Evidence for God...

by tec 251 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  tec

  You didn't mention my comment about why God waited all that time to send a redeemer to mankind? And if God sent us important truths earlier in mans history, why did he not protect them and allow later peoples to discover them and use them? We have cave drawings

  from thousands of years ago, but God couldn't save ancient texts he inspired? There is no way of knowing, but there is also no reason for me to believe it.

  He knows the reason for the timing, not I.

  As well, truths are spiritually discerned; within us. Writing it down is more of a two dimensional view of something fuller. A command, rather than a truth. Love, the golden rule, etc... these mean something when written within us (on the heart, seared into the conscience, etc). That has been communicated and preserved. Other than by those who reject it.

  Go to any corner of the globe and you'll have a moral obligation not to murder or steal, and to do good to others.

  Exactly. Good communication, imo.

  All cultures have similar rules to follow, but their spiritual beliefs are usually quite different. One may ask you to pray 5 times a day, facing a certain direction. Another will tell you to perform a sacred dance for the crops to grow (as NC said earlier). Why is there variation in one but not in the other, if the two are tied, and are supposedly from the same source? If there is only one moral truth, then shouldn't there be only one spiritual truth as well? Unless God has said ''worship me however you want''. But what's your evidence of this?

  And how do you know that the worship God wants is not that we love one another, care for one another, show compassion, mercy, forgiveness, love, serving one another? Most of the rest (the rituals, etc) is just religion. Man trying to control the people through God.

  People from all over recognize the spirit... of love and peace and faith and mercy and forgiveness... within Christ, even if their culture and religion prevent them from acknowledging Him as the Truth, and Life. Can't really blame anyone for not seeing those qualities in the religion of christianity.

  It's still a supernatural concept which came from purely human imagination. Just like those different ideas of heaven. They can't all be right, can they? If all religions stem from a single source, then the further back in time one goes, there should be a visible trail that leads back to the original, ultimately correct view. So what about the Egyptian view of the afterlife? It came well before the Christian adaptation of heaven, but it's still completely wrong. Unless God wants to keep us in the dark about the real afterlife and so has made a motley crew of ideas to confuse us, there's no reason for all these different views. Completely nonsensical.

  Once the spiritual is conceived of, then man can put all sorts of details into it that he thinks are right. It is the original conception of anything spiritual at all that I speak of. Not different versions of heaven, or gods, or whatever. The sense of the spiritual is within us, so we can conceive of it.

  I do not think anyone knows what this spiritual afterlife entails. Analogies give us a sense, but we probably have to experience it to know.

  Just apply Occam's Razor to your thinking, that's all I'm asking. Does one perform less mental gymnastics contemplating an eternal universe, or an eternal omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent creator? Yes space and time began at the Big Bang, our universe had a

  beginning and will end at some point (by eternal I was referring to the possibility of universe cycles; Big Bang/Big Crunch/Big Bang etc). It's quite possible there will only ever be one universe and this is it. God is still MIA though. And just because on earth, causality works

  in such a way, does not mean the same laws apply to the universe. But, in my opinion there isn't enough known to state anything of the above with certainty, and i'm not an astrophysicist so I can't have a real discussion with you about it.

  This is exactly what I did do. What I mentioned in my first post. The living comes from the living - simplest explanation. That spark, that animation... coming from something inanimate, unaware, one-dimensional so to speak... seems far more complex.

  Peace,

  tammy (off to work)
• 

  InterestedOne

  Me: You find it impossible that humans would imagine such a realm on their own.

  
  
  

  tec: I find it unlikely.

  
  
  By what criteria do you determine that it is unlikely? To be specific, here are two options under consideration:
  
  Option a: (which I assume you think is more likely) Humans got the concept of a non-physical, spiritual realm populated by non-physical sentient beings such as god, angels, demons, etc. from a realm that actually exists & they didn't make it up on their own.

  or

  Option b: Humans made up the idea of a non-physical, spiritual realm populated by non-physical sentient beings such as god, angels, demons, etc. on their own & did not get it from a realm that actually exists.
  
  Why do you think option (a) is more likely? I just gave an example of my own imagination of a super-spiritual realm beyond the spiritual. Although I have conceived of such a thing, the fact that I have conceived of it does not increase the likelihood of it actually existing. Why do you consider the fact that humans have conceived of a spiritual realm populated by immaterial sentient beings to increase the likelihood of it actually existing?
• 

  NewChapter

  Because making that leaps depends on the assumption that most ancient people were more willing to accept supernatural explanation, over a natural explanation

  It was the only explanation available to them. But you know that already. You have looked into the human tendency to make logical fallacies. You agree that children making up invisible friends (independent of others and without previous knowlege of such) does not make such friends real. It is only belief in god that gets a pass.
• 

  Qcmbr

  tec - of all the religibods here you make me saddest. There are plenty who are riled up in prophetic ire and type faster than their ability to reject facts, I laugh at the blindness of their zeal. There are posters who are likely to have been ill or socially restricted who have written their delusions as battered paragraphs dripping need and cries for help, they make me realise my own helplessness in truly helping another; but you seem balanced, unencumbered by pills, pub or past and yet you stand pretty naked in defense of something (I have no concrete idea of that which you defend!) No matter what logic, facts, criticism or argument comes your way you just bend out of the way and pop back up having changed nothing.

