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Ask HN: When and why did you start believing in God?

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Ask HN: When and why did you start believing in God?

7•dvrp•23h ago
I presume many here are not believers. So, for those who believe—and in the spirit of open and genuine curiosity—I’d love to know what made them change their minds.

Comments

croes•23h ago
Why the limitations to one God?
yawpitch•22h ago
Loaded (and begging) questions are a fundamental part of circular reasoning.
giardini•22h ago
Occam's razor ("Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity")?

I mean, God, isn't one enough? Honestly, it's too much for me!

yawpitch•22h ago
By that argument zero is sufficient.
croes•22h ago
In nature everything has a opposite or opponent. That would make at least two.
yawpitch•19h ago
Show me the opposite, or the opponent, of a black hole.
croes•13h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hole
yawpitch•13h ago
I said show me, not point me at a hypothetical entity with no known pathway to reified existence.
croes•11h ago
> hypothetical entity with no known pathway to reified existence.

More realistic than god.

yawpitch•10h ago
> More realistic than god.

No argument there, but “in nature everything has an opposite” is just as illogical; many things have no opposite, thus it’s not “at least two” it’s zero asshole gods in a nihilistic atheistic universe, one asshole god in a true monotheistic universe, one neutered god and one not-quite god representing the bit that’s been neutered off in a false monotheistic universe, one good god and one bad god in a morally balanced duotheistic universe (looks identical to the zero god(s) option), or a variable number of variably asshole gods in a polytheistic universe.

mrkeen•21h ago
Let's settle on having three then.

(If you had just one, it would look pretty silly calling himself father and praying to himself.)

alonsovm44•22h ago
Because of divine simplicity, the absolute maximum of perfection logically excludes the possibility of more than one.

if there were two gods, they would have to differ from each other in some way. But a being that is pure act (without any potentiality) and absolutely simple (not composed of parts) cannot have any accidental differences. They could only differ in their very “whatness” (essence). However, if they differ in essence, then one has a perfection the other lacks. The one lacking that perfection would not be absolutely perfect, and therefore would not be God. Thus, you cannot have two beings each claiming to be the maximum of being.

croes•22h ago
Then explain evil
mrkeen•22h ago
If you need a god to explain where the universe came from, induction would like a word with you
kisper•17h ago
My understanding of God is not “one more thing in the universe that explains an earlier thing.” It is closer to God as the ground of being itself: the reason anything exists at all, including matter, energy, spacetime, causality, and whatever laws describe them.
Sabinus•14h ago
Couldn't you suppose these gods had the same one-many property as the Trinity and say that it's whole essence is perfect?
sds357•22h ago
Using his name instead of his title/position helps. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Psalms-83-18/
yawpitch•22h ago
Ahh, as in “om namah Shivaya” then?
giardini•22h ago
I fail to see how.
mrkeen•22h ago
Or maybe you're not allowed to!

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-tetragrammaton/

Chalk this up as one more disagreement between believers (that they really should have settled by now, given their interactions with an unbiased, omniscient third-party)

aarond0623•19h ago
It is my understanding that we don't really know how this is pronounced and that this is just another instance of the Tetragrammaton [1] that is normally rendered as LORD with a few exceptions like this. This could just as easily be Yahweh instead of Jehovah.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton

yawpitch•22h ago
Almost every human being started believing in god(s) because they were introduced to the idea by their parents or other family members or teachers in stories and rituals and songs, usually long before they had the capacity to focus on objects more than two feet away. Every human society I’ve ever visited is saturated with the trappings of some religion or another, often many, and the messages and symbols of history’s many mythologies resonate in everything from the architecture to the money.

