(October 20, 2015 at 3:37 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(October 20, 2015 at 3:30 pm)lkingpinl Wrote: But even if you walked in to a room and a being appeared to you claiming to be God and knew things about you only you would know, would you believe in God or chalk it up to a psychotic episode?
I would probably recognize that an event is not the cause of an event, and would investigate further. If this god being refused to allow me the additional data that would let me come to a rational conclusion about the nature of the event, then that is hardly my fault.
Quote: I've always been fascinated by the demand of non-believers that God let himself be known. I seriously think if any non-believer was to have an experience of a being coming to them and knowing all about them and performing a miracle in front of them, they would probably still not believe.
Probably, if the event alone is the only thing we had to go on. That's only irrational if you think that being god is the only way that someone could possibly know things about a stranger, which is a ridiculous claim on the face of it. TV psychics worldwide make a living off of their ability to glean personal details about someone they've never met without being god, after all.
Having high standards of evidence for supernatural claims, or any claim that we cannot establish is even possible, for that matter, is not a weakness, and I refuse to apologize for that. I'm kinda perplexed at how many theists think it's weird that a group of people who're all about obtaining data to come to rational conclusions about events would... you know, want to do that.
Thanks for the response Esquilax. I agree with you. My point was we are skeptical by nature and for that reason, having an experience like I described above we tend to only accept the supernatural explanation as an absolute last resort if at all.
For God to meaningfully show himself, wouldn't it have to be supernaturally for anyone to accept it? But if it is supernatural, aren't we even less likely to accept it? It's a kind of conundrum. I see this man in the room, floating off the floor, knows things about me and then shows my deceased relative to me. I either accept that this is God and he is real or I accept that I've gone barking mad. If i tell others, they would of course assume I'd gone barking mad. So if we are overly skeptical of the supernatural how could a God meaningfully reveal himself?
We are not made happy by what we acquire but by what we appreciate.