Personal relationships with deities

[Nay_Sayer]

---

---

Mangled the quote feature.  You never gave Santa a chance and how do you know that wasn't Santa in a  god disguise?.  That aside I really hope you understand that the only way of life is through the teachings of FSM, His Son Cheesus and the Apastales.

RAmen.

I'm stil offended by you quoting the butchered quote tags but Santa in a god disguise made me lol so hard

Yet it could very well be, I like putting religious people in a pickle making them do the job of debunking something.

[Losty]

You strawmanned my argument. Put whatever spin on it to help you sleep tonight, but that's a rather dishonest tactic.

sorry just seen a perfect opportunity to illustrate my point so i grabbed it nothing else was working wooosh going over everyones heads i was desperate .

How old are you? Perhaps you ought to finish high school before presuming to tell us how medicine and science works. You realize some of the people you are talking to are doctors and scientists right!

[jenny1972]

anyways im going to bed its almost midnight its been fun see you all tomorrow , dont hate me too much if you didnt have anyone with any different views what would you do other than all just agree with eachother and pat eachotheer on the back about how absolutely right you all are " your right" , " no no your more right" , " but not as right as you are " exc. and sorry snake oil warrior i used your comment for my own evil purposes of illustrating my point good night

---

sorry just seen a perfect opportunity to illustrate my point so i grabbed it nothing else was working wooosh going over everyones heads i was desperate .

How old are you? Perhaps you ought to finish high school before presuming to tell us how medicine and science works. You realize some of the people you are talking to are doctors and scientists right!

i have respect for the diagnosis of both real doctors and scientists , just not the pseudo science of psychology/psychiatry and the many many many many many many different unscientific theories about how the mind works . its all based on theory and interpretation . exactly like religion .

[Losty]

Well we can all sit around talking about our rights, I guess.
As far as this discussion, if you want to teach us something, you'll need far more than disagreeing with us to do so. Like facts and evidence. Opinions hold no value in a debate.

Also, psychiatrists are real doctors and psychiatry is a real medical science that has proven itself over years of scientific research. You might want to do a little research yourself instead of believing everything the thought voice in your head tells you

[rexbeccarox]

Meh. Facts and evidence mean nothing to this one. Big surprise.

[robvalue]

It appears you're talking about God like it has severe problems which stop it being able to communicate effectively, for which we should make allowances.

I believe each of us is born with that personal relationship. But I have few problems with your "points".

Born with a relationship? What does that mean? That sounds like involuntary conscription to something, not a relationship.

1) Both parties in the relationship exist, and are easily distinguishable from being imaginary.

Being imaginary, is up to how much knowledge you have. A person from the stone age would laugh at you for ages if you told him that there are "little men called viruses" that infect his body.
So imaginary or not is up to how big your mind can actually extend. Denying the existence of black holes, never proved that black holes don't exist.

Yes, knowledge changes. But we don't call something knowledge until there is adequate evidence that such a thing is real. So I don't know what your point is here. Are you claiming to have more knowledge than us, thus putting us in the "cave man" category? If not, what's the point of such a comparison? Speculating on what may or may not become knowledge is pointless, as this puts every belief on equal footing just because it "might turn out to be true".

Anyhow, No other problems here; moving on.

3) Both parties directly communicate with the other party in a meaningful, observable way.

In this way, I can have personal relationship with any human, any animal that has some way to at least acknowledge my interaction with it, and arguably with an artificial intelligence. It seems to me that if these 3 criteria are not met, it is not a meaningful personal relationship. The only exception I can think of is where one party becomes unable to communicate at some point, such as a friend going into a coma. You could maybe argue that you can continue to have a personal relationship with them, based on your history together, even though they can't directly answer back.

I have a big problem here. What if the opposing side is communication through a language you can't actually get ?

Well, that means the opposing side is failing to communicate effectively, due to a lack of common understanding. Since we're talking about deities, I would expect that they would know exactly what language to use if they actually wanted to communicate. You seem to be suggesting they choose to pick a language that they know some people won't be able to interpret. That's not them trying to have a relationship with us all, that's sending out coded messages to the "elite" who they decided beforehand would be able to read them.

Keeping it short; God communicates with us daily, through natural phenomena. That sweet sunshine, the pretty moonlight, a windy day carrying warm breeze, didn't you hear the voice near the sea ?

Unsupported assertion. This isn't an argument. You're just arbitrarily assigning agency to things around you. Humans are pattern seekers, so much so that we try and force things to fit a pattern, even where there is none. That is a far simpler explanation.

Away from all of that, pray and that's your part of the conversation now; good acts too are a good way to communicate. If you demands a direct reply, then your mind didn't understand yet that it doesn't communicate with a deity different than humans..

So a deity can't, or won't, reply to me in a way I can understand, within a reasonable time frame, like humans can? How is this different from talking to no-one, and then randomly interpreting things in the future as being the return of communication? Just because you say you're talking to something, it doesn't mean that thing actually exists or is hearing you.

Even with animals you can't get a direct response all the time.

I'm not asking for a direct response all the time. Just a reasonable amount of the time; at least some of the time. I've never had a direct response from "god", or indeed any response at all. I just get people pointing to random things and saying, "That was the response". I can have relationships with many animals. We can communicate through touch, and by what we do visually for each other.

So, yep..

Check the cherry blossom

Or maybe the stars ?

I don't know what this means. If you decide beforehand that you are receiving messages from god, then you're going to interpret whatever random stuff as messages from god. The problem is, this works for anything. I can convince myself I'm talking to my dead relative, or a being in another dimension, or even my spoon if I am willing to just point at stuff that happens later and say, "The spoon did that". That's not what I would call a meaningful relationship. I don't think you would either, if we were talking about anything other than religion. Why is god so bad at relationships? I'd expect him to be the best at them, not the worst. God is clearly being deliberately difficult to interpret. If we're not clever enough to interpret him properly, then he's pretty stupid for making creatures for which to have a relationship which are not properly equipped to do so. That's like me building a robot with no auditory senses and then sitting there talking to it. What the fuck?

[ignoramus]

Jen. I like you ...But you are batshit crazy, you know that, right!

[robvalue]

I've told you not to call me that in front of other people...

[ignoramus]

C'mon Rob. It's not her we're bashing at all. It's her logic.
Can she at least describe the recipient of this relationship? Or does he talk to her in her voice? What a coincidence?

Rob, you and I know that if there ever was a :God:, he lives outside our detectable universe. But somehow he found a way using symbolisms (snowflake in this case) to communicate to us!
Why snowflakes? What the fuck's wrong with a piece of toast! hehe ...I think you know what I'm saying...

[robvalue]

Sure, I know what you mean.

It's like I said in my reply to Atlas, god appears to be deliberately choosing extremely vague methods of communication which are indistinguishable from nothing particularly happening at all. I would have thought if anyone would be capable of clear, concise communication, it would be the very author of communication itself.

You're right, what people talk about as "god" would be in another reality. At best, we could conclude that "something" is trying to communicate with us. But since we have nothing to go on but the supposed messages, we have no idea what that something is. To conclude that it's the creator of our reality is premature; although even if it is, it could just be a computer programmer. Would people be so pleased with themselves if they thought this was who was on the other end?

Or it could be the equivalent of a crank call.

PS: people praying and then interpreting events as answers is like me continually sending letters to a celebrity, just assuming they are arriving and actually being read by that celebrity, and then assuming that anything that happens vaguely related to my letter was orchestrated by that celebrity. That is clearly a one way relationship, which doesn't even require the other party to be aware of your existence.