In this episode, I share the common arguments for God’s existence and how they don’t add up when you think about them. I also provide some answers to strange occurrences often attributed to the existence of God. Reference articles in this broadcast:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chapters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this episode, I share the common arguments for God’s existence and how they don’t add up when you think about them. I also provide some answers to strange occurrences often attributed to the existence of God. Reference articles in this broadcast: Chapters:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology"],"acf":{"file_name":"aa-ep19-gods-existence","duration":"24:19","ep_num":19,"file_size":21,"transcript_content":"What's up good people?\n\nThis is your host Neil Real and this is the Apostate Apple broadcast.\n\nToday I'm talking about God's existence.\n\nAnd if I'm saying God doesn't exist, then why did this and that happen to you?\n\nOr why did this and that happen to me?\n\nBut before we get into those things, the goal of this necessary today is just to share how many of the arguments people put forth to support God's existence don't really hold up well when you actually think about them.\n\nAnd once you get more information you realize that a lot of these arguments just fall flat.\n\nThe goal is not to generate any debates with any Christians.\n\nI never debate Christians at this point in my life because frankly, I know their mindset and I know how I used to think when I was a Christian.\n\nThere's no way of fixing that from outside.\n\nThe person has to come across enough evidence to change their minds and have them themselves leave that religion or that belief system.\n\nSo I don't want to get any emails or calls to come on the show to debate God's existence or his non existence.\n\nAnd frankly the burden to prove God existence is actually on the Christian, not on people who don't believe in God's existence.\n\nAlso, I want to say that I am not an atheist.\n\nI do believe in God or a deity or deities, but I am not religious.\n\nI don't worship a deity.\n\nFrankly, I believe I'm God and I can create my own reality.\n\nIn a nutshell, probably in other talks I'll talk about that.\n\nBut that ain't the goal of this talk here.\n\nSo the first one is just my own personal experiences.\n\nThe first one was I was driving down the interstate, I 94 in Detroit, Michigan and I came up off the interstate.\n\nI had been on the interstate for about 30 minutes or so and I was in this kind of daze.\n\nI'm awake, I'm not tired, but I'm just used to just driving without any stops.\n\nAnd I pull up off the ramp and there's a red light, there's a stop sign, all this s*** and I'm just going right through as if I'm still on the interstate.\n\nAnd at one point a car almost teeboned me.\n\nNow the weird thing that happened at the time was that I'm in this days, I'm fully awake, my eyes on the road, I can see myself passing the red light.\n\nAnd I'm not in a rush by the way.\n\nI'm just driving like as if I'm still on the d*** interstate.\n\nBut my wheel, my steering wheel turns to the right, just vibrantly, just shoots to the right.\n\nAnd when I realized it changed, it turns to the right.\n\nI looked to the left and seen a car that almost hit me.\n\nI almost got Tboned.\n\nAnd I attribute that to God, not at that moment, but later on when I had became a Christian.\n\nI had looked at it and said, that was God saving me.\n\nHe moved the wheel for me and saved me from being total in the crash or getting hit T bone in the crash here.\n\nSo after leaving Christ, I would think about certain experiences like that.\n\nAnd I realized that because I'm fully awake, I'm not sleepy.\n\nI'm just in just kind of this mode of where I'm constantly going.\n\nMy peripheral vision picked up the car.\n\nMy eyes are alert and my brain is saying, there's a car about to hit me.\n\nAnd in a knee jerk reaction, basically just turned the wheel to the far right to maneuver around the car.\n\nOkay?\n\nThat's what really happened.\n\nThere was no guy or the angels putting their hand on my wheel to change the direction of the car to keep me safe.\n\nIt was me who kept myself safe.\n\nKind of like when you're in a fight and somebody swings at you from the side of you, you have a knee jerk reaction.\n\nAnd I keep using that term because I can't think of nothing else right now but where you end up blocking the side of your face.\n\nYou put your arms up.\n\nYou didn't see them, but your peripheral picked them up.\n\nYou did see them, but you're not focused on them, you see?\n\nSo can I say that God moved my arms up to block me?\n\nNo, I did that.\n\nSo these are some of the things that I would say to people.\n\nThere were other things that happened to me that I would say that God was moving and God looked out for me.\n\nThere were times when I needed money, housing, a new battery for my car.\n\nAnd people came through most of the time because I either asked or they saw my condition and said, let me help them out.\n\nBut prior to that, I was praying and saying, god, I need help.\n\nI need this, I need that.\n\nNow, did God answer my prayer?\n\nAnd because of that, does that validate his existence?\n\nNo.\n\nLet me tell you why.\n\nBecause people are empathetic in some cases and people can see if somebody's in need or not and choose to help him out or not.