Why do you believe in Hashem ?

InnerMe

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 11:09 am

Optimystic wrote:

There is no such thing as "implicit atheists" anymore than there are "implicit anti-gravity believers."

I don't know why you are so emotionally attached to atheism that you feel this need to push it on frum women. Maybe sometimes Hashem shows Himself separate to those nearest Him, or a righteous person falls seven times, and seven times he rises. Or maybe it is just that rejecting human ideas of deity is a necessary step to finding Hashem, and some people get stuck longer than others in this middle step. Many people never even reach this middle step, so if you think you are smarter than believers like me, maybe you are.

Optymistic- just want to say that I love all your posts on this thread. I love how you are unapologetic about your beliefs.

amother

Seafoam

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 11:16 am

PinkFridge wrote:

Thanks!
I'm not good about listening to long things on line but I did listen for a few minutes. Sounds interesting. It would be a trip to see the brothers Gottlieb together on a stage ;-D
From the few minutes, I couldn't help but think of Dr. Twerski's assertion that everyone can access the 12 Steps, even atheists, because everyone can get in tune with spirituality.

Yes
As logical as I am I am also very spiritual believe it or not. I have psychic abilities to some extent and often follow my instincts.
Which is why I loved his speech so much. It’s spirituality without the constraints of organized religion.

Optimystic

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 12:13 pm

amother wrote:

Taking a step back - your statement is that every person must conclude "I am breathing, therefore there is a Gd".

So why not I'm not floating in the air - there must be a deity keeping me on the ground?

I hope for a world where all of us can be more certain of Hashem than we are that we are breathing.

In any case, people are going to conclude what they want or think they have to conclude. Truth is not affected by our conclusions.

amother

Silver

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 12:16 pm

I didn’t read thru the other responses. I don’t know why I believe. I don’t have the words for it. It’s ingrained in me. But I have a complicated relationship with God and often feel rejected and don’t understand why things are happening to me. I lose faith in Him but not because I don’t believe He exists. I just don’t always believe He is as kind and loving as we are supposed to believe. But I can’t fathom thinking like an atheist. Bec it is so obvious (to me) that god runs the world.

amother

Saddlebrown

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 12:46 pm

Optimystic wrote:

I agree 100% with the bolded.

I would never argue that evidence against a deity is that there are atheists.

I just disagree with the premise that there can be no such thing as an atheist because actions, like breathing, speak louder than words to evidence what a person truly believes.

Optimystic

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 1:04 pm

amother wrote:

I'm not an atheist.

I do however reject the idea that there are no atheists.

I also reject the idea that every person at some point in life ponders if there is a deity.

When I learned gravity in highschool physics - it certainly changed my understanding of why I'm not floating in the air.

I think we are going to end up going in circles. I agree there are people who call themselves atheists. My point is that they don't act like it. How could they? At best, they act as though the universe somehow self-exists. That might be pantheism, but it is not atheism. I agree with you that not every person ponders religion or the nature of life or existence let alone the "deities" of human religions. I don't call the rejection of idols atheism. I call it Judaism.

You keep speaking about "a deity" as though any human pondering of reality is a replacement for the real thing.

Optimystic

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 1:09 pm

amother wrote:

Okay, sounds like we aren't so far apart after all, just disagreeing over use of terms. I am really good at disagreeing Wink

Laiya

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 1:37 pm

amother wrote:

I recently read a fascinating book, written by a non-Jewish historian. He argues that, if you live in a Westernized part of the world, your outlook on life, your views that individuals are unique and that human life has value, that people make choices that affect outcomes and therefore, that the future will not be a mere, endless repitition of the past; that, because life has value, we have a responsibility to act morally and promote justice---all of these notions derive directly from the Jews introducing the world to monotheism.

The author explains that these beliefs were only possible when an individual became able to form a personal relationship with one G-d.

So if a person subscribes to those beliefs; as the author puts it, he values the concepts of: individual, unique, person, history, time, future, story, choice, justice, etc.; then he is already viewing the world through the lens of monotheism.

amother

Papaya

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 1:39 pm

I haven't read the thread, and I'm going to be decidedly unphilosophical.

The ear.

I believe in Hashem because of the ear.

Seriously. Look at a baby's ear. Its incredibly complex, with folds and cartilage and all sorts of shaping. How could that happen randomly? How could that happen without a sculptor.

When things are bad, go wrong, whatever, I look at the ear. And I believe again.

daagahminayin

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 2:29 pm

amother wrote:

Also the Hebrew language. For example, the word for scales is מאוזניים. Where do we we get our sense of balance from? The vestibular system in the ears - אוזניים. Was this knowledge available to people thousands of years ago? And even if it was, how did the Hebrew language get constructed so elegantly that you have all these connections of meanings between words and letters?

amother

Saddlebrown

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 3:29 pm

Optimystic wrote:

We are going to disagree. I don't understand what it means to 'act like an atheist' which I think you are arguing is impossible. But if its "they act as though the universe somehow self-exists" , not sure how that is to act exactly, but that's not pantheism, and it certainly doesn't stop someone from breathing.

