Is the comfort that some find in God real? What is the comfort in no belief?

...here's a true story

Years ago, my step-son said to me, "I don't believe in God 'cause when I was a kid, I prayed and prayed for God to help me and nothing happened".

You, see, he was living with his Mom at the time and they were not getting along well at all. He wanted to get away from her but we didn't know about the trouble till it was really bad between them. I guess it went on for years in silence and he was being molested by HIS step-father. Finally, we got wind of all this, and, even though we did not have custody of him at the age of 16, we sent him money and a plane ticket to where we lived so he could be with us.

So, God did intervene and sent him to our care. After living with us, he made honor roll and graduated high school with honors...went on to receive medals from Desert Storm, as he was there in the Air Force and lived to return home.

After he shared with me, the prayers he said as a child and that he felt God ignored him, I then reminded him that God DID answer his prayer...it just took God's perfect timing and it took time for all of the answered prayer to unfold...it took years, in fact. The look on his face when I explained this to him was of utter amazement. He understood and began to think...well..?

One must not think of God as a magic genie. It's much more than we can fathom. I have had times in my life that I cursed God...like when my husband of 23 yrs died within 5 days of being diagnosed with cancer. I was angry and didn't understand...but years of gentle love came back to me and I realized that my dear husband was healed by death...meaning where he is now is a better, pain free place and he is continuing God's work in Heaven.

I will not give you Bible quotes in my answer, although there are many, many scriptures that are amazing, uplifting and Holy. Instead I will offer this...spend some quiet solitary time in prayer. Even if you aren't yet sure...pray anyway. God will hear and answer. It may not be immediate and the answer may not come in a glorious blaze...but slowly, and gently, God will speak to your soul. Don't worry about being in a rush...God knows your heart and will help you understand. Even in times of dismay, you will begin to grasp His Love. It will come and I will pray for your heart to "see". It's not a sin to doubt...that's when God does His work to stamp out your doubt. Let him do this...just listen and go along for the ride. You will be amazed, I guarantee this !

It depends really, I was brought up as a Catholic.

When somebody dies, its always comforting to believe that you will see them again in Heaven, but the reality is Heaven is an invention of Paul of Taurus who tried to popularize Christianity by pitting it against Judaism which doesn't offer heaven.

Its nice to believe somebody is watching over you, but when bad stuff happens to you frustration hits and it becomes a curse to believe that God forsook you, when other relatively "evil" people live a better life than you do.

God may give you company, but this has not quite worked out well to my Extreme Roman Catholic Granny, who is now hell bent on following the suffering of Jesus Christ. She doesn't want to spend money, doesn't eat, doesn't make friends and lives a miserable life. Maybe if she was an Atheist and didn't believe in the Afterlife she'd try to enjoy her last days and not try her best to suffer and show off that shes suffering.

Religion in my opinion, justifies so many evil things such as oppression, genocides, lynching, restriction of science and human rights, that it is counter-intuitive to humanity.

We must build our morals not to satisfy our Gods, but to satisfy and care for each other as we all are children of the Earth,we all share common ancestor and the ability to love. It is sad that we also share evil and ability to hate, but more then often Religion increases the hate rather then decreases it.

If you feel that you must be religious, it is very easy to "trick" your mind into believing in God and the easiest way is to walk into any church and believe every word they say is true.

Mostly that nice warm feeling is community based and the feeling that somebody is watching out for you helping you, but as I said before bad stuff will happen and while you can always believe that it is God testing you or the Devil playing games with your mind, you will eventually turn back to your non-religious ways.

The comfort in no belief is that you accepted that you don't need an Accountant God counting your bad deeds and you good deeds, seeing how he can balance it out. If you are good its because you are inherently a nice person. The comfort is that you don't have to think about things that can never be solved, you don't take Easy bullshit answers for all the hard questions in life. You are a rational human being, with a moral compass and a heart of Gold, if you ever do any good and if you do any good you will realize that you don't need the belief in religion or God (although I personally do believe in God) to feel warm in the heart. All you need to do is go to a Soup Kitchen or Orphanage and help out for Christmas. It will probably be the best Christmas of your life and you will realize that it is the smallest things in life that make you happy , not the bombastic beliefs of farmers and hunters.

