I have nothing to prove. You don’t understand faith on a basic level, if the demand is for proof.
Close the thread. If proof was readily available, this thread would not exist as everyone would believe in God.
I’d just like to say that I’m very grateful for your engagement and contribution to this thread. I respect your beliefs even if I don’t share them.
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Hang on. The idea of the thread was that I was interested in why people still believe. I, like others, need proof to believe that a thing exists. You don’t need to provide proof but you do IF you expect us to share your belief.
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And I respect you mate… well, apart from the lawyer part, obviously.
[Hopes obvious joke was seen!]
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So, let me be clear at that point then. I don’t expect you or anyone else to share my belief. If you do believe, great. If you don’t believe, have at it. Live your best life. All of us, for that matter.
I have shared plenty on some of the reasons why I believe. I have had life with and without. From my experience, one is much better.
Funny in a way, I take great comfort in what I see as liberating myself from the thing that gives you great comfort. Each to their own. and why not 
Think of this one though if you wish. I don’t think (never know for certain) I’ll ever see my Gran again so I make a point of bringing her up in family conversations. My family believe they’ll see her again one day. Which version of her is always a bit hazy. The teenager she’d probably want to be with Grandad or the old lady the grandkids remember? Anyway, her memory lives on because I make it live. Relying on an afterlife means people’s lives can fade?
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Edited: Fuck it, it not worth it.
I think the flooding is real. There are accounts across many civilisations that state there were mass floods. There is scarring in the landscape indicative of flooding. There are also growing evidence of meteor or comet impacts. It’s worth looking at temperature data for the Younger Dryas period as well. Some believe this was the result a large asteroid impact that created a massive amount of melt water.
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Right near the start of this thread I described my loss of faith.
This obviously upset my mum, who was still a believer. Partly because she wanted the best for me, but also, I think, because she knew how traumatic I found unjacking myself from religion and felt guilty.
Years passed, the vicar she loved (the cool one I mentioned earlier) died, Church lost a bit of its appeal. Weekly visits became less frequent.
Until one day on the phone she told me she’d stopped going and didn’t believe in God.
What happened, I asked?
A few years earlier she’d got a job as an NHS secretary, which had brought her into near contact with some of the grimmest child abuse cases you could image. And this broke her.
She couldn’t reconcile that suffering and cruelty visited on the most innocent with a benevolent God. Once she had her connection to the church broken, her belief in God couldn’t survive.
I think highlights a couple of things.
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the problem of evil is still the argument against a benevolent, interventionist god. I don’t think the idea can withstand the logic.
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the role that organised religions play in reinforcing belief, and creating excuses and justifications for challenges to faith.
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I never, at any point argued he wasn’t. That you arguing a strawman again.
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It’s this sort of logic/argument that I have to take exception to, as if it’s a binary choice and a universal rule.
Just because this is the experience in your family does not it mean it has any bearing on how everyone else lives your lives.
Talking about dead relatives is not exclusive to atheists.
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I’m not sure I got an answer to my previous question. Is there a religion that doesn’t belief in the after life? It’s pertinent to my view that the human psyche is inherently fragile.
Would you class reincarnation as the afterlife?
Yes. Anything where you/your soul “goes on”. Where death is not the end.
Probably not then. At least not any major religions. There is Epicureanism which is a philosophy, though there is a train of thought that it fulfills all the criteria of being a religion.
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Another question then. Does being an atheist preclude a belief in an after life?
I’ll let an atheist field that one.
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What say you @cynicaloldgit ?
If anyone’s an Epicurean, you are.
I was invited to a reincarnation event in a few weeks.
I am going to go, sure you only live once… .
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I suppose if there isn’t a God involved, then technically, no?