Justification of Believing in a God

This thread is for those lainons that are religious and believe in God. I was raised very religious, but in the last few years I have realized that I only "believe" in God and take part in religious rituals because of my upbringing. Within my head, I cannot rationalize the existence of God. With that being said, I do not believe I am 100% correct and will give up on all religion. I want to hear what logic, or at least reasons, religious people have for believing in their respective religions.

There are no coincidences in this world, everything has a reason. Realising this turned me away from the atheism I was drilled into believing by my parents. Read the Kybalion OP, it's on Project Guthenberg. I posted the epub in another thread a few weeks ago but I'm not going to post it this time since that would be too spammy to be honest. Most people upset with religion are people who have been raised up in the western world, where their only experiences with religion have been through Christianity and Islam Sufism is ok to be honest. Those two faiths are practically Judaism, except for the lowest common denominator, that's why those two are the most widespread religions in the world.

>>6599 >There are no coincidences in this world I don't believe you. Is it possible for you to convince me or is it just something you're supposed to believe as "faith"? >everything has a reason in the sense that the future is determined by the present? Of course. This is a fine argument against supernatural things like souls or gods or miracles, unless you use Liebniz's reasoning.

A lot of religions are just one, esoteric christianity, buddhism, taoism, judaism, pythagorianism, platonism, hinduism, zen and so on... They all have their metaphysics and ethics based on a state of consciousness called non-duality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism

>>6601 just because they have a similar idea(and to be honest I'm doubtful that non-duality is even a significant idea in most of those religions) doesn't mean they're the samem

I meditated and I saw it. It's as simple as that for me.

>>6602 All of those religions are all grounded on non-dualism, just check the wikipedia link. "They are not the same", of course they aren't, if they were they would have the same name, I was speaking in a general sense. Do you even know what non-dualism is?

>>6599 I too am not atheist but if this were true reason would be a universal law. We have discovered universal laws through reason but it isnt a law itself. Rocks don't reason, people and animals often behave in unreasonable ways. If you want to argue we just haven't found a reason yet then we obviously don't fully understand reason, in which case we are speaking about something a bit outside our paygrade. I don't think its fair to assume that just because the human brain works off reason and cause and effect everything must as well, and I don't think there is proof for this.

>>6599 I can't speak for Islam, but Christianity is fundamentally different to Judaism in both theology and moral outlook. The New Testament is contextualised by the old, but it shouldn't be considered a derivation.

>>6603 You have meditaded for way too long lainon

>>6606 But the New Testament doesn't replace the Old Testament, it's an addition to it. If Christianity is built off of the former, how isn't it a derivation? It's almost like C, C++ and C#, each of them is different but they clearly share a root. The moral values of modern day progressivism and Christianity differ as well, yet after careful examination you can vividly see Christian roots in the leftism of today. Sin, monotheistic worship, the punishment of the well off and the rewarding of the less well off, the clergy, they're all present in a mutated form of Christianity, because the Christian religion had to adapt to it's environment after the Church and the State were separated. I don't see how people don't realise it, but all three religions are inside the same "storyline" so to speak. Those Satanists who hate Christianity so much some groups think it's a joke, some take it seriously, I'm talking about the serious, how don't they realise that by admitting that a character in the Abrahamic canon is true and that they worship him, they're also working within the framework of Christianity, thus legitimising it? >>6600 What about omens? Some people have had paintings fall off walls before bad things happen, for example. What about the ominous feeling you sometimes get that something bad is about to happen even though there's logically nothing to signify a threat? Animals can simply "feel" that some things are going to happen very soon, earthquakes can be explained by heightened senses that humans lack, but some animals can also sense attacks, or people dying soon, or people having undiagnosed illnesses. What about some people dreaming about things that will happen in the future? What about synchronicity? I come back to my computer, and I get a message from a friend who I haven't spoken to in months within seconds of sitting down even though he has no idea what I just did. Just one example, but stuff like this happens all the time, not only online but in real life as well. >>6602 What he's saying is that all religions of the world have a common perennial root that have all mutated by being separated for large amounts of time. >>6603 woke

I was a diehard atheist for a while when I was young. What turned me from that was realizing that there were things well beyond my understanding, even more so, there were things that completely trancend my mode of perception. However sofisticated humans are, we're still brutally primitive in light of all that is reality. Our brains offer us but a feeble heuristic simulation of what our limited senses can percieve. When I understood this I realized how arrogant it is to make statements of the absolute. There is a god, there is no god, or god is like this or that. To me seem like wishful thinking rather than anything approximating truth. I found a book that talks about god in uncertain terms, between blurry lines, without certanties, that is the Tao Te King. I like the book. I found discordianism as well. It allowed me to put a name to the approach that I now take, where I will steal rituals, beliefs and any other religious paraphernalia if I find it useful. Belief is a tool, learning how to use it is the meaning of power over your own mind.

