Trailblazer
Veteran Member
And that is the hundred-dollar question God refuses to answer.
That is the least God could do considering all the suffering we have to endure in this life.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Atheists and agnotics, do you hope God exist?
- Thread starter Starlight
- Start date
That is the least God could do considering all the suffering we have to endure in this life.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
So would I.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Why would anyone hope that God exists?
In other words, unless one is stuck believing in God, why would they want to believe God exists?
I can see why they might want to believe in the loving merciful God, but that God might be a childish hope.
lukethethird
unknown member
Be like the look on the faces that see God in their burnt toast.
Hope god exists, no, given the terrors of life i don't see how a god can exist.
Afterlife, i can't think of anything. worse.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
If it could be definitively demonstrated god does or does not exist, it would be the discovery of all history, trumping everything else you can think of. It would have profound and staggering effects on global scale. It may be unpredictable what would happen within the short-term future of such a discovery.
lukethethird
unknown member
It wouldn't make any difference to me.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Of course this is just a belief, but I believe that in the future everyone will know that God exists, they won't just believe. My belief is based upon the Bible and the Writings of the Bab.
Jeremiah 31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Isaiah 11:9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
“The Day is approaching when God will render the hosts of Truth victorious, and He will purge the whole earth in such wise that within the compass of His knowledge not a single soul shall remain unless he truly believeth in God, worshippeth none other God but Him, boweth down by day and by night in His adoration, and is reckoned among such as are well assured.”
Selections From the Writings of the Báb, pp. 153-154
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
What would have the bigger effect is if it could be definitively demonstrated that God does not exist, since most people in the world believe God does exist even without definitive proof.
Yerda
Veteran Member
I suppose that what I consider to be 'me' is tied up with the body and when that dies anything that lives on can't be what I think of as my self.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
Even if god exists, this is going to mean tons of people are going to discover they are wrong.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Why do you think that your body is yourself? I believe that the soul is who we care because it is the mind.
I believe that after we die our soul takes on another form, a spiritual body, free of all the impediments of the physical body. Why would anyone want to live in a physical body forever? The physical body was designed to get old and die so we can have a better life in another world with a new body.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I am not sure I understand what you mean.
If God exists and it could be proven, the people who would discover they are wrong would be atheists and that is not tons of people.
According to sociologists Ariela Keysar and Juhem Navarro-Rivera's review of numerous global studies on atheism, there are 450 to 500 million positive atheists and agnostics worldwide (7% of the world's population), with China having the most atheists in the world (200 million convinced atheists). Demographics of atheism - Wikipedia
Heyo
Veteran Member
There are more people who believe in a god, but there are more people who don't believe in any god than there are people who believe in a specific god.
So the existence of a specific god would be surprising to more people than the proof of non-existence of any gods.
Yerda
Veteran Member
I think the best understanding of what we are comes from what we know of biology and the physics and chemistry that underpin it. That is, we are physical objects* and the product of a continued physical/chemical reaction that produces stability in the kind of systems that we find ourselves in. Like a rock rolling down a hill to most stable equilibrium point.
*There is something frankly magical about consciousness and something inherently mysterious about existence but I believe that for us both of these things end when we die. It might be that some kind of mind pervades reality or that we return to the "source" or whatever but I think that necessarily means the end of the self if true.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
No, if we are going strictly by the numbers of believers that is not correct, because Christians are 29% of the world population and Muslims are 24% of the world population, and they each believe in a specific God, whereas Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist are only 14.1% of the world population.
List of religious populations - Wikipedia
If what you are saying is that proof that there is only one God who revealed all the religions would be more surprising to more people than the proof that there is no God or gods I can go along with that, since the Baha'i Faith is the only major religion with the belief that one God revealed all the religions, and it is only .12% of the world population.
Want to compare notes? I would still say an eternity is too long for anyone. A full (hopefully) human lifespan is enough for me.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Yes, that is true as long as we are alive in a physical body.
I fully agree because according to my beliefs the soul is a mystery no human mind can ever unravel.
“Thou hast asked Me concerning the nature of the soul. Know, verily, that the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel. ”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 158-159
I believe that after the body dies, the soul continues to exist, crosses over into a spiritual realm, and takes on a new form by which it will continue to think and express itself. Exactly how that will play out I have no idea.
“The answer to the third question is this, that in the other world the human reality doth not assume a physical form, rather doth it take on a heavenly form, made up of elements of that heavenly realm.” Selections From the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 194
Heyo
Veteran Member
And we are at the central problem of the "god" concept. Nobody knows what it is.
There is not one god all Christians believe in, there are tens of thousands.
You have a serious problem of identity if something appears and claims to be "god". You may allow some your presumed attributes to be false, but how many can you sacrifice before you have to admit that that entity claiming to be god is not what you think of being god?