I think she's describing Hume's Guillotine (http://www.philosophy-index.com/hume/guillotine/), or the is-ought problem, which is that certain statements describe what "is" and other describe what "ought to be", but you can't go from one to the other.

So it's raining outside. And if you go out side without a coat you'll get cold. So you ought to put a coat on?

Depends if you care about getting cold. The first two are facts, the last one is a choice, and the facts can't tell you what you want. The heart wants what the heart wants.

Picard's final statement seems straight out of Hume, who (if second-hand memory serves) felt that, as societies became wealthier, people would spend more of their time in contemplation.

Even so, I can't see getting around at least a unit of account: at some point, Starfleet will have to make a decision about commissioning a new space ship. To do that, they'll need to know what they could be doing with those resources if they didn't build a new ship. Thus, they'll need to know what it would cost them in foregone opportunities. To answer this, it's a convenient to have a single metric.

Kant, Hume, Descartes, Hobbes and now.... Cookie Monster.

I understand now why you garner such hostility from other Sifters . Still at least your trying to engage me intellectually, in that respect at least you may consider yourself light years ahead of most of your brethren.

I garner hostility here because most of the sifters here grew up in Christian households and they've rebelled against their parents and God and they don't want to hear anything about Him. This is their sanctuary where they enjoy mocking God and Christians without any dissenting voices. I'm here because I care but I wouldn't be here unless God told me to be here. I've tried to leave a few times and He keeps sending me back. Although not so much lately.

There appear to be two fundamental points of disagreement/misunderstanding here.

...Instead we apply Hegel's Dialectic:

Thesis- all statements are false

Antithesis- therefore the above statement must be false and some statements must be true

Synthesis- statements can be both true and false simultaneously!!!!!!!!!!!!

There are two ways, and only two ways, to know truth. Either you are omnipotent, or an omnipotent being reveals it to you. Since humans are not omnipotent it is impossible to know truth unless it is revealed to us by an omnipotent being, ie God. If you think there is another way to know truth, name it. Otherwise what is there to debate? If you don't think it's possible to know truth then you don't know anything. If you don't know anything then you have nothing to talk about.

"Nothing is true" is mere expression. It is a poetic sounding mantra which contains therein a deeper wisdom about the foundations of all human knowledge. You are not specially equipped to break the problem of "under-determination" as outlined by Philosophers like David Hume. God himself could appear to you and say/do anything he liked, it would not change the fundamental limits of the human condition.

Could God reveal Himself to you in a way that you could be absolutely certain of it? It doesn't matter what we can prove to one another; God could sufficiently prove Himself to me (He has) or to you and it would transcend every piece of rationale you've offered.

How could you possibly know for certain that it was not Satan out to trick you? Satan is a deeply powerful being after all, powerful enough to fabricate a profound spiritual experience don't you think? How could you ever prove that the God you worship is not the greatest impostor in the cosmos beyond all doubt?

I know it for certain because God has made me certain. I've seen things only an omnipotent God could do, such as arranging and timing circumstances which would require Him to be in complete and precise control of everything and everyone. Satan certainly can generate profound spiritual experiences (and blindness), which is why he is able to deceive the whole world.

I ask this because the God you worship DEMANDS that you do in fact worship him (and only him) on threat of divine punishment. No true God would ever require worship, let alone demand it! What kind of sick egotist are we dealing with? (the changes in the system related to that whole Jesus thing don;t make a difference here. Either This "God" started perfect or it is not what it claims to be! Past crimes count no matter what token amends were made later on)

God doesn't need us, woo. He had perfect love within His Trinity relationships before He created anything. He doesn't demand that we worship Him because He is egotistical, He commands us to worship Him to put us in right relationship with Him as the supreme good and sustainer of all things. He is the only appropiate object for our adoration, which also puts us in right relationship with other people. Human beings are built to worship; that is why the world is littered with the carcasses of false idols. I don't just mean pagan deities, I mean power, money, fame and all of the other things human beings lust and pine away for. The thing man most likes to worship is himself. Humanists worship the intellect, and the accomplishments of human civilization. These too are idols. Everyone has something they worship, when God is the only appropiate object of our worship. The love that we have to give to all of those things comes from Him, and that is why we return it to Him, which in turn leads to greater love for all people and things. Every other kind of worship is selfish and ultimately spiritual dead(and destructive). Thus this command to worship Him alone (we were created to be in relationship with Him) is for our growth, our protection, and so that we can be who He created us to be.

Your not the only one to have experienced encounters with things you might call "Gods" or "Angels/Daemons". But the God I found lies entirely within and demands/threatens ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and sets ABSOLUTELY NO CONDITIONS. It knows that all Monads (souls) will inevitably make their way back to it, and that it has the patience of eternity with which to wait.

How do you know that?

