God, Energy and Matter

[Lek]

Are you saying, that in the history of humanity, there haven't been a significant percentage of people, that seriously, sincerely, believe god has revealed his existence to them, but were delusional? Even many of them, who claim to 'know', with as much fervor and earnestness as you have?

I'm sure some were delusional, but that doesn't mean that everybody was.  There are people who are delusional about all kinds of stuff.  

Then we might not have warrant to believe them, right? And we might not have warrant to believe your claims either. You just might be, no matter how sincerely you believe, have had some delusional experience. Just like many of those people that have equally strong belief as you have, but were mistaking or delusional.

I wouldn't believe based entirely on the testimony of others or the prevalence of them, but it would be a factor which would make me take it seriously.

Yeah, because 'so many other people also believe the same thing' has worked so well for all those billions of people down through history who believed: the earth is flat, god throws lightning bolts, disease is caused by magical curses, mental disease is caused by demon possession, the earth is the center of the universe, etc, etc, etc.

After the Enlightenment the huge majority of people continued to believe and also during the Industrial Revolution.  During the Modern and Post-modern era the large majority continue to believe in God -   people from all walks of life including a large percentage of scientists.  

Remember, 1.5 billion Muslims believe Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse. Does the number of people that believe that, add any credibility to the claim?

God is unquantifiable.  Like I stated before, we all try to come up with images of God in our minds, based on our culture and experiences.  Actually, we're all wrong in that regard.  And I will agree that tons of stories from various religions are myth.  Myth has been used through history as a way to pass on underlying truths.  I believe the Vedas and Upanishads contain tons of spiritual wisdom which can be used on one's journey to God.

And at one time, believing in the flat earth was a very common thing. Again, how did that work out?

We believed in all kinds of incorrect things at one time.  That doesn't mean belief in God is wrong. I'm not going to abandon my faith because someone long ago who believed in God also believed incorrectly about natural occurrences or if a culture passed along truths and traditions in the form of myths. I'm also not going to abandon it because many people lied about about stuff, which atheists also did.

[Lek]

Lek, I'm delusional too. Something revealed itself to me and told me...."blah blah blah"

I'm sure your first thought would have been
"That never happened. You're just making it up."

And you think that because you KNOW that as an atheist, I'm probably not delusional. You give me the attribute of having a good head on my shoulders because of my atheism.

If an atheist told you that they sincerely believed some way out there insane crazy shit, more than likely you would tend to not believe them, instead believing that they are saying these outlandish things "to make a point"

You give us this attribute of being a group that thinks critically and is less likely to believe in bullshit.

If that's what you think of us, then how do you view other theists ?

I don't consider atheists as a group to be more or less delusional than theists. I consider them more likely to demand physical proof before they accept something as true. That can be good in some instances, but it can also hold them back from discovering spiritual truths. Of course, I would consider theists to be more open to other ways to discover truth than through natural methods. This is very general as everyone within a group is an individual.

[Fake Messiah]

I don't consider atheists as a group to be more or less delusional than theists. I consider them more likely to demand physical proof before they accept something as true. That can be good in some instances, but it can also hold them back from discovering spiritual truths.

Another nonsensical post. "hold them back from discovering spiritual truths" - I mean wow, "spiritual truths" wtf is that? And why would theists be in advantage? What would be a "spiritual truth"? - perhaps that Ganesha is real God and all other gods are fakes? Or that your thetan levels are low?
And what if the "spiritual truth" is that there are no Gods and no spirituality? Then atheists are in advantage.

[Rahn127]

Lek, let's say you win a vacation tour to work at an archaeological dig site.

You find a bone. What religious method do you use to obtain some kind of truth about the nature of the bone ?
Without using any modern scientific methods, what do you suppose you would come up with ?

Would you truly expect it to be the truth ?
It would be a miracle for you to guess everything correctly about this bone.

If you or ANYONE could gather the truth about such things without having to analyze the material, well that would be front page news, all over the world.

What religious method would you use ?

[Deesse23]

I'm sure some were delusional, but that doesn't mean that everybody was.  There are people who are delusional about all kinds of stuff.  

Yet you are constantly claiming not to be delusional yourself. Why should anyone believe your claim(s)?

Thats why this thread (and your posts) is so pointless. Noone cares how firmly you think you *know* a god exists. What you have is not knowledge, but strong belief. Knowledge is what you can demonstrate to others. Either you can demonstrate it to anyone else, or anyone else has to factor in that you are possible delusional (or even plain dishonest, like so many con men). Thats how rational thinking works. If i would believe anyone who claims to know....i would start to believe in contratictory claims.

You can keep asserting that you *know* a god exists until you are blue in the face, its still not knowledge, its belief. Andy you cant give me a single reason why i should accept your belief.

So its dismissed.

[Fake Messiah]

Yet you are constantly claiming not to be delusional yourself. Why should anyone believe your claim(s)?

Thats why this thread (and your posts) is so pointless. Noone cares how firmly you think you *know* a god exists. What you have is not knowledge, but strong belief. Knowledge is what you can demonstrate to others. Either you can demonstrate it to anyone else, or anyone else has to factor in that you are possible delusional (or even plain dishonest, like so many con men). Thats how rational thinking works. If i would believe anyone who claims to know....i would start to believe in contratictory claims.

