I have some questions about God and why people believe, as follows:
What is the main reason you believe?
Would you say your beliefs are reasonable, i.e. your faith is grounded in reason and you have good reason to believe?
What is your standard by which you judge things to be true or false?
Thanks in advance for any responses.
Note to mods: wasn't sure where the best place to post this was, so I chose the closes topic I could find.
I started my faith with this:
Long time ago, I truly cannot understand the logic of faith. To believe in a God whose existence is obviously based on a man's need to be led or ruled over. To believe in the Book called the Bible, the content of which is a story of a race who at present time is famous for their shrewdness, was also very far away from me. I distrusted the Church who teaches rituals and beliefs which are actually a simple Philisophy 101. The teaching like if you're down, God is shaping you and if you're up, God loves you was quite a good example of never-wrong deductive logic. But I thought , if the world's most clever people believe why shouldn't I. And besides if I am going to err, I'd rather err on a safe side.
I didn't find my faith reasonable because I was worshipping a God who openly declares that His Chosen race does not include me. A God whose sense of justice is the destruction of others for the good of his own people. But again, majority of the people in this planet believe. It would be logically safer for me to have a God too.
True or false are subject to trend, power, numbers and marketing. Heck, it was true that you go to heaven if you could buy a certificate from Vatican and it was false to say the world is round. So all one can say is, everything is just perception. My knowledge of true or false is actually a product of my life story. But belief in common denomination is required to live in a community and I live in one.
But all these changed because of my personal experiences with God. So one asks me what is my reason to believe, the answer is simply because He is real . Do I have a solid reason to believe, heck yeah. The same reason I believe I have a mother from whom I came and lived with. And the standard of my true or false is my faith for my faith, the truth, in Jesus name, set me free.