@shinyblurry

Finally getting around to this older comment of yours.

M: The first reason is that it's very common among holders of all sorts of mystical beliefs to have gained the belief following such an experience, and to have attributed the belief to whichever mystical force is closest at hand, in your case, Jesus.

SB: Even then I had no religion or belief system. From there, I explored many of the worlds belief systems and philosophies, religions and traditions, for many years, before being led to Christianity. To note, at the time, out of all the religions, I considered Christianity to be one of the least plausible. Again, because it had been uniquely confirmed to me, there was no way to deny it. The evidence was as plain as my reflection in the mirror.

By "closest at hand", I didn't mean that you grabbed it right away. While you did spend years coming to Jesus, it's no coincidence that you did, IMO. You say that among religions, you were particularly prejudiced against Christianity for it's implausibility. This doesn't surprise since it was the one you were most familiar with, and so the one you had seen the most problems with, until you investigated the other ones, and found them even worse. As you have noted several times yourself, growing up in the West, you were also strongly prejudiced towards Christianity, since a large part of our cultural ethos and moral code stems directly from it, even for us atheists. So, if you were going to discover that one religion was the true one, it would almost certainly be a strain of Christianity as it's the one that fits your own culture's moral code the best. If you'd chosen Voodoo instead, then your careful search of religions would be something worth pointing to as evidence.

[God] is the only source of truth, and anyone in contact with Him has access to that truth. The second and lesser power is that of Satan. He is the source of all lies, and anyone in contact with him is deluded and in bondage. Satan is the ruler of the world system, and in general, the people who are enslaved to him are not aware of it. He can only really enslave someone who is ignorant of the truth.

These definitions, especially the ones about Satan are really self-serving. You declare that you have the truth, and part of that truth is that anyone who disagrees with you is possessed by the devil, which of course your dissenters will deny. But you can counter that easily because your religion has also defined satanic possession as something you don't notice. Tight as a drum, and these definitions from nowhere but the religion's own book.

I think it's a natural thought to have, that your life might be something like the Truman show, and everyone else is in on the conspiracy. A belief like that puts you in the very center of the Universe, and from there you could weave together any story you could imagine.

Actually, it was a very different feeling from that. I didn't feel I was the target of any conspiracy. I had stumbled into one --my group of friends-- but I was ignorant of the conspiracy before I had my experience. After I had it, I realized that they were all part of something bigger than me that I could never understand, and that I was actually in their way, that my presence in their group was really cramping their style a lot, slowing things down, forcing them to get things done surreptitiously. I realized they weren't going to directly remove me for now, but I didn't know how long their patience would last. So I removed myself, and hoped they'd leave me alone. In hindsight, they were horrible friends to begin with, so it was no loss for me. Losing those friends was a very good move for me.

The thing is, what I know now is, that everyone who falls into these traps has a little help. That you don't just fall into the abyss, you get pushed in. Satan fuels these types of experiences supernaturally. He can cause people to give you responses or engage you in dialogues which confirm the lies that he has planted and therefore reap a harvert of delusion. He will even give you these kinds of experience in order to debunk them later with the ultimate goal of getting you to doubt the real thing:

Again, you're claiming you are right, and everything untrue comes from Satan, and if I have any logical reason to doubt your story, you can give yourself permission to ignore my logic by saying it is from Satan and that's why it has the power to show the Truth is wrong. So, any Christian who believes a logical argument that conflicts with the dogma is, by definition, being fooled by Satan, and has a duty to doubt their own mind. Even better than the last one for mind control. It does away utterly with reliance on any faculty of the mind, except when their use results in dogmatic thoughts. Genius. Serious props to whoever came up with that. That's smart.

I admit some things I believe may seem counter-intuitive to you, but as you have admitted, our intuitions about what is correct are not always reliable. Quantum physics is a good example of this truth.

