Why we believe in the Christian God

[Cornfed]

The answer is simple - abductive reasoning. This is much used in science (itself a derivative of Christianity) where you take a bunch of data points and come up with an explanation that accounts for them. We observe from the known universe that there is a plan behind it, it is knowable to us as intelligent Christian men, that we are evolved and driven to understand, exploit and promote the nature of the universe and the plan behind it. The very existence of people like us is further proof of Christianity.

Christianity is the only real religion that offers an explanation of the way things are. With any other religion you would have a chaotic universe at the whim of different deities. Christianity is the only one that attests to a universal God capable of maintaining a universe with the integrity that we observe. Actually at the esoteric core on most religions there is a Christian-like belief in a universal God, but this gets buried under noise as different cultures merge.

But waaa, you say, I want "proof". You have already been supplied with vastly more proof than you have for all the ridiculous bullcrap you believe. Witness evidence is proof. You have plenty of witnesses attesting to the Christian God or what could be interpreted as manifestations of Him in their culture. The attestation of proven experts is proof. The experts and scholars that founded all of modern science and scholarship and the technology subsequently derived therefrom were Christian acting within the Christian paradigm. You have the miracles in the Bible, like where thousands of Jews converted to a new religion based on the resurrection of an executed criminal. Why would that have happened if it hadn't been true? But waaa, you want God to appear to you personally. But would that even help? There is none so blind as won't see.

[Pixel--Dude]

The answer is simple - abductive reasoning. This is much used in science (itself a derivative of Christianity) where you take a bunch of data points and come up with an explanation that accounts for them. We observe from the known universe that there is a plan behind it, it is knowable to us as intelligent Christian men, that we are evolved and driven to understand, exploit and promote the nature of the universe and the plan behind it. The very existence of people like us is further proof of Christianity

I believe abductive reasoning naturally leads to the inevitable conclusion of an intelligent creator. There is simply too much design in everything for everything to have just materialised out of nothing. However, your argument here is only substantial for Deism and not Christianity. The Biblical narrative has no basis in reality and it is only true because you want it to be.

I do think there is a purpose to us being here. I've had experiences on psychedelics which have been really profound and spiritual. They are a gift from nature and show you the nature of the world in which we live. Layers of reality peel away like the skin of an onion and we see at its core that all the material world is is just densified spirit.

My point being that I have experiential witness testimony, which isn't unique to me. Lot's of people have had this kind of spiritual experience around the globe. I've never seen anything to do with Christianity when in this higher state of consciousness, nor have I ever even considered its validity as something worthy of reflection.

@Lucas88 has had a similar kind of experience. Both our experiences revealed concepts from Hermeticism, which I didn't read into until afterwards.

Christianity is the only real religion that offers an explanation of the way things are. With any other religion you would have a chaotic universe at the whim of different deities. Christianity is the only one that attests to a universal God capable of maintaining a universe with the integrity that we observe. Actually at the esoteric core on most religions there is a Christian-like belief in a universal God, but this gets buried under noise as different cultures merge.

Isn't that a bit of a leap? Did you even look into any other religions before you made up your mind? What about Brahman in Hindusim? Just as an example. Brahman is the same premise with a supreme god! The divine consciousness.

Hindu religion had the Devas, which were gods and divine beings fighting against the Asuras, which are evil angels. Christianity has the Watchers who were flying about sleeping with human women. Satan and his demons, isn't that the same thing you're criticising as a "chaotic universe at the whim of different deities"? Yahweh, as all powerful as he is supposed to be, can't even control these demons running amok and f***ing up his social experiment on his little ant colony how is that not being at the mercy of a chaotic universe? When god has no control at all.

But waaa, you say, I want "proof". You have already been supplied with vastly more proof than you have for all the ridiculous bullcrap you believe. Witness evidence is proof. You have plenty of witnesses attesting to the Christian God or what could be interpreted as manifestations of Him in their culture. The attestation of proven experts is proof. The experts and scholars that founded all of modern science and scholarship and the technology subsequently derived therefrom were Christian acting within the Christian paradigm. You have the miracles in the Bible, like where thousands of Jews converted to a new religion based on the resurrection of an executed criminal. Why would that have happened if it hadn't been true? But waaa, you want God to appear to you personally. But would that even help? There is none so blind as won't see.

I believe testimony is a valid source of knowledge as well, chap. So when it comes to religions and ancient texts which all talk about different deities and creation myths (Yet still share the same motifs) then it is best to trace these mythologies and religions back to their source. Mesopotamia is considered to be the cradle of civilisation. That's where the first urban areas can be traced to between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Their cuneiform tablets tell an older story than the bible which several of the main motifs were plagiarised by the Jews who wrote the Bible. And these cuneiform tablets predate the Bible by a millennium.

