How can I know that there is a God?

[McCulloch]

I've been debating many issues here for some time now, but the single most important one, in my opinion is this. There are those who claim that they know that God exists. How does one come to that knowledge? Do they really know that God exists or do they simply suppose or assume that God exists?

If your answer is that I cannot know, then you are as much of an agnostic as I am. If you answer is that some holy book says so, then you have only pushed the question onto that book. I also have what I think is the second most important question.

How can I know that there is a God?

[rusty]

LittlePig wrote:
Whether god/s exist or not is independent of our belief. Whether we truly believe or simply wish that god/s exist is contingent upon evidence.

.....contingent upon evidence AND the evidence that each man and woman is born ignorant of God, sinful, in error, confused, in denial of sin, .......

Some people wouldn't recognize "evidence" even if it was two by four upside the head! Man cannot define "right and wrong" since man is born ignorant, therefore, I am thankful for the guiding light of the Bible. Denial of God and His definition of "right and wrong" leads to "self" fulfillment which is life without God and His righteousness, and without the promise of inheriting the earth for eternity with your loved ones. The offer has been made, the table is set for those who will choose to live with a loving God and without denying their own ignorance.

God has granted mankind life and freedom. Man and "self" will live and reap what he sows, but man and God will live and live life happily, joyfully, and wisely, while expecting another happy and joyful life when this age of reaching the lost is over.

God is love. Isn't mankind in need of a true understanding of love? Or shall each man live by his own definition of love?
rusty

[justifyothers]

justifyothers

I know God exists because of the reasons I listed:
Communication with Him.

Answered prayers that cannot (IMO) be counted as coincidence any longer.

Validation of both communication and prayer through many, sometimes daily situations. These situations compound themselves to justify my trust/belief/faith.

The change within me that includes levels of compassion and love that are deeper than I am capable of on my own.

I don't see anything here that cannot be explained by human wishfulness, and since most of these seem to be experienced by those who wish the idea of god/s to be true, it makes sense to go with that explanation without more compelling evidence. Not long ago there was a news story of a woman finding an apparition of the Virgin Mary burned into her grilled cheese sandwich. That may sound silly to most here, but that is what our minds do. They often find what we seek if we aren't careful. That is the basis of the Rorschach test and most of the Arts.

Wishfulness does not apply to me. I never wished for God to be real. Equating the hope of God to a superstitious lady and a grilled cheese sandwich does seem silly.

For example, people are easily convinced or shocked by the recognition of coincidence. But coincidence is only as rare as we make it. Each event that occurs in this world can be related to some other by a creative mind. Sometimes what you wish for or pray for happens, and you are shocked. But so many times it does not happen, and you take no notice except when it results in some later 'good' that would legitimate it as the will of god/s. This is magical thinking and not to be confused with a sound argument based in probability.

Really? Well this is how it works for me: if I bring someone up in prayer, I do it, mean it and move on. I do not drive around town looking for the answer. I do not share my prayers with others. I trust that God has it now. I brought it up, I'm done. I don't dictate what needs to be done and I don't look for the answers. I am no longer shocked to see or not see results. However, when they smack me in the face, I notice them. And I do NOT deny what I have seen.

Communication with god/s is a very interesting psychological situation. It is always conceivable that you are truly receiving those kinds of communications, and that would be good evidence for something on the other end. But that is only a subjective confirmation of the claim that god/s (or something) exist and could not be used to convince anyone who didn't trust you completely. It is apparently not an evidence available for anyone else to consider. Most people I know who speak of affirming communications with god/s usually refer to some emotional experience that occurs during prayer or meditation rather than a comprehensible message.

This is true for some. I do not meditate and I do not relate prayer to emotional experiences. I am capable of separating the two. I may cry when I hear a certain song about God, but this does NOT tell me that God is real. Appealing to emotion is a strong tool used by religion.

justifyothers

Prayer over time has shown me that God is there. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes in mighty ways. As I mentioned earlier, I did consider some of these coincidence in the beginning, but over time, reason outweighs the odds of coincidence by far.

