can anybody make me a believer?

No, you have to do that yourself.
People can talk about their religion, they might be able to teach you, but the rest is up to yourself.

Nope, it's all a choice.

If you seek and search for the answers to your questions, you will gradually find peace about spirituality/religion/God, or even atheism.

Why the question?

'ook616',

You already are!!!

i was brought up in the church all my life til i moved from my parents home and i still don't get it...i tried to get it, but i don't...i took my children to church when they were young just because whether their is a God or not it doesn't hurt them to learn right from wrong...make sense????

i have nothing much to believe in. i hear storys of gods but how do we know that that one god is what started everything. i want to believe something but its like having to pick what slice of the pie i want. i hope you guys understand.

the most important thing to believe in is yourself ook...i also think the true "believers" believe very fiercely...unconditionally...no questions asked..brenda

We do, but see, everybody believes something, search your heart to find out what is best for YOU.
Everybody from any denomination will tell you that her/his belief is the only right one.
Inform yourself, there are so many possibilities out on the internet nowadays, read as much as you can find about everything, and make up your own mind.

ook616,

Jesus promised to show himself to those who ask. Humble yourself and tell Jesus that you will accept Him as your Lord if He will reveal Himself to you. Being Humble is very important. It took me a long time to be saved, because the chruches I went to early in life focused on Jesus as a man and I refused to bow to another man. "Why is Jesus special?" I thought. It's important to understand that Jesus is God. Jesus created everything that exists. Good luck in your spiritual journey.

you guys are right. thanks awhole lot. i guess all i have to do know is just do some research. again thank you guys.

“can anybody make me a believer?”

I can’t make you a believer, nor would I want to. But if you’d like something to believe in I can share with you my beliefs if you like.

First off, I won’t use any doctrine. So there’s no need to read any books, or believe in any stories that are full of contradictions. I will offer you some Karma laws that have been arrived at by very wise men. These ‘laws’ are not laws in the sense of commandments, but more like ‘laws of nature’ similar to gravity, etc. In other words, it’s just the way things are. It’s not that you *need* to obey them.

Before we go there though, you need to know who you are. Or may be I should say that you need to know what you are. (which is really the same question)

Would you like to be part of something much bigger than yourself?

Well, I’m afraid that’s impossible, because you can’t be any bigger than you already are.

However, it may be possible that you don’t realize what really you are and that could keep you from recognizing who you really are.

Take a look around you. Are you separate from everything around you?

How about the air? Are you separate from the air?

Well, you might at first claim that you are. After all, you are you body right, and air is not a part of your body, it’s just something that your body uses right.

How important is air to the functioning of your body?

What would happen if you’re body was suddenly deprived of air? You’d die right? Air is as much a part of you as anything else.

Well, you might say, so I’d die. Air is still separate from my body!

Ok, how about your blood? Is your blood a part of your body? I claim that is no more (or no less) a part of your body than air is. If I puncture you body your blood will flow out onto the ground and you will die. You can’t live without your blood. You can’t live without air. They are neither the same, nor are they differnet. Both are as much a part of you as any other part of you.

How about your vision? Is that a part of you? What is it that’s a part of you? Your eyeballs? Is that what enables you so see? Can you see without light? Can you see if there is nothing there to be seen?

Can you touch anything that does not also touch you?

Can you hear anything that does not make a sound?

You are not separate from anything. You are a part of a whole. There is no boundary where you cease to exist and the rest of the universe begins.

Where did you come from? Do you know? Did a stork bring you from Never Never land? Or were you born from womb of another living human being? And where did that human come from? Well, I don’t know how much credit you give to the great scientific minds of humanity. But it has been discovered through countless fossil records that all life on Earth began in a very simple state and became increasingly complex. This is not merely a ‘theory’ although there is a ‘theory’ to explain it, but there is hardcore evidence that we came out of this universe via the earth.

Scientific knowledge has also revealed to us that everything in the universe is made of the same ‘stuff’. All life on Earth is carbon-based and also DNA-based. All matter in the entire universe that we can detect is made of a few fundamental particles and forces called quarks, leptons, and boson.

