I could look at what seemed like evidence against God's existence and I could go with that and determine that I was wrong about God possibly being real. I decided not to shut the door but to pray about understanding about it.
I find this both laudable and concerning all at once. I think that when we are presented with evidence that disconfirmes a current belief it is wise not to immediately abandon our position. I can't remember who said it but it is a great quote: the mark of an educated mind is to be able to engage with an idea and to consider it deeply without agreeing with it.
On the other hand there is the worry of appealing to our confirmation bias or perhaps in light of our recent conversations of depending overmuch on the weight of our current position, rather than following the evidence where it leads. For example, if I believe that all apples are green and all my experience in life has confirmed this, giving the belief a lot of weight, what do I do if someone presents me with a red apple? My first step would be to examine the evidence of this new apple, consider its source etc. Once I have verified that it is indeed a red apple would I be justified in changing my belief that all apples are green? Or should I meditate on the problem for as long as it takes to come up with an idea that allows the red apple to fit my current belief that all apples are green? Maybe I decide that on a quantum level it is not actually an apple or that what I perceive as red is in fact an ultra rare shade of green that my eyes are misconstructing ( other of those are testable hypotheses at least) or maybe the apple is green but a Cartesian demon is fooling my brain to make it appear red. These are possible solutions to the datum and allow me to maintain my original belief. The question is are they probable? Is it more probable that there exist red apples of which I had previously been unaware or is it more likely that one of those other explanations are correct. This is where the weight of our beliefs make things difficult. On a question of apples overthrowing my belief has few consequences whereas for a belief in God the consequences (even setting aside spiritual consequences) would be enormous. Thus when a data point disconfirmes a strongly held belief like mine in evolution say, it is almost impossible, on the basis of that single datum, to overturn the entirety of the belief and the ideas that are associated with the belief in a coherentist net.
How do you know how sincere they are about their sincerity? Also, God has plans for people and timing is an important part of that.
I don't think we can know for certain. All we can say is that their actions are consistent with what we would expect of a person who is sincere and give that belief a high confidence rating. In the same way that you can't know for certain that God is good, but that in your best judgement his actions are consistent in your mind with what a good God would do.
Do you think there is ever a reason for someone to die for something they have done, say for instance do you think that someone deserves to die if they rape, mutilate and kill a child for fun and would continue to do so?
Wow that is quite the set up
The short answer is no, I don't think killing them is the way to go. In this scenario you have added a couple conditions, doing it for fun (to establish it as a moral transgression in an objective sense?) and will continue doing it (presumably regardless of efforts to rehabilitation irate the individual). In this ultra specific case, I as a human, would advocate a life prison sentence. If, however, I was a God I would know exact what it would take to rehabilitate this person and would have the power to help them in this way. So as a deity who wanted both the good of this individual and the society around her, I would be able to intervene to accomplish this.
What if hypothetically, we as souls prior to being born determine what happens in our lives here on earth? What if we plan with God what types of situations we will put ourselves into to bring us to either acceptance of God or what might break us away
Well fair is fair I guess... I have asked you to consider enough hypothetical situations
So in this situation, I am sitting with God, as a soul, prior to being born. He asks me what circumstances I want to face that will draw me to him. Am I allowed to answer riches, health, love and acclaim? These good things and having a blessed life will convince me that a God exists and loves me in the life to come so I could choose that right? Why does there have to be suffering? Is suffering a necessary condition for belief in a loving God? I will await your thoughts on that, but let's say that for some reason it is the case that a soul has to suffer in order to choose God. When we are having this conversation I say "OK God, test me by giving me an atheist roomate in college". God responds "that is a really clever idea, as you learn more about belief to resist this atheist you learn more about me.... Um
...one problem though.... You know I can see the future and I know that if I test you that way you are actually going to end up disowning me and end up in hell for eternity... Did you want to pick something else maybe? "
So in your hypothetical scenario the presence of people in hell (broad is the way and many are they that find it) means that either God simply let them choose whatever trials they wanted and didn't stop them from choosing trials that he knew ahead of time would damn them to hell or the souls had that conversation with God and knew that they were choosing hell and chose it anyway. Both these seem unlikely.
