Why do you believe in God?

[FlaviusAetius]

Why do you believe in God?

 

[LivingWordUnity]

God led me to his Church. And, in various ways, he lets me know of his continuing presence.

That's the primary reason why I believe in God.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

Even today's widespread godlessness and "decomposing" Christian culture is a proof of God's existence since it validates the words of Sacred Scripture that foretold that a great apostasy would happen.

 

[Chrystal-J]

God led me to his Church. And, in various ways, he lets me know of his continuing presence.

That's the primary reason why I believe in God.

Same here. I've been shown the dark side and the light. Jesus has spoken to me in dreams and in real life. I've had supernatural demonic experiences. There's no way I could not believe in God now.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

When I was beginning my conversion to Christianity, a memory came back to me. It was something that happened about 7 years earlier, when I was 15 years old. I explained the experience on another forum (here).

 

[MoonlessNight]

Ultimately every Christian will believe in God due to a personal religious experience.

It is possible through reason alone to know that there is a "God of the philosophers": that is to say a being who is completely simple, entirely actual, is love, truth and existence itself, etc. But this will not get anyone by itself to knowledge of the True Nature of God, who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and whose body and blood is the Eucharist. However, reason can get a person to the place where when God acts in his life, he is able to recognize His hand. And when that happens the philosopher will become a true believer.

Other people will come to God in other ways, some by miracles, some by blind repetition of traditions that they do not understand at first, some through an analysis of historical texts, some by recognizing the good done by the saints on Earth.

As for myself it followed from reason. As time went by I realized two things:

1.) That scholastic philosophy was a tremendously more common sense approach to the universe than competing philosophies. As Chesterton puts it, it lets "eggs be eggs," meaning that it does not demand that we first believe that the self is an illusion, or that free will is a myth, or that all of the universe is a realization of competing political theories, or anything else along those lines. Analyzing things with this philosophy seemed more coherent to me than analysis by any other philosophy.

2.) The arguments for God's existence were not as trivially brushed aside as I had been led to believe. I still do not think that every proof of God's existence is a sound argument, but even the flawed arguments tend to prove something worthwhile (for example I do not think that Anselm's ontological argument proves that God exists, but it does demonstrate that if God exists, then He exists necessarily).

Putting these things together and I was forced to accept the "God of the philosophers." But it was not enough to bring me back into the Catholic faith specifically, and for a while I drifted between labels. In fact when I first registered to these forums I put my faith label as agnostic.

It was only after certain personal events in my life that I was convinced that prayer was effective, and that the sacraments were exactly what they claimed. I would rather not get into the details for two reasons: the first being that I would be required to detail some events from my life I would rather not discuss because of some shameful details, and the second being that even if I did give you all the details the stories would probably not convince you of anything. They would seem mundane and easily brushed aside. I was not witness to any type of miracle of a flashy sort, and a skeptic would probably say that I have not witnessed any sort of miracle at all (since they would not consider things like the transubstantiation of ordinary bread and wine into the blood and flesh of God as a miracle, nor would they consider the forgiveness of sins through confession to be a miracle). But the events as I witnessed them from my perspective were convincing to me, and they brought me back to the Church from which I had strayed.

 

[mea kulpa]

I believe in God because without God there is no point and no hope. Without God everything is permissable.

Ultimately

I believe in God because he has made himself known to me a poor sinful creature who is not worthy to share the title Catholic among those on these forums and in the world and yet he made himself known to me in my most unworthiness. I thank almighty God for his mercy and his love. I do not know why he has made himself known to me and not to other much better people than myself.

 

[Chrystal-J]

When I was beginning my conversion to Christianity, a memory came back to me. It was something that happened about 7 years earlier, when I was 15 years old. I explained the experience on another forum (here).

