Trying again--why is God silent?

[fraidycat]

Just wanted to add a little on the free will thing. My understanding is that we don't really have free will to the extent we think we do. That's because many of our thought, attitudes and behaviours are governed by unconscious processes. (A science-based perspective here, not a spiritual one.)

 

Ironically, we behave better when we assume we have free will, than when we don't. So it's a tricky line - not really having free will, but having a strong motivation for convincing ourselves and others that we do.

Adding to the bolded: Processes that are a result of our conditioning (mind manipulation?) based on every interaction we've had with the "world outside our mind". People, events, emotions, etc. It all adds up to who we are and what we believe.

 

If someone grows up never hearing of god or religion, there is no fear of not having religion or not believing in "the right" kind of deity. KWIM?

[Guest]

I've been on a similar journey. Albeit, it didn't bother me as much when I quietly came to (fibally accepted?) this conclusion:

 

Why is God silent?

 

Because God doesn't exist.

 

If I look historically at any and all religions, to me, they are a mash-up of government control of people/commodities/land/resources and trying to explain the natural world. "Don't anger the gods or we'll have a [what we now know as NATURAL] disaster." "Pay your x-amount to these *higher up dudes* to appease the gods." Obviously the higher up dudes know exactly where to spend the money to make the gods happy. Wink wink.

 

All of them have these similar themes running through them.

 

I'll stop there, I was heading off into a rant. Pm me if you'd like to hear the rest.

I was on a similar journey and my answer is similar, although not atheist. My answer is:

 

"because that's not what God is for." I'm a Deist, for all intents and purposes, though my life is constructed with Christianity throughout. If someone asked the general question of me, "What faith do you practice, if any?" I would say, "Christianity." But if someone wants to really parse out my actual beliefs, I would tell them I am a Deist.

 

For several years, this dichotomy was difficult for me, sometimes intensely. What *am* I? What do I actually believe? Am I fraudulent if everything about my life makes me presumably Christian, but most Christians would say I'm not if they knew the details? I came to the conclusion that it does not matter. It's not much different from being a Republican who does not mind same-sex marriage. If a friend wants to dig deep enough to discover my specific beliefs, then so be it. Most often, specific beliefs are background noise that we infrequently know about others anyway. (At least, it is so in this area.)

[wintermom]

This is OT, but why is it ok that there aren't concrete answers regarding religion? We don't accept anything else (that I can think of) on faith, right? We look for proof to back up claims except for religous ones. That is hard for me.

 

I had a great conversation with my scientist dh about accepting things with and without proof. One excellent example of something we can't prove is gravity. 

 

Here is a link which includes details: http://ncse.com/rncse/27/5-6/gravity-its-only-theory

 

There are a million things we accept everyday that can't be proven, and most of us just get on with business of living. Can we prove we have emotions (how do we really know that what I believe to be "anger" or "love" is the same thing as what you believe they are), or a spiritual component to our being? Not really, and yet these can be very important to our quality of life. 

 

If it adds a positive dimension to your life to include religious faith and practicies, then keep exploring and searching. I really think it would be best done in-person within a trustworthy and reliable organization, though.

[fraidycat]

I was on a similar journey and my answer is similar, although not atheist. My answer is:

 

"because that's not what God is for." I'm a Deist, for all intents and purposes, though my life is constructed with Christianity throughout. If someone asked the general question of me, "What faith do you practice, if any?" I would say, "Christianity." But if someone wants to really parse out my actual beliefs, I would tell them I am a Deist.

 

For several years, this dichotomy was difficult for me, sometimes intensely. What *am* I? What do I actually believe? Am I fraudulent if everything about my life makes me presumably Christian, but most Christians would say I'm not if they knew the details? I came to the conclusion that it does not matter. It's not much different from being a Republican who does not mind same-sex marriage. If a friend wants to dig deep enough to discover my specific beliefs, then so be it. Most often, specific beliefs are background noise that we infrequently know about others anyway. (At least, it is so in this area.)

I should have stated *God of the Bible* (or any human constructed religion) does not exist.

 

I'm kind of new-agey, spiritual, we're all energetically interconnected, maybe there's something there, maybe not, depends in the day, who cares anyway, agnostic, anti-religionist.

 

Clear as mud? :D

[Daria]

I'm not offended at all. I'm sorry if it came across that way. I suppose maybe I just don't understand why you would want everyone on earth to subject to that conversation when only some actually believe in God.

 

But presumably, if God was speaking from the sky, some of us agnostics and atheists would join the flock.

[albeto.]

dp 

 

[albeto.]

I had a great conversation with my scientist dh about accepting things with and without proof. One excellent example of something we can't prove is gravity. 

 

Here is a link which includes details: http://ncse.com/rncse/27/5-6/gravity-its-only-theory

 

There are a million things we accept everyday that can't be proven, and most of us just get on with business of living. Can we prove we have emotions (how do we really know that what I believe to be "anger" or "love" is the same thing as what you believe they are), or a spiritual component to our being? Not really, and yet these can be very important to our quality of life. 

 

If it adds a positive dimension to your life to include religious faith and practicies, then keep exploring and searching. I really think it would be best done in-person within a trustworthy and reliable organization, though.

 

Perhaps you're not aware, the article you linked offers a satirical look at the argument that falls on the "it's just a theory" defense. To be clear, concepts like "anger" and "love" are complex human emotions, arbitrarily defined according to cultural contexts. They evolve as societies evolve. There do exists ways to identify and measure certain details, like production of certain chemicals in the brain, heart rate, etc. These things don't have to be taken on faith, and none of these things suggest one ought to make decisions that seemingly go against their own well-being or face an eternity of torture, making their comparisons arguably irrelevant. 

