God

Tinkerpeach said:
Well that is why you have free will.

I respect your belief as I hope you respect mine
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Personally I respect those who believe. Most of my friends are Christians and they live good lives which I honor. I would never want to see someone bereft of their faith if it brings them happiness and comfort. My usual limit is when religion becomes coercive.
 
Quincunx said:
And it would defeat the need for damnation as well.



I was a Christian for about 30+ years. (Cue up the usual list of how I must have done it wrong).

I will challenge you with something called "Scrupulosity". This is a variant of OCD in which the sufferer feels they are constantly offending God but desperately do not want to do so. One young man I met once had it so bad that you couldn't walk down a hallway with him. Everytime he so much as THOUGHT a thought he felt offended God he would stop, kneel down and touch the floor 5 times and pray for forgiveness. Of course it is absurd in the extreme but it was very real to him. Why would God allow an illness to exist which causes faith to be pure hell for the faithful. This kid was a really good kid, and he truly loved the Lord. But he was "blessed" with brain chemistry that made that feel like a living torment.

(YOu can read about it in the link I just provided in this text).

I have always been curious why God would allow his most ardent believers to suffer for the belief...not as a martyr to unbelievers but as an internal torment that literally never stops.
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If we never suffered that would essentially be Heaven and a person has to choose Heaven, it is not given to them

Some of the most faithful people in the Bible suffered and God allows this so that we can also see his mercy when He pulls us out of it.

If you didn’t learn this in 30 years of faith then I highly doubt you were actually ever a Christian.

Going to church and saying grace does not make someone a Christian
 
Tinkerpeach said:
If we never suffered that would essentially be Heaven and a person has to choose Heaven, it is not given to them

Some of the most faithful people in the Bible suffered and God allows this so that we can also see his mercy when He pulls us out of it.
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So God deems suffering to be essential...even if that suffering causes some people to lose faith altogether?

That means God is OK with losing some of his beloved creation to damnation. That is theologically problematic for me. (And, to be quite honest, is a big part of the reason I am no longer a believer. I failed to see sufficient evidence for God, but I used to suffer scrupulosity. If you don't know the pain you wouldn't understand my conclusions I suspect).

If you didn’t learn this in 30 years of faith then I highly doubt you were actually ever a Christian.
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And here we go. You are not to sit in judgement of my spiritual experience, but here you are. You see I've suffered more for my spiritual journey than many. While I was never as bad as the kid I met who had to kneel down, you can bet your bottom dollar that I suffered immensely.

But the worst part was that in my suffering I didn't FEEL God's presence giving me comfort. Just the pain. I challenge you to strip away all the pleasure you get from your relationship with God and just live with the suffering and tell me how much "evidence" you feel of God's presence in your life.

Going to church and saying grace does not make someone a Christian
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And being a pharisee doesn't either. But here you are.

As such I rescind my 'respect' for your faith. You have none for my experience so I need have none for yours. Luke 6:31
 
Quincunx said:
Oh, that's not a form of atheism I am familiar with. Those atheists who say "there is no God" are doing it wrong IMHO, they are practicing a "belief".
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No shit. That's exactly my point.

Anyone disbelieving there is nothing beyond the Natural Universe is doing so without facts.
 
Doc Dutch said:
No shit. That's exactly my point.

Anyone disbelieving there is nothing beyond the Natural Universe is doing so without facts.
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Hopefully, though, you see my point about "lack of belief". I fail to believe in God which might "shorthand" down to I don't believe in God but it is in the same way that I fail to believe in anything I don't have evidence of some sort for. That's perfectly reasonable.
 
Quincunx said:
Hopefully, though, you see my point about "lack of belief". I fail to believe in God which might "shorthand" down to I don't believe in God but it is in the same way that I fail to believe in anything I don't have evidence of some sort for. That's perfectly reasonable.
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An agnostic may or may not believe in God, gods, the afterlife, life is a video game, etc.

The difference between an agnostic and an atheist is that the agnostic understands such beliefs can't be proved. The atheist keeps trying to prove they don't exist by virtue of their arguments such as running around screaming "I disbelieve!" Kind of stupid, but it's also a statement of belief.
 
Doc Dutch said:
An agnostic may or may not believe in God, gods, the afterlife, life is a video game, etc.

The difference between an agnostic and an atheist is that the agnostic understands such beliefs can't be proved. The atheist keeps trying to prove they don't exist by virtue of their arguments such as running around screaming "I disbelieve!" Kind of stupid, but it's also a statement of belief.
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Actually, as I understand Huxley who coined the term the difference is that agnostics feel the question can never actually be answered. The atheist takes the more common route that if one fails to experience any evidence for something the question is answered in the negative.

The atheist feels the same way about God that you and I both feel about the existence of an invisible wall blocking the interstate. You and I both put our foot to the accelerator and just drive with the assumption that our failure to believe in the invisible wall means that no such wall exists. Otherwise we'd be crawling down the interstate at a mile an hour.

In fact this is really how science is usually done. It is, in effect, how all claims in science are assessed.
 
Doc Dutch said:
An agnostic may or may not believe in God, gods, the afterlife, life is a video game, etc.

The difference between an agnostic and an atheist is that the agnostic understands such beliefs can't be proved. The atheist keeps trying to prove they don't exist by virtue of their arguments such as running around screaming "I disbelieve!" Kind of stupid, but it's also a statement of belief.
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My position as an agnostic is that our primate brains are not capable of achieving omniscience, that our sensory perception and simian cognition do not have the ability to perceive and correctly interpret all true knowledge**, and that some questions probably don't have answers we can grasp, and probably never will.


