Does faith mean no spiritual experience? (Revelation, Einstein, blood, afterlife)
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Well then do please do both of us a favor and kindly provide what evidence or proof you feel justifies a belief in God. That's really all I'm asking anyone to do if/when they claim there is such evidence to justify their belief in God. Beyond faith for example.
For me that would get us out of this gray area as you put it. Specifics...
Let’s restart to see if we are on the same page, cuz this is interesting.
From what I understand,
You are saying that, there is no evidence of God and hence, the belief that “God does not exist” is justified.
Is that correct?
Let’s get this cleared up by keeping it short n simple before we move forward with our journey of exploring this logic and philosophy.
Again, this is not a hosing down contest. We are just trying to learn from each other.
Sorry but no. Of course there are probabilities at some stage of the game, of knowing versus not knowing, but then the odds or probabilities are no longer necessary or applicable.
Explanation: when you sit down to play poker, you are best served to consider the probabilities you will be dealt which hands, win the hand. Once you are dealt your hand, and if you are dealt a spade royal flush, you no longer need to rely or even consider probabilities. No longer need to rely on faith you can or will win.
Now, with that spade royal flush in your hand, you KNOW you will win.
I am again simply pointing out the difference between KNOWING and having faith, per the topic or question I posed to start this thread.
Again to get back on point. If you KNOW god exists, you don't need faith. If you have faith god exists, you don't know. Should simply be able to admit or accept which it is anyway, rather than make this more about shades of gray as well.
Otherwise, we all clearly recognize when we know something and/or when we really don't. People seem pretty black or white as a rule when it comes to such things. When it comes to knowing god, however, I get the feeling people hate to admit they really don't know. So they have faith instead...
I think in my previous post, I made it very clear that in my opinion, we don’t really “know” whether,
A: God exists
OR
B: God does NOT exist
In both cases we are using faith to place our bets on probabilities.
What’s the issue here?
The game of poker may be an example to illustrate some scenarios BUT the problem is, we already know ALL the rules of poker and we have played it a million times. We fully know how it starts and how it ends. We know all the cards in the deck. There is no new or never foreseen card in every game, correct?
This example may not be a good one to depict faith in theology because we don’t know the end of it. We don’t know all the rules.
Contrary to the “game of poker”, in the game of “faith in theology”, there is a MAJOR event of death - and we enter into the territory of the unknown. There is no such card in poker to be handed to every player in every game.
You can’t fit the equivalent of this event in the game of poker, can you?
I can't speak for any of the other atheists here, but it seems to me you are missing a point many of us often make: It's not a problem if you believe something about faith; it's a problem when you (that's the bigger you) state it as a fact.
Me?
Not sure where did I even use the word “fact” in this entire thread.
Please quote me.
And while we are at it, let’s briefly talk about it, please define for me as to what do you consider a “fact”? What’s the definition of “fact” in your understanding?
Let’s restart to see if we are on the same page, cuz this is interesting.
From what I understand, You are saying that, there is no evidence of God and hence, the belief that “God does not exist” is justified.
Is that correct?
Let’s get this cleared up by keeping it short n simple before we move forward with our journey of exploring this logic and philosophy.
Again, this is not a hosing down contest. We are just trying to learn from each other.
As an observer to this little conversation, I feel like I need to point out what I bolded in your post.
So, I want to say something about "evidence".
I live in Arizona and have a very large back yard. Almost everyday I go out and pick up a few sticks and things that have blown into the yard. And some days I find poop. Having lived here for two years, I definitely learned to identify dog poop versus coyote poop. It's really quite easy. Plus, we have strict leash rules in our HOA, that I am quite confident that there has not been any dog poop in my yard over the past two years.
When I first started living here, two years ago, I would see the scat...the evidence...and jump to the conclusion that coyotes had been in my yard overnight. But then one day my neighbor asked me if I had seen the bobcats in my backyard. Hmmmm. And more recently I learned that a small group of javelina had meandered through our back yards. Hmmmm again.
This is sort of like evidence in a courtroom. There may be evidence against a defendant. But how reliable is that evidence? Is it beyond any doubt? Or beyond a reasonable doubt? Or is the evidence being misinterpreted? We are learning with DNA testing that there have been lots of innocent men and women sent to prison due to a misinterpretation of evidence.
I'm not going to say that there is "no evidence" for god. But "some" evidence is not good enough for me. Not for something this big and important. If you want me to believe in god, and that Jesus was the son of god, you're going to need to come up with some fairly conclusive evidence. And you don't have it. At least not by my standards. And I'm not being unfair about this, either. I'm Buddhist. I have no conclusive evidence for rebirth or karma. That doesn't mean I shouldn't believe in it, but I also should not expect you to believe in those things without some fairly conclusive evidence.
Me?
