• 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!

There is a god or there isn't a god

F1fan

Veteran Member
Christians believe in a god due to faith, the bible, personal experience and passed on experiences/stories, etc.

Atheist just a lack the belief.

To have faith in most cases requires a personal experience.

Christians/religious people give your best personal experience of why you have belief/faith in a god.
This is why white supremacists experience how they are superior to other races of people. Jesus and God endorses them, according to their beliefs and experiences.

Atheist/non-religious give your best personal experience of why you lack belief/faith in a god.

PS. This is key...."personal experience", not "lack of scientific evidence".

And go....
Well when i was young I saw my Baptist family members have a serious rift with my Catholic family members. I was an observer and was part of my grandmother's Presbyterian church. All the idealistic Jesus talk did not make sense to what I observed of my fervent family members. To my mind these Christians can't even get along with each other, yet I'm supposed to get along with all people? All this just didn't;t make sense to me. As a kid I could tell something was very wrong and fishy with Christianity. Over time I saw more hypocrisy and discovered I was more of a Christian as a non-believer than these Christians were.

I was obvious these folks didn't really believe in a God. If they did they would bend over backwards trying to follow Jesus' example of charity and good will. I think they are atheists but just don't know it.
 

AlexanderG

Active Member
May he be blessed then! What a great thing to have happen (in my opinion).

The point is that different people have directly contradictory personal experiences. This means that many personal experiences cannot be true, and that anyone conclusion they have drawn from a mysterious personal experience is therefore unreliable to some significant degree. Since we have no tools to assess which personal experiences are more reliable than others, we are left with nothing but personal preferences, subjective feelings, and charismatic persuasion. These are the known tools that grifters and con artists use, and the known tools of self-delusion.

For all of these reasons, skeptics and non-believers don't consider personal religious experiences to be good evidence for truth claims.
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
I am an atheist.

Personal experience that informs me that not believing in God is the correct route to go:
  1. I have talked to a great number of people, all with different stories and ideas about what God is or has done, or is doing, or how He/She operates, none of whom can provide concrete details (sufficient to my expectations) on how to know whether their account is even the "most accurate."
  2. I don't see the things people tell me they see. I just don't. My experience does not, at all, inform me that there is a "God" present in the things other people tell me inform them that He/She is there. In my experience, there are explanations for things, and there is the base function of reality. I can't see a reason to insert "God" into the base function of reality - and I have never been given what I would deem a good reason to do so.
  3. In my personal experience, information about God has only EVER come in the form of other people's accounts. This is true for my experience with any/all gods. Never once has a piece of information about God come to my attention that wasn't being spoken or written by some person. Also in my experience, people are not very reliable, and a lot of them absolutely love making things up.
  4. In my personal experience, even the stories and accounts told about God coming from just one person are not consistent. There are holes in logic, questions raised that cannot be answered, or if they are answered the answer is not compelling or reasonable in my estimation. In my experience, there are a lot of excuses, and very little in the way of consistent and reliable information received when questions about God are put forth.
  5. In my personal experience I have seen believers do A LOT of wacky stuff. And I mean absolutely bat-guano bonkers type of stuff. And also in my experience, people who are willing to flail about in fits of drama and like to put on colorful displays that they treat with all seriousness are simply not reliable sources of information. They just aren't. Again - this is my experience we are talking about here. Maybe some of you have met some people who just go nuts and do crazy things who are just bastions of great information and trustworthiness. Not in my experience. Not at all.
  6. The books I have read or have been exposed to (quoted to, investigated claims about, etc.) about God/gods (these are the ones trying to treat the subject matter seriously, mind you, like The Bible) are absolutely terrible reads. Just chock full of blatant assumptions and statements made with authority that have absolutely zero real-world backing when you try and compare them to reality, full of bad or vague advice, or prescriptions for how one should go about doing things that are so many thousands of years old. In my experience, these books are interesting from a historical/cultural studies perspective only, and carry no real worth beyond that.
There are probably a lot of other things I could come up with that distinctly tie my literal experience with my non-belief, but this is getting a bit long.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Atheist/non-religious give your best personal experience of why you lack belief/faith in a god. PS. This is key...."personal experience", not "lack of scientific evidence".

