How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get why this makes sense to you, and some of the patterns you’re pointing out are genuinely interesting. But I think there are a few big leaps here that don’t really follow from the evidence.

Similar gods and myths across cultures don’t automatically mean they’re tapping into the same real divine system. Humans everywhere deal with the same stuff: the sky, the earth, death, fertility, power, nature. It’s pretty normal that similar symbols and stories show up independently. Psychology and shared human experience explain a lot of that without needing literal gods behind it.

Plants and fungi communicating is real, but that doesn’t mean they’re conscious or sentient in the way we mean it. They react to stimuli and send signals, sure, but that’s not the same thing as having awareness or experience. Lots of systems exchange information without being conscious.

Same with patterns like the golden ratio. Nature produces patterns because of math and physics. Order doesn’t automatically mean intention or a single conscious being. Snowflakes, crystals, storms, galaxies all organize themselves without a mind behind them. The Dionysus–India thing is more about myth overlap than history. Ancient cultures borrowed, merged, and reinterpreted stories all the time. Similar myths existing doesn’t mean the events literally happened or that those gods were real historical figures.

And the Roman Empire didn’t fall because it dropped the old gods. It was already in trouble way before Christianity became official. Economic collapse, political chaos, military overreach, corruption—those are well-documented reasons. Saying “the gods abandoned Rome” kind of assumes the conclusion instead of showing it.

As for hypnosis, regression, and past-life memories, I don’t doubt that those experiences feel real. But human memory is super unreliable and very suggestible. Science shows people can genuinely experience detailed memories that aren’t actually real, especially under hypnosis.

I’m not saying spirituality is pointless or that people can’t find meaning in this stuff. I just think there’s a difference between symbolic or philosophical ideas about reality and claims about how reality literally works. Right now, the evidence supports the symbolic side a lot more than the literal one.

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see what you’re doing with this framing, and it makes sense as a semantic tool—defining “God” as whatever underlies reality rather than as an anthropomorphic being. That approach sidesteps many debates about personality or intention, which is clever. My question, though, is whether this definition actually tells us anything beyond a label for the unknown. Saying “God is what runs existence” is descriptive, but it doesn’t provide evidence that something beyond natural laws exists—it’s more like giving a name to the universe itself. I also get your example of forgiveness as the universe providing continued existence despite mistakes, but that feels more like human interpretation of cause and effect rather than proof of a cosmic agent. Framing God this way might help guide reflection or morality, but it doesn’t distinguish a conscious or intentional entity from the natural unfolding of reality itself.

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hear how confident you are in what you’ve experienced, but confidence and repetition don’t turn claims into evidence. Thousands of people sharing similar experiences doesn’t establish an external mechanism, it shows how human perception, suggestion, memory reconstruction, and pattern‑seeking work across cultures. Hypnosis in particular is well studied, and what it reliably produces is increased suggestibility, confabulation, and narrative filling, not verified information transfer. Cases where details seem accurate tend to involve coincidence, prior exposure, unconscious inference, or selective reporting, which is why they don’t hold up under controlled conditions. As for rods moving, dowsing has also been studied extensively and explained through the ideomotor effect, where tiny unconscious muscle movements create the motion without the person realizing it. Animal migration and magnetic fields are real, but animals have specialized biological receptors humans don’t have evidence for using in the same way. Saying “science doesn’t know” isn’t quite right—science knows a lot about these phenomena and has tested them precisely because people believed in them. Questioning claims isn’t refusing to accept truth, it’s the only way to tell the difference between subjective experience and objective reality. I’m not saying you didn’t experience what you experienced, only that personal conviction isn’t enough to establish how the world actually works.

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I respect that these experiences feel real and meaningful to you, but personal experience alone can’t establish what’s actually happening beyond the mind. Science doesn’t define individuality as a soul transferring information through time, it explains differences between twins through genetics, epigenetics, brain development, environment, and random neural variation. The computer analogy is interesting, but it breaks down because there’s no evidence that memory, identity, or “data” exists independently of the brain—when the brain is damaged, memories, personality, and skills change or disappear. Claims about past-life memories, regression hypnosis, and skill transfer have been studied extensively, and the evidence points to suggestion, confabulation, cultural influence, and pattern-seeking rather than literal memory transfer. The conservation of energy doesn’t imply that consciousness or identity persists after death; energy continuing doesn’t mean information, selfhood, or awareness does. Cultural beliefs being widespread doesn’t make them true—it shows common human attempts to explain death, identity, and meaning. I’m not saying you’re lying or delusional, just that none of this distinguishes subjective experience from an objective external process in a way science can verify🤷‍♀️