My point is this, we don't have all the answers. God set up the universe to work a certain way and for seasons and elements to behave certain ways and in that we have hurricanes, tornadoes and floods.
Well you assert that God set things up this way. We do have naturalistic explanations for all those things. Why invoke God?
God uses these to illuminate His existence, either in the outpouring of love to others, to confirm Himself to some and like the same as forest fires to refresh the land.
So in your view, God is so kind that he will cause death, suffering, both physical and emotional on a huge scale, to some of the creatures made in his image, so that others will have to opportunity to console them in the face of the horror He has just visited upon them? Are you saying the point of Job was to give his friends an opportunity to be generous?
As for refreshing the land what you are saying seems to be that in the communities where natural disaster hits, God with all possible power, can only help a society start fresh by using massive death and destruction. What is more likely, that God can only build them up by causing mayhem, death and suffering or that the event was a purely natural one with no spiritual significance?
We can't know because we don't know why certain things happen in the world but that doesn't disprove God's existence when in these same things you claim make it impossible for God to exist actually bring many to Him in their need.
Actually that is exactly what I didn't say. I admit that it is logically possible for God to exist and to do these things for morally sufficient reasons. It is just that for me such explanations (it could be the case that, maybe God just..., if there is a reason) seem like a stretch. To me the hypothesis that bad things happen as a result of natural events makes more sense than that a loving, caring, intervening God would set things up to cause such suffering.
As for people coming close to God in their suffering we are back to the problem of different beliefs. Muslims in their suffering draw strength and reassurance from Allah, they become closed to him. Since you have said before that Allah can not in any way effect this world then there must be some natural explanation for why the Muslims are able to draw strength and comfort from their beliefs. If there can be a natural explanation of why it works for those of other religions there is no need to suppose that it is any different for Christians who suffer.
I do know that when we were a young country and most of the population were either deists or Christians we suffered a limited number of natural disasters but as our nation became more and more anti-God He removed His protection against them and has allowed more to hit our nation. Statistics confirm as time has gone on, more frequent disasters are occurring and they are becoming much worse.
Is there a natural explanation that makes sense of this pattern or is the idea that God is angry and so is punishing America with natural disaster the only possible solution? Is this same correlation present in other countries where Christian belief is on the decline? What about the inverse.. Is there a correlation between the increasing brief in Christianity in some countries, with a lessening of natural disasters?
Sounds like you are judging God, because you can't "think" of anyway God can allow these things and still be loving and caring He must not exist. I
As I said above that is not at all the case. I ha e a great imagination and can come up with all kinds of possible scenarios. All I saying is that it seems incredibly unlikely that a being as described by Christians would choose so much pain and suffering for the creatures that he loves.
And no one can actually say that the evidence doesn't support God's existence either, they just "think" that natural explanations must be the only explanation.
This is true but I still find it problematic. It seems to me that God is defined in such a way that any and all possible le evidence an just be subsumed. If it turns out that that abiogenesis happened on earth and we discover the mechanism Christians will just say that this is how God decided to start life. If we discover that the universe is past eternal or that string theory is correct then Christians can say that God planned it that way and is God of the other universes too. The problem is that there is no way to falsify the God hypothesis. Another problem is that God is not the only hypothesis of this kind. It could be the case that transcendent, immaterial, universe creating pixies exist and created our universe and life on earth. How would we disconfirm this?
So do you believe that religion being the majority's worldview is more accurate in terms of reality? I mean, the majority of the earth's population are religious and those who do not hold that view are a strong minority.
This would seem to follow from what I said, that since having beliefs correspond to reality confers a survival advantage that if most people believe in a God then it is likely to correspondence do to reality. One problem with this from your end is that most people today, and even more so in history, don't believe in your God and you hav said that these other gods can't effect this world in any way. This would imply that it is not belief in a real God that confers an advantage but rather belief in any kind of God, including gods of the land, rivers, the animal spirits etc. There are some scholars who make the case that belief in a God was a very useful construct in early human societies, uniting people and providing an us and them distinction. I won't outline the entire argument here but it is an interesting one.
Ok, if I have time today I will present what I think is the strongest evidence other than God's revelation of Himself to me.
Awesome I will be looking forward to that. Hope you are having a good day. Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts on all of this.