Why Do You Believe In God?

[Papist]

It's been 3 1/2 years since this thread was active, and there are a ton of new members, and though I have made progress I am still in much the same position, so... bump!

Asteriktos, glad to see you are still addressing these questions. I'm taking a natural theology class, and its quite interesting.

[TheTrisagion]

When I was coming out of my agnostic phase, I wrote a article kind of to myself laying out what makes sense about believing in a God.  I should see if I could find it and post it so everyone can pick apart my logical flaws.

[William]

It's been 3 1/2 years since this thread was active, and there are a ton of new members, and though I have made progress I am still in much the same position, so... bump!

Will you ever reach a satisfying conclusion to your inquiry?

I can empathize. I keep feeling like I can never be sure of Orthodoxy and have all these reservations about it. I've been told both by netodox and realifodox to not join with reservations but I don't want to drag my feet forever. Eventually I'll want to start a family and I can't really do that outside the church. You know?

[truthseeker32]

I was agnostic for a long time. I didn't ever really ask why I did or didn't believe. As a young hedonist, God, spirituality, and all those things weren't important categories. After taking an interest in the questions over the past five years or so I have concluded (based on several categories including but not limited to philosophy and personal experience)  that I most definitely believe there is more to the universe than its material components. This I find easy to believe in. That being said, I seem unable to believe anything more than this. Years of unanswered prayers, a lack of spiritual experiences, etc. make it difficult to believe God, if He exists, cares about my personal spiritual path. I suppose I am a neo-Platonist, perhaps Aristotelian, deist of some sort at this point, but I always have an ear out if God wants me to take a different path.

[Iconodule]

I can empathize. I keep feeling like I can never be sure of Orthodoxy and have all these reservations about it. I've been told both by netodox and realifodox to not join with reservations but I don't want to drag my feet forever.

Hm... I'm going to tell you, maybe you should join with your reservations. You're not going to be able to work them all out standing outside.

[Ashman618]

I was agnostic for a long time. I didn't ever really ask why I did or didn't believe. As a young hedonist, God, spirituality, and all those things weren't important categories. After taking an interest in the questions over the past five years or so I have concluded (based on several categories including but not limited to philosophy and personal experience)  that I most definitely believe there is more to the universe than its material components. This I find easy to believe in. That being said, I seem unable to believe anything more than this. Years of unanswered prayers, a lack of spiritual experiences, etc. make it difficult to believe God, if He exists, cares about my personal spiritual path. I suppose I am a neo-Platonist, perhaps Aristotelian, deist of some sort at this point, but I always have an ear out if God wants me to take a different path.

If I may be so nosey, what makes you believe, and can you expand, the universe is more then material

[TheTrisagion]

I dug up my old writing on my belief in God that I wrote after returning to Christianity from a stint as an agnostic.  I didn't realize it was this long, but if anyone is interested, I posted it here.  I will note that it is not written from an Orthodox perspective as Orthodoxy was not even on my radar at the time, so my views on some things have changed quite significantly.

http://musingsofthreefates.blogspot.com/

[JamesR]

what makes you believe...the universe is more then material?

I can't speak for him. But for me, I'd say it's simply due to the fact I desire more than material. I think that humans need a sense of comfort and happiness that transcends a purely naturalistic worldview. I never got that before I was religious. In a sense, I felt like I was denying myself, denying my own needs and desires simply because it didn't fit in with my naturalistic worldview.

[orthonorm]

I dug up my old writing on my belief in God that I wrote after returning to Christianity from a stint as an agnostic.  I didn't realize it was this long, but if anyone is interested, I posted it here.  I will note that it is not written from an Orthodox perspective as Orthodoxy was not even on my radar at the time, so my views on some things have changed quite significantly.

http://musingsofthreefates.blogspot.com/

I stopped here:

The best place to start when discussing anything is at the beginning which is what we will do.  Scientists, even avowed atheists, struggle with why our universe appears to be so finely tuned.

[Iconodule]

what makes you believe...the universe is more then material?

I can't speak for him. But for me, I'd say it's simply due to the fact I desire more than material. I think that humans need a sense of comfort and happiness that transcends a purely naturalistic worldview. I never got that before I was religious. In a sense, I felt like I was denying myself, denying my own needs and desires simply because it didn't fit in with my naturalistic worldview.

I actually felt very similar through the years where I was a materialist. It was a sort of asceticism that didn't have any reward. My inner senses, "spiritual" senses if you will, kept telling me, "Check this out," or "Look how beautiful this is" and I had to keep saying, no, that's not real, because if it's real my ideology will unravel. Of course, now that I believe, I have to fight a nagging sense of atheism, but to accede to it would be to close and narrow my world, whereas my passage to belief was very much the opposite. So I feel a substantial difference between the doubts I faced as a materialist and the ones I face now.

[Iconodule]

I dug up my old writing on my belief in God that I wrote after returning to Christianity from a stint as an agnostic.  I didn't realize it was this long, but if anyone is interested, I posted it here.  I will note that it is not written from an Orthodox perspective as Orthodoxy was not even on my radar at the time, so my views on some things have changed quite significantly.

http://musingsofthreefates.blogspot.com/

I stopped here:

The best place to start when discussing anything is at the beginning which is what we will do.  Scientists, even avowed atheists, struggle with why our universe appears to be so finely tuned.

I think appealing to science, and trying to prove God from DNA, dark matter, quantum physics, what-have-you, is, like, the worst apologetics of the modern age.