[Matryoshka]

Struggling, yes and have been for years.

 

This is OT, but why is it ok that there aren't concrete answers regarding religion? We don't accept anything else (that I can think of) on faith, right? We look for proof to back up claims except for religous ones. That is hard for me.

 

I don't think of God as a big guy in the sky with a megaphone (or the potential to use one, but isn't for whatever reason).

 

I think of God of more something that is in all of us, in everything, everywhere, that connects us.  Sometimes I think that maybe God is something like the vibration frequency of all those strings in string theory, found in entangled subatomic particles. 

 

Once my minister quoted something that said something like "God is always speaking, inside all of us, you just have to be quiet enough to hear".  Maybe that's the feeling/sensation some people get from meditation and/or prayer.  I think that maybe some people can resonate or hear this better than others, and those are some of the prophets/teachers down through the ages, but no one can hear perfectly, so while the messages have very similar themes, the details aren't all the same.  So I don't sweat the details (and this is my personal thought on why there are no concrete details). 

 

I don't know.  I'm an agnostic theist.  I can't swallow any traditional religious narrative whole, like the virgin birth or Jesus' literal resurrection or Mohammed riding on a winged beast to chat with God, but I also can't seem to totally shake the feeling that there's something deeper and unifying,  And I can ponder what that might be, but I don't need to know for sure.  I still think of whatever this as God, but my description doesn't have much to do with Christian theology - I've obviously gone way off the rails.  But I'm good with the mystery - it doesn't need to be all or nothing for me.

 

[Mergath]

Think your question is a good one and I don't think it is a bad idea to ask it in an Internet forum. I don't think you were expecting to find a definitive answer but rather something that would bring you closer to an answer and that would be a good thing.

 

I think we live in an age of cynicism and, for most people, if we heard a voice that claimed to be divine we would see it as a prank or hoax or we would wonder if we were mentally ill.

But it wasn't that way five hundred years ago. People absolutely would have believed a "voice from the sky" then. It's only recently that so many people are skeptical about the supernatural. Possibly because there is such a staggering lack of evidence.

[LucyStoner]

Yes, that link on gravity is satire and labelled as such. It is written to defend the teaching of evolution in schools.

 

Right at the top:

[Textbook disclaimers are down, but not out. This satirical look at "only a theory" disclaimers imagines what might happen if advocates applied the same logic to the theory of gravitation that they do to the theory of evolution.]

 

 

[Guest]

But it wasn't that way five hundred years ago. People absolutely would have believed a "voice from the sky" then. It's only recently that so many people are skeptical about the supernatural. Possibly because there is such a staggering lack of evidence.

Personally, I think that there have always been a high percentage of people who were skeptical or non-believers who were just going through the motions of their faith because that was what was expected. I think the explosion of communication we've had in the last 50 years is leading those people to think "hey, I'm not alone, my beliefs are valid, I'm not hiding anymore".

[bolt.]

That doesn't make sense to me. I know for certain my next door neighbor exists, but that doesn't mean I'm mandated to have a relationship with her.

 

I think the truth is that a sentient, benevolent God who exists but doesn't communicate with us, who punishes non-belief but doesn't provide any direct proof, just doesn't make sense. And people will perform some astonishing mental gymnastics to get around it.

 

Probably one of the reasons that my thinking works for me, and not for everyone, is that I don't believe the "punishes people for non-belief" bit.

 

Knowing that your next-door neighbor exists does obligate you to relate to her minimally *as your next door neighbor.* There are certain minimal obligations you have due to to her existence -- Because she exists, her property is hers, not yours, and you respect that. Because she exists, if you heard her screaming for help, saw her being attacked, witnessed her having a stroke, etc, you would call 911, and do what you could. That's not an intimate relationship, but it is an inter-relation between people that would not be possible if she didn't exist, or if you didn't believe she existed.

 

Knowing (for sure) that God exists, and that all God's claims about himself and about humanity, and about the rest of creation, and about life, the universe and everything... if it were all true, and there was just no way to plausibly explain whatever clear proof, evidence etc would supposedly prove that -- In that scenario, the relationship between the hypothetical person and the hypothetical totally clear and unavoidably obvious God (Creator, Lover, and Source and provider of the life of all living things, including yours and your loved ones; present, active, powerful, reliable, not cruel, nor flawed in any way, but -- just hypothetically wondrous exactly the way God claims to be via his less-than-provable communication choices) would not exactly be a take it or leave it proposition. To me, that would be the kind of dead-giveaway that would pull the rug out from under any semblance of calling belief in God a "faith" (the choice to trust, seek, and love God).

 

Perhaps that's "mental gymnastics" to a bystander, but to me, it's just the best theory that explains and unifies the facts, theories, experiences, and beliefs that make up my life. I'm not trying to get around things; I don't think they need getting around. I think they make good sense, and I think God's choice to maintain deniability makes sense. A world where God didn't maintain deniability would be a very different world indeed.

[Guest]

I recently read a study that correlated the rise in atheism with the growth of the internet. Only a correlation, though I believe they controlled for things like wealth and education, but interesting.

 

The social consequences in Western nations for 'heresy' are minimal also. In countries where rates of religion are high, you would see a significant decrease if controls mandating forced religion were relaxed.

I strongly believe that the availability of "fingertip research" has cracked a large number of faith foundations (presumably, in multiple faith traditions, not just Christianity.)

 

And you're also right WRT the social consequences of leaving or re-defining one's faith. It might not be a bowl of cherries, but at least you're not likely to be stoned to death.

