There seem to be very few people on reddit (and judging by the size of this sub, I'm correct) that understand a relationship with God doesn't mean you are religious. I'm actively seeking (online or offline doesn't matter, your heart does) people who are genuinely interested in experiencing eternal life in Heaven here on Earth.

To many people, Heaven and eternal life is a place you go after you die and thing you experience. I will let those people continue to believe this, and die. However, I want to make that experience real for you while you are alive. The only pre requisite is that you sincerely love God.

Eternal life, when experienced in the body, creates an intensely blissful state of being like Enlightenment, but there are quite a few differences. You're no longer susceptible to mortal illness and those things go away. Your soul is one with God and nothing bodily affects the stability of your consciousness, even pain. Mental illness goes away and cannot take root. Your heart is full and you never feel lonely, because God takes permanent residence in your heart and you feel unconditional love for all of reality...

This transformation requires complete dedication, similar to leaving for Navy SEALs training and not returning until the first phase is complete: your Enlightenment. Unfortunately, many stop here and their life ends like every human, but this is not the goal, just a necessary first step. The second step is letting go of your life, consciously. Many people that reach Enlightenment revel in it's beauty and become lost souls, sated by their achievement. So they depart the body, convinced there is some Nirvana or afterlife waiting for them.

The question you must ask yourself: do you want to dedicate yourself to living forever in bliss and peace here on Earth, or take the chance on an unproven afterlife? Ultimately the choice is one you are already convinced of, as you cannot be convinced, the desire to live forever is born of genuine love of God and life.

Lately, I've been looking towards the Epicurean Paradox and have been doubting weither God truly exists or not. When I saw the Epicurean Paradox, it being a logical dilemma about the problem of evil truly changed my perceptive. After however I was reading some posts regarding on this topic, it soon came to my conclusion to be able to see some people talk about this topic on a post on Reddit. Now what I'm mostly discussing about, is one of the answers to this dilemma. As said in the Epicurean Paradox, it states that if God can do certain things such as lift a rock that he made so heavy that he can't carry. Or what the actual context is, weither God can do things that determines weither he is actually all-powerful. Obviously, after some time of consideration, this answer is wrong, (I'll explain throughout later) even like other answers practically having the same context. For example, some of which I have heard are: Can God make a fire so hot that he can't even touch? Or can God make a door so strong, that he can't break through? You get these. When we look at this answers towards this specific context, we realize that this is something that is considered systemically impossible. What seems impossible to us, is possible to God. For example, a man can not climb a mountain in 30 seconds, but God could. But what this is saying is like can God make a square triangle? It goes out of logic. Or can God make a triangle with two sides? It's practically the law of the universe, to consider that a triangle is a shape that has 3 sides. It doesn't make sense.

But here's what's interesting. Who decides what is systemically impossible? For example, when we go to the dilemma of why God allows evil, some say due to God giving us ultimate free will, to show us how powerful he is, and a relationship and redemption. But couldn't God just make a world without evil? Regardless of it being natural evil (such as earthquakes and tsunamis etc,) or just evil? It comes to a point where you'll say that that is because it is necessary for our universe to exist. But who decides what is necessary for our universe to exist? God, obviously. Then, God could make it possible by the fact of removing evil, if he was truly good. But it seems like God truly doesn't exist, since he is supposed to be all-good, all-loving. I'm looking forward to see arguments against this.

We discuss morality, religion, the metaphysical, and often military matters. We have a lot of Christians, and I'm happy with them, but I'd love to see some input from non-Christian Theists.

https://discord.gg/SQcXHrZfxk

I know there are these three classical teological, teleological and cosmological, but maybe there are some other underrated arguments?

Looking to start a group supporting Robespierre's state religion

Atheism has 2.9m users and theism has 908! Why such a large difference? I guess because specific religious subreddits are dividing the members?

This critique is mainly for Theists, I being a Muslim myself.

What is the difference between using the Law of Attraction and Prayer ?

The Law of Attraction is you putting out a wish to the Universe and via Manifestation, the Wish is then given flesh and bone.
The critique : This process is not possible without affecting/altering the Will of other people. So as Muslims, Christians, etc., we would essentially be deferring to another entity which ISNT God to Realize our own wishes via imposition of our will over other people's wills. And how would that be any different from Witch Craft or Magic ?

