@ Shawn

You wrote:
Pay attention. What I wrote was that you described the old testament god in your description of a monster. Your description stated these monsters are fictional, not I.

You wrote:Yes, it is. There is substantial information about Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma. So what! Show me something verifiable about your god as TRUE and you'd have something about your god worth talking about. Otherwise it's just made up stories. You may as well talk about Zeus.

You write:
Unfortunately what you find it implies, is not what it says. This is typical of you.

@Aces
Now you're just telling lies.
I wrote: You are asserting that God is fictional as a fact.

Which you denied. Saying I described God in my description of a monster (which contained the assertion that monsters are fictional). What kind of deception are you trying to pull here? Do you really want to have to tell lies to prove God wrong? What does that say about your position. If your position is true shouldn't you be able to support your position without telling lies?

So now you are dropping the spaghetti monster and trading in that strawman for a shotgun of other actual deities as strawmen. Then you do this:

Argument from ignorance
You also poisoned the well in the part I left out aboveNow you have proclaimed yourself the arbiter of whether or not the information I present is worthy of being considered evidence.

>>Unfortunately what you find it implies, is not what it says. This is typical of you.
Actually that's exactly what your implying unless you are ignorant of the claims atheists make in debate that atheists claim they favor reason over faith and theists therefore take faith over reason.

You're not implying that no. Not in a forum debating God between theists and non-theists. Give me a break. I can't stand liars.

Shawn wrote:
You're confusing the words you put in my mouth with my own. You do that a lot.

You wrote:

Faith has no epistemological value for determining truth, and you value faith over truth, so you apparently can.

>>You're confusing the words you put in my mouth with my own. You do that a lot.
You can't even be convinced you said something that you said its right there in the forum.
I asserted that in the statement S1 below you said God was fictional:

S1:What I wrote was that you described the old testament god in your description of a monster (which begins with fragment D1)
D1:A monster is any fictional creature, ...
Therefore, your statement means my description of a monster which included the characteristic of FICTIONAL described the God of the Old Testament. You stated this as a fact.
So we can conclude You stated as a fact that the Old testament God is fictional.
We can also conclude that you're a liar because you tried to say you didn't say what I just quoted.
Then you tried to do it again. I can't stand liars but even worse is a persistent liar who is too proud to admit they lied.

>>Faith has no epistemological value for determining truth, and you value faith over truth, so you apparently can.Actually, no I don't. That is an incorrect assumption.


>>Faith has no epistemological value for determining truth,
Sorry, wrong again. Without faith in something you cannot determine truth because you have no way of discerning if anything you see, taste, touch, smell, hear, think, know, or otherwise discern is real. You have to have faith that your senses are reliable enough that your sensory inputs and your understanding of those inputs is accurate an accurate representation of what is "true". Therefore, faith is not only valuable but 100% required to determine truth. The search for truth always begins with faith.

In fact, you need some faith because you don't even believe it when people show you exactly what you said earlier today and you have the ability to scroll up and look at it with your own eyes. If you did scroll up you must not trust your own eyes either. Or you hallucinate and see text that you didn't type. Are you really willing to delude yourself this much to protect your worldview? Lying to find truth is a bad method my friend.

@Shawn

You wrote:I agree.

Q: How can you determine the difference between faith and fact?

dear Shawn,

why is your god playing games?

thank you

@Aes
>>Q: How can you determine the difference between faith and fact?
Generally speaking, Facts rely on agreed upon assumptions such as reliable senses of the population with our best evidence of exceptions to our senses agreed upon as common knowledge. Therefore, though we see a blue sky turn black we don't believe that air is blue and changes color though our eyes tell us it does. We don't believe straws bend in a glass of water though our eyes tell us they do. We don't believe the sun is small though it might look that way to some. Faith as you seem to reference it, as something that can be compared to fact, (and its generally not) seems to be simply the set of assumptions each person might take on so that he can evaluate information and ultimately determine facts.

The tendency is that too little faith and you deny evidence is real, too much faith and you believe something as true with a small amount of evidence. This might be compared to jumping to conclusions. At certain points when presented with a dichotomy such as The question "Was the universe a product of intelligent design?" each person who chooses to answer is guilty of more assumptions required than the person who doesn't answer.

