Your proposing all or nothing. I don’t see why.
You’re presupposing to know what his golas are and the rate he thinks best man grasp the amount of knowledge (1-100%) that he disires them to.
Since we do not know the grand plan I don’t see how you can decide if any decision is good, bad, benevolent, or cruel.
Sort of. I’m suggesting that if God’s desire is to make himself known, that is better accomplished by performing acts we can understand. Now, for your average person there’s the possibility that in order to get one thing, we might have to comprimise on something else; God doesn’t have that problem, so I think it’s fair to say each step towards the unknowable is pretty unnecessary. Would he want to be totally known? I’d think so, and i’ll get into that.
You’re correct. I’m assuming God wants to be known, which doesn’t seem all that silly. The only other ideas would be if God actively doesn’t want to be known, which is totally incompatible with, well, that he is actually known. On the other hand, he might be indifferent as to whether people know about him, but that seems incompatible with the proseylatizing efforts of Jesus (assuming he had a good idea of what God was on about). So we’re left with God wanting to be known.
You also suggest that it’s not a matter of wanting to be fully understood, but possibly only partially. That’s perfectly possible; maybe God wants to keep things about himself hidden from us. Of course, the problem with that one is; why would he want to keep things hidden? There’s plenty of reasons not to; any kind of point which isn’t clear is going to be debated (in the best case) or fought over (in the worst) which kinda detracts from the whole love-thy-neighbour business. And, of course, by keeping some facet of himself unknowable, God leaves room for suspicious people to say “What’s he trying to hide?”. And if God’s unknowable on some issues, how do we know we’ve got the right end of the stick on the things we think we do know about him? Maybe he meant to literally love thy neighbour but to hell with the rest of them. Leaving himself unknowable on some issues means he’s so on all.
Except on faith, I suppose, as you do. 
But this is a good point. If we don’t know the grand plan, how can we decide if we want to follow him or not? You wouldn’t sign a contract without reading it. Why would we sign on the dotted line if we not only can’t read the contract, but we can’t evaluate the other party? It’s just not attractive business, and I think if we can agree on one thing it is that the Christian God would want people to be Christians.
okey dokey
<snip>
As I said, some will argue intelligent design and insist that creation itself is evidence. I realize we know a lot about the earth but there are still unanswered questions. Still, for the sake of this discussion lets say for the moment that there is no objective evidence at this time.
I certainly think beliefs should be examined and scientific objective evidence must be considered. Some brilliant minds throughout history have had various views about the possibility of God and and the details about God. Not everyone has embraced the bearded man in the sky who judges us and deals out reward and punishment. You seem to be speaking of a specific concept of God.
Your argument reminds me of The End of Faith by Sam Harris. Excellent book.
Given the way society has developed I don’t think it’s illogical or irrational for people to believe. I think there’s a slow natural process taking place as scientific knowledge becomes more available and I see the nature of spiritual beliefs changing. The kind of scientific knowledge needed to dispel certain myths hasn’t been around all that long and it takes generations for it to displace long held traditions. Religious beliefs have a certain insulation. I think the fact that so many do believe gives it weight even though it’s not objective evidence. Think about it. I’ve never been to Austrailia but I believe it’s there because of what I’ve been taught and the fact that it’s a widely accepted fact. You can’t realistically expect everyone to examine the evidence in detail and make a “logical” accessment.
Imagine a radio station broadcasting the same signal a very consistant message to everyone. The problem is everyone hasn’t figured out how to tune in their receiver. Compound that problem with those who feel sure they are understanding the message when in fact they’ve corrupted it with their own feelings and agendas. Compound it still more with those who want to manipulate those who are trying to tune in. It is confusing and I understand people choosing to believe there is no broadcast. Being one who has exoerienced the power and mystery of tuning in I also understand those who continue to believe.
Plenty of people believe in ghosts and others believe in aliens abd while others may scoff or disbelieve they don’t always think these people are a little crazy. I think the point is how does that belief affect their lives and in turn the lives of others. IN that regard I completely agree. We do need to challenge beliefs that adversly effect the lives of others. I think it is action that brings the belief into question. As I said before , if someone’s belief in God prompts them to feed the poor then I see no need to question that belief. However religion should not be a sheild for bad behavior.
Yeah and… what? When you say in their heads are you implying that no one should ever speak their beliefs out loud unless they have objective evidence to prove them. Comon! I mean really. What are you suggesting as a solution? I agree that religious beliefs should not be off limits as far as open discussion and objective examination. I still maintain that we need to respect people’s right to choose their beliefs while making sure those beliefs do not threaten or oppress others.
