And I am sorry if this offends anyone for whatever reason. However let us assume for a moment that a devil exists. I happen to believe that yes there is a devil, just a feeling that I am pretty sure I am right about.

Now if a devil exists, then that must mean there is a God of course, correct? Why is it that I would believe more so in the existece of a devil but I still question the existence of God?

May God have mercy on my soul please.

Possibilities include:

It's the worldview that fits best with your mood
Rebellion
Self punishment relating to guilt or low self worth
Mental illness, either developed or beginning - many early stage psychoses begin with an obsession with dark things.
A low ability to visualize happiness and goodness, leading to a gravitation toward things which are easier to visualize
Laziness, similar to the point above (it takes more energy sometimes to be positive than dark).
Drugs, lack of sleep, lack of activity
A higher relative prominence in your mind when encountering stories of evil rather than normality or good [lots of possible reasons from internal to external]
A creative tendency which makes you gravitate to darker ideas
A desire for meaning which you find in darker things
A misplaced desire for adventure
Problems with receiving and believing in love, due to its absence in your life at some point, or less healthy connections with family members.
A desire for freedom, since darker things are less "crowded" and tainted by other people spending all their time focusing on/talking about them

Why don't you have mercy on your own soul? It's a lot easier.

These 4 are all likely to be true, simultaneously. They're not mutually exclusive.

Very interesting. But we still are not closer to understanding whether or not God exists or not.

We first need to know, why you think its important to know whether God exists or not?

I don't believe it's important, so why do you believe it to be an important question to answer?

Im not sure how important it is really. I guess its personal curiosity more than anything. But if a God does exist wouldnt we be better off by attempting to have a good relationship with him? Surely it would be to our benefit.

I can't have a relationship with non-physical entities.

If you believe you can, then I could I see some importance there for you.

As for personal curiosity, may I suggest it be directed elsewhere?

It's only curious for so long as you consider it important. Question its importance first and the curiosity should dissipate, quite quickly.

The devil is used like a plot device to get people to act out of fear. Why would a person need to be afraid to simply love their neighbors?

I see a billboard on occasion"go to church or the devil will get you" I see it as a confession. The goal of the devil is to get a person to go to church and give money to pay for the billboard. You already know this if you go to church because of the devil, it's stated up front. You are giving in to exactly that- whatever additional information that church may produce to disguise the process.

The devil is a person who invents the devil as a device to get people to go to church. The devil's existence has always only been in the institutions that gave the devil a shot and anyone who figured out the scam and stuck around acting it out anyway. The way to beat the devil is to not play against him and inform people of the scam, hidden so well in the camouflage of hubris, tradition, and authority.

The devil is the pent-ultimate fake, written out of the story as deftly as written in. The devil will tell you I am the devil and I may say yes I am a human, but you don't have to go to my church.

I think there is a devil.

Then there is one.

Think you're living in hell?

Then you are.

So you are saying that what takes place in our minds ultimately becomes our own reality? But how could that be possible unless none of you is really real and I am the only real entity. Are you following me I hope.

Not entirely, but primarily so. One may use it as a general rule to live by.
Well, your perception and beliefs create your circumstances, just as much as your circumstances create your perceptions and beliefs. In the long-term, your perception and beliefs, in fact, create more of your circumstances/reality.

My son thinks there is a Santa Claus. Doesn't mean there must be an Easter Bunny and we need to develop a personal relationship with it.

Why?
Why?
Our minds define reality to a very large degree. Mainly because the emotional part of our brain is very powerful/central, and a person's view of the world is nearly entirely colored by emotion.

The simplest explanation for the idea that there is an external world AND we create our own reality is that the world is richly complex and multifacted, yet what we have in our heads is not actually the world. It's a model of it, and all of the meaning and interest we have is colored by our mental models. And because the interesting parts of the world consist of other changeable individuals with their own mental models, there are strong feedback loops in human affairs, such that you actually do alter the world depending on how you see it.