[Mor Ephrem]

Given that the question was "Why do you believe in God?" rather than "Why are you Orthodox?", I voted "personal experience" and "just believe".  While I don't feel comfortable saying I have 110% unshakable, certain faith, I also don't feel "doubtful" enough to give it up.  God knows many things would be easier if I didn't believe in God (and I've tried), but I can't not believe that he's "out there".  I've experienced things that won't prove God to anyone, but they work well enough for me to keep me "in the game".      

[Fabio Leite]

There are three steps there, two that are rational and one that relates to faith.

The first is that Theism makes more sense and is more rational than atheism. I believe that any person can come to that conclusion with different degrees of clarity, from a perception of a generic "divine stuff" to the more precise "God of Philosophers", in Aristotelian forms.

That would leave us with a generic divinity, not to the Triune Christian God. That is hinted in the Old Testament, but it's really a revelation we get from the life of Jesus Christ. The second rational step, then, is that there is enough historical evidence for the fact that Jesus Christ existed, that the main miracles ocurred and that He was crucified and resurrected in flesh, in history. One can learn that and still not believe, just be aware of a sheer fact.

Now, the third step is faith, trust. Faith points toward invisible things, but starts with visible ones. If this man did what He did, if He truly died and resurrected this is very serious. Enthropy itself was reversed, or, in cultural terms, death was destroyed, if the conscience that emerged on the third day is the same conscience that died on Friday, it means that it was kept above and beyond every natural law. Only that one First Cause could do that and in doing it we are revealed things we could not have assumed: it's personal, it became completely human without ceasing to be completely God. And if this God and He tells us about a Father and a Holy Spirit that we can't see, we knowing the visible Human-God, trust Him on that which we can't see. That's faith. When He promises that bread and wine *will* be His body and blood, we trust Him because of Whom we saw. When He says that there will be *one* community that will be His unbroken body, we trust Him (at least some of us do).

[orthonorm]

I dug up my old writing on my belief in God that I wrote after returning to Christianity from a stint as an agnostic.  I didn't realize it was this long, but if anyone is interested, I posted it here.  I will note that it is not written from an Orthodox perspective as Orthodoxy was not even on my radar at the time, so my views on some things have changed quite significantly.

http://musingsofthreefates.blogspot.com/

I stopped here:

The best place to start when discussing anything is at the beginning which is what we will do.  Scientists, even avowed atheists, struggle with why our universe appears to be so finely tuned.

I think appealing to science, and trying to prove God from DNA, dark matter, quantum physics, what-have-you, is, like, the worst apologetics of the modern age.

Nevermind the fact, that is not where we even "start".

[Papist]

There are three steps there, two that are rational and one that relates to faith.

The first is that Theism makes more sense and is more rational than atheism. I believe that any person can come to that conclusion with different degrees of clarity, from a perception of a generic "divine stuff" to the more precise "God of Philosophers", in Aristotelian forms.

That would leave us with a generic divinity, not to the Triune Christian God. That is hinted in the Old Testament, but it's really a revelation we get from the life of Jesus Christ. The second rational step, then, is that there is enough historical evidence for the fact that Jesus Christ existed, that the main miracles ocurred and that He was crucified and resurrected in flesh, in history. One can learn that and still not believe, just be aware of a sheer fact.

Now, the third step is faith, trust. Faith points toward invisible things, but starts with visible ones. If this man did what He did, if He truly died and resurrected this is very serious. Enthropy itself was reversed, or, in cultural terms, death was destroyed, if the conscience that emerged on the third day is the same conscience that died on Friday, it means that it was kept above and beyond every natural law. Only that one First Cause could do that and in doing it we are revealed things we could not have assumed: it's personal, it became completely human without ceasing to be completely God. And if this God and He tells us about a Father and a Holy Spirit that we can't see, we knowing the visible Human-God, trust Him on that which we can't see. That's faith. When He promises that bread and wine *will* be His body and blood, we trust Him because of Whom we saw. When He says that there will be *one* community that will be His unbroken body, we trust Him (at least some of us do).

Careful. The first two step will get you accused of being a "scholastic" or a "rationalist." 

[TheTrisagion]

I dug up my old writing on my belief in God that I wrote after returning to Christianity from a stint as an agnostic.  I didn't realize it was this long, but if anyone is interested, I posted it here.  I will note that it is not written from an Orthodox perspective as Orthodoxy was not even on my radar at the time, so my views on some things have changed quite significantly.

http://musingsofthreefates.blogspot.com/

I stopped here:

The best place to start when discussing anything is at the beginning which is what we will do.  Scientists, even avowed atheists, struggle with why our universe appears to be so finely tuned.

I think appealing to science, and trying to prove God from DNA, dark matter, quantum physics, what-have-you, is, like, the worst apologetics of the modern age.

I'm not going to defend it, because, as I said, my thinking has changed quite a bit on issues.  I will say that when I stated that scientists "struggle" with it, I meant that they seek rational explanations.  I then detailed some of the explanations that have been put forth.  I could similarly say that theists "struggle" to explain the problem of evil.  It is a difficulty, but not necessarily one that is insurmountable. 

Just to give it some background.  I wrote it upon coming out of agnosticism and was very operating from a scientism based mentality, hence my discussion on science.  I did not struggle as much with the philosophical concept of a God as much as how I could believe in God and still have faith in science.  I did not intend to use science to prove God, but rather wished to be able to understand how the two can be compatible.

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