Those who don’t believe are usually the ones who have changed their minds, not the other way around. It’s not surprising that some number of those change their minds again.

alonsovm44•22h ago
For me it was that the implications of atheistic materialism contradicted basic empiric knowledge. Atheistic materialism is an onthologic monism, the ultimate implication of it is that nothing can be defined since everything is a continuum. yet we can discriminate concrete objects and things. No essence can be defined in Mat-Ath, When I was an atheist I argued that the essence of things can be defined in their composition and geometry (arrangement) of constituent parts. But that is a weak argument since "objects" constantly lose atoms and gain new ones. Think about the atoms you lose and gain through all your life (throwback to the greek boat paradox)

Ultimately it was that in MatAth the person could not be defined, yet we are persons. Also the concept of specie was broken too, every animal would be its own specie.

Then I realized that atheists have no explaination for quantum probabilities, i thought that for God to not exist everything had to be explainable with mechanisms. But when we measure the spin of a particle, whether is spin up or spin down, there is a 50/50 perfect chance? what mechanism makes the choice? There is none, and atheists have no answer other than "thats just how the universe works, period" I realized that since there is no mechanism the only thing that remains to explain it is Will, and if there is will there is a person behind that will.

mrkeen•22h ago
> the ultimate implication of it is that nothing can be defined since everything is a continuum.

What does this even mean?

yawpitch•19h ago
That entire post, run through ChatGPT, gets summarized as “WOO!!!!”.

Not sure the fourth big bang was necessary.

perilunar•34m ago
> atheists have no explaination for ...

So? Better to not be able to explain something, than a glib "god did it".

> atheists have no answer other than "thats just how the universe works, period"

I've never heard an atheist say anything like this. Or a physicist. They're more likely to say "that's how it appears to be. We don't know why. It's a bit of a mystery."

jamesgill•22h ago
Which god?
tim-tday•12h ago
I’m a fan of Ra the sun god.

What could be more reasonable than to worship the source of all heat life and light in this world? Unfortunately I grew up in the wrong era/continent for that.

dotcoma•22h ago
I was told to when I was a toddler, but by the time I turned 12 or 13, I had outgrown the phase.
kisper•21h ago
Grew up in the faith, but never made it my own. I fell away for some years after I left home, with psychedelics, and ‘free’ sexuality before I realized that I had been desperate to fill an emptiness and the find answers to the plaguing questions that plagued me of who I was and what I was for and why I should continue living. It took a night of experimentation in witchcraft to snap me to the realization that if there WAS a god, maybe it was possible that it could be the God that came to be with us as man. “If he is there, if he is all powerful and loving, then surely you will let me know you are there, that you are Truth, because that is what I have been searching for“ was the essence of the prayer that night and the rest is history. I have an M.Sc. in the earth sciences. I loved learning previously about the beautiful and intricate interplay of factors across discrete systems in our physical world and, from the start of my reversion, I have looked for something that I can’t accept in the teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that is logically inconsistent or incoherent within an all-encompassing view of reality, physical and otherwise… something I can unequivocally view as bullshit so that I don’t have to believe it, so I don’t have to impose upon myself everything that would be entailed if religion were indeed all true. Instead, The book has instead been wonderfully illuminating and found it to be a great primer for learning about the spiritual and human side of our metaphysical reality.

Regardless of religion, creed, or motto, it is human to seek the truth and understand it.

dotcoma•21h ago
I’m all for the truth, or even anything resembling the truth.

You can choose to study physics, or sociology, or how the human body works, or the mind, and how to fight diseases etc.

Questions bigger than that seem too big to me, but if trying to find an answer to those questions makes people feel good and/or live good lives, why not?

adamredwoods•21h ago
There is absolutely no god(s). It is a false fabrication of the human mind.
Henchman21•5h ago
There are monsters with human faces though. A great many.
b0rtb0rt•1h ago
what created the universe?
sph•12h ago
I built a more solid foundation for life after discovering spirituality in my mid 30s, but I still do not believe in a God the way religious people do. The existence of a prime mover from which the universe expanded (pretty difficult to refute) doesn't require my worship.

The first few chapters of Alan Watts' "The Way of Zen" opened a completely new world to me outside of rationality which I sorely was ignorant about, and I desperately needed. Having a spiritual perspective from which to view the world is probably the most valuable part of the religious experience. The fantasies people have over the centuries built on top, I really can do without.