I was raised without religion, but at age twenty, while in the Army, I met a girl who was a zealous Christian. Being in a relatively bad place in life - I had already failed at university due to lack of discipline, which is why I chose the military, but that life was unpleasant for me, adding to the general malaise of life, and I was far from home, which contributed to my unhappiness even more. So, this girl and her religion were appealing to me, and I dove in. I remember one day, while sitting on the barracks steps with her, the sun shone down in crepuscular rays, and a shiver went down my spine. I was sure the Holy Spirit was telling me that I should marry her, and I did.

I was already somewhat skilled at critical thinking, and the religion didn't make sense to me, but I decided to suspend disbelief to give this God a chance to reveal itself to me and for the dogma to begin to make sense. I likened it to trying on a pair of shoes that didn't fit quite right, but if I walked around in them for awhile, the fit would improve. The two years in that Maryland congregation were euphoric, and that was enough to convince me that I had been filled with the Holy Spirit as promised. Then I was discharged and returned to California, where we had two daughters.

We went to about a half dozen congregations there, finding them all lifeless. Eventually, I realized that what I was interpreting as the Holy Spirit in Maryland was just a psychological state induced by a gifted and charismatic pastor, since that feeling didn't come with me to California. I realized that the religion was not delivering in its promises and was false, so I kicked off that pair of shoes and returned to atheism, where I found better fitting shoes in secular humanism.

But that's not an argument against gods existing, just that one. I'm an atheist because I learned the harm of believing and making decisions by faith. Eventually, without the religion holding us together, we divorced. She was still a believer, and we weren't well matched in any area. I didn't really know her when I had that barracks steps experience. She was bitter about my leaving her and the religion, and has never forgiven me over forty years later. She moved the kids away from me (I wasn't mobile, being back in university) and turned them against me. I still don't have a relationship with either of them.

This is the chief regret in my life. I made a bad decision based in faith and am still paying for it. So, I don't do that any more, and that is why I am an atheist. I don't say that gods don't exist, just that believing in one or more is irrational and, at this point, having learned to accept that the universe may be godless and that there may be no afterlife, and having developed a social structure outside of a religious congregation, adds nothing to my life.

Is this what you were looking for?
 

Link

Veteran Member
Premium Member
There is two RISQ (sustenance/energy) to humans and jinn, and it's one direction over the other. One from the sky/family of light the other from the shadows and Satanic energy. Just detect these two forces at it in you, and you can know for sure God exists.
 

Link

Veteran Member
Premium Member
If you can't tell the difference between your sword of honor and light with you and the sabotaging monster in you and evil companion, then you heard nothing your whole life, and you know practically just worldly matters and important nature of who you are is veiled from you. It's time to see the battle and true kingdom within.
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
If you can't tell the difference between your sword of honor and light with you and the sabotaging monster in you and evil companion, then you heard nothing your whole life, and you know practically just worldly matters and important nature of who you are is veiled from you. It's time to see the battle and true kingdom within.
Stuff like this is case-in-point from my earlier reply to this thread.
 
Christians believe in a god due to faith, the bible, personal experience and passed on experiences/stories, etc.

Atheist just a lack the belief.

To have faith in most cases requires a personal experience.

Christians/religious people give your best personal experience of why you have belief/faith in a god.

Atheist/non-religious give your best personal experience of why you lack belief/faith in a god.

PS. This is key...."personal experience", not "lack of scientific evidence".

And go....
I lived the fun party life until the consequences of that lifestyle brought addiction, crashing vehicles, health problems, insecurity, isolation, depression and ended up in a rehab wondering what went wrong and had no hope or answers. For the first time in my life I got honest with myself and knew I couldn’t get myself out of the mess I was in and cried out to God in prayer asking for Him to help me. At that moment I felt His presence in the room and was delivered from drugs and alcohol and felt like running through the house and was telling everyone that God was real.
I started seeking the God who delivered me in all kinds of different directions like meditation etc. And was thinking there has to be more to God than that one experience.
I ended up through different circumstances going to a Church, I would see the pastor in town and had to talk to him about something but didn’t know what, it was this intense urge I couldn’t let go and one day went to his office and said I have to talk to you about something I just do t know what.
He shared how God loved me and wanted and relationship with me but my sin separated me from Him. He told me that’s why Jesus Christ came, that He died on the cross for my sins, was buried and rose from the dead. He asked if I believed this and I did believe that, He asked if I had sinned and I said yes, many times. He asked if I was willing to turn away from my sins and live for Jesus and receive the gift of eternal life He was offering me. I said yes and prayed to God to receive Jesus Christ, repented and surrendered my life to Him. I made a covenant with God that day to live for Him. After that I was filled with the Holy Spirit so much that I couldn’t jump high enough to get the joy out, had this desire for the Bible and started reading it and couldn’t believe what I was reading, all the promises, wisdom and what was written. I couldn’t get enough.
That was just the beginning, He has done far more than I could’ve ever imagined. I’m free!
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
Atheist/non-religious give your best personal experience of why you lack belief/faith in a god.