For some lucky few, faith answers all questions. I am not one of those. For the rest of us being between faith and doubt can be excruciating, and so it is not surprising that many choose to go with "no faith" as an alternative to examining their mythologies and making sense of them. Those who argue against faith are often quite fanatical about it, and if you try and question their belief in non-belief they often get defensive and angry because they are trying to avoid the pain of the mental and emotional struggle involved in more positive belief systems. (by positive I mean affirming something rather than denying. I do not mean to characterize atheism as negative "bad", just negative "disavowing" rather than embracing a personal mythology.)

I believe that everyone has a personal mythology, like it or no, and that those who choose to see themselves as purely "rational" are just ignoring their own natures. How I deal with seismic changes in my belief system is by means of a mythology that says when my beliefs are shaken, the end result is a better stronger more useful belief system. Morris West says "There is no great faith without great doubt." This is how I reconcile a questioning mind with a need for faith. Faith is not toppled by disagreement, and confusion. It is strengthened by it, EVENTUALLY.

I believe in God, I pray and I practice my belief system. But I also assume it is an ESTIMATION, not absolute truth. Am I comforted by it? Not so much. Am I HELPED IN MY DAY by it? Definitely.

I too have a strong faith. It is completely without any link to any one relgion but bears bits of wisdom from all things and all origins of 'Gods' and also has a basis in science and emotion. It is simple to describe in this way: The Universe is God and we are created by stuff of the stars, therefore we are "Godbits" the Earth is our Goddess. She nurtures us and we leave our bodies and our material deeds and possessions to her as legacy when we die. We are never going to die in spirit, but only by complete surrender to our true calling can we become perfect beings with equal measure of light/dark up/down/in/out/back/forth YIN/YANG and negative/positive. If you will listen/see/sense/perceive you can hear/feel/see/touch/taste the colored sounds touching the soul with the absolute truth. No one can lie; no one can disguise their intentions. There might even be complete understanding among mankind. I also believe that we call this ESP or psychic ability and many doubt it, which pretty much blocks it. Soon technology will enable us to utilize our abilities in a completely WRONG way- for gaming, advertising, spying, and the pursuit of wealth. Those who fall to such things will be altered by the very things that are 'enhancing' or channeling the signals and transmissions of the brain. They will bio-engineer signal disruptors and cause domino effect of neural systems until the control is assured and most of humanity is assimilated and in perfect sync.

those that remain will be the underground, the outlaws, the poor not on government supplementation; then there will be laws against us for being terrorists and communists and traitors and they will send us many viral threats which we will be altered by therefore thwarting evolution and the grand design of the higher power- which is our collective yet individually diverse subconscious spark of light

its complicated..when my son became paralyzed i went through similar feelings...in fact i reached a point where i thought it happened because of things i had done in my own life..my grandfather had been a minister for 60yrs so i have been through every argument every discussion there is about faith...but faith is just what it means..to believe without proof..there are those that say no i need proof..there is one thing i have always taken to heart..christ said the kingdom of heaven is within you..so whither or not one has faith those words are still good words to live by...but i will say that both sides of this issue have certain factions that carry a lot of anger and hate with their side..but to be honest with you it comes down to what your soul knows to be the truth of things...and when you are comfortable with your spirit whither you have faith or not things never seem as bad..mixed up you are not you just did not get the answers you were looking for...

It has been my experience, having been raised by hypocritical atheists who "took the children to church" for whatever reason - that when love finally touches your life, along with all the other fabulous consequences of that, a clear understanding and vision of God emerges too. Just like that. There it is. Not only that, but also all the derivatives of that - morality, right and wrong, eternal peace and happiness, heaven, etc.

So it seems to flow from love -

But I think love is the engine, not belief - people get that backwards. Love tells you what's what, in every way.

Yes, the comfort that some find in God is real. But, the comfort alcoholics find in a bottle is also real, as is the comfort that others find in illicit drug use. That's not a good reason to become a drunk though, is it?

