How can I know if God exists?

[Rose07]

I read the atheist arguments and they seen too shallow -not deep enough- to me.
Most of them are from scientists, and science is reductionist. I feel like Science can't explain 90% of phenomena, let alone the spirituality.

But I think there is something that must exist. Why there are so many magical believers in the world? Why a concept that not exists should stay as an idea on many people in the world? Even mitological creatures stem from existents beings, example unicorns: horses, etc.

David Ritchey say on his book that this is an anomaly or even a mental illness. He (and his followers) wrote that being INFP or INFJ is having schizotypical personality (I can't remember where I read this), and that is untrue. We are simply normal human beings.
They patologized normal ways of being, just to say that the supernatural does not exist.

I know belief in God or the supernatural doesn't depend of culture, thanks to MBTI we know some people are simple wired to be believers and they are not crazy.

All the matter we can see is 5%, what if INFPs for example can see another aspects of matter that the rest of us can't? Many of them report experiences with aliens, others believe they are vampires or angels, and they are not insane.

And INFJs are aware of how other people perceive the world, INFJs not necessarily have magical thinking, I am a rationalist, for example, and I'm not the only one.

Atheits/skeptic arguments are even childish sometimes.

How can I know if God exists and what kind of God it is?

 

[aeon]

I don’t know, but I am willing to exist in that unknowing and consider things.

My partner says much the same thing. We both self-describe as agnostic, and we both feel theism and atheism to be untenable positions, although that could be because they both sound like work when we’d rather be doing other things.

We are ENFP and INFP, both E9s.

Cheers,
Ian

 

[Matty]

Seems like you'll know for sure after death.

Even then, you won't get to see him unless you aim for, and actually get to heaven. Catholics hold that heaven is God himself, and not just some utopian world, so it would be unambiguous to saints.

 

[Wyote]

As a human your corporeal form prevents you from knowing with certainty.
You can become more/less certain but you will always carry doubt with you.
Life and afterlife both require faith.
Growing into faith judiciously will give you more solid ground on many fronts.

 

[Sidis Coruscatis]

It's not a controversial fact that you can believe something that doesn't correspond to reality. You can usually find what's a true belief and what's a mere reflection of unstable mental health by the fruit it brings. So God can't simply be a matter of magical thinking if there is any merit in the moral transformation such belief brings. He also can't be exclusive to people with a specific mode of cognition (well, sort of, but definitely not in terms of MBTI). If the truth of such God exists, it must be available to everyone because either everything is subjected to it, or there's no point in worshiping something that can be overcome by man.

There are many logical arguments for existence of God, most of which I find to be common sense, but proving mere existence doesn't mean anything. If you want to know the nature of God, look at how following the divine revelation changes you. Christian God is unique because there is not only the moral myth, but also the historical embodiment of it in Christ, which represents our existence between material fact and cognitive narrative perfectly. I struggle to conceptualize it now, but I recommend listening to Jonathan Pageau for start.

 

[philostam]

I wish God existed. It would be much easier to live. Just do good and you'll be rewarded at the end.

We can play logical and semantic games, but it's pretty clear that God doesn't exist.

 

[philostam]

It's not a controversial fact that you can believe something that doesn't correspond to reality. You can usually find what's a true belief and what's a mere reflection of unstable mental health by the fruit it brings. So God can't simply be a matter of magical thinking if there is any merit in the moral transformation such belief brings. He also can't be exclusive to people with a specific mode of cognition (well, sort of, but definitely not in terms of MBTI). If the truth of such God exists, it must be available to everyone because either everything is subjected to it, or there's no point in worshiping something that can be overcome by man.

Yes, you can believe in anything you want, and if that brings you positive results (moral transformation, as you call it), more power to you. I have no problems with that. So in some sense your belief can be "real" and "good", but the thing you believe may not correspond to reality.

So, the question "should we believe in God" is an interesting one. However, the scientific realist question if God actually exist is very clear (and boring).

 

[Asa]

"For we walk by faith, not by sight."

 

[slant]

Very simple answer. If the groundhog sees it's shadow, that year God exists. Conversely, if the opposite happens, God does not exist that year. Ever since the beginning of earth this has been the way it has been determined and it seems very efficient. I'm surprised nobody else mentioned this yet.

Now, the question of which type of God is a little trickier. The groundhog won't give any details so that's frustrating.