My point is that since the question of God’s existance cannot be answered conclusively it’s okay for people to come down on the believe side. The specific details of theiur belief and how those beliefs affect others is a seperate issue.
Thats why I think it’s the actions that should be examined first.
You read my post incorrectly. I said since the subjective experience is almost all of the spiritual journey then believers should not expect to prove their beliefs to others, nor should they insist that everyone believes exactly as they do.
Even people that belong to major religions and specific denominatins do not all believe the same thing. You need to do the research before you make blanket assertions like that. Isn’t that what you’re demanding of believers?
You are misunderstanding the application of subjective evidence.
I don’t agree. Spiritual beliefs have a long history and tradition and there are millions of believers from all classes and intellects and are changing. You’re saying without sufficient evidence non belief should be the default. Perhaps without hundreds of years of religious tradition and influence that might be realistic.
One could say that the amount of “knowability” is precisely where he thinks it should be. Also, if God popped onto the airways and performed a few miracles for all to see, eliminating all doubt as to his existence, that kind of does away with “faith”. Now that might be interesting, seeing how people—who would all be believers—would act. For some reason he chose this scenario, which does make a little more of free will.
Agreed. The question is then to what degree and at what rate he will dial up the “knowability” (if at all).
My guess is that the amount “knowability” is tailor-made for man and the free will he endowed us with. If nothing else, I think you’d agree that its allowed man to show himself at his best and his worst. Maybe that’s the point.
Doesn’t that go too far? How about The Ten Commandments? The teachings of Jesus?
Maybe he’s experimenting with the effects of free will. Maybe in another time or another place he dialed up—or down—the degree to which he is known and is looking at the incidence of following him. In the end it is a personal decision. The entities with the experiences and DNA that make each of us who we are each have to choose for ourselves.
I cut this short last night because I was tired. I’m not talking about the subjective evidence of an objective reality. When someone says God is, we don’t know what God represents to them. Supreme being, in itself is still a somewhat vague term. In many ways I think the concept of God represents those unsolved mysteries about us. Where did we come from? Do we have a purpose greater than just survival and reproduction? Does our consciousness or spirit survive the end of our physical body? Those are questions that science has no definitive answers for even though progress has been made.
My own subjective experiences have led me to believe there is something more although my beliefs are very different now from the Christianity I once embraced. I think the important part of those subjective experiences are about what our priorities are and what we value. In that believers and non believers can find common ground. When it comes to making value judgements and choosing how our lives affects the lives of others ,everyone acts with a certain amount of faith.
That’s the kind of subjective I am talking about. Even though religion does have some beliefs about objective reality, it is more in the subjective realm of “what we truly value and how our choices reflect that” that most of religion lies. There’s plenty of reason to criticize religion in that area as well, but in it all people share a common imperfection.
Concerning your ideas about believers being delusional or a little bit crazy. I remember my own process of letting go of certain beliefs. It’s a bit more complicated than reading a science book and saying “Gee I guess my sacred beliefs aren’t true” It’s too deeply rooted in people’s emotions and even their sense of purpose and well being. I don’t think it’s reasonable or realistic to treat it in purely objective terms. Were the people that believed in the Roman Gods delusional or just living within the consciousness of their era?
I’m all for challenging people’s beliefs , objective and subjective. I think it stimulates growth. I don’t think it serves any useful purpose to call believers delusional or a little crazy. I don’t think it’s accurate when you consider how belief is so ingrained in our society.
Thats a very interesting point. It would be a new thread.
Do we know that all twelve, minus Judas, went on to spread the teachings of Christ?
Was it just a few that decided to do so and then recruited the others mentioned in the NT?
Paul was the most prolific writer and he was not one of the original twelve.
It’s an interesting subject but let’s not hijack this thread for it.
I think that’s the quality I was thinking of. Timeless. It’s pretty hard to grasp but IMHO things happen or don’t happen as a matter of spiritual condition rather than on any time related basis. God is consistently true to his nature which is love and truth. We have the ability to be in that nature fully but choose not to consciously or unconsciously. God may know every sparrow every blade of grass every hair on my head…{I wish he’d put some back} but it’s spiritual condition that translates into changes what we perceive as changes in physical reality and linear time.
I think the knowing part is up to us. We must surrender our false perceptions to the truth.