The fundamental difference is that this God did not create the universe (an absurd answer which demands infinitely more explanation than it provides), this God is created BY THE UNIVERSE!

The explanation you provide only pushes the "absurdity" back one step; you're still left with the same problem as you say I have. Yet, it is not a problem to believe in something eternal. To believe something came from nothing wouldbe the absurdity. Do you believe the Universe is eternal?

We are all "God" experiencing itself subjectively as it evolves teleologically towards perfection. If Consciousness is eternal then this is the only outcome that makes any sense. God being perfect and beyond all time experiences everything it is conceivably possible for a perfect being to experience within an instant of non-time. With all of eternity stretched it before it does the only sensible thing it could do, it commits suicide and returns the universe to a state of pure potential, ready to undergo the experience of evolving from the most basic "mathematical" principles to fully actualised and all powerful consciousness (i.e. back at God again). A fundamental part of this entire process is the journey from elemental and animalistic unconsciousness to fully self aware enlightened consciousness, the highest truth then is to discover that you yourself are God (at least in-potentia), not some mysterious external power.

If God is perfect, which He is, then He isn't limited. His joy never ends; it is the limitation of the human intellect that prevents you from understanding an infinite being, so you have devised a scenario based on those limitations where you impose a limitation on Gods experience so that He is forced to "commit suicide" in order to have new and enjoyable experiences. An infinite being experiences infinite joy. A perfect being will always be perfect. God doesn't evolve; a perfect being has no need to evolve or ever become "basic". He is eternally perfect, and we are not.

1 John 1:5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

The other is your conviction that the Gospel is absolutely true and that you appear to see everything related to it and the greater human spiritual quest via this filter. I'm not going to trade scripture with you on matters of pedantry it'll take all day and get neither of us anywhere. Instead I shall focus on one key argument that undermines the entire house of cards. If the God of Abraham and the old testament is one in the same as the God of which Jesus preaches (/is in corporeal form) and further more that the Old testament is in some way a true account of his/its actions......Then the God of Abraham and Jesus is demonstrably A. not perfect and B. malevolent/incompetent.

Yes, the God Abraham is the God Jesus is referring to. The error is that you think you understand God better than Jesus did. Jesus is the perfect representation of God; His exact image. If you've seen Jesus you have seen the Father. They are one and the same in terms of their character and every other attribute. You don't see that because you don't understand the scriptures. Jesus did, which is why He said things like this:

John 17:23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

The atheist version of studying the bible is to look for something that seems to contradict the claims of Christians so that they can throw it in the garbage and be done with it. You would see the same God that Jesus represents in the Old Testament if you understood the history that it presents.

Go ask the Benjamites or the Canaanites how they feel about this "God". Or how about the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah? The firstborn of Egypt? etc. etc.

Go ask the criminals on death row how they feel about the judge and prosecutor who sent them there. Does that mean they don't deserve to be there?

Yaweh demands Abraham sacrifice his own son, truly the act of a benevolent creature no? And while were on the subject what kind of "God" demands a blood sacrifice for anything? Even if it was a legitimate test of Abrahams faith (a highly dubious notion unto itself) what about the poor goat sacrificed in his sons stead?
This leads into the key difference between the Gnostic God/The Buddha/Dau/Chi etc. (Esoteric) and the Abrahamic God (Exoteric).....

God didn't ask Abraham to do anything that He wasn't willing to do Himself, but unlike Abraham God did sacrifice His son. This is what I mean when I say that you you're not understanding what you're reading. The sacrifice of Issac is a picture of Jesus Christ. You don't see these things because you don't know what to look for.

One merely offers the wisdom to transcend the suffering inherent in mortal life and make ones way back to union with that which we were all along. It is not invested in the material world, it is merely a higher expression of consciousness no longer bound by emergent natural laws. It never judges, it never condemns or punishes and it helps only those who are ready to help themselves.

The other demands blood sacrifices, incites genocides, sets strict rules and threatens you with damnation if you don't obey, demands worship (WORSHIP! WTF!!!!), inspires/authors deeply contradictory and difficult to understand written works (it expects you to accept on faith alone), claims to be a perfect creator of a universe into which suffering and imperfection are inherent (perfect beings do not create imperfect things) etc. etc.

Here is the difference..the God you describe wants to "help" you out of a situation that it created because of its own limitations and need for self-gratification. It is not only responsible for evil, but it does nothing about it. The God you describe is limited, selfish and immoral.

The way you describe my God is a strawman argument in itself. It is not an accurate representation of the biblical account. The God of the Universe created a perfect Universe and endowed His creatures with free will. The creatures He created freely chose to do evil and this is what brought sin and death into the world. This is the reason for the imperfection, and God, at great personal cost to Himself, restored and reconciled His creation through Jesus Christ.

You won't be able to understand the bible without Gods help:

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

That's why I suggested you read the gospel of John, if you really do want to understand God accurately, and pray for assistance.

