Is there a God?
 

I am curious to know why or why not a God exists in your own opinion, I am going to try and avoid any particular Gods but still raise the question 'Is there a god?'
Last year I did a survey at the school I go to about who believed in a god or not and surprisingly for a Christian school only 37% said they believed in a god.

I believe in a god because I can think of evolution as how we got here to me it doesn't seem right, because the term 'Evolution' means that something has over time turned into another so if we evolved from apes why are there still apes, this is not my only reason for believing in a god but it's just something to point out to the evolutionists and I still have not met anyone who can say that I am wrong then given a logical reason.

Apes are like insects, as in they cover a lot of species. So a wasp and dragonfly are an insect in the same way as a gorilla and a gibbon are apes. The point of evolution is to be perfectly suited to the environment that is being lived in. So for example a fox in England is red while a fox in the Arctic is white, and they have evolved that way because that is what suits their environment. What we evolved from is no longer about, and just because we are smarter than other members of the ape family that exist today does not mean evolution has screwed up somewhere. If I was to dump you into the middle of a jungle with nothing, you would probably die (unless you were some kind of Bear Grylls type or come from a jungle tribe), because you're biology is not suited to live in that environment and you lack the knowledge to survive. However your ape cousins like the orangutans thrive in jungle environments because that is how they are evolved. So yeah... evolution works :)

As for God, I do believe in God. I don't know why and there isn't any real logic follow through other than- I just believe in God >.> I don't think evolution undermines God, only theology (which was written by humans anyway so yeah go figure).

Do I believe in a God? no.

I believe in many.
I don't like the idea of one being having complete control over everything that happens. But thats just me.

To quote Richard Dawkins, "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."

I don't understand the world, how it originated and what have you, and we may never know, but I believe there is a day when we will find out one way or another, and I do not want to guess. I feel like religion is sort of giving up, and I find it's often a closed-minded approach to understanding life. I try to keep my eyes and mind open to possibilities, and I try to never tell someone there is no god or what they believe is not true, although I am against that mindset.

I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but to sum it up, no, I don't really believe in any god or higher power. For the time being we are here and I am living for myself.

yes i believe in God. There is no real proof God does or doesn't exist. Like you can't proof there is no unicorns. There could be on a another planet. So you can't say for sure unicorns don't exist because you simply don't know if there is another planet with unicorns. There is no evidence on each side. For all you know there could be unicorns.

also people who simply say God doesn't exist because of misery and suffering needs to do a bit more research. God gave us freedom of will. All our misery and suffering came from freedom of will. God can't effect your will, even if you ask him to get rid of the feeling. If you want God to get rid of misery and suffering then he would be constantly controling you like the sims games. If he does then say good bye to all the things you love. He be in constant control over the decisions in your life. You won't achieve your own happiness or goals.

hmmm.. After thinking a while it's hard to understand who this god is.. Is is it a woman a man, neither. What does god look like, but then, the only way you can know is if you go to heaven, but what if there is no god what happens after death? Nothiness? But I guess your just going to just have to trust that there is a better place after death, trust in something that you cannot see or have you seen god in a physical form? the bright fresh sunrise, the stranger who helped you out or again could all of this 'religion' just be an old story which our ancestors told each other and over time we have become to believe this stories or messages.

What ever anyone else may think, I think god is out there waiting, waiting for his children return home

I believe in God. I always have, and it's not because I've been a bible beater Christian who goes to church every Sunday. I've been to church maybe five times in my life not counting funerals. I just feel like there is a higher being--to me it's a sense. That, and things start going horrifically wrong for me when I start leaning towards agnosticism or atheism. Always have, and I suspect they always will.

Now, there are quite a few things that confuse me. The Bible itself is very confusing to me, so I spend a lot of time pondering over it. What does God look like? I have no idea. The Bible says that man was made in his image, but what exactly does the term "man" refer to? Is it a blanket term referring to both men and women as "man"/"mankind"? Or does it mean that God is a man, and woman is an afterthought? Does it mean God is gender-less?

The Bible also says a lot about how women should serve men. I don't believe that, sorry. It says that women are the root of all evil. I don't believe that either, not apologizing for that one.

Everything is so questionable.

All in all, I believe in God. Yes, I believe in Jesus (and I am not willing to debate this so don't start on me), but I have had to come to my own terms on why I believe in these things. I personally think it's foolish to believe that some freak occurrence created the universe. Something made this universe, or at least started it. We will never figure out what that was.

I agree very much with what Howie said.

I don't like the idea of a higher power controlling me in any way, shape or form. I control me. When something bad happens to me, I feel that it's bad luck or a result of my own mistakes. I don't think there is some great destiny lying ahead for me.

I also find it hard to believe in religion because there are so many of them. Why doesn't everyone agree on one religion if God is real? I don't know how people can't believe in Jesus though. I mean, whether he is the son of God or a raving lunatic or anything in between is totally up for debate, but the fact that the man existed is not.

