This would depend if the mind is capable of observing a objective reality instead of my belief of subjective reality and the mind is designed to design reality. Your question would only matter if:
reality was objective
AND
that objective reality is observable by people
AND
the mind was incapable of creating it’s own version of reality.
If all that I would hate to even think of such a world, the suffering that would happen here. Life on earth would be horrible.
Love, overwhelming Love, all problems are gone and you feel totally at home where you were always meant to be.
Much like a heroine addict describes their first hit, without the withdrawal symptoms.
Also there is the absolute knowing that He is the Lord.
The physical appearance is quite unimportant, and why I mentioned it last, as He will use any form He chooses, and will chose the form He wants, including the traditional westernized appearance which was the form He chose with me. I know the thing you want the most, facts, measurements, clothing, email address, SS # etc, but that is the least important factor almost irrelevant.
I would like to get the chance to see the infant Jesus.
The “problem of evil” is not a problem unless your belief-system raises incompatible expectations, i.e., that God/the Universe is just and, therefore, bad things should not happen to good people, or whatever. To an atheist, shit that happens is shit that happens. That does not mean that the atheist has no business making moral judgments about shit that happens, or raising a moral objection to it, or even trying to do something about it; but only that the phenomenon does not raise any cosmic questions.
As for “meaningless”: Sorry, existence does not come equipped with “meaning” as a standard feature; you have to provide your own, as an after-market add-on.
Yeah, but why don’t you go ahead and give it a shot, seeing as how that was the question I asked you. The rest of it you can cut and paste for when someone asks you how he made you feel.
He mentioned that his appearance was both traditional and westernized. Don’t know what to make of that, maybe a beard and blonde hair? Like the son of this woman?
I would agree that it appears that way, but would not state it** is** that way and have observed ‘flaws in the matrix’ so to speak.
This is the reason for the slight differences in the 4 gospels, differing realities of the 4 observers (Q document not withstanding). Each one is true for a personal reality, or sets of realities.
A simple example to see this is after a rather significant event ask the people who saw it what happened and you will get different stories, after they talk and hear other versions they tend to come to one version.
Yes this is a large part of it, the mind is there to create realities for us to live in, and yes a mind can create a living hell or a heaven out of the opposite.
Let me throw out a hypothetical for believers: What if we set up an experiment where you sat down and wore a magnet helmet that can manipulate the brain, and induce the exact same warm fuzzy feeling of pure love, that you believe to be bestowed on you by Jesus (or whatever deity you believe in). Would that give you second thoughts about whether you’re experiences are caused by the supernatural, or are purely a product of the physical brain?
Could not God have created (either directly or through evolution) our brains specifically to have a nerve center which It can stimulate? And, like cannaboid or opiod receptors in the brain, what was evolved to respond to one trigger may respond to others.
As mentioned, the Problem of evil assumes God. But it is also easy for atheists to explain the existence of evil. Natural evil - people being killed by floods and earthquakes - happens because the natural world is driven by physical processes totally unrelated to the presence of thinking beings. I almost said uncaring processes, but that kind of implies they can care. Calling these evil is absurd, actually.
As for evil done to each other, genetic diversity says we are born with a range of abilities of fitting into society, so there will be sociopaths who don’t get that killing people is wrong. We also have different and conflicting goals, and me achieving my goal may get in the way of you achieving yours. So the reason we don’t hear atheists discussing evil is that the solution is so trivial.
I don’t think you need to show that the Bible is inerrant to show that God exists - if you do, then that train has left the station long since. Finding verifiable first person accounts of the resurrection might help. Even bigger miracles than the one you describe would also. But the Christian God is inherently contradictory - omnipotence is not logically compatible with either omniscience of omnibenevolence, so if the Christian God is tri- or bi-omni it has vanished in a puff of logic, even granted that an omnipotent god still can’t do logically impossible things like the burrito example.
I believe that the correct electrical stimulus of the optic nerve can cause a subject to see flashes of light. I don’t think that proves that there is no such thing as light.