What Would Evidence for God's Existence Be Like?

[KCfromNC]

I don't know if it is just me, but your thoughts seem to be all over the place.

You are not alone. This is fairly typical of someone who "knows" what the answer is and is searching for a way - any way at all - to get there.

 

[Freodin]

Remember Matthew 7:6. I've been having trouble remembering myself but am going to put forth real effort to do so.
"Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces."

The word is what is holy, the evidence are the pearls.

To some, the holy and the pearls are stepped on (by utter denial/mockery/deceit/trickery) and you are now "being torn to pieces." You are holding your own for sure but remember there are millions out there willing and needing to hear about God. The ones who blatantly deny/mock/deceive/trick, will not be moved. They have the heart of the pharaoh. I am trying to remember this myself. Take care!

Have you ever heard of the "Urantia Book"? Some pseudo-religious/mystic/scientific book from the 1930s/50s that makes the Scientologists seem sane.

I posted some "revelations" from it in my last post... but you can read more. It is available online.

Read it. Laugh about it... or weep about it. It is grotesque.

This is what Colter is proclaiming the improved version of Christianity. This is what he proclaims solves all the problems that exist in the corrupt, organised versions of your religion.

Perhaps there are millions out there willing and needing to hear about God. Are they willing and needing to hear about our planetary lord Caligastia also?

This is what you just proclaim as the holy pearls of wisdom that you just now defend from our evil stepping on!

You really show be more careful who you bed.

 

[kristina411]

So you're saying you do accept the personal testimony of UFO hunters. Or maybe you're a skeptic who "will find fault no matter what the evidence shows."

Or maybe there are other options besides the unreasonable ones you're trying to pin on everyone else.

Lol, despite my neutral belief in the manner, I'm not on some alien or ufo forum exclaiming "Aliens are a lie! Show me your proof!"

 

[KCfromNC]

I do believe I am constantly being told what I believe because i am a Christian, so blanket statements seem welcome on this board.
Is is obvious that there are exceptions to every group.

You want proof that skeptics would not take video evidence? That they would not believe the testimonies of millions before them? That hearing from God, although for everyone else they would be institutionalized but to the skeptic they would believe it?
You can be your own evidence of this.

I can't, since I've never seen God on a video or heard God talk to me.

As for the testimonies of millions, I can look to you as evidence of how a skeptic would treat those. You, as a die-hard skeptic, reject the testimonies of billions of people of different religions different than your own.

 

[KCfromNC]

Lol, despite my neutral belief in the manner

Because I have always assumed most of the reports were government air crafts.

Which one is it? Are you neutral or have you always had a skeptical take on the subject?

And how about your die-hard skepticism of the personal testimony of billions of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists?

 

[Colter]

Hmmm... I'm not too sure about that. Religion does indeed touch upon many philosophical matters, and religion can be examined philosophically, but whether it's "in the realm" seems debatable to me.



If you had not side-stepped the questions they would not keep coming up. I'm not the only one to have asked either.

What was disingenuous about the questions?

Accusing me of side-stepping is what is disingenuous when my answer is that I cannot provide proof of my experience with God. That is the answer, nobody really can, that's not a sidestep, its a concession.

 

[Colter]

Remember Matthew 7:6. I've been having trouble remembering myself but am going to put forth real effort to do so.
"Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces."

The word is what is holy, the evidence are the pearls.

To some, the holy and the pearls are stepped on (by utter denial/mockery/deceit/trickery) and you are now "being torn to pieces." You are holding your own for sure but remember there are millions out there willing and needing to hear about God. The ones who blatantly deny/mock/deceive/trick, will not be moved. They have the heart of the pharaoh. I am trying to remember this myself. Take care!

Hi Kristina, thanks, that's good advise for sure. This is a bad part of town.

 

[KCfromNC]

Remember Matthew 7:6. I've been having trouble remembering myself but am going to put forth real effort to do so.
"Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces."

The word is what is holy, the evidence are the pearls.

To some, the holy and the pearls are stepped on (by utter denial/mockery/deceit/trickery) and you are now "being torn to pieces." You are holding your own for sure but remember there are millions out there willing and needing to hear about God. The ones who blatantly deny/mock/deceive/trick, will not be moved. They have the heart of the pharaoh. I am trying to remember this myself. Take care!

Weird that the post calling others dogs and swine is also calling others out for mocking people. Maybe the rules are different if you know you're right?

 

[kristina411]

Hi Kristina, thanks, that's good advise for sure. This is a bad part of town.

Lol its funny you said bad part of town because last night as I was logging out I felt like I just stepped out of a dark alley lol

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Accusing me of side-stepping is what is disingenuous when my answer is that I cannot provide proof of my experience with God. That is the answer, nobody really can, that's not a sidestep, its a concession.

Recall that you keep claiming we are able to obtain knowledge about the supernatural. As my previous posts to you clearly show, my questions have centred on how we are able to acquire this knowledge. Besides which, what would be disingenuous about asking someone who claims to know something how they know it?

 

[KCfromNC]

Lol I think its funny you said bad part of town because last night as I was turning off my phone I felt like I just stepped out of a dark alley lol

Cognitive dissonance can be an uncomfortable feeling.

 

[kristina411]

Cognitive dissonance can be an uncomfortable feeling.

Lol you!

God still loves you, even when you don't believe!
Take care!