[Lucy the Valiant]

(Haven't read the whole thread . . . )

 

The beautiful parts of nature *do* shout to me that God is there, sustaining. The Fibonacci sequence in pineapples, the power of a mother's love, the aurora borealis, the brilliance of the coral reef. It is not irrational to me that a God who is dimensionally bigger and deeper and higher than I am sometimes does things that do not "make sense" to me. God's actions (or lack thereof) are supra-rational (above our understanding), but not irrational (against our understanding).

 

Questions drive us forward, lead us, call us to new understanding. Sometimes the struggle is part of the answer; sometimes the question does not have an earthly answer.

 

In this case, though, we are promised that "if we seek [God], He will be found of us." (Proverbs 8)

 

 

[Guest]

Sure we do.

Think of marriage vows. You promise to love that person for the rest of your life. You are claiming that you will, if you want to word it that way. You don't know what will happen in the future. You are taking marriage on faith.

 

Or homeschooling and parenting. You are taking it on faith that what you are doing is the best for your kids. You try to instill in them the values you want--but you have no idea of the outcome. Parents may think they do, but there are no guarantees.

 

We are caught in the present, with no control over the future. That's the nature of temporal beings.

One reason marriage does not work for me as a parallel to faith in God is that I am able to observe and analyze things my husband does or says to conclude that he is loving towards me, cares for me and the kids, is someone worthy of my admiration. I would not continue to love him if I could not verify that he did anything loving towards me or, God forbid, acted cruelly towards me. What if he closed the door to his garage, lived in there and refused to talk to me for a year? Would I say I was going through a "dry spell" in my marriage? Would I say I'm sure he still loves me and the kids, but for his own mysterious reasons, he is falling silent for now? No! He would just be a douchebag who is not worth my adulation - or at the least, he would be mentally ill.

 

Even when we first got married - yes, in one sense, I was taking it on faith that he would continue to love me and be worthy of my love. But it was also not a total gamble. I was in a relationship with him for four years. I based my hopes of marriage on what I could reasonably assume was his character, as evidenced by the things I had seen him do and say and react to for four years.

[umsami]

OP, when I read your post, I immediately thought of God on "The Simpsons" and it made me smile. :)

 

 

 

I don't picture God as an old guy in the sky.....but view God as more of a force/universal energy/love.  I do think God does speak to us....but it's more an inward speaking...and in general, it's always good/affirming/protecting.  

 

But yeah, there are days when I wish God would just take over the airwaves or speak from the sky and say...."What part of Thou shall not kill didn't you understand???"   or "Stop being such an evil ninny or else you'll end up in hell...or I'll smite you...or something."

 

 

[wintermom]

I see gravity happen every day.

 

We see the effects of what scientists have described as gravity here on earth. How it works, why is works, what it does (or doesn't do) is theory. Gravity is just a name we use to describe something we think is effecting things around us. 

 

There are millions of people who believe that they see God's creation and His works every day. Who's to say that God isn't the one making gravity work?

[Guest]

We see the effects of what scientists have described as gravity here on earth. How it works, why is works, what it does (or doesn't do) is theory. Gravity is just a name we use to describe something we think is effecting things around us.

 

There are millions of people who believe that they see God's creation and His works every day. Who's to say that God isn't the one making gravity work?

Sure, but the reason one can conclude that gravity exists is that world-wide (and even in space) zillions of things are consistently behaving in accordance with the theory of gravity. Gravity doesn't sometimes behave as expected and other times not. I don't get out of bed one morning to find that I float and wake up another day unable to lift my feet because gravity has suddenly become stronger.

 

To see evidence of God in creation is fine, but if you believe God is involved in everything that is happening, to believe that He is answering prayers as we ask, inevitably begs the question of why things are going wrong all the time as well, why one person survives cancer and another does not. If God is bringing my beautiful daffodils into bloom, why is he also letting thousands of crops fail due to drought?

[Ipsey]

The other day, I heard someone in conversation praising God for saving a person from a terrible traffic accident, while everyone else was killed. You hear these things a lot. Loads of people die in a horrible way, but one or two might survive, and everyone proclaims the greatness of God and how He truly exists, etc. Somehow the deaths of the others don's speak directly of God at all.

 

Yet, in the plane crash in the Alps, no one survived, and you didn't hear about the greatness of God.  Imagine what we'd be hearing if just one person had survived. The entire story would be cast in a whole new light. God is good/performs miracles because of the survival of one person and the deaths of so many others! If there were only one survivor it would make the story one of the goodness of a God, rather than the relative religious silence we hear now.

 

 

[tm919]

This thread immediately made me think of the Futurama episode Godfellas. Bender gets a chance to be "God" and acts a lot as described by the OP. This ends in disaster, and when he meets "God" (or an entity that thinks it's probably God) he has a memorable conversation about some reasons that God uses a light touch.

 

(Edit: I'm not sure if I shouldn't post youtube links here if they were posted by people other than who owned them, but you can watch the clip with the conversation online.)

[wintermom]

Sure, but the reason one can conclude that gravity exists is that world-wide (and even in space) zillions of things are consistently behaving in accordance with the theory of gravity. Gravity doesn't sometimes behave as expected and other times not. I don't get out of bed one morning to find that I float and wake up another day unable to lift my feet because gravity has suddenly become stronger.

 

To see evidence of God in creation is fine, but if you believe God is involved in everything that is happening, to believe that He is answering prayers as we ask, inevitably begs the question of why things are going wrong all the time as well, why one person survives cancer and another does not. If God is bringing my beautiful daffodils into bloom, why is he also letting thousands of crops fail due to drought?

 

The effects of what is called gravity in the universe is a lot more complex and difficult to measure than simply stating it's constant. It's simplified for us for convenience. It's really mind-boggling to imagine that each object is exerting a relatively weak force on every other object in space; my body is pulling the table, the table is pulling me, the earth is pulling us both while we're pulling it, the earth is being pulled by the sun, the sun is being pulled by something else, all the time we're travelling quickly through space with each object pulling each other. Then add in friction and how to measure this in space. It seems a lot easier to just keep it simple and say it always works the same way, when we really don't know how it's working in the entire universe. 

