James R,
You’re simply attempting to explain it away. Why would you do that? Surely it’s something worth investigating.
Belief in God is natural to humans, and by God I mean, the original source, the original cause. If Flew was off his rocker, his natural faculties would still be intact i.e. hearing, smelling, feeling… etc, and so would his capacity to accept God, and therefore believe.
IOW, shut down any opportunity to comprehend and understand God.
We must keep God out of the picture! Is that it James?
One simply has to accept it without bias, then as one understands what is being said, one can therefore ask pertinent questions and make informed decisions as to whether it is feasible or not.
Something like this, but accept a thought without believing it.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - attributed to Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics).
I dare say we’re all stupid in the light of the truth. But I didn’t say that atheists are stupid. Stupidity does not necessarily arise through a lack of intelligence, neither through ignorance. A child isn’t stupid be he doesn’t understand that his parents have to pay the mortgage, the reason why he can’t get Xbox One.
In all his campaigning, Flew didn’t stop to think about God, and his relationship to God.
He effectively wasted his time sprouting, what eventually became for him, nonsense, and affected others with it.
If you don’t accept God, for who and what God is (character), then how can you decide that the notion of God or belief in God is absurd?
Acceptance is different from belief. Acceptance means you suspend belief or disbelief, and take everything at face value. Then as you begin to understand, you begin to make informed decisions on the whole idea.
If you accept that God is the original cause, then you must accept that everything IS evidence of God. If at this point you decide that is illogical, and has no basis in reality (lest it be proven within the logical framework), then you have effectively cut yourself off from understanding how the whole thing works, and now see God purely as some illogical idea with no basis in (your) reality. This is the level at which the ghostly teapot is aimed. It has no basis in informing one who or what God is. It serves to cut ones acceptance of God, and increase ones non acceptance (ignorance).
I’m not redefining the term, I’m looking beyond the term. Theism is a real thing in that there are people who believe in God. But that’s all, the term ‘’theism’’, can offer.
Faith is a different thing. We all have faith, because we all (or at least most of us) have goals that we want to achieve. The goal dictates how much faith we must have. If we want to eventually get married, make a family, buy a nice home, and so on. That doesn’t require as much faith as wanting to be a famous rock star.
I don’t see the point of getting hung up on the existence thing. Experience tells me one cannot prove God’s existence to someone else without that person accepting that proof. But that is unscientific and does not really satisfy the enquiry. And it works the same for non-existence.
As it is said ‘’ "the absence of evidence is not theevidence of absence".
Reality checkpoint: There will never be any evidence that lead every person to God exists or does not exist. Therefore, to keep bringing it up, is simply a waste of time.
But is that belief in God, or belief in what i been told. If it is belief in God, then at some point that person will carry on inquiring about God, because the person believes in God. It stands to reason, if you believe in something, you want to know about that thing. If you believe in what you were indoctrinated with, it stands to reason that you will shun everything that contradicts what you were taught.
The bolded section is incorrect in my opinion.
Belief that God exists is not something the human being has to cultivate, as it is a natural aspect. History bears witness to this. One does not need science, or scientific evidence to believe God exists.
Scriptures are more than just words. In fact good books, whatever the subject matter, are more than just words. Have you never read a book or article which physically/mentally affects you beyond your immediate control. Make you laugh, cry, angry, feel horny… Those words, upon understanding, affect different parts of your psyche, filtering down through your body. Scriptures does that, but it also affects you, the observer, the one who wills the mind and the body. In that connection you realise thta though you are attached to this body, you are not this physical body. This is the beginning of knowledge of self and God. All the great spiritual Masters, Jesus included, sought to wake people up to this.
Belief in God does not mean one has knowledge of God, or one is better, safer, or happier then one who does not believe. It is neither something that one can choose to do. What we can do is control how we perceive it, we can ignore it b occupying our time in ways that render it dormant, allowing us to forget about it.
Belief in God means we can access that information (scripture) easier than if we didn’t believe.
There are different levels of belief, as many as there are people. No two people can believe at exactly the same level, just as no two people are exactly alike.
To sum up, belief is something that is activated (or not) according to individual. Atheism and Theism are simply gross categories we put ourselves, nothing more, nothing less.
This is my opinion.
Jan.
It's worth pointing out that there is some question as to the degree to which Flew was influenced at a time in his life when his mental faculties were in decline. In other words, it might be less a case of him coming to see the light and stopping childish games yadda yadda yadda than of a man in the throes of Alzheimer's being taken advantage of by some religious types who were very well aware of what a coup it would be to get a famous atheist apparently to recant on his deathbed.
You’re simply attempting to explain it away. Why would you do that? Surely it’s something worth investigating.
Belief in God is natural to humans, and by God I mean, the original source, the original cause. If Flew was off his rocker, his natural faculties would still be intact i.e. hearing, smelling, feeling… etc, and so would his capacity to accept God, and therefore believe.
In summary, I don't think I'd hold up Flew as the best example of an atheist coming to see the light.
IOW, shut down any opportunity to comprehend and understand God.
We must keep God out of the picture! Is that it James?
In other words, one has to have faith, in the sense of believing in stuff in the absence of evidence. That goes against the basics of the scientific method, which I guess is why so many scientists don't believe in God.
One simply has to accept it without bias, then as one understands what is being said, one can therefore ask pertinent questions and make informed decisions as to whether it is feasible or not.
