Common_Cents

I hear many people who disbelieve God say that the main reason they don't believe is because "there is no proof". They say that if he exists that he should give adequate proof of that fact and they would believe. The problem with this is that to "know" based on proof that something exists doesn't mean you that you trust, love, and believe that thing. God is not interested in you knowing that he exists he is interested in a loving relationship with you. In the OT God leads the Israelites out of bondage. He parts the red sea in front of them. They know for a fact that he exists. It isn't an issue of faith they seen his actions. They know he exists. Not only that they saw him help them at every turn. Then a funny thing happened. He and Moses went away for a while.


With God's prescence gone the Israelites began to worry. What if he never came back? What if he changed his mind? They built a golden calf and worshipped it because it was there. It was something that wouldn't go away. They still knew God existed but the problem wasn't proof it was trust. They didn't know God they knew he existed. That is a huge gap. I know that people exist. That doesn't mean i trust or believe in them. The Israelites thought of God as this genie. He did their bidding and was always on call. This did wonders for them believing in his existence but it did nothing in developing trust and love. Do you trust and love the appliances in your home? You do when they work but what about when they fail to work? God isn't an appliance and he isn't here to serve you. Anyone who tells you that they would "believe God if he showed himself" is telling you half truths. They would believe in his existence but they still wouldn't trust him or love him. This is why faith is so important. This is why God doesn't do his own personal sermons every week. He isn't interested in you believing that he exists and he isn't interested in spoon feeding you forever. He wants you to trust him and love him not because he is always there propping you up.

Love isn't about what you have to gain but what you have to give. God isn't against rewards and help but what he is against is you using him. No one likes to be used. Why should God be any different? Only through tests and faith can he allow you to not only love him but grow as a person. When a baby bird is ready to hatch you don't go break the egg for them. They have to do it to help form the muscles in their wings. When a butterfly is flying you don't touch their wings or they can never fly again. If God interferes he can ruin your development. Bad things happen with the good and you can learn far more about yourself in the bad times. Without the bad the good is irrelevant. God wants to know that when it gets bad that you are still with him. Is that so bad? God wants you to grow and mature as a being and only through trials can you grow. Is that sadistic? Faith is trust when you can't see it and it doesn't appear that you ever will see it. Faith is trust and you can't love without trust. Faith is the bedrock because God is going to allow trials in your life not for his amusement and not for sadism but to push you further on your path of realizing that with God you can be great. It is a noble quest but without faith it is impossible.

jastity

And whe he parts the sea down at the local coastal weekend spot for me, I will believe. And risk that I will not grow as a person.

salyed

I have never viewed the stories in a book as "proof" of anything. There are many competing books with claims of "divine" or "spiritual" authority with competing mythologies: the Bible (both OT and NT), the Bhagavad Gita, the Qu'ran, the Buddhist Pali Canon and Mahayana sutras, the Vedic scriptures, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Baha'i Writings (Kitab-i-Aqdas, Kitab-i-Iqan, Hidden Words, et al.), the Book of Mormon, etc. Many of them also have correspondances with archaeological sites of ancient cities and locales which supposedly "prove" that they are true. Or they engage in spurious pseudo-science to try to prove their claims.

To summarize, the bibliolatry (the worship of a book which Christians and other religions engage in and where proof is normally circular logic which refers back to itself) does not provide any strong evidence for the proof of your claims. In fact, quite the opposite - faith is the response of the uninformed.

The story about the "value" of faith that you are providing comes straight from the Bible. Circular logic.

Stormlight

Yes, yes. That's very nice. Now could you let me decide that for myself if it's not to much trouble?

Oh, and I assume that your god can communicate directly with me? You know, without you telling what god does or doesn't want.

King Rat

I don't think it matters. Proof is irrelevant to believers because they value faith, faith is irrelevant to non-believers because they value facts. If god exists and hides, he may as well not exist.

Mageth

Actually, most of us say that there is no evidence, or that what evidence there is does not justify belief.

Sounds perfectly reasonable. If God exists and is concerned about my belief or non-belief, then one could expect him to give adequate evidence to convince me.

Doesn't mean that you can't, either.

Psa 46:10 Be still, and know that I [am] God

And what does the First Commandment say again?

I'm sorry, but I am incapable of having a relationship of any sort with something in which I lack belief. If God wants a loving relationship with me, he's going to have to convince me he exists first.

IMO, you're missing the point of the story. They knew he (YHWH) existed; they were just hedging their bets by appealing to another God (Baal, apparently), just in case. The Israelites were illustrating their polytheism - something God was trying to break them of (see the first couple of the ten commandments).


[quote]This is why God doesn't do his own personal sermons every week. He isn't interested in you believing that he exists and he isn't interested in spoon feeding you forever. He wants you to trust him and love him not because he is always there propping you up. [/quoute]

Again, if I don't believe he exists, then I can't very well trust and love him!

Umm, because he's God?

If all the good and bad happens without God actually helping me or at least without me being able to tell one way or the other, if God is primarily just watching from above to see how I'm doing, then, if I survive and mature, what I'll learn from it (if I don't already have belief, have faith) is that I don't need God to see me through the good and bad times, and all he's really interested in anyway is watching me like some ant in an ant farm.

Umm, if I can't see it, if I can't see God's agency, if to my perspective I'm going it on my own, how can I realize that "with God I can be great"? It appears to be me that's doing all the work, suffering all the bad, finding the good, and not God doing it for me.

What you're saying, really, is to believe God is behind all this, is perhaps there to help you by pulling a few strings on occasion, and is allowing all life's shit to happen to you so that you can become a better person. Well, I don't believe that, and see no reason I should.

What you're talking about is that looking at life through a Christian perspective, one must have faith that the good and the bad are all part of God's plan. It's basically an "out" used to explain why bad things happen to "good" people (as in believers), and an excuse as for why there is bad in the world created by your God. To someone like me, who lacks belief in your God, the existence of good and evil are easy to explain without God (but are difficult to explain with God); to me, that's just the way the world is. There's nothing behind it, there's no purpose or plan. You just have to deal with it as it comes.

No it's not. There are many successful people that get by just fine without faith of this sort.

Hedshaker

And how do you know your God gives a hoot about faith? No don't tell me, because it says so in the bible and the bible is the word of God, right? And you know this to be true because....?

No, don't tell me...... let me guess....... something to do with the bible, right?

Too many circles make me dizzy

Orbit

trendkill

I disagree. We can know people exist and still have the need to put faith in them; just knowing someone exists does not mean you know he is trustworthy. And I think the Bible backs me up here when it talks about people who saw proof of God's existence and still had faith.

jafosei

Like Mageth said, I can't have a relationship with something that I don't think exists. So if God is really interested in a relationship, God would make Him/Herself known. Without that, everything else is irrelevant.

If I love someone, and want them to love me back, how can I expect anything to work unless I let the one I love know about it directly? If they never see me or hear from me, how is that love?

King Rat

God seems particularly needy according to the OP, kind of like a stalker. Love meeeeeeeeee pleeeeeaaaaase, OR I WILL DESTROY YOU!

Sorry god, don't make me get a restraining order, you freakin' psycho...