I have no problem with counter-intuitive things. I love them. That's why I'm do drawn to quantum physics. I really try hard to wrap my mind around how some of those things can be so, but I really can't. I trust it's so only because experimental evidence bears it out. The only claims of anybody's that I have problems with are A) highly improbable ones only where following such a belief will somehow result in an undesirable outcome; and B) internally self-contradicting or otherwise demonstrably impossible ones.

Like, if you say you believe God exists, I say fine. If you say you know God exists, I say prove it's not your imagination. If you say evolution is wrong, ordinarily I wouldn't care what you believe, except that if you're on school board and decide to replace it with Creationism or Intelligent Design in the science curriculum, then I have to object because that causes harm to children who are going to think that they are real science, and on equal footing with/compatible with/superior to evolution.

It seems to me that you're still very much interpreting reality through your experience. You make the leap that since you were able to fool yourself to such an extent, and that your experience had the character of the supernatural, that everyone who has a supernatural experience is undergoing a similar process. Yet, this is a classic example of confirmation bias. How do you know that you're still not seeing things according to an unconscious paradigm you haven't yet questioned?

You may be right. I may be right. I think it's more likely that I'm right, but that's neither here nor there. How do you know you're not seeing things that aren't there? My experience proves the human mind is capable of doing so and sustaining it. The bible could have been written by several such people. Maybe in that time and place, people who ranted about strange unconnected things were considered to be prophets, and once plugged into the God story, they went to town. I'm not saying it's true, just a possible theory.

As far as truth, it is by nature, exclusive. There is no true for me, or true for you. Someone is right and someone is wrong. This world was either created with intention, or it manifested itself out of sheer happenstance. There either is a God or there isn't.

Excellent to hear. I agree with everything here and might refer back to this several times when I get to your other comment about the nature of God.

You believe you were just deceiving yourself. What I am telling you is that you had supernatural help, and that you're still in it.

If I was "in it" and deceiving myself then, I was in something and deceiving myself before. My beliefs about all supernatural things remain unchanged by my experience, that's to say, I still don't believe they exist.

First, you can rule out all the gods who make no creation claims. Two, you can rule out the creation claims that contradict the basic evidence.

First, not claiming to have created anything doesn't mean he didn't do it, or that he did [edit] claim it and the records were lost. Two, hold the phone -- this rules out Christianity. Genesis states the world was created in six days a few thousand years ago, or something. You can argue that this is metaphorical (why?), but surely you can't say that world being flat, or the sun rotating around the Earth is a metaphor. These are things God would know and have no reason to misrepresent. Since it's God's word, everyone would just believe it. And why not? It makes just as much sense that the Earth is round and revolves around its axis.

I thought about weighting the probabilities for each religion, but discarded it as unwieldy and unnecessary. There are so many mutually exclusive strains even within a single religion that we are still left with tons of them to choose from.

Your evidence about what the most influential/largest religion is is valid (in the "indication" sense of "evidence") for Christianity's being true, and for it being the only reasonable candidate for being true, but is not conclusive. My counterarguments are several:

1. If having the largest relative numbers is evidence of the probable truth of something, then even larger numbers is stronger evidence that it's probably not true. Around 2 billion people are Christian, so around 5 billion are not. By this method, while it's most probable Christianity is right, it's more probable that none of the religions is right. [On re-reading the preceding argument and the context you made the claim, it is a stupid see-saw argument, so I'm taking it back.] Consider also there are tens of thousands of different strains of Christianity with conflicting ideas of the correct way to interpret the Bible and conduct ourselves. Can gays marry? Can women serve mass? Can priests marry? Can non-virgins marry? And so on. Only one of these sects can be right, and again, probably none of them are.

