Welcome, enrico.
On another site, a user made the point that the universe as described by the believer is no different in appearance from that described by the non-believer. All evidence for god is hidden to those who would ask for it. Those who receive it, get it in a form that is unique and not reproducible.
That comment hit me like a bolt out of the blue, because it really should've been so obvious during all of those years that I was arguing that yeah, god existed... and no, no one could prove it but god, and he wasn't talking. I point to an empty box and I tell you that it's empty because I don't see anything inside of it. You point to it and tell me that it's not empty, even though I can't see anything inside of it. We are both pointing at an empty box.
God exists on some other plane of reality that we cannot detect with any instruments, even though we have methods for detecting all sorts of phenomena that we cannot detect with our own senses. God hides from us (excepting those occasions when he taps us on the shoulder and then ducks behind a couch) even though acknowledging his existence is the most important thing we can possible ever do. God arbitrarily confuses the minds of people so that they either believe, think they believe, aren't sure if they believe, or don't believe... but he is a kind and benevolent and loving being, a creature of pure justice. He's there, you just can't see him. And it's your fault.
(March 15, 2013 at 10:46 am)enrico Wrote: As far as testing anything this is individual and rightly so.
The feeling that i experience belongs to me.
On another site, a user made the point that the universe as described by the believer is no different in appearance from that described by the non-believer. All evidence for god is hidden to those who would ask for it. Those who receive it, get it in a form that is unique and not reproducible.
That comment hit me like a bolt out of the blue, because it really should've been so obvious during all of those years that I was arguing that yeah, god existed... and no, no one could prove it but god, and he wasn't talking. I point to an empty box and I tell you that it's empty because I don't see anything inside of it. You point to it and tell me that it's not empty, even though I can't see anything inside of it. We are both pointing at an empty box.
God exists on some other plane of reality that we cannot detect with any instruments, even though we have methods for detecting all sorts of phenomena that we cannot detect with our own senses. God hides from us (excepting those occasions when he taps us on the shoulder and then ducks behind a couch) even though acknowledging his existence is the most important thing we can possible ever do. God arbitrarily confuses the minds of people so that they either believe, think they believe, aren't sure if they believe, or don't believe... but he is a kind and benevolent and loving being, a creature of pure justice. He's there, you just can't see him. And it's your fault.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
