What does believing in God actually mean?

When people say they believe in God..

What does believing in God actually mean?


Does it mean.. believing in the separate existence of a supernatural being.. ?

Who acts.. and wills.. contrary to nature..?

If so.. where does this idea of a supernatural being come from.. ?


Does the Bible teach this is how God is..?

If so.. where?


Or alternatively.. does believing in God mean… believing in the words spoken by the prophets..?


So he said to them: "O senseless ones and slow in heart to believe on all the things the prophets spoke!”
Luke 24:25


"All things, therefore, that you want men to do to you, you also must likewise do to them; this, in fact, is what the Law and the Prophets mean."
Matthew 7:12


And.. is an atheist someone who doesn’t believe this.. ?


"Why do you not judge also for yourselves what is righteous?"

Luke 12:57



Just wondering..


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Why did you inject the ".. contrary to nature." in your question?

God does Act accoeding to His will. But i am just wondering where you are coming from with this "contrary to nature"?


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

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What the hell is supernatural? Is that not contrary to nature? Really Adstar, are you so blinded by your delusion that you can't see that belief in a deity, who supposedly "supernatural" is contrary to nature.

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Miracles are contrary to nature by definition. If God didn't have to interrupt the cascade of cause and effect, there is nothing for him to do.

Great question, EH. If God is beyond comprehension, do they even know what they believe in? It is possible to know beyond symbolism?

 

So he said to them: "O senseless ones and slow in heart to believe on all the things the prophets spoke!”
Luke 24:25

What is with the bible and its tendency to just insult people? And religious people say they aren't judgmental...

 

It typically means:

"I accept the assertion 'God' exists without consideration to supportive or contradictory evidence"

 

Emotional Hooligan

There is a cause of all causes that defies standard material definitons

Kind of an advanced theistic topic from the view of inter faith dialouge - some will say god is localized in the consciousness, some will say that is god is a stretch of infinite energy that pervades everything and some will say that he is localized inhis own individual form, and some say he is all three

SB 1.2.11: Learned transcendentalists who know the Absolute Truth call this nondual substance Brahman, Paramātmā or Bhagavān.

if god exists, then the idea would come from him, aside from being the cause of all causes, the idea of a phenomena comes from the noumenon

have to let a xtian answer that one

generally speaking the way knowledge works is if you inquire through someone who knows

yes, they tend to disagree for obvious reasons

 

When someone says to me that something is contrary to nature i get the impression that the something is in opposition to nature, or that the Something is against nature.

contrary
A noun
1 contrary

two propositions are contraries if both cannot be true but both can be false
Category Tree:
abstraction
╚relation
╚logical relation
╚contrary
2 contrary

exact opposition; "public opinion to the contrary he is not guilty"
Category Tree:
abstraction
╚relation
╚opposition; oppositeness
╚contrary
3 reverse, contrary, opposite

a relation of direct opposition; "we thought Sue was older than Bill but just the reverse was true"
Category Tree:
abstraction
╚relation
╚opposition; oppositeness
╚reverse, contrary, opposite
B adjective
1 adverse, contrary

in an opposing direction; "adverse currents"; "a contrary wind"


Like God hates nature and is in conflict against it. Thats the impression i got from the original post. Now if it had said that God is not bound by the laws of nature then it would have been a lot clearer and i would not have replied as i did.

Anyway i await E Hooligan's reply.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

The bible reveals to us that we are not perfect.

The proud react to that news with anger and rejection.

The meek react to that message with regret and a desire to be perfect.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

And if I come to the realization (sans the bible) that I'm far from perfect and seek to improve, where does that leave a humble atheist such as myself?

 

Casting Out devils

In response to Falcon22
((What is with the bible and its tendency to just insult people? And religious people say they aren't judgmental...))


That depends on who is being insulted.. doesn’t it?

Do you have any nice things to say about George Bush?

The teaching is.. do not to judge people for being individuals.

However.. judgments against the system are fair game..

That was the agenda of the prophets..

To tear down the out-dated system.. and rebuild it.

Also.. one needs to consider that the Bible is a mix of love and anger.

The prophet’s anger was consistently turned on those in positions of authority.

Because they ignored the law..

That we should treat each other as we would wish to be treated our selves..

And replaced it with their own ill conceived laws instead.

Which have been proved not to work.

-------------------------------------------------

Woe to those who are enacting harmful regulations and those who, constantly writing, have written out sheer trouble, in order to push away the lowly ones from a legal case and to wrest away justice from the afflicted ones of my people, for the widows to become their spoil, and that they may plunder even the fatherless boys!

Isaiah 10:1

In reply he said to them: ‘Why is it you also overstep the commandment of God because of your tradition?

Isaiah aptly prophesied about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far removed from me. It is in vain that they keep worshiping me, because they teach as doctrines the commands of men.

Letting go the commandment of God, you hold fast the tradition of men.

Further, he went on to say to them: ‘Adroitly you set aside the commandment of God in order to retain your tradition.. and thus you make the word of God invalid by your tradition which you handed down. And many things similar to this you do.’

Matthew 15:3 & Mark 7:6*

 

Miracle or Metaphor

I've responded on a new thread.. in order to go in to more depth

Concerning this subject of the supernatural.

