For those with personal experience of God, they get the usefulness and the rest in their personal lives. I will note that archeologists have found much of the historical information in the Bible "verifiable, demonstrable, and useful in explicative and predictive power." But hey, you apparently aren't an archeologist.
You got that right.
For many people, the Bible provided a useful shortcut to morals. Again, the morals were "verifiable, demonstrable, and useful in explicative and predictive power". But maybe you have no use for morals, either.
HAHA
Nice false dichotomy, Lucas. The Bible isn't the only nor the best way to acquire morals, but nice try anyway.
As an aside, you should drop the 'verifiability". It's part of a refuted philosophy of science called Positivism.
Well, I'll keep verification or falsification. They both work well enough for my purposes.
To me, accuracy is important no matter what. The new research showing how the Battle of Little Bighorn actually went down is not useful in any way in my life. But to me, it's important that it is accurate.
Accuracy is indeed important but again only as far as it can explain or predict things. Saying that Aztecs and the Mayans fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn isn't accurate nor useful. On the other hand, saying that 40% of the combatants had dry mouths, while it may be accurate, isn't useful nor important. If it is to someone, then good for them.
I find that much of science is not useful, which is why I'm in research that has foreseeable clinical implications. I remember a paper many years ago describing the position of every atom in crystalline vitamin B12. It wasn't useful. Come to think of it, fully 1/3 of the articles in the scientific literature are never cited. No one in the scientific community found them "useful". They were never "verified" and they had little "predictive power". Not only does God not provide you with these, but a good portion of science doesn't either.
That's right. However, unlike scientific discoveries, I don't even see the possibility of it being useful, or heck... even interesting, in the future. If you find this deity belief interesting or useful, then more power to you.
But again, I'm not here to convince you to believe. If that is your reason for believing God does not exist, go for it. It's not a valid reason, but it's yours.
Then, again, that strawman is not why I reject the claims of theists regarding their deity, now is it? I reject them because they tell me I should I believe in something for a reason only they can see. Well, good luck with that.
Can we know it's true?
Actually it's the same claim. In order to get a banana to do the creating, you would have to change the properties of a banana such that it would be the same thing as God.
Only if you think that the way you imagine your god to have created the universe is the only possible way.
Right. Evidence theists have which cannot be demonstrated, verified, or falsified. Evidence which most of the time is logically contradictory and differs for everyone who has seen this evidence. Now, it could very well be true but until there is a way to distinguish this evidence from mere thoughts or at least show that there is reason to believe something exists beyond this universe (whatever that means,) I'll remain unconvinced of these theist claims.
Now, based on the assumption that I lack the evidence (or even the means to acquire this evidence) that, presumably, you or other theists have, you'd agree that it would be unreasonable for me to accept the claims of theists, correct?
