r/religion • u/Turbulent_Cap3272 • 1d ago
Any anecdotal proof of god
I have been reading quite a few religious texts, I was a believer in a creator but now with the suffering in the world, not having conscience without a functioning brain makes me think god does not exist. Do you guys have anything to refer to apart from religious texts because they will be circular in nature one text will point to their belief.
Do you guys believe in god and why?
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u/Snoo77835 1d ago
Why specifically anecdotal evidence? Wouldn't independently verifiable evidence be preferable, particularly when you're already questioning the reliability of religious testimony?
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u/Turbulent_Cap3272 1d ago
Yeah, but independent evidence doesn’t seem possible ig else it would’ve been established as the truth by now?
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u/SacredGnosis Buddhist 1d ago
For a creator-God?
No.
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u/Turbulent_Cap3272 1d ago
What do you believe, any proof of it?
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u/SacredGnosis Buddhist 1d ago
() What do I believe? There’s suffering. There’s an origin to suffering. There’s the cessation of suffering. There’s the path leading to its cessation.
() Any proof of it? Well, what kind of proof are you actually looking for? I may be able to assist you.
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u/Turbulent_Cap3272 1d ago
Something to point to life after ig
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u/SacredGnosis Buddhist 1d ago
No one can prove an afterlife for you. It’s a wisdom that you would have to acquire for yourself. To start off, consider the principle of continuity that exists on all scales in the universe. In other words, when there’s life there will be death. When there’s death there will be life. The principle of continuity exists on all scales. This doesn’t mean that who you are now, continues. However, there’s is continuity.
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u/onemansquest Deist | Abd-ru-shin / Grail Message 23h ago
Anecdotal. :My life got better when I started focusing on making the world a better place.
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u/well-of-wisdom Atheist 13h ago
The best I got is that when I was young and lost a tooth, I put it in a glass of water. Next morning the tooth was gone and replaced by a quarter.
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u/Same_Version_5216 Animistic Celtic Pagan/non Wiccan traditional Witch 12h ago
Wow! Same thing happened to me but I put my tooth under the pillow! Oh how I miss that tooth fairy.
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u/sir_schuster1 Omnist Mystic 19h ago
I saw a vision of Jesus, wearing robes of light, burning in glorious radiance, with his arms wide and accepting. I felt completely known, as if he could see through me and knew my past and my future, and I felt unconditional love and acceptance for exactly who I was. I heard reverberating through my mind the word "REVERENCE".
My experience is not unique, I've spoken with other people who have had similar experiences, though the details can change, but the feeling, I think, is similar.
To me this is a human experience, this is God, this is the secret mystery of nature expressing itself, this is a socially evolved trait, it is part of us, dwelling in our subconscious. The part of our psyche which nature reserves for itself.
So God knows what we know, God only has as much power to change the world as we change the world in God's name, God is only as good as expressed by us.
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u/Turbulent_Cap3272 18h ago
I have a few questions with this. One is what is eternity? Is there a purpose of it. Second is why does the conscience of those with brain damage get impacted doesn’t it show our reliance on the physical body we can’t exist outside of it.
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u/sir_schuster1 Omnist Mystic 8h ago
>what is eternity?
A long time
>Is there a purpose of it
If we give it one
>doesn't it show our reliance on the physical body
Yes I agree
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u/teknix314 15h ago
Yes, God is real. I have the gift of the Holy Spirit. God has revealed Himself to me and made His home with me as promised in the Bible.
I believe in God, because God has revealed Himself to me. Moreover He has revealed Himself to mankind many times.
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u/RPH626 13h ago
I believe in God because his existence is not restricted to supposed sacred texts. God also does not have to be good, actually I believe that he is evil as i am a misotheist. There are also some logical reasons like Primary Cause argument and fine turning. Other reasons includes atheists explanations for origin of reality being pretty bad
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u/Important-Gas-9305 Solo Practice, Panentheistic Wide Monotheism, Chariot Enjoyer 13h ago
I spent four years with ArchAngel Michael by my side as I was under attack from others via spiritual warfare. I didn’t get to see him, but he would use tech like printing stuff from my printer and he put his hand on my head once.
