I'm Agnostic. I am this way because I feel that it's possible that there is a God but I am not so positive that any religion has truly pin pointed to what it is. But I would like more proof in any sense. I know there is an after life so I can't deny there isn't something, but I'd like more proof before I blindly follow some said religion.

I am a protestant christian. I have met lots of happy people in the same faith. I believe in the sprit realm. and I think everyone goes to heaven no matter what happens in one's life. I tend to think that the earth is the source of our creation as the whole universe is rather large. I think the planet created us from the content of the earth's surface. not evolution. the planet is our "GOD". It could still do the Jesus thang. as well as all the other religions. Life is all about Love. show me a religion without love and I will show you a fake and false religion. that is pretty mixed up. LOL.

I am a member of the LDS Church. Many here will try and convince you that I am not a real Christian because I don't subscribe to the idea that Jesus and God are the same person or because I believe that Lucifer was Jesus' spirit brother.Or that I believe that salvation is alot more complicated than saying Lord Lord I believe in you forgive me my transgressions and then once I have done that I can be the biggest whoremaster and I'm still saved cause I professed my belief in Jesus as my savior. Too bad salvation doesn't work like that. However I am just as much Christian than anyone else who professes to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The son of God born of the virgin mary and who died on the cross at calvary to save us from spiritual death provided we continue to follow his teachings and do our very best to live a life as close to the example he set as possible.

I'm an atheist. I came to that the long way - after being a christian some 20 years. I became an atheist slowly - beginning when my questions increasingly could not be answered to my satisfaction inside the church. I looked elsewhere, read widely, wandered widely and concluded that, based on available evidence, the gods we have had so far are man-made rather than vice-versa. It may turn out there really is a god, or goddess, or pantheon of many gods. When reliable evidence turns up I'll convert I guess!

I've been an atheist since my mid-teens, not that I was ever a real believer - I just went with what I was taught, which is what I suspect happens with most people. However, I questioned things, came to the conclusion that there was almost no proof that god or anything else actually existed, realised that you have to take responsibility for your own life and actions, and became a fervent non-believer.

Atheist. For a long time I would have said that you cannot prove that God does not exist. But now I feel that, if you have investigated with reasonable care for long enough, it is reasonable to say that, as a working hypothesis on which to base your life, that there is no God.

I'm agnostic. I believe that it's possible there is a God, and possible there isn't one. I do lean on the more spiritual side however. Going back to the big bang, I think something humans aren't capable of understanding (God maybe?) started it. It just can't be proven, because we are human, and our minds can only stretch so far.

I am atheist for the simple reason that religion couldn't answer for me the most basic questions in a manner that I found acceptable and reasonable. I was raised christian but ultimately have come to believe that no god exists. It's a "proof is in the pudding" thing. I believe what I see. So far I haven't seen anything but the works of man. At this point I don't believe in the existence of a god but I still keep an open mind because even that can't be proven. Peoples arguments haven't been sufficient and I think it would take Jesus himself to knock on my door and perform some sort of reasonable miracle to convince me otherwise. That's my take on it. Everyone is different. I don't pretend to know what I believe is the truth, only that it is what I believe. We may never know the truth and instead of bickering over this, humanity needs to accept that possibility and move forward. Nothing I wrote here is intended to offend or belittle anyone else.

Jewish. However, I'm not comfortable with all the trappings of Orthodox or even Conservative Judaism. (e.g. why should it matter whether we say the same prayer three times instead of two? why does it matter where on the cow a meat comes from in order to be Kosher?) I identify with the Reform movement, and go to a synagogue that emphasizes the cultural and spiritual aspects of the religion rather than the ritual. Why? I was brought up Jewish, but first started to question the ritualistic aspects when I found there were certain prayers and honors in the synagogue that were barred to women. Good question!

