Belief in God will always require ‘some’ faith

[Trailblazer]

What evidence are you procuring? You have zero evidence that could be used to infer the existence of any god.

Ciao

- viole

Messengers of God are the evidence of God. I did not procure them, God sent them.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Belief in God will always require ‘some’ faith because we can never see God or hear God speak to us directly.

However, it is my contention that the better the evidence we have of God’s existence the less faith we will require in order to believe in God. In other words, there is an inverse correlation between good evidence and faith required to believe in God.

I will even contend that with good enough evidence we can know in our own minds that God exists even thou we can never prove it to anyone else.

May the God in your mind serve you well.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Messengers of God are the evidence of God. I did not procure them, God sent them.

No. I don't think so.

It's only evidence of people who proclaim themselves as messengers of what lives in their minds.

 

[Exaltist Ethan]

We as a human species know the nature of Earth pretty well by now. I am not saying we know it all, we don't. If we can do that here, I would assume we could do that on other planets. Eventually are footprint will get larger until we know the nature incarnate. The Omniverse. People keep chasing down these false negatives. Biology answers some questions about where we come from, but it cannot answer why we exist. That is why we have things like religion. And as someone who sees nature itself as God I would say we exist to be part of it. Existence is its own reward. I would rather feel sad or numb than feel nothing at all.

I don't believe I have really any "faith" in God. I don't believe in an afterlife, I don't believe praying makes my voice be heard, I have no superstitious type thinking that I know of. But I know God pretty well, and if you follow the evidence and educate yourself you probably would be, too... All of us need a little less faith in God and a little more knowledge and expertise in this thing called human life. Being a human is how I understand God. Not by reading and reciting books endlessly.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: Why would good evidence for God require inter-subjective agreement and peer-review?

Inter-subjective agreement is one of the minimum criteria of epistemology as a whole, because to prove that something is external to one's mind you need to demonstrate that other minds can independently verify it.

Peer-review is one of the highest standards of good evidence and it's the backbone of all scholarly fields, because there could be an error in your reasoning that other people are better equipped to catch.

Without these two things, you do not have good evidence. You have anecdotal evidence, potentially even confabulation.

Nobody can ever prove that God is external to one's mind because God can never be verified to exist.

Only Messengers of God can be investigated but everyone has to do their own research in order to determine if their claims were valid. There is no reason to think that 'other people' are better equipped to determine who was actually a Messenger of God, and since we are all personally responsible to God for our beliefs we cannot rely upon the judgment of other people to guide us to truth about God.

“If, in the Day when all the peoples of the earth will be gathered together, any man should, whilst standing in the presence of God, be asked: “Wherefore hast thou disbelieved in My Beauty and turned away from My Self,” and if such a man should reply and say: “Inasmuch as all men have erred, and none hath been found willing to turn his face to the Truth, I, too, following their example, have grievously failed to recognize the Beauty of the Eternal,” such a plea will, assuredly, be rejected. For the faith of no man can be conditioned by any one except himself.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 143

 

[Jagella]

Belief in God will always require ‘some’ faith because we can never see God or hear God speak to us directly.

However, it is my contention that the better the evidence we have of God’s existence the less faith we will require in order to believe in God. In other words, there is an inverse correlation between good evidence and faith required to believe in God.

I will even contend that with good enough evidence we can know in our own minds that God exists even thou we can never prove it to anyone else.

How do you define "faith"? Most theists don't define faith as necessarily without reason or evidence. For them faith is trusting God to tell the truth and fulfill his promises. That trust is, at least in some cases, based on reason and/or evidence that supports the conclusion that God will do what he said he will do. Of course, we can argue about the reasoning and the evidence, but there is reasoning and evidence nevertheless.

 

[Trailblazer]

And what makes you think your God is not a fictional character?

Ciao

- viole

The Messengers of God.

 

[Trailblazer]

May the God in your mind serve you well.

God does not serve me, I serve God.

 

[Ella S.]

@Trailblazer then, under your model, there can never be good evidence for God. Therefore, it is always unreasonable to believe in God.

I'm a gnostic atheist and even I wouldn't go that far, but I guess it's the end of the thread when you openly disprove your own model of God.

 

[Exaltist Ethan]

Have you ever considered that we may all be messengers of God? Manifestations of this essence? What makes some people so much more special and important than others?

 

[Trailblazer]

How do you define "faith"? Most theists don't define faith as necessarily without reason or evidence. For them faith is trusting God to tell the truth and fulfill his promises. That trust is, at least in some cases, based on reason and/or evidence that supports the conclusion that God will do what he said he will do. Of course, we can argue about the reasoning and the evidence, but there is reasoning and evidence nevertheless.

I am not saying there is no reasoning and evidence behind belief in God.
I do not have faith without reason and evidence because that would be blind faith. However, some faith is necessary to believe in an unseen God.

How could we ever know if God did what He said He would do? All we have are scriptures that are allegedly God's Word, scriptures from various religions tat can be interpreted in various ways.

 

[Trailblazer]

@Trailblazer then, under your model, there can never be good evidence for God. Therefore, it is always unreasonable to believe in God.

I'm a gnostic atheist and even I wouldn't go that far, but I guess it's the end of the thread when you openly disprove your own model of God.

As I said in the OP, I will contend that with good enough evidence we can know in our own minds that God exists even though we can never prove it to anyone else.

What is considered 'good evidence' is highly subjective as what is good to one person is not good to another. For a Christian the Bible is good evidence but it is not evidence to another religious believer. To a Baha'i the Revelation of Baha'u'llah is good evidence but it is not evidence to anyone else. Do you understand the problem? It is all in how we perceive the evidence.

