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Johnny Montoya
Johnny Montoya
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

Fri Apr 10, 2020 11:36 am
Why do people believe in God? Is it wishful thinking or delusion? Or is it simply a choice?
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Fil7251
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Re: Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

Thu Apr 23, 2020 7:00 pm
It depends. Is it believe or a relationship as set out by Jesus in John's gospel.
Johnny Montoya
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Re: Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:33 pm
Have you ever stopped believing? I stopped for a while when my cat died, but only for about a week.
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Fil7251
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Stopped believing

Sat Apr 25, 2020 12:23 am
No. In 32yrs I’ve never stopped believing. I’ve rebelled but even then I have had the unshakable knowledge that God and His Son Jesus are completely real. More than this they will always do what they have said they will.
For me it’s more than just believing, like I said it is an unshakable knowledge, not in a belief but a relationship that cannot be broken.
I may find my self far from
God and His only begotten Son but that doesn’t mean that they are far from me. We are children to Him. Adopted into His family but we, like the description of the Jews, are a stubborn obstinate stiff necked people. Lucky for us God is faithful even when we are faithless.

To pose the question as you have about believing in God perhaps being delusional. Is really asking the question dose God exist. For only the belief in an non existent being could be considered delusional.

So what question are you asking?
An atheist may say that belief in God is delusional but I may say that he is more delusional for not believing.
Yet belief is not enough. Jesus Himself said the demons believe and tremble. This is because Jesus is their Judge.
As for man, Paul sums it up best when in one of his letters to the corinthians he says that if we believe these things and suffer for our belief yet none of it is true then we above all men are to be pitted.
You can apply this to any belief system. Like all false religions, and here i include all those in the established Christian churches who go to church every time it’s open for service but to the people it is just a religion and no more.
I’d say you can apply this to any belief system known to man where faith is required to allow you to cling to a system that has begun to fall apart. This includes a number of Scientific theorem. Like evolution, or the big band or the widely held belief in science that there is no such thing as spirit or soul.
Johnny Montoya
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Re: Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

Sun Apr 26, 2020 8:45 pm
I don't think it's delusional. For it to be delusional, you'd have to ignore evidence to the contrary, or concoct evidence, neither of which you or I are doing. Nor is it based on evidence, because let's face it, it does require faith, which means there's nothing that we can call objective evidence, although I guess that's subject to interpretation.

The way I see it, you have faith, and then God somehow meets you halfway and gives you that sense of knowing, or that certainty.

I think the book by Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" is naive, because it assumes that without objective evidence, belief in God must be delusional. Many atheists get uncomfortable when I point out to them that atheism is a belief in a godless universe, which makes it a belief, which means they must justify why they have it. The bottom line is that they don't want to believe, and that's fine but they don't like admitting it.

Belief in God is a choice I think. But even the fact that you made that choice shows that something (or Someone) made you make it.
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ginsu
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Re: Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

Tue May 19, 2020 9:37 am
How do you reach that point of knowing with certainty?

I have been raised as an atheist because of the atheist country I grew up in, unfortunately. How do you deal with parents that turned their backs on traditions and raised you in a different way than they were raised?. Thereby robbing you of the same childhoods and programming that they received.

It feels like they have made it difficult or impossible for me to ever get close to god as people who have grown into these things as a child.

I respect and appreciate what the faith has done to shape western culture in the past. And I see its benefits today in maintaining a society worth living in.

But i never reached the point of certainty, there are moments where i searched for and felt the connection and life was easier and warmer even if it is just for some hours. After which it fades and i return to my normal state where i forget about spirituality and just stick to the material world.

My question is how can a guy like me who have been raised to be atheists but see how that road is a dead end. Or have felt a spiritual connection at varying moments in their life so they don't doubt there is something more but have a tough time holding on to it.

It keeps slipping unless I dedicate myself to seeking it every day. And to be honest I barely dedicate myself. is the problem that I see faith as something that should be there naturally and effortlessly when in fact it is hard work to go from a spiritual void and undo all the atheist brainwashing i received to building a solid faith. Is this normal ?.

One of the biggest wake-up calls I had was when I ruined a great love with a girl that was raised to have faith and she had a lot of it and never doubted. She said god was just always there with her in everything she did. I cannot imagine what that is like.

I was still trying to achieve happiness by being red-pilled '' cynical hedonist '' at that time, and maximizing the girls I dated and the options I had. She saw there was good in me tried everything in her power to convince to me to be better but I was not ready I regret a lot disappointing her and I think it will never stop stinging.

