Why believe in God? Personal Revelation?

[jubal]

Let me first begin by asking if the world was without shape or form (no space or time) then how can you derive knowledge of God?

It is literally impossible to imagine a image of God without relying on a spacial framework.

Even if you imagine a circle and label it space and place a image of God next to it all that has occurred is the creation of a rendering of God and a circle in the second dimension. (which is spatial)

So what now?

Can we take the word of a prophet who has a unique understanding?

If we do that however the prophets words are gibberish to us even if the prophet himself understands what is being said.

Saying " I was talking to God" (a being outside time/space) is like saying "I was drawing blue colorless 20 sided triangles who were talking to squares with no right angles"

Those are words,but they are all incomprehensible to you even if we assume I personally witnessed them.

We could say that God is a logical necessity but because of of mental limitations any person claiming to know what a thing in not space/time is building our understanding of not space/time entirely out of space/time and is therefore fallacious.

So how do you justify belief?

[Scimitar]

First tell me "how you do it" :)

that question was the most interesting part of your post, barring that, the rest was (no offence) badly opined.

Scimi

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you jubal; and welcome to the forum;

So how do you justify belief?

We have to rely on our Holy scripture; to have faith and trust in God as we journey through life. God can be a great comfort in life when things go wrong.

A few years ago, I had tests done for cancer, about a month later the doctor phoned and said he urgently wanted to see me, it was non – Hodgkin Lymphoma, this was a name I recognised, our friend had this cancer, and died a few months later. I prayed for the wisdom, strength, peace and serenity to do God’s will, whether the cancer was a death sentence, or just an inconvenience. I can only say that from the moment of making this prayer, I have experienced a profound sense of peace, and the thought of cancer has never troubled me for a moment.

Cancer can be a truly worrying process, you wait a month or two for tests, you wait for the results, and you wait for more tests, but the prayer to do God’s will sort of handed the problem to God, and I have never had to worry. I have never once prayed for healing, at the age of 62, the prayer for healing was too complicated, it might or might not be my time to go. Recognising this profound sense of peace comes from God, gives me reason to be thankful.

I could not imagine this sense of peace without a faith and trust in God. I can say, from the moment of hearing about my cancer and making that prayer, I could talk about cancer in the same way as I talk about what’s for dinner?

In the spirit of searching for God.

Eric

[eesa the kiwi]

alhamdulilah one advantage islam has over religions is that we do not try and liken god to his creation in anyway
Allah swt is beyond our comprehension, we know certain attributes about him for example him being merciful but we believe in these atttributes without likening him to creation or trying to explain how these are. eg We know that Allah is above the heavens but we do not know how he is so.
if you havent already found yourself a copy of the quran and read it i suggest you do so,
in the meantime i will leave you with a short surah found near the end of the quran inshaallah you will find it beneficial

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[Tim_the_Plumber]

If this is a challenge to explain why people believe in God then it is perhaps the least strong one I have seen.

Our human understanding of physics/the universe is beyond normal easy human language to describe. Why would any being which is beyond that universe fit easily into human language?

That said I am of course an atheist myself.

[kidcanman]

Time/Space

Of course the particular argument that you have presented begins with a premise that automatically fits your conclusion. You imposed this premise on us: "God is outside of time/space". You should have first asked us what we believe about God and then proceeded to draw conclusions.

What we believe is that God is outside of time/space and he is also inside time/space.

That should satisfy your argument.

[kritikvernunft]

Let me first begin by asking if the world was without shape or form (no space or time) then how can you derive knowledge of God? It is literally impossible to imagine a image of God without relying on a spacial framework. ... So how do you justify belief?

From within a universe, looking back in timespace at its origin, we can only approach it from the right, i.e. from points in time that come after the beginning. It is indeed not possible to approach the origin from the left, i.e. points in time that would come before the beginning, because negative times are not defined and not possible to define within the existing universe.

Hence, we can approach the original and originating event of the universe, by moving back in time, and claim that it is the attraction point for the repeated application of the causality function.

Say that we have a causality function that maps a consequence onto its causes. We also axiomatize the following statements:

[1] Time is finite.
[2] For every consequential event, there is always at least one event that is its cause ("generalized causality").
[3] A cause always strictly precedes its consequence.
[4] Supertasks do not exist, i.e. it is not possible to traverse an infinite number of events in a finite amount of time, since that would expend an infinite amount of energy.

Given these axioms, we will end up with exactly one attraction point in time point zero, at the beginning of the universe. This is actually, exactly what Aristotle claimed in Physics, book VIII, part 5:

If then everything that is caused must be caused by something, and the cause must either itself be caused by something else or not, and in the former case there must be some first cause that is not itself caused by anything else, while in the case of the immediate cause being of this kind there is no need of an intermediate cause that is also caused (for it is impossible that there should be an infinite series of causes, each of which is itself caused by something else, since in an infinite series there is no first term)-if then everything that is caused is caused by something, and the first cause is caused but not by anything else, it much be caused by itself.

Aristotle also claims that if the first cause is an attraction point for the repeated application of the causality function for any possible event, it is also the attraction point for itself. This is a claim that clearly rest on the principle of least surprise.

In Physics, book VIII, part 6, Aristotle further claims that there is only one such attraction point:

It is sufficient to assume only one cause, the first of uncaused things, which being eternal will be the principle of causality to everything else.

Under the assumption of generalized causality, there cannot be two original causes, because one of both will have preceded the other, and hence will be its cause, invalidating the idea that it would also be an original cause. Hence, in the given axiomatization, there is indeed only one first cause possible.

Therefore we can conclude that the belief in a First Cause is equivalent to the belief in the finitude of time, generalized causality, strictly-ordered consequentiality, and the impossibility of supertasks. These beliefs are equivalent. Someone who believes the one, automatically believes the other, because these beliefs can be derived trivially from each other.