(October 10, 2014 at 8:42 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: A lot of you at one point had faith. At one point it felt like you knew God. When that feeling started to go away how were you? Were you caught up with thoughts about God a lot? When it away, how do you know it was baseless?
At one time I had the feeling that "I knew god'' (whatever the hell that means. Seems like a pretty incoherent statement to me).
It was a long process that lead me away from that feeling.
I made the conscious decision that I cared whether my beliefs are true. I wanted to have as many true beliefs, and as few false beliefs as possible (to quote Dilahunty). The best, most consistent method to achieve this goal is basing my beliefs on demonstrable evidence and reasoned (valid and sound) argument.
Basing them on a feeling is not a path to truth. People all over the world have feelings that: they were abducted by aliens, that homeopathy is effective, that psychics are reliable, that humans were bred by ancient aliens, etc, etc.
If you would rather believe something because of a feeling, have at it. But if you actually care if your beliefs are true or not, just know that you are using an unreliable method.
Still calling yourself a 'deist' huh?
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.