If he did exist, it would be only logical to say the amount of “knowability” is exactly where he thinks it should be. And there’s the problem; the lack of it doesn’t seem to dovetail with his other attributes.
Regarding your miracles example, I think you’re confusing two issues; knowing that God exists, and knowing what he’s about if he exists. I know that God, if he exists, is supposed to be all about loving and goodness; but I don’t think he actually exists. He could improve what we know about him without actually making us certain he exists; the Bible could be clearer, for example.
But why would he need to dial it up? Because we’re not ready for it? That seems a bit like poor planning.
God is supposed to be omniscient. He doesn’t need to be shown us at our best and worst; he should already know.
How do we know where “too far” is? I’ll paraphase Rumsfeld horribly and point out that if there are things we know we don’t know, there should also be things we don’t know we don’t know; it’s only logical to say that it’s likely we’ve got some aspect of such an unknowable creature wrong? The Ten Commandments may seem clear, but there’s a lot of wiggle room there. Same for the teachings of Jesus.
But he doesn’t need to look, he knows already. Experimentation on helpless creatures when it isn’t needed and the results are already known is something even we tend to look down on.
And yes, we do have to choose for ourselves. But because of the unknowability factor, it’s not a case of choice a or choice b; it’s choice a and choice b, or maybe c, or maybe d… It just doesn’t work with what are supposed to be God’s ideals to leave some ambiguity as to what he stands for and why he does things.
Pretty difficult when the being of truth won’t identify itself as the truth. Kinda makes it all guesswork.
This isn’t evidence for god though.
We can study everything real.
We can double blind study humans, and they are supposedly intelligent.
Again, this isn’t evidence for prayer. It’s just an excuse, thought up after the fact.
For a child yes, I wouldn’t argue that. But an adult would know better than to extend the idea as far as god. They can realize that no person knows everything. Certainly that no person is all powerful. And definitely that no person loves everyone. Existing while out of sight is much different from ‘invisible’ or ‘intangible’. These are all attributes that are easily recognized at unreal. So taking the leap from ‘parents exists’ and ‘authority exists’ to ‘god exists’ is huge and unsubstatiated.
It’s easy to see, after a bit of thought, that those consequences are not directed at people doing bad things, unless god really hates the tops of tall trees and skyscrapers, and can have his will thwarted by a grounding line.
This is because science hasn’t found anything on the subject of god. It isn’t looking for anything for or against god, it’s just looking at reality. Science not finding anything isn’t evidence for god, but it might be considered evidence against.
Actually, we do. They believe in something without adaquate evidence for that something.
Why is god presumed to be intelligent? Is there some evidence somewhere that shows that god is intelligent in this way? Or is this an excuse made up after the fact? The problem with the argument is that you can’t say for sure that god is intelligent, because you don’t know. People are intelligent, and we can run studies on things they do, even with the critics watching. And why would god hide himself from things like this? One good example, and he suddenly has a whole bunch more followers.
Yes, that’s what I said.
Don’t you hear the excuses they use? The alien’s technology is much more advanced then ours, and precludes us finding them through terrestrial means. Sound familiar?
You’d think someone would have found real evidence for god and told us about it through credible channels by now.
This argument sound familar for some reason too.
This is an appeal to popularity. They would still need present evidence.
Again, this is just an excuse after the fact. You don’t know god is undetectable.
And considering that every single time a god event is investigated it turns out to not be god after all, that some kind of pattern is emerging? The fact that certain events in the bible haven’t been proven wrong yet is not evidence for god. Evidence for god would be proving one of them right. You can’t start off with the assumption that god is real, and then expect him to proven wrong.
It is insane to believe arguments from popularity or authority when there is no other evidence to believe those arguments. If all you have is ‘well, all these people think it’s true’, then that doesn’t make it true. You don’t have to prove god by formal logic, just present some evidence. That no evidence at all, after all this time and effort, has been brought forth, is a big red flag all by itself.
But they would be quite wrong. Intelligent design doesn’t have any evidence, its just an idea, that some things are too complicated to have developed solely from random processes. They don’t give any proof of this, no actual studies, anything. Besides, it’s well known that ID is just creationism in new clothes, and creationism is just a religious agenda.
Unanswered questions are not evidence for god. Thats the god of the gaps argument.
You need to support this argument more. Science hasn’t dispelled many, if any, of the long held myths about god. And logical conclusion of the development you mention is the elimination of the belief in god.