Something like this, but accept a thought without believing it.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - attributed to Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics).
Ah, I get it. Atheists are stupid! That explains why they don't believe in stuff that has no evidence like they should. Thanks, Jan.
I dare say we’re all stupid in the light of the truth. But I didn’t say that atheists are stupid. Stupidity does not necessarily arise through a lack of intelligence, neither through ignorance. A child isn’t stupid be he doesn’t understand that his parents have to pay the mortgage, the reason why he can’t get Xbox One.
In all his campaigning, Flew didn’t stop to think about God, and his relationship to God.
He effectively wasted his time sprouting, what eventually became for him, nonsense, and affected others with it.
Wait a minute! You can't have it both ways. One minute you're saying people just have to accept that God exists regardless of evidence, and the next you're saying that no, there really is some evidence that we can use to make a rational decision after all. So which is it?
If you don’t accept God, for who and what God is (character), then how can you decide that the notion of God or belief in God is absurd?
Acceptance is different from belief. Acceptance means you suspend belief or disbelief, and take everything at face value. Then as you begin to understand, you begin to make informed decisions on the whole idea.
If you accept that God is the original cause, then you must accept that everything IS evidence of God. If at this point you decide that is illogical, and has no basis in reality (lest it be proven within the logical framework), then you have effectively cut yourself off from understanding how the whole thing works, and now see God purely as some illogical idea with no basis in (your) reality. This is the level at which the ghostly teapot is aimed. It has no basis in informing one who or what God is. It serves to cut ones acceptance of God, and increase ones non acceptance (ignorance).
Lots of people believe in God for fairly insubstantial reasons. I'd even wager that quite a few do believe just because of one thing - one thing that happened to them, one thing they were told by their parents or teachers, one thing they felt in a quiet moment, or just one wish they have. And they're theists as much as you are, no matter how you try to redefine the term.
I’m not redefining the term, I’m looking beyond the term. Theism is a real thing in that there are people who believe in God. But that’s all, the term ‘’theism’’, can offer.
Again, it seems to me that you already stated that no evidence can lead you to the unavoidable conclusion that God exists. To get there, you need a leap of faith, which means you make a choice to believe in something for which you have insufficient evidence.
Faith is a different thing. We all have faith, because we all (or at least most of us) have goals that we want to achieve. The goal dictates how much faith we must have. If we want to eventually get married, make a family, buy a nice home, and so on. That doesn’t require as much faith as wanting to be a famous rock star.
I don’t see the point of getting hung up on the existence thing. Experience tells me one cannot prove God’s existence to someone else without that person accepting that proof. But that is unscientific and does not really satisfy the enquiry. And it works the same for non-existence.
As it is said ‘’ "the absence of evidence is not theevidence of absence".
Reality checkpoint: There will never be any evidence that lead every person to God exists or does not exist. Therefore, to keep bringing it up, is simply a waste of time.
That's assuming you're making a conscious choice, of course. But most believers don't go through a process of logical reasoning and examination of evidence to get to their belief in God, anyway. They are indoctrinated into their religion by their parents, their relatives, their friends, their society, and so on. That is, they effectivelyinherit belief in God by default.
But is that belief in God, or belief in what i been told. If it is belief in God, then at some point that person will carry on inquiring about God, because the person believes in God. It stands to reason, if you believe in something, you want to know about that thing. If you believe in what you were indoctrinated with, it stands to reason that you will shun everything that contradicts what you were taught.
So let's see how that reads from the other side:
Everything we genuinely believe in, has its basis in some form of experience, so what’s at question here is the experience, not the belief. Theists believe God does exist, and the reason they believe this is personal to each and every one of them. Of course most of them have been conditioned to cry ''Look at all the evidence'', but evidence does not yield any experience to back up their claims. They simply have no choice but to stick to ''I feel that God exists, therefore God exists''. That is ALL they have to bring to the table.
The bolded section is incorrect in my opinion.
Belief that God exists is not something the human being has to cultivate, as it is a natural aspect. History bears witness to this. One does not need science, or scientific evidence to believe God exists.
Scripture is just words written by people. It's obviously important to you and your belief, Jan, so I can understand how it rankles when people point out that it's just words written by people. Your belief that scripture is God's word is just faith - belief in the absence of evidence.
Scriptures are more than just words. In fact good books, whatever the subject matter, are more than just words. Have you never read a book or article which physically/mentally affects you beyond your immediate control. Make you laugh, cry, angry, feel horny… Those words, upon understanding, affect different parts of your psyche, filtering down through your body. Scriptures does that, but it also affects you, the observer, the one who wills the mind and the body. In that connection you realise thta though you are attached to this body, you are not this physical body. This is the beginning of knowledge of self and God. All the great spiritual Masters, Jesus included, sought to wake people up to this.
Belief in God does not mean one has knowledge of God, or one is better, safer, or happier then one who does not believe. It is neither something that one can choose to do. What we can do is control how we perceive it, we can ignore it b occupying our time in ways that render it dormant, allowing us to forget about it.
Belief in God means we can access that information (scripture) easier than if we didn’t believe.
There are different levels of belief, as many as there are people. No two people can believe at exactly the same level, just as no two people are exactly alike.
To sum up, belief is something that is activated (or not) according to individual. Atheism and Theism are simply gross categories we put ourselves, nothing more, nothing less.
This is my opinion.
Jan.
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