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You know God exists. Now thats either true or its not. Your opinion matters.

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    #392
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    smacl wrote: »
    You should perhaps better acquaint yourself with this forum so. The last long running thread by a theist on this forum keen on creationism got re-titled 'Origin of specious nonsense', that being most people's position on the subject in this neck of the woods.

    Understood. But when the position of those on the forum can't find sustainance - aside from "this is the atheist forum, whaddya expect"...

    Your own inability to state yours a belief position, regarding that which I would have thought to be something you would have said you know .. is noted.

    The very silence I was seeking.


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    #393
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Your own inability to state yours a belief position, regarding that which I would have thought to be something you would have said you know .. is noted.

    Sorry, but what does that even mean? While I don't doubt what you write makes sense to you, could I humbly ask that you read what you've written prior to posting to see if it likely to make sense to your intended audience.
    The very silence I was seeking.

    Maybe you could try some early Art & Garfunkel if that's your thing.


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    #394
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    smacl wrote: »
    Sorry, but what does that even mean? While I don't doubt what you write makes sense to you, could I humbly ask that you read what you've written prior to posting to see if it likely to make sense to your intended audience.

    Your admiring that womans figure of course. You never said that whether it was something you believe occurred (subject to error) or something you know occurred (not subject to error)

    Subjective (belief) or subjective (you were the only one to witness it)

    You might clarify.


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    #395
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Your admiring that womans figure of course. You never said that whether it was something you believe occurred (subject to error) or something you know occurred (not subject to error)

    Subjective (belief) or subjective (you were the only one to witness it)

    You might clarify.

    Still have no idea what you're on about. I see a woman I find attractive, it is clearly subjective. I find one thing or another attractive about many women I meet. Other people might find other things or nothing attractive about the same women. It's clearly subjective. What's your point exactly?


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    #396
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    smacl wrote: »
    Still have no idea what you're on about. I see a woman I find attractive, it is clearly subjective. I find one thing or another attractive about many women I meet. Other people might find other things or nothing attractive about the same women. It's clearly subjective. What's your point exactly?

    I'm not talking about that kind of subjective assessment. I'm talking about your admiring her in the first place. You remember admiring a woman. No one was there, so you cannot evidence it as having happened. That makes it the kind of subjective you yourself expounded upon (single source)

    You either know you admired her figure

    OR

    You believe you admired her figure, but you could be wrong that it happened - you might have imagined it and any number of things you think happened yesterday.

    Which is it?


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    #397
    fritzelly
    Registered Users Posts: 17,258 ✭✭✭✭fritzelly


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    I'm not talking about that subjective assessment. I'm talking about your admiring her in the first place. You remember admiring a woman. It happened. No one was there so you cannot evidence it happened. That makes it the subjective you yourself raised expounded upon (single source)

    You either know you admired her figure..
    You believe you admired her figure, but you could be wrong that it happened - you might have imagined it and any number of things you think happened yesterday.

    Which is it?

    Schrodinger's cat comes to mind, aka pointless argument


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    #398
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    I'm not talking about that subjective assessment. I'm talking about your admiring her in the first place. You remember admiring a woman. It happened. No one was there so you cannot evidence it happened. That makes it the subjective you yourself raised expounded upon (single source)

    You either know you admired her figure..
    You believe you admired her figure, but you could be wrong that it happened - you might have imagined it and any number of things you think happened yesterday.

    Which is it?

    Again struggling to understand your point. Do I question my memory of events? Yes, regularly. My memory for that type of minutiae is poor. There is nothing in the scenario that is ostensibly objective. You clearly find women's figures fascinating, and while I appreciate the sentiment it isn't something I tend to obsess over and hence commit to long term memory. Personally I'm more taken by the dynamics than specifics, so a mischievous smile and lively eyes would tend to stick in my mind more than a huge pair of tits balancing a large arse. Each to their own, hey?


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    #399
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    smacl wrote: »
    Again struggling to understand your point. Do I question my memory of events?

    Pick any event which you clearly remember as having occurred. Do you know it occurred or do you believe it occurred.

    Unless you have serious problems with your memory, I'm thinking of any number of a thousand things that occurred today, where no one was there to witness.

    Pick one of them


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    #400
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Pick any event which you clearly remember as having occurred. Do you know it occurred or do you believe it occurred.