I had an experience like that before. I was in a dark parking lot and some tiny old lady appeared next to me asking for a ride. The neighborhood she wanted to go to was a bad one I didn't want to drive in. I told her I couldn't, but started to offer her money for a cab. She said 'no thanks' to my money and said she could catch a jitney (cheaper cab). I felt bad and turned around to talk to her again (to try to convince her to take my money) and she was gone. There's no way she could of walked that fast to be gone from the parking lot. I often wondered if that was an angel who wanted to see if I would help someone.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

I had an experience like that before. I was in a dark parking lot and some tiny old lady appeared next to me asking for a ride. The neighborhood she wanted to go to was a bad one I didn't want to drive in. I told her I couldn't, but started to offer her money for a cab. She said 'no thanks' to my money and said she could catch a jitney (cheaper cab). I felt bad and turned around to talk to her again (to try to convince her to take my money) and she was gone. There's no way she could of walked that fast to be gone from the parking lot. I often wondered if that was an angel who wanted to see if I would help someone.

Perhaps you and I will find out after this life who those people were that we met.

 

[Chrystal-J]

Perhaps you and I will find out after this life who those people were that we met.

That would be nice.

 

[Mountain_Girl406]

Ultimately every Christian will believe in God due to a personal religious experience.

It is possible through reason alone to know that there is a "God of the philosophers": that is to say a being who is completely simple, entirely actual, is love, truth and existence itself, etc. But this will not get anyone by itself to knowledge of the True Nature of God, who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and whose body and blood is the Eucharist. However, reason can get a person to the place where when God acts in his life, he is able to recognize His hand. And when that happens the philosopher will become a true believer.

Other people will come to God in other ways, some by miracles, some by blind repetition of traditions that they do not understand at first, some through an analysis of historical texts, some by recognizing the good done by the saints on Earth.

This is along the lines of what I've often thought must be true. You can study and pray, learn the philosophical arguments for the existence of God, etc., but until you have an experience of God (perhaps that's the gift of faith from the Holy Spirit), it's hard to be a true believer. So if the time comes that I can say I believe, it will likely be because I've had an irrefutable experience of God.

 

[AvilaSurfer]

Why would I not?

 

[pdudgeon]

This is along the lines of what I've often thought must be true. You can study and pray, learn the philosophical arguments for the existence of God, etc., but until you have an experience of God (perhaps that's the gift of faith from the Holy Spirit), it's hard to be a true believer. So if the time comes that I can say I believe, it will likely be because I've had an irrefutable experience of God.

and thanks to the grace of God and Jesus Christ in choosing Thomas to be a disciple,
we have that example (and more important the assurance) that is indeed possible to reach people for Christ who have not seen Him
face to face, and yet who do believe.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

This is along the lines of what I've often thought must be true. You can study and pray, learn the philosophical arguments for the existence of God, etc., but until you have an experience of God (perhaps that's the gift of faith from the Holy Spirit), it's hard to be a true believer. So if the time comes that I can say I believe, it will likely be because I've had an irrefutable experience of God.

In my experience, God sometimes sends a messenger. For example, many years ago, I was feeling very depressed and was alone in my apartment room, and I asked God to help me because it seemed like I was buried way over my head with problems. Early the very next morning, a priest happened to be visiting my job. He's one that I knew, but it had been at least a few months since I had seen him. He was outside of the office that I was in, but he looked in at me, and walked into the room where I was to ask me how I was doing. I told him how things were going, and he told me that things would work out fine. And they did. So I've always believed that God sent him to me in answer to my prayer. It was such a quick response.

 

[FlaviusAetius]

Might I ask then a few questions, first what then is your view when someone outside Catholicism or even non Christian completely tells you they believe fully in their religion because of similar personal religious experience? Are those experience equally valid to your own that drew you to Catholicism?

Where do these experiences come from, is it from God? Another question is I know invincible ignorance is what can allow a pious non Christian salvation, but how can that work especially in religions like Islam or Mormonism which are based heavily on distorting the Christian message?

 

[Cedrick Moore]

Why do you believe in God?

