Yahzi

And yet, if you hit yourself with the bat enough, you will cease to believe everything.

Your argument revolves around the fact that having your head crushed in might not be a bad thing. This is so stupid and self-refuting that the only possible response is to heft a bat, and ask for permission to proceed.

Since we all know perfectly well you will not submit to having your head crushed like a rotten melon, we can all see the sincerity of your counter-argument. To wit, it's just words you're spouting.

If you can't walk the talk, why should we listen to your babble?

Starboy

[removed]

Starboy

Mageth

Umm, because I do not have to have faith in the very existence of my wife, perhaps?

I'm not arguing that people don't find security etc. in their faith in God. I know many that do, and for whom God-belief has enriched their lives in positive, measurable ways. And that's true for many different definitions of Gods/many different religions. Many people find meaning, comfort, security, etc. in their various god-beliefs, undeniably.

That says more about humans than about God or gods, though.

Sure, (the concept of) God can be intangible and yet experienced like an emotion. Note, however, that that does not make God real, nor does it provide evidence for the existence of God. (You're close to equating God with an emotion - I'm not sure you want to do that).

Mageth

Good point. If Irishbrutha is unwilling to bash his own head with a bat to demonstrate the non-existence of the bat and his head, then his assertion that "we don't know if the bat etc. exists" is instantly moot.

Like I said, bats hit back, rocks kick back. Even Irishbrutha knows this.

Faith

I was equating God with things that are equally intangible yet can still be experienced, but thanks for the advice.

To repeat my question which, to the best of my recollection, you never answered:

What about someone who has personally "experienced" God, had a revelation and actually saw or spoke with Him? Would such a person be able to go beyond faith in God, to trust in His existence, with such experiential evidence?

Mageth

I didn't answer it; instead, note that I asked for clarification as I really need more information.

Are you asking if someone physically encounters God (as in "actually saw or spoke with him"), or is someone has a "revelation" of God as in a vision? They're two different things, though perhaps hard to distinguish without more than one eyewitness.

However, in any case, of course if someone thinks they've had such an experience, believe they were not simply deluded or hallucinating or something, and thus interpret their experience as an actual face-to-face encounter with God, that person could "go beyond faith in God". But what's your point? I know many people that claim to have one sort or another of experiential evidence of God's existence (not many that claim to have seen or heard him in person, though).

My first question to someone making such a claim, as I think I noted above: "How do you know that what you experienced was God?"

And a lot of people believe they've been abducted by ETs because they've had similar face-to-face "experiences" with space aliens, many people believe in ghosts because they've "experienced" some supposedly ghostly phenomena, and many people believe John Edward can really communicate with the dead. We humans are an odd sort. We're able to convince ourselves of all sorts of things, and then match "evidence" to our expectations.

miata

Christians are hostile to Atheist: WHY ?

safeinacell

Just me two pence like, (and I've said this before, I'm sure!)
Why? Because if Atheists are right, then the whole "I'm gonna live forever with the big beard in the sky" thing is a pile of old pony.
Lets face it, mortality can be a hard thing to face up to.
To cut a long story short, Christians that are hostile to Atheists are so because they are scared of dying.

Or maybe I should paint with a brush that's not quite so broad .

Irishbrutha

Yahzi, you're missing the point. You believe that you know I will die. You do not know it. Epistemology 101. Attack the argument. Calling it babble doesn't do anything but show your inability. My motivations and my actions do not stem from certainty. They stem from belief. That's why I'll duck when the bat comes swinging. Not because I know it will happen.

You wrote, "Nope. If you hit yourself in the head long enough, you will die" Prove it. I don't want to take you all the way through it, so pick up a philosophy book. Start with Hume and then move forward. You don't know anything Yahzi. Neither do I. You believe that empiricism is valid. That's it. Can't prove it. Because how would you prove it? Through other empirical observation. And until you can validate that your sensory devices accurately record an actual reality, then you are stuck with belief as your only option. Furthermore, to tell me that something will happen regardless of my belief is to wag the dog. We're talking about our ability to understand what will happen, and you're telling me, "well it happened even if you don't agree with it." I'd ask how you knew it already happened and you have nothing to say except, well because I saw it. (shrug) Doesn't work. all that will be known will be that I have stopped thinking (and this presumes that this happens as well.) Of course no one can verify that I have stopped thinking, not even myself because I am done existing (in a naturalistic system that is.) So your use of my potential death just doesn't fly.

Mageth, Science is just an epistemic system. If science claims certainty, it only has effectiveness because you believe in it. That's my point. It only has as much authority as you give it. Btw, science does not claim certainty ever. It can't because it's inductive. I refer to certainty in a philosophical sense for those who want to distinguish between "hovind certainty" or "scientific certainty".

We have no way of knowing whether "you" (figuratively) are in a position to correctly assume the verdicality of empiricism. Iow, we have no way of knowing whether our senses are valid, or that there is a world to be recorded, therefore we have to believe in science as a truth-yielder. I agree that if we believe in empiricism, then it makes a lot of sense to adhere to scientific certainty. But there is no certainty that science yields truth, because we have no way to verify that accurate empirical observation is even a possibility. Kant tried to make it possible, but in the end even he had to say that our own rational processes impose upon the real world. We're stuck in our own subjectivity.

-Shaun

Mageth

I've been hit in the head with a bat before. And between the eyes with a fast-pitch hardball. And in the head with a hoe. (Maybe that explains it... )

In any case, I don't believe getting hit in the head with a bat will hurt, I know it will hurt. I also know it can kill, but thankfully not through personal experience.

So, if I choose not to believe in gravity, I can fly?

BTW, you're expressing that as if you know it's true...(I'm being a bit silly, I know. )

I'm really not sure what your point is. You seem to be claiming to know we can know nothing.

I know that a bat upside the head hurts, and that guillotines kill.

You might say that Kant is refuted by a good whack upside the head.