Evidence for Believing

[Lek]

Pay attention. I am not dismissing your conclusion (it was god) because of the fallacy you’re using. I am pointing out that you have reached your conclusion (it was god) using fallacious reasoning. That’s a ‘you’ problem, not a ‘me’ problem. Whether or not your conclusion is actually true is irrelevant to the fact that you are not warranted in believing it is true, because you’ve used fallacies to get there. If you’re comfortable knowing that the reasoning you’ve used to reach a conclusion about the most important belief of your entire life is erroneous, then no one here is likely to change your mind. But, that’s something you have to live with, not us.

What do you think I've been doing over the years? I've studied the bible and all the modern religions and have been in discussions with believers and nonbelievers. I've participated in this forum since 2013 and have heard pretty much every argument against God that there is. I've also read extensively. I live and breath this stuff, when I'm not working, caring for family or serving the community. Believe me; I don't take mt beliefs for granted.

And, hundreds of thousands of people right now think the earth is flat. Is their belief, alone, sufficient evidence that the earth is flat? Yes or no?  The number of people who believe some claim is true has zero rational bearing on whether or not it’s actually true.

If I hear 100,000 people say they believe in God because they sought him and he impressed them with his existence, then I follow the same path and he impresses himself on me, then I believe them. When he still keeps me in the faith daily, I continue to believe.

This is nothing more than an ad hoc rationalization for why so many people’s experiences of god are contradictory, and often times mutually exclusive (another fallacy), and is unrelated to the base fact that NONE of you have a way to distinguish between a revelation and your own mind. Therefore, your belief has not been rationally justified, and you can’t continue to whine about why folks here don’t believe in god. It’s because we, unlike you, can recognize that you have no good reason to believe your experience was caused by a god to begin with.

I don't know why it is so hard to comprehend it when I speak of a God who doesn't always operate according to natural law and does things in ways that we don't have the capacity to comprehend. He knows that our religions and beliefs are ways to try to understand what we can't fully understand until we come face to face. We don't have words to describe all aspects of God. So he assures us of his existence and resides in us. It doesn't matter to him that we have our various ideas of who and what he is. It's the fact that we are moving toward him and having that realization at the point when we come into union with him. That's what the journey is about.