Most of us would like to "find" our real selves . We try to see ourselves as we really are and not just as we want to see ourself . But finding yourself in true honesty involves you making a decision on whether or not you believe in God ,for real.
Perhaps the hardest thing in life is to be honest in what we believe , in respect to God and God's reality .
What is truth . We know that we lie to our children in so many ways so not to hurt them or put fear into their innocent ways.
So how do we really find God so that we know for sure God is real .
We have Churches etc but some of us know it may take more than that to make us believe .

So my question is ,,,

" what did it take for you to believe in God? "

What a great subject to talk about : )

I was once asked: "All this postive thinking about God is good, but what if there is no God?" I answered:" So, what does it matter?" "Is this not the best way to live?"

I have been to hell and back, for me to believe in a God/source/universe/higher power/higher Self is my choice. I can't proove to anyone that there is a God, but anyone can experience God. If metaphysic's is right and thought creates our experience, who creates when I take "no thought".

I was thinking a few years ago:"Where is God?" I heard a small voice inside of me saying:"I am closer than you think". I responded:" Of course you are..... you are inside of me". I did not hear anything back, so I started to think about what I heard. Closer than you think....think...thinking....thought. Than I got it, thought is the only thing that separates us from from God. Think about it: the only time you "think" is when you are in doubt. The funny thing is that thinking will bring you to no thought. In the silence of our mind we are one with God.

Just try it for your self: next time a lack or loss is brought to your attention, affirm the truth: My father and I am one, There is no lack or loss in the universe, God is with me, Get behind me satan, what ever works for you and then give it no more thought. Go about your ways and don't think about it anymore. The goal is to get your attention completely off of the "problem, lack or loss". Do not think how it's going to change or come into manifestation or how it's going to disappear. If you did not do ANYTHING to bring about a change, then that should be proof enough to believe that there is something that is on "the field" when you are not : )

Nothing, as I do not believe in God at all. The simple fact is, there is absolutely zero evidence, outside of the minds/imaginations of human beings, for the existence of anything that might reasonably be called "God," especially a god resembling that of the 3 great monotheisms, Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

And let me say, those imaginative minds are capable of a great deal. 25% of Americans believe in witches. 50% believe in ghosts (the same number as belief in the devil and that the book of Genesis is literally true -- which really is complete nonsense and flies in the face of every scientific discovery we know of.)

H.L. Menchken said, "the most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It's the chief occupation of mankind."

And you know, if you look at the beliefs expressed just on this board alone, you'll find that there are many, that they contradict one another, that nobody can show any evidence supporting their belief --- and also that nobody is going to give up their belief even though there's nothing to support it and much to deny it.

Look, let's put up the idea of the existence of God as a testable hypothesis. Every hypothesis should be able to make predictions in order to be testable, and this God hypothesis certainly does that. It predicts, among many other things, that miracles should be observable, success or happiness in life should be roughly proportional to virtue, suffering should be roughly (or even exactly) proportional to sin or wickedness.

I look around me every day, and unfortunately, it is my observation that none of these is even remotely confirmed. Quite the opposite, actually. Miracles basically stopped happening just shortly after the supposed death of Christ. Many of the world's most evil people are quite well off and very happy, thank you, while some of the world's best suffer and die in horrible conditions, or toil in grinding poverty until they can't bear it any longer. Innocent children suffer in ways that give the lie to any notion of a "loving creator."

There's a Yiddish expression that says: "If God lived on earth, people would break His windows." That speaks to how well the predications from our hypothesis validate the existence of God. They don't.

__________________
evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

"In the silence of our mind we are one with God." Very well put.


evangelicalhumanist, l want to discuss with you here at this great site so l am going to think and decide how to approach you with what l want to discuss with you and others here too ofcourse , except that Lightkeeper guy lol.

That was funny,, right ?

I love the Lightkeeper really and that is why l can be funny , but seriously , he's gotta go lol .

Okay enough of my sick humour .

Tomorow evangelicalhumanist l will post my dicussion for you as tonite l will figure out what exactly l can learn from my question to you . I do appreciate that you think when you post and are so funny too . I know you make sense and how you feel and that is why l must think before l start our debate .

When l am alone l think of God and what is going on here and all of us Humans and so on and it is so difficult to determine real from fiction when so many things occur .

Anyway thanks for the reply from both of you and tomorrow we can discuss an issue of great debate and come to a conclusion .
A good topic is ' why we kill and eat our furry friends" but there are so many other topics that l need to think before l start this debate with an intelligent person as you evangelicalhumanist and ofcousre others here too .

Mr. Lightkeeper l am only kidding , you know , and l do love you and want to bear your children lol oops . Hey , I am not Gay and l am straight , not that there is anything wrong with that , as they say on " Seinfeld " lol.

Gotta love life with it's ups and downs and a balance makes it go so much better.

Before l have to go now l wanted to say that people are living in Faith and when it comes to the CRUNCH time of actually saying to someone " I know God is real " they say it with ease but have not grasped what they are saying when they say " I believe in God " .

