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My question is, why DON’T people believe in God.
Ha, maybe that should be another thread, but I think you've had that answer here from atheists many times over, the main one being "there is no convincing evidence".
It becomes a difficult conversation, because to you and other fundamentalists who hold the Bible to be evidence, there's the oddity of people not understanding how you cannot understand that writings by people do not constitute evidence to non-believers. And then the conversation gets stuck.
So, leaving "the Bible is the evidence!" story off the table, why would people believe in God?
People don't believe because they have prayed and there is no answer, for one thing. Spare the rhetoric about God not being a candy machine. Not talking about specific requests. How about just a prayer asking for God to make it known to the person praying that the prayer was heard in some way? People have done that and gotten no response.
It shouldn't be so hard. It should be possible for God's existence and God's love to be made evident to seekers who ask without pointing to a book that may or may not resonate with the seeker.
Ha, maybe that should be another thread, but I think you've had that answer here from atheists many times over, the main one being "there is no convincing evidence".
It becomes a difficult conversation, because to you and other fundamentalists who hold the Bible to be evidence, there's the oddity of people not understanding how you cannot understand that writings by people do not constitute evidence to non-believers. And then the conversation gets stuck.
So, leaving "the Bible is the evidence!" story off the table, why would people believe in God?
People don't believe because they have prayed and there is no answer, for one thing. Spare the rhetoric about God not being a candy machine. Not talking about specific requests. How about just a prayer asking for God to make it known to the person praying that the prayer was heard in some way? People have done that and gotten no response.
It shouldn't be so hard. It should be possible for God's existence and God's love to be made evident to seekers who ask without pointing to a book that may or may not resonate with the seeker.
Hold on! You have spoken for me ^^^, giving an explanation for my post I neither asked for or intended. Don’t tell others what I believe-I can speak for myself.
Hold on! You have spoken for me ^^^, giving an explanation for my post I neither asked for or intended. Don’t tell others what I believe-I can speak for myself.
Fair enough. Recently I expressed on another thread that I was having difficulty with my own faith diminishing, only to be met with a fundamentalist's cold robo-response to the effect that reading scripture would do the trick, which I know for damn sure is not true.
So, I was just trying to prevent a rehash of some of the old, tired, dead-end conversations that have occurred here previously, and not necessarily with you in particular, in my evergreen hope for some more thoughtful responses.
I apologize for making it seem as if I was speaking for you. I can't do that.
My question is, why DON’T people believe in God.
Good question. I think, from what I have gathered from posts by non-believers, people who have been hurt deeply, damaged in an existential way, or just irritated by all the hoopla of organized religion, have decided they do not need such a belief.
Why do you think people believe in God?
Good question. I think, from what I have gathered from posts by non-believers, people who have been hurt deeply, damaged in an existential way, or just irritated by all the hoopla of organized religion, have decided they do not need such a belief.
Why do you think people believe in God?
But, of course, since you're not one of those persons you're just making assumptions about their situations.
Well they can be forgiven for thinking this way since much of the language of adoration and worship leans this way. For example, here's a discussion about John Wesley's hymn, Jesus, Lover of My Soul:
Quote:
Quote:
John Wesley was thirty-five when he experienced the now famous "warming" of his heart—not his mind—toward Christ, and knew in that moment he had become not merely a Christian, but something more—a lover of God. Shortly after, he penned the hymn "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," whose first verse goes like this: "Jesus, Lover of my soul/Let me to thy bosom fly." Down through the years the hymn has left many a hymnologist reaching for a more palatable translation, "the difficulty," as John Julian said, "is the term Lover as applied to our Lord." Revisions now in hymnbooks read, "Jesus, Savior of my soul" or, "Jesus, Refuge of my soul," which are touching but nothing close to what Wesley meant. He meant Lover.
Yes, this is a huge problem within the church--to the extent that the clergy running their parishes and neighborhood churches and ministries on TV aren't the least bit aware that they are promoting loving Jesus to the point of eroticism and in the case of men, homoeroticism. Or maybe they are pushing the covert eroticism intentionally because it gives them positive feedback in the form of greater donations to their institutions. Whatever their intentions, the blowback can be damaging to society in the fact that many men and women are taking Paul's figurative "save your virginity for Jesus" thing literally--they are eschewing marriage and children in favor of presenting themselves as real virgins to Jesus in what they believe is the coming rapture. One disturbing story I read on the website talked of a friend of the webmaster once picking the petals on a daisy while saying, "He loves me, he loves me not....etc" and then exclaiming "He LOVES me! Jesus is my husband." Maybe it was boyfriend, I can't remember but either way it was oddly sickening that young girls are thinking of a possibly mythical figure in such prurient ways. Does any other major religion do this???
But, of course, since you're not one of those persons you're just making assumptions about their situations.
Nope...no assumptions...they expound upon it...in detail, for years.
And they have my sympathy for the deep emotional troubles they tell about. I pray for them.
Why do people still believe in God in 21st century?
It doesn't make sense.
I am an atheist but before I became one, I actually did ask God to let me go. I find that an odd thing to say. But believing in God has served a purpose for me. It has brought some sort of foundation that I was lacking for reasons I don't understand.
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