An Example : I asked the Universe that my neighbor rings the door and gives me a glass of water. I did all the techniques in The Secret (either wishing it too hard, or imagining the whole thing to every final detail and thought of it as already done, etc.) and then, lo and behold, my neighbor suddenly rings my door and offers me a glass of water.
If you would say here "No but your neighbor actually wanted to give you the glass of water, it was their will to do so"
if so, then why do I need to manifest the glass of water ? it was coming to me anyways.

Now when it comes to Prayer, it is different. The assumption is : If God is Omnipotent and Omniscient, and you're praying to such entity, you're only asking to execute the Will of God, never the will of You.
A prayer is the active hope that the will of Allah happens to COINCIDE with what you're wishing, and that it becomes true.
So, is the Law of Attraction Haram / Immoral ?
And how is the Law of Attraction is any different from Witchcraft?

Proposed:

1. If a maximal loving or perfect God and heaven exists, he would send a person to heaven, no matter what that person does or believes, as that would be in His nature.

2. Correspondingly, a maximal loving God would never create a hell, nor would he send a person to that hell because of that person's beliefs.

3. If a purely evil God exists, He would send a person to hell or deprive that person of heaven at his whim, regardless of that person's actions or beliefs.

4. If a God that does not fit into the above definitions exists, it is unclear based on the vast number of religions what to believe or do, if anything at all, and such potential beliefs would immediately be contradictory. (Note: the major world religions do not fit into this category - this is for completeness, i.e. pantheism, paganism, and so forth).

5. The events of this world benefit or hurt individuals regardless of a person's theistic beliefs. In other words, your well-being or suffering while personified is not influenced by your beliefs.

6. No one religion, or theistic framework, has been independently proven true. Even if it were, it would not change the proposition unless that framework falls under #4.

7. Why then believe at all? Agnosticism seems the only rational position.

Please note an clear response is that some people are just 'happier' believing in a God, going to Church, being part of a community, and so forth. This is true of course. But others are not. I'm thinking from a theological perspective.

I believe I'm a theist?? After reading this sub. I think I may need more direction/to expand on this more. I'm going through a bit of a spiritual shift. I believe 100% that there is a God, and that God is still involved in our lives/universe-- so not sure if "deist" fits. I also believe without a doubt that there is a God, so not sure if agnostic fits either.

And what about the atheisitic countries such as the people's republic of china and soviet union. Were they incfluenced by the past religions that previously inhabited the lands?

View Poll

my bro is theist but thinks God sent these abrahmic religions to let us know that sin exists and that we r to repent and follow the 10 commands . the problem is that these religions except for christianity view idolatry(if u knew it was bad),adultery,and murder unforgivable,judiasm thinks they cant b forgiven in this life,islam thinks its hard to reach forgivness for murder and adultery. so since the concept of sin was created from the bible and if God did send the 10 commandments wouldnt that mean that there are also three unforgivable sins? please help im worrying

Every time I've tried to choose a religion and follow it, I then have to choose which subgroup, then which sub-subgroup... which book, then which translation... so I lose my original commitment. This last time, having backed off again, I'm wondering if a god would be involved in all this chaos. It sounds like just people stuff to me. Squabble, squabble. "That's heresy!" "YOU won't listen to the TRUTH!"

The sense that there's a protector, probably a creator, something "out there" that's magnificent and powerful, persists.

Maybe He/ She/ It/ They just want/s me to quit worrying about it and go live the life I was given.

So, the more i think about it, the more i realize i have a problem with organized religion and people who follow scripture.(tbh the existence of scripture isnt something im fond of because it can bring so much bad stuff with it but not like its not a part of history so can't say much against it) because those are rhw aspects of religion that cause problems. beleiving in a tri omni god might b difficult to prove and not something i agree with, but its certainly not problematic. But i dont have any sort of dislike for people who just happen to identify with a religion, but still make there own morals and life choices, people just slapping a random label that doesnt fir there beleifs isnt rlly a huge problem yk? but it makes me wonder why they do that, why are people so insistent on using the wrong words to describe there beleifs? (i am neurodivergent, i suspect this might b some sort of social curtisy that i missed maybe? like a family thing?)

So I know most theist people on this Reddit don’t believe in a specific religion and neither do I but I am wondering do you pray if you truly think there is a god out there and if you do why?

I truly believe that a God exist as well as the Devil

I don't believe in the after life and of going to Heaven and Hell.

I believe Heaven and Hell are concepts of Memory for a person. That if they do good that memory goes to Heaven and if they sin that memory goes to Hell.