Believing in God means believing in a type of " Super-natural" type being . And that when we die we go somewhere .


People believing in God should probably believe in Satan and when some "psychic" person comes along and says " I can do this and l can do that" we are in doubt and feel only normal happenings occur on Earth even though a cartoon type character named Satan lives and although real and people believe Satan is real they would not believe you if you told them that you had a cup of tea with Satan on your couch ,,,but no no no that is crazy even though there is a place called Hell where it is hot and fire and so on and there is God and angels and so on but any happening on Earth is all a fabrication from the Red Sea splitting to Jesus and God communicating to the Creation of Indian Lord Ganesh from dirt to so on .

What's going on . Hmnnn

It is hard for me to answer the question as stated, because this belief, for me, is an ongoing reconfirmation. It is based primarily on my experiences and knowledge, but part of that knowledge, for me, is that no other person will ever have exactly the same experiences and knowledge that I have, so it would be unrealistic for me to think that anyone will believe things quite the same way that I do.

Good question! It's also a hard one to answer in a paragraph or two, but I'll try. Like many, I was brought up in church, so I "believed" before I was able to question that belief. After leaving home at 18, I had to face the fact that I'd had no direct experience of what I believed - infact, I believed because others had told me the "truth" as they saw it. I had to admit that, other than a few emotional experiences, I didn't have much personal conviction.

For the next ten years, I went through periods of questionning and periods of forgetting God altogether. I joined an evangelical/Bible believing-church and threw myself into study/prayer/devotion, only to find I had more questions than answers and infact was quite miserable in a life filled with constant judgement. Finally, in an honest moment, I decided to leave the church and told God He would have to show Himself to me if He wanted me to believe. At that point, my only thought was "If there is a God, He would have to be totally loving" - I mean, who would want to worship Him if He weren't?

It wasn't long before I began to encounter people and books who talked of God in a different way. I remember being drawn to a book by Edgar Cayce (back then it was in the "Occult" section of the book store - no "Spirituality" category!). I opened to the introduction and saw the words "Presbyterian Minister," the church I'd been brought up in. It was my first attempt to reach beyond the mainstream and it was a very meaninful moment. I bought the book and read it with great curiousity. After that, there seemed no end to the discoveries that just happened to "show up" when I was ready for them. I've always been partial to a few scripture verses, including "you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free," and after a while, I really felt as though God was indeed teaching me AND setting me free. For me, the greatest part is, it doesn't end!

See we have to define what we mean by God. When I read something like this, something like; "what did it take...", it imediately makes me, intended to or not, think of one idea of God. God as the Ruler of the Universe, the Master Technician, the Master Potter, the CREATOR God of the monotheistic religions. It also, kinda makes me cringe a little because it makes me think of certain arguments often used to entice one to believe in this type of God. Stuff like, oh I don't know, the whole guilt trip about Jesus dying for your sins, the whole lovely notion of, "when I look out at a sunset I know there's a higher power than myself", stuff like this. Did this do the trick? Did it take yet? No? Well how about when you were at the lowest of your lows- and you were about to give up. When you were in the foxhole so to speak, or literally!, then, finally then, did you "give in" and believe in the Higher Power, the good and jealous Creator God? What did it actually take...? How much turmoil, sadness, grief, anger, etc before you finally accepted the Myth that you were already ensconsed in, namely the Myth (or Image) or God as the Master, from the time of your birth, and give it the respect that it is due...

Now, I know you're talking more about introspection, contemplation, meditation, how much of this did it take... But that's what it made me think of. And along those lines I suppose everyone has their breaking point where you could get them to believe in whatever Myth. Even the Eastern Myths! But those are usually arrived more out of happiness than sadness and longing.

I don't believe in God. God believes in me. When God stops believing in me then I realize that I was never there to begin with. It was always all God and belief in God is really illusory anyway. Or something like that.

When I went through my ultra-rationalistic phase, I dabbled in atheism before moving to agnosticism. I found it took more faith for me to declare myself atheistic than it did to acknowledge where I actually felt I stood. I had to convince myself of my atheism. I never really returned to theisms, however, and didn't realize that the stage I had come to was Deism. Thomas Paine said the only true definition of an infidel is someone who professess to believe that which they do not. So to answer the question, "What did it take for you to believe in God?" my answer would be honesty.

Truely, since I was a child and I went to church with my grandparents and my dad on the rare occassions. I automatically latched onto God fromt he beginning. Jesus was always my hero whom I would have loved to have been like at any time in my impulsive life. I believe in Him like He is a brother who is far away, but I know he is real. Its like second nature for me. I feel Him all the time. I just know He's there and I'm never alone. Even sometimes when I feel like I am alone and have nobody on earth to love me or care for me, then I feel His peace He always wants to give me. If I am open to it though, of course He doesn't push Himself on anyone. He offeres a free gift of Himself, but you have to be willing to take it and feel it. Sometimes I am not receptive to to Him. Sometimes the human feelings are what I wanna drown in at certain times and so I close myself up to feeling God. Always feeling totally guilty and ashamed of myself for it later. Well this is my experience...