>>6603 This is a good answer. God speaks in many different ways, its a matter of learning to listen.

>>6597 Life is meaningless and soykaf. If some people can convince themselves it's not by believing in a "God", then good for them.

>>6616 >What about omens? Some people have had paintings fall off walls before bad things happen, for example. unlikely coincidences are still coincidences. >What about the ominous feeling you sometimes get that something bad is about to happen even though there's logically nothing to signify a threat? I get that all the time and usually nothing happens. Your subconscious mind sometimes makes decisions about things that the conscious just doesn't have access to. >but some animals can also sense attacks, or people dying soon, or people having undiagnosed illnesses. I think all of those can be explained by hightened senses that humans lack. >What about some people dreaming about things that will happen in the future? what about the millions and millions of dreams that never come to pass? >What about synchronicity? I come back to my computer, and I get a message from a friend who I haven't spoken to in months within seconds of sitting down even though he has no idea what I just did. what about all the times that didn't happen? It's a classic form of cognitive bias to pay attention to only exceptional cases. Just because improbable things happen doesn't mean there's some supernatural force is at work. Someone always wins the lottery. The Boltzmann Brain could just *happen* to pop into existence, and it would be fantastically improbable but still fully consistent with a purely mechanistic worldview. For the record, I'm not willing to categorically discount something "spiritual" or aphysical about reality, but I think if it exists the chances that anyone has or ever will actually figure out what it is are infinitely small, so what's the point? >What he's saying is that all religions of the world have a common perennial root that have all mutated by being separated for large amounts of time. are we sure that's not just a case of convergent evolution?

I don't know if my reasons are "logic", I even doubt the existence of such a supreme being often, I don't know how the fuarrrk could I not. How can people be so firm in their belief (and any belief!) and be so sure and unwilling to even question I don't know. All I know is I make a conscious choice to believe in something that seems to escape all logic. Though in a way I think of god as a sort of platonic object. Whether it is a she, he, or whatever I can't say. I do not understand why, being out there so many books by such different cultures which try to describe this reality and such entity, can people hold on to a particular flag and claim it as the Truth. There is a particular philosophy which has been confused for a religion (and sometimes it is made a religion) which is the chinese Dao. However, the idea of Dao denies institutions and has thus far in my exploration of it's classical literature never touched the subject of god. Back to the subject of god, I claim total ignorance about it, there seems to be very little consensus at all about it in world literature. I correct: there is NO consensus. I believe nihilism is a strong stance too. tl;dr i don't know soykaf

I'm not a religious guy, but i believe there is something or someone who created everything. My argument is basic as fuarrrk: since its literally impossible to be sure if there is or isn't a God by natural means, its more reasonable and less frustrating believing there's a God. If he isn't real i'm not losing anything and i'm also avoiding wasting my limited time with impossible questions and focusing more on the things i know are real and problems i can actually find solutions.

After a long series of painful but educational life experiences, personal issues, philosophical navel-gazings, and countless nights of prayer, I gradually went from being simply raised Christian to being Christian. It's not something that happened all at once and many of my faith-building moments have been retrospectives and introspections rather than miracles and divine works. Simply put, I felt the Spirit.

>>6597 Not really sure where else to put it So I was born and raised Roman Catholic, and have been given a reasonable interpretation of God's scriptures. (at least I think) However, a friend of mine convinced me to go to my dorm's small group religious meeting, and it was a flipping RIDE. Like, they were all roman catholic like me, but they were *really* into the specifics of certain rituals (like how the priest *must* hold his fingers in a certain way during the Eucharist, or how you *must* receive the body of Christ to the tongue directly -- no hand contact with the body because then you "desecrate the body" or something like that. They were *really* into Latin and some crap called "High Mass" and "Requiem", which if we're being honest, sound more like JoJo stand abilities than anything). I guess what I'm asking is, what's the point of being all nitty-gritty like that? They seemed to be pretty smug about doing religion the "right" way, and at least the friend that invited me isn't really a good person (or, from what I see, doesn't really have a sense of empathy for other people that don't share his opinions) and goes against the spirit of the teachings which is just "be a good person". Like, he cares about where mentally disabled people go to after they die ("Limbo of the Innocents" apparently), but constantly makes jokes about autistic people and uses the r-word. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just seems kind of disingenuous with what he's telling me to believe. What do you guys think? Is it worth it to follow the word of god to the 't'? Or is just doing the basic motions good enough? I think I'm a decent person (I mean, I guess everyone does), but does me not celebrating mass a certain way mean I'm less holy than them? That's how they made it seem, anyway.

