My family has an unshakeable religious resolve, but I fell out of faith as a preteen. The sheer volume of competing religions filled me with doubt, and I never managed to overcome that. I know a lot of people on either side of the faith coin, but my own indecisiveness is starting to weigh on me.
Do any of you believe anything? If so, how do you support it in debate/under critique? Why do you think your faith is the correct one, and how did you come to that conclusion?
Wew lad Sup Forums is fast, but I think there's a Good Friday thread up already, too.
Do you not pay attention to any of the religious threads that allow you to ask anything?
Considering how easy it would be for anyone to write in a "holy book" like the bible (THE WORLDS LONGEST RUNNING GAME OF TELEPHONE) I don't care what the books say and just choose to believe there is a God. Not a particular God just that one exists. Because there are so many religions out there the odds of choosing the right one are slim. I like having options ie not being restricted in what I do or say because God said so in a book. But if any God is real my bet would be Jesus or Kek, but again no clue so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don't come to Sup Forums often, but you're right: I should've checked the catalog.
I consider myself a deist.
I think that there is a higher force, but since we don't actually know jack shit about it nor it seems to give a single fuck about us (apparently because everything is made perfect, and under "perfect" I mean self-regulating and not requiring any interference), it doesn't matter.
and not requiring any intervention*
Deism is interesting to me. It seems like the easiest sort of faith to at least discover some sort of reasonable proof of, but I see more articles about people trying to prove we live in a simulation than te existence of a God figure, Abrahamic or otherwise.
The notion of deism is silly because it presumes an all-powerful God that, by necessity, not only create everything but conceives of it all well.
>He lets it run on its own
Fine, but by nature of omnninessince He is still aware of everything, and had been aware of it at its onset.
>the universe is to big for God to care
Then that could would not be Omnipotent. An all powerful God, by definition, would have an inexhaustible amount of concern.
I think it isn't that the universe is to big not to care, rather the events within the universe simply aren't of that being's concern? Sure, he/it COULD express an infinite concern, but chooses not to.
You know what Orthodox Christianity needs? Statues.
The fact that something exists, opposed to not existing,, expresses some concern on the part of the one in which the thing is wholly dependent on existing. The fact that consciousness arises from life to point of reflectivity, which would be necessary in a God that creates outside Himself, also would lend credence towards his concern towards man.
Additionally, life's eternal struggle against entropy, which all other systems are doomed to succumb, also seems to be pretty significant.
Being a catholic means you have the words of Thomas Aquinas and Chesterton to back you up. Your Church is the only true one, still standing after 2000 years and legitimised by Jesus Christ Himself. This also mean having to debate all the fucking time: from pedophiles joining the church to abuse children to our current Pope being the worst in recent memory (we had worse, though).
To me my faith is a matter of tradition and order. Of respecting my forefathers and protecting my culture, and that's about it.
God is all.
Everything.
Love, hate, life and death all stem from him.
But to choose love. That is what makes the path to him worthwhile. It is the hardest route. Yet the easiest to choose for some.
Hey dude,
I was sort of in the same boat as you, grew up a Jehovahs Witness, left around 14 because I wanted to jerk it and kiss girls guilt free.
Came about when I was 19 that I just felt very spritually thoughtful, spent a lot of time contemplating stuff and decided I believed in god, but simultaneously I didn't really agree with any faith in particulars doctrine.
Im 21 now and just call myself non-denominational, I pray most days and try my best to be a good person. The bible may be gods word, or it might have been somewhat convulted through out history, but none of that really matters. Listen to your internal moral compass, we as humans know what is right and wrong and we need no tradition, no penance and no religious tokenism to do right by god. Follow your heart, feel free to approach god and ask him for guidance, all men and women are equal in his eyes, no denomination, no faith, no adherence to any particular doctrine will make him any less or more receptive to your prayers.
Focus less on the path and more on the relationship is what I mean I suppose. God shepards us, etc, etc. Let yourself be lead
Jesus was a Catholic? Lots of people think he was a Jew. Proof, user?
Claiming to be God generally is frowned by ancient Judaism (post-temple judaism, however, is another story).
Ha. Matthew 16:18.
What?
See, this is what makes me so curious about religion as a whole and the concept of a creator god. Our loneliness as humankind. The path that lead to us being here seems to have literally never been taken before as far as we can tell. In this big, wide universe, we can only confirm ourselves as being capable of our current level of thought and introspection. It makes you wonder why us? I know some people will say "No reason, really" but I just don't believe that at some base level.
