Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

And I thought you were claiming to be an enquiring mind. A mind that so unequivocally dismisses entire realms of knowledge and enquiry that admittedly might be way above your intellectual pay grade is not an enquiring mind; it is a closed mind; shut, padlocked, closed to new business.  That's no way to be.

I do not have a closed mind.
It took a lot of deep thinking and assessment to reach my conclusions that free will and self awareness could not be derived from material entities.  I reached this conclusion in my early twenties, and at that time, although I was a church goer, I did not have deep faith.  Since reaching this conclusion, my faith has gone from strength to strength and has been confirmed in many different ways.

[Shaker]

Since reaching this conclusion, my faith has gone from strength to strength and has been confirmed in many different ways.

Care to share a few?

[Sebastian Toe]

Miracle? It's not even funny.

Well it made me smile -

and to coin a phrase used by a well respected member of this community, -

....and after all......That's what counts.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Isn't everything?


Well, yes, thats right; consciousness however is a particularly curated form of information flow, curated within a brain to produce optimal decision making and outcomes for the body it serves, traditionally.

Take me to your curator.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Well it made me smile -

and to coin a phrase used by a well respected member of this community, -

very true.

[Alan Burns]

Care to share a few?

I have been doing this for the last twelve months on this and other threads, but my experiences are falling on deaf ears.

[Shaker]

I have been doing this for the last twelve months on this and other threads, but my experiences are falling on deaf ears.

Perhaps it's not the ears you should worry about but the brains, since if you claim you've already shared these experiences, people have been calling you out on the cascade of assertions and fallacies you've been churning out.

It's not deaf ears at all. It's not that people aren't listening; they're not agreeing with you because your reasoning is defective.

[Alan Burns]

Perhaps it's not the ears you should worry about but the brains, since if you claim you've already shared these experiences, people have been calling you out on the cascade of assertions and fallacies you've been churning out.

Sceptics will always seek alternative explanations for anything with a spiritual implication.  They latch on to evolution to explain the unimaginable complexity of life.  They desperately seek explanations for conscious awareness and free will which do not involve the human soul.  Just because you can come up with an alternative explanation does not invalidate the original explanation.

The truth I see is that we are spiritual beings gifted with the ability to choose our own destiny.  We only have one life in which to make this choice, and I will pray for all who read this that they will seek and find the truth.

[Shaker]

Sceptics will always seek alternative explanations for anything with a spiritual implication.

It's up to those who think that there's a spiritual whatever-it-is firstly to define it and then cough with the evidence for it, isn't it? Who accepts something as true simply on somebody else's say-so?

They latch on to evolution to explain the unimaginable complexity of life.

Evolution is supported by the wealth of evidence for it. Unimaginable complexity is your personal incredulity at work again.

They desperately seek explanations for conscious awareness and free will which do not involve the human soul.

Again, if you want to posit a soul, define it and the provide the evidence for it along with its appropriate methodology so that such claims can be evaluated and their truth or falsity ascertained.

Just because you can come up with an alternative explanation does not invalidate the original explanation.

Any explanation is only so much waffle without a concrete definition and then evidence for it.

The truth I see is that we are spiritual beings gifted with the ability to choose our own destiny.

You're confusing truth with opinion. Again.

We only have one life in which to make this choice

Why?

and I will pray for all who read this that they will seek and find the truth.

How do you think you're going to fare with that?

[Maeght]

Sceptics will always seek alternative explanations for anything with a spiritual implication.  They latch on to evolution to explain the unimaginable complexity of life.  They desperately seek explanations for conscious awareness and free will which do not involve the human soul.  Just because you can come up with an alternative explanation does not invalidate the original explanation.

The truth I see is that we are spiritual beings gifted with the ability to choose our own destiny.  We only have one life in which to make this choice, and I will pray for all who read this that they will seek and find the truth.

Everything you suggest there Alan could be said about theists desperatly looking for theistic explanations for things. You believe you are right but it is only a belief and not a truth.

[Shaker]

I do not have a closed mind.

