The idea of God always existing

[ronedee]

What?
How do I know the characteristics of a Creator entity?
I don't.
You're the one who claims to know.

I guess I should've rephrased the question to: "How don't you know?"

IMO and others, there's more reason to believe... "think" an omnipotent individual created all that we see? JUST BECAUSE WE ARE HERE!!

Now...If this is what you need to hear; there are (at least) 3 very physical elements in our lives that defiy our understanding and are explained only by theory: Time, Water, and Gravity.

Anyone can try to explain these things (w/ scientific pov). But the reality is that there is no difinitive answers!

Are you seriously going for the god of the gaps?

No...just that mystery is a part of everyday life.

And...it is the opinion of atheists that if you can't explain God in a physical sense, He doesn't exist.

Existence is a touchy subject.
What does it mean to exist?
To physically exist, you must have some form of energy.
But you would argue that emotions exist; ideas exist; imagined stories exist; imagined beings exist.... but are not physical.
Here, we may hit a stump as theists claim that god is a real entity... with at least one clear input on the physical world - the creation.
But for the knowledge of such entity to reach human minds, it must have provided more inputs into someone's physical brain. If such a thing happened far away in the past, it would have sparked the very first religion of humanity. That was clearly not christianity.... What was the first religion?
So, if this entity could do this to one human, maybe it could do it to others as well.... and, if he was pretty smart as you propose, he would have done it in a way that would be impossible to miss the point.... how come we then have several religions?

Why is belief a requirement?
Why must I, you and anyone believe that there was such an input from a deity on a few select human beings? Heck, the guy could provide that input to us all, or does he like to watch some of us convince others of a specific point of view that he provided to just one or two humans?

All these questions may lead one to hypothesize that these gods and religions were man-made...even if the original idea was sincere, but not necessarily true.
If they're man-made, all these questions can be answered. Hence atheism.
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What makes what what?!

This mystery you speak about... yeah... that's when the myth ends and the questions remain...
Man-made myths tend to suffer from that problem.

Well, you have good points for not believing in God. But, if one is to search for a meaning he has to do it with an open mind. I don't find atheists to be a very open-minded bunch...

The first question has to be why ? The only answer it can be is LOVE.
That is usually good but for the majority of "believers". It wasn't (at first) for me.

The second question then has to be how ? This is actually the hard question! How are we to think like God? What [Grand Plan] can it be that would present us with what we have today?

But, if you have an imagination, an open mind and yes Faith...it can make sense. Remember, what people ONLY imagined 100 years ago...even 50 years ago is reality today! So, lets use 2 outta 3?

I started my search around my mid-twenties. I was in my grandma's attic with boxes of books around me that I was cleaning out for her... I pickup and easy-read Holy Bible called "Good News". Someone had told me once if I asked a sincere question, then opened the bible I would get an answer!

So... I sat on one of those boxes, alone (with God) and asked "THE" question that any Christian worth his salt should ask: "Why did Christ die for my sins?" .... I opened the book to: page #377...Romans 5:18.
And there it was.... under a stickman picture of Jesus on the cross the words read: "One rightous act sets all men free, and gives them life."

Of course being very much less than a biblical scholar...this one line asked more questions than it answered for me. But, it put me onto a path to finally connect those dots over time.

I think I should stop at this point. If my continuing interests you pocaracas, then I will. If not, I won't. I've already said more to you about my spiritual path than I've told most of my Chrisitian friends....

1. Because they probably don't need me to tell them anything to increase their faith or understanding.

2. I don't usually talk about "my road", because it's not really ortodox christianity...but that wouldn't matter (I think?) to you.