What are your reasons to believe or not believe in God/s?

Arthur C. Danto, the art critic at "The Nation," once described a work of art that gave him a sense of "obscure but inescapable meaning." In other words, while great art doesn't not "hit you over the head" with a simple message, it always gives you a sense that life is not a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." It fills you with hope and gives you the strength to carry on, though you cannot define what it is that moves you. Leonard Bernstein once rhapsodized about the effect of Beethoven on him: "Beethoven... turned out the pieces of breath-taking rightness. Rightness, that's the word! Word you get the feeling that whatever note succeeds the last is the only possible note that can rightly happen at that instant, in that context, then chances are you're listening to Beethoven. Melodies, fugues, rhythms. Leave them to the Tchaikovskys and Hindemiths and Ravels. Our boy has the real goods, the stuff from Heaven, the power to make you feel at the finish: Something is right in the world. There is something that checks throughput, that follows its own law consistently: Something we can trust, that will never let us down."

If there is no God, and everything in this world is the product of, as Bertrand Russell famously put it, an accidental collocation of atoms, then there is no actual purpose of accidental natural forces, then what we call beauty is nothing but a neurological hardwired response to particular data. You only find certain scenery to be beautiful because you had ancestors who knew you would find food there and they survive because of that neurological feature and now we have too. In analogy, though music feels significant, that significance is an illusion. Love too must be seen in this light. If we are the result of blind natural forces, then what we call love is simply a biochemical response, inherited from ancestors who survived because this trait helped them survive. Berstein and Danto are testifying to the fact that even though we as secular people that beauty and love are just biochemical responses, in the presence of great art and beauty we inescapably feel there is truth and justice that will never let us down, and love means everything. Notice that Bernstein, though by no means an orthodox religious person, can't refrain from even using the term Heaven when talking about Beethoven. We may therefore, be secular materialist who believe truth and justice, good and evil, are complete illusions. But in the presence of art or even great natural beauty, out hearts tell us another story.

Another prominent artist who is apparently telling us the same thing is John Updike. In his short story "Pigeon Feathers" a young teenager says to his mother, "Don't you see, if when we die there's nothing, all your sun and fields and what are all, ah, horror? It's just an ocean of horror." Later, in the presence of the beauty of pigeons feathers, of their texture and color, he is overwhelmed by a certainty that there is a God behind the world who will allow him to live for eternity. Updike seems to be saying that regardless of the beliefs of our mind the random meaninglessness of life, before the face of beauty we know better. "So what?" Someone might object. "Just because we feel something it true doesn't make it so!" Are we, however, only talking about feelings here? What is evoked in these experiences is, more accurately, appetite or desire. Goethe refers to this as blessed longing. We not only feel the reality but also the absence of what we long for.

St. Augustine in his "Confessions" reasoned that these unfulfillable desires are clues to the reality of God. How so? Indeed, as it was objected, just because we feel the desire for a steak dinner doesn't mean we will get it. However, while we hunger doesn't prove that the particular meal desired will be procured, doesn't the appetite for food in us mean that food exist? Isn't true that innate desires correspond to real objects that can satisfy them, such as sexual desire corresponding to sex, physical appetite corresponding to food, tiredness corresponding to sleep, and relational desires corresponding to friendship? Doesn't the unfulfillable longing by beauty qualify as an innate desire? We have a longing for joy, love, and beauty that no amount or quality of food, sex, friendship, successes can satisfy. We want something that nothing in this world can fulfill. Isn't that at least a clue that this something that we want to exist? This unfulfillable longing, then, qualifies as a deep, innate human desire, and that makes it a major clue that God is there. "If I find myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world," says C.S. Lewis.

Undoubtedly, obstacles to the formation of life on primitive earth would have been extremely challenging. Even a simple protein molecule is so rich in information that the entire history of the universe since the Big Bang wouldn't give you the time you would need to generate that molecule by chance. Even if the first molecule had been much simpler than those today, there's a minimum structure that protein has to have for it to function. You don't get that structure in a protein unless you have at least seventy-five amino acids or so. First, you need the right bonds between the amino acids. Second, amino acids come in right-handed and left-handed versions, and you have to get the left-handed ones. Third, the amino acids must link up in a specified sequence, like letters in a sentence. Run the odds of these things falling into place on their own and you find out that the probabilities in forming a rather short functional protein at random would be one chance in a hundred trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That is a ten with one-hundred and twenty-five zeros after it. And that would only be one protein molecule, a fairly simple cell would need between three-hundred and five-hundred protein molecules. When you look at those odds and evidence, you can see why, since the 1960's, scientist have abandoned the idea that chance played any significant role in the origin of DNA or proteins.

Protein: http://creation.com/did-god-create-life-ask-a-prot...

First and foremost, there is simply no sufficient evidence in favor of the existence of any god. When we look out at the universe we live in, it is a universe that indicates it formed as a result of natural processes and not by divine intervention. That's not all, though. There is also some amount of evidence against the existence of God to be found in philosophy and computation theory, not just the Problem of Evil but also the issue of how Occam's Razor relates to the concept of emergence. The nature and distribution of the world's religions also strongly suggest that, if any god does exist, it is not a god that is like any of the gods we worship.

>i guess if i really wanted to know for sure it would gotta be from a ton of research, religion tryouts and not just getting random peoples own conclusion/s, ideas whatever stuff .. huh?

Yes, basically. There are a great many arguments to be had against the existence of God once you start going into the statistics regarding so-called 'miracles'. For example, if God is willing to cure so-and-so's anecdotal second cousin of cancer, then why isn't he saving the millions of starving children in Africa? They say that an ounce of data is worth a pound of anecdote, and that applies as much to religion as to anything else.

