(August 11, 2016 at 9:14 am)SteveII Wrote:

(August 10, 2016 at 6:08 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Steve...by your logic:

I experience a personal relationship with Genie from 'Aladdin' (Disney version).  Therefore, this is proof that the Genie from Disney's 'Aladdin' exists.

Air tight, man.  

Find a few billion people who share your experience and track those people over 2000 years and you might have a point that makes sense.

Does it have to be a few billion? What about a couple of million? Where is your cut off, and how did you determine that number to be accurate? Anecdotes are still anecdotes, no matter their quantity. Hundreds of thousands of people also believe the Mandela Effect is caused by parallel universes sliding into one other, but the sheer quantity of lunatics who believe such nonsense does not lend the theory an ounce more credibility than if it were just one individual claiming it.

(August 10, 2016 at 6:25 pm)Simon Moon Wrote:

(August 10, 2016 at 3:47 pm)SteveII Wrote: Billions of people have entered into a relationship with God. Their experience/testimony would be empirical evidence for everything we are discussing. 

Billions of people have CLAIMED to have entered a relationship with 'God', many gods actually.

If 1.5 billion Muslims clam to have a personal relationship with their god, is that 'empirical evidence' that Allah exists?

You are guilty of the fallacy of special pleading. Not too impressive.

I doubt whether you know what the term 'empirical evidence' means.

Do you believe that every Christian that claims to have entered a 'personal relationship with God' has actually done so, or is there some percentage of Christians that are delusional, or fooling themselves, or misinterpreting some other feeling as a 'personal relationship with God'?

1. Sure. But the doctrine of salvation in Christianity is unique. No other religion describes a personal relationship with God. 
2. Muslims do not attempt to have a relationship with God. They specifically believe that is not possible. 
3. Since there are no comparable religions to Christianity (specifically the doctrine of salvation), there is no special pleading.
4. Empirical: based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.
5. No. I don't believe everyone who claims to be a Christian has experienced the event of 'salvation' and the effect of regeneration as described in the NT. Does that really change anything?

(August 11, 2016 at 9:05 am)SteveII Wrote: 1. Pew Research http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/ameri...landscape/
2. I see you moved from your original 'feeling' to changes in a person. Your examples could induce change in a person (for good or bad). Salvation as part of Christianity induces a specific set of large scale changes that are repeated over and over for millennium. Setting aside the catastrophic causes, how does education, science or medicine change a person in the way I was describing? More specifically, how do these things change a persons character so they exhibit things like love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and hope when none may have existed before? I still don't think you can identify one non-religious process that can produce similar results with any kind of predictable consistency. Therefore, the experience that does reliably produce these effects as well as the individual's intuition that their relationship with God is real is empirical evidence for the existence of God.
3. Impartiality has nothing to do with it. The effects of salvation as described in the NT and as experienced by a believer leaves a person in an objectively better (psychologically and sociologically) state than they were previously.

bold mine

1. You cherry picked the research by only including the evangelical christian data and ignoring the other data. Good for yooooouuuu. If you were confident in your position you would have included all of the data. Your still loosing.
2. You were the one who deviated from feeling to "change". So I took up the "change" that you appeared to want to discuss. Please provide proof for the bolded statement. And I notice you only discuss positive changes, no negative, that's not very honest. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wwjtd/2014/...istianity/  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity
3. Impartiality has everything to do with it. That's why people making judgements (in this instance you) are expected to be impartial (not you).

(August 11, 2016 at 9:19 am)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(August 11, 2016 at 9:14 am)SteveII Wrote: Find a few billion people who share your experience and track those people over 2000 years and you might have a point that makes sense.

Does it have to be a few billion?  What about a couple of million?  Where is your cut off, and how did you determine that number to be accurate? Anecdotes are still anecdotes, no matter their quantity.  Hundreds of thousands of people also believe the Mandela Effect is caused by parallel universes sliding into one other, but the sheer quantity of lunatics who believe such nonsense does not lend the theory an ounce more credibility than if it were just one individual claiming it.

Why do I have to have a cutoff? How many apples do we have to drop to examine the properties of gravity? The fact that the same thing happens over and over (with different people over 2000 years) with reliability and predictability is empirical evidence of a cause and effect relationship. The individual ascribes the effect to salvation and God. Therefore, unless you are willing to throw out human intuition as a source of knowledge, you are left with proof of the existence of God.

(August 11, 2016 at 9:37 am)SteveII Wrote:

(August 11, 2016 at 9:19 am)LadyForCamus Wrote: Does it have to be a few billion?  What about a couple of million?  Where is your cut off, and how did you determine that number to be accurate? Anecdotes are still anecdotes, no matter their quantity.  Hundreds of thousands of people also believe the Mandela Effect is caused by parallel universes sliding into one other, but the sheer quantity of lunatics who believe such nonsense does not lend the theory an ounce more credibility than if it were just one individual claiming it.

Why do I have to have a cutoff? How many apples do we have to drop to examine the properties of gravity? The fact that the same thing happens over and over (with different people over 2000 years) with reliability and predictability is empirical evidence of a cause and effect relationship. The individual ascribes the effect to salvation and God. Therefore, unless you are willing to throw out human intuition as a source of knowledge, you are left with proof of the existence of God.

