What are some of the ways God has shown his love for you?

I don’t believe in god. At all.

What if the Christians are right and soethe6 is mistaken. He will have made a dreadful mistake!

In every mishaps in my life, I am seeing God. They are all great lessons for me. It is an indication that your spiritual guides are teaching you something very valuable.

Birth in the US, health, family and many more each day

Katrina, 911, the fires in California, Iraq, Bush – Yep, God sure does love America all right.

@ Cardinal: Though you probably don’t realize it, what you have just articulated is a simple version of Pascal’s Wager. That is, “why not err on the side of believing in god, rather than risk eternal damnation for being wrong.”

As you’ll see from even cursory examination of this stance, it’s full of holes. For example, it (a) assumes that god rewards belief rather than rational skepticism, (b) does not constitute a true transcendental belief because it is pragmatic—i.e., does not meet the Kantian demand for categorical belief—(c) denies the possibility of a benevolent god who rewards good works regardless of stated beliefs and punishes sin regardless of stated beliefs, another Kantian position, and (d) assumes that belief has no cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal’s_Wager

Other ideas?

And of course that is not to mention that, depending upon your reading of the various sacred texts, taking Pascal’s wager and believing in god also likely entails the risk of believing in the wrong god…which is pretty much a crapshoot, since any belief in one god goes against the convictions of a few billion other people.

But to properly answer your question, along the lines of Maverick, what god has done for me has been basically bad: he has left on earth billions of people who still believe, and who therefore take it upon themselves to screw up human life on earth as much as possible. Politically, socially, even morally. Wars, religious justifications for racist and homophobic violence, corruption and moral hypocrisy. There is no such thing as an ethically innocent believer in my book.

Of course, not believing on some level is also very difficult. But I try.

God hasn’t shown me anything. Absolutely every I’ve done and earned my life was done by me, and me alone.

I give no credit to fairy tale characters in the sky. On the same hand, I also take responsibilty for every action I take, good or bad. I don’t push blame on a myth called fate or some devine strategy conjured from the clouds.

Unless, maybe… God made me write this! Now why would he do that!?!?!?

Just kidding, I totally belive in Zeus though.

soethe6: I did understand what I said. Pascal repeats himsely over and over in his thesis. however if you truly believe then his statement where ” He contends the wise decision is to wager that God exists, since [“If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing”, meaning one can gain eternal life if God exists, but if not, one will be no worse off in death than if one had not believed] is flawed. A true believer expects the alternative to believing is to spend etereny in Hell! You are far and away worse off.

@ mavrick its better than living in Iraq, Indonesia, Aids infested regions of Africa. Man look at the good here. How many days has it been since you have had a meal?

I believe in god. I believe he gave all free will. With free will comes responsibility. We are accountable for our actions. Therefor, it is unfair to blame god for the bad in this world. Our action carry consequence. Good of bad. And as a connected people, our actions will almost certainly affect others. God is not to blame. Free will.

I also believe in God. He loves each one of us on earth unconditionally. Ditto on jcol79, it is unfair to blame God for anything bad happens.

He’s been there through good and bad.

Love his sunsets, the stars in the magnficent sky, creatures big and small and nature.

I can’t imagine life without God. He is very near those who are hurting.

everyone has basic impulses for selfishness, the point of the god and religion and etc is very important because it shows many things, including how to overcome selfishness and how to be loving to others etc. and “god rewards good people” is really a spinoff of “if you are a nice person, you will get nice things”, which comes from experience, such as helping someone out and later on when you need help they help you back. If it was an evil person, others will know they are evil and will not help them or even support them so they must become poor and weak and full of pain and regret it is inevitable, it is life. god is just a symbol to show everyone that, honestly, you really DO have to swallow your pride and let whoever is right be right, and do right to everyone, and right will be done to you. spread happiness and prove it to yourself that you can get happiness back, its easy and its almost free.

“I give no credit to fairy tale characters in the sky.”

Is this kind of comment necessary? Please just move on, and find a question you are interested in. There’s no reason for you to chime in just to be be rude to the original poster.

@jcol79

God has a plan, everything is predefined as a divine plan, also fate. But you have free will.

So you do, but you don’t but you do. Wait, I got lost again.

Absolutely every I’ve done and earned my life was done by me, and me alone.

Whether there is a God or not, this statement is ignorant. No one has ever done everything in their life alone.

We all rely on others for what we do and others rely on us for what we do.
No one is independent.

Disclaimer, Spargett your contributions here on fluther are of value and appreciated by me, as I’m sure they are by others. It’s the statement I find fault with not you.

As for the question. God gave me a far more beautiful son than I could ever deserve.

http://proof-of-god.freewebsitehosting.com/

@Theotherkid

No matter how many charts and graphs that guy uses, he isn’t going to prove sh*t. Except for my theory that the free web hosting services host 99.9% of all conspiracy theorist’s content.

Sorry.

You have to love the irony that god would give scientific proof of himself to the world, but require it to be hosted on sites with pop up adds. Although thanks @Theotherkid for linking me to George Hammond information. Good to find another proof that there is a certain amount of clinical insanity in the belief of god.

Making me like Himself