I can't believe this question has been up for three minutes and no one has answered it yet. You have probably sent hundreds of Yahoo Answers readers' minds reeling by offering a legitimate question that doesn't attack our beliefs, but instead questions the basis of them. I hope I speak for many readers and say, sincerely, thank you.

Onward then, to my answer. I choose not to believe in God because I was force-fed religion as a child. I'm the daughter of divorced parents, so I was Catholic when I visited my father and more or less a fair weather Christian when living with my mom. At the age of 20 I fell into depression and begged for help. No one helped me but myself. It was then that I realized there is no God, and that which I can do for myself is worth doing with vigor and pride.

I don't need a god. I have myself. Which is not to say that I worship myself by any means, because I don't. I'm capable of creating, enduring, and eventually solving my own problems. I seek the help of trained professionals when necessary (doctors, mechanics, teachers, etc.) but I rely on human intervention for my problems instead of an imaginary being whose ideas were stuffed down my throat my entire childhood. I feel ten times stronger today because of my 'disbelief'.

DOES GOD EXIST?

Do You Believe in What You Cannot See?

WHEN someone says, 'I believe only in what I can see,' he is not speaking literally. Actually, we all believe in things that we cannot see.

For example, at school you may have performed an experiment designed to prove the existence of a magnetic field. It may go like this: Sprinkle iron filings on a sheet of paper. Then place the sheet over the magnet. When the sheet is vibrated, as if by magic the iron filings bunch up near the magnet's poles and form into the pattern of the magnetic field. If you did that, could you actually see the magnetic field? No, but its effect on the iron filings is plain to see, giving you convincing proof that magnetism exists.

We accept without question other things that we cannot see. When we look at a beautiful painting or admire a fine sculpture, we do not doubt the existence of a painter or a sculptor. So when we contemplate a waterfall or gaze at a sunset, should we not be moved at least to consider the possibility that they are the work of a Great Artist or Sculptor?

Why Some Do Not Believe

Ironically, some people have stopped believing in God because of what they were taught in church. This was true of a Norwegian man who was told that God burns the wicked in a fiery hell. The man just could not understand what kind of God would torment people in that way, so he became an atheist.

Later, however, the man agreed to investigate the Bible, assisted by one of Jehovah's Witnesses. He was amazed to learn that the Bible does not teach that the wicked are tortured in a fiery hell. The Bible likens death to sleep. In the grave, we feel no pain; we are conscious of nothing at all. (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10) The man also learned that those humans whom God judges to be incorrigibly wicked will remain in the grave forever. (Matthew 12:31, 32) The rest of the dead will be resurrected in God's due time, with the prospect of obtaining everlasting life under Paradise conditions. (John 5:28, 29; 17:3) This explanation made sense. It harmonized with the Bible's statement that "God is love." (1 John 4:8) This sincere man continued his study of God's Word and, in time, came to love the God of the Bible.

Others reject the existence of a loving Creator because of the prevalence of distress and injustice. They agree with a Swedish man who once pointed to the heavens and asked: "How could there be an almighty, all-bountiful God up there when we have so much corruption and wickedness down here?" Because no one could answer his question, he too became an atheist. Later he began to study the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses. He learned that God's Word provides a satisfying answer to the age-old question, Why does God permit wickedness?*

This sincere man learned that the existence of wickedness does not in itself prove that God does not exist. To illustrate: A man may design a knife to be used to carve meat. A customer may purchase the knife and use it, not to carve meat, but to commit murder. The fact that the knife was misused in no way disproves the existence of its maker. Similarly, the fact that the earth has not been used in harmony with its intended purpose does not mean that it did not have a Creator.

The Bible teaches that God's work is perfect. With him "there is no injustice; righteous and upright is he." (Deuteronomy 32:4) God gives good gifts to man, but some of the gifts have been misused, causing untold suffering. (James 1:17) God will bring an end to suffering, however. Thereafter, "the meek ones themselves will possess the earth, . . . and they will reside forever upon it."—Psalm 37:11, 29.

The Swedish man mentioned earlier was moved when he saw the suffering of fellow humans. Really, his tender concern for others confirms the existence of God. How so?

For most people, the only alternative to belief in God is belief in evolution. Evolutionists teach "survival of the fittest"—that humans and animals compete within their kinds for survival. The fittest live; the weakest die. That is the natural order of things, they say. But if it is "natural" for the weak to die in order to make room for the strong, how can we explain the fact that, like the Swedish man, some strong humans are moved at the sight of the suffering of their fellowman?

Source(s):

Getting to Know God

We cannot see God because he does not have a human form. Yet, God wants us to get to know him. One way we can become acquainted with him is by observing his extraordinary works—the "paintings" and "sculptures" of creation. At Romans 1:20, the Bible states: "[God's] invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world's creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship." Yes, just as studying a painting or a sculpture can help you gain insight into the personality of the artist, meditating on God's marvelous works can help you become better acquainted with his personality.

Lack of evidence for God.

to much order and structure in the universe for there not to be a God

and the Aposltes who claimed (i beleve they did) they saw Jesus ressurected went thru so much pain,suffering and finally death for the cause of christ there is no way they didnt see christ ressurected

wud u die for sumthing that u knew wasnt tru?

There is no reason to believe in a god. those who believe in a god only do so because they were brought up that way as a child or someone convinced them not to question the Bible. also known as brainwashing.

Complete and utter lack of evidence for the existence of a deity.

God's track record has been awesome in that He never fails to keep His word, His promises, and that He never changes.

I fail to believe, for lack of evidence.