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I'm confused... Why would anyone put faith in something they don't think exists?
You seem to be hung up on the word "CLAIM," establishing a high bar by giving it a special meaning (that can then be sidestepped)... and it's not helping your logical arguments. A claim is merely a proposition, a premise, a statement in support of an idea, a thought that something is. You can even keep that thought to yourself if you want.... I would still consider it to be a claim, if you think it to be true. The "CLAIM" does not have to be capitalized, or rolled out with trumpet blasts and flashing neon signs, or branded on your flank, or tattooed on your forehead, or painted on your house, or signed on a formal document. Avoiding use of the C word doesn't mean you have not made a claim.
If you think something exists, enough to put faith in it, you have de facto made a claim. Presumably all the believers in the world would not be putting faith in something they don't think exists?
The obsession with the word “claim” is pretty much a trait of Atheists.
Atheists claim that theists claim that there is a God.
What exactly is a claim?
Here is my one of previous reply.
Take a deep breath and read very slowly. Take pauses after each sentence and please make you understand before moving forward.
“Originally Posted by GoCardinals View Post
You either don’t understand or you do not want to understand but sticking with the word “claim” seems to be your last resort.
There is absolutely no relevance between “having faith” and “making a claim”.
Let’s put it in a simple structured sentence so u can perhaps clear the confusion in your understanding.
If I say, “I am the second coming of Jesus”. Or if I say, “I know that God exists” - Then - YES INDEED, I am making a claim. And for which, I should produce an evidence.
But if I say, “I am getting on this airplane and I hope it will arrive safely at its destination. Or if I say, “I have faith in the existence of God” - THEN - I am *NOT* making any claims. There no sense in demanding or providing an evidence. It’s a ridiculous oxymoron.
How hard is it to understand? Seriously.
Who is making the claim by saying, “I know God exists” -
And who is making the claim by saying, “I know God does not exist”
no, because we will just answer "we have faith that your god doesn't exist.”
I have ABSOLUTELY no problem with that.
IMO, it should effectively put an end to the debate of Atheists demanding evidence from the theists that God exists - and theists demanding evidence from the Atheists to provide an evidence that God does not exist.
While neither party has any. Both are using faith.
Quote:
or in my case, saying that "you just are misunderstanding the universe around you."
And there you go again - making a claim and starting the “provide the evidence to backup your claim” debate again.
IMO, it should effectively put an end to the debate of Atheists demanding evidence from the theists that God exists - and theists demanding evidence from the Atheists to provide an evidence that God does not exist.
While neither party has any. Both are using faith.
And there you go again - making a claim and starting the “provide the evidence to backup your claim” debate again.
Calling you an Atheist isn’t a bad thing, is it?
actually not GO.
what we do when we bump up against two claims is evaluate the claims to assign proper weights to them. Basically we need to come up with a more valid, less valid, and/or equal.
Now, this forum frowns on science, but thats really the only tool box we have in forming beliefs. i say "tool box" because most people do not understand that "science" is many, many, many areas of study. Science also includes the study of why people believe some of the things they do.
The claim "I believe there is a god". Cool, based on what what?
I say "I believe you are misunderstanding your connections to the system around you" Ok, based on what.
others claim "some of us feel that religion is so dangerous we must do anything to stop it. ok, based on what?
Still others claim "insert statement of belief about god"
then we compare, via a list(s) the two claims. apply weights.
as you know I do the exact same thing to atheist claims. I was shunned by an atheist pastor for it.
No, I have no problem being an atheist. I do have a problem when I list the reason for a belief and the science is dismissed by
"I don't believe that",
"your just a materialist",
"that's apologetic"
"That's cherry picking"
"that's strawmanning" The number one avoidance tactic.
I do have a problem when people are openly dishonest about "content" because they have an "atheist/theist" perspective" to maintain. far more theist fit this category than atheist.
The obsession with the word “claim” is pretty much a trait of Atheists.
Atheists claim that theists claim that there is a God.
What exactly is a claim?
Here is my one of previous reply.
Take a deep breath and read very slowly. Take pauses after each sentence and please make you understand before moving forward.
“Originally Posted by GoCardinals View Post
You either don’t understand or you do not want to understand but sticking with the word “claim” seems to be your last resort.
There is absolutely no relevance between “having faith” and “making a claim”.
Let’s put it in a simple structured sentence so u can perhaps clear the confusion in your understanding.
