Religion/god is just wishful thinking.

[FallentoReason]

I know He exist through faith and belief, this is the time in which He makes Himself known as a real being.

So to make himself known, you first need to believe/have faith he exists so that he can make himself known? Circular.

then If one continues to grow with God one will receive knowledge from God

Which you had at the beginning already

about who He truly is.

Which you already knew at the beginning, because out of all the gods, you chose the one that smells of Christianity and its claims.

This is linear reasoning,

Far from it.

you're the one going in circles, you should stop before you get dizzy and fall you could hurt yourself.

Try again.

---

I have no degree in physics, yet I make it appoint to learn some about what science is looking into. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I'm saying they investigate it through faith.

Science makes predictions based on theories that have so far stood the test of time. This is how they "presupposed" the cosmic background radiation (or w/e it's called) and then found it. This is what a solid understanding of reality tends to do; it points you in the right direction to discover more about it.

[Ryantology]

I know my God is the true One for a very simple reason, He called me and gave me the faith to get started see Matt. 13:1-23. He made great changes in my life and no other god has ever approached me in any way. So what has your spaghetti god done with you, has he made your life better, does he comfort you during losses of loved ones, during troubling times and ect. What holy book has he given you to learn more about him.

The same old circular horse shit story: I know my god is real because a book said so.

Nice touch by the way, making the assumption that someone else's god, fictional though it is, can only communicate through holy books and fits of madness, because your God is too weak and impotent to communicate in any way that can be detected by someone who has not engaged in confirmation bias and made the blind and entirely impossible to prove assumption that he exists.

[Cato]

Satan has not been a challenge to God either, this however is for another thread. You haven't tried any of the others have you, then how is it you think you have anything to compare. If you want to know my God you need to open up to His calling and ask Him to teach you, all I can do is witness what He's done for me.
Satan can only deceive the minds not guarded by God, God promises me this. God says satan can fool all, even the elect if that were possible. Conformation from God I'm protected, as long as I trust Him, He will protect me from such deceit.

I'm bored, so let's see what happens when I replace references to God in the quote from GC above....

Satan has not been a challenge to Cato's dick either, this however is for another thread. You haven't tried any of the others have you, then how is it you think you have anything to compare. If you want to know Cato's dick you need to open up to the calling of Cato's dick and ask Cato's dick to teach you, all I can do is witness what Cato's dick has done for me.

Satan can only deceive the minds not guarded by Cato's dick, Cato's dick promises me this. Cato's dick says satan can fool all, even the elect if that were possible. Conformation from Cato's dick I'm protected, as long as I trust Cato's dick, Cato's dick will protect me from such deceit.
.
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Sounds a little silly now, doesn't it?

[Ryantology]

Satan has not been a challenge to God either, this however is for another thread. You haven't tried any of the others have you, then how is it you think you have anything to compare. If you want to know my God you need to open up to His calling and ask Him to teach you, all I can do is witness what He's done for me.
Satan can only deceive the minds not guarded by God, God promises me this. God says satan can fool all, even the elect if that were possible. Conformation from God I'm protected, as long as I trust Him, He will protect me from such deceit.

I'm bored, so let's see what happens when I replace references to God in the quote from GC above....

Satan has not been a challenge to Cato's dick either, this however is for another thread. You haven't tried any of the others have you, then how is it you think you have anything to compare. If you want to know Cato's dick you need to open up to the calling of Cato's dick and ask Cato's dick to teach you, all I can do is witness what Cato's dick has done for me.

Satan can only deceive the minds not guarded by Cato's dick, Cato's dick promises me this. Cato's dick says satan can fool all, even the elect if that were possible. Conformation from Cato's dick I'm protected, as long as I trust Cato's dick, Cato's dick will protect me from such deceit.
.
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Sounds a little silly now, doesn't it?

I may presume a bit here but your dick exists, so I can't say it's sillier.

[Lord Privy Seal]

We know God exists in belief, we learn who He is from revelation, through His word or from Him.