@Bert
Your questions tend to have a false, disputed, or question-begging presupposition. Therefore, I must ask you, "Why do you ask loaded questions so often?"

In this case your question is "loaded" with the presumption that my God is "playing games" which can be taken as my God is mocking or ridiculing. My God (meaning the God I believe in) does not do this.

Loaded questions are also deceptive. Assuming you aren't ignorant to your loaded question, I must ask, "Bert, why are you willfully using deception to find truth?"

dear Shawn,

we surely look at religion differently.

to me it is a machinery of force.

to me at a point in time time when everything was unknown and mysterious

some men had visions of/with god.

i think opioids and other drugs had a great part in these visions/talks with god.

now controlling men took these stories and pronounced them as fact.

you said WHAT? that's BLASPHEMY!

now follow the misery and hurt since then with these religions.

so much more has come from science and reason.

opinion without force, 1/8,000,000,000

thank you

First some definitions that I will make up;
-"Fact", something that is verifyable, repeateable by different people
-"Truth", something abstract that is perceived as correct in this universe in one persons mind only.
-"Untruth", the opposite of "Truth", that is essentially corrupted "Truth" when we try and communicate Truth (that is meant only for one mind/one brain) using an innaccurate form of communication such as speech and language.

We have an idea of what truth is in our heads but when we try and communicate it, we introduce untruth into it. When we try and communicate truth, the message is always destroyed by our words, other peoples words, and other peoples minds trying to perceive our words. English isn't our native language, our brains are not "designed" (either by evolutionary processes or intelligent processes) to use this language; ours brains do not work in sentences at its most pure form, in fact our brains do not even work logically.

True "Truths" are unobtainable as all our human characteristics, our thoughts, our beliefs, are the result of interactions with other humans. Only when we are free from the constraints that humanity has created for itself can we discover the true "Truth". But we are human so this is impossible. Only God can understand the true "Truth", which may be his own existence. If God "touches" people then people who are not corrupted by other peoples untruths should develope faith and belief in God. So only ignorant people can know the true God as everyone elses idea of a God is corrupted by other peoples ideas of what God is or is not. Our minds can create things which appear as truthful, but there will always be untruth in it if we are influenced by anyone else. The only fact that will support a God is if everyone who does not know anything has the exact same idea of a God. Christianity makes a certain emphasis on "converting" ignorant people but only truly ignorant people know The Truth. If The Truth exists then there is no way of validating that it exists as anyone who has it is unable to communicate it with an unbiased person or humanity in general.

If God is Truthful and Exists then he would only communicate with those who are not part of humanity or conscious. If God is Omnipotent and wanted Christianity or any Religion to be True then he would have destroyed the one thing that makes it impossible to know God and The Truth; Untruth, or the inabiltity of humans to communicate 100% effectively. The only way for God to exist is if he does not reveal himself to people and does not desire humans worship.

In conclusion
1) Our minds are full of untruth so even our personal Truths are untrue in their very essence; being that they are based on other peoples Untruth, and when it comes to philosophy there is no perceiveable Truth that applies to everyone.
2) An omnipotent God could have created humanity without Untruth but he didn't; we are unable to communicate 100% effectively.
3) Following from two there are two possible conclusions either
a) There exists a God but he does not care if we are unable to know Truth and he only reveals himself to humans who are not influenced by other peoples Untruth, essentially no-one. He may reveal some truths to prophets but whenever they communicate it with others it instantly becomes Untruthful as the Truth is converted into words that are not in the same language as the Truth (all languages are based on Untruths and no combination of Untruths make a Truth) and communicated to a brain that functions differently to the enlightened brain.
or b) God does not exist and neither does the Truth

My logic is illogical further proof that even if Truths and God exists that we are unable to communicate them as I know that this Untruth/Truth interpretation of abstract concepts and notions is an approximate truth to my brain.

@Shawn

Thank you. Your answers give insight into why our understandings and views are so different.