I believe that if you act in accordance with God, where an action goes to Heaven, then if you pray then God can listen to you and find ways to help you.

I believe that Satan tries to temp you to sin and it begins with a temptation where Satan can hint you to sin. He tries to make you act and have that memory go to Hell.

I believe that being Good or morals are innate in all human beings, which gives evidence for God.

I believe living with accordance with God means doing the following: Love Compassion Empathy Honesty Hard Work/Work Ethic Helping Others/Unselfish Courage/Bravery Self Control/Discipline Living towards a higher self/Living towards your potential that God gives you.

Living with Devil, would be to the polar opposite of the above, while also highlighting: Hedonism, doing things for selfish pleasure Living against your upmost potential

Good - God Evil - Devil

I personally don't like too much organized religion and dogma, and cults. I do enjoy that day the Bible has passages and I believe it is meant to be taken metaphorically.

What does it mean when you believe religion makes sense as , if all religions was to come together and teach each other there religions that not just for religion but for the world we would learn more together ? Like idk I make just be talking bare I’m fried af rn but I’m hoping someone gets where I’m coming from

For a long time theists have insisted that atheists must also prove their claim(s) and they're right about this- if not in the way they expect. Atheists are heavily reliant on what is called the burden of proof but is known as extrospection in the disciplines of psychology and philosophy. Extrospection is about the observer looking outward in the hope of discovering the absolute truth (our shared reality). The theist will often try to reverse the flow of this investigation so that the ordinary claim(s) would have as much need to prove as the extraordinary claim(s). This makes no sense at all. If any reversal is to occur this exists in the proposal of an opposite kind of investigation: this time focused on introspection/looking inward. Theists do participate in introspection and extrospection too. They are thus much more thorough and science compliant than the atheists they typically encounter on social sites- who tackle none. I should also mention that only one of the three atheistic beliefs also attempts both investigations. Anyhow, all beliefs have equal onus to prove within introspection as no penalties are assigned, and this is what theists were striving for all along.

A couple of years ago, I changed my mind on the question of God after philosophical investigation into the existence of God. I now have dedicated part of my youtube channel to providing arguments for the existence of God. I believe theism is underrated and can be the solution to the many mistakes atheists make and the confusion religions create. It is an underrated system of thought, and I hope to try to make videos on it. You can check them out in my channel and my "metaphysics" playlist. I would appreciate a community of theists in my channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8AvSvYbtEM

I'm not a theist. I'm an atheist and yet this is so. My opinion of the atheist community took quite a blow when they objected to the introduction of additional knowledge about atheism consistent with university courses dating way back to the mid twentieth century. This they assumed was a planned attack on atheism- without even knowing what was about to be said. They followed this up with a permanent ban from atheism and then a temporary ban from Reddit. I now regard that community unworthy of knowledge sharing. They can wallow in paranoid ignorance for all I care. Would any of you like to know some of the findings?

I find this objections to the Kalam in r/Atheism and I want to know if is a solid one or fail. The comment is the next:

The argument is flawed from the beginning. Here are some highlights:

Special Pleading

A commonly-raised objection to this argument is that it suffers from special pleading. While everything in the universe is assumed to have a cause, God is free from this requirement. However, while some phrasings of the argument may state that "everything has a cause" as one of the premises (thus contradicting the conclusion of the existence of an uncaused cause), there are also many versions that explicitly or implicitly allow for non-beginning or necessary entities not to have a cause. In the end, the point of the premises is to suggest that reality is a causally-connected whole and that all causal chains originate from a single point, posited to be God. That many people using this argument would consider God exempt from various requirements is a foregone conclusion, but citing "special pleading" because finite causal chains are said to have an uncaused beginning is hardly a convincing objection.

Effect without cause

Most philosophers believe that every effect has a cause, but David Hume critiqued this. Hume came from a tradition that viewed all knowledge as either a priori (from reason) or a posteriori (from experience). From reason alone, it is possible to conceive of an effect without a cause, Hume argued, although others have questioned this and also argued whether conceiving something means it is possible. Based on experience alone, our notion of cause and effect is just based on habitually observing one thing following another, and there's certainly no element of necessity when we observe cause and effect in the world; Hume's criticism of inductive reasoning implied that even if we observe cause and effect repeatedly, we cannot infer that throughout the universe every effect must necessarily have a cause.

