Empirical Evidence of God

Write4U said:
postscript,
I am really offended by this arrogant statement implying that only believers can comprehend the concept of God.
The believer possesses some kind of extraordinary insight which is just not present in the unenlightened comprehension of non-believers?

VANITY!!!!!!!!
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///
Catch-22. In order to understand we must 1st believe.

<>
 
Write4U said:
Yet you reject StrangerInAStrangeLand's claim he is God. Justify that one, please.
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Im not seeing the confusion here, NO PERSON is GOD.
Not Jesus, not StrangerInStrangeLand, No one
Write4U said:
postscript,
I am really offended by this arrogant statement implying that only believers can comprehend the concept of God.
VANITY!!!!!!!!
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That doesn't say only believers can understand. It says no one can
 
akoreamerican said:
Im not seeing the confusion here, NO PERSON is GOD.
Not Jesus
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No?
Look up Holy Trinity: "one God in three Divine Persons".
Or Colossians 2:9: For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, or John 10:30 I and the Father are one, or 1 Timothy 3:16 God was manifest in the flesh, etc. etc.
 
akoreamerican said:
Im not seeing the confusion here, NO PERSON is GOD.
Not Jesus, not StrangerInStrangeLand, No one

That doesn't say only believers can understand. It says no one can
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That maybe so, but then what is it that makes understanding God more than a simple belief with no specific authority?
Is your God sentient or more mathematically probabilistic? What about a Grand Motive and motif ? What are God's potential powers ? And lastly...."why" ?

I think we are just infatuated with and worship our own capacity for abstract thought. But it is an (un)reality created by ourselves, we should admit. Seems more honest.

The Universe is still wonderful and awesome without all of that!!
"To the symphony of life no one has the score"........:rolleyes:
 
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Yazata said:
What Jan means? Jan is just trolling, trying (very successfully) to keep all the board's idiot-atheists crazily barking.
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Be that as it may...
'Denial' in the epistemological context means declaring an assertion to be untrue.
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Is denial that strong a proposition, though? If this is the case then many atheists do not "deny" the existence of God.
In the case of assertions that God, pixies or pink unicorns exist, denial would be the claim that they don't. And in the case of atheist assertions that they don't exist, denial would be the claim that they do. Either way, the denial may or may not be correct, provided that there are good reasons for taking a position on the reality of these things.
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So agnosticism is a non-denial position?
Logically, denial seems to simply be the application of the 'not' operator ~ to whatever proposition is being denied. That's all I read the Greek 'a-' prefix in 'atheist' as doing, expressing 'not-theist'. It needn't be read as 'without' and can just as correctly be read as 'not'.
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This is where it gets somewhat confusing, as in a "belief in X" the denial could be either "not-belief in X" or "belief in not-X". As we both appreciate, there is a syntactical difference: Is the negation / denial of "to eat a banana" either "eat a non-banana" or simply "to not eat a banana"?
More recently, the word 'denial' has taken on a new and more tendentious meaning derived from Freudian psychology, the idea of individuals insisting on the untruth of what should be obvious truths that they find threatening and don't want to face. So the word 'denial' has taken on a new perjorative and rather insulting meaning that it never used to have. That's the usage that we see today in phrases like "science denier".
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This is where I think Jan is coming from, although I do await his confirmation one way or the other, and a fuller clarification from him, on the matter. It seems he thinks denial is to turn away from something that is objectively real, rather than simply to not belief as real something that is subjective.
To deny that Mt. Everest is the tallest peak on Earth seems different than denying that the Mona Lisa is a beautiful painting. The former is denial of fact, the latter is denial of subjective opinion.
In real life, it's often justified and entirely correct to deny particular propositions, provided that there are good reasons for doing so. If Jan wants to make a convincing argument that atheism is 'denial' in the tendentious Freudian sense, then he or she needs to make a convincing case that God's existence should be obvious to everyone.

And it should also be pointed out that Jan can just as easily be accused of 'denial' of the non-existence of God. Perhaps the truth of atheism (assuming it is true) is something obvious that Jan just can't face.
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I still see denial of proposition X not as the claim that not-X is true, but simply as not being in a position to accept that X is true (irrespective of whether one claims not-X is true or not).


But I (still) await Jan's clarification of his usage of the terms.
 
I believe that many atheists simply avoid admitting they believe in God because they dislike religion so much. I believe that that do so to spite religious people. This us against them thinking is a primitive instinct that no longer serve us. We need to embrace the true Truth.
 
akoreamerican said:
I believe that many atheists simply avoid admitting they believe in God because they dislike religion so much. I believe that that do so to spite religious people.
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And you're mistaken again.
(But you do show a remarkable consistency).
What makes you think[1] that atheists do actually believe in "god"?

We need to embrace the true Truth.
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The problem is that you don't have the "truth", merely a belief that you (and other theists) proclaim to be so. (With a noticeable lack of evidence).

1 I use the word "think" loosely given the lack of capacity you've so far demonstrated for doing so on the forum.
 
Dywyddyr said:
The problem is that you don't have the "truth"
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Of course no one has the Whole Truth, but we have parts of it that we are sure of. For one thing as I said
"Us against them thinking is a primitive instinct that no longer serve us" is part of that Truth
 
akoreamerican said:
Of course no one has the Whole Truth, but we have parts of it that we are sure of. For one thing as I said
"Us against them thinking is a primitive instinct that no longer serve us" is part of that Truth
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The problem is that there's an entire set of people (i.e. theists) who claim to have (some sort of) knowledge of something and require that everyone subscribe to their way of thinking/ behaving/ etc. Yet they cannot show that their belief has any basis whatsoever in reality.
Please show that (per your claim) ""Us against them thinking is a primitive instinct that no longer serve us" is "part of that [or any] Truth".
Additionally please show that the word truth requires (or even deserves) capitalisation.

I do note that you failed to answer my question: What makes you think that atheists do actually believe in "god"?
 
Dywyddyr said:
What makes you think[1] that atheists do actually believe in "god"?
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Do you believe the law of gravity is the truth? Do you break that law? CAN you break it? You believe the law of gravity don't you. You won't dare go against it or can you defy it. That is just part of what you believe as God
 
akoreamerican said:
Do you believe the law of gravity is the truth?
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Nope. (FYI there is no "law of gravity") [1].

That is just part of what you believe as God
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Two points:
1) You're talking utter bollocks, and
2) You're obfuscating the issue here: nature = "god"? If that's the case then fine, nature is nature, neither requiring worship nor requiring belief per se, but using "god" and nature interchangeably brings on more problems (for you and other theists) and also confuses the issue.

1 There is a law of gravitation: but A) that's a physical law (hence subject to alteration: i.e. not "the truth") and B) doesn't require "belief". (Any more than I am required to "believe" that I have two legs).

Oh, you cleverly avoided my questions. Again.
 
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And, again, you've so subtly avoided addressing the actual point of my post that I didn't even notice...
 
Well.. It's time for me to go to church. I like going there because even though I don't believe in what they believe, I don't see them as enemies.
 
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