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One thing I can think of: Very specific and very unlikely predictions about the future. God does not have to physically speak these predictions to me, they can come via some sort of interpreter. For example, if a friend told me, "Yahweh told me that at 10:24:43 a.m. on May 24, 2019, an 1 km x 1...

I have just been reading through Genesis for the first time in several years and I have a few questions. 1) Why does God switch between plural and singular throughout the first two chapters of Genesis? For example, Genesis 1:26 reads, "Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our...

Welcome. There are many branches of Christianity and I would caution you from equating what a particular group of Christians say in 2018 with what God is or what Jesus said 2000 years ago. There's a lot to unpack and a lot of historical baggage. Yes, very likely. The idea that parts of the...

No one knows. Better to live life focusing on the life you actually have right now (and the lives of those around you) rather than the possible afterlife you may or may not have after death. If dying means going to eternal bliss in heaven with God, then death is the ultimate gift and life is...

No True Scotsman

Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda includes claims of divinity, resurrection, direct connection to God, miraculous healings, miraculous events etc. According to the book the guru known as Babaji is the incarnate God. It was written in the 1950s (very recent). Many people knew...

I recently read the book "Why Buddhism Is True" by Robert Wright. In the book, he outlines why and how various ideas in Buddhism align very well with modern psychology and neurology. As we learn more about how the brain functions, it seems that science regularly confirms some basic notions of...

Sorry about the delayed response. I agree that this is a methodologic assumption. The "lower" categories are not any "less real" than the "higher ones" in a subjective sense. But the more general category is more objective. The idea being that, no matter how you look at a rock, you can always...

I really appreciate your responses as you are probably the most engaging of the respondents so far :) Everything you've said thus far is very plausible. Our minds enjoy categorizing things but the more we learn about the universe, the more we see that these categories, while useful, are...

We invented microscopes and telescopes and ultraviolet sensors and computers which allow us to access facets of the universe well beyond the sensory faculties that evolution constrained us with. Is it transcendent to look in a microscope? You must be a fan of Deepak Chopra, right?

I can also feel the emotion called "love" or "fear". But, as far as I can tell, these are just subjective experiences contingent upon my existence rather than fundamentally existing themselves. Is God like this?

This is mostly a word salad, but I'll try to address it: There are several ways to define the universe. Scientists often describe the "observable universe" which is the farthest light we can see based on the age since the universe began expanding. A more all-encompassing view is that the...

Thanks for the reply. Like I said to an earlier poster, your argument from the Big Bang may be valid in determining that something transcendent caused the Big Bang billions of years ago. But most theists argue that God exists here and now. So I don't see why you need to reach billions of...

Fair enough. But why would they believe he does? Everyone has a reason for their beliefs. And not all reasons are valid or consistent. Someone's belief in the tooth fairy might be very real for them, but the reality of their feeling has no bearing on the actual existence of the tooth fairy...

This sounds like an "Everything Exists" scenario. Your argument argues that God exists because everything else is not-God. But someone could argue that Cthulu exists because everything else is not-Cthulu. Or mermaids exist because everything else is not-mermaids. Or apples exist because...

(emphasis mine) That's a big if, first of all. I see no reason why this is not just a coincidence. If yes, then the most honest answer is that we don't know the explanation and any offers of "explanations" are pure speculation.

I appreciate this answer and I will add an edit to my original post. I think I could broaden your answer to basically say that we have another criteria for determining if something exists based on the effects it has on other things that exist. For example, if you hear a thud in another room...

You can see atoms using an electron microscope. People have now manipulated atoms into specific shapes and even spelled out sentences with individual atoms or wrote a code for a song using individual atoms. You can see atoms. You can see trees. Ad hom. Noted. I no longer have time for these...

Rather than asking whether or not God exists, I instead want to focus on the epistemological criteria that we use to determine whether things in general exist and how that applies to God when someone says God "exists". My personal view is that the criteria should be consistent. If A exists...

Hedonism seeks pleasure and happiness and fulfillment as the primary aims of human life. What many people think will bring them happiness and fulfillment often, paradoxically, does not actually bring them happiness and fulfillment. Most people (especially Christians) associate hedonism with...