I had Jesus call my name out loud. After that, the power in the entire neighborhood went out. I responded and called out Jesus’ name. And he brought the lights back on immediately.
And I got to hear God speak two words to me “stop whining” because I was very distraught. But His words were like a command to my entire being that calmed me and brought me to peace and stillness.
No, Jesus is not God. But he is awesome. And I can see how many would confuse Jesus as God if they only got to experience him and not God as well.
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u/Qarotttop 1d ago
I had this vision that showed me the first 6 days, starting with "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth!" and as that happened I saw a huge wave of light leave the sun and earth in its wake.
So that was something of my own mind that I saw before but I never imagined I'd see it like that, and then the second day happened, where we brake from scripture.
"On the second day the Lord created the sky, and he created fire and earth and water, and earth and fire and water, and water and fire and earth, and fire and earth and water."
And that was ground shaking, especially after seeing the sixth day, which is where I'll go next because the third and 4th and 5th go about exactly the same as was said in the scripture, except I do have this hunch that there's one galaxy for every human that will ever live, and we got maybe ~1400 years left on the clock.
So Adam was born, the sixth day, the Lord gathers the dirt, looking like snakes of dirt moving under the grass in the ground of their own accord, and when the dirt was gathered, the Lord breathed the breath of life into his nose and he awoke, a new consciousness.
He laid still until he heard a voice in his head, a female's, saying, "Adam, open your eyes!"
And he did, and he turned to the garden, and the Lord ushered him in saying, "Come here, you little dog cat fish bird fucker!"
And Adam ran into the garden, saying "la la la la la," very obviously only using the bottom right part of the brain, where the 7th, 8th, and 9th element of the second day were.
Picture of what I saw of the second day, for reference. Adam also saw this without color on the 6th.
https://imgur.com/gallery/sky-12-elements-of-fire-earth-water-tQ5qcdN
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u/SpiritedReasoner 1d ago
There’s a good recent book by Dr. Jeffery Long on the many anecdotal references to God by people who have reported their near death experiences. I think the title is God and the Afterlife.
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u/Turbulent_Cap3272 1d ago
What do you believe in?
Do you think it’s just the brains defense mechanism1
u/SpiritedReasoner 5h ago
I don't believe it's just the brain's defense mechanism. There's actually an even better book, one by John Burke, titled Imagine the God of Heaven, which deals with that exact question in Chapter 2. ("Science, Skeptics, and NDEs.") I'd highly recommend reading his book.
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u/Beefpumper 1d ago
Why is there anything at all? Science explains how things work, but not why a universe exists in the first place. A lot of philosophers, going back to Aristotle before Christianity, reasoned to a first cause.
The universe's physical constants fall in a narrow range that allows life. Physicists agree on that. They disagree on why, but it's a fair thing to weigh.
On consciousness, you're right that the mind depends on the brain. But science still can't explain why brain activity produces experience at all. Philosophers call it the "hard problem," and it's unsolved.
For anecdotal cases, the Lourdes Medical Bureau has documented about 70 healings that doctors there couldn't explain medically. Not proof, but worth looking into.
Suffering is the hardest one. Christians believe He entered it and suffered alongside us.
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u/thecasualthinker 1d ago edited 13h ago
Edit: Beefpumper has looked into it, and knows a lot! Hooray! But alao, everyone should learn more about this, its really cool stuff!!!
The universe's physical constants fall in a narrow range that allows life
I recommend digging deeper into this, its not nearly as strong as you think it is.
The reality is that one constantly exists in a very narrow range, other constants can vary by very wide amounts. (If I remember correctly, one of the electromagnetic constants can vary by about 40% and we would still have the ability to see life as we know it) The Gravitational Constant is the big one.