In my world, a Fact is the actual state of affairs. It has nothing to do with opinion; it is the actual case. It would be that case if not a single person existed. A fact is what actually is.


In your world, according to your description, fact is little more than social opinion, thought to be knowledge (by which I mean thought to be true).

Centuries past when people thought the earth was flat, it was common belief, what you would have described as fact.

In my world, the fact of the earth being spherical is true (factual) regardless of a common belief because a spherical earth is the actual state of affairs. It is actually the case.

But this is also why you can so comfortably call something "true" that isn't, or cannot be verified as such. Truth, to you, has a philosophical connotation.

Truth, to me, is a fact. That is, it is what actually is.

@Aces,
"In my world, the fact of the earth being spherical is true (factual) regardless of a common belief because a spherical earth is the actual state of affairs. It is actually the case. "
Or so it seems! We are 99.999999999999% certain the earth is spherical and revolves around the sun but we could be wrong; there could be some as-of-yet unexplained system that is actually occuring that makes it seem like the earth is spherical!
Facts are factual but Truths are not truthful . . .. when someone says I know the bible is true it does not mean it is factual merely that in their minds it seems factual. The same could be said about everything we observe; it appears true and only after we have countlessly tested something do we consider it to be a fact. But even then, since we are not omniscient we cannot fully know if something is in fact factual.
But I digress, the Christian God doesn't exist in my opinion just because there has never been a valid argument for Him, only Truths mascarading as facts . . .

Jason wrote:

---

True! My point is that whatever it is that is the actual case (not our opinion of what it is, but the actual state of affairs), THAT is the truth.

We are not the arbiters of truth, we just try like hell to devise systems that best retain a commitment to truth (like logic and science, epistemology, etc.) in our quest for it. But faith... poor faith... doesn't even pretend to want or seek the truth. It only wants to survive, even at the expense of the host.

A truth that destroys meaning is not the Truth. It is, at the best, a partial and imperfect truth. A truth that relies solely on the head and denies the heart is a crippled truth. A truth that acknowledges the object and denies the subject is a betrayal not only of God but also of what is best in humanity.

There are two types of atheists: the atheist who suffers because he thinks there is no God and the atheist who says "Thank God there is no God". Most of the self-proclaimed atheists nowadays belong to the second category. No one who understands the full implications of atheism can rejoice over it.

Jason wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

Just incase you wanted the facts.

Richard Wurmbrand, a Christian who spent 14 years in the communist prisons for his faith, writes: ’When an engineer has built a bridge, the fact that a cat can pass over the bridge is no proof that the bridge is good. A train must pass over it to prove its strength. The fact that you can be an atheist when everything goes well does not prove the truth of atheism. It does not hold up in moments of great crisis.’

Apart from truth, Christianity brings two more values into the equation: meaning and salvation. When someone is thirsty, the fact that he knows the chemical formula of water isn't of much help. When someone is dying, the fact that they know they are a collection of atoms doesn't make things easier for them. When someone hurts you, knowing that pain is only a chemical reaction in your brain doesn't stop you from hurting. Christianity goes to places where science cannot reach... to the human soul.

It is a fact that the Christian faith has helped people cope with incredibly difficult circumstances. The experience of being a Christian is a unique experience that cannot be "artificially recreated". There are joys in being a Christian that can't be found in any other human experience and that cannot be fully grasped until one becomes a Christian.

As an atheist with a wife who battled cancer, and one who has lost both parents to cancer, I can tell you first hand that rationalism versus appeal to the gods holds up very well in times of crisis. My wife is now cancer free, thanks to the many doctors, surgeons, and modern science.

Nor is it much help to imagine that they are drinking the water.

There is a big difference between believing something because it "makes it easy" for someone to accept, versus actually being true. Wishful thinking is exactly that.
Christianity goes to places where science cannot reach... to the human imagination.

And the "tooth fairy" has helped countless kids deal with the pain of losing teeth. This has nothing to do with truth.

I know many ex-Christians that would disagree, who claim to live more joyful and fulfilling lives now than ever before. Visit www.exchristian.net and read some of the hundreds of "testimonies".