 

[Roses In The Vineyard]

One of the big problem with the materialists is that they can't see anyone and themselves as being anything more than just material no more than what people in general would think of an TV or an washing machine for example hence the ideologies like eugenics as they can never consider people being anything more than just sacks of meat. How they handle animals if very telling how they think/feel of people in general. As for their issues regarding religion/spirituality truth be told there is some real fear on their part of there being anything outside of their ability to understand much less control so they like to cut this off as often they like cutting out human emotions.

 

[Rose07]

He also can't be exclusive to people with a specific mode of cognition (well, sort of, but definitely not in terms of MBTI)

I did not imply this, rather I said the following: in the test of cognitive functions, for example, a question is "Do you have magical thinking or strange beliefs", this implies that there are people who actually have them naturally and they are not insane. (For those scientists who think that magical believers are schizotypical)

Why there are people with naturally magical thinking if magic doesn't exists at all?
What is the meaning of this? This is super weird to me. Can you all see the implication?

 

[Rose07]

Sorry if I wasn't very clear in my questions

 

[Rose07]

Also I noticed many magical believers are INFPs, and they have a more objective view on reality than an ENTP or INTP, because they have Si (subjective percepcion of reality) but they have also Te (objective, external logic), whereas INTP have Ti paired with their Si (super subjective perception of reality), so is more logical to believe an INFP than an atheist INTP.

Sorry if I offend someone, but I am obsessed with these thoughs and need clarification.

 

[Sidis Coruscatis]

So in some sense your belief can be "real" and "good", but the thing you believe may not correspond to reality.

If something is good, it corresponds to reality. There is no other way around it. Your doubt seems to be about whether teleological validity necessitates God. It's a simple question of common observation and reasoning: everything that comes into order has a governing force. If you want anything to work properly, you have to maintain it. If you leave everything alone and still, it decays. Chaos can never become order by itself. If "nothing" is the alternative to God, nothing has a reason to have a purpose. The farthest you can get with purely scientific reasoning is that all purpose serves survival. But then you still can't answer why is survival desirable. Just removing God from the equation leaves everything incoherent.

So, the question "should we believe in God" is an interesting one. However, the scientific realist question if God actually exist is very clear (and boring).

There are two problems here. Scientific realism just claims that what is shown through science must be real. It doesn't follow that everything that is real has to be shown through science. Besides, there were thousands of scientific conclusions that turned out to be wrong, so the principle doesn't even hold.

More importantly, by appealing to science, you can't escape the is-ought problem. The means by which we view reality change how we live, so there is an inherent moral claim in implying that we should care about what scientific realists have to say. Science has nothing to say about value, yet it's an irrefutable reality that we must have values to say that we should care about science. Same thing with logic and language. These are all higher-order concepts that are needed for scientific realism, but can't be ever confirmed as scientifically "real" because they lack empirical verification. You're putting the cart before the horse.

 

[Sidis Coruscatis]

I did not imply this, rather I said the following: in the test of cognitive functions, for example, a question is "Do you have magical thinking or strange beliefs", this implies that there are people who actually have them naturally and they are not insane. (For those scientists who think that magical believers are schizotypical)

Why there are people with naturally magical thinking if magic doesn't exists at all?
What is the meaning of this? This is super weird to me. Can you all see the implication?

I think there's a difference between magical thinking and, say, intuition tempered by reason. Clearly there's a purpose to it, but that doesn't mean you can't miss wildly with it. If you ask priests or theologians, very few, if any, would argue for blind faith.

 

[John K]

How can I know if God exists and what kind of God it is?

It can be an exciting lifetime journey, and it has two sides to it - seeking outside yourself, and seeking within. The first way is the one that most people think about - an external journey. This seeks God in the world around us: in religious scripts and teaching, in reading or hearing about others who have found him, in the mystery and the beauty of the world we find ourselves in. But there is a huge range of possibilities there, many of which overlap or seem to conflict with each other, and is often misrepresented by people with an incorrect knowledge of him. It's best to limit your attention to just a small part of these - to chase too many of them is like trying to live in five cities on four continents all at the same time, and you end up everywhere and nowhere.

But the second way is much more direct. Those who have experienced God have found that he lives deep within us all, and he can be found there inside you. The encounter can be life-changing in the same way that near death experiences can be life changing, or in the way that falling in love can be life changing. Finding God this way is an intense and amazing love affair with no equal.

These two sides aren't alternatives - they are both needed because one lights a fire brighter than the sun, while the other gives us a way of controlling and sharing it.

The journey isn't a trivial one - we need to seek in earnest and really commit to it, otherwise we just chase the end of a rainbow that flees as fast as we try and reach out for it. I don't mean commit to a belief in God at the start of the journey - just the journey itself.