I don't side with Lucifer (I think she has the opposite problem to Jehova i.e. enlightenment at all costs as quickly as possible and damm the journey to get there), but I do recognise her as the fundamentally opposing force to Jehovah/Allah out of which a higher synthesis emerges (Abraxas the Gnostic God of light, or whatever you want to call it). Jehovah represents supreme attachment to the material world (R>0),

It's a false dichotomy. What you're describing when you refer to God is the gnostic demiurge, which bears no resemblence to the God of the bible. There are no opposing forces to be spoken of because there is no actual duality. God is only light and the only thing He is attached to is His children, because He freely loves them. He is the only power in the Universe. Satan has a paper kingdom; it is just shadows on the wall. In any case, you can't escape the corruption caused by your sin nature. If you shatter a mirror, no matter how well you glue it back together it will never reflect purely again. It doesn't need to be repaired, it needs to be replaced. This is why Jesus said you need to be born again:

John 3:3 Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

When you receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, He will send the Holy Spirit to live inside of you and make you a new person. You are spiritually dead in sins and transgressions, but the Holy Spirit will regenerate your spirit and cleanse you from all of your sin.

while Lucifer supreme attachment to the spiritual/mental (R=0). A wise man see's the two as a personification of the two highest drives in the human psyche and thus concepts to be transcended/mastered.

Satan desired one thing, which was to be God. He became prideful because of his great beauty and intellect and based on his ignorance of Gods true nature, he tried to form a rebellion against God to replace Him and was kicked out of Heaven. This is essentially the process you are describing for those who believe they are God. All Satan is trying to do is duplicate his errors in you and as many other people as he can so that he can destroy them before his time comes. He can't strike back at God directly so he goes after his creatures. Satan is an imitator; he is a potter just as God is a potter. He is doing everything possible to shape and mold you into his image and character, and he has entire universes of deception waiting for you, filled with as much "secret knowledge and wisdom" as you desire. He has a door for every kind of person, every kind of philosophy; his is the broad road that leads to destruction. Jesus said enter through the narrow gate:

Mat 7:13 "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

Mat 7:14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Either way I regard worshipping the God of Abraham as the "one true God" to be a supreme mistake, if Jesus professes to preach that same God's gospel then following him would be a supreme mistake also. I show no fealty to torture Gods, I have more self respect than that.

You surely prefer the idol you have created in your own mind, because that is the god who allows you to do whatever you want. That's all this is really about. Do you know what Jesus said the reason is that men won't come to God?:

John 3:19-21

19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”

You don't get to decide who God is, and just because you don't think you should be accountable for what you've done in this life doesn't mean you won't be.

For the record. I love you as much as any other creature in this cosmos but I don't pray to anything for your soul to be saved. Truly it was never in jeopardy in the first place! That part of you which lies beyond the limits of mortality will find its way back to the highest state eventually no matter what, even if it takes eons. In the mean time however I'm happy to waste a small portion of said eons arguing (I suspect futilely) with you on the internet.

God loves you and I love you, and that's why I am telling you all of this. The highest state is the lowest state:

Mat 23:11 The greatest among you shall be your servant.

Mat 23:12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

(I'll get back to you on some of your other more specific points at a later point, I don't have the time or inclination to dig out the texts to make those counter arguments right now.)

Take your time. God bless.

I understand now why you garner such hostility from other Sifters . Still at least your trying to engage me intellectually, in that respect at least you may consider yourself light years ahead of most of your brethren.

There appear to be two fundamental points of disagreement/misunderstanding here.

First if your reliance on Aristotelian Logic to attack my Dialectic argument. When I said you were using the language with which I described to counter instead of addressing the underlying concept it was to this I was alluding (not clearly enough it seems).
Philosophers (good ones anyway) have largely up on traditional Aristotelian logic as a means to extrapolate objective truth because it functions only upon linguistic syntax. The very fact that such a fundamental assertion as "nothing is true" is mutually contradictory as a prime example of this. The language we use to describe and frame the problem simultaneously limits our ability to comprehend it. As I suspect you well know deeper conceptual matters are often too deep to be fully expressed by mere syntax based language.
Instead we apply Hegel's Dialectic:

Thesis- all statements are false

Antithesis- therefore the above statement must be false and some statements must be true

Synthesis- statements can be both true and false simultaneously!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Nothing is true" is mere expression. It is a poetic sounding mantra which contains therein a deeper wisdom about the foundations of all human knowledge. You are not specially equipped to break the problem of "under-determination" as outlined by Philosophers like David Hume. God himself could appear to you and say/do anything he liked, it would not change the fundamental limits of the human condition.