 

[Clara Tea]

Belief in God will always require ‘some’ faith because we can never see God or hear God speak to us directly.

However, it is my contention that the better the evidence we have of God’s existence the less faith we will require in order to believe in God. In other words, there is an inverse correlation between good evidence and faith required to believe in God.

I will even contend that with good enough evidence we can know in our own minds that God exists even thou we can never prove it to anyone else.

FAITH VS. TRUST:

The two are almost identical. The difference is that faith often involves trusting a diety (often an invisible one who doesn't show itself).

Even atheists have trust. If they didn't, they couldn't take a step outside of their homes. They would mistrust neighbors and think that they could get shot and robbed (actually, that is almost the norm that they would get attacked now). We have to trust that cars on the road will stop for us.

Moses got the 10 commandments from God.

God told Noah to build an ark in the desert.

I think that you have lost faith if you think that God will never communicate with anyone.

These are the end times. The end times, according to Revelation, started with the attack of Iraq (which God strictly prohibited us from doing). Now God will make us suffer (example, Revelation 15 is seven plagues), and God will eventually end all life on earth.

Because these are the end times, God will talk to some people, and has already talked to some. God has sent his modern prophets to earth to warn us not to attack Iraq. But, no one heeded them. God also sent helpers to do His bidding on earth. They must prepare humans for the 2nd coming of Christ. This means that they can't use the Cancel Culture to kick Christ off of forums (though they will try). This also means that those with tepid (hardly warm) faith will falter. One must either be completely cold (atheist) or quite hot in one's faith. Tepid won't do. One can't have weak arguments for faith or one will never survive the rigors that the end of the world entails. There will be floods, droughts, fires, famines, extreme heat (Global Warming--which a lot of Christians deny), debt, homelessness, etc. (We see it all around us now). How can someone with weak faith keep going? God knows this, and that is why God sent helpers to talk some sense into the tepid theists, and make them either hot or cold.

In this modern age of science, it is difficult to get the faithless (like those who claim that God will never talk to us) to believe that God will talk to us.

The inverse correlation between faith and evidence, that you discuss, makes sense. This is because you don't need faith if you have evidence. Yet, it is entirely possible that someone with a lot of evidence can also have faith.

Evidence doesn't take away faith, it actually strengthens it.

 

[Clara Tea]

As I said in the OP, I will contend that with good enough evidence we can know in our own minds that God exists even though we can never prove it to anyone else.

What is considered 'good evidence' is highly subjective as what is good to one person is not good to another. For a Christian the Bible is good evidence but it is not evidence to another religious believer. To a Baha'i the Revelation of Baha'u'llah is good evidence but it is not evidence to anyone else. Do you understand the problem? It is all in how we perceive the evidence.

Subjective evidence....yes, I had a friend who found a rock on a rock pile, and took that as a sign that God exists. That poor soul doesn't have a chance to survive the starvation that end times will bring. He needs to find other reasons to believe in God.

 

[Trailblazer]

Have you ever considered that we may all be messengers of God? Manifestations of this essence? What makes some people so much more special and important than others?

I believe we are all manifestations of God in a sense since all of creation is a manifestation of God.

What makes Manifestations of God (Messengers) special is that they have a twofold nature, both divine and human.
By contrast, ordinary humans only have a human nature.

Also, ordinary humans do not manifest all the attributes of God perfectly as the Manifestations (Messengers) do.

 

[Clara Tea]

Messengers of God are the evidence of God. I did not procure them, God sent them.

Only if those messengers are really of God. There are so many charletans, that most messengers of God are disbelieved.

There are also some carnival hucksters who take pleasure or derive profit from fooling theists. For example, con man Jeb Bush (brother of President W. Bush) said that he talked to God and God promised that hurricanes would not strike Florida if he was the governor. Hurricanes did strike Florida...then he had to back peddle his statement. Jeb Bush is a false prophet who has been proven to be wrong.

We should have known that the Bush family was not of God the minute that they exhibited cruelty (mocking a woman on death row, denying a retrial to a man with DNA evidence proving his innocence, etc.) We should have known that the Bush family was not of God when they make wars, especially wars that are not justified by the evidence. There is no evidence that Iraq was involved in terrorism.

 

[Wildswanderer]

I don't agree that God doesn't speak directly to people.
Of course we can doubt regardless and some faith is required.

 

[viole]

Messengers of God are the evidence of God. I did not procure them, God sent them.

Sure. BYW, I am also a messenger of Superman. I am sure you will accept that as sufficient evidence of Superman.

Is that really so easy?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Exaltist Ethan]

I believe we are all manifestations of God in a sense since all of creation is a manifestation of God.

What makes Manifestations of God (Messengers) special is that they have a twofold nature, both divine and human.
By contrast, ordinary humans only have a human nature.

Also, ordinary humans do not manifest all the attributes of God perfectly as the Manifestations (Messengers) do.

I see all people as both divine and human. Knowing this I try my best to understand everybody's view point; I see everyone and every thing having some worth and value; and everybody is important. By knowing people I know parts of God. This is how I don't have faith in God, but I know God instead. Yes, if you believe that only these certain manifestations are divine, and you don't personally know these manifestations, you can only have scripture to hold back on. I like to get coffee with people and talk to them about things that matter to them. Almost like an interview. I know people better from a few hours doing that then you will know Baha'u'llah from reading one of his books. Knowing people is how I understand God. It doesn't matter who it is. Everybody's unique in their own way; with or without political or religious expressions to help me understand them.

 

[Twilight Hue]

God does not serve me, I serve God.

Which is you since the only God that exists is in your mind.