Why knocking is so important.

[Esquilax]

If 'we' don't expect our leaders to chase after us and beg us for our approval, then why would we expect the master of all creation to do so?

I love that you're comparing world leaders, for whom we have plenty of evidence that they exist, and can be provided pictures of on demand, with god, as though they're remotely equal.

Remember, before you can answer "why won't god appear?" you've got a much more basic question, that you seem simply incapable of answering properly: "does he exist?"

[Drich]

I am so tired of this dishonest nonsense from you. We both know where this goes, and handily you provided evidence of your escape hatch in the very next quote:

There it is! "You didn't look long enough." A slimy, squirmy little shit of an excuse that has no limitations.

Whether it's one try, a week, a year, twenty, even an entire life, if someone doesn't come out of this process agreeing with you, "you didn't look long enough." No need for thought, no need for falsification, just a stupid, unthinking, "you didn't look long enough."

you haven't given this much thought have you? I can tell your just shooting from the hip, and haven't considered all the other places where we may look for something or some one for life time, yet not find what it was we seek.

What about when you are seeking a wife? Like in our search for God all we have to go on is the fact that others have found what they were looking for, even though this in no way means you will experience what they do, nor is their any guarantee that you will even date someone. Yet most of us are willing to try/knock till we find what it is we are looking for.
That is the nature of any relationship, how can anyone claim that is an I falsifiable premise when it is apart of our everyday lives?

Because you don't actually care whether your beliefs are true or not, you don't care if your proposed method works, and you don't care about actually bringing people to god. All you care about is shoring up your own beliefs with the pretense of preaching, which is why your go to argument is nothing more than a fucking logical corkscrew with a convenient back door for you to flee out of the moment anyone discovers that actually, you're talking nonsense.

That's the thing when one knocks till the door is opened.. 'we'/I do not have to shore up anything. God does that for us.

So how long will it take? When should we stop?

As God is infinite and we are not we will never stop building. That does not mean we will not or can not have something livable in the way of an understanding/house in fairly short order.

Is there any possible length of time we could go that would actually falsify this belief of yours? Or would it always be, no matter how long, that conveniently we "didn't look long enough"?

know in your heart you will be made to wait for two things. One you have to let go your idea of what God is supposed to be and you will be made to wait until you let Go of your time line and in your heart are willing to wait on God no matter what it takes.

Money where your mouth is, Drich: what's the acceptable minimum length of time before we can accept that it doesn't work? And if there isn't one, then why on earth do you keep telling us this shit? You don't want to hear if it's wrong, and you're not interested in any account that doesn't already agree with your presuppositions, so if it turns out there's not an acceptable minimum knocking period, then do us all a favor and just start telling this shit to an empty fucking room, instead of polluting the boards with it.

See above

[rexbeccarox]

Hearts pump blood. They "know" nothing.

[Drich]

OP in a nutshell: "Wanna believe in god? Have a go with wishful thinking!"

No thanks. My mind alone is not the best thing I have to attain knowledge of anything. It's not even reason we're talking about, it's bloody imagination!

Ah, no again. In a nut shell approach God with an open mind and the same determination one should have in trying to find a mate.

[Anomalocaris]

Potential mate exists.

[Tobie]

What about when you are seeking a wife? Like in our search for God all we have to go on is the fact that others have found what they were looking for, even though this in no way means you will experience what they do, nor is their any guarantee that you will even date someone. Yet most of us are willing to try/knock till we find what it is we are looking for.
That is the nature of any relationship, how can anyone claim that is an I falsifiable premise when it is apart of our everyday lives?

Well for one thing, most people don't doubt the existence of other people. You can't equate meeting actual living, breathing people and trying to seek some supposed all-powerful being which has no known evidence in favour of it existing. If you/it wants us to "knock" at least give us some support (actual support, not some book a bunch of guys wrote in the bronze age, or someone's personal testament) for your claims.

