RE: Question about "faith"
September 22, 2020 at 6:26 pm
(This post was last modified: September 22, 2020 at 7:25 pm by Simon Moon.)
(September 22, 2020 at 3:04 pm)tackattack Wrote: Sorry if I missed that post, I did come in late as GN pointed out. If your friend attributes the betterment of his life to Hinduism, then that's great for him and his Hindu gods. I didn't dismiss it. If I was Hindu I would probably believe in those Gods as well. When I was wiccan I believed in the great mother. In my case, my limited understanding of God, within my worldview is very reliable, hence my belief. I agree that demonstrating the spiritual is hard, by substance, but not by content.
I am not saying you are dismissing my friend's experience or the improvement of his life, but you certainly dismiss the existence of his gods, and their hand in improving his life.
I completely understand that theists of all religions and god beliefs have experiences that they attribute to their gods. I am not doubting that. I just doubt that they are coming to the right conclusion for their experience.
All I am asking is, how do I (someone who is outside of ALL religious belief systems and god beliefs) discern if my friend's religious experience was due to the existence of an actual extant god, or yours is due to an actual extant god?
You both cannot be right, but you both can be wrong.
That there cannot be any demonstrable and falsifiable empirical evidence for the existence of your god, is not my fault. It is your god's fault.
He created me, with the facilities to figure out what constitutes good standards of evidence, yet, for his existence, he fails to provide said evidence to me. Again, not my fault for disbelieving he exists. Although, he seems OK with me using the same standards of evidence, for me to reject the existence of all those other gods.
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.