** You can try until the cows come home, but you will never get a golden retriever to understand quantum mechanics
 
Cypress said:
My position as an agnostic is that our primate brains are not capable of achieving omniscience, that our sensory perception and simian cognition do not have the ability to perceive and correctly interpret all true knowledge, and that some questions probably don't have answers we can grasp, and probably never will.
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Agreed as individuals, I agree. Collectively, I think our species is very capable of understanding all natural laws of our Universe.

A minor example is the Apollo project to the Moon. No single person could do that. It was a collective of human beings that made it happen.

To understand all the workings of our Universe may require the assistance of AI, but I think we can do it since the information is discernible.
 
Quincunx said:
Actually, as I understand Huxley who coined the term the difference is that agnostics feel the question can never actually be answered. The atheist takes the more common route that if one fails to experience any evidence for something the question is answered in the negative.

The atheist feels the same way about God that you and I both feel about the existence of an invisible wall blocking the interstate. You and I both put our foot to the accelerator and just drive with the assumption that our failure to believe in the invisible wall means that no such wall exists. Otherwise we'd be crawling down the interstate at a mile an hour.

In fact this is really how science is usually done. It is, in effect, how all claims in science are assessed.
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Exactly. They believe it doesn't exist. OTOH, I believe an absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Since there is no evidence for or against, the question is unanswerable.

You keep bringing up the car analogy, but like the question about God creating an immovable rock, it's silly because it assumes God lives inside the Natural Universe. Most people who believe in God, gods, the afterlife, etc, believe these things are supernatural AKA supranatural; outside the natural universe.

Ergo, your invisible wall doesn't exist because we don't have the tech to create it and there's been no reports of invisible walls suddenly popping up on the nation's highways. If one did pop up, I, for one, would start to drive slower.
 
Doc Dutch said:
Agreed as individuals, I agree. Collectively, I think our species is very capable of understanding all natural laws of our Universe.

A minor example is the Apollo project to the Moon. No single person could do that. It was a collective of human beings that made it happen.

To understand all the workings of our Universe may require the assistance of AI, but I think we can do it since the information is discernible.
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My two cents: deriving the mathmatical expression of natural laws isn't the end of the questions. Why does the cosmos have a mathematical scaffolding, why are there universal physical constants, and where did they come from?
 
God is such a personal issues, as one who now chooses to let the mystery be, because in my search I’ve found there is no evidence for or against that satisfies me personally. I am just in awe of the universe and life. I have questioned since I was 12, and now I’m just at peace with the idea to let the mystery be.
 
Quincunx said:
Actually, as I understand Huxley who coined the term the difference is that agnostics feel the question can never actually be answered. The atheist takes the more common route that if one fails to experience any evidence for something the question is answered in the negative.

The atheist feels the same way about God that you and I both feel about the existence of an invisible wall blocking the interstate. You and I both put our foot to the accelerator and just drive with the assumption that our failure to believe in the invisible wall means that no such wall exists. Otherwise we'd be crawling down the interstate at a mile an hour.

In fact this is really how science is usually done. It is, in effect, how all claims in science are assessed.
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What does science have to do with invisible walls?
 
Phantasmal said:
God is such a personal issues, as one who now chooses to let the mystery be, because in my search I’ve found there is no evidence for or against that satisfies me personally. I am just in awe of the universe and life. I have questioned since I was 12, and now I’m just at peace with the idea to let the mystery be.
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Sounds like religion. Don't ask questions, don't learn, just ignore it.
 
Phantasmal said:
God is such a personal issues, as one who now chooses to let the mystery be, because in my search I’ve found there is no evidence for or against that satisfies me personally. I am just in awe of the universe and life. I have questioned since I was 12, and now I’m just at peace with the idea to let the mystery be.
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Sounds like a very good perspective
 
Doc Dutch said:
Exactly. They believe it doesn't exist. OTOH, I believe an absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Since there is no evidence for or against, the question is unanswerable.

You keep bringing up the car analogy, but like the question about God creating an immovable rock, it's silly because it assumes God lives inside the Natural Universe. Most people who believe in God, gods, the afterlife, etc, believe these things are supernatural AKA supranatural; outside the natural universe.

Ergo, your invisible wall doesn't exist because we don't have the tech to create it and there's been no reports of invisible walls suddenly popping up on the nation's highways. If one did pop up, I, for one, would start to drive slower.
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So it is solely your belief that the wall doesn't exist because you don't have enough evidence that it does. QED.
 
Cypress said:
My two cents: deriving the mathmatical expression of natural laws isn't the end of the questions. Why does the cosmos have a mathematical scaffolding, why are there universal physical constants, and where did they come from?
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The Universe is logical. It has laws. It's the cosmic equivalent of a clock in how it runs on the large scale. On the smaller scale, like ours, there seems to be more randomness.

Do you really believe that if the Earth has another impact event, it's just random? That given timely information on its orbit, the asteroid's impact upon the Earth couldn't have been predicted thousands or even millions of year ago?

What's inside our Universe is knowable. What's outside, not so much. LOL

For those who like puzzles, learning about the Universe is the greatest puzzle of all. We can wonder about what's outside the Universe, but, so far, we can only learn what's on the inside.
 
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