2. The method itself doesn't take into account why the religion has spread. The answer isn't in how true it is, but in the genius of the edicts it contains. For example, it says that Christians are obliged to go convert other people, and doing so will save their eternal souls from damnation. Anyone who is a Christian is therefore compelled to contribute to this uniquely Christian process. I can't count the number of times I've been invited to attend church or talk about God with a missionary. That's why Christianity is all over the world, whereas no other religion has that spread. Also, there are all sorts of compelling reasons for people to adopt Christianity. One is that Christians bring free hospitals and schools. This gives non-truth-based incentives to join. The sum of this argument is that Christianity has the best marketing, so would be expected to have the largest numbers. The better question is why Islam still has half the % of converts that Christianity does, even though it has no marketing system at all, and really a very poor public image internationally.

3. This kinda follows from #1, but I want to make it explicit, as this, IMHO, is one of the strongest arguments I've ever come up with. I've never presented it nor seen it presented to a believer, so I'm keen for your reaction. It goes something like this: If God is perfect, then everything he does must be perfect. If the bible is his word, then it should be instantly apparent to anybody with language faculties that it's all absolutely true, what it means, and how to extrapolate further truths from it. But that's not what happens. Christians argue and fight over the correct interpretation of the bible, and others argue with Christians over whether it's God's word at all based on the many, many things that appear inconsistent to non-Christians. In this regard, it's obvious that it's not perfect, and therefore not the word of God. If it's not the word of God, then the whole religion based on it is bunk.

I agree to some extent about psychological motivations but reject the premise as a whole that people need religion to live in a scary Universe. Most atheists aren't aware of the vast intellectual and philosophical traditions of Christianity, or how self-critical it can be. Even Paul said that if Jesus is not resurrected that we are all fools. We're not just a bunch of ignoramouses who drank the kool-aid and are waiting for the UFO to arrive.

I didn't say people needed it. I said having a religion in a scary universe with other people with needs and desires that conflict with your own makes life a lot easier and more comfortable. Religion, in general, is probably the greatest social organizing force ever conceived of, and that's why religions are so attractive and conservatively followed in places with less beneficial social organization (i.e., places without democracy), and lower critical thinking skills (i.e. places with relatively poor education).

In contrast, in times and places where people on a large scale are well off and have a tradition of critical thinking, the benefits of having a religion as the system of governance are less apparent, and the flaws in this system come out. It becomes more common for such nations to question the authority of the church, and so separate religion from governance. The West has done so, and is leading the world. Turkey is the only officially secular Muslim nation in the world and has clearly put itself in a field apart from the rest, all because it unburdened itself of religious governance when an imposed basic social organization structure was no longer required.

It's funny but science functions in the same way for atheists as you say a god does for theists.

You're right, and you may not know how right you are. Modern scientific investigation, as away of life, comes almost entirely from the Christian tradition. It once was in the culture of Christianity to investigate and try to understand the universe in every detail. The thought was that understanding the universe better was to approach understanding of God's true nature -- a logical conclusion since it was accepted that God created the universe, and understanding the nature of something is to reveal the nature of its creator (and due to our natural curiosity, learning things makes us feel better). The sciences had several branches. Natural science was the branch dealing with the non-transcendent aspects of the universe. The transcendent ones were left to theologists and philosophers, who were also considered scientists, as they had to rigorously and logically prove things as well, but without objective evidence. This was fine, and everyone thought knowledge of the world was advancing as it should until natural science, by its own procedures, started discovering natural facts that seemed inconsistent with the Bible.

That's when people who wanted truth had to decide what their truth consisted of: either God and canon, or observable objective facts. Natural science was cleaved off from the church and took the name "science" with it. Since then, religion and science have both done their part giving people the comfort of knowledge. People who find the most comfort in knowledge that is immutable and all-encompassing prefer religion. People who find the most comfort in knowledge that is verifiable and useful prefer science.

Many of the discussions from the thorium guys revolved around "why... why... why..." There was one mention near the end about needing a few people to get involved in the Thorium energy process for it to happen (via social media). But there's no mention of the issue of political corruption/lobbyists which is the real cause of the problem and why fossil fuels, weaponry related technologies continue to dominate. They touch on it I guess, when they talk about Nixon firing the guy who ran the successful throium reactor for 6 years, but they could have gone further.