If I say, “I am the second coming of Jesus”. Or if I say, “I know that God exists” - Then - YES INDEED, I am making a claim. And for which, I should produce an evidence.
But if I say, “I am getting on this airplane and I hope it will arrive safely at its destination. Or if I say, “I have faith in the existence of God” - THEN - I am *NOT* making any claims. There no sense in demanding or providing an evidence. It’s a ridiculous oxymoron.
How hard is it to understand? Seriously.
Who is making the claim by saying, “I know God exists” -
And who is making the claim by saying, “I know God does not exist”
You tell me.”
I've discussed this with you before and you take it a lot further than the possibility of a sentient being who may or may not have directly had anything to do with creating physical reality. You believe in a whole system of unsubstantiated phenom like Jinn.
I've discussed this with you before and you take it a lot further than the possibility of a sentient being who may or may not have directly had anything to do with creating physical reality. You believe in a whole system of unsubstantiated phenom like Jinn.
great point L8,
its about properly making predictions based on the information we have. Too many people go to far off of the curve. or ignore the curve all together.
Most theist I have met just don't know the curve, for any number of reasons. There is something "more" going on. That's what most people, rightfully so too, understand. That's just common sense. It's also strengthened by observations. Irreligious believers will always outnumber deny everything-ers because the observations and scientific method just don't support deny everything due to misuse of religion.
Why on earth would you be talking about plural gods?
Because if people experience other gods, then that means there must be more than one. Unless experiences are not good as evidence, hint, hint. How many times do I need to explain this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
It seems you have trouble separating the empirical existential question from the descriptive ones.
It seems you have trouble reading English.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
The existence of God is separate from ANY of its descriptive attributes assigned by fallible humans. Your plural gods are figments of fallible human perception and imagination.
You are close to the goal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
There is only one reality and one God establishing it.
But not every person believes in God. Some people believe in Zeus. If your feelings about God prove that God is real, then it follows that other people's feelings about Zeus prove Zeus is real. The same is true of every other deity which any person has ever believed in.
Or, your feelings about God do not prove God is real.
One of those statements is true; take your pick.
Exactly. Thank you, I thought maybe it was my English that was confusing him.
Nonsense. It is just as silly as positing multiple universes despite the fact that we only have evidence of ONE.
So a known mathematical argument is silly? Still, when you have no evidence other universes can not exist, dismissing a plausible position as silly is all you have left.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
What names fallible humans ascribe to God are irrelevant to God's existence.
its about properly making predictions based on the information we have. Too many people go to far off of the curve. or ignore the curve all together.
Most theist I have met just don't know the curve, for any number of reasons. There is something "more" going on. That's what most people, rightfully so too, understand. That's just common sense. It's also strengthened by observations. Irreligious believers will always outnumber deny everything-ers because the observations and scientific method just don't support deny everything due to misuse of religion.
an omni religious god thing is a tad too far.
Thanks. GC and I agreed that our brains process differently, if I'm recalling the discussion correctly. When venturing into the unknown I default to "there must be a logical explanation even if I don't know what it is". Some people must (IMO) default to a more (for lack of a better word) intuition. That is why when some says to me that Jesus could come to me in the flesh and I would still say it didn't prove anything they are right; I would suspect myself of a mental disturbance.
It looks to me like GC is using conversion logic:
Isn't it possible there is a God?
Yes it's possible.
So if there is a God doesn't it logically follow that He would want to communicate with us?
No it does not logically follow.
OK the, Is it possible He would want to communicate with us?
It's possible yes....
....and the next thing ya know your giving money to a church and shunning your family.
what we do when we bump up against two claims is evaluate the claims to assign proper weights to them. Basically we need to come up with a more valid, less valid, and/or equal.
Now, this forum frowns on science, but thats really the only tool box we have in forming beliefs. i say "tool box" because most people do not understand that "science" is many, many, many areas of study. Science also includes the study of why people believe some of the things they do.
The claim "I believe there is a god". Cool, based on what what?
I say "I believe you are misunderstanding your connections to the system around you" Ok, based on what.
others claim "some of us feel that religion is so dangerous we must do anything to stop it. ok, based on what?
Still others claim "insert statement of belief about god"
then we compare, via a list(s) the two claims. apply weights.
as you know I do the exact same thing to atheist claims. I was shunned by an atheist pastor for it.
