There is no way to know for sure. Ever.

Go with the evidence. Virtually everything once attributed to god has moslty been explained scientifically to happen without the intervention of a supreme being. Most old testament stopries have been proven to be false.

Humans created the concept of god to explain the unknown. We have since learned that not knowing is not "proof" of anything.

If you want the truth about God it's super simple. Take all of your irrefutable evidence that god is real and interacts with the universe he created.

Put that evidence on a scale and watch nothing happen. Nothing ways just as much.

U own a mirror ? Go take a look . " controlling and guiding everything ", well , congrats , u r god today . At least for the things of your immediate interest and future . I am god every day since 18 pretty much . Nobody rewards me or punishes me other than me as well . I hope u r a good god to your self and others .

There is no such thing! Ask yourself, whatever happened to Baal, Zeus, Odin, etc etc etc....no different from today's current "gawd"!

there is no way; you make your own choices and decisions about this , we are all different.

If "he" exists, he's either an asshole or incompentent. The only way you can find out is after you are dead.

So I had moved to the point of absolute atheism and in some ways I'm still there but...

I'm a physicist. The problem is that some of our (humanities) recent physics experiments show that we clearly live in an exceptionally strange universe that is very very different from our common sense. The kicker for me is something called "The Delayed Choice Experiment." It is a twist on an already bizarre and surprising experiment called "The Double Slit Experiment." Then there is Bell's theorem which is also truly unique and points towards a universe that is very much based on "random chance."

It isn't simple to explain these experiments to the uninitiated so I will give references for those who are interested. It is worth saying however, that not even our best minds can explain these experiments.

[en.wikipedia.org]

[en.wikipedia.org]

[en.wikipedia.org]

In the delayed choice experiment - it appears that consciousness matters. That is that physics is different if you decide to observer. This is truly strange.

One possible, and maybe at the moment the most sensible explanation of this truly surprising result, is that we live in a universe which is a simulation. If that is true, then there exists a simulator. One who is apparently simulating our universe. If you choose to call that "God" then God exists much to my surprise.

Of course this "God" creature (or whatever it is) has no "morality" nor any reason to care about human outcomes that we could know of. All that we could know, if this explanation is correct, is that this thing would be outside of our universe and intelligent beyond our ability to comprehend.

There are lots of ways to know more about it.

The first step is ignosticism. one cannot determine if a thing exists without knowing what that thing is. If I say "does thing exist" and you ask what "thing" is and I say "it's thing", you can't know. So, to begin, you must have a definition of god, a description, which you can think about.

The next step is about evidence. one must have a way to determine what one thinks is "true" or "not true", which means there has to be a system for making that distinction. we have two. observation and reasoning. we can observes something to be true, such as "this grass is wet", or we can deduce it to be true, such as "infants have no control over their bowels, therefore this infant will poop wherever it is when the time comes". you don't have to observe that particular infant pooping to know that this is true.

Now, when you ask "is there a "he" controlling or guiding everything, the answer is "no", because "he" is a term for male members of a sexual species, and a supreme creator would be singular, ergo not sexual, ergo neither "he" nor "she". it would be an it.

now, "controlling and guiding everything". if this were the case, then we would see evidence that natural processes were being subverted. we know that water runs downhill. it takes no "god" to make a river run downhill. UNLESS you see something happening that actually defies a natural law, i.e. one of the forces we know to actually be causing things to happen, then there is not only no evidence of a god, but there is actually evidence that nothing except natural forces is guiding anything. This evidence becomes stronger the more you know about natural processes.

to date, not one single instance of a natural process being reversed by the will of any being at all has ever been recorded, anywhere, at any time. things thought to be "miraculous" at one time have been largely explained, and more and more of them are being explained as time goes on.

First off, get rid of ideas that are self-serving. Then start to practice critical thinking. Everything will become crystal clear. It really doesn't take a genius to see the idea of a magical deity that puts one puny life form at the center of the universe is insane.

Research the origins of religion,for instance, Jesus himself is a combination of mythologies that came before him.horus of Egypt Mithra of Persia bore identical traits of Jesus performed miracles was crucified rose from the dead born of a virgin Etc. Many if not all for the stories in the Bible can be disproved, prophecies that never came true. Faith is a belief system that is not based on evidence if you had evidence you would not need faith. Faith is dishonest it asserts what is true which is evidently not true.

Weigh up the evidence and draw a logical conclusion or go the other route and believe based on faith. Only you can decide.

My opinion is that there is no answer, and that the question itself is what matters. Your probing questions indicate that you are courageous and deeply aware.

The ultimate nature of reality is a deep and overwhelming mystery IMO. The question of God is bound up with other questions, such as the nature of conscious awareness, and the question of what we are ourselves. There is also a very basic question: What is existence? It’s something that we take for granted, but according to quantum gravity field theory there are no “things”—time does not exist, and space as we view it is illusion.

I like to keep an open mind to the idea of a higher intelligence—something like a universal consciousness in which we all share. The theory of conscious realism proposed by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman might be of interest to you.

