(February 7, 2018 at 4:14 pm)SteveII Wrote:(February 7, 2018 at 12:54 pm)polymath257 Wrote: And I am speaking from what I believe to be the truth. I believe you have deluded yourself. The experiences you have had were NOT of God, but were, instead, a type of brain fart. After that, you get confirmation bias. [1]
I also will not deny the truth: that there is no evidence for a God. [2] That, to me, is quite sufficient reason to not believe in a God. To deny that is perverse, in my view.
As for Jesus being your Lord: you are, in essence, deciding to be a child. You pawn your moral decisions off on another being. But even if that being is beneficent, your refusal of moral responsibility is not. The adoption of a Lord is, in and of itself, an immoral act. Yes, even if that creature is your creator. [3]
Think about it the other way around. Suppose humans manage to create artificial intelligences with their own 'free will'. Would you want these intelligences to *worship* us? I certainly HOPE not. To even *ask* for worship makes one unworthy of it. And to worship makes the worshiper unworthy of respect. It is *inherently* degrading to adopt a dictator, even if that dictator is your creator. [4]
1. That is a conclusion based on the assumption that there is no God. Your conclusion is not based on any evidence related to GC's (or any other Christians's) experience. Can human experiences be relied on for truth? If you say yes, then your conclusion is just special pleading. If no, then you have all kinds of other metaphysical problems to work out.
2. It's simply nonsense that there is no evidence. You might not think it sufficient for your personal threshold of proof, but it is just intellectually dishonest to say there is not any. Along with personal experience (which is evidence), you have
2.1 The NT describes actual events including the miracles, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
2.2 God works in people's lives today--changing people on the inside as well as the occurrence of miracles. It is easy to meet these people and hear their stories.
2.3 The natural theology arguments (which are additional reasons to think that the above is true):
a. God is the best explanation why anything at all exists.
b. God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe.
c. God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.
d. God is the best explanation of intentional states of consciousness.
e. God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties.
As always, belief in Christianity is based on a cumulative case of evidence. Each piece increases the probability that God exists.
3. If you have come to a point of believing in God (of Christianity), that entails belief in certain truths about humans as well. We were created with a purpose, we have value, we have eternal souls, our sin separates us from God, God desires a relationship with us, and finally, that relationship will produce fundamental changes to our character for the good. Given these fundamental beliefs in the human condition, following God's moral precepts and allowing the relationship to guide your actions is the logical conclusion. To say it another way, there is no problem with the logic in a desire to make God the Lord of your life. You seem to think that the goal is to give up control, when in fact what you are doing is to change your heart so that your motives are more pure and you are open to opportunities/experiences that God has for you. 'Control' is the wrong word--or at least does not fully describe the process.
4. Your analogy is a poor one. You, the maker of a robot, do not possess the qualities or characteristics worthy of worship. Christians don't worship God because he created them, they worship him because he is worthy of worship. The distinction is important.
EDIT: left a sentence hanging from all the editing...deleted it.
1. Experiences alone are not sufficient for truth. After testing for biases, delusions, and hallucinations, they have some applicability for truth detection. Religious experiences are inevitably under the categories of delusions or hallucinations because they are inherently untestable.
2. Would you claim there is evidence for the existence of Athena and Apollo? The Iliad gives testimony for both.
No, I do not consider the NT to be good evidence. It is no better than the Iliad, for example.
No, I don't consider personal change to be evidence. We know full well that personal change can happen from a wide variety of opinions.
No, those claims that God are the 'best explanation' are simply false. God cannot explain why anything exists at all, because the existence of God is assumed--i.e, not explained. The rest of the claims are equally BS.
Yes, if you are deluded into believing in a deity, that delusion spreads to the point you are willing to degrade yourself by slavery. That doens't make either delusion or slavery desirable.
And the robot analogy is spot on. Even if the creator is 'good' and 'awesome', that is nowhere close to being reason to 'worship' such a being.