The question was posed "why do you believe in God?". This question is such a loaded question without trying to be one that exists. For starters, if you are asking someone why they believe in God, it is an assumed belief that the questioner does not and will be criticizing the answer one way or another. If this wasn't true, the question would be asked "Why do you ALSO believe in God?". There are many reasons one would believe in God and only 2 that someone would not. It's interesting, as I type this, that I will be covering all of the reasons on both sides in depth. If you are looking for a simple answer of "cuz God is good" don't read on..if you are agnostic, atheist, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or other, if you believe in science, if you want to believe in science, if you feel that it's fun to find flaw in people or you love everything....please continue on. First off, lets cover first...what is God? If we can't answer that simple question, how can we conceivably answer the question as to whether or not we believe. The following list is the accepted characteristics of the theistic concept of the divine. This is not my list, it is the understood list of all religions that hold a theistic belief. The Theistic Concept of the Divine states that God is: 1) TRANSCENDENT (non-physical and other than natural) 2) PERSONAL (is discriminate, yet not prejudicial, in all things) 3) SOVEREIGN (being most worthy of worship, obedience and allegiance) 4) TIMELESS (having neither a past nor a future)((the alpha and the omega)) 5) CREATOR OF ALL THINGS (nothing comes into existence independent of God) 6) SUSTAIN ER OF ALL THINGS (Nothing happens or continues to happen without God's knowledge) 7) TOTALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT (neither lacking nor being limited by anything) 8) IMPASSIBLE (neither able to suffer nor be harmed) 9) OMNIPRESENT (present everywhere at the same time) 10) OMNISCIENT (all knowing) 11) OMNIBENEFICENT (all loving and does only good) 12) OMNIPOTENT (able to do all things that are logically possible)((note LOGICALLY possible)) it's very important to remember that this means God is ONLY capable of doing things that don't internally and automatically self-contradict i.e. can God create a stone so heavy that He can't lift it) Now that we have a firm grasp on what God is, now we can look at "should we believe in religion". This question is an interesting one since there are so many misunderstandings to the word "religion". Lets now break down the word religion and we will build up from there. The dictionary definition of religion is: 1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. 2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion. 3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions. 4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion. 5. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith. 6. something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice. 7. religions, Archaic. religious rites. It is my understanding that we can't use the word being defined within a definition and it is also important in this case to know that religion can be a one person thing. It is fully possible and EXPECTED for there to be groups or communities of a given religion, but each member is religious. That being the case, we can eliminate most of these definitions to find the one that best fits the question. First off we eliminate the false definitions which leaves only #4 and #6. Since we aren't speaking of a lifestate, we eliminate #4 and are left with #6. Definition #6 tells us that religion is something that we devote ourselves to completely and it doesn't have to be "religion" per se. Anyone can be religious of something and EVERYONE is religious of only one thing. This definition is stating that, one finds ultimate importance in a cause. You can't have 2 Ultimate importance, so you can only be religious of 1 thing. I'll summarize what's up so far just to make an easier reference point. There are 12 characteristics of the Theistic Concept of the Divine, and Religion means giving something ultimate importance in life. Now I will do something I never wanted to do, I'm dropping the "F" bomb. "faith" It is important to understand what faith is before we question someones faith or question a religion based on faith. Faith by definition is: A firm, unshakable belief in something that has no supporting evidence. Before you get all high and mighty and say "HAHAHA NO SUPPORTING EVIDENCE!! RELIGION IS FLAWED" let me continue. By "no supporting evidence", I mean: something that can not be proven nor dis proven with current scientific evidence. An example is life after death, although we know what death is, we know what life is, we can do as many tests as we want, and we still just don't know. No one knows. Not one person. Not science, not anyone. So it is fair for a person to apply faith and say "although there is no supporting evidence or evidence to the contrary, I believe that there is life after death". This belief is unshakable and becomes a "statement of faith" Another important thing to know about faith is that, it is the foundation. There is nothing lower than faith. You can't say "give me evidence to support your faith" because faith is what supports all beliefs to a religious person. Imagine building a house, you must have a foundation, no one says "what supports the foundation" (though some that wish to be argumentative will say that the earth is supporting it) because the foundation is the support for the rest. It isn't a fair question to ask "what supports your faith" and then laugh that the person doesn't have an answer...it is logical that they won't have an answer because there isn't one. Now that we have the basics covered to theism: The theistic concept of the divine, the definition of religion, and faith we can move on to the next big question. Does God Exist? I'm sorry about the answer from here out for it will get very technical and very convoluted, it will however answer the question to the best of my ability as well as the abilities of many philosophers and theologians throughout history. I will go over the 4 major arguments for the belief in God and the counterpoints that push towards or away from a specific belief. I apologize if it gets deep, but it's a deep topic and if you expected anything less, you don't deserve a good answer. I'm going to cover each argument now that deals with the theistic deity. First is the Cosmological argument. The Cosmological argument was first raised by Aristotle and goes like this: All things that exist owe their existence to something other than themselves. Everything that exists therefore has a contingent eistence. Yet for the first thing to have come into existence, it must have had a non-contingent existence, something that necessarily exists which has always and will always exist. Such a being is termed "God" Basically this argument states that all things were created by something...trees from seeds, people from parents, planets from gravitational pull in space that pulled in different debris that allowed creation and so on...until we get to the beginning. The big bang...something had to cause it..we call that something "God" The big argument is that this doesn't SPECIFICALLY apply to Theism. It could work for Deism, Pantheism, Finite Godism, and Polytheism. This argument doesn't specify that the religions of the book are the correct ones..but it definitely gives strong support to religious belief. Secondly is the Teleological Argument first introduced by Paley. This argument states: Whenever and wherever we find order in human experience, we find a mind at work, designing, intending, planning. The natural world exhibits order and design, and cannot be accounted for as being the product of human minds. Therefore, the only way to account for the natural order of things is in terms of a divine architect, an author/creator of all