No, I have no problem being an atheist. I do have a problem when I list the reason for a belief and the science is dismissed by
"I don't believe that",
"your just a materialist",
"that's apologetic"
"That's cherry picking"
"that's strawmanning" The number one avoidance tactic.
I do have a problem when people are openly dishonest about "content" because they have an "atheist/theist" perspective" to maintain. far more theist fit this category than atheist.
This is actually a good post.
The key word is the "tool box" that we have, which is science.
There two paths we can focus on from this point.
First - The tool box of science works to a certain extent - after that is another box that holds "human logic, intelligence and common sense" (let's call this tool box as "HIC"). This box also gives us some direction and some perceived information (not necessarily always correct though) and this box also works only to a certain extent, and THEN, there is the inevitable, throwing the white towel of "I don't know" or "we don't know".
The final box of "I don't know" is held by both Atheists and Theists, and it's the exact same box.
And I think the crux of our discussion lies in the box of "HIC". Because this tool box is not exact the same for every person (unlike the tool box of Science and the tool box of "I don't know".
This box of HIC may vary from person to person. This box may also have a common ground between Theists and Atheists but this tool box may also have uncommon ground between the two groups.
So lets begin with the first tool box.
I fully support the tool box of science - but we see that the immediate bone of contention between both camps is "Theory of evolution" - a topic not so encouraged to be discussed in this forum - so we have to surpass it.
So lets stick with the tool box of science and move beyond the Theory of human evolution - and we come to this post that I wrote earlier which moves us from the tool box of science to the tool box of HIC where all the action lies.
If you haven't read it before, please read it again. Slow and easy so you could understand my train of thoughts.
Quote:
"Scientifically, logically, and philosophically thinking: If we start the process of reverse engineering and take the route of going back and start finding out the order of events and say, "that OK, this thing came before this thing, and this came before that, and this thing came before that, and this came before that... and we keep on going, and going and going .... then we may probably see two scenarios.
1 - We get into an infinite loop. We keep on going trillion and gazillion upon gazillion years of reverse engineering (way past the big bang) but it will never end because we are locked into an infinity.
2 - The second and more interesting possibility is that, say we actually DO FIND what started it all (again, way past the big bang). Say we call it X.
In our process of reverse engineering, we reached to a point where there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING !!
And we see that X came first.
Now the question is: Who created X?
If X was created by something else then X is not the start and hence X did not come first. Which is not true because we know that X came first and there is nothing beyond X.
The other option is, X created itself.
This is ridiculous. You cannot decide to create your own self when you don't exist.
So the only logical answer is, whatever came first, whatever started it all (X, in this case), did not actually come at all. It was always there. It has no start. Nobody created it. It was always there."
Remember the above in quotes is the step BEFORE we throw in the white towel of "we don't know".
Now to continue with this HIC box if X is what started it all then X is probably a force with intelligence because creation and design (as we observe in the natural universe) requires intelligence and force.
I think to some extent, believers can say X is God.
Atheist can say, X is just nature that has designed and created it all.
What is X and where it come from?
Both parties throw in the white towel of "I don't know".
*BUT* is probably a fact that exists.
As the great Einstein put it,
Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.”
In my personal opinion, if you are an Atheists and you can be all the Atheists you want but if you are also a believer in the knowledge of science then it will probably be unfair to outright deny the existence of this "force" - NOT because you have more scientific knowledge than Eisenstein and you can prove him wrong but look at what's going on here?
He (a non religious and perhaps the greatest scientist) believes in the existence of "force" that he cannot provide the evidence of it's existence.
Sounds familiar?
Perhaps believers label this "force" as God.
The second path that we can take from the tool box of science that I would like to shed just a little light on is, "What should be our intention behind using this, very useful, tool box"?
In my opinion, exploration of scientific knowledge that benefits humanity MUST be continued on - I 100% support it. If that was not the case, I would've not gotten a Masters in Science, and neither would have encouraged my wife pursue a double PhD in science.
IMO, when it comes to the scenario of "Science and Religion coming face to face", THEN, believers should use the knowledge of science to appreciate X as to how this force created things under our research and exploration.
And Atheists should simply continue with their research and exploration in the field of science that benefits humanity WITHOUT belittling those who would like to appreciate X.
This way, both camps can join forces and move even faster in expanding the knowledge of science that is beneficial to all.
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