First of all, why do you think this deity is male, or has a gender at all? Second, there are strong hints that we simply cannot know, that is impossible for us to grasp the universe in its entirety. See Schrodinger's cat, the double slit experiment, and Godel theorem of incompleteness.

that's a tough one because you can't prove a negative. you could substitute any myth for "he" (which, by the way, is not a given within every religion). if you substitute the words "tooth fairy" or "spaghetti monster" (admittedly neither of whom are purported to control or guide everything) the immensity of the task becomes clearer. to make it even clearer, not every belief system that involves a supreme being involves one who controls or guides everything, or even anything. so there is a lot to prove or disprove. so let's go back to basics and call this thing god, and assume it has some active interest in what's going on in our lives. look for one thing that cannot otherwise be explained. then realize that our not individually knowing the explanation for a phenomenon doesn't automatically justify attributing it to a supernatural being. there is another element to consider as well: if there is a controlling thingie, and it refuses to reveal itself to us, why are we so concerned with it when it is so little concerned with us? i know you are interested and you have a right to be interested, but i can't help feeling otherwise. i have seen, heard, felt no evidence of any supreme beings, and have seen, heard and felt lots of evidence for natural causes of everything currently attributed to a supreme being, so i don't see any reason even to suspect, much less try to prove, the existence of such a being. (i will admit that the tooth fairy still owes me a quarter, and with interest, a settlement could solve a lot of my worldly problems, but i am not holding my breath here.)

okay, that was long. let me ask you a short question: apart from the fact that lots of people SAY there is a supreme being (and keeping in mind that some people SAY that they've been kidnapped by aliens, and others keep missing the deadline for when they SAY the world is going to end), why would you even imagine for an instant that there was a controlling/guiding being?

g

Just observing nature, the universe and reality around me has been my means of choice.

Research:

Linguistic Record ~ etymology term God
Latin God=Deus
Deus derives from Greek city Dion built for the worship of Zeus.

Research:

Mythogical record ~ Jesus is a solar deity
Research Astrotheologia

Research:

Historical Record ~ Sumerian Civilization
Judaism took many of the famed biblical stories from Sumerian Cosmology.

Historical Record ~ Egyptian Civilization
The Pharaoh Amenhotep IV created monotheism

Historical Record ~ Egyptian Civilization
Learn about the Hyksos rulers in Egypt. Modern Scholarship believes the Canaanite and Hebrew peoples descend from the Hyksos.

That is a good start for you.

Israel

Isis ~ Egyptian deity who gave virgin birth to Horus
Ra ~ Egyptian solar deity born of virgin birth to Isis
also known as Horus
El ~ primary deity of the Canaanite/Hebrew
peoples. First name of Yahweh or the
supreme deity known as God the father
of Jesus prounced "hey zeus". Represented
by the planet Saturn because the
Canaanite/Hebrews worshipped the planet
Saturn as the deity El.

Just beware of anyone who claims to know the answer.

First read everything you can about how to think scientifically. Then read about evolution. Then about psychology. Then folklore. The more you know about human nature, the better you will understand God's nature.
Or take this handy shortcut...
The “he” in this case is a metaphor. When metaphor is mistaken for literal fact, puppies die (metaphorically, of course).
But don't take my word for it. Study hard. Pace yourself; there’s a lot of material to cover. Best wishes.

By all means, go in search of a personal experience of God, and become a mystic. They are genuinely interesting people, if they can manage to stay clear of extremism.

If God is, by definition, immaterial, he is beyond the scope of our senses and scientific instruments. So, there is no way to prove God. Besides that, God is ultimately undefinable. One cannot prove the undefinable.

I've yet to see or hear anything from any source that has some verifiable evidence attached to it that would make it worth the effort looking for this supposed god figure.

It could be considered suspicious the fact that there is zero verifiable evidence that would support the god idea if there were any.

The writings about the various religions I've seen look distinctly man made to me and most of the info about these religions date back to the bronze age and earlier than that and those ages weren't exactly known for having an over load of quantum physicists or anyone else of a similar caliber that would even understand what a quantum physicist was, performed for a living or any other of the people with higher levels of enquiry we now have.

When I add the above together religion becomes a thanks but no thanks to me.

By the way I'm a secular humanist, being referred to as an atheist as you probably know is akin to referring to someone as a non stamp collector.

Regards ippy

There's as near to zero viable evidence as you can get for the god idea so why bother with religious belief, there could be a he, she or it god out there somewhere and it's just as likely that there are leprechaurns, fairies or unicorns out there; I take it you more than likely don't believe in them, why bother with god idea?

All of nature can be explained by the known laws of physics there is no need for a God. The argument can be made that we don't know everything so God could be hidden there. That creates the God of the gaps problem. What it means is the more we learn the smaller the circle God could inhabit. But if you want an education on the topic I would check out Cosmos. It features Neil Degras Tyson and was produced by Seth MacFarlane. It takes you step by step and explains not only what we know, but how we came to know it. It is exceptionally well written and produced and will capture your imagination and broaden hour understanding.

No there is not and once you start digging deeper and deeper then eventually you get to a point where you realize that everything there is that we have known or will ever know could have never existed, that everything is just an illusion and the thought may get so disturbing that you may get to feel the big senseless hollow of total and utter meaningless. When you get there if you try hard enough then you discover it's not fun and we rather dive into the crazy reality called life to keep us busy instead.....until the day we die. That's all. The human need to feel that void has been filled up forever with God. In other words, WE created God out of a desperate need that as of today it is still an open question. Why are we here? What could have been if we were not? Would a huge empty universe make sense or could it be possible that not even the universe would have existed either and then the sense of nothingness completely takes over?.... thoughts and thoughts.....endless journey