 

So how can we begin to guess how God is working? We're trying to simplify and measure things we have no idea how complex they are.

[umsami]

The other day, I heard someone in conversation praising God for saving a person from a terrible traffic accident, while everyone else was killed. You hear these things a lot. Loads of people die in a horrible way, but one or two might survive, and everyone proclaims the greatness of God and how He truly exists, etc. Somehow the deaths of the others don's speak directly of God at all.

 

Yet, in the plane crash in the Alps, no one survived, and you didn't hear about the greatness of God.  Imagine what we'd be hearing if just one person had survived. The entire story would be cast in a whole new light. God is good/performs miracles because of the survival of one person and the deaths of so many others! If there were only one survivor it would make the story one of the goodness of a God, rather than the relative religious silence we hear now.

 

With regards to this, I think part of the explanation may be that death is not a bad thing.   It's a transition...but not necessarily a bad one.  

[Ipsey]

With regards to this, I think part of the explanation may be that death is not a bad thing.   It's a transition...but not necessarily a bad one.  

 

Fair enough. 

 

I know that Franklin Graham said that he was so glad that so many people on Malaysian flight 370 were Christians (and going to Heaven...while the others were...weeeelllll... but they don't really count in this particular view.)

 

However, in the case that the "transition to death" is neutral at worst, and still carried out by a loving deity it still leaves one to wonder why there wasn't praise for God that he ushered so many into this meaningful transition, if this was really as fervent a belief as the goodness of the deity. 

[J-rap]

OP, I was haunted by this same question for a long time (years), following a catastrophic and devastating event in my life. 

 

Eventually, I began to realize that my question was far deeper than that;  what I really wanted to know was, Does God even exist?

 

Rote answers and trite sayings and even long-held traditional beliefs of the Christian church often rubbed me the wrong way and confused me, and never really satisfied my questions.

 

I began reading books and papers by various philosophers and scientists throughout the centuries who had explored this same question.

 

The pearl I finally found was There Is a God:  How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Anthony Flew.  It was kind of like starting over for me, getting to the very foundation of the faith that I had long held, instead of beginning where my childhood roots had me begin.

 

From there, I read lots of C.S. Lewis, and Gregory Boyd (Letters from a Skeptic, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God).  I didn't necessarily agree with everything, but it gave me a reassurance of God's existence that, finally, is solid.  (And also, it gave me a much clearer understanding of the necessity of Christ, but that's a different topic.)

 

So much of God is a mystery, and we can only understand bits and pieces with our human minds.  I still can't answer your question.  But I believe God is pure goodness and knowledge, and because my assurance in this is so firm, I find I no longer need the answer to that question anymore.  I trust that He knows what He is doing.

 

On a side note, I don't believe God's plan is to send all non-believers to hell, and I don't believe "non-believer" equates "bad."  That is inconsistent with who He is.  We all come from so many backgrounds and beliefs, and how can we be blamed for where we are born?  I don't know how judgment works, but I believe He has placed His law in our minds and on our hearts, and we can choose to follow it or not in our lifetime (by trying to be nice, decent, helpful people), even if we don't know God.  We'll have plenty of time to get to know Him after that.  That's what I have come to believe, anyway.

 

[albeto.]

We see the effects of what scientists have described as gravity here on earth. How it works, why is works, what it does (or doesn't do) is theory. Gravity is just a name we use to describe something we think is effecting things around us. 

 

There are millions of people who believe that they see God's creation and His works every day. Who's to say that God isn't the one making gravity work?

 

I don't know if you read posts subsequent to yours, but the article you're using to explain this is a satirical article, written to show how absurd the argument "it's just a theory" would sound were it used on a fact everyone knows to be true. The fact they chose to highlight is gravity. It seems you're unfamiliar with the scientific use of the word, "theory." It isn't used in science as it is in literature and maybe that's throwing you off. It does a lot of people. 

 

 

A scientific law is a description of an observed phenomenon. Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion are a good example. Those laws describe the motions of planets. But they do not explain why they are that way. If all scientists ever did was to formulate scientific laws, then the universe would be very well-described, but still unexplained and very mysterious.

 

A theory is a scientific explanation of an observed phenomenon. Unlike laws, theories actually explain why things are the way they are. Theories are what science is for. If, then, a theory is a scientific explanation of a natural phenomena, ask yourself this: "What part of that definition excludes a theory from being a fact?" The answer is nothing! There is no reason a theory cannot be an actual fact as well.

 

For example, there is the phenomenon of gravity, which you can feel. It is a fact that you can feel it, and that bodies caught in a gravitational field will fall towards the center.  Then there is the theory of gravity, which explains the phenomenon of gravity, based on observation, physical evidence and experiment. Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity replaced the less accurate gravity theory of Sir Isaac Newton, which was the first complete mathematical theory formulated which described a fundamental force. (link)

 

The effects of what is called gravity in the universe is a lot more complex and difficult to measure than simply stating it's constant. It's simplified for us for convenience. It's really mind-boggling to imagine that each object is exerting a relatively weak force on every other object in space; my body is pulling the table, the table is pulling me, the earth is pulling us both while we're pulling it, the earth is being pulled by the sun, the sun is being pulled by something else, all the time we're travelling quickly through space with each object pulling each other. Then add in friction and how to measure this in space. It seems a lot easier to just keep it simple and say it always works the same way, when we really don't know how it's working in the entire universe. 