  And this is why you make me feel sad. I don't get the feeling that you know how/want to be anything different. Your style of defending your beliefs robs you of any tools with which to examine your own worldview. Like a silken prison ten times stronger than steel and impossible to shatter you have become adept at simply identifying anything that you feel is good as 'Christ' and everything else as either Satan or at least 'not Christ.' This approach is a strength in defense (it allows infinite sidestepping) but also means you have no strength of argument with which to persuade another. I have yet to be able to say what you believe in (you frequently bookend your comments with references to Christ though why there is a causual or evidential link you never say; this is of less defined meaning than saying that a car is the taoist uncarved block given form.)imo.

  While I would love you to one day post that you are doubting and have begun to approach the world revealed by reason and fact I get the impression you will never be able to change. Having perfected your ability to avoid a faith crisis you never need to make a fact v myth choice. You have become theologically unaccountable to yourself. How can you ever know if you are wrong if you are unable to define what being wrong would look like?

  I had hoped you'd some actual proof when you started this thread, something that would be modern scripture (apparently biblegod persuaded people almost exclusively by evidence) but as usual its 98% subjective experience and 2% unrelated logic. I totally get the whole personal relationship with god. It just isn't proof. :(

  Dang I feel sh*t writing this. Sorry. I'm going to post it anyway even though it sounds arrogant. I'm not the best at getting across intent. I hope your comprehension skills are better than the clarity of my written thought.
• 

  tec

  I understand you fine, Q. More than that, your compassion comes through... kind of makes it impossible to take offense. Not that I read even a hint of arrogance in your above post; just complete disagreement. I have no problem with that.

  If it makes you feel better, I stopped posted for a little while (maybe a snippet here or there) because I was thinking about things that you had said and shared. Because it sounds to me as though you had faith. Not just belief, but faith, in the spirit, though the details might be different. I hear it in the way you describe how you used to feel, how or what you used to 'hear'. You had faith... and then you didn't. It makes you hard to argue with as well, because you don't see it as a loss of faith, but as a coming to reason. All the things that are OF faith, you dismiss and embrace another explanation for them.

  I actually hold out hope for you to rediscover your faith, as much as you might hope the opposite for me.

  So see? I probably sound arrogant too ;)

  Do not be sad for me, Q. I would be a spiritual person regardless. It is within me. It is just that I also see Christ as the manifestation of that Spirit, that is in us.

  Peace,

  tammy
• 

  tec

  It was the only explanation available to them.

  Now, how do you know this? This is a pretty big statement to make.

  "No explanation" was also available to them. No one had to dream up some spiritual reason for a seemingly natural thing. No one needed to dream up a spiritual realm or spiritual plane at all.

  Why is it just physical or spiritual anyway... why not another option? A third option that I cannot even conceive of because it is not within our ream of existence? (okay, I answered that one in my question, but what do you think?)

  Peace,

  tammy
• 

  tec

  I just gave an example of my own imagination of a super-spiritual realm beyond the spiritual. Although I have conceived of such a thing, the fact that I have conceived of it does not increase the likelihood of it actually existing.

  But you did not conceive of the spiritual. You conceived of the details within the spiritual, but you already knew of the spiritual to be able to build upon it, or add things to it, or manipulate it, etc.

  Peace,

  tammy
• 

  THE GLADIATOR

  When I was a boy, I had very few possessions, but my father worked for a telephone company. He gave me an outdated dial phone the company had discarded. It was not connected to anything, but I took great joy in pretending it worked. I would make calls and pretend people were phoning me. One day my brother threw it on the floor.

  “I’m tired of hearing you pretend you can talk to people. The phone doesn’t work you know. There’s no one there, you’re talking to yourself!”

  “I know,” I replied, “but I enjoy pretending. Why couldn’t you just let me be. I wasn’t doing any harm.”

  My point is that imagination can serve a purpose and help a person cope with difficulties in their life. Believing that there is a purpose, makes sense of our struggles and disappointments. Faith can be comforting and offer a feeling of security in uncertain times. It is not my desire to damage something a person values in order to justify my own present views; besides viewpoints can change. Mine included.
• 

  NewChapter

  Now, how do you know this? This is a pretty big statement to make.

  No bigger than any statement you have made: That humans are incapable of creating a spiritual universe.

  "No explanation" was also available to them.

  Since when have humans EVER setteled for that? Not when we have these fantastic brains that can either hypothesize, or simply make things up.

  I find it hard to accept that you HONESTLY don't believe humans were capable and even likely to create gods. And if you really believe that, then I definitely view your take very differently---

  So what about children and their invisible friends? You have not addressed this. Children through the ages, all over the world, independent of each other, have created invisible friends with varying powers and appearances. This seems really unlikely, if I approach it with your viewpoint. So do you think there really are invisible friends which is why we see a common theme? Or does your reasoning only apply to gods?

  NC
• 

  still thinking

  Almost anything is possible. Dreams and hallucinations and such MIGHT give one rise to consider another realm. I consider that a very big might, especially concerning hallucinations or the above sleep paralysis mentioned. Because making that leaps depends on the assumption that most ancient people were more willing to accept supernatural explanation, over a natural explanation. Or that most were evetn more prone to leap to a supernatural explanation to begin with. That is a big assumption... unless perhaps this sense of the spiritual is inherently a part of us, making it easier to turn to or accept this as a possible explanation. Because most of us had some sense of it. ...tec

  No ,most people didn't have to think that way....all it would take is a few....or even one person to attribute this to something other than themselves. Why do you assume that most people would have to think that way for it to become the norm to believe?

  You get one person who suggests something like that and other people who cannot explain (like me) will believe it.

  You will always get people like new chapter who never thought that way....some people are just to smart for their own good...LOL

  I don't see how this is a bigger assumption than believing god is real......or that it is unlikely people could do this.