Look at this way. In one way of looking at reality, people do not exist as meaningful entities. They're lumps of carbon and water moving around in unpredictable ways, no different to the birds or a falling rock or the air moving or the trees swaying. That is a perfectly valid way to look at the world. Yet we are so deeply hardwired to create models around people and their central importance that virtually no one thinks in this way.

Another way of looking at the world is that people are richly interesting, able to both give and receive pleasure, and a source of opportunity - both for honing your own mind, for feeling pleasure (and giving it), for exploring, for loving.

Another way of looking at the world is from a perspective of security - that people are the only real threat to your personal integrity/identity/safety, and must be treated warily and avoided where possible for maximum safety.

These are all ways of looking at an identical external world. What differs is what aspect the mind focuses on in its limited mental model of a deeply rich and incredibly complex reality.

So in that sense we do create our own reality. Doing so doesn't mean the external world doesn't exist. It feels different and we create different personal experiences by creating a different reality for ourselves. But it doesn't imply solipsism.

A similar thing is going on with you and the devil. The idea has prominence in your mind for some reason or other, but it probably has zero correlation to reality. It's just your mental model working the way it works.

Mental models imprinted early, especially those tied to emotion and that answer deep questions, tend to be extremely resilient. Which is why most people believe in the religion of their parents and society. And can't be talked out of it.

Yes, why?

That's great! Can you please cite some sources for why you believe this to be true?

This where most religious discussions end for me. I apologize for not taking a feeling that "you're pretty sure you're right about" seriously. I had a feeling New England was going to cover two weeks ago. Amazingly, I was wrong.

I do however, have a very intelligent friend who is convinced that evil exists and therefore god does also. But he at least attempts to frame a reasonable evidence based argument around the existence of evil. Even though he hasn't convinced me yet, it has led to some meaningful discussions. But when someone simply says they have a feeling that they're right and then fail to even attempt to back it up, it's pretty much a conversation stopper for me.

If you did know for a positive fact that God does exist, then it does create a possibility of an eternal afterlife. The question of how one should live taking account of the now known existence of God and an eternal afterlife becomes supremely important. If one knows for a fact that God does not exist, then that question is not relevant.

It's more of a "If you think you're going to fail, you're going to fail."

From my understanding that's not one question, but rather 2:

(1) Is there eternal life?
(2) Is there a God?

For example, I can believe in eternal life (and some days I do, although I can never know in this life) without God, as a creator of that life.

How?

It all comes down to the way one chooses to define 'life'. If one defines it solely by - subjective experience - then one may already be eternal.

To elaborate: I don't ever recount a time when I was not experiencing. That's to say that, I don't ever recount being dead. This is not as trivial as it may appear at first. Indeed, it is consistent with the scientific understanding of subjective experience, whereby time does not register upon loss of consciousness. If after loss of consciousness, a billion years goes by, and some part of me somehow gets to experience again - at some point or place in time -then from the view of the subjective experiencer, those billion years would pass in less than a second.

If as such, we live inside an infinity, then it may be plausible that I will never be dead. More precisely, I will always be experiencing, whether under the framework of this particular body and this universes' physical laws, or some other.

In other words, to the best of my knowledge, I have always and will always be experiencing something at some point or place in time. Whether I have memory of prior life experiences or not is irrelevant. The focal point and the eternal nature of my existence is in - experiencing. In this sense, my subjective experience may already be eternal and God in this conception of eternal life is entirely unnecessary.

Any other reasons, as to why the question of God's existence is important?

Do you guys believe in God? Do you ever feel like you see the numbers 666 a little more than it should be coincidence? I can say with certainty that I do.

Please refer to synchronicity. Its a cognitive error/bias.

Why do the middling quality trolls always blow it? You had a good thing going, man.

It's not a synchronicity. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy to believe in a supernatural entity and match a pattern with it's myth. The causality is apparent. A theoretical post-Jung synchronicity can't have error as that is indicative of a causal event.

How? The thought only serves a purpose as a story device and understood as being just that.

Why don't you write down every 3 digit number you see for the rest of the year and see if 666 comes up more often than 732 or any other 3 digit number?

I don't think you know what certainty means.