 

What's the alternative to the theory of gravity? Divine pulling? Is God holding everything together by his sheer will? I'm not trying to be funny or mock you because I recognize you're being serious, and so I ask a serious question in return. If gravity doesn't explain the phenomenons we observe (falling), what does? If theories that rely on natural explanations cannot be trusted, that leaves supernatural. I can assume from your comments, that would mean the particular god of the bible. 

 

The problem I had with applying a religious theory of god, that is, an explanation of observed phenomenon (my experiences), was that it wasn't consistent. It was impossible to make accurate predictions. I found myself explaining how things must be after the fact, as there was never assurance the theory would apply before the fact, and in reality, two competing ideas might be used to explain a situation, but only after the situation was complete and I had the opportunity to reflect on it and try and explain what happened. Eventually I realized I was looking for reasons to validate what I believed, rather than reasons that explained what I experienced. I suspect for the OP, as well as many who have come before her and many who will come after, and probably a few walking along side her right now, recognizing an explanation to be unreliable exposes the possibility that the explanation is unlikely.

 

 

So how can we begin to guess how God is working? We're trying to simplify and measure things we have no idea how complex they are.

 

Start by testing the claims made. As the only claims we can validate are written in the bible, start with those. From a very informal, subjective point of view, one might consider the verse upthread that was offered about God not forsaking those who seek him. Well, there's lots of us who did seek "him" in earnest, genuinely, sincerely, deeply, devotedly, for years. We did the same things others did, that is to say, we employed the very same method. The method was unreliable. The predicted outcome was not forthcoming. It could only be explained in hindsight, which by definition is not an explanation but a rationalization. But that's a subjective test, and not available to objective analysis. The best way to proceed would be to test claims objectively. 

 

Some of the claims to begin to guess how God works:

• Believers can cast out demons, speak with new tongues, pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them,  they will lay hands on the sick who will consequently recover (Mark 16:17-18).
• Believers can do greater things than Jesus (walk on water, calm storms, bring in money from obscure places, raise the dead, come back from the dead; John 14:12).
• Believers can expect prayers and petitions answered with consistent results (Matthew 7:7).
• Believers won't sin (but first an objective definition of "sin" must be declared, with elements that can be identified apart from other, natural explanations; 1st John 5:18).

From the perspective of beginning to know how your god of the bible works, one would approach these things in a systematic way, a way that utilizes objective facts and neutralizes personal bias as best as possible. This would entail experiments created under controlled conditions, experiments that can be recreated in other areas, by researchers with various religious beliefs, as the observation doesn't require faith, only the act. So I would not require faith to watch a volunteer drink poison, for example, the volunteer's faith would be sufficient. I imagine spoiled milk or something that would elicit a natural reaction but not dangerously so should be sufficient, but those are the kinds of details that can be worked out. Once researchers identify Real Believers from those whose belief is false (as confirmed by not reacting to poison, snake bites, can walk on water, raise the dead, etc), the real fun begins. Collecting samples of blood before and after serpent venom should show the difference faith makes on the cellular level. fMRI scans might show which neurons in the brain are responsible for resisting the temptation to sin when sinful choices are offered in a controlled setting (maybe photos of sinful behavior shown, or letters to Penthouse read to the subject to monitor neurological reaction). It's times like this I wish I were a scientist so I could offer a concrete plan for such a quest. It would be fascinating, I think, and of the utmost importance. Can you imagine the potential? We could study what makes certain people more likely to believe, and from there find ways to work around skepticism in order to offer Real Faith to as many people as possible. In this way, our schools would be safer, our communities would be safer, our nation would be more prosperous, medical care would be reduced to physical trauma only. I imagine the consequences of increasing the magnitude of Real Faith in a nation the size of the United States would be profound, if the theory accurately explained reality. 

[8circles]

 

OP, I was haunted by this same question for a long time (years), following a catastrophic and devastating event in my life.

 

Eventually, I began to realize that my question was far deeper than that; what I really wanted to know was, Does God even exist?

 

Rote answers and trite sayings and even long-held traditional beliefs of the Christian church often rubbed me the wrong way and confused me, and never really satisfied my questions.

 

I began reading books and papers by various philosophers and scientists throughout the centuries who had explored this same question.

 

The pearl I finally found was There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Anthony Flew. It was kind of like starting over for me, getting to the very foundation of the faith that I had long held, instead of beginning where my childhood roots had me begin.

 

From there, I read lots of C.S. Lewis, and Gregory Boyd (Letters from a Skeptic, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God). I didn't necessarily agree with everything, but it gave me a reassurance of God's existence that, finally, is solid. (And also, it gave me a much clearer understanding of the necessity of Christ, but that's a different topic.)

 

So much of God is a mystery, and we can only understand bits and pieces with our human minds. I still can't answer your question. But I believe God is pure goodness and knowledge, and because my assurance in this is so firm, I find I no longer need the answer to that question anymore. I trust that He knows what He is doing.

 

On a side note, I don't believe God's plan is to send all non-believers to hell, and I don't believe "non-believer" equates "bad." That is inconsistent with who He is. We all come from so many backgrounds and beliefs, and how can we be blamed for where we are born? I don't know how judgment works, but I believe He has placed His law in our minds and on our hearts, and we can choose to follow it or not in our lifetime (by trying to be nice, decent, helpful people), even if we don't know God. We'll have plenty of time to get to know Him after that. That's what I have come to believe, anyway.

Thank you, that really spoke to me. Beautifully said.

[sbgrace]

I don't know why! Though I suspect it wouldn't help in the way we hope it would. What happened when Christ himself came in flesh and blood? Of course so much human time had passed with uncertainty long before that! Hence the question.  I don't know what life would look like, and if it would be better or worse, if God had been obvious from the dawn of humanity.