Not sure where did I even use the word “fact” in this entire thread.
Please quote me.
And while we are at it, let’s briefly talk about it, please define for me as to what do you consider a “fact”? What’s the definition of “fact” in your understanding?
You didn't read what I wrote. I said, "it's a problem when you (that's the bigger you) state it as a fact". "the bigger you" does not mean you as an individual. It's a broader group of people that share a particular point of view.
As far as defining facts, I'll use a dictionary definition: "the truth about events as opposed to interpretation". "Victor is 5'7" tall" is a fact. "Victor is short" is not a fact.
It seems that we can get two kind of Believers - the one who build up a persuasive case and the acceptance of it leads to Faith as a mystical experience, and the kind who gets Faith, through a mystical experience and builds up the evidential case to support it.
I am not sure exactly what is a “mystical experience” in the first kind. Are you saying “experiencing being a believer without evidence” is a “mystical experience”? Just a clarification is what I need. No argument here.
But the “mystical experience” in the second part is interesting.
Do we have an established and universally agreed upon set of rules that we can use to first,
Define, exactly what’s a mystical experience?
And second
Use the set of those established rules to be able to identify if the so called “mystical experience” was not hallucination or day dreaming or any other psychiatric condition, etc?
If we say that “mystical experience” as in the second kind of believers is “personal”, then I think it will be a little unjust of such a God who does not give all a chance to use their intelligence, logic and research to establish or deny faith, but such a God hand picks a few very, very lucky individuals and “speaks to them”, that we call “mystical experience”.
I don’t have an issue with either one; however,
which one of the two kinds would make a little more sense to you if you were to be a believer?
You didn't read what I wrote. I said, "it's a problem when you (that's the bigger you) state it as a fact". "the bigger you" does not mean you as an individual. It's a broader group of people that share a particular point of view.
As far as defining facts, I'll use a dictionary definition: "the truth about events as opposed to interpretation". "Victor is 5'7" tall" is a fact. "Victor is short" is not a fact.
So that bigger you may not pertain to me. Now that we got it out of the way, let’s talk about “fact”, just a little.
“God exists”
“God does not exist”
Which one of these statements is a “fact” in your opinion?
As an observer to this little conversation, I feel like I need to point out what I bolded in your post.
So, I want to say something about "evidence".
I live in Arizona and have a very large back yard. Almost everyday I go out and pick up a few sticks and things that have blown into the yard. And some days I find poop. Having lived here for two years, I definitely learned to identify dog poop versus coyote poop. It's really quite easy. Plus, we have strict leash rules in our HOA, that I am quite confident that there has not been any dog poop in my yard over the past two years.
When I first started living here, two years ago, I would see the scat...the evidence...and jump to the conclusion that coyotes had been in my yard overnight. But then one day my neighbor asked me if I had seen the bobcats in my backyard. Hmmmm. And more recently I learned that a small group of javelina had meandered through our back yards. Hmmmm again.
This is sort of like evidence in a courtroom. There may be evidence against a defendant. But how reliable is that evidence? Is it beyond any doubt? Or beyond a reasonable doubt? Or is the evidence being misinterpreted? We are learning with DNA testing that there have been lots of innocent men and women sent to prison due to a misinterpretation of evidence.
I'm not going to say that there is "no evidence" for god. But "some" evidence is not good enough for me. Not for something this big and important. If you want me to believe in god, and that Jesus was the son of god, you're going to need to come up with some fairly conclusive evidence. And you don't have it. At least not by my standards. And I'm not being unfair about this, either. I'm Buddhist. I have no conclusive evidence for rebirth or karma. That doesn't mean I shouldn't believe in it, but I also should not expect you to believe in those things without some fairly conclusive evidence.
So a couple of things here.
First, I do not follow the method of “establishing a belief in the existence God”........ based on “evidence”.
You already read and replied to my post # 190. Please revisit and give it another read to understand my thoughts.
Second. I do not believe that Jesus is a God and/or son of God.
Third, I have no intention to convince you or anyone to believe in a theology and faith of my liking.
You have already subscribed to Buddhism as your system of belief as you may feel that its message talks to your heart. Good for you.
We are all adults and intelligent people. We have done our research and we have established our beliefs. Good for us.
On a side note though, which pertains to point one above, please read post # 202 about defining the evidence of God.
We can examine the excrement of a dog, or a hyena or a bobcat or a coyote or we can visually see such an animal and present our evidence, BUT when it comes to evidence God, neither can we define what would be an evidence of God (a visual sight? a sample from his dna? a personal visit?) to begin with, nor do we have the knowledge and capacity to verify and validate that piece of evidence.
I don’t adhere in the “evidence of God” but please do tell me, what would you consider as an “evidence of God” and when it’s presented to you, how are you going to verify and validate it?
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