Searching for GOD...

[Outrider]

The concepts of evidence and information only exist in conscious awareness.  Information does not exist as information until it is perceived and consciously interpreted.

Information doesn't exist, but data does.

Outside conscious awareness, there is only matter and energy.  All evidence will be subjective within the conscious awareness that perceives and interprets it.

To an extent, but you can construct the data gathering to ensure that the subjectivity comes as late in the system as possible to minimise its effect, and you can collaborate with a wide range of subjective opinions to attempt to even out the variance caused by subjectivity, especially as ongoing work learns more about the inherent biases humanity brings to the table.

O.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Please try these to understand what I mean.......

https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2019/11/04/reality/

https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/evidence/

That's an interesting read and I agree it highlights the possibilities of areas beyond the detection of our current senses or technology. But a possibility of something undefined and undetected is not a convincing argument for accepting the existence of anything specific. Which is presumably why people disagree on what we should accept and what we should reject. We take undefined possibilities and flesh out the possibility into abstract concepts based on their cultural background and knowledge and then we try to spread the influence of those concepts because we believe they have value. We take feelings and sensations and mould them into morals and values and beliefs that we discuss and use to try to organise our families, communities and societies. 

As you say our mind has developed in a particular way to produce a consciousness that interprets the data it receives in a particular way. The mind's interpretation of the data into abstract concepts is subjective and presumably unique to that individual's mind - so it is not surprising if a mindset and a particular interpretation by that mindset is only really relevant or meaningful to that individual? 

[Sriram]

That's an interesting read and I agree it highlights the possibilities of areas beyond the detection of our current senses or technology. But a possibility of something undefined and undetected is not a convincing argument for accepting the existence of anything specific. Which is presumably why people disagree on what we should accept and what we should reject. We take undefined possibilities and flesh out the possibility into abstract concepts based on their cultural background and knowledge and then we try to spread the influence of those concepts because we believe they have value. We take feelings and sensations and mould them into morals and values and beliefs that we discuss and use to try to organise our families, communities and societies. 

As you say our mind has developed in a particular way to produce a consciousness that interprets the data it receives in a particular way. The mind's interpretation of the data into abstract concepts is subjective and presumably unique to that individual's mind - so it is not surprising if a mindset and a particular interpretation by that mindset is only really relevant or meaningful to that individual?

I am losing rack of what exactly we are discussing....

Please see my above posts 38186, 38188, 38203 etc. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

I am losing rack of what exactly we are discussing....

Please see my above posts 38186, 38188, 38203 etc.

Gabriella explained to you that truth being probabilistic does not mean that all possible truths are equally probable. That’s the basic mistake you make here and in your error-stewn blogs.

[Alan Burns]

Just came across this profound summing up (from VfJUK) explaining why people should be searching for God:

The devil cannot win this battle.  He was defeated once and for all at the Cross.  But while he remains free, he can still ensnare, maim, and slaughter those who do not know God and follow his lies.  This is why the battle is so important.  How men and women choose today will determine their eternal destiny.

[Gordon]

Just came across this profound summing up (from VfJUK) explaining why people should be searching for God:

The devil cannot win this battle.  He was defeated once and for all at the Cross.  But while he remains free, he can still ensnare, maim, and slaughter those who do not know God and follow his lies.  This is why the battle is so important.  How men and women choose today will determine their eternal destiny.

a) What is VfJUK?

b) This is just more meaningless hyperbolic theobollocks, Alan.

c) Therefore, on the basis of this, I'm not convinced that I need to do any 'searching' whatsoever.

I suspect your profundity bar is set so you low that you're in danger of tripping over it.

[jeremyp]

Just came across this profound summing up (from VfJUK) explaining why people should be searching for God:

The devil cannot win this battle.

Yep, because he is just as fictional as your god.

He was defeated once and for all at the Cross.  But while he remains free, he can still ensnare, maim, and slaughter those who do not know God and follow his lies.

That doesn't sound like a once and for all defeat. Sounds like Jesus didn't finish the job.