    Unless you have serious problems with your memory, I'm thinking of any number of a thousand things that occurred today, where no one was there to witness.

    Pick one of them

    Any event? What like reaching the summit of Mont Blanc with my then girlfriend now wife? Being there through the visceral intensity when that same wonderful woman delivered our first born? Holding my father's hand in the morgue and crying my eyes out? Obviously.

    Seeing some 'woman with an attractive figure' walk down the road or how many cups of coffee I had today? Not so much.


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    #401
    looksee
    Registered Users Posts: 28,070 ✭✭✭✭looksee


    I suspect that Antiskeptic is working on the basis that as long as people are reading and digesting (as against skimming through, as I am) his lengthy meanderings they are not engaged in more sinister, though rational, discussions about atheism on other threads. He is therefore, in a very small way, saving us from ourselves. Or indeed, making us think about Christianity - in this he is considerably less successful, he is far too distracting with his female figures and angels-dancing-on-a-pin 'subjectivity or objectivity' logorrhea.


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    #402
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    looksee wrote: »
    I suspect that Antiskeptic is working on the basis that as long as people are reading and digesting (as against skimming through, as I am) his lengthy meanderings they are not engaged in more sinister, though rational, discussions about atheism on other threads. He is therefore, in a very small way, saving us from ourselves. Or indeed, making us think about Christianity - in this he is considerably less successful, he is far too distracting with his female figures and angels-dancing-on-a-pin 'subjectivity or objectivity' logorrhea.

    I'm without a doubt too harsh and dismissive but am reminded that for those of us with just the one rather short life that time is fleeting. I have great respect for those with strong beliefs and passions and have no great urge to investigate the basis of those beliefs until pressed to do so. God botherers by and large don't bother me until such time as they bother me. I think I'll leave this thread to those that remain bothered as I'm not and doubt I should ever have ever been.


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    #403
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    smacl wrote: »
    Any event? What like reaching the summit of Mont Blanc with my then girlfriend now wife? Being there through the visceral intensity when that same wonderful woman delivered our first born? Holding my father's hand in the morgue and crying my eyes out?

    Whether those unforgettables or something more mundane, but remembered nevertheless. Take something from today that happened and assert its happening here

    So long as you were on your own when it happened.

    Now. Do you know it happened? Or do you merely believe it happened (and being mere belief, it may not have happened). Because it would seem to be the latter.


    smacl wrote:
    An assertion without any proof is no more than a statement belief or opinion and hence subjective.


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    #404
    fritzelly
    Registered Users Posts: 17,258 ✭✭✭✭fritzelly


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Whether those unforgettables or something more mundane, but remembered nevertheless. Take something from today.

    So long as you were on your own. Do you know it happened. Or do you merely believe it happened (and being mere belief, it may not have).

    To summarize everything antiskeptic is saying (since every post is basically the same thing)...
    If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it fall does that mean it made no sound, so juxtaposing that just because we have no proof god does exist we must accept he does even tho we have no proof


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    #405
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    fritzelly wrote: »
    To summarize everything antiskeptic is saying (since every post is basically the same thing)...
    If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it fall does that mean it made no sound, so juxtaposing that just because we have no proof god does exist we must accept he does even tho we have no proof

    Did the tree fall though or did God push it? :)


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    #406
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Any decision of ours to refer the matter to an exterior court for judgment arises from our first granting that court authority.
    I think this could be the point at which the disagreement between our two sides might reasonably be said first to arise.

    Objectively, we need to assess the physicality of the system under consideration. Should it consist of physical objects alone, then surely it can be nothing but systematically objective since the nature of subjectivity does not exist within the purely subjective-free bailiwick of substantial, subjective experience (as much as such could be said to exist within an objective space). However, should the system under consideration consist of mutually exclusive self-aware, self-directing, goal-seeking entities, each one of which (by virtue of self-awareness) would therefore be unimpeachably subjective, as each would be subject to the ne plus ultra experience of ultimate subjectivity rather than the objectivity to which a suitably trained, or inclined, objective individual one would naturally incline.

    If we then wish to submit to the authority of an external court, then this cannot exist for objects within the objective space, or objects purely capable of being subject to objective forces, since objects - lacking subjective experience - cannot make decisions within a space to which they do not have access, or even, on account of their lack of subjective consciousness, even assert the basic existence of. That's as good a catch-22 as exists in basic philosophy.

