Snickers The reason for the two questions is that they underlie two common assumptions that are made. One is that God needs to be a limited and easily defined term in order for it to exist. And the second part is that the answer to the question is obviously yes, but people will tell you that you are halluinating when you experience God, even though they have no evidence that points in either direction clearly, as they do not know what God is, and they can’t possibly know what you experience that they have never had was like in order to judge it as a hallucination.
So the questions might seem silly, but they are meant to pick apart some very basic assumptions made by many different people.
The idea of a god is product, nothing more. It’s what religions package and sell. God exists in the same way that Captain Crunch does: to help sales and marketing.
Second question:
Is it possible for one person to have an experience that another person has never had?
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Every experience that a person has is totally unique to that person. The answer is yes.
Well, then your definition of god isn’t the one most people use, and reduces the meaning of the word to the same level as the meaning of the word “christian”. If you want the words “knowledge” and “god” to be interchangeable, I can’t stop you. But you cannot communicate efficiently with the majority of people on this planet if you do.
There is a third option: “I have no reason to believe there’s a god”.
I actually used to think the same thing, but then I realized that saying I believe there is no god is different from saying “I know there is no god.” Many theists believe in god without a lot of evidence, some even admit this. An atheist, who looks at several religions and says that he is confident enough to believe there is no god is being perfectly rational. I’d assume this atheist would change his belief if evidence appeared. Belief is different from dogmatism, especially if you are willing to change belief.
There is a difference, though. The first statement might be made without much introspection. We often argue whether it makes sense to say a baby has no god belief, but everyone would agree that a baby does not believe there is no god, right?
I think this argument is irrelevant. Without evidence to support either claim, okay fine. However, mswas isn’t saying this. He/She has “evidence”, in the form of observation and experience, unlike your theoretical baby, who has no reason to speculate upon god, having no knowledge of the concept. Mswas has “evidence” of something, but instead of applying scientific principles to this experience, chooses to say “I do not understand it, therefore it is inexplicable - it must be God”.
Just because an atheist cannot explain something does not make that thing the province of a super-, supra-, or extranatural being. Atheists believe in rational explanations for things. If a god were to manifest to me in such a form so there could be no possible rational explanation , even one outside the realms of my personal knowledge, then I would still exhaust all avenues of inquiry before conceding belief. A god worthy of my belief would appreciate this.
In an infinite universe, anything is possible, even god. However, as god is the least likely explanation (hell, there’s more “evidence” to support the existence of fairies), I feel more than justified in my atheism.
Dude, you need to get new friends. Either that, or you need to stop pushing your beliefs onto other people that don’t want them. Just because you have had a life changing, ineffable experience doesn’t necessarily mean that “God” does exist, either, you know? Maybe your experience has proven to you beyond a doubt that “God” exists, but don’t be offended when I might still be skeptical, based only on your recounting of your experiences.
I also think you’re selling people short. While there are definitely religious people who have a simplistic view of God as the big bearded kindly guy in the sky, there’s equally as many people who have a nuanced, complex, sophisticated, and not easily defined “God.” And they’re forced to use the limitations of language to try to encompass those ideas to share with others. You seem to be equating these limitations of language with limitations of that “God” itself, which is a flawed assumption. I can use a simplistic definition to describe Democrats or Republicans, too, but that doesn’t mean I’ve reduced the ideals of those groups to that definition.
I think it’s actually almost impossible for someone to have an experience that someone else has had, at least not precisely the same, when you get right down to the fine detail.
I’ve just eaten a slice of swiss roll and I intend to wash it down with a cup of tea; something you’d be forgiven for imagining was rather common, however, the precise amount of swiss roll I ate is quite likely to differ from the precise amount others have eaten before me; the time of day at which I ate it adds another variable, as does the exact manner in which I nibbled it. the duration between the swiss roll and the tea, the amount and temperature of tea, in which particular cup, and so on.
Then there’s the fact that the first taste of the vanilla cream filling made me think of ice cream, then it made me wonder what people really mean when they talk about French Vanilla; by the time I was chewing my second mouthful of cake, I was reminiscing about a camping holiday I spent in the south of France back in the eighties.
And so on, and so on; it’s highly unlikely that any two humans have ever enjoyed precisely the same experience.