Short version: yes, but not in the way it’s usually talked about. IMO, God doesn’t exist, but god does, and it’s in your brain and ONLY in your brain (or nervous system, whatever).

I believe in god as a psychological construct, something that humans may experience as an element contributing to their perception of their relationship to material reality. Organized religion (in a lot of cases) attempts to codify this and make it so a group can share a very similar conception of god, which can include that of it being God (see: creator attibutes, entityness, likes and dislikes, etc.)

My take is that god has no independent, material existence. god has no effect on material reality outside of how that concept may inform the actions of people in material reality. But that doesn’t mean that god is necessarily a useless concept, and different techniques in spiritual practices may help some people explore god in the sense I think about it to good personal benefit. god has much more to do about your sense of belonging in and relationship to the real world you exist in than the independent existence of the material world.

Saw a couple of people talk about psychedelics here, and this was actually one thing leading me down this type of thinking. One thing that happens when you take some classical psychedelics is that bloodflow to your brain is reduced, and there is less activity in hubs that make connections to different brain regions. My thinking (and if the science doesn’t back this up, please say so, I’m just some dude) is that this can induce states that are much closer to a kind of brain activity that might be similar to states more common in early versions of what would become the human brain. So a ‘caveman’ (probably an older ancestor than what we’d call a caveman, really) may have had experiences of the world where some unified, bigger entity type thing made a lot of visceral sense. It wouldn’t have the capacity to finely describe that concept quite yet. Different techniques mucking about with brain function (psychedelics, holotropic breathing, meditation, etc.) could create conditions that turn off/quiet activity in brain regions that developed later on, allowing people to access something like a direct experience of ‘god’. And it’s something that sticks around, to some degree, in our brain structure.

Not everyone needs to engage with god this way. People, for whatever reasons, have different levels of attraction and interest in god/The Divine/whatever the fuck you want to call it. But it’s something deep in our psyches that can be examined and poked at a little, sometimes with beneficial results that change how you view your relationship to the rest of the world.

Or not, which is 100% fine. You can do a lot of the same work without conceptualizing this as god, big or little G. The problems, in my opinion, only come when you try to organize a particular version of this impulse to make it as uniform as possible between humans, and demand compliance to that shared conception. This breeds conflict, creates in-groups and out-groups, and perpetuates violence. That shit is fucked and unnecessary. god is best enjoyed in your quiet moments of reflection, and gentle conversations with interested people close to you. Beyond that? Just shut the fuck up and worry about being a good human living in a material world. Even if there is a creator God, how much does that really matter? I’d say not a lick.

/end of rant, please feel free to tear this to shreds 😀

No reason. I just do.

If you look at it very very loosely, many major religions are reaching toward the same general concepts and have enough similarities to suggest a consensus that there’s a “something” up there.

We probably all have an imperfect idea of what that “something” is, but there are enough similarities (or echos of the same ideas) across many religions to suggest they’re looking at the same indivisible thing and interpreting it differently.

Truth is proof - I can neither prove the number of gods is >0, nor prove it is =0.

Thus cautious agnosticism (since the evidence suggests, if there is at least one god, then they really hate us).

I believe in a god but it is strange lol. I will truly never understand the concept of being all knowing and powerful so my idea is he’s either so bored with his existence he created us for entertainment or simply boredom. I imagine him similar to a comic book writer or tv show creator

I believe in God because I don’t believe knowledge is possible without a transcendent being. (e.g. the impossibility of the contrary) Otherwise you are dealing with infinite regress or axiomatic circularity. Materialism breaks down with origin theories. Metaphysics aren’t substantial yet exist. Math and logic aren’t descriptors of the world but integral to how the world is structured. The Orthodox view is that these principles are a reflection of the divine mind.

(I am an Orthodox Christian)

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Earthseed

Sort of, but it’s more a comforting theory rather then a true belief. I came up with it when I was younger, doing a lot of psychedelics, and meditating often on the nature of existence and reality.

My theory is that God is everything. The earth, the stars, our fellow beings. All of reality makes up a complex web that I loosely refer to as a “consciousness” for lack of a better word. The nature of this “consciousness” is incomprehensible to us. It does not activly intervene in our daily lives, and operates on a scale beyond our comprehension. Mostly, it simply is. It is the oblivion from which our consciousness was once plucked, and it is where we will one day return.

In essence, each of us is a tiny fragment of reality experiencing itself. The meaning of life is to experience it. All of it. Joy, pleasure, and suffering. It is all a part of the whole of existence. When we die and return to the infinite our individuality is lost, but maybe God learns something about itself.

Consciousness exists. This implies that either consciousness is some emergent property of sufficiently complex interconnected systems, or it’s some universal force that complex interconnected systems “channel”.

If it’s emergent, it seems less presumptuous to assume that the most complex interconnected system of all, the universe itself, would develop consciousness. That universal consciousness might as well be called “God”. If it’s a universal force, it might as well be called “God”. Anyway you slice it, a universal consciousness seems inevitable from a sober metaphysical analysis.

Lots of people have ascribed lots of culturally specific attributes to the universal consciousness which are obviously quite silly. The core statement that “I am that ‘I am’” is really the only meaningful attribute we can identify.

Upvoting the actual answers here, as some who were not the target audience and haven’t read the question have answered.

I believe in God because I think its the best explanation for the existence of our universe with it’s laws. A being outside of our current space/time setting our universe into motion just makes sense to me.

I saw something fitting a common description for God (in meditation). Yes, a total mystic vision.

(The creator of reality. A star (that also looks like a jewel) that emits poetry energy. And then I react to that energy by dreaming this dream that I call reality. Like contriving lyrics for an instrumental song.)

No intelligence or personhood as far as I can tell. Just a vast brainless mystico-cosmological gusher of energy.

Makes me feel more assured and will reduce my suffering until I die. After my death, regardless of if I am right or wrong, the net positive of having had the soothing idea of a larger meaning can’t and won’t be retroactively undone. So why the hell not?

In some sort of greater being yes, in any kind of church or following no.

I find I have my own belief in some unknown cosmic entitys, something along the lines of energy is always in a state of flow, life and death, rocks to dust, consciousness to the sprawling reaches of the universe a bit of new age spirituality stuff,