>> ^Sagemind:

I'm convinced, without a doubt that the world is round.
But, the wind idea is interesting/facinating, and the question of would I get dizzy standing on the axis of the planet if I were used to standing at the equator, are all good questions.
Does anyone have a link that may discuss these phenomenon? ... Sometimes an explanation is more convincing that saying, "Well that's a stupid statement or opinion." Maybe someone schooled in this area (or who has more spare time than others)can guide us to some interesting reading on this. <img class="smiley" src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/smile.gif">


It's a frame of reference issue. It's harder to define mathmatically, but the view point that the earth is standing still and the rest of the universe is revolving around it is just conceptually valid.

The wind argument assumes that the atmosphere is not part of the earth and should be sitting still while the earth rotates beneath it. However, the physical planet applies more force to the atmosphere than the surrounding vacuum so eventually, the atmosphere will also rotate in sync with the planet itself based on Newton's laws.

>> ^chilaxe:

@ghark
Even small liberal arts schools with no science departments or interactions with corporations have had sky-rocketing costs.
Doubling the size of university bureaucracies probably played a role. Other factors like skyrocketing healthcare costs & transitioning into complex technological organizations probably did as well.

@ghark said:
You may want to research the education system a little more deeply before making criticisms of those that decide to pursue academia. The US education system is becoming increasingly privatised, and the corporations making the profits are often underwritten in part by public funding. Can you think of another situation where risk is placed on the taxpayer, but profits go to the corporations? Do you think it's fair?
In addition, go research the cost of education in the US in the 1980's and then compare the increases in education cost compared to the CPI, you might be a little shocked. Perhaps back in the 1980's your argument held some merit, but we're in 2011, you may as well type purple monkey dishwasher 15 times for all the weight your argument holds.


Which schools are you referring to, and what costs have skyrocketed? I'm not disagreeing, but by simply saying costs have sky rocketed, you're being a little vague. My point was also not that costs shouldn't be increasing more than the CPI, but simply that because they have, Rychan's point that people are getting themselves into their own mess is very misplaced, things have changed since that viewpoint was valid - even with a job these days many people struggle to pay off student debts (as the Fox interviewer mentions).

And it also comes back to the issue, should education be considered a human right? If it really is a stupid idea to educate yourself in America these days (as Rychan seems to suggest is the case for many people), perhaps something should be done? Just because it may be a bad economic decision to educate onseself doesn't mean the only other option is to remain uneducated, you can pursue policy change that leads to a better education system, take a stand!

I agree with you on the bureaucracies issue, I actually worked for my local University for a while, the pay was good, the job was easy, and the management layers were incredibly deep, we had around 10-11 layers from the lowest workers to upper management. The focus was on marketing; we wanted to present the best image we possibly could to potential Australian tertiary students, it's a numbers game, the more students we had the more profit we made. I was there for presentations from our upper management (such as the pro vice chancellor) and the issues always revolved around the economics of university business and getting published in as many journals as possible rather than the quality of teaching.

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^marbles:
You know what's funny is @MycroftHomlz, @hpqp, and few others love making "rude and trollish" comments on my sifts.

But how would you regulate to stop someone posting meaningful information?


I wasn't saying that I cared, just pointing out that some people are ignorant to what trolling is. If it bothered me what someone was posting, I'm pretty sure putting that person on ignore would solve my problem. But evidently some people are bed-wetting crybabies that think the sift revolves around them.