PS. This is key...."personal experience", not "lack of scientific evidence".

And go....

Perhaps, then, I should speak more to initial thoughts I had on this topic than anything else. They served as my initial inflection point, and led to further research and study, but at the heart of things they remain;

1) There are lot of different beliefs and religions in the world, and at some level of detail they become distinct. So I know that AT LEAST most religions are 'wrong' in a literal sense. That isn't to say they are without value, necessarily.

2) People professing belief in terms that brook no argument or discussion do not often appear to live in a manner consistent with their profession. And people professing personal revelation do not appear to live in a manner consistent with their profession.
Believers who express doubts, or are more nuanced in their arguments for God appear both more believable and less defensive to me.

These were the initial kernels of my non-belief, and I was a primary school aged child at the time. They are anecdotal, but I think that's what you're after.
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
The request for atheists is a bit flawed. Are you asking us for a "personal experience" such as a mystical feeling we experienced one time at summer camp in 1997, when it was late at night, and we'd been feeling guilty about the dirty magazines we'd been reading behind the bleachers at high school and we wanted to feel more purpose in life, and then the campfire burned low and we looked up at the stars, and shiver ran down our spine and all the hairs raised up on our skin, and we felt an overwhelming conviction that no gods exist? I know this is a bit tongue in cheek, but what are you asking for?

Do I need a positive "personal experience" in order to lack a belief that dragons exist? I don't see how I would. I have simply encountered nothing that convinces me dragons are real, so I don't currently believe they are real. And for the same reason I don't believe in dragons, I don't believe in gods. Gods and dragons seem to fall into the same evidentiary category of imaginary mythological things.

It seems like you're trying to shift the burden of proof. Most atheists are "agnostic atheists," which means we simply accept the null hypothesis until evidence is provided. It is the reasonable default posture toward every claim. To do otherwise, and instead accept all claims until evidence can indicate they are false, would lead to contradictions and an incoherent worldview.

I can only speak for myself, but I was raised loosely Christian. To move away from that, both in cultural and religious terms, was a choice I made. Whilst philosophically I agree with what you're saying, I think the OP works fine for someone like me...and there are a lot of atheists who would be somewhat in the same boat.
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
I have read the Bible, seen this world and things going as told in the Bible.

Just a question...any basic understanding of human history and human nature would allow me to make broad predictions about the future. What makes the Biblical predictions more than that, in your opinion?
 

Koldo

Outstanding Member
Christians believe in a god due to faith, the bible, personal experience and passed on experiences/stories, etc.

Atheist just a lack the belief.

To have faith in most cases requires a personal experience.

Christians/religious people give your best personal experience of why you have belief/faith in a god.

Atheist/non-religious give your best personal experience of why you lack belief/faith in a god.

PS. This is key...."personal experience", not "lack of scientific evidence".

And go....

As an atheist I don't think I can provide a personal experience per se, but I can provide a perspective that doesn't revolve around the lack of evidence for God.

If that will do...

I was raised as an spiritist. For those who don't know, this is like an expansion pack to Christianity here in Brazil. Then the internet came, and I started talking to people from all places over the world, and reading up what they had to say. Then I noticed a certain pattern...

People from America are very likely to be christian. People from India are very likely to hindu. People from Saudi Arabia are very likely to be muslim. Then it came to me that religion is strongly connected to the place you are born and raised. And honestly, from my perspective, it just doesn't make sense that a divine powerful being would have an influence that is limited within the confines of territorial boundaries. Then I started to see religion as a form of cultural expression, just like languages. And then I asked myself the question: Does the world make more sense if religion is just part of culture and nothing more? Yes, it does.

