He doesn't have to answer all of them, but most Christians say that sincere prayers are definitely answered.
Disproving a Personal God with Science
- Thread starter spidergoat
- Start date
Yes I do know. It comes from the New Testament. St. John says that Jesus said God is light, like I claimed initially. I've been trying since then to get someone to use some science on it, and just look.gmilam said:
What's up your ass, then?
then I guess that leaves you with the issue of giving an empirical unit for sincerity
I'm willing to assume most praying Christians are sincere.
You are the light of my life.
Of course we can. This is why we have the ability to understand metaphors.
The argument could even be made that many words/concepts have gone through complex changes in relation to whether they are understood literally or metaphorically, and that the two qualifiers may have changed places over time.
For example, perhaps the original meaning of "light" was the one we nowadays consider secondary, metaphorical (ie. 'that which is important, good').
Perhaps people back then considered the meaning 'that which comes from the Sun or fire; energy waves' to be metaphorical.
I find that the more I read older texts, the more it seems apparent that the distinction between literal and metaphorical is very relative.
You believe that you love your cat, right?
And yet it cannot be confirmed independently that you love your cat.
Are you therefore wrong?
Should you give up your cat?
The problem with the reasoning that "A reported experience isn't reliable evidence in science, it has to be confirmed independently" and holding science as the highest measure of all, is that vast portions of the human experience must be ruled out as being irrelevant/unreliable/untrue.
Such ruling out, even if it may seem rational, cannot be maintained, at least not for long.
He doesn't love me, but he feeds me and gives me fun laser pointers to chase.
There are degrees of confirmation, and the owner's actions over a long time will tell a lot about how one feels about his cat, and that is independent of the owner's statement.
And what are the actions that over time scientifically prove that the owner
loves his cat?
jan.
Caring for it well, hugging it, playing with it, taking it to the vet, treating it as a member of the family, getting another cat for it to play and be social with, giving it toys to play with, talking to others about the cat, not kicking it around, and I'm, sure you're not really at a loss to add many more actions.
Have you ever observed how love is expressed? Any pattern there?
Now you could have a rare case of a fake person doing it for some other reason, and that would probably be exposed eventually.
So you'e admitting that somethings can only be known and understood as fact, subjectively?
jan.
The point is that there exists an agreement of sorts as to what the external signs of love are.
This agreement is not self-evident. It also differs from one culture to another, and it also differs according to circumstances (what may be love for a pet may not be love for a child; what may be love for a poor person may not be love for a rich person, etc.).
That would depend on what you mean by "is light."
If by "God is light" you mean, for example, 'God is my leader' or 'God is my friend' that is very much a personal God.
Heaven knows what people see when they look at something this:
Try again. It's not from Jesus at all... It's not even from one of the Gospels.
It's incoherent. It makes no sense. You just pulled a stupid idea out of your ass and said, "Dispute this."
Granted, it does prove that it's hard to dispute pure non-sense. Time to repeat that Thomas Jefferson quote:
What a small arsenal! And ineffective at that.
Until someone uses the same arsenal against you, I guess ...
If that's a statement in reference purely to an effulgence, it is meaningless