My only real issue with religion is all of the people who fight over it. I just cannot wrap my mind around the Bible preaching peace (if it does, I never read it) but people kill each other in holy wars and such. I'm against war, so that may be part of that. I also don't like people using religion to justify homophobia or any other form of discrimination. No God that loves all of his subjects or whatever would condone that kind of behavior. If you discriminate, those are your thoughts, not the Bible's.

Overall, I don't believe in a God. I never have. I actually got sent to "time out" back when my father put me in CCD for asking questions about proof that what they were teaching was true. Of course now I realize that was rude, but I was maybe seven at the time.

It's hard to believe what a specific God would be, considering only people wrote the religious texts. I feel like there is no proof of a God provided without some sort of second-hand story, such a a religious text or someone who claims they went to heaven and back. Even if there is a higher power, it is hard to believe that One (or Many) could be specified with rites and practices. If anything, It would most likely be a nameless, genderless, force that, not necessarily rules, but guides or oversees the universe, as if to flow with it.

I believe in God and I'm a Christian but the have been considering Islam. I do believe very much in evolution and even my Catholic school was very insistent never to bring creationism into the picture citing the 'God of the Gaps' which means putting God into holes in our understanding in the world and science simply because it's convenient.

Not a big fan of Dawkins since he's too one sided of the coin and fuels that popular belief that religion and science are battling one another. Not just with Christianity but also Islam and many other religions, science was considered a way to understand God's creation, not for one to undermine the other.

Science still has a long way to go though. I've been around people who can predict the future and lived in the jungles in Asia where shamans did things you see in fantasy movies, and those things make me wonder if there's a higher power that we can't explain.

God will never actually take over your will. That's not how He operates. Rather, He guides you to the choices that will make you the happiest. You say that you'll lose your happiness, but who knows you better than the one who always has His eye on you and created you. Still, God lets you make your own choices, for better or for worse, and will never take your free will away.

When the Bible says that God created man in His image, it's talking about His triunal nature; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. God told Adam and Eve that they would die upon eating the fruit. That's true, they died spiritually. So now, we're biunal beings with a dead spirit, but a living body and soul. Jesus's death on the cross reconciled us to God, and allowed Him to revive our spirit, making us a triunal being again.

As for women, God saw that everything He made was good, except for the fact that man was alone. Every other creature had a female counterpart but man. But God had a special idea in mind for women. Instead of creating her from the ground like He had every other creature, He created her from man; not from his foot to be under him and not from his head to be above him, but from his side to be next to him. Man was never intended to be master over women, but partners. God does expect the man to be the authority though, that much is true.

A good picture of what marriage is supposed to be is found in Ephesians 5:22-32. The Bible consistently refers to the Church as a body. Ephesians declares it to be the bride of Christ. Put into that context, it doesn't really make much sense for the Church to tell Jesus what to do, and it doesn't make sense for the Church to ignore everything He says. A wife is supposed to submit to her husband, but to help him, not follow him blindly. In fact, if it's not Biblical, they aren't supposed to do it.

As for the woman being the root of all evil, that's due to a little misreading.

See? Adam was with her and let her eat of the tree anyway. He knew it was wrong, but he listened to the serpent just as much as she did. Rather, it was both of their fault.

The best way to answer this is with a passage of scripture.

If it doesn't make sense to you, don't worry about it. What Paul is saying here is that God is visible everywhere.

And that God has gotten tired of convicting these peoples' consciousnesses. So He's let them do what they want without any feelings of guilt, which, in a saved person, is the Holy Ghost telling you that you're doing something wrong. That's why all of these false religions exist. During the Old Testament, they were peoples' responses to the fact that they knew of a higher being. Now, not so much.

Now, I never put this up for debate, but to clarify things that people seem mistaken on or unsure about. The Bible isn't up for personal interpretation. It's the unchanging, Word of God. I don't actually get how that came about. Why interpret the instruction manual for life, both here and after, based on feelings? You wouldn't do it when trying to assemble a desk, so why would you for something so much more important?

Personally I do not believe in God, I majored in religious studies in college and through all of my studies I became an unbeliever. However I do not down anyone's personal beliefs, as long as they are not hurting anyone. The only time I hate religion is when it drives people to hate. Through biblical studies, there are way too many contradictions to actually build a belief system around it, unless you are taking away and interpreting the words to sway people to believe what is "right" and "wrong". With a lot of ancient text, like the Bible, they have been translated and rewritten over many many years; it is to be expected that things were lost in translation.

Didn't realise the double post.

Truthfully, I cannot truly say I do. I can say that I definitely do not believe in the bible. I do not believe one story in it and yes, I do know them. As a child, I went to church every Sunday, was part of a religious youth group, and even went to bible school.
But as I got older my life became more based on science, history, and my studies in science were mostly based on biology. I believe in evolution because we see it everyday. Humans have evolved since the very first US president. No, not majorly, but we have gotten taller, our pinkies slowly getting shorter.
The bible says the earth is what, 5000-6000 years old? I simply cannot believe that based on the facts/proof of bones, rocks, and fossils discovered that date back millions of years. Not too mention that the bible mentions that the God first created the waters, land, and the animals we know today. But, we have the fossilized evidence of creatures not mentioned in the bible.

Those are just a few reasons..