 

[ringobingostarr]

I have been on all sides of the coin. I have been monotheist, polytheist, atheist and now agnostic. I think there is no possible way to truly know that there is a "God", "gods" or none. I think science can explain more than 90% (some things that seem inexplainable now will be explained), but maybe perhaps not all could be. Plus, it is true that faith is not something to be "seen", while science is, so while there could be a scientific explanation for something there could also simultaneously be a spiritual explanation. Also, science cannot prove or disprove God. God is intangible and again not to be "seen", so there is no way to scientifically prove it other than secondary observation.

There are logical arguments for there being a God. As mentioned above, how can there be things without a creator? Everything is made by something, eventually you have to get to something. There are also logical reasons for there not being a God. It is just this back and forth thing that has no definite proof until death (or, maybe even never). You will never know truly what God there is or isn't as well. There are millions of ideas of God. Who is to say which one is correct? People only believe in groups one idea of God because that is what they have been taught, if that population is terminated or the idea is no longer taught, then that belief will fall out of practice.

Millions of people believe in magic. If you believe that Jesus walked on water, is that not some sort of magic? They believe this because they have been taught and conditioned to believe it (even if they believe in science). We also have been conditioned to not believe in magic because it is seen as outdated and non-sensical. We have been conditioned to believe our scientific knowledge comes first, but less than 100 years ago we were believing so heavily in theories that seem barbaric or whimsical to us now that were branded as science. This will happen again, too.

As for this sort of "what MBTI types will believe in magic more and who should I trust?"
All 16 types will believe in magic it depends on how they get there through their cognitive process. An INFP will seem to believe in it more whimsically and personally while an ESTJ would brand it as some sort of logical consensus and the correct answer. Also, don't trust anyone based on their MBTI. Trust them based off what they think and their reasoning. INFPs don't "see" anything else than what others see, and it is actually illogical to believe someone over someone else based off their type rather than their logicality.

Also I must say...

Also I noticed many magical believers are INFPs, and they have a more objective view on reality than an ENTP or INTP, because they have Si (subjective percepcion of reality) but they have also Te (objective, external logic), whereas INTP have Ti paired with their Si (super subjective perception of reality), so is more logical to believe an INFP than an atheist INTP.

Sorry if I offend someone, but I am obsessed with these thoughs and need clarification.

ENTPs have more of an objective view on reality than INTP and INFP. Si isn't objective or concrete. It is subjective, impaired by impression. Ne is based off objective reality with its only distortion being that of its abstraction interpretation. INFPs are led by their Fi, which pertains to its own personal concepts, and is most likely to ignore logical consensus (or any consensus) especially due to inferior Te. Combine that with Ne's abstract interpretation and Si's personal impression on objects. I think this makes them most prone to believe in magic if anything at all. INFJs, I am not so sure. Perhaps it is their Ni. As mentioned though, any type can be fantastical.

 

[just me]

As a human your corporeal form prevents you from knowing with certainty.
You can become more/less certain but you will always carry doubt with you.
Life and afterlife both require faith.
Growing into faith judiciously will give you more solid ground on many fronts.

My physical form does not prevent me from knowing anything. I call that ignorance or unlearned.
My corporeal form carries no doubt about God.
Does earthly life mandate faith as a requirement "to be"? Afterlife with God requires faith. Growing into what kind of faith?

 

[Wyote]

Growing into what kind of faith?

Idk you tell me

 

[just me]

More will be revealed to those who earnestly search for it. It cannot be alone, for things could be missed. Modern search engines make studying and referencing much faster and easier in these times.

It may take one years and another weeks to see the same things. Some things we make difficult our own selves. There is a simplicity in Christ many overlook. If we have faith, we can accomplish anything in His will. I am reminded of walking on water. Your closeness to God and Heaven matters greatly. Matthew 14:

"25 And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.

26 And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.

27 But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.

28 And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.

29 And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus."

However, when Peter took his eyes off Jesus and began looking around himself at the troubled situation, he started sinking and called out to Jesus.

"
30 But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.

31 And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

32 And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.

33 Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God."

I personally believe there are different measures of faith in a person, depending on how close their walk with Jesus is.

Put faith and prayer together? Now, we can pray for a Heavenly being to walk on the water in a specific location at a specific time if it is for the work of God. Therefore, faith seems to have different levels, offering milk to some and meat to others.

If a person wants to believe, he will find a way to. If one has no desire, he will have no faith.