 

[Colter]

Recall that you keep claiming we are able to obtain knowledge about the supernatural. As my previous posts to you clearly show, my questions have centred on how we are able to acquire this knowledge. Besides which, what would be disingenuous about asking someone who claims to know something how they know it?

Knowledge isn't the right word I think, because that has a specific definition in the discipline of science. Experience is the right word, you can experience God but not contain him as knowledge which would be provable to another.

You would need to develop a relationship with God yourself, not to be confused with a relationship with religion or theology, or belief in histories or dubious stories and reports from others.

We would then approach the bible through God, not God through the Bible. The Sons of God are the Word, the Bible books are about the Word, about the doings of the Word as that was written about by holy men.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Knowledge isn't the right word I think, because that has a specific definition in the discipline of science. Experience is the right word, you can experience God but not contain him as knowledge which would be provable to another.

You would need to develop a relationship with God yourself, not to be confused with a relationship with religion or theology, or belief in histories or dubious stories and reports from others.

We would then approach the bible through God, not God through the Bible. The Sons of God are the Word, the Bible books are about the Word, about the doings of the Word as that was written about by holy men.

How do you know that what you are experiencing is genuinely divine? As I noted earlier in our exchange, many people report experiencing the divine, but they often come away from the experience with very different ideas of what the divine is. Notably, their experience of the divine seems to be informed by their religion, so preconceived theological ideas do have some role in guiding or directing the interpretation of the experience, with the experience often construed as a direct reinforcement of those theological ideas. Do you see how this keeps falling back to the same epistemological issues? If we want to examine the experience of the divine honestly, then these questions inevitably arise.

 

[Colter]

How do you know that what you are experiencing is genuinely divine? As I noted earlier in our exchange, many people report experiencing the divine, but they often come away from the experience with very different ideas of what the divine is. Notably, their experience of the divine seems to be informed by their religion, so preconceived theological ideas do have some role in guiding or directing the interpretation of the experience, with the experience often construed as a direct reinforcement of those theological ideas. Do you see how this keeps falling back to the same epistemological issues? If we want to examine the experience of the divine honestly, then these questions inevitably arise.

Yes I do see your point, it is true and a legitimate question. Because the God fragment that is in man is pre-personal ("I will put my pure spirit in the") each persons experience with it will be influenced by all the things you cited. This is evidenced by the multiplicity of religious insight within religions.

One cannot examine the experience of the divine of another as a science.

"This profound experience of the reality of the divine indwelling forever transcends the crude materialistic technique of the physical sciences. You cannot put spiritual joy under a microscope; you cannot weigh love in a balance; you cannot measure moral values; neither can you estimate the quality of spiritual worship.

The Hebrews had a religion of moral sublimity; the Greeks evolved a religion of beauty; Paul and his conferees founded a religion of faith, hope, and charity. Jesus revealed and exemplified a religion of love: security in the Father’s love, with joy and satisfaction consequent upon sharing this love in the service of the human brotherhood.

Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes religion as the motive of inner response to outer conditions. But such a real religion is not a purely subjective experience. It signifies the whole of the subjectivity of the individual engaged in a meaningful and intelligent response to total objectivity — the universe and its Maker.

The exquisite and transcendent experience of loving and being loved is not just a psychic illusion because it is so purely subjective. The one truly divine and objective reality that is associated with mortal beings, the Thought Adjuster, functions to human observation apparently as an exclusively subjective phenomenon. Man’s contact with the highest objective reality, God, is only through the purely subjective experience of knowing him, of worshiping him, of realizing sonship with him.

True religious worship is not a futile monologue of self-deception. Worship is a personal communion with that which is divinely real, with that which is the very source of reality. Man aspires by worship to be better and thereby eventually attains the best.

The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience — spiritual reality. Psychology and idealism are not the equivalent of religious reality. The projections of the human intellect may indeed originate false gods — gods in man’s image — but the true God-consciousness does not have such an origin. The God-consciousness is resident in the indwelling spirit. Many of the religious systems of man come from the formulations of the human intellect, but the God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these grotesque systems of religious slavery." UB1955
​

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Yes I do see your point, it is true and a legitimate question. Because the God fragment that is in man is pre-personal ("I will put my pure spirit in the") each persons experience with it will be influenced by all the things you cited. This is evidence by the multiplicity of religious insight within religions.

One cannot examine the experience of the divine of another as a science.

In what way can one examine the experience of the divine captured by these apparent religious insights?

 

[Colter]

In what way can one examine the experience of the divine captured by these apparent religious insights?

It's something you would have to experience yourself to really know what it's like. Ever done any LSD? If so then we both have an experience in common that would be difficult to really explain to another person in a wholesale way. Or, we could tell them to go read Alice in Wonderland.

 

[Colter]

I don't see this a irrefutable proof of a creator but for what it's worth it is an interesting consideration of the 0 age, the time before time, before the so called "big bang". A kind of reservoir from which the universe evolved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQVm8RokoBA&feature=share

 

[Eudaimonist]

I don't see this a irrefutable proof of a creator but for what it's worth it is an interesting consideration of the 0 age, the time before time, before the so called "big bang". A kind of reservoir from which the universe evolved.

I happened to see this only yesterday. It's not a very convincing argument.

The argument rests on treating the "laws" of nature as something having a separate or transcendent metaphysical reality from physical entities, and then calling the laws of physics "God".

Science does not do anything to support that idea.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Davian]

Thank you for proving my point.

How so?