Lol, sure, people reliably and predictably SAY they have a personal relationship with God without an OUNCE of measurable, demonstrable evidence to back that claim up. This is in no way empirical, and it is in no way proof of cause and effect. I think you need to read up on the basic principles of scientific research and the difference between 'correlation' and 'cause'. If you are claiming proof of cause and effect here, you better be able to back that up with a double-blind, controlled, clinical trial or two involving your god. An individual ascribing the effect to 'salvation and God' when they ALREADY believed that to begin with is blatant confirmation bias, and not scientific in any way.

(August 11, 2016 at 9:35 am)mh.brewer Wrote:

(August 11, 2016 at 9:05 am)SteveII Wrote: 1. Pew Research http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/ameri...landscape/
2. I see you moved from your original 'feeling' to changes in a person. Your examples could induce change in a person (for good or bad). Salvation as part of Christianity induces a specific set of large scale changes that are repeated over and over for millennium. Setting aside the catastrophic causes, how does education, science or medicine change a person in the way I was describing? More specifically, how do these things change a persons character so they exhibit things like love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and hope when none may have existed before? I still don't think you can identify one non-religious process that can produce similar results with any kind of predictable consistency. Therefore, the experience that does reliably produce these effects as well as the individual's intuition that their relationship with God is real is empirical evidence for the existence of God.
3. Impartiality has nothing to do with it. The effects of salvation as described in the NT and as experienced by a believer leaves a person in an objectively better (psychologically and sociologically) state than they were previously.

bold mine

1. You cherry picked the research by only including the evangelical christian data and ignoring the other data. Good for yooooouuuu. If you were confident in your position you would have included all of the data. Your still loosing.
2. You were the one who deviated from feeling to "change". So I took up the "change" that you appeared to want to discuss. Please provide proof for the bolded statement. And I notice you only discuss positive changes, no negative, that's not very honest. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wwjtd/2014/...istianity/  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity
3. Impartiality has everything to do with it. That's why people making judgements (in this instance you) are expected to be impartial (not you).

1. The descriptions of salvation that I have been using are most typically experienced in the evangelical church bucket rather than mainline protestant or catholic churches.
2a. If people consistently ascribe the change in their lives to God (intuitively believe the cause and effect relationship) why is that not evidence for the existence of God? Are you willing to say that human intuition is not a source of knowledge? 
2b. What negatives are there in NT Christianity? All the list you have come up with are a result of institutional decisions and people's opinions. The only thing that makes a Christian a Christian are those things contained in the NT--so that is common denominator for all places and all times.
 3. Impartiality is not required to examine the truth of something. That would be a ridiculous standard to achieve to make an observation.

(August 11, 2016 at 9:46 am)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(August 11, 2016 at 9:37 am)SteveII Wrote: Why do I have to have a cutoff? How many apples do we have to drop to examine the properties of gravity? The fact that the same thing happens over and over (with different people over 2000 years) with reliability and predictability is empirical evidence of a cause and effect relationship. The individual ascribes the effect to salvation and God. Therefore, unless you are willing to throw out human intuition as a source of knowledge, you are left with proof of the existence of God.

Lol, sure, people reliably and predictably SAY they have a personal relationship with God without an OUNCE of measurable, demonstrable evidence to back that claim up.  This is in no way empirical, and it is in no way proof of cause and effect.  I think you need to read up on the basic principles of scientific research and the difference between 'correlation' and 'cause'.   If you are claiming proof of cause and effect here, you better be able to back that up with a double-blind, controlled, clinical trial or two involving your god.  An individual ascribing the effect to 'salvation and God' when they ALREADY believed that to begin with is blatant confirmation bias, and not scientific in any way.

em·pir·i·cal
əmˈpirik(ə)l/
adjective
based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

This discussion is not scientific. You can't put a persons brain under a microscope and examine experiences and why they do or say things. So, 'scientific' standards of proof do not apply. 

Are you willing to throw out human intuition as a source of knowledge? It seems so. How do you justify that?

Theism is very childish. A supernatural Guy in the Sky to make it all better and a happy place to go after death for the good people and a sad place to go for all the bad people.

It's so immature and childish and absurd a belief, all 3 Abrahamic religions are equally unreal and there would be no way to verify one over the other.

(August 11, 2016 at 9:58 am)SteveII Wrote:

(August 11, 2016 at 9:46 am)LadyForCamus Wrote: Lol, sure, people reliably and predictably SAY they have a personal relationship with God without an OUNCE of measurable, demonstrable evidence to back that claim up.  This is in no way empirical, and it is in no way proof of cause and effect.  I think you need to read up on the basic principles of scientific research and the difference between 'correlation' and 'cause'.   If you are claiming proof of cause and effect here, you better be able to back that up with a double-blind, controlled, clinical trial or two involving your god.  An individual ascribing the effect to 'salvation and God' when they ALREADY believed that to begin with is blatant confirmation bias, and not scientific in any way.

em·pir·i·cal
əmˈpirik(ə)l/
adjective
based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

This discussion is not scientific. You can't put a persons brain under a microscope and examine experiences and why they do or say things. So, 'scientific' standards of proof do not apply. 

Are you willing to throw out human intuition as a source of knowledge? It seems so. How do you justify that?

News flash, Steve: you don't get to throw around phrases like "proof", "evidence", and "cause and effect", and then declare this isn't a scientific discussion. You can't have your cake, and eat it too. Sorry. Thanks for playing though.

Human intuition? Do I think it is relevant? Yes. Do I think it's important? Sure, up to a point. Does it, by itself, qualify as indisputable "proof" of ANYTHING without corroborating scientific evidence? Of course not.

Fuck I love my friends here.

The real religion is the one that is real in the sense that it really is a load of bullshit. Oh wait, that's all of them.