I noticed a pattern that my best relationships keep happening with girls that have faith, they don't doubt god it's so natural for them that he's just there, it seems they don't have to do a lot of work to maintain this state as it was what they grew up with. There must be something going on if I keep developing a good partnership with these girls.

I'm still at a split where a big part of me is tempted to go down that red pill road again for a few years. Focussing on money and in the private time enjoying dating a range of girls however I see fit. But I know that this is not a road that leads to true fulfillment, I only experience that when you find yourself in real love with and for others or a girlfriend.

I have been thinking about starting to read the bible for some time, but from what I've seen in people interjecting bible verses into conversations it seems goofy and often I discover no sense in them. The bible seems like a good introduction to the history of faith but not something I could hang my whole life onto as others seem to do.

If i had to put a number on it im living 90% of my life as the typical modern atheist, just seeing the material world but there is that 10% of me somewhere in the back trying to get attention for the spiritual and i can't ignore its there.
I hope i can get to a more balanced way of being maybe 50/50.
Johnny Montoya
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Re: Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

Wed May 20, 2020 9:15 pm
The bible does tend to be hard to understand. I don't read it, I just can't understand what the hell is going on most of the time. The bits with Jesus in them are easier I guess, but still Jesus is very cryptic. If I was one of His disciples I'd constantly be like "Huh?"


As for certainty, let me see if I can convince you that God exists. I'm going to paraphrase a train of thought that I had once, if I can remember. Sorry if it sounds pretentious, it's just my way of getting my thoughts together.


The origin of all things, whatever it is, isn't an event (i.e. big bang). If it was an event, it would have a cause, because things don't happen because of nothing. They are caused by something.

So if the origin of all things has no cause, it must be self existent, meaning that it just exists in its own right and always has existed. It exists unto itself. It's hard to really understand this because it's not something that we experience or have any examples of in the natural world.

The buck has to stop somewhere, and whatever the first domino is, it is by nature different to everything that comes after it, so it must have attributes that are mysterious and different to everything else, i.e. self existence.

It has to be self existent because if it has a cause, then you end up with infinite regression. And it can't arise from nothing, because nothing can't give rise to anything.

If the cause of all things is self existent, and if it causes things, then how does it do it? By being all powerful. Power, strength, potency, potential. It contains the potential for all things.

Why does it cause things? Potential is what can be, and when it comes into being, then it exists. But it could have existed, even before it began existing, because it was potential.

The cause of all things isn't bound or limited by anything, or subject to anything, because it's the first domino and already exists, and it is what it is independently of anything, because all other things only exist because it causes them, and you can't be influenced by what you cause. It's also not compelled or caused to do anything.

So the only explanation is that it causes things because it itself wants to. Which means that it is conscious. It's aware of itself, and of its own attributes, and of what it does. It also means that it has a will.

Because it is completely independent of all other things, and not subject to or bound by anything, it could just as easily not cause anything. It doesn't need to. It needs nothing. It has no lack or objective or aspirations, nothing to improve on and nothing that it needs to do.

The only thing I can think of that would make a conscious being use its will to decide to cause, create or make something happen is that it wants to take it from potential to actual, and to see it be what it's meant to be. The closest word we have for that is love.

So if this being is bound by anything, it's only bound by its own attributes, because it is what it is and can't be and isn't anything else.

This means that it is :

1) what it is
2) what it has
3) what it does
4) its own attributes*

They're all one and the same. It can't be, have or do anything that is outside of itself and not part of its being. It's completely self contained and complete.

*Self existent
Mysterious/unfathomable
Omnipotent
Transcendent
Omniscient
Sovereign
Perfect
Loving

I can only think of 3 reasons for anyone to believe anything.

1) What the person considers to be evidence
2) Delusion (ignoring existing evidence to the contrary / concocting evidence to support a belief)
3) A choice

There's no evidence for the existence of God that is 100% objectively convincing to everyone. So there's not much point in limiting your reasons for believing to evidence.

I don't think any of us here are deluded.

The only other way is to make a choice. Try believing in God regardless of any lack of evidence or convincing argument.

Then when you've been trying it for a while, you might want to ask yourself why you agreed to do this and why you're still doing it.
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ginsu
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Re: Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

Thu May 21, 2020 11:06 am
It will take some time to process what you wrote, but it makes more sense to me than the big bang theory does.

To be honest i think evidence is overrated, and meant to keep someone stuck in indecisiveness waiting for conclusive evidence which in this world is mostly hearsay from other people that supposedly have the conclusive evidence so you just have to trust them.

