Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K,

Ok...lets have a quick overview of our conversation so far.

-You said my belief in God was irrational.

-I said 'irrational' is defined as 'lacking usual or normal mental clarity or coherence'. I then gave evidence I've seen and claimed my belief was not irrational.

-Several posts of us arguing what 'coherence' means. Eventually we agree on the definition...it means consistent.

-We both agree that the evidence I've witnessed is consistent (IE coherent) with my belief in God.

-Now you are claiming that though the evidence I've witnessed is consistent with God...it in no way suggests that God exists.
K, make note. I am not asking about what your position is on other beliefs. My question to you K is how does...

-The marked and verifiable prosperity in my life where before there was none. In terms of finances, health, friends, family, education, career and physical, mental and social achievement. One could draw a line on the calendar accurate to within probably 2 months of when I drew close to God.

-Large amounts of answered prayer. Some of the more notable: Father dying on hospital table and being the only student to finish a 3 day/3 night coding challenge.

-When I pray I feel God's presence.

-When I listen closely, at times I can hear God's voice.

not suggest God exits?




Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Selsaral

SOMMS, (honest question), did you deliberately ignore my last post to you, or did you accidentally overlook it?

K

SOMMS:

Check.

Check.

Check.

Hold on a second. We agreed that the evidence you witnessed was not contradictory to the existence of God. Then you changed your definition of consistent to mean "implies". If consistent means "implies", then we do not agree that your evidence is consistent with the existence of God.

Your evidence is not contradictory to the existence of God, but it doesn't imply his existence any more than personal evidence by Heaven's Gaters implies the existence of a UFO behind Hale-Bopp.

Again, just to be straight (I feel like a broken record here), the Heaven's Gaters' evidence is not contradictory to a UFO existining behind Hale-Bopp. But it doesn't imply that the UFO exists. Similarly, your evidence is not contradictory to the existence of your God, but it doesn't imply His existence.

But you're asking why your belief is COHERENT or CONSISTENT. Then you turn around and ask me to evaluate your claim in a vacuum. If you want your belief to be considered consistent, then you have to hold your supernatural claim to the same standard of evidence that you hold others to.

If the Heaven's Gate members' personal evidence for their supernatural claim is not enough to justify their claim, then person evidence is not sufficient for rational beliefs. Period.

How can you claim that your belief is consistent while at the same time asking for special pleading versus the supernatural claims of others?

Because (as been state more times then I'd care to count) allowing personal evidence of the kind you offered as implication of facts leads to an incoherent model of reality. In other words, there is personal evidence out there for all of the following:

-Jesus was the Son of God.
-Jesus was not the Son of God.
-Jesus was not divine at all.
-Mary gave some kids the Rosary thousands of years after her death.
-Mary did not give some kids the Rosary thousands of years after her death.
-Praying to saints causes miracles to happen.
-Praying to saints does not cause miracles to happen.
-The Book of Mormon is true.
-The Book of Mormon is hogwash.
-All of the Gods live on Mount Olympus.
-The movement of the sun is really Apollo driving his chariot across the sky.
-The Christian God created everything.
-Brahma created everything.
-Allah created everything.
-Zeus did most of the creating.

... AND...

-There is a UFO flying behind Hale-Bopp that will take people to a place of pure bliss if they castrate themselves, dress all in black, and kill themselves at the right time.

These can't possibly all be true.

If we allow your personal evidence as implication of the truth of your claim, then we are stuck with two undesirable options:

1. Allow personal evidence as implication of the truth of other claims. This leads to an INCOHERENT model of reality as shown by the few claims listed above.

2. Only allow personal evidence as implication of the truth of your claim. This is special pleading - an INCOSISTENT treatment of evidence.

Selsaral

I'll dive in and elaborate anyways.