So you don't mind when governmental bodies show preference or reverence to certain religions. That's cool, but you don't have to distract from the real subject by ranting about PC crap and whiny atheist bitches being offended - since that has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I stand by my previous statement. It's STUPID EASY to keep religion outside of schools and where it belongs.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^braindonut:
So, your argument is that by leading the graduating class in a prayer, they weren't showing a preference towards the god they were praying to, over the numerous other religions they could have been honoring?
hmmm... yeah, that makes no sense at all.
It's not hard to keep religion out of schools. It's simple. Easy as hell. And the best move, in ALL cases.
>> ^Yogi:
>> ^braindonut:
Your comment makes no sense to me whatsoever.
It's really quite simple: Schools should not show preference to any religion. Period. That's what this principal just did. Whether or not there's a majority of people wanting to pray has absolutely nothing to do with it.
I hope they get sued.
>> ^longde:
Bullies? I don't think so. What's the big deal either way? If the majority of the students want to take a minute out of their ceremony and pray, so what? Let those fools pray. Noone has to participate. How are they hurting anyone to say a few religious words aloud?
If anyone is a bully, it's the kid who filed a lawsuit to defy them the right to pray. Now that is troll behavior. I am glad they defied the injunction.


Preference? Nobody who was christian got a better grade...they got a minute to do a prayer. News flash people are different and they get treated differently.


I'm sick of this PC shit. Everyone acts like they deserve things like never to be offended. If you don't like something don't participate, same with TV change the damn channel. It's completely narcissistic for you to say that because I'm an atheist everyone has to stop what they're doing and take me into account.
It's a fucking graduation, it's completely voluntary, I didn't even go to mine. So quit being a whiny little bitch and thinking that the whole world revolves around you. I'm an atheist too but I'm not gonna put up with whiny fucking atheists crying about unequal treatment, live under slavery and then come talk to me.

>> ^braindonut:

So, your argument is that by leading the graduating class in a prayer, they weren't showing a preference towards the god they were praying to, over the numerous other religions they could have been honoring?
hmmm... yeah, that makes no sense at all.
It's not hard to keep religion out of schools. It's simple. Easy as hell. And the best move, in ALL cases.
>> ^Yogi:
>> ^braindonut:
Your comment makes no sense to me whatsoever.
It's really quite simple: Schools should not show preference to any religion. Period. That's what this principal just did. Whether or not there's a majority of people wanting to pray has absolutely nothing to do with it.
I hope they get sued.
>> ^longde:
Bullies? I don't think so. What's the big deal either way? If the majority of the students want to take a minute out of their ceremony and pray, so what? Let those fools pray. Noone has to participate. How are they hurting anyone to say a few religious words aloud?
If anyone is a bully, it's the kid who filed a lawsuit to defy them the right to pray. Now that is troll behavior. I am glad they defied the injunction.


Preference? Nobody who was christian got a better grade...they got a minute to do a prayer. News flash people are different and they get treated differently.



I'm sick of this PC shit. Everyone acts like they deserve things like never to be offended. If you don't like something don't participate, same with TV change the damn channel. It's completely narcissistic for you to say that because I'm an atheist everyone has to stop what they're doing and take me into account.

It's a fucking graduation, it's completely voluntary, I didn't even go to mine. So quit being a whiny little bitch and thinking that the whole world revolves around you. I'm an atheist too but I'm not gonna put up with whiny fucking atheists crying about unequal treatment, live under slavery and then come talk to me.

Unfortunately, you yourself have just attempted to frame the conversation around the idea of "evidence standing on its own without having to frame it in a particular way."

See how perfidious this is? Not as easy as you suggest!


>> ^bcglorf:

When you start talking about 'framing' the conversation, you also start loosing my interest. "Framing" and "spinning" revolve around pushing a specific agenda or viewpoint. I detest it, I don't care what your take is on something, if you want to pretend you favor the scientific method, you've gotta accept the evidence standing on it's own with out having to frame it a particular way.

When you start talking about 'framing' the conversation, you also start loosing my interest. "Framing" and "spinning" revolve around pushing a specific agenda or viewpoint. I detest it, I don't care what your take is on something, if you want to pretend you favor the scientific method, you've gotta accept the evidence standing on it's own with out having to frame it a particular way.