 

I do understand why it feels like it would help. Or at least it feels it would help those of us who struggle with certainty!

 

I found the book by Greg Boyd, Benefit of the Doubt, to be very helpful to me in my journey. Perhaps it would help you as well. At least it might give a perspective on why lack of certainty might be a good thing (might) or at least can be beneficial if that's the hand we're dealt in life. Here is a (quick read) article containing an interview with the author of Benefit of the Doubt. It will give an idea of some the contents anyway. http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/09/19/audacity-question-god-interview-greg-boyd/

 

I really think it's worth a read from your library, though I don't think there is an actual answer to your question. I've got lots of things, things I don't want to voice on a public message board, I would like to understand about God's, well, choices. I don't think I'll have answers during my life, though I choose to believe anyway.  I keep telling myself that we see through a glass darkly. Some day I may have eyes that can see the answers to the why questions I have. If all is revealed, maybe certain things will make sense then.

[Guest]

The effects of what is called gravity in the universe is a lot more complex and difficult to measure than simply stating it's constant. It's simplified for us for convenience. It's really mind-boggling to imagine that each object is exerting a relatively weak force on every other object in space; my body is pulling the table, the table is pulling me, the earth is pulling us both while we're pulling it, the earth is being pulled by the sun, the sun is being pulled by something else, all the time we're travelling quickly through space with each object pulling each other. Then add in friction and how to measure this in space. It seems a lot easier to just keep it simple and say it always works the same way, when we really don't know how it's working in the entire universe.

 

So how can we begin to guess how God is working? We're trying to simplify and measure things we have no idea how complex they are.

Ummm...what? I'm not talking about complexities of gravity. I'm talking about realities that every person can observe to be consistant. You don't have to believe in gravity to experience the effects of this force scientists have collectively named gravity. It always behaves as expected. I don't randomly start floating just when I was beginning to feel certain that gravity is a reliable theory.

 

This is what it sounds like the OP wishes for. If she lets go of the book she is holding, it will move towards Earth. I am 100% certain this is true no matter where she is on Earth, no matter what her beliefs may be, no matter who she is. This is not true of things we might attribute to God. If your dog is dying and we all pray for the dog, he might live. But he might not. We do not see God always behaving according to a theory the way we do with gravity.

[Justified]

I think to understand why He chooses to manifest His love or to express Himself in a particular way one has to understand why He has allowed such darkness into the world. I think hearing a testimony from a believer who has suffered many great tragedies and still gives glory to God helps to shed light on why God chooses to do things by His Word and Spirit in this broken world. Warning: This testimony might be offensive to some.

 

 

[TheDairyQueen]

:iagree:

 

I get the impression that she feels she should believe, but that she doesn't feel strongly enough to be 100% sure either way, so she is looking for definitive proof one way or the other.

 

It must be a tough position to be in. :(

 

It is a tough position. I was once in it, and finally, after many years of not wanting to accept, I had finally come to the conclusion that I just didn't believe. Once I admitted it to myself, all the questions I had over the years, the ones I tried to explain away (such as the Op's question) were pretty much instantly solved.

[Audrey]

Sure, although I think I can guess your answer. I don't exclude anyone which is why I didn't mention any religion.

 

No hands make no sound when clapping.

[eternalsummer]

Sure we do.

Think of marriage vows. You promise to love that person for the rest of your life. You are claiming that you will, if you want to word it that way. You don't know what will happen in the future. You are taking marriage on faith.

 

 

 

Not only that, but the only way that a successful marriage can ever happen is if the two people getting married take their marriage vows on faith.

 

The Will to Believe (William James) is a good read.

 

There are some things that must be believed in order to happen. (Instead of the other way around).

 

That said, I am not religious - I think God doesn't talk from the heavens, or whatever, because there is not a person literally sitting up there in the sky; the concrete idea of god is a metaphor for the order of the universe.  "Tao called tao is not tao," and al of that.

[eternalsummer]

Just wanted to add a little on the free will thing. My understanding is that we don't really have free will to the extent we think we do. That's because many of our thought, attitudes and behaviours are governed by unconscious processes. (A science-based perspective here, not a spiritual one.)

 

Ironically, we behave better when we assume we have free will, than when we don't. So it's a tricky line - not really having free will, but having a strong motivation for convincing ourselves and others that we do.

I see it like this:

 

everything is determined.  That which we consider random, or chance, is just the place where our ability to see the "strings" of the universe stops - not where the strings (laws, whatever) stop, just where our ability to understand them stops.

 

So there is no free will.

 

However, because we can't see all of the strings, we function as if we have free will, and we feel that we have free will.

 

 

This feeling, and the function of it, are part of the determined order of the universe.

 

I am determined to act as if I have free will.

[eternalsummer]

The other day, I heard someone in conversation praising God for saving a person from a terrible traffic accident, while everyone else was killed. You hear these things a lot. Loads of people die in a horrible way, but one or two might survive, and everyone proclaims the greatness of God and how He truly exists, etc. Somehow the deaths of the others don's speak directly of God at all.

 

Yet, in the plane crash in the Alps, no one survived, and you didn't hear about the greatness of God.  Imagine what we'd be hearing if just one person had survived. The entire story would be cast in a whole new light. God is good/performs miracles because of the survival of one person and the deaths of so many others! If there were only one survivor it would make the story one of the goodness of a God, rather than the relative religious silence we hear now.

 

When my dad died a few years ago (this time of the year), he died at home - he was in a coma for the last week or so, and hadn't spoken or moved, other than those instinctive reactions that the dying have like babies - sucking in response to something in the mouth, clutching fingers placed in the hand, etc.  I don't even know if he'd done that for a few days.  (I was living about a mile away, so I was only there a few hours per day).  He was barely breathing; he died of pneumonia/COPD, so his breathing at the end was almost imperceptible.