But other than observing the natural world and taking notice of intelligent design like the fibonacchi sequence and the golden ratio for example, which is just evidence for Deism, what proof beyond the Bible is there that Christianity is the correct belief system?

Experts and scholars might be Christian, they may be very smart. That doesn't mean they are forced to be right every single time. Humans are fallible and that means that no matter what they always have the capacity to be wrong. Someone smart can be wrong and someone dumb can be right.

[Cornfed]

Isn't that a bit of a leap? Did you even look into any other religions before you made up your mind? What about Brahman in Hindusim? Just as an example. Brahman is the same premise with a supreme god! The divine consciousness.

That's what I said in the OP. To the extent that other religions make any sense they are essentially Christianity, but they have become cluttered with a bunch of crap. Christianity is the only religion that explicitly spells things out for modern non-NPC men.

I believe testimony is a valid source of knowledge as well, chap. So when it comes to religions and ancient texts which all talk about different deities and creation myths (Yet still share the same motifs) then it is best to trace these mythologies and religions back to their source. Mesopotamia is considered to be the cradle of civilisation. That's where the first urban areas can be traced to

As precursors to Christianity they took things as far as they could within their belief systems and then the baton was passed to us. From the fact that we could take things further it follows that our beliefs are more refined in the same way that if a mechanic can fix problems with cars more often with greater reliability it follows that his beliefs about how cars work are likely to be more refined.

Yahweh, as all powerful as he is supposed to be, can't even control these demons running amok

This is another very familiar topic. People need to be able to make their own way, these things need to play themselves out, if God intervened all the time we would be wind up toys so there would be no point to life etc.

[Pixel--Dude]

That's what I said in the OP. To the extent that other religions make any sense they are essentially Christianity, but they have become cluttered with a bunch of crap. Christianity is the only religion that explicitly spells things out for modern non-NPC men.

But what is it specifically about Christianity that sets it apart from Hinduism? Or the other religions? Most other religions have a supreme god or absolute consciousness. I see no reason to believe in one more than the other. Because don't forget that a lot of people think the bible is cluttered with a bunch of crap. I wouldn't consider myself an NPC. But I definitely don't consider myself a Christian either.

As precursors to Christianity they took things as far as they could within their belief systems and then the baton was passed to us. From the fact that we could take things further it follows that our beliefs are more refined in the same way that if a mechanic can fix problems with cars more often with greater reliability it follows that his beliefs about how cars work are likely to be more refined.

This is inconsistent with the Bible's teachings though isn't it? As the word of the bible was God passing down his decrees onto Earth. Why did it take him a millennium to do this? Why was Sumerian religion polytheistic? And this predated monotheism.

This is another very familiar topic. People need to be able to make their own way, these things need to play themselves out, if God intervened all the time we would be wind up toys so there would be no point to life etc.

How very convenient. So free will is the reason why he allows these demons to ruin his own plan unimpeded? Why on Earth would that be part of his plan? This story has more holes in it that Swiss cheese.

I'm a father and sometimes I have to step in and make sure my child doesn't end up getting into deep shit. A loving father does what is necessary to protect their child. By taking such a cold and impartial attitude with humanity God himself has driven people to atheism and other religions and if we're talking about empirical evidence then the evidence points to the fact that God doesn't give a f**k anymore. He was active enough when the Bible talks about what happened in the past, but now he is absent and we are orphans.

[Cornfed]

....

To address the three paragraphs, 1. I've answered this, 2. it makes sense if you see it as part of a process, 3. the free will thing is another topic that has been well discussed over the years.

[MarcosZeitola]

The answer is simple - abductive reasoning. This is much used in science (itself a derivative of Christianity) where you take a bunch of data points and come up with an explanation that accounts for them. We observe from the known universe that there is a plan behind it, it is knowable to us as intelligent Christian men, that we are evolved and driven to understand, exploit and promote the nature of the universe and the plan behind it. The very existence of people like us is further proof of Christianity.

Christianity is the only real religion that offers an explanation of the way things are. With any other religion you would have a chaotic universe at the whim of different deities. Christianity is the only one that attests to a universal God capable of maintaining a universe with the integrity that we observe. Actually at the esoteric core on most religions there is a Christian-like belief in a universal God, but this gets buried under noise as different cultures merge.

But waaa, you say, I want "proof". You have already been supplied with vastly more proof than you have for all the ridiculous bullcrap you believe. Witness evidence is proof. You have plenty of witnesses attesting to the Christian God or what could be interpreted as manifestations of Him in their culture. The attestation of proven experts is proof. The experts and scholars that founded all of modern science and scholarship and the technology subsequently derived therefrom were Christian acting within the Christian paradigm. You have the miracles in the Bible, like where thousands of Jews converted to a new religion based on the resurrection of an executed criminal. Why would that have happened if it hadn't been true? But waaa, you want God to appear to you personally. But would that even help? There is none so blind as won't see.