Did you not however say, quite recently, that your faith literally prevents you from seeing anything about the world, life or experience without God bolted onto it?

That doesn't sound very much like flexible open-mindedness to me.

[Alan Burns]

Alan you do appear to have a closed mind to the fact that others don't see it your way, because your approach to matters to faith doesn't work for us.

I see that faith works for many people.  Perhaps it is not myself who has the closed mind.

[Alan Burns]

Did you not however say, quite recently, that your faith literally prevents you from seeing anything about the world, life or experience without God bolted onto it?

That doesn't sound very much like flexible open-mindedness to me.

That was after I opened my mind to the possibility of God's existence.

[Shaker]

That was after I opened my mind to the possibility of God's existence.

Did you open your mind the possibility of the existence of Colin the Giant Invisible Prawn at the same time? And if not, why not?

Moreover, can you say that you have opened your mind to the possibility of God's non-existence?

[Shaker]

I see that faith works for many people.  Perhaps it is not myself who has the closed mind.

Lots of things work for an awful lot of people - that's not in dispute by anybody.

What is disputed is your assertion that the the sort of things in which faith is invested - the contents of faith-beliefs - are literally and objectively real and true and exist in some sort of never quite fully defined sense outwith the mind of the individual believer.

[Maeght]

I see that faith works for many people.  Perhaps it is not myself who has the closed mind.

Having a strong faith in something can of course be life changing and beneficial. it doesn't mean though that the basis of that faith is true.

[Shaker]

But lots of things work for people, as no doubt people of others faiths will claim, but it doesn't mean they have any basis in reality. Christianity didn't work for me!

Or Lenny. Or Rhiannon. Or JeremyP. Or any other member here who isn't a Christian now but was once.

The trouble with Alan is that instead of leaving it at that, he has to erect all sorts of quite ridiculous excuses for why other people don't believe as he does and are not convinced by the claims of Christianity as he is. The most absurd of the bunch is that people are blinded to the truth by Satan, of course, which looks suspiciously cunningly engineered for him to be able to carry on asserting the truth of his own beliefs while maintaining that everybody else is being deceived by a major part of his belief system. I've often thought that his worldview is suffocatingly claustrophobic, a hermetically-sealed bubble that he can't even see out of let alone get out of. He can't be reasoned with.

[ippy]

Sceptics will always seek alternative explanations for anything with a spiritual implication.  They latch on to evolution to explain the unimaginable complexity of life.  They desperately seek explanations for conscious awareness and free will which do not involve the human soul.  Just because you can come up with an alternative explanation does not invalidate the original explanation.

The truth I see is that we are spiritual beings gifted with the ability to choose our own destiny.  We only have one life in which to make this choice, and I will pray for all who read this that they will seek and find the truth.

"I will pray for all who read this that they will seek and find the truth".

And hopefully not be like you Alan, reside in some sort of fantasy world that's not even of your own making,
you must be one of the worst cases of totally religiously indoctrinated people I've ever had the sad misfortune to come across.

Not surprising but I'll bet you don't even think you've been indoctrinated, but there that's the norm where the indoctrination is completely successful.

Doesn't next door to zero evidence for your religious beliefs ring any bells whatsoever?

ippy

[bluehillside Retd.]

Khatru,

Yesterday I had a packet of sweets.

When I opened the bag they were all monogrammed with the initials of Mary Magdalene.

Was that a miracle?

Pah! Small beer stuff. Have you ever noticed the initials of Jaffa Cakes?

Co-incidence?

I think not...

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I do not have a closed mind.

If you cannot imagine the possibility of a godless universe, then yes you have - that's what being closed-minded means.

It took a lot of deep thinking and assessment to reach my conclusions that free will and self awareness could not be derived from material entities.  I reached this conclusion in my early twenties, and at that time, although I was a church goer, I did not have deep faith.  Since reaching this conclusion, my faith has gone from strength to strength and has been confirmed in many different ways.

