needn't add:

"God" is portrayed as omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and short of cash." Crane

 

[BreezeWood]

,
the spoken religion of antiquity - the triumph of good vs evil - must be accomplished to be judged for admission to the Everlasting -

or perish or if just short maybe get a second chance - desert religions need not apply and a few others.

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

BTW, in case anyone does not know: people did sacrifice their children to gods and Moloch was one

Today the god young women sacrifice their children to is named "Choice"

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

The God of the Bible came to earth to suffer as we do, to live and bleed with us, and to save us. This is a God worthy of our love and attention, even though the sufferings we experience may make it feel the opposite

This tiktok is a human example of the true Christians relationship with our Father. He is always nearby when His children call out for Him

 

[Dadoalex]

Any religion. Any faith. Why do you believe in it....or DO NOT believe in it? Bad experiences? Don't believe a higher power can sit back and watch babies and children die? People get horrific diseases and suffer? Or just suffer, period?
Or do you believe in whatever "path" you are on due to personal experience to that higher power?

Believers and non believers...this thread is for you. Say what you will. It's all just opinion anyway and you are entitled to it. So..do tell. Why? Either way.

No judgement from me, either. Whatever floats your proverbial boats, says I.

I started to stop believing in Monotheism back when I was 6 years old and they told me all about packing 2 of every animal on a boat for 40 days. Didn't add up.
Then God killed everyone on earth, Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah.
Didn't seem very "godly" to me.
Monotheism just didn't make sense.
Tried Islam and Judaism with the same result.
Found Buddhism and reasons to believe.
Buddhism doesn't command you to believe. It lays out its truths and lets you decide.

• Dukkha: The Noble Truth of Suffering. Life is full of suffering, full of sickness and unhappiness. ...
• Sapucaya: The Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering. People suffering for one simple reason: they desire things. ...
• Nirodha: The Noble Truth of the End of Suffering. ...
• Magga: The Noble Truth of the Path.

There is no denying the truth of Dukkha and Sapucaya.
If inclined to study further what one finds is an argument based on truth.
The argument?

Do unto others.
Be good for 'goodness' sake.

We are not asked to worship anyone or anything.
Simply to do what is right.

Buddhism has a mystical side as does all "religions"
BUT
The thing is that Buddhism is adaptable in any religion.
SO
Christians can be Buddhists. Jews, Muslims, Hindu, all of them because in Buddhism the worship of a deity is neither demanded nor forbidden. We don't "do unto others" because a "god" commands it. We do it because it is the right thing to do.

The Mystical side?
It is rebirth I think borrowed from Hindu.
We believe the ultimate goal is "enlightenment."
An ultimate state of knowledge and purity.
If you read the Book of the Dead you will see many trials between death and rebirth.
Passing each trial brings the dead to a higher state on rebirth. Failure brings rebirth at the stage of the test.
The goal. of course, being to pass all the tests demonstrating enlightenment.
We believe that how one lives this life will determine success during the trials and the nature of the rebirth.

Sorry. If you want to know more you'll need to find a teacher whose every answer to any question will be "and what do you think of that?"
Buddhism can be frustrating.

 

[sear]

Today the god young women sacrifice their children to is named "Choice"

Excellent example of what Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) called "semantic infiltration".
The assertion uses the words "god", & "sacrifice". This invokes numerous implications which do not apply.
- Choice is not a religion. It does not involve the ancient practice.
- A fetus is not a sacrificial lamb.
- A fetus is not a child.

The comment if accepted as satire makes a valid point, but with self-defeating melodrama. I score it a C-