Thieving Magpie

Godless Dave:

Many religious texts (The Bible, Koran, etc.) are believed to be 'divinely inspired' so that particular argument is moot. In those cases 'God/Allah' made sure the Bible/Koran was perfect. There are other arguments that could be made against this, but that particular one that you brought out is irrelevent, methinks.

Godless Dave

I think it's relevant to theists who claim God is unknowable. You can't claim that God is beyond human comprehension and at the same time claim those works of men are the word of God. The closest you can get is to say the people who wrote those books were trying to comprehend God and came up with imperfect books with some divine truth in them. In some ways this works to the theists' advantage - they can explain away the contradictory, nonsensical, or cruel parts of Scripture as human misunderstandings of divine truth.

Bree

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

Yes, but I can talk to you on the phone, exchange letters and emails, and even meet you in person - and while that still wouldn't "prove" that Bree existed, it would certainly chase away some doubt. God has, to my knowledge, never done anything close to disprove the idea that He doesn't exist. The best answer any of His followers come up with is that we "aren't supposed to know Him" because He's too complex.

seebs

Well, we have this book *saying* that He did such a thing.

A lot of people I know, myself included, have had experiences which we consider about as persuasive as phone calls. I am fairly confident there's *something*; it matches my expectations about God.

I think the "unknowable" thing does get overused. The main point of this is that I don't feel qualified to make firm predictions like "God will definitely act in the following way".

To a certain extent, I would argue that people are also "unknowable" in some of these ways, though not as much. We're smaller and more familiar.

Oxymoron

Tell us more. What were these experiences? Where did your expectations about God come from?

Godless Dave

Actually several books, saying he, she, and/or they proved his, her, or their existence in many different ways. Do you think all are true, some are true, just one is true, or none are true?

Ockhamite

Theists should gain no comfort from the sheer numbers of people who believe in god. How could all these people be wrong?

The total lack of a consensus of understanding of what it is when we mentally construct our god, likely means no two people believe the same thing. If your personal god is different than your neighbors, which one is correct. If your neighbor is of another church the differences are even greater. All these different incompatible gods can't be the one and only god. How can any theist have any confidence in their knowledge of god.

IF no one on this earth professed a belief in god....would you still feel no doubt about your belief in god?

If you went to see Benny Hinn and no one else was there, would you rejoice at being the first in line to be healed or would you have doubts about your decision to go?


Seebs....

When an event can be interpreted either as of a godly action or as a coincidence, then the more simple explanation with the fewer assumptions is to be preferred. An extraordinary claim requires a burden of proof which you cannot provide. Why conjur a god to explain a fart, it seems so unnecessary.

I also would like to hear about this experience that confirms god.

seebs

I suspect that all have roots in true things, but I don't know how much. I think at least one is fairly close to accurate.

seebs

I assumed from your name that you'd feel that way, but I disagree.

After all, I could make the same claim about undiscovered physical forces, or even well-known ones, and just say "hey, I just think the world has a lot of coincidences". We each draw that line differently.

The idea of an "extraordinary claim" makes sense only relative to a given set of expectations. I don't have the same expectations you do, I'd guess.

Would you really? I somehow doubt it; my guess is that you're just hoping to see another coincidence or easily waved-away psychological thing, and that, given this presupposition, there would be no point.

There are things which I will probably interpret as supernatural experiences, which you would probably interpret as psychology. I doubt either of us will be convinced otherwise; this strikes me as a pointless exercise.

Oxymoron

You have truly hit the nail here, Seebs: interpretation. If you admit there are other possible ways of interpreting some event, then you presumably have some way of deciding which interpretation to believe?