This post is about persuasion.... yes?
I'll approach this from different angle. We can not know if the miracles happened in the past. In the present no proper study has shown any divine or even supernatural influence. (this by itself should be enough but...)
Look at the humanity around you.
If you have the opportunity to see other people that are christian, catholic, hindu, buhdist, muslim, and pagan of all sorts you may notice a few things.
1) they all think that they are right in philosophy and others are wrong especialy when it comes to the after life (which no one can prove we have).
2)a few are really good people and do great things for others.
3)a few of them are really terrible people and would kill you if they could for what ever reason or at the very least do not have good will toward anyone.
4)most are just plain folks who grew up in their culture and took on the belief system that their parents gave them. They would help you if it wasn't too much out of their way but would not shy away from violence if they thought it would help their situation even though many of the faiths, with some exceptions, say that violence is not the answer.
5) there are a lot of dumb people and a lot of intelligent people of all faiths (and lack of faiths). The dumb ones shout at you what they think they know is truth and the intelligent ones can run you into circles of logic and faint evidence to try to change your thinking.
what you won't see (espcialy if you are deep into their teritory/culture) is any real difference between them as far as how they behave toward each other and toward strangers.
we could argue that the Muslims are violent but then one just needs to look at history 500 years in the past and see the violent and aggressive expansion of Christianity was pretty damn brutal. Not that correlation is causation but Islam happens to be about 500 years younger than Christianity which happens to be 500 years younger than Buhdism. we are not sure when Hindu started.
My point is that no divine presence seems to be with any of these people as their actions don't seem to really reflect that some holy spirit has made them better/different people in any way.
I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of many of these faiths. There was no difference except in the doctrine. The actions are the same.
There it is. Others can argue till doomsday on the past but if you look at the present then the evidence is clear.
I'll approach this from different angle. We can not know if the miracles happened in the past. In the present no proper study has shown any divine or even supernatural influence. (this by itself should be enough but...)
Look at the humanity around you.
If you have the opportunity to see other people that are christian, catholic, hindu, buhdist, muslim, and pagan of all sorts you may notice a few things.
1) they all think that they are right in philosophy and others are wrong especialy when it comes to the after life (which no one can prove we have).
2)a few are really good people and do great things for others.
3)a few of them are really terrible people and would kill you if they could for what ever reason or at the very least do not have good will toward anyone.
4)most are just plain folks who grew up in their culture and took on the belief system that their parents gave them. They would help you if it wasn't too much out of their way but would not shy away from violence if they thought it would help their situation even though many of the faiths, with some exceptions, say that violence is not the answer.
5) there are a lot of dumb people and a lot of intelligent people of all faiths (and lack of faiths). The dumb ones shout at you what they think they know is truth and the intelligent ones can run you into circles of logic and faint evidence to try to change your thinking.
what you won't see (espcialy if you are deep into their teritory/culture) is any real difference between them as far as how they behave toward each other and toward strangers.
we could argue that the Muslims are violent but then one just needs to look at history 500 years in the past and see the violent and aggressive expansion of Christianity was pretty damn brutal. Not that correlation is causation but Islam happens to be about 500 years younger than Christianity which happens to be 500 years younger than Buhdism. we are not sure when Hindu started.
My point is that no divine presence seems to be with any of these people as their actions don't seem to really reflect that some holy spirit has made them better/different people in any way.
I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of many of these faiths. There was no difference except in the doctrine. The actions are the same.
There it is. Others can argue till doomsday on the past but if you look at the present then the evidence is clear.
