BadBadBad

What if I took you to a door and told you that behind that door is millions of dollars in cash, and I'm going to give it to you. You don't have to do anything but go home and think about it, and come back and talk to me honestly about your thought process. Just come back and tell me if you really believe the money is there as a matter of fact. BTW, I'm omniscient so, I'll know the answer no matter what. Just go home, relax and come back and tell me if you truly believe the money is there just as obviously to you as if you could see it, feel it, smell it, etc. etc. Just answer the question and you get the money.

1. You might be so happy, trusting, and gullible enough that your imagination goes wild, and you just know it's the real deal. For you, it's a fact. You're getting the money. You just know it. You are unthinking and gullible.

2. You might say, you know, that guy was pretty believable, and I have a gut feeling he's telling the truth. To be honest though, I just don't have the kind of information I need to decide whether it's fact or just wishful thinking. You have every reason to not believe, but you make a conscious decision to believe anyway and bury any doubts to the deepest depths of your brain until essentially you have no doubt. Your gut feeling takes you from 0-99% to believing without doubt, and at the last minute you bridge the gap with faith and hope alone. You are faithful.

3. You might say, you know, that guy was pretty believable, and I have a gut feeling he's telling the truth. To be honest though, I just don't have the kind of information I need to decide whether it's fact or just wishful thinking. You have a mixed up story. Was that 1 million dollars or did you just tell that guy over there it's 500,000? Your gut feeling takes you from 0-99% to believing without doubt, but you have doubt. You can't make yourself bridge the gap. You can't tell me with 100% belief that in fact the money is behind the door. You have doubt, and I know you have doubt. You are a skeptic.

4. I didn't tell you about the folks I won't ever tell about the door or the million dollars. They don't know anything about it. If I asked them what they believed about what's behind the door, they'd say Huh? They are unknowing, and I never offered them the money.

Now, let's look at the relative difference between the four groups. Does anyone really know for a fact what's behind the door? Actually, I'm sure they don't. I'm the only one that can possibly know what's behind the door. There is absolutely no possibility of knowing anything beyond what I've told them. Now, what is the relative merit between the four answers? Who really and honestly deserves to get the money? Tell me why you think one group deserves to get the money over the others.

Godless Wonder

All of them get all the money. Because there is no money.

More seriousl reply. The ones that bother me the most are the ones who are able to decide to believe with 100% certainty something they can't know with 100% certainty, and which they know they can't know with 100% certainty, and yet are still able to actually and really do it., believe it with 100% certainty.

This is not something I am capablie of. If I'm 99% certain, I'm 99% certain. The only thing that can make more more certain, is more evidence. This does not mean I can't take action on incomplete information. It means that I can't decide to become more certain than I know the situation merits, and then actually become more certain. Yet I know some people can, and do, deceive themselves this way, and not only that, they think that this is a good thing. Faith is pretending, pretending so well that you forget you're pretending.

winstonjen

To the OP: Because logic and rational thinking are not.

Ojuice5001

Well, if there's not enough evidence to prove the gods, and the gods exist and want people to believe in them, and (as I have argued in the past) it's not as easy as it sounds for them to prove their existence, then naturally they would want people to believe based on faith.

BadBadBad

How about this scenario. I saw a Survivor TV episode where the group was asked to drink a big glass of Cow's blood mixed with Cow's milk. This time instead of getting the million dollars for believing me, you get the million dollars if you can convince me you truly love the taste of this concoction.

Group 1 - These folks just naturally love blood and milk. They've had it since they were kids. Considering their diet, it just fits. It's really a delicacy.

Group 2 - These folks range from either hating it to tolerating it, but they have the unique ability to convince themselves they love it.

Group 3 - These folks range from either hating it or tolerating it, but none of them like it, and there's no way they can fool anyone about it. They vomit, they gag, they cringe with a foul and bitter look on their face. They refuse to drink it. They can't help it.

Group 4 - Never had the stuff. Perhaps they never knew people would even drink the stuff. Do they like it? Well it doesn't sound too appetizing, but you know they've just never had it so, how would they know.

So, now the obvious question, who deserves to get the money? How is this really any different than believing in God? Why is faith and natural acceptance of God so valuable? Why is rational skepticism such a no no with God?

Rational thought and skepticism are natural processes just like our evaluation of taste. Those whose thought processes are dominated by rational thought can't believe in something irrational any more than they can pretend something tastes bad. What's God got against that? We just need more information before we choose to believe. If it's important that we believe, he should know that and just give us more information.

BadBadBad

So, god is omnipotent, but certain things are easier for him than others?

God could make his existence obvious to me just like he did to Abraham. It's no skin off his neck, really. He's omnipotent. I'm in group 3 now as an atheist. If God made himself obvious to me personally, I would naturally choose to believe in God, because it was obvious to me. How would I be different than group 1 is now? I'd choose to classify myself into Group 1. God likes people in group 1. So, if God made himself obvious to me, he would be happier, and according to christians, so would I. It seems like a win win situation.

The only difference is the amount of information God reveals about himself. God foreknows the reaction of all people to the information he has chosen to reveal. He knows that amount of information is insufficient to convince most of the people on the earth. The amount of information that is required for belief is different for each person. So, what was the basis for God to choose this specific amount of information, which he has chosen to reveal about himself, when he knows for certain that most people will choose to not believe it. Why does he favor only those that will believe the specific level of information he has chosen to reveal?

What's so special about those that can believe on faith? If I could convince myself that I really like cow's blood and milk, how does that make me a better person. If I don't believe in God, how does being able to convince myself I believe in God make me a better person worthy of eternal salvation?

Ojuice5001

Yahweh is not omnipotent. Neither are the Roman gods. Any omnipotent god that may exist cares nothing about the human world.

Probably not. I don't know what really happened with Abraham. The story in Genesis is either wrong, or it's something that happened more easily in the past than now.

Uh, yes, but this is the twenty-first century. He can't do that anymore (if he ever could), but has to rely on other ways to make people believe he exists. We live after the time of Descartes.

He reveals as much information as his power and circumstances allow. Some people are convinced by this information, and some aren't. He likes these people better because they are believing as he wants.

I think that faith, properly used, leads to truth, but not that it is morally positive. Are you getting your ideas of what faith is from the Bible? The Bible tries to portray every value as a moral value, so I don't see why you're so quick to assume that all religions see faith as a moral value.

I mean, in some ways, faith is a moral value, but not in the Christian sense of "God doesn't prove his existence because faith is morally superior to belief in what is proven."

Nowhere357

Interesting take. I think the thread title and the above statement really get to the heart of the matter.

If the universe works the way Christians claim it does (belief in Jesus as savior earns you salvation) then I am led eventually to one of two conclusions: either God is actually recruiting mindless slave drones, or god is nowhere near omnipotent.

In the second case, I don't know why having faith would give God the power to save. Maybe it makes it easier to go towards the light when we die.

I think that whatever is really going on, it has nothing to do with any specific set of myths. Look at all of the religions throughout time, distill out the elements which are mythological or easily explained, and take a look at what is left. What do you see?

BadBadBad

Oh, Ok. So you're not talking about the christian god. The christian god is omnipotent. Whether you believe that or not doesn't change whether he is or not, and I think we need to go with the majority position here. The Christian God is omnipotent by definition.