things. Such a being is termed "God" This argument falls short in the same way of the fist, it doesn't NECESSARILY point to theism...but it supports a higher order and a higher power that all things are attributed. The third argument is the weakest in my opinion..but I'm not theologian, it is the Value Judgment Argument by Rashdall and it states: Since we make judgments as to what is good and bad, right and wrong, as well as make judgments of degrees of perfection, then there must exist a perfectly good/right being who supplies us with a standard for value judgments. Furthermore, since often our judgments about the values things have are mistaken, then there must be something which is perfect, about which our judgments cannot be mistaken. Such a being is called "God" This argument states that, since we as humans understand right and wrong, good and evil, and we are fallible, there must be some infallible good out there by which we hold our standards. The big downfall to this argument is simply that, our understanding of a thing doesn't dictate it's existence. We can't conjure something to exist because we believe in things similar. It just doesn't work. The fourth and best argument is the hardest to explain...I'll start with the argument itself and then work to break it down, I'm sure there will be questions. This is the Ontological argument from St. Anselm which states: In conceiving or imagining a most perfect being, a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, we must conceive such a being as lacking nothing--least of all existence. And that which is only thought to be perfect is lass perfect than that which is actually perfect. Therefore, the most perfect being must exist. Such a being is termed "God". Raise your hands if you followed that one. Okay...to break it down...imagine God the best you can, now make God better, and better, and better, and better. Eventually, you will get to a point that God is perfect, but in that case, it's still all in your mind...the only way to make God better at that point is for God to exist...because lacking existence isn't encompassing perfection. Some will say that "just because you can imagine a thing doesn't make it real" This is the counterpoint from AB user 23skidoo. He will say "what about flying spaghetti monsters or Puff the magic dragon" The fact that these are brought up still leaves room for their improvement though...when they are improved upon until they are perfect divine all-powerful creatures that fit the 12 characteristics of the concept of the theistic divine, and lack ONLY existence to be 100% flawless, then we give them existence to be perfect, and that being is called "God" That argument is in my mind the best...it covers ONLY theism, and it is pretty much unshakable. I'm sure I'll get responses that will try and I will have a good debate I hope :) Now, we have covered faith, God, religion, and the arguments for religion...now for the couple arguments against, which will be shorter on this answer than the arguments for because I am a religious person and I just have troubles understanding the arguments against. I will try to remain objective though because that is my goal: an objective truth. People arguing against religion are usually coming from 2 places. One states: I have no proof. The other states:If God is all loving, why do people suffer?. Let me try to hit those the best I can. First, the I have no proof argument. People that claim they need tangible proof, that God can't be seen or measured, that there is nothing rational on earth that allows for the existence of God. I can see where you are coming from, I understand that you like to have the evidence in front of you to make any decision...There is a major downfall to your argument though, the fact that..not all things we see as true on earth have that evidence. Tangible proof implies Empirical data. You want to be able to touch/smell/measure/feel/or hear what you are working with. That is very down to earth and very rational in almost every case. I would like you to use that data though to prove to me that Socrates existed. We have no physical evidence...we only have the word of people passed through the generations. We understand his existence based on non-empirical truths. History is non-empirical. Math is also non-empirical. You are asking to use a form of science to prove something that science can't prove and holding that as a truth. You are trying to compare apples by the intensity of their orange qualities. It is the same as using Math to prove literature. The second argument is the one that asks about God being all loving and why do we suffer?. The question is absurd: when you ask, "If God is both all good and all powerful, why then does He allow suffering?", what you are really asking is, "If God is both all good and all powerful, why then can He not make me (the questioner) -- who is just as much a part of a universe in which there is suffering as is any other part -- be at the same time the exact same questioner, but one who is now part and parcel of a universe in which there is no suffering?" Which, reduced down, is the same thing as asking, "Why can there not be, at the same time, X and the preclusion of X?" This is a much more compelling argument that almost works. The thing that must be remembered though is that we are using the understanding of the Theistic Deity according to the 4 theistic religions. If you are to use the God of those religions, you must use their doctrines. The doctrines of those books ALL explain why there is suffering and pain...they explain how to get through it and why it happened. If you take away the doctrines of these religions you have a flawless argument that could easily be used to shake the beliefs of many that don't know their beliefs. There was a time that I almost fell to this argument, a deeper part of this argument is stating that: true evil is when pain and suffering happen for no gain/greater good/form of justice. An example is a deer in the woods that breaks it's leg and suffers for a few days before dying...there was no greater good, nothing gained, but an ALL-LOVING GOD could have ended the suffering..so how could those two things exist? Both an evil and an ultimate good. The answer, although this will be where I lose the rest of you that stuck through reading this wall of text...there is no evil. All things happen for God's purpose...God is all good and all knowing...so for us to say "that shouldn't happen, God wouldn't allow it" is arrogant. God allows suffering and pain for many reasons that we as humans can't comprehend. As a human, I am 1/6000000000 people on earth...I don't know everything here on earth, and earth is an infinity small part of the universe...since I know so little of anything, how can I say with ABSOLUTION that there is no God? It is arrogant to assume I know anything at all...what I do know is that the Bible, Torah, and Qur'an all give great life lessons...they shouldn't be disregarded because you don't believe in God. I think that you should read them and come to your own conclusions and you might find in your research the answers to the questions you are looking for. If you agree with what I typed so far, you are in agreement that the theistic deity is the right one to follow, you don't need EMPIRICAL evidence to support Him, it's a matter of unshakable faith, and it is the one thing of ultimate importance to a truly religious person. If you are with me so far, now we can move into the book learned religions to see which of these we should follow. I'll not cover that in this post for I have been typing for the better part of 2 hours and I need a break. My next installment will be a breakdown of the book learned religions and which one to follow completely while dispelling myths and rumors about said religion. Thank you for reading all the way through if you did...piss off if you can't find the time to read one post that might change your life.

