(May 2, 2016 at 5:00 am)Wryetui Wrote: I still have the question about which kind of evidence would be conclusive for you to believe the christian God is real. The main "problem" we have is the doctrine ex-nihilo, and the main question we have, how do we know God with our reason? (evidence affects reason), “what is the object of our reason?”, in other words, what is it that we are trying to know? In my opinion, the evidence we need is highly influenced by what we need to know, right?The point of evidence is to distinguish between those ideas which represent objective reality and those which do not.
This is the most foundational principle of evidence: that it must prove to disbelievers that they are wrong, and that they should therefore change their ideas about reality.
Your feelings or philosophical arguments do NOT do that. The religious evidence we have available is that there are many religions, and that their proponents also have special feelings, faith, and philosophical explanations. The common denominator therefore is not God, but human feelings. Your tendency to use reports of special feeling as proof of God therefore fails in a pretty fundamental way.
Quote:God is not a rock. We cannot put him in a test tube. Nor is God an idea like an isosceles triangle. We cannot figure him out. God is not like a human being either, and yet God created us in his own image that we might know him. More to the point, he has revealed himself to us most fully as a man, the God-man Jesus Christ. The discursive reason is all very fine. God gave it to us after all. But it has its limits. The road to Zion is in our hearts, and if we are to find that road, we must cultivate the nous and direct it inward. That is what the ascetical life of the Church is all about. In this regard, by the way, I highly recommend the works of Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos.Sounds like Buddhism or Hinduism to me, but with a different fairy tale to think about while preparing and endeavoring to do nothing with life.