How could you possibly know for certain that it was not Satan out to trick you? Satan is a deeply powerful being after all, powerful enough to fabricate a profound spiritual experience don't you think? How could you ever prove that the God you worship is not the greatest impostor in the cosmos beyond all doubt? I ask this because the God you worship DEMANDS that you do in fact worship him (and only him) on threat of divine punishment. No true God would ever require worship, let alone demand it! What kind of sick egotist are we dealing with? (the changes in the system related to that whole Jesus thing don;t make a difference here. Either This "God" started perfect or it is not what it claims to be! Past crimes count no matter what token amends were made later on)


Your not the only one to have experienced encounters with things you might call "Gods" or "Angels/Daemons". But the God I found lies entirely within and demands/threatens ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and sets ABSOLUTELY NO CONDITIONS. It knows that all Monads (souls) will inevitably make their way back to it, and that it has the patience of eternity with which to wait.
The fundamental difference is that this God did not create the universe (an absurd answer which demands infinitely more explanation than it provides), this God is created BY THE UNIVERSE!
We are all "God" experiencing itself subjectively as it evolves teleologically towards perfection. If Consciousness is eternal then this is the only outcome that makes any sense. God being perfect and beyond all time experiences everything it is conceivably possible for a perfect being to experience within an instant of non-time. With all of eternity stretched it before it does the only sensible thing it could do, it commits suicide and returns the universe to a state of pure potential, ready to undergo the experience of evolving from the most basic "mathematical" principles to fully actualised and all powerful consciousness (i.e. back at God again). A fundamental part of this entire process is the journey from elemental and animalistic unconsciousness to fully self aware enlightened consciousness, the highest truth then is to discover that you yourself are God (at least in-potentia), not some mysterious external power.

R>=0 (R= distance between two points)



The other is your conviction that the Gospel is absolutely true and that you appear to see everything related to it and the greater human spiritual quest via this filter. I'm not going to trade scripture with you on matters of pedantry it'll take all day and get neither of us anywhere. Instead I shall focus on one key argument that undermines the entire house of cards. If the God of Abraham and the old testament is one in the same as the God of which Jesus preaches (/is in corporeal form) and further more that the Old testament is in some way a true account of his/its actions......Then the God of Abraham and Jesus is demonstrably A. not perfect and B. malevolent/incompetent.

Go ask the Benjamites or the Canaanites how they feel about this "God". Or how about the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah? The firstborn of Egypt? etc. etc.

Yaweh demands Abraham sacrifice his own son, truly the act of a benevolent creature no? And while were on the subject what kind of "God" demands a blood sacrifice for anything? Even if it was a legitimate test of Abrahams faith (a highly dubious notion unto itself) what about the poor goat sacrificed in his sons stead?
This leads into the key difference between the Gnostic God/The Buddha/Dau/Chi etc. (Esoteric) and the Abrahamic God (Exoteric).....

One merely offers the wisdom to transcend the suffering inherent in mortal life and make ones way back to union with that which we were all along. It is not invested in the material world, it is merely a higher expression of consciousness no longer bound by emergent natural laws. It never judges, it never condemns or punishes and it helps only those who are ready to help themselves.

The other demands blood sacrifices, incites genocides, sets strict rules and threatens you with damnation if you don't obey, demands worship (WORSHIP! WTF!!!!), inspires/authors deeply contradictory and difficult to understand written works (it expects you to accept on faith alone), claims to be a perfect creator of a universe into which suffering and imperfection are inherent (perfect beings do not create imperfect things) etc. etc.

I don't side with Lucifer (I think she has the opposite problem to Jehova i.e. enlightenment at all costs as quickly as possible and damm the journey to get there), but I do recognise her as the fundamentally opposing force to Jehovah/Allah out of which a higher synthesis emerges (Abraxas the Gnostic God of light, or whatever you want to call it). Jehovah represents supreme attachment to the material world (R>0), while Lucifer supreme attachment to the spiritual/mental (R=0). A wise man see's the two as a personification of the two highest drives in the human psyche and thus concepts to be transcended/mastered.
Or if you want to put your scientific head on for a moment they represent the Left and Right hand brain (all truths are relative, one can approach this from a purely psychological/neuroscience position and argue the same case just with less colourful imagery ).

Either way I regard worshipping the God of Abraham as the "one true God" to be a supreme mistake, if Jesus professes to preach that same God's gospel then following him would be a supreme mistake also. I show no fealty to torture Gods, I have more self respect than that.


For the record. I love you as much as any other creature in this cosmos but I don't pray to anything for your soul to be saved. Truly it was never in jeopardy in the first place! That part of you which lies beyond the limits of mortality will find its way back to the highest state eventually no matter what, even if it takes eons. In the mean time however I'm happy to waste a small portion of said eons arguing (I suspect futilely) with you on the internet.

(I'll get back to you on some of your other more specific points at a later point, I don't have the time or inclination to dig out the texts to make those counter arguments right now.)

Didn't David Hume come to a similar conclusion though?