Please see.. thread.. Miracle or Metaphor.. Was Jesus a Hacker.

For a more comprehensive response

 

Not to be taken literally

Response to Adstar
((When someone says to me that something is contrary to nature i get the impression that the something is in opposition to nature, or that the Something is against nature.))

See my post Miracle or Metaphor.. which is a good example of God apparently being contrary.. as Jesus rebukes the wind and the sea.

However.. this should not be taken literally.

 

Believing in a god is simply a willingness to avoid rational thought.

 

If believing in God is a willingness to avoid rational thought, then so is believing in anything, because a rationalistic basis for any physical thing is impossible to establish. One who wishes to harp on rationality should have a clear notion of the concept.

Sensation, the primary source of empirical data -- evidence -- is an irrational function, unpredictable, inaccurate, and easily influenced by emotion and mental state. Hallucination is commonplace among humans; when hallucination is not occurring, misinterpretation of "clean" data (that is, sensory data not necessarily true but having an ultimate origin outside of the self) likely is. Optical illusions, false inferences, emotions causing people to jump to conclusions. We are not sterile and pristine like the objects around us. We are far removed from them. We live in worlds of our own.

Where -- as God is obviously not a physical object -- do you think he comes from? Why do you think it is so easy to believe in God? If you close your eyes, you see more than the insides of your eyelids. Your memory and imagination take over for your eyes. Keep your eyes closed long enough and you will find yourself convinced that what you see is real. Not just images, but sounds, smells, textures, tastes, and personal intuitions. The people in your dreams are often indistinguishable from those in waking life. Why should such a vast and rich reservoir of unconscious information be active only when we sleep?

Some of the first gods, so to speak, were ancestors, fathers and grandfathers passed away, the progenitors of vivid memories. For a time, we humans worshipped our memories of them. They came to us in our dreams to offer us guidance. We prayed to them, to our dreams, to our deep and murky unconscious. Today's religion is perhaps a little more socially sophisticated than primitive ancestor worship, but its soul remains the same.

Maybe you would argue that dreams have nothing to do with it, that God is an invisible man invented by authority figures to keep the masses under control. Forgetting the massive ignorance of early human history this implies, this is still a huge insult to the intelligence of every religious person on the planet. If you are one who believes this, ask yourself this: Do you really think you and the few others who share your belief are the only critical thinkers on the planet? Greater minds than you have held faith in a higher power despite the obvious arguments against it that you repeat ad nauseum. Your gospel is no newer to anyone than what you've heard from the Christians. Maybe you can shock a prepubescent child and take advantage of his teen angst; then one day, if he proves to be a shallow tool, he will find himself doing the same to raise another generation of philosophical bugs.

Religion persists because religious experience persists. It's part of being human. Irrationality is part not just of being human but existence itself. No one can truly say he is not irrational at all; and religion comes from irrationality. Belief in God is not the confounding death wish that is some mysterious willingness to avoid rational thought. It is far simpler than that. It is the logical outcome of our inherent characteristics, the result of our being. To believe in God is human.

 

baumgarten

Ironically, this idea (...the first gods ....) is gleaned from an empirical understanding of ancient history

Generally there are three methods of understanding

Direct sense perception - look both ways before you cross the road

Empiricism - musing over the information gathered by the senses (good for technological advancement)

Authority - accepting the info of someone who knows (going to a lawyer when you have legal problems)
- of course techncally you are still hearing what the lawyer tells you but obviously it is in a different catergory than the prevous two

Scripture operates out of the last one - the problems arise with it when the other two authorities stick their fingers in and reconstruct scripture

 

LOL, LOL, you crack me up, that's just too pathetically funny.

Scripture is not authority, if it were, there wouldn't be so many freaking discrepancies!

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Get over it, your belief is a freaking delusion!!!!!

 

I do not accept authority as a valid source of epistemic justification, and neither should any intellectually honest thinker. Give it a moment's consideration for a change. Congratulations for clearly stating what took you dozens of threads previously, however.

To clarify your points, "direct sense perception" and "empiricism" should be the same thing. What distinguishes different methods of knowledge is not how much it is thought about but where it comes from. Rationalistic knowledge (for example mathematical proof) is a priori, or derived from reason. Empirical knowledge (anything informed by the senses) is a posteriori. Generally we do not recognize any other type of information as knowledge. In the case of so-called authority, there is a word for that: hearsay.

 

I agree - "Belief" - as in the assertion of absolute truth - is irrational.

The most we can hope for is a very strong probability of the outcome - and the colloquial use of the word "belief" is nothing more than this:
I believe I will be okay when I cross the road.
I believe that Torchwood will be on BBC3 at 9pm on Sunday (YAY!!).
I believe my brother will do the thing I asked of him.

All these are nothing more than an assessment of probability based on evidence of previous experience

No - the sensation is not irrational - it is purely rational and biological function. It is the interpretation that could be irrational.

It is not a logical outcome - but the illogical outcome of not thinking through the experiences logically.

There is no such thing as a "religious" experience. There is just experience.
The interpretation can be illogical and/or irrational.
And from this illogicality and irrationality springs the idea of, and continuation of, belief in God.

 

Lightgigantic: There is a cause of all causes that defies standard material definitons.

If it can't be defined, it can't be debated. End of argument.