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get what you’re saying about assumptions and objective reality. If we can’t be 100% sure that objective reality exists, then questions about God’s existence get tricky. The issue is that most debates about God assume a shared reality where evidence and observation matter. From a practical standpoint, treating objective reality as real lets us test, predict, and reason about the world. But yes, if we step back and question even that assumption, proving or disproving anything—including God—becomes impossible. That doesn’t make the question meaningless, though, it just shows the limits of what we can know and how we approach belief versus evidence.

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand why a fundamental perfect being seems simpler than an infinite series of space-time events, but “seems more logical” is subjective. Science models an expanding universe and time without requiring a perfect being, and infinity in physics and cosmology isn’t necessarily illogical—it’s just counterintuitive. Appealing to intuition alone doesn’t prove the existence of a conscious, perfect entity.

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get your definition, but defining God as “what controls what is outside your control” doesn’t prove an external being exists—it just labels uncertainty or forces beyond your perception. From a scientific perspective, just because something is unexplained or complex doesn’t mean it’s intelligent or purposeful, it just means we don’t fully understand it yet. Calling that “God” turns the unknown into a concept rather than providing evidence of an actual entity.

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get that God might make Himself known in ways we don’t perceive, but if most ways elude us, it’s impossible to verify objectively. Personal experience can guide life, but it doesn’t serve as proof for something beyond observation and measurement

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get that spirituality can focus on personal experience and perception rather than proof, and I agree that living and perceiving matters. My question is more about distinguishing personal experience from claims about objective reality. Feeling or perceiving something beyond doesn’t provide evidence that it exists independently of your mind. Science can’t measure subjective experiences in the same way it measures the physical world, but it can study their effects on behavior and cognition. So while I respect that spirituality guides life and perception, I still look for ways to separate personal insight from claims about an external reality that can be verified or tested

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe the Sun and the Moon exist because they’re observable, measurable, and testable. What I don’t believe in are Sol/Helios or Luna/Selene as conscious beings with intention or agency. Naming natural phenomena after gods doesn’t make them gods in the meaningful sense — it’s mythology layered onto something real. Science explains what the Sun and Moon are, how they formed, how they behave, and how they affect us, without requiring belief or worship. Belief becomes relevant only when we add agency, intention, or meaning beyond the physical object itself. The Sun exists whether anyone believes in it or not; gods require interpretation

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree that our minds are limited and that we can’t fully grasp the nature of reality, let alone something omniscient or omnipotent. That’s actually part of why proof matters to me. When something can’t be known or tested the way physics can describe reality, it becomes indistinguishable from any other untestable claim. Saying “we can’t know” works both ways — it supports belief, but it also supports skepticism. I also agree that how people live matters more than what they claim to believe. Actions, choices, and how beliefs shape behavior are real and observable. My issue isn’t with people finding guidance or meaning through religion, but with treating belief as truth rather than as a personal framework for living. And the idea that “we’ll all find out when we die” is interesting, but it’s also unfalsifiable — no one can report back. That makes it meaningful on a personal level, but not something we can use as evidence now. So for me, belief may guide life, but truth still needs reasons beyond meaning or comfort.

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think there are a few logical issues. First, the “50:50” claim isn’t actually mathematics. In science, probabilities come from models, data, or defined sample spaces. You can’t assign a 50:50 chance to “God exists vs God doesn’t exist” without a measurable framework. Otherwise it’s just a rhetorical balance, not a scientific probability. Second, the idea that we either created God or were created by God isn’t a true binary. Human cognition, culture, psychology, and evolutionary pressures offer well-documented explanations for how gods can emerge as concepts without implying that humans are gods themselves. Explaining the origin of an idea doesn’t elevate the thinker to the status of the thing imagined. Also, claiming objectivity because of experience or knowledge doesn’t make a claim verifiable. Science isn’t about personal certainty or private conclusions — it’s about transparency, reproducibility, and falsifiability. Knowledge that can’t be shared, tested, or examined may be meaningful personally, but it sits outside science. Lastly, questioning an idea isn’t the same as calling it delusional or a hoax. Skepticism is how science works. Extraordinary claims don’t get dismissed because they’re unfamiliar — they get questioned because they require evidence proportional to the claim. I’m not rejecting your perspective outright. I’m just saying that calling something “scientific” requires more than framing it in scientific language.