Don't try and pawn this off on me. It's not my "excuse". I'm closed only to one idea: of my being absolutely certain about anything. I'm not closed to any other idea, period. You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story. And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

Let me get this straight..you're completely closed to the idea of being absolutely certain of something. Think about that for a minute and see if you can spot the inherent contradiction contained within this idea.

If I say there is absolute truth, and someone says no there isn't, and I say are you absolutely sure about that?, this isn't a trivial question. That's what I used to think, that it was some kind of cheap trick, and ultimately meaningless. Don't be like I was and just dismiss this without giving it a great deal of thought. The fact is, you can't deny the idea of absolute truth without confirming it. It's not a cheap parlor cheap of logic, it is a revelation of the framework of reality, of how things really work. That there really is a certain truth, and everything you ultimately believe, flawed logic and all, ultimately points to it. It actually could be no other way. There is a ground for everything we know and understand. The atheist says though that's he is standing on air. The issue is that subjective beings can't know anything about objective reality so they grope around in the dark trying to understand what truth is. An atheism has no route to get beyond his subjective understanding. The only way you can understand truth then is by the light of revelation. IE, someone without objective understanding (an omniscient being) would have to enlighten you. If you've never seen light then you won't understand what darkness is. Jesus said if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

What I believe is that you were not systematic in trying to understand your experience. When you woke up from it and figured out that you were being led down a path to insanity, you just wrote the whole thing off as being entirely in your mind. I would liken this to coming home one day and finding a group of thieves moving furniture out of your house and loading it into a truck. You ask them what they're doing and they say that they are a moving company and that you called them and set up an appointment 2 weeks ago to move you out, and don't you remember? Oh wow, you say, it must have skipped my mind! It looks like it was just a rash idea of mine, really sorry for this inconvenience! You then proceed to help them move your furniture back into your house.

As you're moving everything back in, you notice the door has been busted open and the house has been ransacked. You ask them about this and they say that just earlier you were here trying to let them into house but you couldn't find your key so you kicked the door in because you didn't want to keep them waiting. You then tore the house apart looking for your keys, and when you found them you left to go get something to eat and that's where you've been this whole time. Pondering this you decide that if you could forget about calling them in the first place then you could most certainly forget about doing all of those other things too.

So you finally get everything back in the house and you again apologize profusely for wasting their time, but as they are leaving, they say don't worry about it because we were never here. We're just part of a dream you're having. Goodbye! You think to yourself, considering the memory problems I've been having, this seems very reasonable. The next day a friend stops by and asks you what happened to your house. Oh, it was all a bad dream, you say. I apparently did all of this in my sleep, but it's over now, not to worry!

I don't know what your experience was; typically, they try to convince you that you're some kind of Messiah-like figure, or that reality is centered around you in some way. What I do know is that things happened to you which you cannot explain; signs and wonders, strange "coincidences", etc. These were the signposts in your journey that reinforced your paradigm and kept you on that road. You want to believe that it was all in your head rather than a strategic plan to destroy you, so you chalk it up to delusion. It wasn't all delusion, though; you were being herded down a path, probably with the goal of getting you to kill yourself, and it's only because they went too far that you woke up from that spell.

You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story.

I can't convince you of anything. This isn't an intellectual problem that you're having, it is an issue of your heart. Only God can convince you, but your heart is hardened towards Him and you refuse to come near to Him.

And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

That's just what I've been saying all along, that there is a certain truth, and God reveals it to those who seek Him. That truth is Jesus Christ. You've admitted that God could convince me, so it isn't an inherently irrational position.

All you're telling me is that you are convinced of something, and FWIW, I believe that you are. You have no grounds to believe that your human perceived conviction is warranted, especially given that you know of many other humans who are equally convicted about things that contradict what you believe. That alone should give you doubt about your convictions, as it gives me doubt. If it doesn't give you doubt, you're not being rational. What's more likely: that you alone are correct among all the millions of equally convicted people, or that all equally convicted people, including you, are wrong? What makes you so special?

Nothing makes me special; I simply responded to Gods calling. I can explain why people follow false religion in imitation of the true God, which is that Satan blinds the eyes of unbelievers so that they cannot know the truth about God. He backs up their experiences with supernatural signs and wonders so that they believe they are on the right path. Satan is an imitator of God:

2Co 11:13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
2Co 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
2Co 11:15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

I DO doubt my own existence -- at least, I don't take it as fact that I exist. I could be a brain in a vat, etc. I don't accept my own senses either as categorical evidence. I live as if they're accurate because it's instinctive and it serves me to do so. Skepticism is not ignorance. Accepting something absolutely and uncritically is ignorance. You expect me to accept your word on faith. Why should I believe you? You're just some random person on their internet soapbox who claims to have visions of god. See how stupid it would be for me to change my life because of that? You wouldn't.