Andrew wroteWell played
Imagining you are drinking water can sometimes help; mind over matter and all that. But the mind still can't create a god.

This thread should more be about "is their an alternative to the Christian Religion that is more beneficial to people" not "does God exist". I know it's fun to debate endlessly about gods being anologous to spagetti monsters but its a debate thats occured thousands of times on other portions of this website.

Christianity does seem like one of the better options, except for the whole opinion Christians have about others needing to be "saved". If Christianity stops trying to "save" people then I'm sure it would be the best religion. (Even though I would personally lean more towards Buddhism etc, but thats cos I'm an introvert not an extrovert.)

So keep on debating the debate thats happened hundreds of times since it so much fun and obviously all of you guys' true religion . .

@Bert
No response to the loaded question thing I see... No response to anything ever. You just want a megaphone?

Thats great that you think people were just high. There is no historical or biblical support for that theory so its pretty juvenile. Especially since many visions happened to multiple people at the same time who saw the same thing. Hallucinations happen within your mind they can't be shared with the same results because they have unique effects on each mind. So if you have a theory next time check it out and see if there is any scientific basis for the proliferation of it. Otherwise you're just going to see like a crazy guy on opium.

Also, Science and religion don't claim intellectual territory over the same timeline. This is a simple confusion of agent and mechanism we talk about constantly here.

Bo, first of all, I'm glad your wife is all right now and that the doctors could help her... I'm not the one to deny the "miracles" of modern medicine and technology. What they can do these days is absolutely amazing.

I do think you're a bit unfair to human imagination though. I suggest this simple exercise: think of ten creations or inventions of man in which human imagination didn't play a role.

Apart from imagination, there is plenty of evidence supporting the important role visions and revelations played in scientific discoveries. August Kekulé discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a vision of a snake seizing its own tail (a common symbol in mythology). Mendeleev created the periodic table of elements after dreaming of the basic elements of the universe flowing together in a manner akin to the progression of a musical sequence. Einstein discovered his famous formula E=MC2 after he dreamed of sledding down a hill faster and faster until it approached the speed of light.

If revelations, visions and imagination have merit even in the development of scientific thought, why ridicule them in the context of religion?

No, there is not. These are examples of the creative process, that is all, sometimes attributed to "divine revelations"... big difference.

No ridicule intended, but one cannot simply look at the "visions" that resulted in successful contributions yet ignore the "visions" that were either destructive or simply non-nonsensical. More importantly, we cannot associate truth claims with imagination alone.... truth claims must be verified.

And who controls the creative process? How come sometimes our dreams know more than we do, before we do? What explanation(s) does science provide for such visions and revelations?

Loaded/presumptive question. The question assumes that a "who" controls the creative process. The create process is a function of the brain -- it has never been demonstrated to be anything else.

There are many explanations for what might appear to be external information, including suppressed memories, subconscious thoughts, pure statistical necessity (that is, dreaming about winning money then winning a few hundred bucks -- when you play the lottery every week), cognitive biases such as remembering all the times your dreams resulted in something, yet forgetting all the times it didn't (again, a statistical certainty), the tendency for us to create false memories, the list goes on.

Most importantly, if you think of the number of dreams each one us has (4-6 per night avg source: Chapter 1 of Domhoff's The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003)), the bits of information contained within the dreams, plus the number of people who dream, it would be a miracle if we DIDN'T have numerous stories of dreams coming true.

Mathematics and science explains it all wonderfully -- no magic required.

If these explanations satisfy you, that's fair enough. But many people who have had extra-ordinary experiences with dreams, visions, premonitions, etc. would agree with me that they are far from satisfactory. At best, they are an awkward attempt to force little understood phenomena into their already existing patterns. Most scientists avoid these "uncomfortable" topics because they are baffled by them.

>>The question assumes that a "who" controls the creative process. The create process is a function of the brain

Why, assert a separation from the brain and the "who"?

On a separate thought, aren't there organisms with no brain (like jellyfish, worms, bacteria, et cetera) that operate in an unpredictable fassion therefore exhibiting a from of a creative process?