Why should I believe in God?Okay, I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person so why believe in something if it doesn't make sense to me? If there is no proof after I searched near and far then why would I believe? This isn't a question of whether or not their is proof.
Point is that I find that a personal God is logically impossible. Am I to throw away my findings, surrender my brain, and have faith that something so absurd to me is true? Am I to believe the man in the alleyway that tells me he is Jesus? Am I to believe the drug addict that tells me he needs money to get gas? Am I to be gulible just because someone says I should?
What about the fact that everyone of every religion, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindui claims that their belief is proven and the right one? Christians can’t even get all of their stories straight; some believe in the trinity, hell, and some don’t.
Am I suppose to respect your beliefs when you tell me if I don't I will burn in hell for the rest of time?
Answer First...
It doesn't matter what you "believe" about anything. Not believing in banks doesn't make them NOT exist.
Why should you believe in God? Well if God is real and he wants you to believe in Him, you probably should, seeing as how he's God and he made you.
Second, proof of a God.
Proof of God is all around, it is called everything that exists. With scientific theories of the origins of the Universe and Earth, etc, they always seem to leave out a few small things.
1) Where did matter and energy come from in the first place?
2) How does life form from rocks? If you do the probability statistics on it, it comes out to be 1 chance in 10^300 or more that just the chemical elements would have occurred in the correct sequence to have formed even a simple life form, but even that would have had to have order to it. Then you multiply that by other probabilities of the earth being in the right orbit, with the right type of atmosphere, the chances become incalculable. It is statistically impossible.
3) Based on the laws of physics, it is physically impossible for there not to be something that created all things. See source (1)
But since this isn't a question of proof, let's look at logic.
Second... (assuming that there is a God)
Which god is it? This requires searching and deducing based on facts. Most people look to feelings or experiences to determine their religion, but I've found that logic gives you a much clearer picture.
Let's start here with the question; which god could be the correct god? Let's examine and compare and see where it gets us.
Muslim - God=Allah. According to muslim theology you must adhear to the 5 pillars of islam to have a chance of going to heaven. They beleive God judges people on the last day and will let some people go to heaven and others will go to hell. This is strictly up to their god. There is no Justice involved, but rather the favor of their god towards you. They think they can earn favor by reading the koran and sticking to their pillars. As for allah, it is fully possible for their god allah to lie, as long as it is something he wants to do.
Hindu - Like many eastern faiths, Hindus belive in thousands of gods if not millions. They believe in reincarnation, where your spirit becomes born as an animal or born on some bad planet somewhere, and it goes forever, until you finally get to nervana, which is nothingness. They integrate exercises with their persuit of nothingness. Eastern religions, of them all, are the least logical, and they do not explain any of the deeper questions of life, such as who created these gods they believe in, or who controls or decides what happens if you are reincarnated. Or with population statistics as they are, who is creating all the new souls that are added to this system.
Jewish and Christian - Of all the religions these are the most foundational and reliable. There are thousands of documents and historical records that give reliability of the written old testaments and new testaments. For more on the documents, see Source List 2.
If you are a person who needs evidence, then I would suggest that you get serious and look for yourself. Compare religions for yourself, and see what comes from them. Are they a result of man's imaginations (i'm convinced many are), or is there one that is true. Realize also that they are mutually exclusive, meaning that the claims of one go opposite of the claims of another, so all can not be true, which immediately rules out most eastern philosophies.
Third... Logic of Christianity
I'd like to present to you the logic of the bible, and how to understand it.
First, the bible says that God created man and woman in His own image in Genesis. So that means from the very start that we can deduce attributes of God based on man because man is an image of God, in the same way a painting is an image of man. If you look at a painting of a man, you can deduce that the man has two eyes, nose, mouth, etc. Similarly, looking at man we can deduce that God has emotions, logic, sense of beauty, creativity, etc.
Continuing in Genisis, man was tempted and sinned for the first time by eating a forbidden fruit. This was a single breaking of God's single law. God had setup a rule that man could not eat of it, but man ate of it. From then on, mankind was cursed and taken out of the garden. Over time the bible says mankind started being more and more wicked, to the point that no thoughts of theirs were good at all. And God Judged the world and killed off all of humanity and all the animals of the planet.
This gives us an idea of who God is. As creator, God can do with His creation as He sees fit, but God is long-suffering. He allowed mankind to rebel against him for over 1400 years before He destroyed everything, except one family.