When I get hungry, before I start thinking it's a god telling me something, or that I am having some physical problem, I look at everyone else for some indication of what hunger might mean. When I see that all humans, and basically all animals, feel hunger all the time, I can conclude that it is human nature to get hungry. When I get sick, I don't assume some devil is tormenting me. I can look around at the rest of the humans and see that diseases and physical ailments of all kinds are common. My experience is nothing new. When I have some crazy dream that I can't forget, again a look at the rest of humanity shows dreams to be an extremely common and totally natural feature of being a human.

I extend this to your personal experience. When you look around and see everyone else having these same experiences, but just as often in a totally different context, religion, time period etc (and often in ridiculous situations such as brainwash cults like scientology), how can you not consider the option that your experiences are just part of being human? The propensity of humans to create religions out of attempts at explanations of natural phenomena, coincidences, and emotional thinking is clear throughout history. I might agree such a perspective doesn't completely debunk the possibility your experiences really are indicating the existence of some god, but I don't understand why you don't become extremely suspicious and at least stop relying on it as a sole and conclusive proof of the existence of a god.

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Selsaral,

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. Been pretty busy. On to your post.


I think I should reiterate what my point is: I am not attempting to prove God's existence to you Selsara. I also am not attempting to show why you should seek Christianity as opposed to Hinduism. I am merely stating my belief and giving evidence I have personally witnessed that supports my belief.


Not quite. As I've pointed out to K...I am not making a statement one way or the other about...
-Scientology
-Bigfoot
-Heavens Gate Cult
-UFO's
-Zeus

...as I have absolutely no revelation of these. (This is not strictly true. I do have *some* revelation of these things as concepts just to mention them...but I'm sure you get my drift)


In addition, (again as I've mentioned to K) I am not dismissing other claims out of hand. You seem to think that I am discounting evidence others have personally witnessed, however...I am not.


And this highlights your problem Selsara: Suggesting my evidence is irrational because 'looking at the rest of humanity should debunk...etc' is irrational. In truth you are not actually considering the evidence I've witnessed...you are merely dismissing it.

To claim my belief in God is irrational you must actually consider the evidence I've given and show why it is inconsistent with my belief in God. Period.



Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K,
I am not changing the definition of 'consistent'. It still means
(www.m-w.com)
2 a : marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity : free from variation or contradiction

What I am saying K is that in addition to being consistent with my God belief the evidence I have witnessed also suggests that God exists. This last bit is what we seem to be stuck on.




Yes. You've said this 2 or 3 times now K. But you are just saying this. You have not showed why.

Instead of atually considering the evidence I've given and showing why it doesn't suggest God exists (a fairly straightforward task)...you claim 'members of the Heavens Gate Cult had no evidence for a Hale-Bopp UFO and likewise...neither do you of God'.

???

Could we just stick to the subject K? I have made no claims about UFO's hiding behind comets. For sake of argument...can you just evaluate the claim/evidence I've given instead of attacking some claim I'm not making.




No I'm not. I have always asked you to simply evaluate my belief relative to the evidence I have witnessed. You have been the one who has interjected...
-UFO's
-Bigfoot
-Zeus
-etc...

It seems strange to bring these up when I am not talking about them.



Uh...? I'm not asking for anything. ?

Also the Heavens Gate Cult claim was not a supernatural one. They were making a verifiable physical claim...that there were extraterrestrials behind a comet. This claim was physical...not supernatural.



But K...this is a strawman. This isn't the claim I made NOR the question I asked you. I am not asking if the evidence I have witnessed suggests a model of reality that you feel is 'incoherent'. I am asking how the evidence I've seen does not suggest my belief.




Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Selsaral

SOMMS, thanks for your reply.