Of course I can expect people to examine the evidence and make a logical assessment. That’s how you decided Australia existed right? People presented evidence, and because it behaves for all intents that it does exist, and because you have no reason to think it doesn’t you assume it does. Making a logical deduction does not always involve axioms and proofs.
But you haven’t even shown that the radio station exists, much less broadcasts. If you send people out looking for something so nebulous like god, then people are going to be able to point to anything and see it, and still not have actually found anything.
No one should speak their beliefs out loud unless they can stand to have them challenged. Once the beliefs are out of their heads, anyone can say anything they want about them, true or not. You can’t talk to people about what you believe and expect people to just nod and smile, especialy if you’re espousing something crazy or dangerous. ‘Its personal’ doesn’t apply anymore, once it’s in the open.
Why do we have to respect people’s right to choose their belief? I have to respet someone’s boundaries, and once a belief is out of their mouth is passed their boundaries. If someone chooses to believe that ice cream is good for computers and they should spoon it right in, I’m certainly not going to respect their belief. I don’t see why religious beliefs should be given a miss with this. They should be held to the same standards all other beliefs are held to in society.
Whoa, this is all kinds of wrong. If you can’t give evidence for something, why is right to think that thing exists? This counter to rational thought.
The spiritual journey is not almost all subjective experience. Most people are taught to follow religion from a very young age. They aren’t allowed to make decisions about it, nor are they capabable at that age. And why should they be let off the hook because they’re having experiences they think they are spiritual? This is making an exception for something that does not deserve it.
What kind of variation is there with something like Catholicism? How many Catholics don’t believe in god? How many don’t think Jesus dies and rose from the dead? I don’t care about little variations, I’m talking about the main tenets. How can a person be Catholic without thinking god exists?
No I’m not. If you think I am, you’ll have to explain how.
This is just another appeal to popularity. There is hundreds of years of tradition for the flat earth theory, and thousands of years tradition for the Egyptian mythology.
So? I’m not really concerned about little variations. My statement covers all of them.
You just said that your experiences that you derive your belief about about ‘god’ from have to do with what you want, and are not about god itself.
Support this. I think you are misusing the word faith.
I’m not concerned with the subjective realm. My statement applies to people who assert god is real. This is any kind of real. You can’t say ‘god is real, but not this kind of real, so you can’t expect to see him’ and think it won’t apply to you.
That is their problem, not mine. It doesn’t allow them to get around the expectation of being rational. In my experience, the deeper a belief like that is held, the more likely the person is to be a little crazy.
I did address this before. You also have to remember that the Romans did not think about their gods the way our sociiety thinks about god. The Roman gods were basically people with special abilities. The Romans joked about their gods, made fun of them, cursed them, and made offerings to whoever they thought would help them. I can see this version of a god much easier than the Christian god because it doesn’t have as many unreal attributes.
I do. By exposing their belief as what it is, an unfounded opinion, it will bring them level with the rest of the society. The gubmint will be more hesistant to lavish funding on them. They won’t be able to get away with crimes like they have in the past. People won’t boycott business because that business doesn’t kowtow to their opinions. Religion will be just another group with a nutty belief. Everything good that religion does now, feeding the poor, providing a social group, etc, can be done without all the beliefs.
He is able to do it if there was no omniscience issue, of course. Consider this. You are chatting with god about this leaf, and he has told you, honestly, that he has seen the leaf not fall. You ask him to make the leaf fall. (You’re a good buddy with God.) Now, when he says he chooses not to, I claim he is making the same kind of statement I made about flying (though you are right, it is from logical not physical issues.) You see, if he listens to you and does make the leaf fall, he has just invalidated his omniscience, so it is not possible. Therefore, not only does he not choose to make the leaf fall, he cannot without invalidating the basis of his godhood. Thus, he is not omnipotent, and has also invalidated the basis of his godhood.
As for choosing otherwise, see my comment about when he sees the future. How could he choose before he sees what he has chosen? Besides that, the point is that he can’t change his mind. Are you saying that he was omnipotent at t=0, but is not anymore?
Just to repeat a point made before, you are correct in claiming that god cannot do logically impossible things - but by this practically every action is logically impossible if it is counter to what was foreseen, so god is stuck.
I’m not including omnibenevolence here, which has its own problem. Even a God who is not neutral can clearly do evil, since to not be able to do evil means one is not omnipotent.
Can God make alternate universes, one where he is omnipotent and one where he is omniscient? Interesting. Not too well Biblically supported, though. But I don’t think natural laws are a problem here.