I've heard similar comments before. What method did you use to separate coincidence from probabilistic certainty? How many answered prayers = unexplainable by random occurrence? I think when people start looking for answered prayers, regardless of the causative deity, they find them. The caveat that god/s do not always bend their will to the supplicant's will typically explains the 'unanswered' prayers. This kind of mind game is not a convincing appeal to probability. Now if you were allowed to 'put God to the test' so-to-speak and do some rigorous measuring of answered-unanswered prayers broken down by Faith-type, then we might get somewhere.

Math isn't necessary. I have no problem admitting that this does not provide evidence, it's just how I know. I realize it is subjective and that is OK with me also.
I think everyone has to find their own way. My way, (even if I did have documentation of answered VS unanswered prayers) may not necessarily be the way for anyone else. God has created us all to be individual. Why couldn't our experiences of Him be that also?

justifyothers

Well, maybe you should have simply discarded those reasons. Why do we feel we must have 'reasons' to believe? Maybe He just IS.

Whether god/s exist or not is independent of our belief. Whether we truly believe or simply wish that god/s exist is contingent upon evidence.

I disagree. I think if God is there - He is there, even if nobody believes it. He doesn't need our collective belief to bring Him to life.

One person's "evidence" is their own.

[McCulloch]

Anything as prevalent and profound as a creator God would be obvious to everyone.

If a creator God existed then his existence should be obvious to everyone. His existence is not obvious to everyone, therefore there is not a Creator God. Poof! Vanished in a puff of your logic.

The existance of "right" and "wrong" is as obvious as a tree or a rock.

And there are perfectly valid explanations for the human construction of moral values which do not necessitate a supernatural being. If there is a universal morality from the creator God, why does it only apply to humans? Rocks have no sense of justice. Trees show no mercy.

God revealed scripture is the only proposed evidence that a true definition of "right and wrong" exists, and what that God expects from His servants.

That's why so many civilizations have independently developed various moral codes that all have a striking similarity to each other. The different Biblical moral codes are not the only ones ever to exist.

[LittlePig]

rusty

.....contingent upon evidence AND the evidence that each man and woman is born ignorant of God, sinful, in error, confused, in denial of sin, .......

That last part you added doesn't make any sense to me. What do you mean by that? Do you mean that our belief or disbelief in god/s is contingent upon evidence of our being ignorant of such, evidence that we are sinful, etc.? Most of those presume Christian theology which is a few steps past belief in god/s.

Some people wouldn't recognize "evidence" even if it was two by four upside the head!

And some people wouldn't recognize the lack of evidence for their ideas because they haven't learned to think carefully.

Man cannot define "right and wrong" since man is born ignorant, therefore, I am thankful for the guiding light of the Bible. Denial of God and His definition of "right and wrong" leads to "self" fulfillment which is life without God and His righteousness, and without the promise of inheriting the earth for eternity with your loved ones. The offer has been made, the table is set for those who will choose to live with a loving God and without denying their own ignorance.

You should look into the area of ethics/moral philosophy. People seem to be quite able to work out definitions of 'good' and 'evil' based on a number of criteria that have nothing to do with the mandates of god/s. Interestingly enough, most human contrived ethics/moral systems are in agreement on the basics and also agree with the basics of religious ethics/moral systems. That might lead one to think that religious ethics/moral systems are simply other examples of human contrived systems. Some might disagree with me, but I'd say many animals have systems of morality, but often quite different from ours.

[LittlePig]

justifyothers

Really? Well this is how it works for me: if I bring someone up in prayer, I do it, mean it and move on. I do not drive around town looking for the answer. I do not share my prayers with others. I trust that God has it now. I brought it up, I'm done. I don't dictate what needs to be done and I don't look for the answers. I am no longer shocked to see or not see results. However, when they smack me in the face, I notice them. And I do NOT deny what I have seen.

But you have no reason to believe that God is the cause of the event you have seen. You wish to interpret it as such. Why not say that God did not do it? Or why not attribute it to Satan? How can you know? If you had not prayed, and the same result had occurred, what does that mean? When you attribute random coincidence to God based on nothing more than that you realized you had prayed for something similar, how can that be anything other than wishful or magical thinking?

Math isn't necessary. I have no problem admitting that this does not provide evidence, it's just how I know. I realize it is subjective and that is OK with me also.
I think everyone has to find their own way. My way, (even if I did have documentation of answered VS unanswered prayers) may not necessarily be the way for anyone else. God has created us all to be individual. Why couldn't our experiences of Him be that also?