However, for me, life is not about being comfortable, it is about engaging with reality. There is some comfort in no belief - for instance, I know for certain that I will never feel let down by God, as you have felt.

Some people need to believe in things to find comfort. Some people are better suited for reality. I do not feel any less comforted since I abandoned my attempt at belief in a god. If anything, I derive comfort from knowing this life belongs to me and I'm not trying to believe in something ridiculous anymore.

Why is it that you people equate atheism with nihilism they are two entirely different subjects I find comfort and pleasure in the smile of my grandchildren the laughter of my children the beauty of dawn and the warmth of a lingering sunset, I am uplifted by the complexity and beauty of bach the soaring wonder of Luciano Pavarotti when he sings my life is full of beauty and wonder. I just don't need some ancient and archaic book of social control, nor do I need a weedy pulpit parasite of half my intelligence telling me how to live my life in order to be happy

Here's what I said in response to another question http://tinyurl.com/ybkwhpw regarding meaning in a universe without God:

I don't think [most theists] have thought this through. What if God does exist? Why would that make things any less meaningless in an objective sense? Do you think things would be more meaningful if you got to live forever in heaven? Why? Why would the ultimate fate of the earth matter to you, or to anyone else, quintillions of years from now? How about your love for your spouse, or your child, for whom you’d presumably give your life now? Christian theology holds that your marriage won’t last in heaven, and your child could very easily be thrown into hell to be tortured for eternity by this supposedly loving deity of yours. Furthermore all the suffering you face now, all the parasites and diseases and long descents into hopelessness and death suffered by your family and loved ones and eventually (should you live so long) by yourself – all of that is (by your belief system) ultimately caused by God – if not directly, then indirectly since an omnipotent being could have prevented it with no negative consequences. So what then is the meaning or purpose behind such suffering? There can be none in a universe created and ruled by an omnipotent God who could prevent it without drawbacks.

Now consider an atheist approach: Suffering happens not because some omnipotent diety has decreed it should, but because events follow naturally from causes that have nothing to do with you. There is no torturer in the sky, with self-validation issues, that you have to try to appease. There is no absolute objective meaning to anything. There is just you and the universe, and you are free to find whatever subjective meaning you want. If adversity causes you to reach some insight, you need not belittle the matter with the thought that a deity could have provided the insight without the adversity. If you love your spouse, there is no deity to tell you that’s not important – something you will throw aside in the eternity to come. If you love your family, no deity is going to tell you to forget about them and follow him instead. If you love the earth and the millions of lifeforms it supports, no deity is going to tell you not to get too attached since it’ll be tossed away soon anyway. If you love basic ideals of justice, such as the iniquity of slavery, or the importance of equal rights for all sexes and sexual orientations, no deity is going to come along and tell you that’s not how it’s going to be. If you happen to like shrimp or polyester blends, you can go ahead and enjoy them. And if you’re curious about how things work you don’t have to settle for “goddidit”.

Religious folks act like giving up their faith would be a hardship. They’re like people who’ve become so used to crutches they don’t know how to walk anymore. I, for one, greatly prefer getting around on my own two feet. That doesn't mean I'd ignore evidence of God's existence if any showed up. But it wouldn't give my life meaning. I've already done that to my own satisfaction.

The trick lies in Total Surrender!

Your friend like many true believers have submitted herself to her belief. Its the most amazing thing, yet most difficult, to happen! I have seen people in my own life who get/got strength from their unwavering faith in God...but I also know how much strength is needed to believe in it! Its easier to get upset when going gets tough, and blame it on the one who you thought would take care of you...

I am a believer too! But I must confess that I had been extremely upset when my most earnest prayers went unheard and my most beloved person died. For a time I was distraught and angry with God. I cried my heart out for one whole year and then something magical happened and I found immense peace in my heart...out of thin air, it seemed. The touch of God, I call it!!!

Whatever has to happen will happen. Your circumstances will not be altered. Dead will not be resurrected. But, you will have strength to deal with it!

That's what True Faith does! Call it psychological, if you must!