I'm using deity as a synonym for gd. Atheism is a spectrum of 'intellect', from disbelief (ie pondered the idea of a gd and rejecting it) to absence of belief in gd. You still haven't convinced me that merely existing is sufficient for a person to act as if they are not atheists. But lets end the circle.

jerusalem90

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 3:38 pm

momnaturally wrote:

Shlomo Hamelech was a prophet and everything he wrote is prophecy from Hashem. We have no concept of the greatness of Shlomo he is way beyond our comprehesion and compared to even the greatest tzaddikim of today he is literally an angel.
The pasuk you quoted was misquoted. It never said "respect"
The pasuk can easily be explained that there was a very rare attribute he found only one in a thousand of men and he never found it in a woman or found it even less often than one in a thousand in a woman. Of course he respected women.
The reason he married so many women is discussed in the deeper more kabbalistic type of seforim. I have no knowledge of them but there are reasons for everything he did.

Thanks for pointing that out that there could be a noble reason for a man marrying 1,000 women. I didn't consider it before, but once I thought about it: maybe a lot of young men had died in war leaving many more young women than young men. Solomon might have married so many of them so that they wouldn't be left single and childless forever, and because as king he could afford to support them and their children, so in a case like that it would have been a chesed rather than greed.

amother

Saddlebrown

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 3:40 pm

Laiya wrote:

Re China, China is actually having a revival of religion; a third of the country is religious, and by 2030, China will have more Christians than the US. Some believe that the Chinese do not respond to Western polls the way the questions are intended, so the current number of religious Chinese people is actually being under-stated.

I found it fascinating that, despite attempts to stamp out religion over the course of a generation, it is now resurging in China.

Also, it's relevant to note that Communism rejects religion for purposes of control, not out of a sense of theological conviction.

true -but as we have discussed here - some people are believers because of an unbroken chain of people telling them their Jewish history. Once the chain is broken, what are you left with? The idea that on his own every person will eventually consider if there is a gd or gds, I don't buy that. Christianity spreads because of missionaries.

Laiya

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 4:38 pm

amother wrote:

True, but still interesting that it resurged in China after so many years of being intentionally stamped out.

We can't make blanket statements about every individual. But I think it's fair to draw some conclusions from groups as a whole. Was / is there ever in history an atheistic nation or country for an enduring period of time (excluding Communist countries)?

amother

Natural

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 6:18 pm

BTW lime, when hashem created the world he created it as if it has been there for hundreds of years. He didn't start withe planting seeds for trees or with baby animals. Even Adam he created as an adult not a newborn baby and as you can see by the eitz adas the fruits were all there from the day of creation. So when scientists claim that there are things that are more than 6000 years it can be because by bereishis the day of creation it was already like an old tree , animal, ect.

seeker

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 6:24 pm

amother wrote:

Of course the idea of afterlife is comforting. Who wants to think that after 120 years it's all over? Of course we hope to be able to meet our ancestors and all those that died before us. However, I don't think because we hope for it, it in any way should convince doubters that it's true. Why does hope equate to it being fact?

Yeah personally I'm all on board with G-d, Torah, and Judaism, but the afterlife is something I still have a lot of questions about and research to do. There is no clear consensus even among classical Jewish sources. For now I just accept the likelihood that there is something even if we don't know what. I reached that conclusion through logic based on those things that I do already know or believe to be true.

amother

Saddlebrown

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 6:29 pm

Laiya wrote:

Okay - that humans tend to gravitate as a whole to religion says something about human nature, generally, and not the validity of any religion (for that we need other tests). But that's not at issue. I'll stand by my comment that there is such a thing as an implicit atheist.

PinkFridge

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 8:11 pm

amother wrote:

But this hope is why many people choose to believe.

Laiya

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 9:36 pm

amother wrote:

Idk if there is or isn't.

But it seems to me like it's pretty much impossible to say, because someone who: believes that individuals are unique, that life has value, that stories have arcs, that we can learn from history and plan for the future, that we should strive to be moral, etc.--such a person is viewing the world through a lens already influenced by monotheism.

momnaturally

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 11:27 pm

amother wrote:

But the fact that we just happen to be born and one day die is quite haphazard. Especially considering the fact that we are not simple creatures rather we are quite complex. We have intellect to understand things, an awareness of what will happen to us, a moral conscience to do right/good and not evil and a highly complex emotional makeup. All that to just dissappear 6 feet under does seem quite odd.