Multiple causes

There is nothing in the argument to rule out the existence of multiple first causes. This can be seen by realizing that for any directed acyclic graph which represents causation in a set of events or entities, the first cause is any vertex that has zero incoming edges. This means that the argument can just as well be used to argue for polytheism.

Radioactive decay

Through modern science, specifically physics, natural phenomena have been discovered whose causes have not yet been discerned or are non-existent. The best known example is radioactive decay. Although decay follows statistical laws and it's possible to predict the amount of a radioactive substance that will decay over a period of time, it is impossible — according to our current understanding of physics — to predict when a specific atom will disintegrate. The spontaneous disintegration of radioactive nuclei is stochastic and might be uncaused, providing an arguable counterexample to the assumption that everything must have a cause. An objection to this counterexample is that knowledge regarding such phenomena is limited and there may be an underlying but presently unknown cause. However, if the causal status of radioactive decay is unknown then the truth of the premise that 'everything has a cause' is indeterminate rather than false. In either case, the first cause argument is rendered ineffective. Another objection is that only the timing of decay events do not appear to have a cause, whereas a spontaneous decay is the release of energy previously stored, so that the storage event was the cause.

Virtual particles

Another counterexample is the spontaneous generation of virtual particles, which randomly appear even in complete vacuum. These particles are responsible for the Casimir effect and Hawking radiation. The release of such radiation comes in the form of gamma rays, which we now know from experiment are simply a very energetic form of light at the extreme end of the electromagnetic spectrum. Consequently, as long as there has been vacuum, there has been light, even if it's not the light that our eyes are equipped to see. What this means is that long before God is ever purported to have said "Let there be light!", the universe was already filled with light, and God is rendered quite the Johnny-come-lately. Furthermore, this phenomenon is subject to the same objection as radioactive decay.

Fallacy of composition

The argument also suffers from the fallacy of composition: what is true of a member of a group is not necessarily true for the group as a whole. Just because most things within the universe require a cause/causes, does not mean that the universe itself requires a cause. For instance, while it is absolutely true that within a flock of sheep that every member ("an individual sheep") has a mother, it does not therefore follow that the flock has a mother.

Equivocation error

There is an equivocation error lurking in the two premises of the Kalām version of the argument. They both mention something "coming into existence". The syllogism is only valid if both occurrences of that clause refer to the exact same notion.

In the first premise, all the things ("everything") that we observe coming into existence forms by some sort of transformation of matter or energy, or a change of some state or process. So this is the notion of "coming into existence" in the first premise.

In the second premise there is no matter or energy to be transformed or reshaped into the universe. (We are probably speaking of something coming from nothing.)

The two notions of "coming into existence" are thus not identical and therefore the syllogism is invalid.

I responded to an r/atheism Post that claimed that Christianity was the single biggest opponent to all forms of Progress that has happened in Society. I took each claim of the OP and produced counter argument with historical data. I didn't bring up any additional point. Many atheists have responded to my comments as well. Yet, the Moderators banned me permanently and their reason was "Gish Gallop", even though the number of arguments I made were simply replies to the OP and so were of the same number. If the Moderators were consistent in the claim that I'm "Gish Galloping", they would have banned the OP as well- since we both had equal number of arguements, that too of the same topic. But they haven't.

So, it seems like they are simply using their subreddit to silence dissent. I cannot even reply to those who argued against me here because of this ban. They claim to detest Theocracies for silencing Dissenting voices, but here they are: the Mods of r/atheism behaving like the Theocrats of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Am I the only one who experienced this?

Hello folks if r/Theism! As some of you may or may not have noticed, I'm the sole mod of this sub.

I requested it last year because it was dead, and now there seems to be more activity. I have since realized that I am not qualified to be a mod with my schedule or anything about my life, so I need someone else to take responsibility of this sub. Apply in the replies if you truly would like to be a mod for this sub. I'll list some things that may qualify/disqualify you from becoming a mod, or things that you should be aware of before running this sub:

1. This sub is for the general idea of Theism, not just Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or any specific religion. If you plan on changing the purpose of this this sub to fit your beliefs, then you don't qualify. You can still talk about your religion here, but keep in mind that this sub is for discussion on all of them.

2. If you are an atheist, then you won't qualify. I know some atheists on this platform wouldn't hesitate to delete or ruin this sub if they got their hands on it, so I won't allow any atheists to become mods even if they say that they truly want to be here for meaningful discussion.

3. You have some extra favor if you're already a mod of a decently sized sub.

Edit: I've found what I was looking for and locked the comments. Thanks everyone!