A few thoughts:

1. Personal Revelation: I'm not sure why "God Told Me" is accorded a privileged, absolute position (by many, not sure if by sb) in terms of an information source. Surely a universe that includes supernatural beings interested in human behavior could also include a trickster-God capable of whispering things to someone or creating literally any kind of mental experience or situation (you know, for giggles)? Now, this could be claimed as a counterpoint to almost anything, and it's not really evidence for anything. It's not a good reason to not believe the whispering or something. However, doesn't it preclude absolute surety here? I mean, sure you could say it's more likely the whispering would be from the more powerful, "right" God - but, again, can you be absolutely sure? And if you can say "OK, I'm not absolutely sure - but I'm pretty dang sure" I think that's healthy. There's nothing wrong with picking what you feel is the vastly more likely explanation for an experience, I'm just objecting to the way some attribute absolute value here (again, not sure if this applies to specific participants of this discussion, but would value their thoughts here).

2. Punishment: I don't believe there's any "virtue" to justice or punishment. I think there's a practical societal requirement for deterrent to certain behaviors, and I think jail is a horrible, currently necessary evil (jail is marginally better than some other options, I think, because it mechanically prevents further offenses during incarceration as well as being a deterrent - and ideally it would provide education for reform, etc.. though I don't have much faith that that's happening currently). I don't understand the value of "justice" as an ideal or why it's seen as a virtue independent of these practical concerns. If people have free will and some are good and some are bad... well, whatever. As long as we can keep the bad people from hurting the good people (which, again, doesn't require any notion of justice), I don't see why we'd need to go about punishing anyone.

3. The End of Days: I will point out that shinyblurry's vision of how the whole final judgement scenario goes down is not shared by all of Christianity. There's significant variation between Christian denominations (though many of those, I assume, sb would not consider actual Christians - like Catholics or the previously mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses).

I think some of the confusion in this thread revolves around differing visions of judgement, differing ideas about what "Hell" constitutes, and the nature of God's omnipotence (which I think is a very big question). SB's posts here are essentially Theodicy, and that's a muddy job when these premises aren't well defined. I have some general ideas on SBs positions on these ideas, but I think it might clarify the discussion a bit if we knew his positions more clearly on things like:

1. Who will be in Hell, and does Hell include actual pain/torment (or is the torment more like, say, regret)?
2. What is the nature of God's omnipotence? Does it extend to control/creation of logic? What is his general relation to virtue/right?
3. What is the nature of God's omniscience, and what is your general conception of free will?

To be clear, I'm not trying to ask gotcha questions, or suggesting these questions don't have answers. I'm just asking what your answers are, as I think it'll clarify the discussion.

Ted is a great scientist. His life work as revolved around materials perception. He's also the guy behind this baddassery: http://www.gelsight.com/videos/

As many of you probably realize, almost every visual illusion was designed to illustrate some mechanism, or function of the visual system. This illusion is one of my favorites. It illustrates that the purpose of the visual system is not to directly "read out" luminance values from your retina, but instead to correctly interpret the reflectance properties of materials in the environment. Most often it's the properties of the materials themselves, not the properties of their illuminant which are important. However, the signals reaching your brain will depend drastically on both, and it is actually a relatively complicated process of 3d-scene reconstruction in order to parse out the reflectance properties you are interested in. Of course, the point of the illusion is to demonstrate just how automatic and subconscious this process is despite the obvious complexity.

How is this surprising? This kind of crap goes on in county jails, not just prisons. In fact, it's part of the inmate political system to put someone against a wall and unleash a barrage of attacks if there is a dispute -- especially if a member of one racial group did something negative against another racial group. The guards see it and don't interfere because they work around the system set up by the inmates. Shit, the inmates broadcast the news in English and Spanish every night after lights out. To think for even a moment that the guards aren't aware is foolish.

How do I know this? Marijuana prohibition allowed me the pleasure of being placed, sorry "housed", in a corrections facility for a couple days. At the time I did not have the money to afford anything other than a public attorney (who basically act as handjob machines for the police), therefore I went to jail. It should have just been a fine but they wanted to prove a point. What that point was, I don't know, but it really helped me learn to hate those greedy fucks.