    Hence, it seems very clear indeed that the decision to submit to external authority can, and must, be taken by conscious entities within the subjective domain alone - subjectivity begets and implies authority, as much as its absence implies a flat structure within the universe - dust might beget a star, but neither are conscious. That then begs the question of whether or not it then becomes possible, or advisable or necessary for a subjective entity to submit to an external authority, once a subjective (conscious) entity acknowledges the possibility that such an authority exists.

    It's a certainly an interesting point and one which doesn't appear in any depth in the introductory texts which Zubeneschamali helpfully recommends above, or at least the ones which I've read anyway. It is covered in some of the more advanced texts, including those of Baudrillard, Levinas and the ever-fresh Alfred North Whitehead.

    Zubeneschamali - what would you recommend in this area?


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    #407
    Mark Hamill
    Registered Users Posts: 7,771 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Quite the opposite. He will surely bring you to belief unless you prevent that.

    Can you make up your mind? Earlier you said there isn't one thing we have to do and now the one thing we absolutely have to do is not reject belief in god (by not evading evidence). That's a contradiction.
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Damnation occurs from your doing something (namely, refusal to be brought to belief. Preventing being brought to belief). It is not arbitrary so: it is a function of your doing nothing (in which case arrival at belief and salvation) or doing something (in which case damnation)

    This is dangerously close to you saying that we are all damned unless we stop questioning you. That's not monstrously arrogant at all.
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Believe is a state of being (stative verb). You need to arrive in that position alright. But it is not you who brings you to that state. Rather, it is evidence which has you in that state.

    But we can choose to evade that evidence, you say that just above and in the next bit below. So what we do does effect our salvation. In fact, what you are saying here means that it is 100% what we do that effects our salvation.
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    If there is no evidence that will because the evidence was evaded by you. The attempt will be made to put the evidence before you. But you can evade.

    You won't believe without evidence. And won't therefore be saved. There is no requirement to believe without evidence. Indeed, it is impossible to believe without evidence.

    The only one doing the evading from evidence is you. How many times have you been asked to present some and have failed? How are we evading evidence when it is you who are not presenting any?
    And then, to keep returning to this because it invariably comes up, how do you know your evidence actually supports your god when other people with inherently contradictory beliefs believe their evidence proves their god?
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    If God / my stubbing my toe being the cause of a toe break can't be evidenced then it is indistiguishable from delusion from your perspective. But not mine.

    Are you saying my stubbing my toe is a subjective belief I have, merely because I can't evidence it to you? That even though I was there to see myself stubbing my toe, I merely feel I have stubbed my toe and possibly haven't actually stubbed it at all?

    All our experiences in the objective reality are subjective?

    You err at 'therefore' still apparently not having looked up the word subjective.

    This is discussed in this post here, try responding to it.


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    #408
    Mark Hamill
    Registered Users Posts: 7,771 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    In your second statement, you appear to hold non evidencing as necessarily belief in. So non ability to evidence my toe stubbing means I believe I stubbed my toe. And since my belief (subject to error), I must consider that it might not actually have happened.

    You seem to be saying that all our daily experiences are beliefs. Say driving a car and the millions of observations made in the course of that pursuit - these are all beliefs and prone to error. How remarkably accurate our beliefs (which are all prone to error) must be, given our comparative triumph in car driving.

    Nope. None of this has anything to do with what I said.


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    #409
    Zubeneschamali
    Registered Users Posts: 16,686 ✭✭✭✭Zubeneschamali


    robindch wrote: »
    Should it consist of physical objects alone, then surely it can be nothing but systematically objective since the nature of subjectivity does not exist within the purely subjective-free bailiwick of substantial, subjective experience (as much as such could be said to exist within an objective space).

    It does look that way day to day, but this does not account for the weird behaviour we see at scales where Quantum Mechanics are important, such as dual slit experiments.
    robindch wrote: »
    It's a certainly an interesting point and one which doesn't appear in any depth in the introductory texts which Zubeneschamali helpfully recommends above, or at least the ones which I've read anyway. It is covered in some of the more advanced texts, including those of Baudrillard, Levinas and the ever-fresh Alfred North Whitehead.

    Zubeneschamali - what would you recommend in this area?