However "deep" you may believe your thinking to have been, the overwhelming evidence suggests that you're wrong about that. As you have no counter-argument to the evidence that undoes you you're left only with very bad arguments - ie, expressing your personal incredulity in response to the facts - which makes you not only wrong but wilfully obtusely wrong.

And that incidentally is why your efforts at proselytising here fall on deaf ears when those ears belong to people more capable of rational thinking than you are.   

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Sceptics will always seek alternative explanations for anything with a spiritual implication.

Scepticism is a good thing - it enables to sift truth from BS.

You should try it.

"They" latch on to evolution to explain the unimaginable complexity of life.

They accept it as provisionally true because that's where the evidence leads, yes.

They desperately seek explanations for conscious awareness and free will which do not involve the human soul.

There's nothing "desperate" about it, and "they" are indifferent to claims of a "soul" because it's a bit of mediaeval superstition that lacks any evidential basis at all.

Just because you can come up with an alternative explanation does not invalidate the original explanation.

It does when the evidence for the new explanation is better than the evidence for the previous one.

The truth I see is that we are spiritual beings gifted with the ability to choose our own destiny.  We only have one life in which to make this choice, and I will pray for all who read this that they will seek and find the truth.

Yes, that is the truth that you see. Your mistake though it to assert that personal truth as a truth for others too when you have only very bad arguments to support you.   

[Maeght]

I have been doing this for the last twelve months on this and other threads, but my experiences are falling on deaf ears.

Our ears aren't deaf (though mine are a bit dodgy!). We hear what you say but are unconvinced. A very different thing.

[Rhiannon]

Khatru,

Pah! Small beer stuff. Have you ever noticed the initials of Jaffa Cakes?

Co-incidence?

I think not...

And if you think about it Jaffa Cakes are three-in-one - sponge cake, orange stuff and chocolate in one biscuit. Pointing the way to the Trinity?

The truth's there in the signs...

[bluehillside Retd.]

Rhi,

And if you think about it Jaffa Cakes are three-in-one - sponge cake, orange stuff and chocolate in one biscuit. Pointing the way to the Trinity?

The truth's there in the signs...

Exactly!

And there's more: is not the introduction of the milk chocolate topping in addition to the traditional plain chocolate as the schism of protestantism from the catholic?

It gets spookier. The other day, I noticed that the pack in the cupboard was empty. When I looked again this morning, there was a Jaffa Cake there at the bottom of the box! I know, I know - how else would you explain that but for a resurrection!

Oh there'll be sceptics about this I know, but to them I say this:

1. Can you disprove it? No you can't!

There you go then - proof positive I'd say (copyright H.Ope)     

2. I can't imagine any other explanation.

There you go then - proof positive (copyright: A. Burns)

3. I def defo experienced a celestial Jaffa Cake-ness for which I have no words.

There you go then - proof positive (copyright: V.Lad)

4. Explain to me how a Jaffa Cakes could just have popped into existence from nothing...

There you go then - proof positive (copyright: TW)

Looks like we have a slam dunk I'd say...   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Rhi,

Exactly!

And there's more: is not the introduction of the milk chocolate topping in addition to the traditional plain chocolate as the schism of protestantism from the catholic?

It gets spookier. The other day, I noticed that the pack in the cupboard was empty. When I looked again this morning, there was a Jaffa Cake there at the bottom of the box! I know, I know - how else would you explain that but for a resurrection!

Oh there'll be sceptics about this I know, but to them I say this:

1. Can you disprove it? No you can't!

There you go then - proof positive I'd say (copyright H.Ope)     

2. I can't imagine any other explanation.

There you go then - proof positive (copyright: A. Burns)

3. I def defo experienced a celestial Jaffa Cake-ness for which I have no words.

There you go then - proof positive (copyright: V.Lad)

4. Explain to me how a Jaffa Cakes could just have popped into existence from nothing...

There you go then - proof positive (copyright: TW)

Looks like we have a slam dunk I'd say...

Another epic fail. In a world of biscuit related analogy he misses Left Twix and Right Twix..........always the amateur.