Now think of all the lower income fools that get robbed blind by that system and expected to go back to society with no money, maybe a few extra scars, and with anger in their hearts. Who did they go to for moral support while in jail? Other criminals. It's not just a terribly flawed system. It's a carefully crafted machine that creates a revolving door policy; rather than help these mostly undereducated fools, we steal their money, release them, then pick them back up when they commit another petty crime and start all over again.

Due to entropy, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, etc, we know that there isn't such a thing as a perpetual motion machine. Everything which begins to exist does appear to end, including the Universe. For instance, the expansion of the Universe into heat death. A record player will wear out, a DVD player will break down. I believe that the temporal is temporary because it was created with a specific purpose which will end. After that, only that which is perfected and can co-exist with God eternally will remain.

Yes, talk of the eternal is intelligible. It doesn't mean we can't grasp a few concepts about it. One, it lasts forever, always has been, always will be. It never began to exist and it will never end. Two, it is essentially perfect, because it doesn't break down. It has no real flaw or weakness. It is self-contained and nothing could be added to it to make it better than it is in this sense.

Yes, you can doubt anything, but reality is orderly. It has a way which works and makes sense. I'm not sure why you believe time is only in the mind, because we can do very precise experiments on forces which show time as an emergent conception. What we perceive of time may be faulty, but clearly everything isn't happening at once; there is a logical progression to events which suggests time is more than in our minds.

As far as astronomical history you're talking about a history which is completely speculative and not based on observation, ie the origin of the moon, dinosaurs etc. If you doubt so much, why do you accept the secular narrative as truth? There are certain things such as the existence of the short period comets that proves a young earth. IE, if they're still here it means the Earth can't be that old. The secular narrative inserts the illusive and unobservable "Oort cloud" which supposedly replenishes all the comets.

Yes, I believe knowledge is certain and true, but I think you must see how limited beings with limited perceptions and knowledge take quite a bit on faith. Just in your normal life, you must see past your senses to navigate and interact with reality. You don't know everything that is going to happen, or even what you do know is even reliable, but you make the best of it. I don't see how anything could pass the "certainty" test.

I said what is spiritual couldn't be empircally proven, but I believe God has material evidence because He is a part of history. Where the rubber meets the road is the resurrection of Christ. God did interact with this world; He redeemed it. God isn't beholden to the world though, as if He needs anything..it is by Grace that He interacts with us. I will also tell you that God proves Himself. He promised to reveal Himself to those who come to Him in repentance of sin, who believe in Him and His resurrection and confess Him as Lord. To those He reveals Himself and grants eternal life. God can change a skeptic to a believer in a nanosecond, but He isn't going to show Himself to the world until the right time. What He wants is a heart willing to change, a broken and contrite heart coming to Him in total humility.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
@shinyblurry
There is no logical necessity for time to have an ending only because it had a beginning. A record player spinning with no end comes to mind. There is no reason to assume the end is necessarily destruction. A comparable analogy would be would be when a DVD is over; the fact that it has ended has nothing to do with its eradication. Either is plausible. There is also no reason to assume that something eternal will arise from temporal. It isn't impossible either, mind you, just not necessarily or shown to be the case.
I don't think it is possible to think about what is more plausible about eternity. We have no idea how to predicate eternity. We don't know "Being" is a consistent idea with "Eternal". Any type of talk about eternal is unintelligible. I don't mean that in a rude way, what I mean is I have no reason to believe anything that is said. If 2 things are logically possible, and I have no understanding of what it means to be eternal, then any talk about what is the more "likely" mode of an eternal metaphysics is a fruitless debate, rife with personal bias and little else.
And once again, this whole line of thought revolves around the very subjective idea of time. I have had no compelling argument to show time to be anything more than an experience of minds any more than the color blue. I have no reason to accept time as anything more than the way in which minds alter the information of the universe to make us more successful creatures.
I don't understand, beyond bias, why you would accept data about a young earth vs an old one with any less skepticism. Assuming they are using the same dating methods, why trust 10k year old earth and not 13 billion? The detective work that goes into the methods of age aren't perfect, prone to mis-calibration, and lack true modes to calibrate with, but it never claimed to be exact, just a rough cut. When they talk about the ages of dinosaurs, it usually has 50ish million year give or takes. Even our own solar history, and the history of our moon, and of Mars speak far more about a much older universe than a 10k year old one. I also can't see the Grand Canyon being made in 10k years. But isn't is a debate on the Christion bible, but on a more basic idea.
I am not an empiricist. I believe my classification is either a existential phenomenologist, or perhaps an transcendental idealist...most likely a combination of the two great schools of rationalism and empiricism. For me, knowledge is the same as Descartes put it. It is certain, and it is true. By certain, that means it passes Cartesian doubt. More to the point, it means that it has the right stuff to have an answer to every criticism. It is the opposite of doubt, it is certain. In that, religious evidence fails the certainty test, as the main element of all the great religions isn't knowledge, but faith. So to your point, prove that it can be known, with certainty and without any doubt any of the claims you have made, you would be the first in history to do so, to my knowledge. And to say that God can not be empirically proven seems rather lonely, for it means that God does not interact with this world; as empirical study is the world as it is beholden to man. If God is not beholden to the world which man exists, then he isn't really our God.