The troubling thing is, whenever you see this point brought up its always the same tactic. Its first said that there are a bunch of constants. Then the Gravitational Constant is used to show the narrow band it has to be in. But none of the others are spoken about, none of them are even named. Its always spoken in a way that makes it sound like all the constants are this same level of fragile, when they aren't.
Its also all resting on the assumption that the constants can actually have been any different. We don't know what makes the constants act the way they do, so it is currently equally possible that the constants have to be the way they are. But the argument never makes room for this possibility.
Its also a pretty big problem that this whole line of reasoning only works when we want to talk about "life as we know it". Its still possible that life can form with different constants, but we wouldn't recognize it today.
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u/Beefpumper 1d ago
I worded it too broadly. Not every constant is finely tuned, and some have pretty wide ranges. Physicists genuinely disagree on how strong this argument is. Fred Adams published a big review in 2019 arguing many parameters could vary a lot and still allow life, while Luke Barnes defends the fine tuning case.
A couple of corrections though. The gravitational constant usually isn't the main example. The one most cited in the scientific literature is the cosmological constant, which Steven Weinberg showed in 1987 has to be very small for galaxies to form at all. And it's not just one number. Martin Rees discusses six in Just Six Numbers, and others include the strength of the strong nuclear force and the low entropy of the early universe.
On "life as we know it," that's a fair objection, but a lot of the tight cases don't just rule out carbon life. They rule out stable atoms, stars, or galaxies, which makes any complex life hard to picture.
And I agree we don't know whether the constants could have been different. That's an open question.
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u/thecasualthinker 1d ago edited 1d ago
All great expansions! Glad to see someone who has taken time to look into it. Can't tell you how many times I've seen people who just parrot the idea without knowing much about it. Its quite annoying.
Actually I should correct on my end too. The "life as we know it" only really applies if we are talking about the weaker constants. Like the electromagnetic one I mentioned. It would still allow for life. But if we changed the Gravitational Constant, or the Cosmological Constant, then it is more correct to say we wouldn't even have a universe as we know it. Since I doubt we would even have things like atoms.
Its an interesting space to look at. I don't find it convincing at all. As soon we can look at it as constants being able to be different, then we run smack into the Anthropic Principle. But I can't really get to that point yet until we know if things can be different. Recent findings have brought some possibilities where some of them could be different, and I find it fascinating.
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u/Beefpumper 1d ago
Good conversation. I appreciate the back and forth. Those recent findings sound interesting, I'll have to look into them.
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u/lydiardbell 13h ago edited 1h ago
An argument against fine-tuning that I find convincing - and maybe it's philosophically unsound, since it seems to hardly ever be brought up - is that the vast majority of the universe is actually massively hostile to life, and it seems reasonable to expect that if it was finely tuned for life by an omnipotent and omniscient creator, this would not be the case.
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u/thecasualthinker 13h ago
Well that does run smack into the Anthropic Principle, just on a more local scale rather than using it for the constants themselves. We only see life where we expect to see life. So its kinda like saying "the vast majority of the earth is hostile towards fish, but we find fish in the ocean so the ocean must be made for fish". Its backwards.
If we found life in a place where life cannot exist, that would actually be a better indication.
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u/Turbulent_Cap3272 1d ago
Like the one problem I have is if conscience is so dependent on the brain, memories too, how could we say we will have that once we don’t have the physical body. In another sense there feels like there’s nothing pointing us to if conscience survives external of our body
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u/Beefpumper 1d ago
Showing the mind depends on the brain isn't the same as showing the brain is all the mind is. The philosopher William James made this point in 1898. A radio depends on working parts to play music, but that doesn't mean the radio creates the music. I'm not saying that proves anything, just that the dependence alone doesn't close the question.
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u/Snoo77835 1d ago
An unanswered question is not a license to assert an answer as a truth about reality
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u/Beefpumper 1d ago
Did I do that?
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u/Snoo77835 1d ago
You're presenting unanswered questions as reasons to consider God as an explanation. But you haven't established why God is a better explanation, or even why these observations should favor that hypothesis in the first place.
