(April 13, 2014 at 10:40 pm)professor Wrote: Oh, I forgot you wanted to know why one book is retained and the others rejected?
For me, I did what the Bible said.
I prayed to the God of Heaven- "Our Father...."
I prayed a prayer of repentance. I surrendered.
I felt like I was on a tree branch sawing it off at the trunk.
Woke up 8 hours later without the awareness of sleeping and had an innate knowledge that I knew, that I knew, God was real.
I was born from above.
So, you didn't pray for a god to provide you with evidence of its existence, you already presupposed a specific god exists, then prayed to that specific god, and had some sort of experience that you attribute to said god.
A perfect demonstration of confirmation bias.
Quote:Previous to this, I laid out all the myriad religions and systems of belief in my mind as a giant mosaic, and because they are contrary to one another- one and only one is the truth and all the rest are lies and shades of lies.
You are missing one very important option, all religions could be wrong.
Quote:As time has gone by, more learning and more experiences have deepened my absolute confidence in the wisdom of that decision long ago.
So then, reinforcement of your confirmation bias. Nicely done.
Quote:Whatever book is contrary to the Bible is a lie.
For me, it is that simple.
That's funny.
All the other members of other religions also claim that their book is the truth, and all other books are a lie, including the Bible.
And here's me, a disbeliever in ALL religious books, with no method to tell which one, if any, is correct.
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.