You can keep asserting that you *know* a god exists until you are blue in the face, its still not knowledge, its belief. Andy you cant give me a single reason why i should accept your belief.

So its dismissed.

But what you "don't get" is that Lek claims how he has some spiritual knowledge which you can't have because as an atheist you must have evidence.

It's what you hear all the time: that you must believe first in order to "see" the evidence, which is of course a total delusion. I mean imagine if you had a neighbor who spent his every weekend, and all free time, digging in the garden because he believed there's a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried underneath. So one day you try to dissuade him, but he shows you shiny translucent pebbles he just dug out as "evidence" of getting close to the diamond. Now, you look at those pebbles and say "this is probably just some broken glass", but to him it doesn't matter because he is so stoked in his belief about the buried diamond that it's your lack of faith that is a real problem there.

And indeed, when you have a belief in something, you see these kind of "evidence" all the time. That is what happens when you decide first to firmly believe in something and then decide to look for the evidence.

[Anomalocaris]

Lek, I'm delusional too. Something revealed itself to me and told me...."blah blah blah"

I'm sure your first thought would have been
"That never happened. You're just making it up."

And you think that because you KNOW that as an atheist, I'm probably not delusional. You give me the attribute of having a good head on my shoulders because of my atheism.

If an atheist told you that they sincerely believed some way out there insane crazy shit, more than likely you would tend to not believe them, instead believing that they are saying these outlandish things "to make a point"

You give us this attribute of being a group that thinks critically and is less likely to believe in bullshit.

If that's what you think of us, then how do you view other theists ?

I don't consider atheists as a group to be more or less delusional than theists.  I consider them more likely to demand physical proof before they accept something as true.  That can be good in some instances, but it can also hold them back from discovering spiritual truths.  Of course, I would consider theists to be more open to other ways to discover truth than through natural methods.  This is very general as everyone within a group is an individual.

Anything which a demand of evidence holds people back from believing isn’t truth because there is no way to ascertain truth other than evidence. 

Your god does not deserve to be believed because only a desire to believe in what you want to believe, rather than a desire to not believe in what is not true, could possible cause you to believe in your god. 

So get over it.

[polymath257]

Lek, I'm delusional too. Something revealed itself to me and told me...."blah blah blah"

I'm sure your first thought would have been
"That never happened. You're just making it up."

And you think that because you KNOW that as an atheist, I'm probably not delusional. You give me the attribute of having a good head on my shoulders because of my atheism.

If an atheist told you that they sincerely believed some way out there insane crazy shit, more than likely you would tend to not believe them, instead believing that they are saying these outlandish things "to make a point"

You give us this attribute of being a group that thinks critically and is less likely to believe in bullshit.

If that's what you think of us, then how do you view other theists ?

I don't consider atheists as a group to be more or less delusional than theists.  I consider them more likely to demand physical proof before they accept something as true.  That can be good in some instances, but it can also hold them back from discovering spiritual truths.  Of course, I would consider theists to be more open to other ways to discover truth than through natural methods.  This is very general as everyone within a group is an individual.

So, here's a question. How do you test 'spiritual truths' to *be* true?

Suppose two people disagree about whether some statement is, in deed, 'spiritually true'. Is there a way to determine who is right and/or who is wrong?

Such 'decision procedures' exist in math (using formal proof) and in the sciences (requiring hypotheses to be observationally testable). This is part of why we can label the conclusions of those subjects 'true'.

So what decision procedure is there for 'spiritual truth'? And, if there is none, why would anyone think that there is actually a truth there at all?

-------
In my view, atheists tend to require evidence prior to belief because they realize that without evidence it is too easy to concoct 'just so' stories. The imagination can dream up all sorts of fictions, none of which have anything to do with reality. Also, atheists tend to accept that they may have the wrong interpretation on their experiences. So, if they have a 'mystical experience', they are more willing to realize it may be illusory.

Theists, on the other hand, are willing to believe because it 'feels good' without requiring either precision or evidence. When they have 'mystical experiences', they tend not to doubt the veracity of their interpretation, saying the experience itself is 'self-justifying' (which atheists will disagree with).

And, as you said, these are generalities. Individuals can differ.

[Lek]

If someone hits me with a baseball bat, I don't need to look for scientific proof before I realize it.  You might tell me I could have imagined it, but that wouldn't change the fact that I got hit by a baseball bat.  Someone visiting from another country, who also got hit by a baseball bat, might think he got hit by some other kind of club, but he still got hit by a baseball bat.

If you want to have some other evidence before you would believe then go ahead and wait for it.  I've got no good reason to spend my life looking for other ways to prove it's real.

[Nay_Sayer]

If someone hits me with a baseball bat, I don't need to look for scientific proof before I realize it.  You might tell me I could have imagined it, but that wouldn't change the fact that I got hit by a baseball bat.  Someone visiting from another country, who also got hit by a baseball bat, might think he got hit by some other kind of club, but he still got hit by a baseball bat.

If you want to have some other evidence before you would believe then go ahead and wait for it.  I've got no good reason to spend my life looking for other ways to prove it's real.

Nifty, Semi-related;


I've got an old steamer trunk I am going to buy for 10,000$ with about 530,000$ stuffed in it.  It's yours for a deposit of 5,000$

I should note, It's locked and I wasn't allowed to see it but the guy I got it from was reassuring. 

I figure we go half on the deposit and split the contents.