God is patient with evil, but God does demand Justice. It was Just and right that God destroyed all of humanity, because all of humanity abandoned God, their creator. They made themselves as gods, with power struggels, murdering, lusting, and all kinds of immorality. It got to the point that God was sorrowful for even making man.
After the flood human history began and the bible says there was a man named Abraham whom God promised the land of Israel to, and he promised Abraham that his seed would be as the sands of the seashore, too many to count. Today, these people are the Jews that we see spread throughout the world.
So Jewish history began, and the Jews became enslaved to the Egyptions and God sent Moses to set them free. During this time, God established His Law with the Jews, His chosen people. He wrote in stone the 10 commandments, which were not only for the jews but for all mankind.
Now why did God give the Jews His law? The answer is so that mankind would know what God saw as right and wrong. With societies and cultures, if man makes up his own rules in regards to morality, then morality will always shift towards a downward trend. If you examine the history of the early 1900's leading up to World War II, you'll notice the gradual decline in ethics in Germany. That is what lead to the fall of the Roman empire, and the evidence is all over.
Now, since God established his laws governing morality, just as he has established His laws governing physics and mathematics, we should obey them perfectly, right? Objects can not disobey the physical laws of gravity, and similarly we should never disobey the moral laws set forth from God, who also wrote in each of our consciences.
The bible makes it clear that all mankind has broken God's moral laws, which means spiritually we are in trouble. Why? It has to do with what we were created for. We were created to be in the image of God, and the Law shows us the outline of that image. It points us to what we should be at all times.
One of the commandments says that you shall not lie. I personally do not know a single person who has never told a lie, and I would not doubt that all mankind has told at least one lie. Now here is the problem.
Since you are supposed to be in the image of God, if you tell one lie, you are a liar, and not only that but your are telling all of creation that God is a liar. Now the bible says God can not lie, so you are mis-representing God, and by doing that you are making yourself an enemy of God.
Now comes in the concept of the Justice of God. The bible says that God is Just. This means, like in court, God is a Judge and will punish all law breakers. Good judges do their jobs fairly, and everyone hates a corrupt judge. How much more fairly and perfectly good will God judge us, if He is good and we have broken His law.
The bible says when we die, we stand before God in Judgment, and as we have seen, he will judge, not by man's corrupt standards, but His perfect standards which are reflected in the 10 commandments. God must punish sin, whereever it is found.
Imagine a child molester who lived a long life to the age of 80, and during that life he did all kinds of cruel acts to hundreds of children. When he dies, he will deserve full punishment for all of His crimes, and we will all say that God is Good when He sentences a murderer or a child molester or hitler into eternal punishment.
But God does not stop there. He sees all lies as crimes against Himself. We don't think lying is such a bad offense, but, the child molester doesn't think molesting children is a serious offence either, and the murderer is always justified in his own eyes. So too we think that just because we've told a few lies here and there that it's ok. But that is saying that God is a corrupt Judge if you think that He will over look a single crime at all.
So the bible presents a major problem. How can anyone get to heaven? If we all have broken the law, and we all deserve punishment, how can anyone be saved from eternal justice?
The bible says that God provided a solution in Himself. God came down as a Man, Christ Jesus and walked a perfect life. We've all lied, stolen, cheated, and done things we should have. But Jesus was blameless in the site of man and God. Jesus lived the perfect life, that we can't live. Then He willingly allowed Himself to die in one of the cruelest of ways as a payment for your and my sin. The bible says that Jesus took the full and eternal punishment that both you and I deserve, so that if we turn from our sinful ways and trust fully in Him as the only means by which we can be reconsiled with God, then He will grant us eternal life. He will both forgive our sins by not remembering them, and He will not be seen as a bad Judge for letting criminals go free. Rather he will be seen for all eternity as a Good God who paid the price for the lawlessness of His people by paying His own life. And thus satisfying Justice and maintaining His Goodness.
And the bible says the only way to have eternal life is to forsake your sins and consider them as garbage, and then trust and embrace Jesus Christ as the only means by which you can be saved. Belief in Christ however is not some mind exercise. It is daily grabing on to Him just as you would a parachute when jumping out of an airplane. You must trust in Him, and knowing that He died and suffered for you, you will naturally love him more and more.
Your fate does not depend that you believe in some god, but your fate does depend that you Trust in Christ as your savior.
How do you know you're saved? What is Depression? I'll try to explain what the bible says about these things, and simply ask more questions. Feel free to comment below if you have questions or comments.
Great Question.