The bottom line in all of this is that you are made of the same stuff that makes up everything else in this universe. In other words, it is a direct observation that you are this universe. There’s no need to merely have faith that this is the case because it is claimed to be true in some fairytale. All of this is known from observing our very nature, and you can know it too if you care to study it. Although that isn’t really necessary. Other’s have already studied these thing so that you don’t need to. But there are places you can go to confirm these fact for yourself if you care to. There is no need to merely believe in unsubstantiated myths.

So what do we have at this point?

Well, there is no definitive border that you can draw where you cease to exist and the universe begins. You are made of the same stuff of everything in the universe, and you are intimately and unavoidably connected with it in every way that you can sense. In fact your senses wouldn’t even work if this were not true.

So you are this universe. Or at least an inseparable part of it.

Now I am going to ask you to believe that this is all there is to it. There is nothing else that you need to believe. You are the universe perceiving itself. And so is everyone else. You are connected with everyone and everything. And this will always be true because there is nothing else that you can be.

What about when you die? What happens then?

Well, it should be obvious. If everything that is you, is this universe, then when your body dies you will still be this universe. You haven’t gone anywhere. You have simply changed form. You were the universe before you were born, and you will continue to be the universe after you die. The journey of life was merely a ride on a momentary wave that you wore as a body. You will wear many bodies and journey through many lives. Just as the ocean has many waves yet when they break on the shore they merely flow back into the ocean to become yet another wave to break on yet another shore.

This is the true nature of your being. There are several religions that explain this view in various ways. The two that are closest to what I have described above are Taoism, and Zen Buddhism (two entirely different religions, but have much in common). There are even non-religious philosophies that describe this same picture. The picture is that we are the spirit of the universe. Whether you wish to think of this as a ‘god’ is a matter of semantics. Some do, others prefer not to use the word ‘god’. But the underlying idea is the same. We are the spirit of the universe. We are the essence of the wave (the body), we are not the wave (the body) itself.

I might also suggest that this picture can (and has been) told with much more romanticism attached to it. My brief description of it in a post is necessarily quite lame. It is an extremely beautiful picture of an all-compassionate ‘god’ or ‘spirit’ that can never abandon anyone for any reason. It’s the nature of the spirit that you are it and can never be separated from it. God manifests herself in you. (my personal choice to refer to god as feminine). The spirit has no gender, but it sounds better to refer to god as a him or her rather than an ‘it’. But ultimately it is YOU, or you are IT. Always.

Finally I offer you the Karma Laws. These laws make perfect sense when you realize that you are this universe. How the universe reacts to you will ultimately depend on how you react to it. That’s pretty much the basis behind all of these ‘laws’ of nature. You are a wave, and if you make strong waves you will be splashed by them. If you make gentle waves you will be calmed by them.

http://thejourneyinward.net/karma/karmalaws.html

And just to reference a famous person who endorses everything I’ve just said I’ll offer you the following quote.

“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.” – Albert Einstein

Notice the reference to Buddhism which is one of the religions I referred to as having this pantheistic view that we are the universe.

Finally, let me just point out that I did not attempt to ‘prove’ anything to you. I did offer some logical arguments along the way in the hope of offering some rationality for the picture. However, the bottom line is that you don’t need to believe this view. Nothing bad will happen to you if you don’t believe in this view – at least not because you don’t believe it! This view doesn’t require your belief. It’s just the way things are whether you believe it or not.

A believer of what?

No-one can MAKE anyone do anything....unless there's a gun to one's head, or some other threat,...a person can be influenced by another...a person can have suggestions made, but everything, comes down to your own discernment.

flamebait. god flamebait.

Which one???

ahem - Madison Ave. on line 1....

S1ow wrote:
"flamebait. god flamebait."

I don't know Slow. In light of the following it appears to be a genuine request.

ook wrote:
"you guys are right. thanks awhole lot. i guess all i have to do know is just do some research. again thank you guys."

I hope it was genuine. I'd hate to think I did all that typing just in response to flamebait.

Ook, start with believing in yourself.

Slow, you got it!

<---- reads minds

Slow, you got it!

<---- reads minds

Well his profile has him with a "bunch" of bananas in his mouth....

Hmmm......



But just in case....

Jess gave my answer for me.... Can anyone "make" you do anything, other than be physical force or extreme coercion (e.g. threatening to kill a loved one, etc.).