As a panentheist I kind of see the cosmos as a life giving entity which is kind of like god.. in that the cosmos creates life, it is life, and it is intelligent in that we are intelligent and contained within it. You don't have to see god as a biblical entity described in the Hebrew bible. So I believe in a kind of greater fractal cosmic computing god which is the underlying substance of being, something so great we cannot know it. The difference between an my POV and an athiest's is that I suspect that this system represents a greater intelligence imbued with meaning, is the substrate of life and love and despair and relief and free will.

Also, I think that most religions and spiritual movements ultimately try to connect to this cosmic computing force, but are heavily laden with different cultural sociological systems, which have advantages and disadvantages. In some ways these systems have become blueprints for society, which now that they are built may be ready to move beyond, and in other cases they represent intense cultural identity which gives easier access to this meaningful but ultimately unknowable fractal intelligence, and can continue to serve their followers. Even in the athiest experience looking introspectively into the human psyche we can find this force in the awe of our own intelligence, of beauty, and the elegance of mathematics. Heaven, life after death, sin, these are trivial and crude human mythologies.

Because of free will, we are accountable for our actions and must take direct responsibilities for our actions, out of respect for the inherent awesomeness of everything and everyone, we should learn to be decent and admire the essence of every person. And try to live in constant awe of our reality, if that means with ritual or without. Meditate, talk to it, talk to yourself, enjoy mathematics or appreciate beauty, to look for and live with awe, to be connected to it, by whatever means you can. For me, I feel I can best connect to it by the creative process, a means of emulating it.. by writing a game, a piece of music, fiction, painting, creating algorithms, solving problems, making things, painting, inventing characters, gathering and processing information.

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I dont believe in God (or gods) because there is no reason to do so. Nothing in the experience of life indicates that there is a supernatural supreme being. In fact all the evidence of observation reveals only natural processes. That doesn't disprove the existence of God, but you can't you disprove anything like this..

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Your root cause of belief seems to be exactly the same as mine, only opposite in that you seem to see atheism as a default state of birth and I definitely see theism as a default state at birth. It is somewhat uncomfortable to believe that people are just born diametrically opposed to one another, however I suppose I can accept it. It further reinforces my belief that wars are inevitable and any attempts at peace always have been and will always be useless.Why? Because people are just born for conflict.

I believe in god because he helped me out in many situations
and he allways gives me the strengths within.
And even if there would be no god
why not try with him what would me life be without him?
nearly the same
so I give it a try.
hey and Sience guys also just are humans I dont allways believe them

I do believe in an absolute, indestructible and eternal question mark, that maybe has some qualities of a "being" and some qualities of a "theory of everything" - and a lot of implications for my life - and because I´m such a lazy person, and because I grew up under western influence, I tend to call it (much shorter): God.

How did I reach this point?

I was never forced and I never forced myself into "faith" or a particular faith system. Actually - for me - it has nothing to do with faith. I´ve no idea, why people can have faith, or how this faith-thing works. I never pray and I don´t go to church.

In the end it´s a long and personal story, with some similarities to the story, that can be found in a book: "The Man without Qualities" - "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften".

It´s the story of a mathematician, who has lost his faith in the worldly world and finally he makes a mystic attempt. It ends with a very clear and detailed description of this special condition.. Well, actually the book doesn´t end. Musil unfortunately died in 1942 after writing on this book for approximately twenty years.

After I somehow finished this book, I wanted to write a screenplay. It somehow turned into a mystic experience, that lasted for seven days. Very strange, more like translating an abstract message into a text - instead of inventing it.

Maybe I could describe it like this: some events in my life remained in my memory, some books or pieces of art, movies etc. impressed me more than others. For a long time all these experiences remained unconnected with each other: like accidents.
Somehow in this mystic period "everything", all the details, seemed to have a big meeting in my head, they arranged in a way, that - for the first time - made sense.

I felt a huge contrast between the ordinary, real world - as it is, and a possible world - the world as it should be according to the "question mark", I mentioned above.

This happened almost ten years ago, but it changed my life completely.
I couldn´t say, that it became more easy and in a certain way the last ten years could be described as a series of attempts to convince myself, that these seven days were just a period of inspiration.

Well long story, short sense:
Mysticism is for me something very real, not mysterious. All my rational thoughts come to exactly the same conclusions. But what can I do with something that weighs so heavy?

I think, a life, according to what S. Freud called "the principle of reality" will make you probably more happy. It´s also much more practical.
Trust your genes! Just leave the difficult decisions to your DNA!
For me unfortunately it´s probably too late. Maybe I do belong to a crazy species, that should have died out a long time ago

I have the exact same views as Matt..there is no reason to believe
in God's existance...and even if he does,then why should we fear
and worship ?.The closest I can ever think of the existance of God
as some kind of a neutral force,with no preferential treatement
to humans.

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But it does. Desire is the first cause of faith. People desired to be helped by a superior being, and to be rewarded in an afterlife. Thus Man created God.

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Did you not read NITROs post? It made sense and its something that most Christians do not realize. The majority of us have faith and love God at a very early age. Help and the afterlife mean nothing to most childeren.. thus you are wrong. You are wrong twice, ;-) God created you yet you have put yourself on a pedistal thinking your own wisdom is greater than His. Keep thinking. :-)

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I have the exact same views as Matt..there is no reason to believe
in God's existance...and even if he does,then why should we fear
and worship ?.

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Look at every fact you can before making that choice. You should fear Him because if He created you then He has total control of what happens to you in life and the afterlife. Keep in mind, fear is not the motive for serving Him. Some worship Him because we realize what we were. He has great mercy whether you realize it or not. On you, on me.. on all of us. You speaking against Him.. sin in general, He hates these things yet you are still well and life goes on. I would call that mercy. YOU should praise Him. All of us have a certain line in the sand. I just hope you figure out that this life isnt possible without a Higher Power than the thought of evolution.

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Well a little bit opportunistic

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List your reasons for not believing and I'll most likely say the same thing about you.