\n\nAlso, people are religious and they're told if they do a good deed, that might make them favorable to God and they can get points in heaven.\n\nAnd so they go out their way to do that.\n\nAnd so sometimes they may say that God led me to do this for you.\n\nAnd if you're religious and you're told that God answers prayers you will attribute anything good happen to you especially after you praying about it to God.\n\nYou see?\n\nBut that don't prove his existence.\n\nYou see, some people will pray about a job.\n\nThey will get on the interview.\n\nThey will go through the rounds and then they'll get offered a job and they'll celebrate and say, thank you, Jesus.\n\nHe got this job for me.\n\nI was praying for a job and he got it for me.\n\nBut does that validate his existence?\n\nBecause you say that he answered your prayers.\n\nHow do you know it wasn't just you being a good candidate for the position?\n\nYou see, you went through the interview.\n\nIt wasn't like somebody called you out of the blue and said, hey, take this job.\n\nHere you go.\n\nAnd funny thing is, I've had instances similar to that, but the job turned out to be some something s*****, like they were just trying to fill it because they needed a black person to kind of be a token Negro.\n\nAnd that was something that would happen.\n\nAnd I think once or twice I would say, but anyway, still, does that make it God?\n\nAnd let's just say that I took that job and I did at some point, can I say as God, even though the black folks are being mistreated on the job and it's h*** on that job, but somehow God gave it to you.\n\nNo, you see?\n\nSo he gave you a job you prayed for.\n\nYou certainly didn't pray to be abused.\n\nYou prayed for a job, you got a job.\n\nAnd all the white folks are mistreating you and you find out you were token Negro there to kind of check off the box of diversity.\n\nNo, it's not God.\n\nOkay, so this idea that God answers prayers, so he must be real is bullshit.\n\nThat's not a strong argument.\n\nThere are people also that don't even believe in God and they pray to themselves.\n\nAnd they say that by their vibration and their positivity towards what they want, that they can attract what they want and they get what they want.\n\nThey will give you testimonies of I pray for this, and they ain't talking about God, they talk about themselves.\n\nYou see?\n\nSo this idea that God is doing this or God answers prayers, therefore he must be realistic, is not a good idea.\n\nAnd you've been told that God answers prayers.\n\nTherefore you believe that anything you say while you hold your hands together and close your eyes and say something to somebody that don't exist, that if it does happen, it must have been Him.\n\nSo therefore, that validates its existence.\n\nIt doesn't.\n\nOkay, here's another one.\n\nThey say that miracles explain that God exists.\n\nSo a miracle is an event that appears unexplainable by the laws of nature, and so it is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God.\n\nSo here's the problem with miracles.\n\nJust because you don't understand something don't mean it's proof of God's existence.\n\nThere are a lot of people that didn't understand how certain natural events occur, like volcanoes, and they attribute that to a God.\n\nPeople didn't understand lightning and thunder, so they said it was God that's Thor up there, the God of thunder.\n\nThey just didn't have enough information.\n\nThey didn't know or understand what was happening.\n\nSo they attributed to God.\n\nYou cannot use a miracle and say that that's God.\n\nThat proves that God's god exists.\n\nAnother thing people say God's existence is proven by Scripture because the Bible says that God exists, he must exist.\n\nThat's one of the weakest statements that I've heard, because any document can say anything that doesn't make it true.\n\nA document is not self authenticating.\n\nI can pick up a comic book by Spider Man and say, well, Green Goblin exists, and Mary Jane exists, and Peter Parker and everybody else in his little world exists.\n\nNo, it's a comic book.\n\nIt's a fictional story.\n\nAnd there's been many millions of stories that claim to have real factual data that they found out to be false.\n\nJust like the Bible.\n\nThe Bible has a ton of errors.\n\nThey don't align up with nature or science.\n\nWe find these same stories in older texts from other sources that's not related to the Bible.\n\nSo to say that God's existence is proven by scriptures is not a good argument.\n\nAll right, another one.\n\nPeople say, I feel a personal relationship with God, so I know that he is real.\n\nI remember women in church that I was cool with would tell me about how they would sleep and feel God's arms around them after praying, they would feel good.\n\nAfter speaking in tongues, they would feel good or speaking in the Spirit.\n\nThey say, and because I feel good, therefore God is real.\n\nWell, that's your feelings.\n\nAnd frankly, that's based off of personal experiences which are subjective.\n\nSee, one person could say, well, because I feel this way, God exists, but another person can say, well, that feeling don't mean nothing to me.\n\nI can't attribute that to God.\n\nOr a person that don't believe in God could say, well, I'm just happy.\n\nI don't attribute that to God.\n\nI'm just happy for what happened or whatever.\n\nSee, you can't base it off your feelings, but at the end of the day, the reason why you're saying this is because you were told that God is the root of happiness and love and all of that.