Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How can we find out if God exists?

Thank you both, you may henceforth call me "Jehovah".


Seriously, I appreciate your thoughts but assure you I am no sage, just an honest seeker who went through 50 years of misery before discovering how to get out of that misery. These paths have been trod for thousands of years by true sages, their knowledge is there for us to find, we just need to rid ourselves of ideas other humans have used to control us and try to walk those same paths with fresh and open minds.

Jim in Idaho,



Generally I agree with this post. Here is a little more information about Jesus. He took time to weave His own whip and kick some butt in the temple. Most folks are familiar with that so I won't document it. Something most are not is "'Judge with righteous judgement.'" John 7:24 In order to do that one must know God's righteous Word and use it, not personal experience or opinion.

Smart post.

Not surprising, considering the author.

Jim in Idaho,

You short essay reminds me of an essay I wrote for my entertainment. One of many many. The first three paragraphs follow. They say the same thing you did in a parable.

In a drop of water there thrives a mini-metropolis of unicellular life forms. They have no clue that their drop of water is just one of millions of drops that make up a three foot diameter puddle. This three foot wide puddle is sustaining a whole other ecological level of multicellular life forms. These multicellular creatures have no idea their puddle is merely a small slew attached to a pond. The pond teams with invertebrates and vertebrates that don't know there is a puddle; nor are they cognizant of the fact that there is a whole different kind of ecology with air breathing life forms just beyond the bounds of the pond’s surface.

In the topsoil of the field surrounding the pond are unicellular life forms constantly decomposing and converting dead animal and plant matter into more topsoil. Future vegetation will flourish. Running around in the vegetation of the field is a multiplicity of insects, rodents, reptiles, arachnids and others. These creatures are generally oblivious to the multiplicity of flying creatures soaring above them on currents of air; air that keeps them alive. Some are insects, some are birds, some are mammals. (The Bible and the fossil record indicate that there were flying reptiles that used to fly in the air above the field and the pond.) Some of these flying creatures are aware of the animals, such as mice and toads and snakes that live in the field. The mice and the toads are not aware of us humans living at the edge of the field that surrounds the pond.

We humans are not aware of, nor could we begin to fathom, all that God has created inside, and outside, of (what we think is) our thirty billion light year wide drop. How can we comprehend such a Being as the Infinite Creator, unless He greatly humbles His awesome and magnificent Self and reveals Himself to us in such a way that we finite creatures with extremely limited and deficient intellects will accept?

curdog4570,



That is a very fun statement. Thanks.

well, since we are in to positing ideas on this beautiful friday morn in late september, then just know that ol Frijof Capra (& others) posit that every single solitary lifeform on this earth evolved from a single cell ornamism. later it split or bifurcated into both the animal and plant kingdoms. thus the trees are our mystical opposites on earth. they breathe in CO2 and breathe out oxygen. we, their mirror images, do just the reverse in perfect order.

then, ol Nikola Tesla, a man of many ideas, were believed by some to be receiving very valuable information from outside our solar system. maybe from a far distant star system even. ol Tesla, what a character he was. if the gov't hadn't seized a lot of his writings, we'd probably be further along than we are.

at any rate, it's every bit very interesting, no matter in which seat we reside at the RoundTable.

Thank you for that, I like it. You state my left brained struggling for understanding in a much more poetic fashion. I think many of us are on the same page here with perhaps only minor differences of interpretation. Or to take a stab at poetry, we all see the same beautiful forest, what we might name the individual trees is a small matter.

The exploration into the meaning of it all can be "interesting". I talked about the metaphysical leading into left field, well...

One person, a distinguished doctorate of practical science, went to India and studied there. He came back fully believing that what we call "God" is simply a regional sub-governor on the next plane of existence up from ours, and that there are several planes above that, seven in all. He knew this because the Indian holy men had traveled to those higher planes in their meditations.

Another fellow postulates that the man we call Jesus of Nazareth was actually an alien from a spiritually advanced planet who was sent to Earth to enlighten us.

I'm a practical person, left brained to the core - "does it work?" is my motto. Also "what is true?" and what is a good way to determine what is true. I looked at the things people from all over the planet in all times have taught us, people who possibly never heard of each other. They each had their cultural leanings and interpretations, Siddhartha Gautama was a handsome Indian prince, Jesus was a Jew under Roman occupation, Marcus Aurelius was a practical warrior and ruler of a vast empire and who didn't like Christians, Epictetus was a slave of that empire, Tolstoy was Russian aristocracy - but when you distill down their teachings and writings, they are all telling us the same things about how to be happy here and now. It's that sameness of thought spanning time and distance that convinced me that there must be something to it and any differences of opinion in the cults that sprang up around these people - for example a messianic virgin birth or a Hindu blue skinned charioteer - shouldn't get in the way of their core teachings.