An unexplained phenomenon is evidence of an unanswered question, not evidence of your preferred answer.
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u/Beefpumper 1d ago
So what would science do? Propose a hypothesis. Why can't I?
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u/Snoo77835 21h ago
You can. I never suggested otherwise.
But proposing a hypothesis and establishing that the observations support it are two different things. What about these observations makes God a better explanation, or even favors that hypothesis in the first place?
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u/Beefpumper 14h ago
An observation favors a hypothesis when it's more expected if that hypothesis is true than if it isn't. That's the standard way evidence works.
Existence: everything physical we know of depends on something else. If there's an ultimate explanation, it has to be something that doesn't depend on anything. A necessary, non physical cause fits that role. Another physical thing just pushes the question back.
Fine tuning: if a mind set the conditions, a universe that allows life is expected. If not, it's one outcome among many possible ones, unless you add a multiverse. That's why many treat it as evidence, though it depends on whether the constants could have been different.
Consciousness: if reality is ultimately mind, finding minds in it isn't surprising. If it's ultimately mindless matter, the hard problem is exactly what we'd expect to struggle with.
None of this is proof, and you can reject the probability judgments. But these aren't arguments from gaps. They start from things we do know: things exist, the constants have the values they have, and we're conscious.
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u/Snoo77835 4h ago
You say an observation favors a hypothesis when it's more expected under that hypothesis than otherwise. I agree. But you haven't established those comparative expectations. For instance, why should we expect a hypothetical universe-creating mind to prefer life-permitting conditions? Merely proposing a mind that would produce those conditions doesn't establish that the observation favors the existence of such a mind.
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u/Beefpumper 3h ago
> why should we expect a hypothetical universe-creating mind to prefer life-permitting conditions?
The argument doesn't need a mind to definitely choose life. It only needs a life permitting universe to be more likely with a mind than without one.
Without a mind, nothing prefers any outcome. So if the constants could have been different, and if life permitting values are rare among the possibilities, then landing on one by chance is a long shot. A mind, on the other hand, acts for reasons, and conscious beings are something a mind could value. Even a modest chance of that beats no preference at all.
To be clear, nobody knows whether it actually is a long shot. That depends on two things science can't currently answer: whether the constants could have been different at all, and what the full range of possibilities looks like. We only have one universe to observe, so there's nothing to compare it to. That's why I said you can reject the premises, and why none of this is proof.
But it cuts both ways. Science hasn't disproven a creator either. Science studies how the natural world works, and whether something stands behind it is outside what it can test. Not being disproven isn't the same as being proven. It's an open question, and I'd rather hold my belief honestly as a reasonable one than claim certainty I don't have. That's where I stand.
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u/Snoo77835 3h ago
You're confusing the absence of a preference with the probability of an outcome. That nobody prefers life-permitting conditions in a universe without a mind doesn't establish that those conditions are less likely.
You acknowledge that we don't know whether the constants could have differed, or what the distribution of possible values would look like. So on what grounds are you claiming that a life-permitting universe is more likely with a mind than without one?
I'm not asking you to prove or disprove a creator. I'm asking what establishes that the observations favor your hypothesis in the first place.
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u/Constant-Bat-4846 1d ago
yeah none of these are definitive proof but the questions around existence and consciousness are genuinely interesting and worth exploring even if you end up reaching a different conclusion
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u/Remarkable-Study128 1d ago
yeah these are interesting arguments to explore but unexplained things aren't automatically evidence of god and that's where the debate gets complicated
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u/MasterVegito7 1d ago
God has been proven to me many times, but throughout most of my life there was no proof at all, so I know what that's like. Maybe you need to be more interesting to God.
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u/tubby_chumpkins Catholic 1d ago
Anecdotal? There are so many testimonies about the supernatural and God/gods that it's overwhelming. I find the naturalist position relies on the belief in human delusion in a way that requires a lot of faith.
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u/Da1UHideFrom Atheist 1d ago
There's no proof. If there was, I would be a believer.