Search for Causes

[The Architect Of Fate]

Who puts boundaries on that meaning?  As far as I can see, you're the only person in this thread who insists that it can only be one thing.

Food for thought.

You guys are always telling me that the supernatural doesn't exist.  How can you be open to something that you've already decided doesn't exist?  I never said that spontaneous remission had a supernatural cause.  I think it very well could and I asked what you thought.  Not one atheist even admitted that it could possibly have a supernatural cause.  In fact, pretty much all I got was derision for even considering it, calling it "magic" or whatever.  There was no openness to the idea at all.  Rather than say it could be supernatural, you'd say "we don't know, but we'll find out someday."  There's a boundary there that separates you from considering any supernatural explanation.  If I said anywhere that it had to be supernatural you'll have to show me.

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Think of all the crap we couldn't explain, then could explain a few hundred years later. What compelling reason do I have to think anything is different?

Also, the reasons that things happen arent dependent on human ability to explain them. That's my point. When you dont know why, assume theres a reason, and admit you dont know it. The end. Making up another explanation because it makes sense to you (God) is the opposite of what you should do.

Not true.  If billions of sane people attest to something, even in light of modern day science, it's worth serious consideration.

1.You can  be open to something and not be convinced it exists 

2. Argument from ignorance

[The Grand Nudger]

It does get serious consideration, anyway. As the cultural artifact it's been since the first written word. It's the religious, themselves, who feel the need to distill our deep human literary traditions into a Really True Account of the Meat Fairy.

[possibletarian]

We're all looking for ultimate meaning,

I don't think I'm looking for something called 'ultimate meaning', unless by that you mean as many true, testable answers to the things around us ? However I'm not going to fantasize about things because i would like them tom be true.

What exactly is utlimate meaning?

but we put boundaries up that limit our ability to find it.

What boundaries are they ? show what those boundaries are and why it's sensible to believe they exist.

Despite the experiences of others we rufuse to consider anything we can't see or touch.

There's lots of things I believe exist that we can't see or touch, and we know what we call spiritual experiences are very unreliable and we have no evidence that they originate outside of the human brain.

[Lek]

I argue this with you in the forum, but that's really where I'm at in my journey right now. I'm more into the process of trying shed my ego so that I may merge, so to speak, with God. I believe our ultimate purpose is to return to God or the ultimate reality from which we are currently separated.

[The Grand Nudger]

You're not arguing with yourself?

We, you and I and everyone else here..agree that people get cancer, and that cancer goes into remission. In some cases, we don't know why.

We, you and I and everyone else here..agree that people have anomalous experiences that they relate to a sense of the numinous.

We, you and I and everyone else here..posit that the world can be known.

You...you..believe that your faith is insufficient. That you are separated from god. You pray and "study" and "argue" these things in order to remedy that deficit. Not to discern truth, or even to achieve a state that is true, rather, one that you wish to make true. Just as you haven't been enlightened, you wish to be enlightened. I honestly can't see it happening for you, and it looks like, on some level, you share that position with me as well.

[Lek]

You're not arguing with yourself?

We, you and I and everyone else here..agree that people get cancer, and that cancer goes into remission. In some cases, we don't know why.

We, you and I and everyone else here..agree that people have anomalous experiences that they relate to a sense of the numinous.

We, you and I and everyone else here..posit that the world can be known.

You...you..believe that your faith is insufficient. That you are separated from god. You pray and "study" and "argue" these things in order to remedy that deficit. Not to discern truth, or even to achieve a state that is true, rather, one that you wish to make true.

Com'on!

[The Grand Nudger]

Have you ever considered whether you were capable of conceiving of the divine without the baggage of the supernatural concept?

Must a god be "supernatural" for you to recognize it as a god? To worship it? The vast majority of gods that human beings have come up with never needed it. Do you think it might be helpful to figure out why you do?

[Lek]

No. God is whomever or whatever he is. I just happen to believe that he's supernatural, which is the view the vast majority of believers throughout history believed or believe. It makes sense to me.

[no one]

Lek:
You guys are always telling me that the supernatural doesn't exist.  How can you be open to something that you've already decided doesn't exist?

You are just like the rest of the nickel a dozen religibozos that parade their warped, pious disposition so flagrantly about. So cocksure of your absolute conviction that your vision is completely obscured.

The reason I tell you that the supernatural doesn't exist is because, it doesn't. Nothing is beyond the power of nature, nothing. It's quite a telling tale, your pigheadedness. No matter how many times it is explained to you, you can not grasp the concept, that just because humans do not currently have an explanation, doesn't mean there isn't an explanation.

[The Grand Nudger]

No. God is whomever or whatever he is. I just happen to believe that he's supernatural, which is the view the vast majority of believers throughout history believed or believe. It makes sense to me.

That's not, at all, how those terms work.  When we add the caveat things make sense "to me" we are explicitly acknowledging that they do not, in fact, make sense.  This is the sort of novel and useless employment of terms that you're never going to slip past when we have these discussions.

On top of that, you're plain and simply wrong.  Most people, who have believed in most of the gods, throughout most of history..did -not- view gods as "supernatural".  That's why I asked you why you needed it. Whether you'd prayed on it, studied it, or received any enlightenment. The god that you believe in was a departure from the norm. There's an entire age named after the trend in belief.

What is it doing, for god..or for you, except saddling you both with shit that neither of you wants to or even can defend? As you say, a god, if it is, is what it is. A god, if it goes around curing cancer, does it however it does as well. Is there some specific reason that a god can't be natural, or that a god can't use natural means? If not, and you seem unattached to the notion now..why have you spent all these pages going to bat for it? It's useless and unimportant to you. Nothing but a liability. It's not even a good faith argument if we were going back and forth for the lulz.

I'm over here throwing you a lifeline. You don't have to say shit like this, or make arguments like these. You wanna know what, I bet that you don't even believe in the supernatural. It's just a word you use, an entirely pavlovian response. What's different about the supernatural that god uses from the world that god made? Nothing.

Or do you lack the conviction of your faith in the nature of gods creative act?