The collection of texts we call "the Bible" did not descend from heaven on a ray of light to a soundtrack of angelic choirs. The original texts were written by men, ordinary human beings, just like you and me. Anyone who wanted to believe that their writings were taken by dictation from a god would have to take their word for it. Those texts were then copied by hand (no printing presses in those days)--by men. Then re-copied and re-re-copied, by men.[1] The texts were then assembled by men, redacted by men, and declared to be "scripture" by men (non-Christian rabbis in the case of the Hebrew Scriptures, and late Roman prelates under the aegis of corrupt Emperors in the case of the New Testament). Unless you're reading your scriptures in Aramaic and Koine Greek, then what you have is the result of translation, re-translation, and re-re-translation--by men. If you have ever incorporated information from pastors' sermons, Bible commentaries, stuff you were taught in Sunday School and the like into your "knowledge of who God is," then that's yet another layer of human beings between you and any original divine impetus that the original writers might have claimed to have received. In order to take the Bible as "the Word of God"[2] you have to place unlimited, unconditional trust in all those human beings, who are no more divine than you or I.

As for your other channel of information, direct knowledge "from Him," the problem here is that millions of people claim to have the same kind of direct, unquestionable knowledge, yet they disagree with you on important matters, either as believers in other deities, or in versions of your own that you consider Vile Heresy.

One of the most wonderful things is the orixa' [deities]...And we feel confused and grateful at the same time, with this process of having an orixa'...and I feel very much this force, this major force, a force I can't explain. It exists between Heaven and Earth...There are mysteries that cannot be explained, and one of them is the orixa'

---Zeze, a young African Brazilian woman, in the film Candomble': A Religion in Brazil with African Roots (1989), translated from the Portuguese[3]

"First, the polythesitic traditions are invariably experiential, although this is also true for aspects of the Religions of the Book: for example, Hasidism, Pentacostalism, and Sufism. People come to know the deities in polytheistic traditions directly, via such modes as mediumism and shamanism, modes to which we shall return in succeeding chapters. This is one of the reasons for a multiplicity of deities. People with differing personalities and experiences meet differing deities. Without an enforced monotheistic creed, people are open to an abundance of numinous possibilities. Faith is both meaningless and irrelevant. We know what we experience; it takes no leap of faith to assume the reality of deities we have directly encountered. ...Arising from encounters in rituals, visions, and so forth, our acceptance of the validity of the experienced deities is absolutely no different, except more certain, than knowledge gained from sensory experiences."[4]

As non-believers, we are faced with countless claims from people who "know" that various deities exist with absolute confidence. Even within the monotheistic traditions, the believers, for all their professions of complete certainty, cannot get their stories straight. Hasidic Judaism/Reform Judaism/Kabbalah/etc., Sunni Islam/Shia Islam/Wahhabi Islam/Sufi Islam/etc., and the tens of thousands of varieties of Christianity. All of these people are quite sure that their gods exist, that they "know" them, and (in the case of the monotheists), that everyone else is wrong.

If gods and goddesses (or some single god or goddess) are/is real and they/he/she/it communicated and/or communed with humans in some way, we would anticipate that as people got to know them better, that human beliefs would converge on the reality. If you look at the earliest maps of the world, especially from different cultures and times, you will see that they differ a lot. But, as surveying techniques improved and people systematically explored and mapped the world, on up to satellite imagery, world maps converged toward a single set of shapes for continents, placement of rivers, etc. World maps in the U.S., China, North Korea, Zaire, etc. will all look virtually identical nowadays, apart from place names being in different languages. This is because we all inhabit the same planet. As we got to "know" it better, our knowledge turned out to be knowledge of the same thing.

When it comes to deities on the other hand, we have a situation where "different people meet different deities," and the gods a person believe in tend to reflect that person's psychology, culture, and upbringing. "Deities," in other words, tend to "behave" as if they are formed in the minds of their believers, rather than existing independently.


NOTES:

1. With the potential for error that implies. For example, the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery is not found in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John. Nor does the "long ending" which includes post-resurrection appearances of Jesus appear in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark. Though biblical scribes usually tried their best to transcribe the texts accurately (when they weren't inserting interpolations or removing bits that were problematic for their theology), they were only human. "The Bible" is a human artifact.