I found theres equally logical reasons for believing as not believing, following both to the end and ending up at the other. My conclusion is logic is irrelevant when it comes to these sorts of cosmic thing, its a human concept. So my opinion is faith shouldn't be backed by logic or anything, it should be completely blind. Otherwise you will go in circles.

Well I currently consider myself an animist, because I think of consciousness as something that derives from a subject's recognition of some object as a "conscious object". (I'm sort of retrofitting the postmodern understanding of art here.) In other words, consciousness is not intrinsic and is simply the result of subjective "personification" of observable phenomena. I have a whole argument about constructing isomorphisms between brains and other dynamic physical systems, thus rejecting that consciousness is intrinsic to brains. Once you lose that, you're basically free to label any dynamic process "conscious". You obviously aren't compelled to, but I think there's something extremely beautiful about imagining the "conscious will" of streams, storms, flames, and trees. I don't believe these things are gods though. I call them spirits, but I don't know how accurate that is. I also have a definition of "demon" that I'm reasonably happy with, but you have to reject hard materialism for it to work. I'm still trying to find a conception of God (or at least lower-case gods) that works for me, so I suppose I'm an atheist in that respect. >>7566 This. Trying to prove anything about god logically completely misses the point. "God exists" is not a testable hypothesis. There will never be evidence for or against it. You can either assume that there is a God and derive your worldview that way, or assume there isn't. It has to be blind faith though. No different than blind faith in materialism or cartesian dualism or what have you. >>6604 I don't really understand this. Is nondualism referring to the mind-body duality? I suspected that Catholics rejected this but I thought Protestants believed in separate spirits and bodies. At least, the unitarian ones I grew up with... I have since realized that this is a pretty unpopular belief among Christians. Also, slightly OT but can someone explain the trinity to me?

>>7564 >I guess what I'm asking is, what's the point of being all nitty-gritty like that? AFAIK it goes back to the "sola scriptura" thing. Most Protestants believe that you can pretty much learn everything there is to know about God from the bible. Catholics believe that the church plays an essential role in preserving the teachings of Christ through rituals. I'm not Catholic, so I don't know for sure, but I think the idea is that if you do the rituals wrong, you are corrupting God's message and making it harder for your decedents to know Him. The point of the Catholic church is to preserve spiritual knowledge. The point of the Protestant church is communal worship. It's why you have confession and they have cookouts.

>>7567 but how do you actually construct such an isomorphism? The dynamical behaviour of a stream, for instance, is qualitatively different from the dynamical behaviour of a human brain.

>>7569 i don't have a formal answer, but it comes from the idea that the brain can be understood physically as a bunch of voltage potentials interacting with eachother. theoretically we could come up with an equation to describe them. after all, the brain isn't infinite. it is a lump of matter like anything else. if you could construct such an equation, it no longer matters what it is describing. what if i took that equation and emulated it using point masses in space? gravitational systems are at least as complicated and expressive as electrical ones, so i hope it isn't too hard to believe that by positioning a bunch of particles just right, you could have them interact in a manner which is isomorphic to your brain cells. that's what i meant by isomorphisms, but i don't blame you if you don't think that idea is very compelling. it's not really an argument, more of a thought experiment that changed how i thought about consciousness. at this point it just seems to me that there really is no good way to draw hard lines between conscious systems and non-conscious systems. because of this, i choose to define consciousness in such a way that the question becomes irrelevant. proving that something is conscious becomes like trying to prove that something is art. the best way i can think to sum this idea up is: "consciousness is the personification of dynamics". the dynamic behavior of a stream is qualitatively different from the dynamics of a human brain, so it makes sense to me that the consciousness of a stream would likewise be very different. but who are we to say that the stream is not "reasoning" in its own way? its neuronal mesh is made of water molecules which bump against eachother. in some alien way, it even has senses. perception is just signals from your body that perturb the dynamic behavior of your brain. how is this different from a rock tossed into a stream? clearly you can't talk to it. it can't understand you and you can't understand it. but i do like being able to think of these systems as having their own agency. all of this kind of rides on the assumption of free will. "if brains can support free will, why can't other things?"... more or less. of course, if you don't believe in free will it all goes out the window, but then you're just acting out of material necessity and you're *really* are no different from the stream.