Then I turned towards my very own religion. I started trying to question it, whether it could be something more. Which made me realize no one was actually interested in proving anything. Spiritism is all about being able to talk to spirits, and no one is interested in proving to the world that this is the real deal?! It couldn't smell any fishier.

Then I turned towards the logical arguments in favor of God and to the bible. Surely somewhere on that book there must be some kind of really strong argument... Nope, none at all. And the logical arguments all just felt like someone was making up excuses and excuses.

Then I looked to the world, and it just felt like a good god wouldn't let so many bad things happen. And all I heard was excuses and excuses once again.

At this point I became convinced that there was no actual substance beneath the sheets.
 

lukethethird

unknown member
There is a god or there isn't a god
The question is not relevant to anything that matters, unless you can come up with something. Good luck.
 

Scoop

Member
There are more reasons than those listed for why people believe in God, but as for personal experience: I have seen His power and been overwhelmed by His majesty which communicated to me His traits and being, in addition to the natural knowledge of God all have (in my opinion). Simple as that.
What is the "natural knowledge of God"? Are you implying that all people are Christians, or at least Theists, in denial?
 

Lain

Well-Known Member
What is the "natural knowledge of God"? Are you implying that all people are Christians, or at least Theists, in denial?

In my opinion knowing of God yes, but Christians know. For if all were Christians in denial it would subvert the concept of revelation and place under natural reason what we believe came from above (I do not think a single soul can discern what I consider to be the reality of the Trinity from anything in any way, the Lord Jesus brought that data point into the world). I believe this because of how I see the following quotations, although perhaps others will see them differently:

St. John of Damascus says: "God, however, did not leave us in absolute ignorance. For the knowledge of God's existence has been implanted by Him in all by nature. This creation, too, and its maintenance, and its government, proclaim the majesty of the Divine nature."

It also says in Wisdom: "For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby."

It also says in Job: "All men see him [God], every one beholdeth afar off."

Not to mention the famous quotation of St. Paul many reference in this. But yes that is my belief.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Since I can't see neither God nor real, I conclude they are both in the mind. I can see a black cat, but I can't see a real cat.
So you just drive over it in your car, knowing that you, the cat and the car have no objective existence, are all solely found in your mind.

No, you don't actually do that. You indeed know the cat and the car are real and that's why you don't drive over the cat ─ or the pedestrian ─ or the cliff.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
So you just drive over it in your car, knowing that you, the cat and the car have no objective existence, are all solely found in your mind.

No, you don't actually do that. You indeed know the cat and the car are real and that's why you don't drive over the cat ─ or the pedestrian ─ or the cliff.

Everything I do, is not a case that it is not depending on my brain nor is everything depending on my brain.

In short you are one of those who take your own processes in your brain as self-evident and then demand that everybody be independent of their brains.
Here is what you do: I can observe processes which are not dependent on brains. I then in my brain as a process dependent on my brain chose and declare that only brain independent processes are valid.

  1. Everything is in a brain
  2. Nothing is in a brain.
  3. It depends on context whether brain dependence or independence are relevant.

You seem incapable in understanding the 3rd position. And that is in your brain. :D
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
In short you are one of those who take your own processes in your brain as self-evident and then demand that everybody be independent of their brains.
On the exact contrary, I tell people to take their brains with them wherever they go.
Here is what you do: I can observe processes which are not dependent on brains. I then in my brain as a process dependent on my brain chose and declare that only brain independent processes are valid.
What test for 'valid' are you using? Without that I don't understand what you're saying.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
On the exact contrary, I tell people to take their brains with them wherever they go.
What test for 'valid' are you using? Without that I don't understand what you're saying.

Valid, you subjectively as valid only accept your objective valid.

I accept subjective as valid when relevant and objective when relevant, but I can't explain that to you, because you only subjectively as valid accept objective as valid and you don't rely notice, when you are subjective, because you don't have to notice it. You just do it as it works for you and you don't have to check and learn when you are subjective.
How is that so? Well, because it is subjective, it works for you, otherwise it wouldn't work.

So here is your trick and it is not unique to you.
If something is subjective to you, you can declare it objective and get away with it as long as it subjectively works for you.
 
Top