 

Finally one night my mother sent my sister to come get me and the kids (DH was at work) and by the time we got back to the house 10 minutes later, my dad had died.  

 

The difference, the fundamental incredible difference, between his barely living body (I had seen him earlier that day) and his just-died body, was as clear a sign as I have ever had of the existence of the soul, or God, or whatever you want to call it.  

 

So I guess I'm saying I agree with you about how people tend to focus on the positive nature of god; this is (to me) kind of like how we talk about a day - the word "day" means 24 hour period but it also means the daylight hours of that period, right?  God encompasses everything, the good and the bad, but there is also a sense of god as primarily a force of good.

 

The Tao Te Ching would say, "Is and Isn't produce each other."  You can't have the word Isn't without the word Is, but Is would mean nothing if there were no Isn't.

[eternalsummer]

 If your dog is dying and we all pray for the dog, he might live. But he might not. We do not see God always behaving according to a theory the way we do with gravity.

 

The dog always always dies.  This is one of the laws of the universe (so far); living things die.  Things that do not die were never alive.

 

This is how I see God in the case of the dog; part of God (part of the order of the universe) is that the dog dies.

[Joker]

.

[eternalsummer]

See, I've been with family members when they died and came to a different conclusion - that when one is dead, one ceases to exist. It did not speak to me of 'soul' or 'spirit' at all. Just absence of life. All the chemical and electrical processes that animate us having ceased, nothing is left except the body that was, and memory in the brains of others.

 

I think I wasn't clear enough; that is how I felt as well (although my conclusion was different).  The dead body was absent of life; there was nothing there except the body.

 

But that experience, of seeing the dead body, gave me a profound sense that there had been something else there before he was dead, something I hadn't accounted for (because the difference should not have been so marked between his living and dead body, as he was only very very barely alive).

 

Crazy how the same experience can suggest such different things to different people! :)  

 

Are you atheist?  (that is to say, do you believe at all that there is something beyond/behind/inside what we can perceive and measure)?

[Teannika]

I asked this question before but I worded it wrong so I'll try again.

 

If I were God, I would want to regularly address the people. As in, a loud voice from the sky "Good morning, just checking in. I'm still here, watching you/judging you/protecting you/whatever". It seems like that would cut down on a lot of problems such as confusion, fighting, war, etc. People would be happier knowing with 100% certainty that He is real, I think?

 

So, why is God silent? Is it a free will thing?

 

 

There are scriptures in the bible that tell us that some people won't find him -

 

   

'Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:'

 

And the reason -

'For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof...' (Proverbs 1:28-30)

 

 

Contrasted with -

 

'I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.' (Proverbs 8:17)

 

'And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.' (Jeremiah 29:13)

 

God wants us to seek him, and it's a heart condition thing.

 

 

 

Another prophecy in the negative -

 

'And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.' (Amos 8:12)

 

 

 

There is a lot to God and his plan that is unfolding, and more than we can know or find out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pawz4me]

There are scriptures in the bible that tell us that some people won't find him -

 

   

'Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:'

 

And the reason -

'For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof...' (Proverbs 1:28-30)

 

 

Contrasted with -

 

'I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.' (Proverbs 8:17)

 

'And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.' (Jeremiah 29:13)

 

God wants us to seek him, and it's a heart condition thing.

 

 

 

Another prophecy in the negative -

 

'And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.' (Amos 8:12)

 

 

 

There is a lot to God and his plan that is unfolding, and more than we can know or find out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And yet Jesus himself said in Matthew 7 --

 

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

 

 

Most people who struggle with belief, or have come to a position of not believing, usually did/are doing lots of knocking and seeking.  Often for many years.

[Teannika]

And yet Jesus himself said in Matthew 7 --

 

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

 

 

Most people who struggle with belief, or have come to a position of not believing, usually did/are doing lots of knocking and seeking.  Often for many years.

 

 

All I can add to that is to say that God's timing is not our timing. He knows our hearts, but he also works in his own time to reveal himself to us, through personal ways that he knows are best for us as individuals. For some people that does mean a long time of "silence". I went through many many years of that, and struggled greatly with it, so I don't make this comment lightly.

 

 

He also knows when a person is not going to accept what he gives them. Ie it may be rejection of his word, the holy scriptures. So why would he then give them a loud voice and signs in that particular case? They have already said in their heart that it is not enough.

[eternalsummer]

Yes, it's interesting.

 

The marked differences for me were between a body with processes necessary for life occurring, and a body where those processes had ceased. I wasn't prompted to supernatural wonderings, although I was prompted to superstitious ones ( singing to my dead grandfather to 'send him on his way').

 

I don't believe we can perceive everything in the universe with the tools, models and knowledge we have right now. I don't believe there will be supernatural explanations but I do believe there will be more explanations of how things work.

 

I don't believe that there is anything outside the natural either, but I do think there are things we currently do not understand and may never be able to understand in a conscious/scientific way but that we may understand in some more fundamental, primal way (in the older part of our brain, evolutionarily speaking), as a sort of intuition.  Maybe this sense is what some people interpret as god?  I'm not sure.

 

My dad used to say that he was not superstitious, but he was not not superstitious, either.

[Pawz4me]

All I can add to that is to say that God's timing is not our timing. He knows our hearts, but he also works in his own time to reveal himself to us, through personal ways that he knows are best for us as individuals. For some people that does mean a long time of "silence". I went through many many years of that, and struggled greatly with it, so I don't make this comment lightly.

 

 

He also knows when a person is not going to accept what he gives them. Ie it may be rejection of his word, the holy scriptures. So why would he then give them a loud voice and signs in that particular case? They have already said in their heart that it is not enough.

