Gemma Therese

nowhereman --

Preach always; when necessary , use words. -St. Francis of Assisi

Gemma Therese

nowhereman

I know of some Christians (look at my location) who would say that you are doomed to eternity in a hot place based on the above, in addition to having commited the unforgivable sins of apostasy and trying to be reasonable.

How is logic pure faith? It doesn't make any claims about the state of the universe and is not based off of observations. Same for math. I think.

Can you give some specific examples of the primary experiences which led you to believe that there's a God? In fact, how can you tell the difference between god and no god?

Why does it seem to you that Christianity is true? What exactly in Christianity do you believe, since it's actually a collection of beliefs?

seebs

They might, but I think they're wrong. I believe in all the Biblical stuff; I have accepted Christianity, weird half-mythical sounding stuff and all, because it seems to me to be true. Basically, on the stuff where I had opinions, Christianity agreed with me most often; this convinced me to consider it seriously. I have found that this appears to be a good way to try to understand God. I suspect it is the "correct" way.

It's faith because how else can I justify it?

Given "A implies B", and "A", how do I go to "B"? I trust a rule which says that syllogisms work. How do I "test" that rule? What do I do if it fails? Ideas like "a system which produces flawed results is flawed, and logic produces flawed results" don't go anywhere, unless I *assume* logic to work.

I can't prove it. I believe it. Therefore, it's faith.

Oh, mostly the normal stuff. I perceive something as assisting me in trying to do things that I believe to be right, but which are hard for me to do. For instance, occasionally if I'm about to say something really mean to my wife (I have a nasty temper), I am stopped. This feels qualitatively different from what it's like when I think better of something; it feels like something other than me has interrupted me briefly to give me time to think better. Things like that.

I believe that God incarnated and died for our sins; I don't have a very clear understanding of how this works, because theology is hard for me, but basically, I think this Jesus guy was very special, and this explanation of how He was special strikes me as a good one. As a result, I accept a number of teachings based on that. I am pretty much agnostic on the whole historical side of things; I don't personally think the Flood happened, or believe in 6-day creation, because I think that excessive literalism in understanding the Bible is a VERY bad idea. (I think it may be getting on towards idolatry, worshipping an object *instead* of God.)

Essentially, right around the time I had come to a basic cosmology, I noticed that Christianity had that cosmology there already.

nowhereman

It's not faith. There's no rule involved.
You get "B" because it tells you that if you have "A" you get "B". The premise already tells you the conclusion. The only part that requires faith is that the person giving you the premise is not lying.

But that's getting off topic.

Again, how can you tell the difference between god and no god?

seebs

Ahh, but why should I trust the rule of "you can follow rules"?

All the stuff about what "implies" means is a system that, however fundamental it is, I feel I am obliged to recognize as arbitrary.

I have no idea. Unless God died *recently*, I have only experienced one of them, and I can't easily tell you how to tell which one.

I have opinions about what God's intervention looks like or feels like. They're pretty fuzzy, and not well-articulated, I'm afraid; it's one of those things I recognize in direct experience, but can't describe well.

nowhereman

I dont understand what you mean.

What? God died?
Either you're not understanding me or I'm not understanding you.
What I'm trying to get at is how can you distinguish god from non-god, and therefore know that god exists?

Gravity is defined as the force which holds me in my chair. A force is holding me in my chair. Therefore, gravity exists.
I can make similar statements about other things. Give me a similar statement about this God you think exists.

seebs

Formal logic is a system. I cannot prove it to be a *correct* system. If I accept formal logic, I can dismiss many other rules as being clearly "incorrect" - but I can't prove formal logic to be correct, I can only assume it.

I was offering an example of a circumstance under which I could make the comparison.

I can't. On the other hand, I can't distinguish "external world real" from "external world imagined", either.

Oh, sure, I could say "God is the reason everything exists. Everything exists, therefore God does", but it's a *stupid* argument, because it's a pure tautology. For all I know, you're just glued to that chair.

God is in the same category with "external reality" and "formal logic" for me. I can't come up with any useful test to distinguish between existance and non-existance, so I just had to punt.

nowhereman

Ahh. If you can't distinguish "external real world" from "external imaginary world" then there's no need to distinguish it. To me they're the same thing.

You're confusing the issue again.
1. That's making the assumption that there's a reason that everything exists. In fact, I don't even know how you define "reason" here.

2. I'm not glued to my chair. There's a difference between a force attracting me to a chair and being glued to a chair. If there's a force pulling me to the chair, then by definition if I'm separated from the chair I would fall back again. If I'm glued to the chair without a force attracting me to it, and then separated from it, I wouldn't be pulled back into the chair.

seebs

Fair enough.

Oh, sure, it was a crappy analogy.

As to "reason", "cause". Basically, I see this as just another variant on the "first cause" argument, and as such, not particularly logically persuasive, because it doesn't change anything.

I don't particularly have a way to distinguish between God and no-God, as of now. I guess I could say "fewer experiences that mesh with my ideas about God" would count as a point for the latter... But it's not a scientific theory, nor intended as one, so I don't care. I also continue to believe that the world is not imaginary, even though I can offer no way to distinguish this.

nowhereman

You still haven't told me what this God is.