    Oh, you are well beyond my reading in philosophy. My recommendation to read an intro to philosophy was to address antiskeptic's sophomoric attempts to suggest that all is subjective therefore God.

    I don't think he has raised any more interesting questions except by throwing word salad at the thread and hoping something sticks.


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    #410
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    Zubeneschamali wrote: »
    . My recommendation to read an intro to philosophy was to address antiskeptic's sophomoric attempts to suggest that all is subjective therefore God

    1. I haven't suggested that all is subjective.

    2. I haven't suggested 'therefore God' by any means. That would be an attempt at a proof.

    I have queried whether a person can know something without being able to prove it. This based on smacl's (iirc) separation of subjective into two classes

    a) something arising from feelings and emotions. I like particular architecture and dislike other architecture

    b) being a sole observer of an event therefore being able to prove you witnessed the event.

    He decided to leave the thread before clarifying whether a person (him) witnessing an event on their own was a belief (therefore subject to being wrong) or knowledge (therefore not subject to being wrong, as far as he, the witness, was concerned).

    By all means quote where I am trying to establish / what you suppose I'm saying. Good luck with it.


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    #411
    Zubeneschamali
    Registered Users Posts: 16,686 ✭✭✭✭Zubeneschamali


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    I have queried whether a person can know something without being able to prove it.

    Yes, with the qualification that no-one can know anything or prove anything the way you seem to think they should.


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    #412
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    Mark Hamill wrote: »
    Can you make up your mind? Earlier you said there isn't one thing we have to do and now the one thing we absolutely have to do is not reject belief in god (by not evading evidence). That's a contradiction.

    Doing is an action. Not doing (e.g. not rejecting) involved no action. If there is no action then there is no doing in the not doing.

    "I'm loving it" Love is stative but McDonalds bastardize grammer to render a stative verb an action verb. "What I have to do is not to do" involves a similar skewing. The aim is to render something that involves and requires no action into something that sounds like it involves activity.



    If you are sitting down (being exposed to the truth), then in order to remain sitting down (remain being exposed to the truth - which will have an effect on you) you 'have to not get up'.

    But you don't have to DO anything to not get up (that is, continue being exposed to the truth). You don't have to choose to remain seated, when making no choice (i.e. doing nothing) will achieve the same result.



    This is dangerously close to you saying that we are all damned unless we stop questioning you. That's not monstrously arrogant at all.

    Questioning can be a positive thing. Genuine enquiry. A seeking (before you hop in and say that's seeking is a doing: if the person is being driven to seek then it is the driver who is doing the doing - not the driven.).

    Questioning can be an attempt to find or maintain objections so as to justify the self directed life.

    Questioning for the latter reason might nevertheless see an objection overcome - such as the objection which (rightfully) takes issue with 'having to believe without evidence'

    The mechanism of salvation/damnation described in this thread indicates that, if you come to believe you are at end of self it will only be because you have all the evidence you need to be convinced of that fact.

    Hopefully the "belief before evidence" objection has been overcome for you.

    For an objection overcome sees you nearer a belief of the fact that you are bunched in your self-directed life. A person who believes they are at end of self has no objections left regarding that truth.

    As for what I say? That is a brick in a structure of millions of bricks. You are faced with truth all day long and respond this way and that. If anything I say strikes as true but it is suppressed, it is but one brick removed from the structure. It will take alot more than one brick to cause collapse and damnation.

    Although my brick could be the last brick removed before collapse. Who knows where anyone is along the way? Who knows whether it is anothers last day, after which opportunity lost?

    In any case, rejection of truth ("I think I might be drinking to much (it's true, he is). Ah well, I'll try limit things to 8 pints every night this week") tends to bring trouble. And it is trouble that brings us to our knees. Rejection is normal and expected. And so is integral to the workings of the mechanism of salvation and damnation.

    Ultimately, it boils down to our hearts desire. Own sinful way insisted upon to bitter end? Or our yearning to be rid of our sinful way because we love what is true and beautiful more, even though we just can't seem to get our sinful way out of the way. If the latter, we will be saved. He'll make sure of it. He'll get our sinful way out of our way.


    For what its worth, for someone who didn't give a fig about God, I kicked like a mule on the home straight prior to crossing the finishing line. CS Lewis described himself as the most reluctant convert in all England. Rebels don't give up without a cause.