I don't think you're actually that skeptical, because I haven't really seen you critically examine your own presuppositions. You say that you don't have any preference for the truth, but that is clearly not true. You are very slanted in favor of a liberal/humanistic/naturalistic mindset, and you oppose any ideas which contradict it. You clearly do accept some things, like evolution for instance, as the gospel truth. This is very inconsistent with your statements about uncertainty. You've seen the human capacity to delude itself, so you keep saying, but you don't seem to question the thought process that leads you to any of these conclusions.

The reason I came to be a Christian, and no one ever witnessed to me by the way, is because I wanted to know the truth and God showed me what it is. I had sufficient evidence from God to give my life to Jesus, and then Jesus completely transformed me and made me a new person. I didn't expect any of that to happen. I had no idea what it would mean to become a Christian. But it did happen, supernaturally, and I found out later that it matched up to everything the bible said would happen. It's one thing to use confirmation bias to make a bunch of coincidence and happenstance into some kind of experience of God. It's another to be transformed at the core of your being into an entirely new person, losing all the negatives and gaining an unlimited supply of peace, joy, hope and love. Even more so when it happens within a moment in time. I've seen miracles, and I've seen things like demon possession. I am certain because God made me certain, but there is plenty of evidence to justify my certainty.

You are certain about God's revelation to you because God has given you certainty of it. That's tautology, if you're a rational agent.

Actually, it's circular reasoning. You will find that every inductive argument suffers from this problem. You cannot actually ultimately justify a single one of your beliefs to me. The conversation could go like this:

You: (objection to a stated fact or belief)
Me: Is that a rational statement?
You: Yes, it is logical.
Me: How do you know it is logical?
You: Because I reason it to be so.
Me: How do you know your reasoning is valid?
You: Because I reason it to be so.

Repeat ad infinitum. You've admitted that you can't trust your senses, and you just assume that you're rational because it's instinctive, which provides you no ultimate justification for anything you believe. That you're telling me it's wrong to use circular reason is absurd since everything you believe is based on it.

Circular reasoning is not necessarily fallacious because you cannot point to an ultimate authority for any claim without using it. Look at the issues this problem of induction causes when it comes to proving scientific theory:

"Joel Feinberg and Russ Shafer-Landau note that “using the scientific method to judge the scientific method is circular reasoning”. Scientists attempt to discover the laws of nature and to predict what will happen in the future, based on those laws. However, per David Hume's problem of induction, science cannot be proven inductively by empirical evidence, and thus science cannot be proven scientifically. An appeal to a principle of the uniformity of nature would be required to deductively necessitate the continued accuracy of predictions based on laws that have only succeeded in generalizing past observations. But as Bertrand Russell observed, “The method of ‘postulating’ what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

You cannot use empirical evidence to prove empiricism is valid, just as you can't use the scientific method to prove the scientific method is valid. Therefore science cannot be proven scientifically! It needs an ultimate justification which cannot be proven inductively. Therefore, you would have to use a deductive argument by presupposing the uniformity of nature to justify the continued accuracy of the predictions of science. But again, just assuming the uniformity in nature leads you to the same problem. The only evidence you have that the future will be like the past is in the past. Therefore it would be fallacious reasoning to say the future will be like the past because of the past.

This is where the problem comes in for the atheist, because he must use viciously circular reasoning, which is always fallacious. I can point to God to justify logic, truth, the uniformity in nature, and my own rationality. These concepts don't make any sense in an atheistic worldview, because there is no way to justify them. My reasoning isn't viciously circular..I can point to an ultimate authority. Your reason is viciously circular because you must point to yourself as the authority.

You want God to be real so you deny all evidence even to other *possibilities*, let alone facts.

I didn't originally go looking for God. He tapped me on the shoulder. I didn't become a Christian because I wanted God to be real, I became a Christian because the evidence indicated He is real.

I don't want anything in particular to be real. I only want to be as sure as possible of what I do believe.

I don't think you want the Christian God to be real, and would prefer that He wasn't. What you can be sure of is that you cannot ultimately justify any of your beliefs.

Yes, of course a god could convince you, but just because you're convinced, doesn't mean it was God who did it. That would be a faulty syllogism. Minds can play the most amazing tricks on people. That's documented fact.

How is it that when you have evidence that confirms your belief, it's faulty, but when you reject that evidence, it's rational? Just because you can potentially falsify an idea doesn't mean it has been falsified. I have a path to the truth, as you've admitted. God could make me certain, and He could reveal truth, so it isn't irrational to believe it, considering the overwhelming evidence that I have received, and continue to receive, each and every day. When God touches your life, you have a justified true belief in Him. In every case, when God makes someone certain, they are going to justified in saying that they're certain. You would say all these people are delusional, but you have no way to be able to tell the difference. Only the individual could really know that they've been touched by God. The only way you could find out is if you were yourself touched by God. That's what I've been trying to tell you all along. I can't convince you, but God can. He loves you and He is waiting for you to soften your heart and seek His face. That is the only thing which will prove or disprove my claim.


