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Arsenios said:Encountering God WITHIN you is a first-hand encounter...
No it isn't.
My Dear - It IS so by definition, because it ONLY happens WITHIN you...
That is the quintessential ostensive definition of FIRST-HAND experience...
If you have no way to test it, you have no way to tell what really causes it.
I agree, and YOU have NO WAY to test it...
Quid, Erat, Splat!
No. You can also create something yourself that you believe is an encounter with God.
Yup - You can do the same with love... And end up married... Then divorced...
Happens all the time...
If that is the criteria for determining what is real, then the people in Heaven's Gate really did go for a ride on a comet.
What is real is that they castrated themselves and committed suicide...
You are only presenting something that you claim is first hand evidence because you can't believe it is anything else.
There is other evidence, but a personal encounter with God is just that: Personal... The evidence will be found externally in a revised life that proceeds from that encounter...
I think you mean TESTABLE. If we can't test it, how do we know it is accurate?
You have to have the encounter to know...
Until you do, you cannot know...
You can only believe or not...
No, they have evidence, not faith. EVIDENCE.
I have no faith...
Do not try to claim that a scientist accepting evolution as real is on the same level as a believer thinking God is real.
Show me just ONE example of an acquired physical characteristic being genetically passed on...
Have you read Koestler's "The Case of the Mid-Wife Toad"? It addresses this issue, and the one time that it seemed to have happened, and what the actual evidence was - K. was a Soviet Atheist, btw... An Apparatchik..
You don't actually know much (or anything) about evolution, do you?
Not as much as Arthur Koestler...
The mechanism behind evolution is understood. There's no such thing as a "higher" species. Every claimed example of intelligent design has been shown to be perfectly explainable by evolution.
We used to explain everything by material development... The mechanism is NOT understood, irreligious of its higher theoretical accountings...
And only one side with actual evidence.
Billiard BALLS I say!!
REAL evidence!!
No. One side relying on testable and repeatable evidence from reality, the other side relying on gut instinct and emotional conclusions that are different for each person.
You are but defining your own limits...
Funny how there are so many different sects of believers, though, isn't it? Almost like there was only a subjective God, not an objective one.
Well, we ARE behind enemy lines and we ARE conducting operations...
So there ARE going to be counter-offensives...
Only if you put testable evidence on the same level as untestable feelings.
I share your scorn for untestable feelings...
And secondly, argument from popularity is not going to convince me, or anyone else with a degree of rationality.
Widen your perception: It is not popularity, but historical pervasiveness that is being proffered...
Science relies on social verification? What in the world do you mean by this?
It is a fallacious doctrine - Social Metaphysics - Groups assemble themselves and proclaim and enforce their version of truth... The Roman Catholic Church did it in the west... Gallileo can attest... Environmentalists do it now... So do evolutionists... Enforcement is less painful than burning at the stake, but more pernicious and pervasive...
Science relies on evidence.
Evidence of SELF?
And yet, you have never provided any argument for God EXCEPT non-material stuff.
Yes, God is NOT material, so what evidence would you prefer?
This does not help your argument. You seem to be claiming that there is no objective God, only a subjective God, which is exactly what we would expect if God was a gut feeling.
That is your limitation of understanding. God is not an OBJECT, so encountering Him will not be an objectively provable event... No video-cams...
Arsenios
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