I don't understand the need to have either "proof" or even true, full, complete believe and devotion to God. I cannot muster the full believe, the complete surrender to God's undoubtable existence. But what I can do, is pretend. I'm quite good at it. And that helps. It's just nice to go to Church, to sing the songs, to listen to the sermons. I don't have to believe it all, but I feel "something" and I know I'm part of something good. I want my children to grow up into faith. It's good for them. The source of morals.

I read that even Charles Darwin wasn't one of those "gotcha!" atheists who never intended his theory to be a way to 'disprove' God or the Bible. Though he thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, Darwin still believed that God was "the ultimate lawgiver". And that's exactly what it all boils down to: the Bible gives sensible laws, if we follow them, we'll all be better off. Whether or not we believe every word in the Bible is entirely trivial and besides the point, although having some earnest believers around probably helps sustain the whole thing.

[CaptainSkelebob]

The answer is simple - abductive reasoning. This is much used in science (itself a derivative of Christianity) where you take a bunch of data points and come up with an explanation that accounts for them. We observe from the known universe that there is a plan behind it, it is knowable to us as intelligent Christian men, that we are evolved and driven to understand, exploit and promote the nature of the universe and the plan behind it. The very existence of people like us is further proof of Christianity.

Christianity is the only real religion that offers an explanation of the way things are. With any other religion you would have a chaotic universe at the whim of different deities. Christianity is the only one that attests to a universal God capable of maintaining a universe with the integrity that we observe. Actually at the esoteric core on most religions there is a Christian-like belief in a universal God, but this gets buried under noise as different cultures merge.

But waaa, you say, I want "proof". You have already been supplied with vastly more proof than you have for all the ridiculous bullcrap you believe. Witness evidence is proof. You have plenty of witnesses attesting to the Christian God or what could be interpreted as manifestations of Him in their culture. The attestation of proven experts is proof. The experts and scholars that founded all of modern science and scholarship and the technology subsequently derived therefrom were Christian acting within the Christian paradigm. You have the miracles in the Bible, like where thousands of Jews converted to a new religion based on the resurrection of an executed criminal. Why would that have happened if it hadn't been true? But waaa, you want God to appear to you personally. But would that even help? There is none so blind as won't see.

WTF are you talking about??
Christianity has hindered us by thousands of years progress!!
I could of gone on a holiday to Mars
Society today in the west has progressed faster and faster in conjunction with the decline in the flock of Christianity!!
Secular society is what works best
We progress because of science
We regress because of dogmatic religions
The evidence you talked about is flimsy
Theres no proof for god
Sky fairies dont exist

[Cornfed]

I don't understand the need to have either "proof" or even true, full, complete believe and devotion to God. I cannot muster the full believe, the complete surrender to God's undoubtable existence. But what I can do, is pretend. I'm quite good at it. And that helps. It's just nice to go to Church, to sing the songs, to listen to the sermons. I don't have to believe it all, but I feel "something" and I know I'm part of something good. I want my children to grow up into faith. It's good for them. The source of morals.

Well, yes, people need a religion to live by and some form of Christianity is ours. However, it might be good to exercise a little more introspection to avoid all the crazy nonsense that has destroyed Western Christianity over the years.

[Yohan]

Christianity has hindered us by thousands of years progress!!
I could of gone on a holiday to Mars
Society today in the west has progressed faster and faster in conjunction with the decline in the flock of Christianity!!
Secular society is what works best
We progress because of science
We regress because of dogmatic religions
The evidence you talked about is flimsy
Theres no proof for god
Sky fairies dont exist

Well said, there is no proof of any god to exist. A fairy tale, nothing else. Christianity was always trying to stop research, it is also a cruel religion which was promoting torture, slavery... it's surely not a religion of love as it claims to be.

About myself, I was forced into Catholic religion as a child and left this club when I was 17 years old for always. These are not good people, best is to have nothing to do with them.

Religions are all made by humans to control other humans, to make them worried and frightened and obedient.

Religions are also coming and going, nowadays nobody believes anymore in old religions like those of Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, also religions disappeared when people died out, like religions in America, for example those of the Inka, Aztecs...

Now various new Christian related religions are coming up, like the Jehovah, or the Mormons and others.... it's really about being a good businessman if you are able to find enough idiots following you and give you money....

[jeniferbet]

I don't believe, I just know for sure that He is there! I feel His love and concern every day! I just know He is there

[Mr. Mistoffelees]

I don't believe, I just know for sure that He is there! I feel His love and concern every day! I just know He is there

I know what you mean I know He is there too! I feel His love and know He is inside me every day.