    But we can choose to evade that evidence, you say that just above and in the next bit below. So what we do does effect our salvation. In fact, what you are saying here means that it is 100% what we do that effects our salvation.

    Evasion affects of course. But that 'doing' works towards your damnation. There is no doing that contributes towards your salvation. Per above.

    The only one doing the evading from evidence is you. How many times have you been asked to present some and have failed? How are we evading evidence when it is you who are not presenting any?

    It has been explained. The belief you need to arrive at has nothing overtly to do with God as such. End of self is something that occurs in an everyday way. And the kind of evidence that is presented and responded to is pretty mundane too.

    By all means cast around for evidence/proofs that are framed in the way you want. It may do good, it may do harm. But whatever it does, it will do so according to a mechanism you are subject to and whose design you have no input into. Subject to. Not boss of.

    Whilst laying out the mechanism, it is merely fyi. You might consider it and see whether anything I say rings true. You mighr see an objection fall and raise another. No harm. But I'm in no way trying to prove anything



    And then, to keep returning to this because it invariably comes up, how do you know your evidence actually supports your god when other people with inherently contradictory beliefs believe their evidence proves their god?

    I'm convinced by the evidence? I can see how other gods have the false god characteristics universal to mankind's need for self direction?

    If I can accomodate their gods and your god into a framework which works, I have no need to be concerned at so many seemingly competing gods. Is a bank teller fooled by any number of counterfeits? Water off a ducks back once they are being compared to something that rings genuine

    This theology (theory) accommodates the observations. As all sound theories ought to.

    Take theist gods for instance. They have a common feature. What you do and how you live your life and how you follow the ordinances of the god affect your afterlife outcome. Islam, Roman Catholicism, any strand of Buddhism I've encountered, Hinduism. You don't have to dig far to find it. They are not all that different despite outward appearances. Common ancestor perhaps?



    This is discussed in this post here, try responding to it.

    So. An observation made alone (take something from the million and one mundanes from your day). You can't prove it.

    Do you know what happened happened?

    Or do you just believe it happened and you could be wrong?


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    #413
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Doing is an action. Not doing isn't an action.
    A truth which applies to atheism as well - belief in some deity is a positive, subjective experience. While atheism and agnosticism both comport a lack of belief, hence neither requires the active experience of belief.


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    #414
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    robindch wrote: »
    A truth which applies to atheism as well - belief in some deity is a positive, subjective experience.

    I haven't gotten to your post, apols.

    In the meantime, do you mean:

    subjective (based on emotions/feelings)?

    Or

    subjective (lone observer, without your making any comment, for or against, as to whether the experience occurred)?

    I'm not sure what you mean by 'positive'. If there is no action taken to arrive at and occupy a particular state of belief then positive wouldn't be a word I would have thought applicable. You might clarify: what is positive about being in a state of belief about something due to evidence presented? To believe isn't an action you take. Believe is a stative verb.

    While atheism and agnosticism both comport a lack of belief, hence neither requires the active experience of belief.

    Presumably the lack of belief in God is matched by a belief in something else.

    Maybe that belief would be the result of having being exposed to evidence which resulted in them occupying a state of belief about whatever it is they believe? Just like me.


    [Are there atheists who declare themselves to be athiests but who have no belief allegience (even if ill formed / ill informed) to an alternative origins/meaning of life / destination system? Vaccum atheists .. as it were?. I can't say I've ever heard if one.]


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    #415
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    Zubeneschamali wrote: »
    Yes, with the qualification that no-one can know anything or prove anything the way you seem to think they should.

    Sole observance (of say your scanning a McDonalds menu) isn't provable. Are you saying you can know you scanned it and know what items you considered before settling for what you ordered? Or are you saying something else?

    Not sure what you mean by knowing or proving the way I seem to think they should.

    I'm of the opinion that I know I scanned a McDonalds menu. Although can't prove it.

    But I am open to alternatives. Maybe I and you don't know it. What's left? We believe it?


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    #416
    Mark Hamill
    Registered Users Posts: 7,771 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    I have queried whether a person can know something without being able to prove it.

    How do you know you know something if you can't prove it?


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    #417
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    Mark Hamill wrote: »
    How do you know you know something if you can't prove it?

    That's what I was asking folk their opinion on. Did they think 'observed it alone' subjective was the same as 'I prefer the look of a Porche to that of a Ferrari' subjective.

