How can we know "God" exists?

[dhanabalt]

certian situation leads us to trust the existence of god... interesting facts about murugan hit the url srimurugan.org/sivanmalai.html

 

[Thief]

By surrendering yourself to all that is. By acting in unison with the wisdom that flows through you and is within everything. By discerning, in all things, between the real and illusory, the Absolute and the relative, the changeless and the unchanging. By never thinking about yourself. By not flattering your vanity. By not aiming, therefore, for originality of thought, but for True thought - originality will come of its own. By not trying to possess or claim credit for truth. By opening your ears to the voice of intuition, and ignoring your own babbling. By not getting lost in distractions like this discussion. By surrounding yourself with beauty. By loving your neighbour as yourself. By giving everything of yourself, until you are nothing. In short, by following a traditional religious path. Without religion, you will discern, if anything, only faint glimpses of self-transcendence (or pseudo-transcendence) in fleeting moments of self-forgetfulnss, as when contemplating a work of art, or enraptured by the beauties of nature, or entranced by a glimmer of that Edenic timelessness that some associate with déjà vu: but inevitably you return to the vanities and the illusions of this world, a prisoner of your own mind.

While God is beyond labels, symbols and ideas, one must be ‘oriented’ towards God in order to see God; consequently, one must have correct doctrine, rooted in religious orthodoxy, and assimilated into oneself by correct practice. Correct practice builds and maintains the seaworthy vessel, and correct doctrine ensures sound navigation. Lacking these prerequisites, no man will fortuitously experience God (except in relatively uncommon cases as when god seems to take the initiative and reveals himself to the suffering individual who has no means of escape, but in these cases there is an antecedent period of intense pain in which the soul opens itself to God; religion achieves the same end by doctrine and practice).

God is not beyond labels.
I use the self explanatory term.....Almighty.

That I attribute the same Entity with the act of creation seems logical to me.
Spirit first....substance as creation.

 

[Urizen]

God is not beyond labels.
I use the self explanatory term.....Almighty.

That I attribute the same Entity with the act of creation seems logical to me.
Spirit first....substance as creation.

One should use rational thought as a support for intuition and not as a barrier to it. Show reason her place as the servant, not the master, of your intelligence.

 

[Thief]

One should use rational thought as a support for intuition and not as a barrier to it. Show reason her place as the servant, not the master, of your intelligence.

And a heart in the lead is fickle....
Yeah I know the drill.....

 

[Urizen]

And a heart in the lead is fickle....
Yeah I know the drill.....

Not heart, but intuition. Not sentiment, but perception. Not emotion, but intelligence. Intuition is higher than reason, not less than reason.

 

[Thief]

I might agree.
Intuition just before that car accident....and I slid forward and under the dash.
Would have gone through the windshield.
'Felt'.....it coming.

As for knowing God exists....
I can know it.
I believe in cause and effect.

God is the Cause.
The universe is the effect.

 

[dance-above]

I don't have any big explanations but God is all around us. He is the breath of life but sin keeps many from him.

 

[shadowcat]

You cannot know that God exists because of a specific reason. Either you do know, or you don't. It's like being in love, if you're not in love you keep asking yourself what it would feel like if you were in love, but you cannot fully understand the way you feel. And then when you finally are in love, you cannot explain it to others, yet it still exists for you at that time.

 

[Excaljnur]

You cannot know that God exists because of a specific reason. Either you do know, or you don't. It's like being in love, if you're not in love you keep asking yourself what it would feel like if you were in love, but you cannot fully understand the way you feel. And then when you finally are in love, you cannot explain it to others, yet it still exists for you at that time.

Would you say that knowing God exists is a rational belief?

 

[tatygirl90]

I feel that there is no feasible way to know that God exists. You can believe that a God exists or you cannot but either way there is no proof.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Exactly there is no proof, which is why it is called a belief.

 

[softhart]

can you prove he does not exsist?

 

[Ouroboros]

can you prove he does not exsist?

That question is not a proof that God exists.

The thread is asking "how can we know God exists."

How can we know magical pixies exist? "Can you prove they don't?" is not a way of knowing they exist.

 

[McBell]

can you prove he does not exsist?

can you prove he does?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You cannot know that God exists because of a specific reason. Either you do know, or you don't. It's like being in love, if you're not in love you keep asking yourself what it would feel like if you were in love, but you cannot fully understand the way you feel. And then when you finally are in love, you cannot explain it to others, yet it still exists for you at that time.

The main problem I have with this analogy is that "love" is the term for the feeling itself, so the mere fact that you feel it is enough to prove (to yourself, anyhow) that you're in love.

This approach doesn't work for things outside our own heads. For instance, how do you know that the person you love loves you back? In that case, your feelings might be wrong... especially if they're not backed up with evidence.

Most theists I've encountered don't believe that God is a feeling, so I think the question of God's existence calls for some actual evidentiary support.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

can you prove he does not exsist?

Have you heard of Russell's Teapot?

It's an object that's clearly made up (since Bertrand Russell effectively told us so) that cannot be proven not to exist.

Is there more evidence for your god than for Russell's Teapot? If so, please tell us what it is. If not, why should we give it any more regard than we give to Russell's Teapot, something we know to be made up?

 

[Thief]

How about the stolen coin trick?

I lay it on the table....come back later.....it's gone.

Need I prove 'someone' took it?

Or do I prove first I even had one?

At some 'point' the discussion has to 'pin' itself.

 

[Ouroboros]

How about the stolen coin trick?

I lay it on the table....come back later.....it's gone.

Need I prove 'someone' took it?

Or do I prove first I even had one?

At some 'point' the discussion has to 'pin' itself.

So you're saying God is taking the coins from your table and that's how you know?

How do you pin what God is supposed to take from you to prove that he exists even if he never wants to openly show himself?

How do you pin God? I tried to pin God by looking for any kind of miracle in my and my family's life... I never saw one. We needed one, many times, big ones, but ... no pin.

But that was because I thought God was some separate, outside of the world person doing magic tricks. When I realized that God is us, the world, reality, all, and Nature itself, then we can say that the "pin" is everyday life. When I sit here typing on the keyboard, it's God talking through me. When you talk your crazy talk , It's God talking through you. God is all. There's no thing that has to be taken away to prove God. God isn't a thing to be proven. God is the concept of All That Exists.

 

[LuisDantas]

How about the stolen coin trick?

I lay it on the table....come back later.....it's gone.

Need I prove 'someone' took it?

Or do I prove first I even had one?

At some 'point' the discussion has to 'pin' itself.

I'm darned if I see the point here. This was supposed to be an argument for believing in God, I assume?

 

[McBell]

How about the stolen coin trick?

I lay it on the table....come back later.....it's gone.

Need I prove 'someone' took it?

Or do I prove first I even had one?

At some 'point' the discussion has to 'pin' itself.

You see no difference between a coin and god?