 

I don't mean to be argumentative (and dang it--I don't have time to debate this morning--tons of things to get done), but your last paragraph seems to me to directly contradict what Jesus said, which was ". . . everyone who asks receives . . ."  That seems pretty clear to me.  He didn't put any qualifiers on it.

[sunflowerlady]

There are scriptures in the bible that tell us that some people won't find him -

 

   

'Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:'

 

And the reason -

'For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof...' (Proverbs 1:28-30)

 

 

Contrasted with -

 

'I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.' (Proverbs 8:17)

 

'And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.' (Jeremiah 29:13)

 

God wants us to seek him, and it's a heart condition thing.

 

 

 

Another prophecy in the negative -

 

'And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.' (Amos 8:12)

 

 

 

There is a lot to God and his plan that is unfolding, and more than we can know or find out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is fascinating. If those in the first example are seeking , but not finding God, how can they hate knowledge and choose not to fear the Lord if they are seeking? But not finding? 

 

The Jeremiah scripture says that those who seek with all their hearts will find God. The first scripture you quote certainly sounds like someone seeking with all their heart. Yet, God does not answer and the people don't find him. Because? They hate knowledge and choose not to fear the Lord that they are out earnestly seeking?

 

And yet, God wants us to seek him?

 

Fascinating.

[Teannika]

I don't mean to be argumentative (and dang it--I don't have time to debate this morning--tons of things to get done), but your last paragraph seems to me to directly contradict what Jesus said, which was ". . . everyone who asks receives . . ." That seems pretty clear to me. He didn't put any qualifiers on it.

 

Is the context of our discussion someone who has already 'believed on' the Lord for salvation looking for a further sign and confirmation of their belief, or a non-believer looking for a sign to make them believe on him?

 

I don't think that I have contradicted 'who asks receives'. The original post is asking for signs, a loud audible voice coming from the sky.

 

Jesus spoke to the Pharisees who were seeking a sign in the negative -

 

11 And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him.

 

12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation.

(Mark 8)

 

 

He called it 'tempting him'. What I have learned about God is that he wants us first of all to accept that he has given us enough. We do that, we trust him, and then he confirms his word in ways that we did not think up.

[Teannika]

This is fascinating. If those in the first example are seeking , but not finding God, how can they hate knowledge and choose not to fear the Lord if they are seeking? But not finding?

The Jeremiah scripture says that those who seek with all their hearts will find God. The first scripture you quote certainly sounds like someone seeking with all their heart. Yet, God does not answer and the people don't find him. Because? They hate knowledge and choose not to fear the Lord that they are out earnestly seeking?

And yet, God wants us to seek him?

Fascinating.

 

The Proverbs 1 reference is a prophetic scripture. The context of the verse is that they did not seek with all of their heart, it goes on further to say that they had none of God's counsel and despised his reproof, he calls them scorners and so on. Prophetically a time is coming when God is going to be very very silent, much more than you think that he is now. That is why he says to seek him while he can be found. He can still be found today.

 

'Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near.' (Isaiah 55:6)

 

Time will run out to seek him. The bible tells us that a time will come that is the worst this world has ever seen, men will seek to die and will not be able to. (Revelation 9:6)

[Guest]

Teannika, When I was going through the struggle the OP is having, there was always someone patiently describing different nuanced bits of scripture to demostrate why this mean this and that doesn't mean that. I admire that patience in a way, but I finally concluded that if God wants us to know him, it is only logical that any person can know what God wants us to know without a theology pHD, kwim? I find the simplest views of God to be the best.

[Scarlett]

I see gravity happen every day. If things kept floating off into the ether, and someone kept insisting that gravity existed despite this, I might have trouble with gravity.

 

Gravity is a very strange example to use.

 

If God was as evident to me as gravity, I'd be a believer. An argumentative believer, but a believer nonetheless.

 

Also, yes we can prove we have emotions, if we consider emotions to be periods of biological arousal to which we assign meaning. As in, you can see it happening on a fMRI.

 

If God was as self-evident as the fact I experience periods of arousal to which I assign particular meanings, I'd be all over him.

God is as evident as gravity to me. Everything around me, my existence, the universe, my son, a red sweet pepper tell me God exists and he has a fondness for humans because he makes so many things for our enjoyment.

[Guest]

The Proverbs 1 reference is a prophetic scripture. The context of the verse is that they did not seek with all of their heart, it goes on further to say that they had none of God's counsel and despised his reproof, he calls them scorners and so on. Prophetically a time is coming when God is going to be very very silent, much more than you think that he is now. That is why he says to seek him while he can be found. He can still be found today.

 

'Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near.' (Isaiah 55:6)

 

Time will run out to seek him. The bible tells us that a time will come that is the worst this world has ever seen, men will seek to die and will not be able to. (Revelation 9:6)

God is either a Loving Father or He is waiting to disappear on us before all manner of horrors fall upon us.

 

Christians are funny.

[Scarlett]

That's nice.

 

I have zero interest in converting a believer to atheism.

 

Individuals make different attributions for the same things. OK.

Well thanks for not trying to convert me. I thought we were having a conversation...that is how real God is to me. Everything around me speaks to me of a Grand Creator. That is all I was saying.

[Teannika]

Teannika, When I was going through the struggle the OP is having, there was always someone patiently describing different nuanced bits of scripture to demostrate why this mean this and that doesn't mean that. I admire that patience in a way, but I finally concluded that if God wants us to know him, it is only logical that any person can know what God wants us to know without a theology pHD, kwim? I find the simplest views of God to be the best.

 

Salvation is simple. There's never been anything more simple - believe on him and you shall be saved.

 

The OP is complaining about not getting a big booming voice from heaven.