To get back to the thread - is there a God and how can we find out if this God exists? I don't know, nor would I know how to define that God in a way acceptable to everyone. But I am convinced there is something beyond us, a "higher power" is the only name I can give it, and it is benevolent. It's portal to existence lives in the quietest parts of our minds, the still, small voice. There is also something darker out there (or in here) and it lives in our minds as well. It does all it can to destroy our happiness and it lives in the flashy, loud things, its path is through the bright golden gateway.

To the best of my knowledge, our job here between birth and death is to try to find that still, small, benevolent voice while the loud voice is screaming at us and pulling every dirty trick in the book to convince us to ignore that still voice. Why that is I have no idea, that's just the way it is.

and as we say in internet land - that's just my humble opinion.

yep, that about sums it up very nicely. i, too can be drawn into the left field fairly easily on occasion.

as a commoner, i certainly see no reason to ignore the Great Teachings that have come down to us over the thousands of years of oral & written traditions. probably the greatest teacher to ever visit earth was Jesus, the Christ.

but he certainly wasn't alone in his efforts.


and here we are, and Life goes on.

Your entire post is excellent, Jehovah , and I've selected just this part for comment.

There is no question that a man can reach an altered state of consciousness thru meditation, but attempts to even understand, much less explain, the sensations experienced in that altered state have never added much to our knowledge of God as far as I can see. The Revelation to St. John is no exception save his instructions to the churches, and we can't be sure of even THAT.

God gave us a brain to use and deliberately dis-engaging its connection to Reality in search of some mystical greater knowledge is an insult to our Creator as I see it. As you pointed out, there is agreement from many sources on what it takes to be productive and content in this life.

The maxim; "Better is the enemy of 'good enough' " might well apply.

If he knows from the git-go that more knowledge of a particular subject is not going to result in different actions, it's a waste of time for a practical man.

I don't know if Chief Red Cloud actually wrote this, but it is attributed to him. Whoever wrote wrote it defined our enemy perfectly.


It would be hard to improve on this.

yes, indeed it would (be difficult to improve on this).

if everyone could just recieve the gnosis[b][/b] in equal amounts, the whole world might be different than "what it is."

i do enjoy these somewhat esoteric discussions, and hope i don't afend, or hurt anyone's feelings. but if we just could possess the knowledge of how best to achieve a salvatory solution to at least a part of the equation would or could be a good thing.


i fully understand that when one is captured. or inculcated into a cult, escape can be a difficult enterprise.

curdog4570,



It's quite easy to improve on that.

Jesus says, "'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.'"

Apostle Peter said,
"'Jesus is the Stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the Chief Corner Stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.'"

Jesus never claimed that a person had to KNOW that Jesus was the agent that brought him to the Father. I repeat.... NEVER.

As far as Peter's statement, he is just repeating what Jesus already said.

Surely you don't believe that semantics play a role in salvation.[ You gotta pronounce it like this, Pedro...GEE_ZUS..not HAY-SOOSE, or you're still hell bound]

there's so many cults in this world. most are dime a dozen garden variety types.

a few, about 7 at last count have global implications, and are working hard to nudge out the other 6, at least by a nose, to enter into the winners circle.

the left-overs will be sent to pasture, or more productively sent to the rendering plant to provide input for the cats and dogs who need good rations.

when one dares to enter into the metaphysical, mystical, esoteric world, one has volunteered to walk in a very potentially fiery zone.

and then there's the supernatural aspects of the discussion.

where is gnosis when one needs it most?

I never met an atheist or non believer in a fox hole. just saying

yep. we got here by some method, means, or process. that's pretty much a military certainty.

and humans have fought each other from nearly the beginning.

i wonder why folks choose to fight each other? they/we both breathe oxygen, and [bleep] in the woods, don't we?

You didn't catch the quote from Jesus in the first part of my post?

not to afend, but why not more talk about the mighty YHWH, the ldr of the whole episode, but we choose to talk about his son jesus?

why is one more important than the other?

You didn't read my answer?