Three basic beliefs: 1 That there is a God. Why? because I have a conscious, thinking, questioning, rational mind, and belief in God provides neat answers for a lot of life's 'whys' which would otherwise be bothering the mind. If I was an animal I'd just live and die without the burden of the ‘whys’. 2 That there is a hereafter and a meeting with God. Why? because I suppose it follows on from 1. Why would I find myself with a conscious, rational, thinking, answer-seeking mind that is burdened with the whys if I too were meant to just live and die like the animals. 3 That there will be a great sorting out. Why? because it kind of follows on from 2. We can't possibly all be left hanging around not knowing what to do or where to go in this hereafter. The sorting out will be on the basis of who we attributed all the abilities and facilities that we found ourselves with and how we used those abilities and facilities. HQ 56:68-69 "See ye the water which ye drink? Do ye bring it down from the cloud or do We?" HQ 23:80 "It is He Who gives life and death, and to Him (is due) the alternation of Night and Day: will ye not then understand?" HQ 46:26 "...and We had endowed them with (faculties of) hearing, seeing and intellect: but of no profit to them were their (faculties of) hearing, sight and intellect, when they went on rejecting the Signs of God. HQ 7:179 "They have hearts wherewith they understand not, eyes wherewith they see not, and ears wherewith they hear not. They are like cattle,- nay more misguided: for they are heedless (of warning)" HQ 10:23 "...they transgress insolently through the earth in defiance of right! O mankind! your insolence is against your own souls,- an enjoyment of the life of the present: in the end, to Us is your return, and We shall show you the truth of all that ye did" HQ 99:7-8 "Then shall anyone who has done an atom's weight of good, see it! And anyone who has done an atom's weight of evil, shall see it"

I don't believe that there is a God but I do recognize the fact that there is no proof of the non-existence of God. So, I'm sort of an Agnostic Atheist.

I am a straight up papist.