RE: My view and reasons for them. Atheist and Christians welcome here. (short)
May 8, 2018 at 5:41 pm
(May 8, 2018 at 5:25 pm)Quick Wrote: I think you need to restate what my beliefs are if you are going to say I am not using the tools that we have to reassess what my beliefs are. I said at some point on this forum that our tools are only as good as the weakest link in our biases which are a byproduct of our flawed perception. I didn't use those exact words, but that's basically what I said. And you could argue "but we know so much about reality now" and to that I would say "how do you know that?"
We know we know a lot about reality, because what we know WORKS.
Just look around a bit. All the technology, your extended lifespan (compared to just 100 years ago), people cured of diseases that were a death sentence in recent history, cell phones, space flight, etc, etc, etc, all due to the our limited knowledge. And our knowledge is increasing at an enormous rate.
All this, is due to the methods I am advocating for telling fact from fiction. The same methods you have at your own disposal.
Quote: There is no way to know how much of reality we have actually figured out. So then that leaves us at the point where I can only believe what I know to be true for myself.
There is no such thing as 'your own truth'. There is only truth. Either the thing that you are applying the god label to, manifests in reality, or it doesn't. Your personal opinion about it means nothing.
Would you rather get on a plane that the designer tells you was designed and built using 'his own truth', or a plane that was designed and built using methods that have been shown to work, no matter what individuals think about their 'own truth'.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