2. Ironically, there is nothing in any Biblical text to indicate that there would ever be such a thing as "the Bible" (a "canon" composed of the Hebrew Scriptures plus a "New Testament"), much less any hint of which texts it would contain. The preamble to the Gospel of John says that Jesus, not any compilation of human texts is "the Word." Your Bible is an idol.

3. Cited in The Deities Are Many: A Polytheistic Theology by Jordan Paper, State University of New York Press, 2005, ix (ninth page before regular page numbering, brackets in original)

4. Ibid, pp 13-14.

[Esquilax]

Can you demonstrate that your knowledge of god corresponds to something real? Yeah, I thought not...

I'll give you two, the change in my life, a change I could not of brought about. 2nd your disbelief, figure that one out is you can, hint it will be found in scripture.

Is there a single thing in reality that you don't take as proof of your god? Because, I mean... this is... this is not compelling. It's not even evidence. It's just willing credulity.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The collection of texts we call "the Bible" did not descend from heaven on a ray of light to a soundtrack of angelic choirs. The original texts were written by men, ordinary human beings, just like you and me. ...The texts were then assembled by men, redacted by men, and declared to be "scripture" by men

I do not disagree. The following as part of a lecture that I gave just last night:

"Most of us have some knowledge about ancient myths that have remarkable similarity to the stories of the bible. Many of these predate their Scriptural form and vary in many important details. The Gilgamesh flood epic sounds much like Noah’s flood. Babylonian artifacts match description of Cherubim and Seraphim found in the biblical texts. This should not surprise us. The Word originated from YHVH, divinity itself, as an inexpressible. To reach the human intellect, it needed to take a form adapted to our understanding. Under the Lord’s guidance, spiritually perceptive story tellers folded spiritual messages into longstanding legends."

[frz]

If there was a god there would be no need for religion because then, we would all know this god. We would all know he is there without the need to gather at some church/mosque or temple, praying for him to reveal himself to us.

So if not for your fear about this life and its eminent end, then what is the fascination to have a god waiting for you at the end of it to have a nice palace reserved especially for you with all the spoils that you desire? Wasn't that the idea of the ancient Egyptian rulers who ask to be buried with all their possessions?

[Ryantology]

The collection of texts we call "the Bible" did not descend from heaven on a ray of light to a soundtrack of angelic choirs. The original texts were written by men, ordinary human beings, just like you and me. ...The texts were then assembled by men, redacted by men, and declared to be "scripture" by men

I do not disagree. The following as part of a lecture that I gave just last night:

"Most of us have some knowledge about ancient myths that have remarkable similarity to the stories of the bible. Many of these predate their Scriptural form and vary in many important details. The Gilgamesh flood epic sounds much like Noah’s flood. Babylonian artifacts match description of Cherubim and Seraphim found in the biblical texts. This should not surprise us. The Word originated from YHVH, divinity itself, as an inexpressible. To reach the human intellect, it needed to take a form adapted to our understanding. Under the Lord’s guidance, spiritually perceptive story tellers folded spiritual messages into longstanding legends."

So, even though many Bible stories are derivative of older tales, somehow you just know your version is right and everyone else's is wrong? Do you ever stop to consider that, perhaps, the Bible is just full of derivative myths? It seems to be the height of (admittedly very tall) Christian arrogance to suggest that the world's various myths and legends are all just people trying to express what a few select people got right and wrote down as your scripture, when you are absolutely incapable of demonstrating that your version of the myths are in any way more credible than any other (or that any of them are credible at all).

[Lord Privy Seal]

"Most of us have some knowledge about ancient myths that have remarkable similarity to the stories of the bible. Many of these predate their Scriptural form and vary in many important details. The Gilgamesh flood epic sounds much like Noah’s flood. Babylonian artifacts match description of Cherubim and Seraphim found in the biblical texts. This should not surprise us. The Word originated from YHVH, divinity itself, as an inexpressible. To reach the human intellect, it needed to take a form adapted to our understanding. Under the Lord’s guidance, spiritually perceptive story tellers folded spiritual messages into longstanding legends."

hock:

Question for you: If your beliefs were false, would you want to know?