[Esquilax]

Don't be proud of forming unfalsifiable propositions. It's not that hard.

you haven't given this much thought have you? I can tell your just shooting from the hip, and haven't considered all the other places where we may look for something or some one for life time, yet not find what it was we seek.

And if the thing we're supposed to search for has absolutely nothing to indicate its existence beyond the insistence of a random collection of strangers who are unable to agree with one another, then it's in the same ballpark as alien abductions and the Jersey Devil.

What about when you are seeking a wife? Like in our search for God all we have to go on is the fact that others have found what they were looking for, even though this in no way means you will experience what they do, nor is their any guarantee that you will even date someone. Yet most of us are willing to try/knock till we find what it is we are looking for.
That is the nature of any relationship, how can anyone claim that is an I falsifiable premise when it is apart of our everyday lives?

And again, you compare god, who has nothing to verify his existence, with something that has plenty of evidence. It's a flawed comparison, because the people who have found wives can produce theirs on demand, and can show where the concept of marriage- which is a human construct, by the way- originated. Also, marriage contains within it no extraordinary claims, unlike your god claim; at least marriage is physically possible.

Invalid analogies don't really get you anywhere, and you're telling me who hasn't thought this through?

That's the thing when one knocks till the door is opened.. 'we'/I do not have to shore up anything. God does that for us.

Fatuous, circuitous nonsense borne of the presupposition you're unwilling to let go of. Why am I not surprised?

As God is infinite and we are not we will never stop building. That does not mean we will not or can not have something livable in the way of an understanding/house in fairly short order.

That's not an answer. What is the minimum length of time one can A/S/K, from the position of one just looking for god to reveal themselves to them, before it's okay to give up and say it's failed? If the answer is still this "god is infinite..." stuff, then your position is unfalsifiable, and hence irrational to even attempt.

know in your heart you will be made to wait for two things. One you have to let go your idea of what God is supposed to be and you will be made to wait until you let Go of your time line and in your heart are willing to wait on God no matter what it takes.

So basically what I said: keep going, keep going, and if you ever stop, shock horror, it wasn't long enough. Do you even realize the game you're playing, or is this kind of con trick just innate?

[Lucanus]

Potential mate exists.

Dang, ya beat me to it!

[Drich]

Of course your method requires the suspension of rational faculties. That is it's problem. This is no surprise since religions like christianity require that to work.

what in what I have said makes you think rational thought has been suspended? If anything I have said rational thought and the lack of support God has in the false pictures of Him we have are apart of the washing away of the old house that Jesus speaks of.

Let's try apply that logic to other situations: First one is dragon hunting. I'm talking about the flying, fire spitting reptile. We have stopped looking. Are we foolish for having stopped? If not why? If we are right for having stopped why? Why should what you propose be treated differently?

we stopped because we have found them.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterodactylus

In order to hunt we must have viable prey. This prey is extinct. therefore hunting them is pointless...
See rational thought at work.

As with God all one needs do is let go of the fantasy version/picture we have, and seek out the being we have been given an accurate factual definition of.

It is a virtue to know when to stop.

Indeed. I believe that is why God allows so many of your ideas of Him to die on the vine. So that you may stop seeking a straw man.

This is my next point and situation. Gambling. Should a gambler experiencing a losing streak continue gambling or should he stop? What about when he is winning? Ideally he should stop before he loses to maximise profits. My point is that it is a virtue knowing when to stop.

this is an active example of the suspension of rational thought. A gambler like any other tradesmen should know his particular game. Meaning he should carefully weigh the different variables that change the odds of winning away from him as a means of determining whether or not he should continue or stop. Not his history of winning or losing.

Now I will address your suggestion having established these things. As you can understand (hopefully) abandoning rational faculties impedes this critical self preserving act. What you suggest implants the image of a robot not realising that it has reached a wall. It continues to walk thinking it is gaining ground. Yet it is not.

Is it not more efficient to first establish that the alleged resident exists before knocking on his door?

