Comments on: Why Do You Believe in God?

By: Thaddeus

Thaddeus — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:52:46 +0000

David, good point. Eternal marriage is available to everyone, and if we stay true to our covenants, even a person’s first love who has died may be reunited with them after the resurrection.

It’s a powerful and uplifting doctrine. I’m curious why you brought it up here, though. Definitely wasn’t the topic at hand…

Let’s continue the discussion of plural marriage here.

By: David

David — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 01:19:45 +0000

LDS practice Polygamy in the Temple. My neighbor and Bishop has married his second wife. He said he will have two wives in the Celestial Kingdom.

By: Katie

Katie — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:22:09 +0000

Thaddeus — I don’t know why it took me so long to come across this post, but I just saw it. I must say, your response was wonderful and I really enjoyed reading what you have to say.

I often find it difficult to explain to the faithful why I do not believe in god. My reasons are very clear to me, but they often just do not make sense to believers. I think of “aha” moments (light bulb moments, revelatory moments) when I think of people’s convictions. Someone can tell you why they believe or why they don’t believe, but until you have an “aha” moment either way, it doesn’t necessarily “sink in.”

See? I’m inarticulate even now!

Anyway, my point here is that I truly appreciated your answer to that question and found it illuminating and very well put.

By: Marie Allen

Marie Allen — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 04:01:54 +0000

Hi,
I, too, am L.D.S. I stumbled on your blog tonight and am so happy I did. You have a very intelligent, educated, and respectful approach to some difficult topics.

As far as answering your question, I have one simple answer: I believe in God because I NEED to. My belief keeps my life vital and in tact. Atheism feels like a black hole to me. Belief is fulfillment.

By: Kevin Christensen

Kevin Christensen — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:55:17 +0000

I published an essay on this very topic, from which I offer the following:

If approached without reference to any particular doctrinal interpretation, Ian Barbour suggests that these kinds of experience can serve as a common ground for discussion, a place of solid footing, a point of little disputed reference from which to examine the varied interpretations and traditions. Those I shall discuss in this paper (following Barbour) can be seen as generally framing a movement:
(a)From responses to external impressions regarding:
Order and creativity in the world
The common mythic symbols and patterns underlying most religious traditions
Key historical events that define separate traditions and bind individuals

(b)Through the innermost experiences of the individual:
Numinous awe and reverence
Mystical union
Moral obligation
Reorientation and Reconciliation with respect to personal sin, guilt, and weakness, the existence of evil, suffering, and death, and tensions between science and faith.

(c)Then returning to the external world as human action:
Personal dialogue where you begin interpret external events as God speaking to you, and you answer through your own actions.
Social and Ritual behavior

These matters cannot objectively prove the existence of a God (whether personal or impersonal), but, as I hope to demonstrate, they do constitute the core of religious experience for believers. They provide the ground of experience on which reasoned and feeling assessments of the validity and worth of faith are based. They encompass the ways in which spirituality is manifest in history and symbol. They are the wine—and doctrine the wine-bottles. To argue and contend about doctrine is to emphasize the wine skin over the wine. In Alma’s terms, it is to emphasize what you think you “know” over what ultimately gives “cause to believe” (Alma 32:18).

Kevin Christensen
Bethel Park, PA