I will be agnostic leaning on atheist until it is proven beyond a doubt whether or not any gods exist.

However, I firmly disbelieve that the Abrahamic God could exist, because such a thing is a logical impossibility:

Evil exists in the world.
Suppose we did, in fact, have an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, forgiving, and all-loving god who created the universe.
If he is all-loving, then why does evil exist? Why do people hurt other people just for fun?
Does the universe need it to stay balanced?
If he is omnipotent, he could have created the universe such that this wasn't the case.
Does he not know when evil is going to appear?
Then he is not omniscient.
Is he not capable of stopping it before it hurts someone?
Another sign of limited power - not omnipotent.
Is he unable to handle evil in one location because he's busy taking care of someone somewhere else?
Then he is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent.
Does he just allow it, perhaps for no reason or perhaps as revenge for something?
Then he is either malevolent or vengeful. Or possibly both.

It's just not possible. The Abrahamic God, as popularly interpreted, is a logical contradiction.

That's not even getting into the details of everything that goes against all details of these creation stories - evolution (btw, humans did not evolve from apes; humans and apes share a common ancestor - we diverged [multiple times, note the fact that there are TONS of ape species] to fit different ecological niches), fossil records, dating by radioactive isotopes...

I don't doubt that a god might exist. It's a possibility until disproven. But I can't bring myself to believe in any of the ones followed by currently common religions.

However, and this is gonna sound strange after that rant up there, but I do believe in the influence of every god that has ever been believed in. Even the ones made up for jokes and fiction. Because someone somewhere is either going to honestly believe or take the core messages to heart and use them to affect the world around them.

So in that sense, I suppose you can say that every god ever to be imagined is very real. Just, not provably as anything that could legitimately be called a god.

I don't see any logical reasons as why a god would exist.
I do see emotional reasons from fearful beings as to why they believe a deity exists. All evidence points to a god being the fantasy creation of sentient beings who are seeking answers to questions and discovering information.

If such beings such as deities actually existed, why would they willingly become the caretakers of other far less powerful beings.
Most likely these deities would be off somewhere living their own lives. They probably would not pay more attention to some apes on a certain planet then we currently pay attention to insects on this planet.

Honestly, I don't really care. I'm here now. And I'm not gonna complain about it.

No. God is just an imaginary friend for grown-ups.

Aside from the cliche, isn't that attitude a tad condescending to the believer? I've heard that line so many times before and it always makes me pause and wonder how people could ever simplify the intrinsic complexities of religion and spirituality into pop-psycho analysis of the believer i.e. people believe in God because they are scared of death ect. It's interesting to note that in the evolution of religion notions such as a benevolent God/Gods, and an afterlife were absent in some early religions. Even in the early forms of Judaism the idea of Heaven came several hundred years after Genesis was written, and religions prior to that contained Gods that did not care for humans because they were often preoccupied with some kind of cosmic battle with another God. In those kind of religions the relationship between the Gods and man was based on servitude or fear... God was not some kind of emotional crutch.
Any who, why people believe in God is a little more complex than that old chestnut, so please try and be a little more respectful [heart]

This was something that we talked about in my youth group, so to begin, I do believe in God, I am a Catholic and I am a Christian.

As it was already said in this thread, God does not control our will. He/she, I am not bias, but to make it easy I will just refer to God as 'he', may wish us to behave a certain way, after all, he does wish us to follow him. But, with that, he will let us make our own choices as he is not a controlling God and does not wish to interfere with our lives. God is a pure entity and does not inflict ill upon others, that is the act of the Devil, one which was one of God's most powerful angels. It is not as though God ignores the bad and just lets the Devil do as he sees fit, but more that he knows that even if he tried to force us to do something, it would not be right and that as humans, we should be able to do as we see fit. God has faith in us and even if he does not agree with what we do, he knows that he cannot force everyone to believe in him or act in his name.

I've only read a little of the Bible, I haven't sat down to really read it nor do I really expect to do so in the near future. That does not mean my faith is lacking or that I don't know anything about my Lord, it just means that maybe, I respect him in a different light.

I try to do the right thing, not because I'm intentionally doing it for God, but more that I think there is enough pain and suffering in this world and if there is something that I can do to make it better for someone, I will.

I was once told at church that when you're having a bad day, it's not that God is forsaking you. He just knows that you are strong and you can handle the pain you are taking in more than someone else. In other words, when you have that bad day once in a while, you're helping someone that could not handle it and they are having a better day than usual. When it comes to that and I think that God finds me strong enough to bare such a weight, though I may be miserable, I think of how well off someone is being and how I am in some way helping them.

I will always rely on God as even when I listen to my religious music in my car, I can feel myself relaxing after a very stressful day. Even when I'm beaten and down, I know I'm not alone and that there is someone I can always rely on. I have prayed to God many times and many times he has helped me overcome obstacles, open up to people and become the woman I am today.

So what if he may just be an imaginary friend. If in the end, people can somehow prove that there is no God, that's fine by me as that will not make me stop believing. I know Santa isn't real and yet I still believe in him. There is just a magic for me, to think that there are these beings or people that are so great and magically that care about me; I just feel cared for so much more then.