\n\nSo now, if you feel a certain way, you attribute that to God if it happens often, you say, Well, God, I have a personal relationship with God, and I feel that he's real, and I feel these things, so therefore he is real.\n\nNo, man, it's not a good argument.\n\nIt's not a good argument.\n\nPeople have said that they've saw things in the clouds, that they've seen God's face in the clouds or something that resembled a man's side view of a man's face.\n\nThey said they saw Mother Mary in toast.\n\nThey said they saw Jesus sitting on a bed after praying or something like that.\n\nAnd what do you say to people who said they saw this stuff?\n\nAre they making it up?\n\nCertainly we can see anything in clouds.\n\nWe can make anything.\n\nWe've seen dogs and cats and clouds.\n\nAny type of shape.\n\nWe can kind of make things out in there.\n\nAnd this comes from an actual psychological phenomenon called pareidolia.\n\nAnd I came across this article from Learningmind.com, and it's called what is Pareidolia?\n\nAnd why do we see animals and faces and clouds?\n\nAnd it talks more about how we kind of make things up.\n\nWe see things.\n\nIt's not supernatural.\n\nAnd I'm going to link the article in the show notes so that you can check it out for yourself.\n\nBut this is your brain finding patterns and things and saying, oh, that's that, and this is that.\n\nAnd if you are a Christian who has been told over and over again that God works in mysterious ways, that he shows you signs, you'll be looking for signs.\n\nBut it's funny, as people talk about they seeing God in the clouds.\n\nI remember this pastor by the name of David E.\n\nTaylor.\n\nHe was telling people you can see God face to face, playing off of people's desire to actually have visual proof of God's existence, wanting to have a close connection with this elusive God.\n\nAnd he showed images of people's face in the clouds, moving through the clouds.\n\nAnd you can look this pastor up, but that is not proof of Christ or God existence, because you see something that looked like a face in clouds.\n\nAnd even then, when I heard that, I told a guy that was promoting this through Facebook.\n\nI was like, Yo, man, that ain't it.\n\nA private message him.\n\nAnd I said, Yo, that ain't it.\n\nThat's not a sign that God exists.\n\nI mean, anybody could say that that's a face.\n\nAnd I can say it is not a face.\n\nIt could be something else.\n\nYou can't say that.\n\nAnd he got offended and tried to go back and forth with me.\n\nBut eventually he was coming from this pastor who was saying this, and eventually the same pastor by the name of David E.\n\nTaylor, he did something stupid.\n\nHe predicted the Super Bowl.\n\nHe also has the so called prophetic gift.\n\nAnd he predicted the Super Bowl and got it wrong.\n\nHe was wrong.\n\nAnd people clown them on Facebook.\n\nThey clown them on social media.\n\nAnd the scriptures teach that if a prophet prophesies something and it don't come to pass that they should be stoned to death.\n\nNevertheless, it just goes to show you that these guys are clowning.\n\nThey're fooling around.\n\nBut back to this idea that seeing God and stuff, this is something called pareidoli.\n\nIt's a psychological phenomenon.\n\nWe all do it.\n\nAs children, we used to lay on our backs in the field and look up at the clouds and say, oh, that looks like a dragon, that looks like a rabbit.\n\nThat's all it is.\n\nAnd if you're a religious person, you'll say that that's God's face.\n\nAnd it could be anything.\n\nLike I said, Mother Mary and toast.\n\nAnd now the toast is selling for $10,000 a piece of raggedy a** toast is selling for $10,000.\n\nAnd for what?\n\nIf God exists and he wanted to show you that, why would he produce, you know, an image of his so called mother in Toast?\n\nIt's not really his mother.\n\nThe scriptures teach that she was just the incubator for Christ.\n\nHe has no mother.\n\nBut how does that toast bless somebody?\n\nI could see if there was millions of pieces of bread falling down on needy people out of the sky.\n\nYou could say that's God even if that happened, I could say a plane flew blind and just drop bread.\n\nYou know what I'm saying?\n\nThere's an explanation for it.\n\nYou can't just attribute everything you don't understand or weird occurrences to God.\n\nThe last thing, seeing Jesus sitting on your bed, okay, you're hallucinating.\n\nThat's quite possible.\n\nAnd if you really want to see something, your mind will produce it for you.\n\nThat don't prove that God exists.\n\nOkay, here's a few more here here's another thing that people say.\n\nBelief in God would not be so widespread if God didn't exist.\n\nAnd then they'll say that so many people have died for God and religion.\n\nSurely it must be real.\n\nFirst of all, we need to understand why people believe in God.\n\nEverybody is spiritual.\n\nWe all have a mind, we have a will, and we have a set of emotions, okay?\n\nThese are things that you cannot tangibly grab a hold of.\n\nYou can't put your mind under the X ray and see your thoughts.\n\nYou know what I'm saying?\n\nSo we have a spiritual component to us, and we seek to connect to spirituality.\n\nAnd religion gives you just enough spirituality that you join in and want to learn.\n\nAnd so the Abrahamic religions have become the most prominent religions, and they give you an answer to the idea of spirituality in God and something outside of yourself.