It's a hard path to take, man. I don't necessarily have a lot of tradition, but I'm just so difficult to have faith in a thing. I know that if there were irrefutable proof of any one religion, everybody would already be that religion, but I have a hard time accepting to have faith in a God that willfully created a world that can't irrefutably prove His existence.
I've contemplated it but am struggling with even the faith in any sort of god.
the big secret is no adult in the west actually thinks their religion is factually real, they just think it's good for society and enjoy the coping mechanism effect of imagining god is watching over them, that's why only low IQ retards in the middle east are legit ready to kill and die for their religion and if you ask a westerner how they know their religion is the real one they'll say something ambiguous like "well that's why it's called faith"
so basically just start pretending jesus has your back and go to church and enjoy the community like everyone else and you'll probably be happier
>See, this is what makes me so curious about religion as a whole and the concept of a creator god. Our loneliness as humankind. The path that lead to us being here seems to have literally never been taken before as far as we can tell. In this big, wide universe, we can only confirm ourselves as being capable of our current level of thought and introspection. It makes you wonder why us? I know some people will say "No reason, really" but I just don't believe that at some base level.
Then consider the reflectivity I previously mentioned. This concept has been (among many others, appearance, free will etc.) one of the traditional understandings of "made in God's image." Similar, one can consider beauty. There is a certain biological basis for beauty, of course, like finding someone attractive, or a food appetizing, yet what biological basis is there for finding beauty in, say, a nebula, or a amoeba, or some other thing in which we should under no circumstance have evolved the ability to appreciate, considering how recently we've discovered them. Infact, consider how many times you have been confronted with something entirely new, and yet with immediacy was able to appreciate its beauty, even before understanding it. This again shows us the significance of reflectivity.
For traditonal Christianity, reflectivity has a divine counterpart in the Trinity. The Logos, the second member of the Trinity, is part of this Divine reflective, it is God's eternal, and perfect knowledge of Himself. An eternal, divine, and uncreated Knowledge, because only such a thing could truly understand its Source.
I think you're coming at this the wrong way, user. Nobody is ever going to sit you down and scientifically prove to you that not only there is a God, but that said God happens to be the God from the Bible and Jesus chose to sacrifice himself for us and was resurrected. And nobody is going to do that because that's completely irrelevant (even though it was a Catholic priest who found proof of the Big Bang).
As this stage I think is the best advice you can take: forget about the existence of God for a minute, join the community, enjoy the rituals, find inner peace. God will reveal Himself after a while.
Desmond is basic, at least make the logical step to monotheist.
As to your op... first you've got to overcome your atheism. There are many arguments to get you to a nice plateau of destruction belief. But may I ask, why do you hate your dad so hard? Not just him but every christian ancestry you've got. You've not just abandoned them, but actively fight to destroy the institutions they created and bled for over millenium. Your problem is pride. It's every atheists problem. Until you know a humbled and truly meek soul, God will never reveal himself to you.
Good luck.
The Holy Bible is inerrant, infallible and inspired.
Any religious Anons can confirm?
I'll try.
I've tried getting back into church from time to time, but I always feel so out of place. Like, everyone there more or less has a genuine faith/relationship and I'm just bumming some cope for terror management.
I don't hate my dad, I just, eh, okay. I should have a better relationship with him. He was the local and familial religious authority, so the straining of our father-son relationship through typical family development admittedly also strained my faith, too. I couldn't get straight answers out of him on hard questions pertaining to faith and I just took it as his personal inability to prove it being a theologian being admittance that it's false.
I've listened to debates/read about the bible being debated countless times and am still indecisive on that statement. Too much is metaphorical or not to be taken at direct value without actually saying so ahead of time.
Desmond = deism
>competing religions
It's not a competition, specially when it comes to all the Christian denominations
yeah but there are are tons of religions, most people follow the "wrong one". why would God do that? he wouldn't.
See
Is what I meant. If they were all derivatives of the same religion, it'd be more understandable. But the history of religions as we know them shows different ones springing up at different times and even Christianity repurposing old religions.
You sound convinced, you've got a rocky life ahead. Youll find that your pride is unable to sustain you, just hope for riches and materialism can fill in the gaps for you until you die and descend.
But how do things exist in your mind, ie protons and the xyzt space you exist in, time itself, laws of physics... just the basic things taken for granted when you consider the polar opposite of the absolute void of nothing that should be without God.
I only sound convinced because I haven't been convinced otherwise in light of material evidence. Don't get me wrong, I know we don't know everything there is to know, but I'd at least like a pointer that somewhere in that void of knowledge lies a God.