    Do people think they believe what they are observing alone or do they know it. Say their having scanned certain items on a McDonalds menu yesterday.

    I would have said I know what I scanned on the menu, irrespective of what some philosophy of knowledge says.

    What so you think?


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    #418
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Mark Hamill wrote: »
    How do you know you know something if you can't prove it?

    I think it is first worth distinguishing knowledge from belief, as per this discussion from an epistemology forum. I think the diagram below taken from that thread is a good starting point;

    iYWzG.png

    Where I think the OPs arguments fall flat is in all the "If then else" type logic which presumes binary states for variables that most other on this forum would consider continuous, i.e. lying on a spectrum.


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    #419
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    smacl wrote: »
    I think it is first worth distinguishing knowledge from belief, as per this discussion from an epistemology forum. I think the diagram below taken from that thread is a good starting point;

    iYWzG.png

    Where I think the OPs arguments fall flat is in all the "If then else" type logic which presumes binary states for variables that most other on this forum would consider continuous, i.e. lying on a spectrum.

    You've just left McDonalds clutching a bag with a Texas Stack and large fries. Fresh in your mind, the options you considered.

    Put it anywhere you like on the spectrum. But do tell me where on the spectrum that it. Since that part of the spectrum covers a large majority of your day.


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    #420
    Mark Hamill
    Registered Users Posts: 7,771 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Doing is an action. Not doing (e.g. not rejecting) involved no action. If there is no action then there is no doing in the not doing.

    When we reject god, is that a choice on our behalf or not?
    -If we are choosing to reject god, then our not believing in god is an action.
    -If we have no choice in the rejection of god, then that rejection must be a result of what god is doing. Therefore god saving us is completely arbitrary.
    So which is it, are you wrong or are you wrong?
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    The mechanism of salvation/damnation described in this thread indicates that, if you come to believe you are at end of self it will only be because you have all the evidence you need to be convinced of that fact.

    Therefore if we do not come to belief then that must be because there is no evidence.
    Anyway, the rest of the omitted word salad still amounts to "we are all damned unless we stop questioning you".
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    "Evidence" word salad.

    You are still evading the simple requests for evidence.

    And saying that I need to be at "end of self" to accept any evidence is a weakness of you position, not a strength. People believe all kinds of crazy things in desperation. Including all of the gods you don't believe in. Why does your evidence not satisfy rational examination? How do I know which contradictory theists "evidence" to believe in without specific evidence?
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    I'm convinced by the evidence? I can see how other gods have the false god characteristics universal to mankind's need for self direction?

    If I can accomodate their gods and your god into a framework which works, I have no need to be concerned at so many seemingly competing gods. Is a bank teller fooled by any number of counterfeits? Water off a ducks back once they are being compared to something that rings genuine

    This theology (theory) accommodates the observations. As all sound theories ought to.

    Take theist gods for instance. They have a common feature. What you do and how you live your life and how you follow the ordinances of the god affect your afterlife outcome. Islam, Roman Catholicism, any strand of Buddhism I've encountered, Hinduism. You don't have to dig far to find it. They are not all that different despite outward appearances. Common ancestor perhaps?

    But those other contradictory theists all say the exact same thing about your beliefs, that you are the one with a false god which fits in their framework. If they can be wrong despite being so sure in themselves, why can't you?

    And then, how do I, as an outsider who sees you all as making the exact same arguments tell who is right?
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    So. An observation made alone (take something from the million and one mundanes from your day). You can't prove it.

    Do you know what happened happened?

    Or do you just believe it happened and you could be wrong?

    You are still not responding to what I wrote. Try again.


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    #421
    Mark Hamill
    Registered Users Posts: 7,771 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Mark Hamill wrote: »
    How do you know you know something if you can't prove it?
    That's what I was asking folk their opinion on. Did they think 'observed it alone' subjective was the same as 'I prefer the look of a Porche to that of a Ferrari' subjective.

    Do people think they believe what they are observing alone or do they know it. Say their having scanned certain items on a McDonalds menu yesterday.

    I would have said I know what I scanned on the menu, irrespective of what some philosophy of knowledge says.

    What so you think?

    You misunderstand, I wasn't asking a general philosophical question.
    I was asking how do you, antiskeptic, know you, antiskeptic, know something if you, antiskeptic, can't prove it.


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