Does belief in God make him real?

[VoodooTengo]

Does the fact that someone believes in God make him real?

[KingOfTheIsles]

No

[TheKwas]

No

dis^^

[David Deas]

Does my little sister's belief in Santa Claus make him real?

[AlokaParyetra]

Real in what way?

Belief in God does not make him observable. It does not make him physical, testable, or tangible.

However, belief in God makes him real in the same way consciousness is real. It becomes an abstract concept, like hot and cold, or redness. Really, i would say that a belief in God makes God more of an adjective than a noun.

[The Good]

Does the fact that someone believes in God make him real?

Yes, but to that person, unless you change. Believing in God is a test of faith, so to that certain person, of course he would think God is real. There is much evidence for the existance of God, I won't go much further than that, but look around you, especially at the stars at night, it is beautiful, isn't it? It simply could not have been an accident, unless of course, God caused that 'accident.' Now before you post a counter post to mine, just look around you, the world is too detailed looking to be an accident.

[Mathias]

Yes, but to that person, unless you change. Believing in God is a test of faith, so to that certain person, of course he would think God is real. There is much evidence for the existance of God, I won't go much further than that, but look around you, especially at the stars at night, it is beautiful, isn't it? It simply could not have been an accident, unless of course, God caused that 'accident.' Now before you post a counter post to mine, just look around you, the world is too detailed looking to be an accident.

The stars are only beautiful because we perceive them as such and the universe is complex only to our puny little brains.

[basics]

A few days after I had felt that warmth flow through me that confirmed my change of life, aye and change in attitude, I was lying in my bed engrossed in the Bible that had come into my possession, itself quite a mystery. From reading the thing suddenly I was in the air overlooking a scene that made me cringe with fear for below me in the dim light was a blackened thing attached to something I at first didn’t recognise.

As I appeared to get closer the head of what was a man turned up towards me and had not his mouth opened in what appeared speech that I never heard I doubt that I would have known it to be human. His whole appearance was one of blackened and ghastly horror that I felt myself trying to get away from whatever I was seeing. When I say that I was frightened I mean frightened so much that the sweat was pouring down my whole body, and that is how I was when I suddenly wakened up.

Even when I got up to wash and shave the picture stayed in me so that the shaking never left. Eventually when reaching the garage where my friend worked, this guy by the way was the chap who dared me to go into that little Baptist Church not that many days before, and when he saw me asked if I had seen a ghost. Seen a ghost, I felt as if I had seen pure evil, so I related the thing to him at which he suggested I speak to the minister about it. Feeling scared and rather stupid I insisted that he keep to himself what I had told him.

Later that week, Sunday evening in fact, after the service we all went as usual up to the manse for tea and conversation. There were perhaps around 9-10 people in little groups having their own discussions when someone brought up the crucifixion as described in the Old Testament.and immediately I asked them to let me speak. This itself was quite unusual for here was I at 40 years of age and a total newcomer to most of them yet explaining what I had seen only days before.

The room or the noise in the room frittered to silence as they hung on my words until the minister’s wife said that God had given me a message, a sign. What I had seen in vision, dream or reality corresponded to all that I could later find in Scripture about the crucifixion and showed me a little of the reality of the horror. But from that day on I have never doubted what Jesus Christ went through for me and others like me. Needless to say and to my shame I don’t share this much because of the flack it brings.

So yes, there is a God, the same God as described in Scripture and the same God who does what He says He does and part of that is that man cannot believe in Him because He has blinded them through sin that they cannot unless revealed by Himself. Once regenerate there is no man who has any more doubt except perhaps why they themselves were ever chosen, but the answer to that lies with God. I have yet to fathom why me when there seems so many more qualified but qualification doesn’t enter the thinking of God.

[David Deas]

It's a sad day when people decide reality is subjective.

[Tecumseh]

Real in what way?

Belief in God does not make him observable. It does not make him physical, testable, or tangible.

However, belief in God makes him real in the same way consciousness is real. It becomes an abstract concept, like hot and cold, or redness. Really, i would say that a belief in God makes God more of an adjective than a noun.

Yep. It depends on your definition of "real". You have a concept of God in your mind, so it exists there at the very least.

Existence external to the mind though? No, I don't think so. You can't think or "believe" something into existence external to the mind.

[VoodooTengo]

^^^David Deas
There is nothing more subjective than reality, and it is all a state of mind. Reality isnt observable or even percieveable to any empherical extent. Its possible that we could all be part of some kids dream, in a world much like our own. I think mentally and conciouslly we exist on a plane completely different than our physical existance, and it would be hard to say that what we percieve to be real is real because its based on a chemical cocktail in our brains.

Personally i believe belief in God makes him real to that person, like Lucius Julius said. The movie what dreams may come if any of you have seen that sort of sums up my opinion of it, that whatever you believe may happen to you when you die will happen.

[KingOfTheIsles]

There is much evidence for the existance of God, I won't go much further than that, but look around you, especially at the stars at night, it is beautiful, isn't it? It simply could not have been an accident, unless of course, God caused that 'accident.' Now before you post a counter post to mine, just look around you, the world is too detailed looking to be an accident.

No. Once again. Non-sequitur logic.

a) Complexity does not necessarily mean design.
b) Even if it did, it does not prove "God", only that there was a designer.

[Kythras]

Not in the real world, in some (good) fantasy cosmologies it does...

[Blau&Gruen]

Does the fact that someone believes in God make him real?

What does real mean to you?

[Vhailor]

Lately Im "flirting" with the idea that God actually is our own belief in him, not that it just makes him real.

Still confused about it though.

[David Deas]

I guess schizophrenia is fine as well, since those delusions are real to that individual. Maybe religion is a form of schizophrenia.

[Blau&Gruen]

I guess schizophrenia is fine as well, since those delusions are real to that individual. Maybe religion is a form of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a very serious psychic disease. Therefore, you would be wrong to relate religion to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia
Some philosophers have described their approach to think in comparision to a process of the healing of a disease (the christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard or the jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig), though they used the term metaphorical. If you know, what that means.

[Niccolo Machiavelli]

Reality emerges in ones consciousness, so if someone perceives god as a reality, he exists as real for that individual.

However, I would agree with David Deas interpretation, as the perception of god as being real is not based on evidence and logic in individuals perceiving him so.

[Chaigidel]

god does not need belief to exist therefore belief does not determine ITs existence, yet the image of that understanding of "god" its definitely forged by the belief of the person regarding the image of god, but god itself remains untouchable. --- to say god is he is the belief in the image of your understanding since our minds are all too feeble to properly understand that which is called god.

[Tom Paine]

Objectively, belief (or conception) - despite the Cartesian ontological argument - does not create reality or make things real; rather, it makes them subjectively real, but then disbelief makes God subjectively nonexistent equally.