I intend to. 
Also the fact that the gods hate a smartass. At least the Discworld ones do 
I didn’t exclude it. I rather think that there is lots of conscious life out there. However, as far as that goes, we only have one example. We now have tons of examples of star systems with planets.
It is good to distinguish between things you think are true and things the evidence points to.
Summary–there have been preliminary experiments using different methods by different researchers that purport to create artificially, technologically induced spiritual/religious experiences.
How odd that theists with one breath say that God is too complex to understand and with the next treat him like a slot machine.
Even if I did treat God like a slot-machine, how would you know? You’re not privy to my relationship with God.
Er, you just said upthread “ultimately we all have to wager”.
So we are privy to it, because you told us.
You’ve got a point there. You could be lying through your teeth about what you believe and don’t believe, and we wouldn’t know the difference.
So is there a test to distinguish a true believer from a flat-out liar? I only ask because this may prove useful, if it exists.
Poe’s Law would suggest no, unless the liar was sufficiently transparent.
Darn. Life would be so much easier if when we’re confronted with 5,000 competing religions, each claiming to be the “true” one, we could readily weed out the ones based on lies.
Or we could assume they all are, until proven otherwise.
Sorry, but I still don’t get the distinction you are making between unconscious matter and self-conscious matter with respect to the Universe as a whole.
Back to basics: The totality of particles and forces which determine the interaction is an inevitable outcome of the starting conditions of this Universe Agreed?
Then why doesn’t it follow that everything which flows from that is also inevitable? How does the fact that we only know of conscious life on earth invalidate this? Isn’t it considered very likely that given the billions and billions of stars with, you know, lots of planets, supports the strong likelyhood of life emerging in several places in the Universe rather than not. And doesn’t the fact that life on earth evolved self-awareness, so often in so many different species, mean that there is a significant benefit to being aware of being alive?
Why is that so more special than accepting as obious that planets in this Universe will tend to be round, rather than square?
Great! have fun with that. Given that you aren’t trying to convert anyone or say that this is the only way to believe or that laws should be changed to reflect this world view I doubt that any atheist would really complain one way or another about this. In another thread I expressed the following belief which sounds very similar to yours and got nary a peep of complaint.
I don’t think atheists have that much of a beef with agnostic theists as long as they don’t claim to have that they have evidence that their belief is correct and so should be held by others.
There is a test, and it’s very easy to administer. All you have to do is check to see if the person’s words and actions match up. A true disciple lives after God in the dark, where there’s no one around to see the good things he does. A false disciple lives after God only when it makes him look good, when the lights are on and the cameras are rolling. A false disciple forgets his Master in private but puts on a show of piety when in the company of admirers.
A true disciple doesn’t care about personal glory.
A false disciple craves it.
A true disciple exalts others in his Master’s name.
A false disciple uses his Master’s name to tear others down.
Well, if there’s no-one around to see, how do we know what the disciple is doing after dark?
Wait, I know this one. You lock him in a box with a radioactive isotope and a gun that will fire when the isotope decays…
And this is where the atheist wins - we have nothing to sell - nothing to gain by our ‘belief’ (as raindog would have it) - therefore we never have to lie or hedge our bets on it.
Because we find out about it after the fact, in the newspaper or on TV.
Not really. You’d have to have access to their private mental states, wouldn’t you?
Then the disciple would be phony and genuine at the same time. 