But your argument is a math argument. You say that there are too many coincidentally positive outcomes for it to be anything other than God answering your prayers. That is saying that the probability of those coincidences happening randomly is too low to be believed. That is a probability argument.

You say this is how you 'know,' but if it is based on nothing more reasonable than what you have said, it sounds to me like it is how you 'wish' or how you incorrectly reason something to be true. That may be sufficient for you to choose to have faith, but I suspect many would find such reasoning underwhelming at best.

I disagree. I think if God is there - He is there, even if nobody believes it. He doesn't need our collective belief to bring Him to life.

That's what I said.

[justifyothers]

How can you be sure that whatever you count as evidence is not just your imagination?

Intuitive reasoning.

No, you see things happening or not happening. You interpret those events as the acts of God.

If they pertain to anything and are not random events, then I reason it that way.

Then answered prayer is a completely non-falsifiable phenomenon. Therefore, it cannot be used as evidence to believe or disbelieve.

Evidence is also defined as an indication or sign. I think that may be applicable here.

I have seen people with and without various religions rise to levels of compassion and love in the field of working with developmentally challenged young adults. I have seen no evidence that those levels require supernatural assistance.

I agree. I never said it was necessary, I said for me, the level changed. I didn't require it.....it just came about.

God as an axiom or assumption. That has been tried before. But I have discovered that there is such a thing as non-euclidean geometry. I have no need of the God hypothesis.

So we have come full circle back to the OP. Do they really know that God exists or do they simply suppose or assume that God exists?

Are you surprised? God may never show Himself in the light of hard cold evidence. He hasn't up until now. How is it then that so many people believe He is there? Are we all mindless wash-outs? Are we all under a magical spell? Are we all on drugs?

If God is so extremely and plainly ridiculous to believe in, why does the concept of Him still exist? People are equipped to do almost anything . We can create life, create food, clone things, explore space, control the weather (or try). Why don't we drop the whole God thing once and for all? Why does it continue to haunt us?
If evidence is required for everything to be legitimate, how can the very idea of Him still permeate our world? Why do you ask about Him?

[Dionysus]

God is love. Isn't mankind in need of a true understanding of love? Or shall each man live by his own definition of love?
rusty

How could a ‘soul state’ correspond to any conceivable definition of itself? If “God is Love”, then God is a crowd, a hydra: there are many different loves. Is the God of Love the God of the Love that is my Love of Anal Sex?

There is no 'Form of Love', or any unindividuated 'perfect love' at all; but then, Christianity is watered-down Platonism, and so a statement of this sort should have been expected.

[Zzyzx]

.

God has granted mankind life and freedom. Man and "self" will live and reap what he sows, but man and God will live and live life happily, joyfully, and wisely, while expecting another happy and joyful life when this age of reaching the lost is over.

God is love. Isn't mankind in need of a true understanding of love? Or shall each man live by his own definition of love?
rusty

Isn't preaching more appropriate in Holy Huddle or some of the "Christians only" websites?

This is a debate forum -- not a pulpit for preaching.

Are there ANY topics that you feel qualified to actually debate?

[Dionysus]

I'm curious as to what the phrase "God is Love" means. Does it mean that God is literally Love, and the act of Love is being God? Does it mean that God is constituted out of some substance called Love?

[justifyothers]

But you have no reason to believe that God is the cause of the event you have seen. You wish to interpret it as such.

You mention to your neighbor that you would like to start getting the newspaper delivered, but would like to read a copy first to make sure you like it The next day, there is a copy on your doorstep. Was this your neighbor? Or would you merely be interpreting the situation that way? Reading into it? (pun intended)

Why not say that God did not do it?

I doubt He would appreciate that. Would you tell the neighbor he didn't give you the paper?

Or why not attribute it to Satan?

I don't attribute anything to "satan"

If you had not prayed, and the same result had occurred, what does that mean?

It may mean that God doesn't need my prayer to accomplish something, but maybe He appreciates the thought. (?)

But your argument is a math argument. You say that there are too many coincidentally positive outcomes for it to be anything other than God answering your prayers. That is saying that the probability of those coincidences happening randomly is too low to be believed. That is a probability argument.

You're right. Is there an equation you would find acceptable relating to this?

BTW - Welcome to the forum - you are a challenging debater.