When I look at the overall complexity of life, and the marvels of various geologic structures on Earth, I can't help but see the aspects of design. If something has the aspects of creation, you infer a creator.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

I know invincible ignorance is what can allow a pious non Christian salvation, but how can that work especially in religions like Islam or Mormonism which are based heavily on distorting the Christian message?

Islam and Mormonism are very different from each other. The Mormon religion doesn't seem to be as directly hostile to Christianity as the religion of Islam is. I gave my opinion on Islam in another thread (here).

Might I ask then a few questions, first what then is your view when someone outside Catholicism or even non Christian completely tells you they believe fully in their religion because of similar personal religious experience? Are those experience equally valid to your own that drew you to Catholicism?

Where do these experiences come from, is it from God?

The examples that I mentioned in this thread have to be taken with the totality of my experiences. But my personal religious experience is not the only reason why I'm a Christian. When you talk about comparing different religions and you ask me to explain to others why they should believe in Christianity I have to go beyond talking about my personal religious experience and talk about the reasons outside of that which gets into the topic of your other thread Faith and other religions. And in that thread I explained some of the reasons why I believe in God that are not dependent on my personal experiences. Here is what I said:

I believe that the evidence for God's existence is right in front of our noses. It's first of all in the fact that we exist and that there are laws in nature, many things that have an intelligent design. Basically, what is unique about Christianity is its founder. Jesus is a real historical person and is the Son of God. He proved his divinity with great miracles, including walking on water, restoring sight to the blind, and raising the dead (most notably his own Resurrection). And these miracles were witnessed by many. Also, his First Coming was foretold by the prophets, and Jesus accurately foretold the future of the Church and the world. No other religion has a founder like that.

"...The crucified Christ is the persecuted just man portrayed in the words of Old Covenant prophecy—particularly the Suffering Servant Songs—but also prefigured in Plato's writings (The Republic, II 361e-362a)."

— Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Jesus of Nazareth Vol. I, p.89​

In Hindu scriptures the human writer of the story inserts himself into the story to advise the characters how they should proceed in the epic. An example of this is how Vyasa, the Indian sage who is traditionally credited with composing the Mahabharata, inserts himself at various points in the epic and at one point even assures the central characters that the story will end well for them. The world described in the Hindu scriptures doesn't resemble this world at all. In the Hindu epics are a fantasy world like the world of Oz. In this world, the bizarre is taken for granted as being normal just as it would be in a dream. There are things in it such as a woman who is conceived in the womb of a fish, a mother who gives birth to a rock which is broken into a hundred little rocks which end up hatching into a hundred children, etc. The Hindu scriptures are based purely on the imagination of the human composer. The extremist within Hinduism interpret these bizarre stories as being real historical events to be taken literally. But moderate Hindus like spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi did not consider the Hindu scriptures to represent any historical events. Instead, he interpreted the Hindu scriptures in a purely allegorical way.

Another compelling point is the Catholic Church was able to supplant the most powerful and feared empire in human history without a war or rebellion. The growth, longevity, continuity, and consistency of doctrines of the Catholic Church far surpasses any other centralized institution in human history, and even an atheist can observe this if he is willing to take a look and try to compare. The Catholic Church is still here because Jesus (God) guaranteed it. If the Catholic Church had been been a merely man-made institution it would have been destroyed long ago. But she remains essentially unchanged after 2,000 years.

 

[Wryetui]

I believe in God because God has revealed Himself to us, it would be foolish not to believe.

It's like writing on this forum saying: "I don't believe in computers".

 

[Sumwear]

I turn to the early Christians and the spread of Christianity from the onset. For it to spread the way it did [Jews, multiple pagans from multiple regions], with martyrdom as opposed to the sword, there is something to be said of those people as I don't think blind faith and a gut feeling made them change their faiths, especially when persecution was the result of converting. Then, you have those very same oppressors change their ways and dedicate their lives to Christ. The best example of such a case being Saul, Paul the Apostle.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Because when I turned to Jesus, he revealed Himself to me.

Faith is God's revelation to the person, however that may happen.

Belief is a person's own decision, but its not faith.

Jim