>> ^messenger:

stuff

One of them is already in . . .

http://videosift.com/video/Obama-Romney-Obama


>> ^A10anis:

If it wasn't so serious, it WOULD be funny. But if Romney and this joker are voted in, when the shit hits the fan, voters will have no-one to blame but themselves...

One of them is already in . . .

http://videosift.com/video/Obama-Romney-Obama


In reply to this comment by A10anis:
If it wasn't so serious, it WOULD be funny. But if Romney and this joker are voted in, when the shit hits the fan, voters will have no-one to blame but themselves...

Cenk's take: http://videosift.com/video/Breaking-Down-Paul-Ryans-Fox-News-Interview-With-Brit-Hume

I'm very happy you liked it. I almost deleted that post because I was afraid the whole thing was too pompous. But I figured, ultimately, who could argue with the sentiment..."Garfield" really was a horrible film.


In reply to this comment by ChaosEngine:
In reply to this comment by TheFreak:
Put a thousand fruit flies in a box and you can watch the entire circle of life, played out in multiple generations, in a matter of days.
Now, stand back far enough to view the entirety of human existence in one box and the objective eye will discern no greater purpose than the fruit fly. We live, we reproduce, we die. All of human evolution and technical advancement bent to the simple purpose of continuing to exist.

We are ultimately seperated from the fruit fly by one thing; a simple question,
"Why?"

The contemplation of our own mortality is undoubtedly the single factor that has inspired us to become more than the sum of our individual lives. The yearning to outlive ourselves, to defy the inherent pointlessness of existence, to deny the emptiness of the void that precedes us and remains, undisturbed, after we're gone. The human defiance of the finity and futility of life drives the greatest achievements of our species.

Humanity, alone among the animals of the earth, has taken the gifts of evolution and harnessed them to scream its answer to the empty cosmos with soul wrenching achievements of art and philosophy. Those creations of mankind that we experience as a feeling, rising up from inside us and overwhelming our minds with a beauty and perfection far greater than ourselves.

The great accomplishments of mankind that elevate the purpose of our existence:
The philosophy of Aristotle
The architecture of Angkor Wat and St. Peter's Basilica
The art and discovery of Leonardo Da Vinci
The grandeur of the Sistine Chapel and the humble beauty of Van Gogh
The feets of engineering; the great wall of china and Apollo moon landing
All the great works of the most inspired among us, who could encapsulate beauty, wonder, humor and tragedy into discrete works of brilliance:

Shakespeare, Sophocles, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Kepler, Gödel, Newton, Hippocrates, Bach, Wagner, Coltrane, Hume, Kant, Descartes, Tesla, Gutenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright...
...and Bill Murray.

Except for his work on Garfield.
That movie was fucking horrible.


My life is better for having read that comment.

In reply to this comment by TheFreak:
Put a thousand fruit flies in a box and you can watch the entire circle of life, played out in multiple generations, in a matter of days.
Now, stand back far enough to view the entirety of human existence in one box and the objective eye will discern no greater purpose than the fruit fly. We live, we reproduce, we die. All of human evolution and technical advancement bent to the simple purpose of continuing to exist.

We are ultimately seperated from the fruit fly by one thing; a simple question,
"Why?"

The contemplation of our own mortality is undoubtedly the single factor that has inspired us to become more than the sum of our individual lives. The yearning to outlive ourselves, to defy the inherent pointlessness of existence, to deny the emptiness of the void that precedes us and remains, undisturbed, after we're gone. The human defiance of the finity and futility of life drives the greatest achievements of our species.

Humanity, alone among the animals of the earth, has taken the gifts of evolution and harnessed them to scream its answer to the empty cosmos with soul wrenching achievements of art and philosophy. Those creations of mankind that we experience as a feeling, rising up from inside us and overwhelming our minds with a beauty and perfection far greater than ourselves.

The great accomplishments of mankind that elevate the purpose of our existence:
The philosophy of Aristotle
The architecture of Angkor Wat and St. Peter's Basilica
The art and discovery of Leonardo Da Vinci
The grandeur of the Sistine Chapel and the humble beauty of Van Gogh
The feets of engineering; the great wall of china and Apollo moon landing
All the great works of the most inspired among us, who could encapsulate beauty, wonder, humor and tragedy into discrete works of brilliance:

Shakespeare, Sophocles, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Kepler, Gödel, Newton, Hippocrates, Bach, Wagner, Coltrane, Hume, Kant, Descartes, Tesla, Gutenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright...
...and Bill Murray.

Except for his work on Garfield.
That movie was fucking horrible.


My life is better for having read that comment.