The way to prove a negative is to assert it and show that it leads to a logical contradiction. It’s done all the time in math and philosophy, so I’m not doing anything odd. I guess you still don’t get that the problem is when God is both omniscient and omnipotent - all your examples are of god not being able to do logically impossible things without omniscience being involved, and I agree that his not being able to does not detract from his omnipotence. That’s not the issue.
Also, nowhere does God have to state anything. When God told Jonah that he was going to destroy Nineveh, and changed his mind, that’s not a problem, since we can assume that God knew all along that he wasn’t going to destroy it, but lied to Jonah for his own purposes. My example only involves God seeing what he is going to do. Like I said, if God doesn’t see the future, there goes Christianity, which is based in part on prophecy. Stating it is irrelevant.
So he can’t change his mind? There goes omnipotence. I don’t see how changing his mind about a leaf falling has anything to do with perfection, anyhow.
Okay. Apparent inconsistencies in the universe get resolved as we learn more, like the inconsistency in the age of the Earth as measured by the rocks and the age of the sun, which was a big problem in the 19th century. Nothing to do with God.
One problem with a timeless universe (and I’ve read some proposals on this from real physicists) is that there is no free will. Basically, everything that will happen has already happened. I see it as a big roadmap spread out over the ground, and we puny humans little ants mapping the roads. We think the roads we’ve walked on are in the past, and might think that the roads we haven’t walked on are still not set, but God, who sees the whole map, knows that they are all there. (Forget about the choices of taking forks for the moment.)
I don’t see any way of deciding whether this model is true or not.
My issue with the bi-omni god has nothing to do with his love or lack thereof - a non bi-omni god can be loving also. I have some issues about how he shows his love, but that’s a problem for another day. I think an evil god or a loving god has the same problem if he is supposed to be bi-omni.
Perhaps we can say that god belief is irrational, but that god believers are not necessarily irrational. The rational among us are often irrational about certain things, such as loved ones and hobbies. The atheist should not accuse the theist of being crazy because he has what they see as an irrational god belief, and the theist should not accuse the atheist of calling him crazy when the atheist calls a specific belief irrational.
Then we can all get along.
But when the rational are being irrational, they are called irrational. If you are doing something irrational, you are being irrational. If belief in god is irrational, then believing in god makes a person irrational.
Tell you what, you tell all the religious people about this, and Ill tell all the athiests, and let’s see who agrees first.
Here’s the thing though; through his omniscience, he already would know that I would talk to him. And he’d know whether or not my attempt to persuade him was successful. It’s not a case of him seeing the leaf fall, and then circumstances change so that I ask him not to; his “vision” of the future would include the talk and his change of mind.
Think of it as a book with “God lets the leaf fall; Revenant does nothing”. If you want to change the circumstances, so that I do in fact intervene and say something, that book never existed in the first place. Instead we have one with “Revenant tries to persuade him to change his mind”. It doesn’t conflict with his original prediction because the original prediction would be different.
No, i’m saying that he can change his mind. He just won’t.
There is no “counter to what was foreseen”. A perfectly accurate predicter would see all events, including other people’s attempt to change his/her mind and the results of that. You can’t say “aha, but what if this happens?” because if it does happen it has already been taken into account.
You’re quite correct, but an omnibenevolent being can still choose to do evil; it simply decides to do good. I like to think of myself as a generally good person, but I could still choose to go out on a murdering spree. I just don’t.
But then I can replay the scenario in the opposite direction. Same problem.
The issue is that before God sees what will happen he has several degrees of freedom - two in this case. After he sees what is going to happen it collapses to one - it doesn’t matter what it is. Since he is omniscient eternally in the negative time direction, He never has more than one degree of freedom - he knows, before it happens, exactly what he is going to do.
This basically, I’ve just seen, boils down to the standard time travel paradox without the escape routes of alternate timelines of the inability of someone to change the future.
But how can he change his mind, without changing what he saw in the past?
Arguments against omnibenevolence usually center around what god has actually done, not what he could do. It’s more evidence based - that someone arguing for omnibenevolence must say every child who died in the tsunami had to for the greater benefit of the world - but isn’t a logical problem.
And the omniscient being would have seen it that way in the first place. No problem.
Just because he knows what will happen doesn’t negate that he can choose. It just means he won’t. If God were to make a prediction on a decision, and then change his mind on it, his initial prediction would be that he would change his mind. He can still change it, and his prediction would reflect any future choice he might make. His constraint boils down to that when he does something, he does it; not really logical inconsistency or even a constraint there at all.
