Faith is a measure of irrationality

[Jenny A]

It's more fundamental than even that. If God decided to work just through humans, fair enough. What grinds my gears is when it's assumed that God will intervene directly in SOME prayers, the ones which we make for Love or a new ipad, but not others. He'll bring us good things, but not them.

It's the Inconsistency.

You're not factoring in the people that don't want His help!

You have to step back and "try" to understand. But you also need some real desire to actually know, and understand.

So, why would God want to answer them if they don't care? Where is His desire to proof something here?

No need to even consider people who don't want god's help. Many very devote people pray for aide and don't get it. Then they say, well it was god's will. If all positives are counted as wins, and all negatives are counted as god's mysterious will, then prayer will always appear to work. But that's childish. You really do have to count the misses. So there is no proof or even indication that prayer works, is there?

I can't tell you how many times here... that the debate has come down to whether an atheist really wanted to know God, or not. Most times its not! Because they hate Him, for all the bad things that happened in "my life." One person here actually told me that she stopped believing when her mother died of cancer. News alert: WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

You can't both be an atheist and hate god. Atheists don't believe in god. I don't hate god. I didn't cease to believe because I hated god. I've lived a good life. Anger at god or even religion is not my reason for disbelief. I don't believe because there's about as much evidence for god than there is for unicorns.

I'll let you in on something.... Until you proclaim your Faith in Him, you won't move a step towards understanding what He is all about. And no amount of "me", or anyone else trying to explain "our" experiences to you will do anything more than frustrate you!

Frankly, if believing in god without evidence is necessary to understanding god, then there's no god to understand.

I do understand you have experiences that feel like god to you. But since they are internal, having coming from believing first, I don't think they're god. Others professing radically different faiths from yours have similar experiences and say similar things. You can't all be right since your conceptions of god are so different.

You can discredit God in all the good things in my life.... but you (ALL) look as foolish to me as I look to you.

I'm quite ready to believe that believing in god makes you feel good about life. But that doesn't make god real. If someone lied and told me I won the lottery and I believed it, I might feel really really good. And if I died believing it, I'd never be undeceived. But, that wouldn't mean I had won the lottery. Thinking god looks after you and will gather you up to heaven may feel good. But it doesn't mean that he does take care of you or that you are going to heaven.

I know having people disagree with you about your cherished beliefs is infuriating. But you did come to an atheist forum. Exactly what did you expect to find here?