What it comes down to is that everyone is judging what sounds right and what feels right based on the info they have. Information is not evidence though. Unless you go to the source and find the evidence for yourself you're just going on your thoughts and feelings.

I do not know why someone would need evidence for the existence of god it just depends on what you feel or know to be true. I do know that by forcing people to stick to the ''evidence'' they are controlled by the people that control the evidence ( science today ).
Johnny Montoya
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Re: Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

Thu May 21, 2020 11:13 am
The way I see it, if there's a God, then we already know it.
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iOneIndividual
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Re: Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

Thu May 28, 2020 3:39 pm
Lets consider this for a minute from the perspective of the all powerful all seeing all knowing being itself.
I'm going to probably humanize God a little bit, but hey, after coming as Jesus, that shouldn't be so outrageous.
Let's look at creating the universe. What else are you going to do with your time? Does time even exist at this point from your perspective, or is it an eternal moment, series of moments, or perhaps something simply unfathomable by a mind that exists bound to time the way an ant can never see the mobius strip they're walking on isn't a continuous line.

So you create the universe. What are you going to do, leave a big empty space? Of course not, you fill it with life. Not just one kind of life, all sorts of life, but life has to have some sorts of things in common. Things like genes; in a way, a form of computer code for your 'system' called the universe.
But this system can't just be something you constantly have to maintain. It needs to be a self contained thing, because you don't want any of the life to know yet that you created it. You like to be mysterious, and you recognize that mortal life can only evolve so much within one single lifespan, and as an eternal being, it may take hundreds of even thousands of generations of that life to fully come to understand or realize what you are, and how much you care for it; because this is simply too much knowledge for these mortals to understand lest they would lose their entire lifespan fathoming how complicated you really are.
But you insist upon yourself to be simple, to clarify yourself, to make it easy for them.
Because you love them, they are your children. Everything they are, is because of you.

So you step back. You take a day off. That day to you could be thousands of years to them; time is as we realize, consistent yet relative. A lifespan of a housefly can be two days to us, and 75 'fly years' to that house fly, where it grew up, had children, had grandchildren, and died living a full life.
"A day with God is like a thousand years" 2 Peter 3:8

So you peek in after your day off. What the heck is going on? They're killing each other! They're curious and that's great but they lack the means to pursue their curiousity constructively. They compete, they don't collaberate. They see their differences and don't understand how they are the same.
Alright, send in an immisary.
Whoops, they killed him. No worries, he's back with me. Send him in again, slightly better.
History repeats itself.
God knows better though. He knows what we are truly capable of, and goes back Himself.
We kill Him. But He knew it would be this way; and so by sacrificing Himself, He grants us what we cannot learn through knowledge alone...
He grants us experience. Those who come to understand it, begin to understand the depth of His love for us, to walk freely into that fire because He didn't want it to be us that burned.
And by doing so, he conquered it.
It might take us mere mortals another few thousand years to truly.... get another small piece of it. We will never figure it all out without God Himself here to show us.

But alas, a day with God.... is a thousand years. And on the third day He rose again.

I think the second coming is probably about a thousand years away. Just my two cents. But no man will knoweth the day or the hour...
However, if you were a primitive human like St. John the divine writing something like the book of revealations, operating in a society using a now no longer used calendar of 12 months -- 30 days each month:
3.5 years
42 months,
1260 days, are all the same amount of time.
And if you saw a 'mountain' fall from the sky, or 'the stars' fall from the heavens, it could probably be called a meteor shower, an asteroid, and other things we now have better understanding of in modern times.
Beings the size of buildings? Not so unreasonable if dinosaurs are real. (Why couldn't they be? You think before creating intelligent life like humans the day before he didn't make a bunch of stupid lizards to keep as pets instead of children but realized the two could never co-exist in nature?)

I mean I dunno. I don't think it's wishful thinking. I think it's a matter of perspective.
Everyone who tries to explain God to non believers often does so from their own perspective, and I like to turn that around, because it allows me to love my own flaws for the lessons they give me, and love those who hate me for the same reason. Even those who might hate God, because to hate God is to believe in God; but have a misunderstanding of that relationship.

Really it comes down to a choice: do you believe you can make a choice and have free will? or do you believe that your choices are entirely guided by your genes and your environment; and you are essentially a meat puppet with your strings being pulled.
Well either you have God given free will which can come from no other place but God--or you accept someone else pulls your strings. If it's not God, then I'd like to know who it is.
But I think I already do.

And if I'm wrong, in Jesus' good name I ask God help me learn what's right. Amen.
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Is belief in God based on wishful thinking? Empty Re: Is belief in God based on wishful thinking?

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