As my most recent post tried to describe, I think it is irrational for you not to look around at the rest of humanity when you consider your own beliefs. I understand you aren't trying to prove anything to me, but as my dream example points out, when you have a strange dream do you think you went to an alternate plane of existence in which you did all the things that happened in the dream? Or do you look around at the rest of humanity and see that dreams are a common and natural feature of being a human? Similarly with any other experience of your life. (I provided two more examples in my last post, but you could apply it to pretty much every facet of your life, I certainly do). Why not apply this same method for your personal experience of god? Wouldn't the result be the same? Not necessarily a total debunk of your experience, but you would see that all of humanity experiences these same things in often totally different contexts, and just like a dream, indicates your experience is simply a feature of being a human. Like I said, if nothing else shouldn't this call for at least some skeptical suspicion on your part, and perhaps at least reduce how assured you are of the truth of your experience from 100% to 90% or something along those lines.

Selsaral

To elaborate on my last post, I wanted to comment on a few things you said.



I understand, thanks.



And I am saying if you took some time to study how others act, it would shed light on your own experience, and perhaps alter how you perceive your experiences.



It's true, I dismiss your evidence, but that has nothing to do with the point I am trying to make. As we both agree, this has nothing to do with me, it's about how rational it is for you to conclude what you do in the face of the evidence.

OK. And I think I have done that. I have shown that when you don't carefully examine your surroundings to put your own experience in context, it is irrational. You do this for everything else in your life. When you experience sexual lust, do you feel abnormal, like some mutant? No, you look around at the rest of humanity and see we all experience sexual lust. It's part of being human. When you get really sick, do you think some crazy bizaare thing is happening to you? No, you look around and see sickness is perfectly natural and happens to everyone. If you didn't look around and see that everyone else has dreams or whatever, you might very well conclude something extremely irrational about your perfectly natural condition, and assume every night you are being abducted by spirits etc.

K

SOMMS:

That's not at all what I said and I think you know it. I only claimed that if your personal evidence suggests that God exists then the personal evidence of the Heaven's Gate people suggests that their claim is true.

I never claimed that you did - and I think you know this too. I just pointed out to you why personal evidence is not sufficient to imply the truth of a claim.

I'll make a clam for you. The clouds are made of gold and trees are really greedy. I know this because trees grow toward the sky. Tell me why the claim isn't suggested by the observation without taking any other information into account.

This is exactly what you're asking me to do - to evaluate your claim in a vacuum.

You want me to say that somehow your personal evidence is sufficient to suggest the truth of an assertion while you know full well that you reject similar evidence from others (eg. Heaven's Gate, astrologers, etc.).

It's not strange at all when we're evaluating whether your the conclusions drawn from your evidence meet the criteria of CONSISTENCY and COHERENCE.

You're asking me to declare that your evidence implies the truth of your claim while ignoring the implications for making the exact same declaration about others' claims supported by similar evidence. That IS special pleading.


I certainly was a supernatural claim. I've never heard of a physical process whereby the personalities of castrated dead people are beamed to a flying saucer.

Besides, the physical aspects are completely irrelevant. According to you, personal evidence is enough to suggest the truth of an assertion. Whether or not we could detect a UFO behind Hale-Bopp is as relevant as whether or not we can find Heaven with a radio telescope.

I'll say it again. Your personal evidence suggests the truth of your belief EXACTLY as much as the personal evidence of the Heaven's Gate cult suggests the truth of their belief.

Do you think the personal evidence of the Heaven's Gate cult suggests the truth of their claim or do you think that your personal evidence should be treated differently than theirs (special pleading)?

K

SOMMS:

Some comments on your post to Sensaral.

You are trying to have it both ways. You want to claim that your evidence is enough to imply the truth of your claim. Then you also want to claim that you are not making a statement about these other beliefs. You can't have it both ways.

You are either saying that personal evidence (just like yours) is enough to imply that these other claims are true or that your personal evidence should somehow be treated as being "above" that of others (special pleading).

You are trying to make a claim about the sufficiency of evidence while ignoring its implication in all situations except you own.

Nice try, but this isn't going to cut it. By claiming that personal evidence is enough to imply the truth of the claim, you do more than avoid dismissing these claims. You actually assert that the personal evidence of their supporters implies the truth of the claims... That is, unless your evidence should be treated as somehow better than the exact same evidence provided by others.