Put a thousand fruit flies in a box and you can watch the entire circle of life, played out in multiple generations, in a matter of days.
Now, stand back far enough to view the entirety of human existence in one box and the objective eye will discern no greater purpose than the fruit fly. We live, we reproduce, we die. All of human evolution and technical advancement bent to the simple purpose of continuing to exist.

We are ultimately seperated from the fruit fly by one thing; a simple question,
"Why?"

The contemplation of our own mortality is undoubtedly the single factor that has inspired us to become more than the sum of our individual lives. The yearning to outlive ourselves, to defy the inherent pointlessness of existence, to deny the emptiness of the void that precedes us and remains, undisturbed, after we're gone. The human defiance of the finity and futility of life drives the greatest achievements of our species.

Humanity, alone among the animals of the earth, has taken the gifts of evolution and harnessed them to scream its answer to the empty cosmos with soul wrenching achievements of art and philosophy. Those creations of mankind that we experience as a feeling, rising up from inside us and overwhelming our minds with a beauty and perfection far greater than ourselves.

The great accomplishments of mankind that elevate the purpose of our existence:
The philosophy of Aristotle
The architecture of Angkor Wat and St. Peter's Basilica
The art and discovery of Leonardo Da Vinci
The grandeur of the Sistine Chapel and the humble beauty of Van Gogh
The feets of engineering; the great wall of china and Apollo moon landing
All the great works of the most inspired among us, who could encapsulate beauty, wonder, humor and tragedy into discrete works of brilliance:

Shakespeare, Sophocles, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Kepler, Gödel, Newton, Hippocrates, Bach, Wagner, Coltrane, Hume, Kant, Descartes, Tesla, Gutenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright...
...and Bill Murray.

Except for his work on Garfield.
That movie was fucking horrible.

@GeeSussFreeK

The whole "what is True/Real?" is a ridiculous posture to begin with, since we know full well that our knowledge is limited by our sensory input and mental faculties as homo sapiens (one of Hume's main points if I remember correctly). "Reality" and "facts/evidence", when spoken of in science, are always taken with that knowledge in the background, which is what allows one theory to be replaced with another or refined, i.e. scientific progress. Who cares if this is all a computer simulation, or a butterfly's dream, so long as the science works? Well, religious people do, and they are usually the ones to bandy around words such as TRUTH with a capital T, what with their god being omniscient/omnipotent and all.

So no, the uncertainty underlying scientific theories has nothing to do with the uncertainty of religious beliefs, and especially not with the Abrahamic faiths, which paint themselves into a corner by being so specific about their god and his creation/functions.

@A10anis

Agnosticism is an epistemological position of the uncertainty of knowledge of things. In other words, the nature of knowledge about God, or knowledge in general really, as many above have pointed out (I'm taking it you did read the nice chart above!). Theism or Atheism is a position, either knowingly or unknowing rejecting or accepting the idea of God; one can be explicitly or implicitly atheist (like all children not exposed to the idea are implicitly atheist). Agnostic Atheist is the most common position, but few people have complete understanding of all the concepts involved, or have their own private understandings of what they mean; making any unilateral criticism troublesome. As to the foundations of science and Mathematics, Kurt Gödel had had a great role to play in the destruction of what most peoples concept of certain systems are. And the o so smart Karl Popper ideas on falsifiability has thrown the antique notion of certain truth from science against the wall, in which modern Philosophers of Science, like Hilary Putnam have found intractable to solve, except to say that very little separates, currently, the foundations of science form the foundations of any other dabble of the imagination. Einstein talked about this as well, that wonderment is really the pursuit of all great scientists...not certainty.

As to my original claim, that science has truths it can not rectify, I leave it to better minds to explain the problems of induction. David Hume, Nelson Goodman, and Kurt Gödel drastically changed any view of certain knowledge from science and maths that I had. The untenable nature of the empirical evaluation of reality is just as uncertain as Abrahamic codifications being real.

I close with this, some of the greatest minds in the history of science and philosophy had no problem, nay, drew power from the deep richness they gathered from their faith. It drove them to the limits of the thoughts of their day, René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal, Alan Turing (who kept some vestibules of faith even after what happened to him), Georg Cantor, and countless others all had some "irrational" faith was more than just a ideal system of commands by some dead people, it drove them to greatness, and in many cases to rejection and madness of their "rational" peers. Georg Cantor, the father of the REAL infinite, died in a mental institution only to have his ideas lite a fire in the minds of the next generation of mathematicians.

It is my believe that we all want to have issue with x number of people, and make peace with y number. We elevate the slightest difference, or conversely, ignore a great flaw to peg this mark just right for us. Perhaps my y is just bigger than your x, or most peoples x as I find this debate I have is a common one; for tolerance, peace, and consideration. If you still think what I am saying is non-sense, then I guess we have nothing more to say to one another. I hope I cleared up my thoughts a bit more, I am not very good at communicating things that are more than just the average amount of esoteric.