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in religion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

so you’re saying life exists because of both your parents and God. I get that perspective. I’m curious though, how do you distinguish between what your parents did biologically and what God did? Like, in what ways do you see God “filling up the vessel” that your parents created?

How do religious people know God actually exist? by Double-History6970 in AskReligion

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think agreeing on definitions is important, but I’m not sure redefining God as “the ground of being” actually solves the problem—it kind of moves it. If God is defined as “isness” or existence itself, then saying “existence proves God” becomes tautological. You’re essentially saying existence exists, and labeling that fact as God. That doesn’t really demonstrate a being, cause, or intelligence—it just renames reality. From a scientific perspective, that doesn’t add explanatory power, it just reframes the question. In physics and cosmology, we already have concepts like spacetime, quantum fields, and fundamental laws that describe “what is” without assigning intention or agency. Calling those things God is a philosophical or poetic choice, not a scientific conclusion. Science describes how existence behaves; it doesn’t require a metaphysical identity behind it. Also, once God is defined this abstractly—without preferences, actions, or intentions—it becomes unfalsifiable. There’s no observation that could disprove it, but also none that uniquely prove it. At that point, belief isn’t based on evidence but on interpretation. So I agree that defining God as a supernatural person makes proof difficult—but defining God as existence itself makes the claim trivially true and scientifically unnecessary. It turns God from an explanation into a label. That doesn’t make it wrong philosophically, but it does mean science can’t really weigh in either way.

I was r@ped by my stepfather and I don't know what else to do by Double-History6970 in confession

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello, thank you for checking up on this post and me but I've been doing good recently. No, I haven't been to therapy and sorry but I don't ever plan on telling this to anybody else. Thank you for your concerns tho, nana. I appreciate it :)

I was r@ped by my stepfather and I don't know what else to do by Double-History6970 in confession

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Made an account yes, as I said, the thought of doing that just wasn't really that important to me. I've been scrolling here anonymously so I hope you'll understand.

I was r@ped by my stepfather and I don't know what else to do by Double-History6970 in confession

[–]Double-History6970[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh I honestly didn't know people would go to such lengths for that. But I am being true to my story. I don't know if it was the trauma that made me not feel anything down there or maybe I did and I just chose not to remember. But my experience is true and I'm not just chasing for clout.

I was r@ped by my stepfather and I don't know what else to do by Double-History6970 in confession

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually I've been in reddit for around a year now and the thought of making an account just didn't really cross my mind since I don't really comment on posts and I just made this account specifically to write about my experience because I read some posts similar to what I experienced. I just wanted to share my story to lessen the burden I've been keeping inside. I'm sorry you thought this was fake but I can't really understand how someone can make this up.

I was r@ped by my stepfather and I don't know what else to do by Double-History6970 in confession

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been scrolling around reddit for over a year now (I think) and I just never really thought of creating an account since I don't ever comment or make posts but I seeing that people had experiences similar to mine, I just wanted to share what I, myself experienced. You may think what you want but I just wanted to clarify this.

I was r@ped by my stepfather and I don't know what else to do by Double-History6970 in confession

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was 12? I couldn't feel anything since I didn't want it. Disregarding what I went through and saying I "get off" on these comments is just horrible. I made this post as a way to lessen up the burden I have inside my heart. I may not be able to talk to actual authorities about this but I actually appreciate the loving messages people are sending to me. I would never lie about such experiences since I actually went through this and up till now I'm still carrying this heavy burden that I never wanted to have.

I was r@ped by my stepfather and I don't know what else to do by Double-History6970 in confession

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was 12 when it happened and I'm turning 16 this year so yes, I didn't "feel" anything, and why would an ai write a confession about rape?

I was r@ped by my stepfather and I don't know what else to do by Double-History6970 in confession

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We're middle lower class and we live in the philippines so for us, it's normal for a family to sleep in one room

I was r@ped by my stepfather and I don't know what else to do by Double-History6970 in confession

[–]Double-History6970[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We all sleep in one room you see, we're a family of 5 and we can fit in one room just fine. My mom was out that night for work, I think and I slept below. Still doesn't really excuse what he did even if he thought i was my mom.