He can’t. That’s my point. If he changed his mind, it would change what he forsaw retroactively (ok, retroactively is not the perfect word. I’m not suggesting the future affects the past.)
Er, yes, I know. I’m not arguing about God being benevolent. I don’t know why why we started talking about, actually. If it was something I said, I didn’t mean to; my only problem is with the omniscient/omnipotent example you brought up.
I’m leaving a few things out for the sake of brevity. My point is that the unaswered questions leve the creator option open.
What science does is shed light on certain traditional beliefs and the real objective evidence makes people look at their beliefs a little closer. If science clearly shows that the flood never happened , or the Jews did not wander in the desert for ages , or that the Bible wasn’t written by God, or the earth isn’t 6000 years old, that’s progress. I don’t accept that the logical conclusion is the elimination of belief in God. It can be a clearer understanding of God.
But you sure talk about proof a lot.
Yeah people I trust told me that Australia and other countries I’ve never visited exist so I believe them. That’s my point about the how belief in God is ingrained in us. The same point begbert2 has been making. Growing up in this culture and being told about God and Jesus by many people you trust and having that concept supported by millions of others of believers it doesn’t seem too irrational to accept that belief. Look at your own statement that I bolded. Many of the people I’m talking about believe in God because they have no reason not to. They were taught God is from their youth and it’s been supported enough by their environment that they have no reason to think God does not exist.
I’m saying the reception of the broadcast is seen as evidence that the message is coming from somewhere. When someone has a subjective experience that is exceptional. A moment of clarity, understanding, love, compassion, peace of mind. they naturally wonder what might be the source of that experience. Whether you like it or approve, or not, the conclusion for many is God. Furthermore, science has only begun to offer alternatives concerning those experiences.
I’ll go along with that. If the JW or Mormon’s with a mission come to my door they’d better be ready. If someone uses a biblical text to defend oppressing the rights of others they’ll get an earful. As I said , I have no problem with beliefs being challenged. OTOH if I made a comment about my beliefs and someone jumped on me and insisted I offer proof I wouldn’t feel any need to meet their demand upon request.
We don’t have to. We do it if we want people to respect our right to do the same. I’m not talking just about religious beliefs. I’m talking about our individual belief system. WHat we value and what we consider right and wrong.
Except that you, like many atheists who enjoy heaping disdain on religious beliefs don’t hold them to the same standards. If someone wants to spoon icecream into their own computer and it doesn’t effect you at all then why ridicule them needlessly?
There is a crucial difference between respecting the belief itself and respecting the persons right to hold a belief. I don’t believe God wrote the bible or that it is inerrant. I’ve seen a wealth of evidence to prove that is an erroneus belief and happen to think this belief only stifles individual growth. If someone refers to the Bible as the word of God I am likely to challenge them. I’m glad for books on the subject as more evidence becomes available to more people. However, because I understand that people need to work through their beliefs and give them up when they are ready, I still respect their right to choose that belief. As long as it doesn’t effect me and mine I will allow them the space to work through their beliefs in peace.
Whats really wrong here is that you are now setting yourself up as the thought police.
Given your statements thus far I doubt you have any basis to make an informed judgement about what the spiritual journey is. If this is more than a superficial opinion then please expound on your basis and experience for this statement.
You are speaking of subjective evidence in regard to objective beliefs. I’m speaking of subjective evidence for subjective beliefs. Big difference.
Right, and there was a natural process for those beliefs to shift from the norm to being discarded in the general mindset. We are in that process but the norm at the moment is belief in God. That doesn’t make it correct, but it does speak to your acccusation of “a little crazy”
No I didn’t.
This is part of what gets me. You want to remove the protected status of religious belief and judge it by the same standards as other beliefs. When I talk of faith in the non believer I get this type of objection. All people operate on some faith. Thats the way the human pysche and emotions work. You have faith that certain actions will yeild positive results. You have beliefs about what is right and what is wrong behavior even though thiose beliefs can change with effort and experiences. You may have faith that your signifiicant other loves you, or you may believe love is an illusion. All these beliefs have a direct effect on your choices and behavior and are a matter of faith.
Then you shouldn’t participate in this type of discussion.
You can’t huh? Does God have a physical form or is he only spirit? What kind of real is that? Does God intervene directly into the affairs of man or is he more of the observer that deists describe?
No, It does allow folks like myself to disagree with you. I am disturbed by people who feel the need to be positive their beliefs are correct whether they are believers or non believers.
I’ll have to finish this later.