>>7570 >if you could construct such an equation, it no longer matters what it is describing. sure, but for something to be an isomorphism you'd need to show that you can find a bijection such that solutions to the differential equation that is your consciousness correspond exactly to solutions of your gravitational system, that it preserves convergence, divergence, singularities, etc. Otherwise you're misusing the term "isomorphism" heavily. There's no reason a priori to accept that such an isomorphism exists without proof, and there are a great many compelling reasons why they don't exist in general. >at this point it just seems to me that there really is no good way to draw hard lines between conscious systems and non-conscious systems I agree with your conclusions, I don't agree with your reasons for believing them though. You could do well by dropping the mathematical language. >all of this kind of rides on the assumption of free will. why does consciousness imply free will? Seems that a thng could be fully conscious while having no agency whatsoever.

>>7583 >find a bijection such that solutions to the differential equation that is your consciousness correspond exactly to solutions of your gravitational system Right, if I had a good model for the brain, that's what I'd try to do. Since I don't, I can't really be any more specific. In pseudo-mathematical terms: I'm trying to say that this "brain equation" is a member of some isomorphism class, and that in principle it should be possible to realize the other members of this class physically. Maybe it isn't. Maybe the brain equation is the only member of its isomorphism class. We have no way of knowing at the moment. But if we assume that it is, then it follows that there are physical systems (other than the human brain) that can support consciousness. I only brought up the n-body gravitation thing because it seemed like a plausible candidate. >Otherwise you're misusing the term "isomorphism" heavily. Sure, I am not using it with the same precision that I'd use it if I were proving a theorem. We're talking about metaphysics here. "Isomorphism" is a word that means things outside of mathematics. I thought it would be appropriate because it suggests both the mathematical concept and another somewhat related concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphism_(Gestalt_psychology) . I didn't make that clear though, and I apologize for that. >there are a great many compelling reasons why they don't exist in general. Can you elaborate? I was under the impression that while you can't just pick any two systems and expect them to be isomorphic, you *can* in principle take any given system and construct other systems that are isomorphic to it. I thought that was why in topology, uniqueness is almost always just *up to isomorphism*. I definitely could be wrong though. >why does consciousness imply free will? You mean "why does free will imply consciousness", right? You're right, it doesn't. I don't know why I wrote that. I think I was trying to emphasize that non-human consciousness has agency, but that's irrelevant to my point.

>>7584 >while you can't just pick any two systems and expect them to be isomorphic, you *can* in principle take any given system and construct other systems that are isomorphic to it. yes, most definitely, but your claim is that we can find naturally occuring examples of isomorphic systems in physical systems besides brains. It's not just a matter of getting your starting conditions just right, it's a matter of the system itself. Newtonian gravitational systems for instance follow the inverse-square law, so they can never be isomorphic to a spring system which has a linear force, no matter what starting conditions you choose. Assuming the consciousness equation is as complex as it seems to be, most things(which can be described with relatively simple equations) wouldn't be anything like it. There is, however, no reason to believe that human consciousness is the only isomorphism class of consciousness or that other systems can't approximate it, to use your terms, which is why I think your ideas hold water.

Experiencing visions and then reading about the vision of Hermes and it reminding you of your own. Past life memories Wild synchronicties and magic The Holy Spirit Understadning the Kabbalah.

Very weird stuff happened in my life and I have no other choice than to believe in god or I will disagree with my own perception of things.

>>7595 >It's not just a matter of getting your starting conditions just right, it's a matter of the system itself. You're right. I don't think I was taking this into account as much as I should be. This is because my conception of consciousness doesn't depend on something being "brain like". But that's a personal metaphysical belief. I should be more careful not to let my personal assumptions ruin the rest of my argument. Thanks for actually engaging with my ideas btw. Most people I meet online seem to dismiss anything that's not hardcore materialism as worthless bullsoykaf. >>7601 Care to elaborate?