@shinyblurry

There is no logical necessity for time to have an ending only because it had a beginning. A record player spinning with no end comes to mind. There is no reason to assume the end is necessarily destruction. A comparable analogy would be would be when a DVD is over; the fact that it has ended has nothing to do with its eradication. Either is plausible. There is also no reason to assume that something eternal will arise from temporal. It isn't impossible either, mind you, just not necessarily or shown to be the case.

I don't think it is possible to think about what is more plausible about eternity. We have no idea how to predicate eternity. We don't know "Being" is a consistent idea with "Eternal". Any type of talk about eternal is unintelligible. I don't mean that in a rude way, what I mean is I have no reason to believe anything that is said. If 2 things are logically possible, and I have no understanding of what it means to be eternal, then any talk about what is the more "likely" mode of an eternal metaphysics is a fruitless debate, rife with personal bias and little else.

And once again, this whole line of thought revolves around the very subjective idea of time. I have had no compelling argument to show time to be anything more than an experience of minds any more than the color blue. I have no reason to accept time as anything more than the way in which minds alter the information of the universe to make us more successful creatures.

I don't understand, beyond bias, why you would accept data about a young earth vs an old one with any less skepticism. Assuming they are using the same dating methods, why trust 10k year old earth and not 13 billion? The detective work that goes into the methods of age aren't perfect, prone to mis-calibration, and lack true modes to calibrate with, but it never claimed to be exact, just a rough cut. When they talk about the ages of dinosaurs, it usually has 50ish million year give or takes. Even our own solar history, and the history of our moon, and of Mars speak far more about a much older universe than a 10k year old one. I also can't see the Grand Canyon being made in 10k years. But isn't is a debate on the Christion bible, but on a more basic idea.

I am not an empiricist. I believe my classification is either a existential phenomenologist, or perhaps an transcendental idealist...most likely a combination of the two great schools of rationalism and empiricism. For me, knowledge is the same as Descartes put it. It is certain, and it is true. By certain, that means it passes Cartesian doubt. More to the point, it means that it has the right stuff to have an answer to every criticism. It is the opposite of doubt, it is certain. In that, religious evidence fails the certainty test, as the main element of all the great religions isn't knowledge, but faith. So to your point, prove that it can be known, with certainty and without any doubt any of the claims you have made, you would be the first in history to do so, to my knowledge. And to say that God can not be empirically proven seems rather lonely, for it means that God does not interact with this world; as empirical study is the world as it is beholden to man. If God is not beholden to the world which man exists, then he isn't really our God.