Debate: God Exists

[pocaracas]

Again, same problem. Every religion claims to be directed towards spiritual needs. They all claim that they have interactions with deities (worship). None of it is evidence of the truth of it. If you expect a person to accept a religion, there must be rational grounds for accepting it.

Really?!?!?

Have you actually studied religion?

Of the top 10 I've actively studied 6, of those Only Christianity claims to put the average person in direct contact with God.

That is not to say other religions 'gods' don't contact people, but when they do there is something special about them which makes them prophets or emissaries, or whatever, or they are used as pawns. Christianity is the only religion that gives you one on one time with it's God. Other religions offer rewards for alliance/obedience. for those followers those 'spiritual rewards' are the reason for their obedience. Christianity offers audience with God, eternally.

If this is appealing or at the very least you want to know if what I said is true then simply A/S/K as outlined in Luke 11 and Allow Him to work with you.

Drich, my boy... that's not how it's supposed to work.
It saddens me that you fail to see that for yourself.

You don't go through the claims and pick the one that fits with your perception.... that's how you pick a political party, or an economic doctrine.

You look at the world and come to your own conclusions. It's how you said before that you got there...made some wrong choices, got help, turned to whichever god you were acquainted with and found some sort of inner peace... or do I remember incorrectly?

From my POV, turning to god like you did would work regardless of the god you turned to... as long as it was some god of peace or something like that.
And it would work because that god, whichever it would be, would be in your head, in your mind. It's a placebo.

The problem with placebos is that they're not really the promised cure. Sure, they work. And it's been established that they may even work when people are fully aware that they are placebos!! But they're psychological tricks.
Our minds are too complex for us to understand exactly how these placebos work, but statistics show them to work.

Statistics also show that some people are unaffected by placebos. Knowing it's a placebo, for those people, destroys their efficiency. That's how religions are to me.

---

The thing is, Drich, that you cannot claim for certain that the bible (nor any other so-called holy book) is a set of instructions by god itself.

Uh, yes I can and did!

All we know is that some people wrote the books currently found in the Bible.

Selective ignorance.
You can be as ignorant as you like with the bible. In that way it is a two edged sword. It's real simple sport try and keep up:
1) Jesus Says if you A, B, C The Father will send the Holy Spirit (God) to Help you.
2) So if one does the A,B,C GtS says do in the bible, and GtF in this current day, Sends GtHS Then what GtS/God-The-Son says can be identified as instructions from God.

Even if those people were being honest when setting those words on paper, we cannot be certain that they were not being influenced by other people.... let alone be certain that they were being influenced by a god.

Again selective ignorance approach. Meaning your looking to vet instructions by trying to determine what was going on in someone's head 2000+ years ago.

How stupid is that?

If you got a 3000 year old cake recipe, would you honestly debate what was going through the baker's head when he wrote it down to classify the the cake as a cake or as a sweet bread? Wouldn't it be easier to simply follow the recipe and taste it for yourself??? Or are you saying the receip does not work unless you first know how a 3000 year old baker thought?

But we do know that many people write falsehoods...

Again here's the thing sport. With instruction the way to vet them (to prove them true or false is to follow said instructions) is to follow them. Not to debate on what could be or maybe or what the guy who wrote them was thinking.

Instructions are a or b. They work or they don't.

even if they are rooted in the desire to help others, that doesn't make them any less false.... even if they, at first glance, seem true.
One famous example of such falsehood is the Geocentric model for the Solar System. When it was adopted, it accounted for the motion of most celestial objects well enough... it was a well-intentioned mistake.

How can we make sure that a holy book is not such a mistake?

IDK maybe someone study them see what they promise take up and see if a promise is a fit for you, if so see it though or here's a thought talk to someone who honestly has!

Remember that placebo thing I just mentioned?
That's how those instructions look.

I'm sure you can find tons of people who have followed them and got the desired result.
And I'm sure we can also find tons of people who have followed those instructions to the letter and got no such result.

That alone tells you that the instructions are not correct.
Add to the mix the nature of the human mind and the well known power of suggestion, and your instructions are automatically nothing more than a cheap illusion.