Ah, no.
At best you tried and successfully failed in trying to establish a three point attack.
First you made the charge that what I have said requires the suspension of rational thought. I showed you where rational thought was the very reason we need to continue to seek. Then you tried to illustrate using your dragon argument. I showed you in that argument as with God we must let go our personal definitions and understandings, and seek out the evidence we have and then Apply it. In your illustration you were trying to describe a smaug/lotr flying dragon, while the evidences we have point to a less than the grandiose smaug, but a flying dragon by definition never the less.

God has (upon request) allowed your fictional take on Him die by not supporting it. But, here (like with your example of smaug) because your fictional understanding of a flying dragon does not exist you foolishly suspended all other rational thought and assume that because a smaug dragon does not exist that nothing can fit that definition. I showed you that flying dragons not only lived, but even reasoned why we can not hunt them. How did I do this? I did not bind my ability to reason to the boxes and categories your ability to reason has been limited by.

The same thing happens with your version of God. Most of you have this grandiose version of God that is not biblically consistent, and it fails under any level of scrutiny, and because this version of smaug/God does not exist you assume no version of God can exist.

So again your first point failed.

Second point was knowing when to stop and you referenced a gambler on a loosing streak. Rather than rationally work though the variables that should help a gambler determine whether or not he should walk away or continue on you appeal to the gamblers knowledge of luck.

This appeal disqualifies your statement because you have suspended rational thought for an appeal to luck.

The third is your summation based on the 2 previous failed points. Ending with object charge that does not stand well with out the support you intended for it to have.

In that you asked: 'shouldn't we establish their is a door before you knock.' This point does not stand because the act of knocking happens no matter what we do or how we want to live. We will inevitable knock or repeatably seek out the life we want to live, no matter what success or [/quote] that we meet.

---

Personal testament does not make a credible argument. Find some demonstrable way of showing us that this is correct, rather than your "try it for yourself, and if it doesn't work the first time, you obviously haven't been trying it properly!" method.

Where did I use a personal testimony?

I showed you why it was important to keep knocking.

---

I'm guessing you won't understand this but sincerely trying to talk to God is as ridiculous to me as trying to sincerely talk to YodaIts just not even possible, if I tried to do it I'd be laughing my ass off within 30 seconds..

possiable to talk to yoda, it is. But, first "you must unlearn what you have learned."

Perhaps its different for those who at some point did believe but for me.. I have never believed and a sincere prayer to something so outlandish isn't even something that I could do.

I just see this ASK business as a way to make it our fault for not believing. Its just a no win scenario for us. Even if we did it and it failed you just keep coming back saying we didn't do it long enough or haven't tried hard enough. Its honestly pretty pathetic.

Then the question becomes, if God does exist would you want any type of relationship with Him?[/quote]

---

Put Krishna to the test, then put what I have said to the test, and then decide for yourself.

I just tried them both and the queen of the fairies answered, what next?

What did they say?

---

The idea of A/S/K sounds a lot like a Peter Panism -“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough." I believe J.M. Barrie might even be one of the Bible's many authors. I humored you and read the chapter and verse. I didn't see anything there that leads me to believe or even care to believe. The first sentence of the last verse stuck with me though. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for[f] a fish, will give him a snake instead?" Every religious person I know thinks their particular species of "fish" is the correct one, and everyone else was given the snake and going to hell. This leads me to ask: "How do YOU know that your parents or whomever introduced you to Jesus were not giving you a snake rather than a fish?
Yes. Bullshit built on rock is better than bullshit built on sand.

P.S. Black Mason, dragons do exist. The bible says so.

I was born in a Buddhist and a spiritualist house hold. The did hand me a snake, because that is what they themselves ate.

[Tobie]

what in what I have said makes you think rational thought has been suspended?

The whole premise of looking for something that has no known evidence whatsoever is entirely irrational. How can you not see that?

Imagine you come across a door to a house which has nothing to suggest it is inhabited, or has anything in it at all - why would you bother knocking on it?

Where did I use a personal testimony?

I showed you why it was important to keep knocking.

You saying "it worked for me" is a personal testimony which seems to be your entire evidence for this whole illogical process.