\n\nSo that's why people believe in God, and therefore, because this is the most prominent religion, particularly Christianity and Islam, a lot of people are going to believe in this s*** because everybody's spiritual.\n\nSo they're going to believe in something that tells them about their spirituality.\n\nThat's just how it works.\n\nSo, yeah, a lot of people are going to get caught up in this s***.\n\nThey going to believe it because they're looking for answers.\n\nAnd here come religion saying, hey, well, the answer is this, okay, you were created by God.\n\nHe has a plan for your life.\n\nAnd if you serve Him and submit to Him and follow Him, then you'll have eternal life.\n\nAnother reason why people connect to God is they've been taught to feel so small about themselves, not just from religion, but from other sources, their government, people.\n\nAnd so they want to feel big, and they want to feel connected to something bigger than themselves.\n\nSo when they're given this idea of a big God that wants a personal relationship with them, they gravitate to that, you see.\n\nSo just because it's widespread, this belief in God, and so many people have died for God in religion don't make it real.\n\nIt doesn't.\n\nIt's just wide belief.\n\nAnd you say to yourself, well, but they died for God.\n\nYeah, they believe it, but they don't make God real, though.\n\nIt doesn't make God real just because people believe something strongly.\n\nI used to have this saying just because the majority rules don't make them right, you can get a lot of people to believe something don't make it valid.\n\nThis goes into another point that I have that people say smart people like scientists and people with PhDs and a bunch of other letters after their name, they believe in God and they're smart, so it must be true.\n\nOnce again, religion bypasses intellect.\n\nIt goes into the spiritual.\n\nSo these particular scientists and smart people, quote unquote, have been indoctrinated and they just so happened to get into the science, the field of science, and got notoriety and became an authority, and they just still hold on to their belief.\n\nSo just because they believe in God doesn't make it valid.\n\nThese are not good arguments, y'all.\n\nFinally, here's another one here my religion, or My God has helped me so much in my life, therefore he must be real.\n\nOkay?\n\nI've heard people say that, you know, if it wasn't for God, I would still be on drugs and no, no, no.\n\nThere are tons of institutions that have no relation to God that can help people come out of drugs and alcoholism and other stuff like that.\n\nWhat religion does is provide a lot of things that humanity provides.\n\nSee, religion is full of humans, and these humans provide what they give to make people happy or to help people out.\n\nSo to say that, oh, it must be real because I've been helped by this.\n\nNo, you were around a bunch of humans and they helped you you recover from drugs because you had a strong eviction that if you didn't, you would go to h***.\n\nThe Bible says clearly that the drunkard is not going to hair the kingdom of God.\n\nSo what happened was you got scared into not drinking no more, that's all.\n\nThey don't make God real because you got answers to your questions about life.\n\nDon't make God real just because those answers made you feel good.\n\nDon't make God real just because you found a community at your local church and you were able to express yourself maybe by singing and dancing doesn't make God real.\n\nYeah, you got a better life, but it's because you are part of a community.\n\nYou got friends that you talk to on a regular basis that you found in church.\n\nThat's not God, that's human beings.\n\nThat's just you making connections with other people.\n\nI hear people say this is why God exists, because of this.\n\nBut these are like circular arguments to me.\n\nGod exists because god exists.\n\nThe Bible said God exists, so therefore, these are not strong arguments, y'all?\n\nIt's not strong arguments.\n\nAnd so I don't struggle with whether he exists or not.\n\nI know for sure he don't, okay?\n\nAt least the character of the Bible.\n\nNow, my own belief is personally that I'm God and I create my own reality, but I'll talk about that in some other podcasts.\n\nBut once again, I want to be clear.\n\nAnybody listening?\n\nI'm not trying to sell that to you.\n\nYou believe what you want to believe.\n\nYou can pick up another religion only for all I care.\n\nI don't care.\n\nI just want you to be happy.\n\nI don't want you following anything that would cause you harm in your life.\n\nAll right, till next time.\n\nBe blessed.\n\nLike share.\n\nRate this podcast email me at neil@neilreal.com and have a good day.\n\nBye.","youtube":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eJacu-584ko"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nealreal.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nealreal.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nealreal.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nealreal.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nealreal.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nealreal.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nealreal.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nealreal.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nealreal.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}