Do you believe in God?

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Methodchess, you have the opportunity to ask God questions right now. What do you think prayer is, afterall. It is either worship, conversations, or questions. Requests and supplications. The God of the Bible invites us to ask, seek, and knock at His door. In THIS life.

[url]Matthew 7:7 - “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."[/url]

This is how I've gotten answers, and how my faith has grown. All this suffering in the world can only be understood if we can view things through the eyes of eternity, rather than this short insignificant moment in space-time called life on earth.

Have you read through Scripture and brought all your questions to God yet? If not, you are missing out on sooo much.

Have you every seen the following Scripture before?:

Isaiah 1:18 - Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

I agree with the definition of God you give. I believe He is able to also hide Himself perfectly from those unwilling to seek or follow Him.

I also believe that God sometimes reveals Himself to those people anyway out of mercy and love. As He did for me at some crucial points in life. Science had nothing to do with it at all. There is a knowing and understanding that does not come from the outside world of knowledge and science. Don't you think that a God of perfection as such could at least communicate to us telepathically, or superimpose understanding directly into our hearts and minds?

A God as you have described can certainly do this.

What about atoms? Although we cannot see them, we can ascertain that they are there. For instance, chemical reactions and spectrometers can pinpoint their exact atomic properties.

When we are confounded with the fact that our universe is eerily fine tuned and had a predetermined first cause, wouldn't one logically reach the same conclusion?

I just now learned of the Bahá'í Faith. I really like it so far.

Secular morality has a tendency to be overly permissive sometimes. One virtue of dogmatic Christian morality is that it's able to cut through PC and other modern day obfuscations and encourage Atheists, and everyone else to look closer at the moral implications of an issue.

Last edited by Nebogipfel on 23 Mar 2016, 9:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

Are you saying atoms can be directly observed?


Please stop asserting as fact the facts you are trying to prove.

Perhaps being overly restrictive is immoral. Political correctness can be misused, but it's origin is acknowledging the feelings of others. In other words, it's a form of compassion and empathy.

AspE reminds me of myself in the 7th grade.

Then your best years are behind you.

I look back on those year with embarrassment. You have to understand that for me those who are dogmatically skeptical, pessimistic,"scientistic," material naturalists who attempt to belittle religious people because they consider themselves to be the "brights" are just as deplorable in my eyes as the religious zealot who crusades in the name of his superficial interpretation of religious ideologies. You have demonstrated very well the exact ideology and attitude I held when I was between 12 and 13. Virtually every sentence you have uttered in this conversation could very well have been my reply as well when I subscribed to that worldview. The first thing you have to admit is the world is a strange and mysterious place... and that as the sphere of understanding increases so does the surface area of ignorance (again... Godel's Incompleteness theroem.) It truly is a mystery why we are here in this experience. God is a hypothesis we can use to think about the nature of Being. In philosophy you can make assumptions and continue to build on them and see where they lead. One need not be committed to any assumption in order to carry out "investigations" using that assumption. I prefer to explore with my mental life the world which assumes God exists, while you prefer to assume a world in which God does not exist. In short you, like me in the 7th grade assume an ontology of metaphysical naturalism. After investigating and cultivating an interest in physics, the humanities, mysticism, philosophy, and comparative religions beyond a popular level understanding my ontology of being evolved to an enthusiastic theism and super-naturalism as the best world view for understanding the nature of existence.

I have an interest in believing as many true things and as few false things as possible. Materialism is not pessimism, it's an acknowledgment of the true wonder of existence, which doesn't need to get prettied up with new age nonsense to be wonderful. I'm the one who's OK with mystery, you want to fill that mystery up with something you can relate to. I'm also fine with metaphors, but god as a metaphor is too limited by the baggage of religion and the myopic viewpoint of earthbound primates. Supernaturalism explains nothing.

On Religion
Kahlil Gibran

"Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?"
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self.
He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.


Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute,
The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.
For in revery you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.
And take with you all men:
For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.


And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees."

For the last time, THESE are facts. The universe had a beginning, and as I have emphasized, by way of Luke Barnes and Roger Penrose among others, the universe is fine tuned for life. Period.

I honestly am starting to think you are just trolling us at this point.

Materialism is complete garbage. Even Max Planck himself acknowledged that the idea of materialism is an illusion. And only a higher power is the rational explanation of all of reality. But of course, unsurprisingly, Max Planck is wrong and AspE is always right:

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter."

You know, I wouldn't doubt for a single moment of my life, that if Planck or Heisenberg were alive and posting on this forum under a pseudonym, AspE would be counterposting on them in the same manner he is doing with me. I honestly, do not think AspE is keeping his mind open.