This is why the battle is so important. 

How can there be a battle if the devil has been defeated once and for all?

[torridon]

Just came across this profound summing up (from VfJUK) explaining why people should be searching for God:

The devil cannot win this battle.  He was defeated once and for all at the Cross.  But while he remains free, he can still ensnare, maim, and slaughter those who do not know God and follow his lies.  This is why the battle is so important.  How men and women choose today will determine their eternal destiny.

That is not so much profound, as profoundly flawed.  If there is a God and God is good, then he would neither create the devil nor tolerate his ongoing ensnaring, maiming and slaughtering business now would he ?  Clear headed logic is evidently not your strong suit if you find such self-contradictory nonsense 'profound'.  It is anything but.

[jeremyp]

a) What is VfJUK?

https://vfjuk.org.uk/about/

five seconds of Google

[Stranger]

Just came across this profound summing up (from VfJUK) explaining why people should be searching for God:

The devil cannot win this battle.  He was defeated once and for all at the Cross.  But while he remains free, he can still ensnare, maim, and slaughter those who do not know God and follow his lies.  This is why the battle is so important.  How men and women choose today will determine their eternal destiny.

I think you mean profoundly idiotic. If god is hidden, or allowing the devil to hide it, and if "how men and women choose today will determine their eternal destiny", then your god is unjust and unfair.

A just god would make sure everybody knew all the facts, without doubt and with total clarity, before they made such a choice. The existence of the devil is no excuse for an omnipotent god - neither is the fictional idea of human "free will", even if we were to concede for a moment that it isn't itself and utterly absurd idea from the point of view of an omnipotent, omniscient creator. Nobody can make a truly free choice if they don't have all the facts.

In all of this thread nobody has come up with even the first hint of a credible, reasonable, rational reason to think there even is a god to search for, neither has anybody addressed the obvious injustice if there were.

[Alan Burns]

Nobody can make a truly free choice if they don't have all the facts.

The major point I keep making is that we are free to choose to search for God, conversely we are free to choose reasons not to search for God.  (Amply evidenced in the last few posts).

The choice is yours.
It is what makes us human.

[Gordon]

The major point I keep making is that we are free to choose to search for God, conversely we are free to choose reasons not to search for God.

Where the 'God' idea is presented in ways that render it meaningless that alone is reason to just dismiss it out of hand. You seem to think that dismissing the idea 'God' is some kind of major decision: it isn't when the claim 'God' is, as I said, a meaningless one.   

[Alan Burns]

Where the 'God' idea is presented in ways that render it meaningless that alone is reason to just dismiss it out of hand. You seem to think that dismissing the idea 'God' is some kind of major decision: it isn't when the claim 'God' is, as I said, a meaningless one.   

Meaningless to you.
Not meaningless to the many who have discovered God in their lives.
Can you honestly say you have sought meaning in God, or have you sought reasons to dismiss the idea of God.  Those who seek the latter will have such reasons provided in abundance from the evil one who is determined to ruin souls.

As explained in the quote from VfJUK, the evil one has been defeated by Jesus on the cross.  To enjoy this victory, we need to freely accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

[torridon]

The major point I keep making is that we are free to choose to search for God, conversely we are free to choose reasons not to search for God.  (Amply evidenced in the last few posts).

The choice is yours.
It is what makes us human.

Noone has the option to believe the unbelievable though, and this idea of a good God that creates and tolerates evil is just as inconceivable as your contradictory claims about free will. 

The urge to think clearly and honestly is also what makes us human, why not try it sometime.

[Gordon]

Meaningless to you.

Due to all arguments to date claiming 'God' being an incoherent mess of fallacies.

Not meaningless to the many who have discovered God in their lives.

Bully for them: but that doesn't get round that the problem their convictions are based on bad arguments: their 'true for me' doesn't equate to 'therefore true for everyone else', and to think it is would be to commit the relativist fallacy.   

Can you honestly say you have sought meaning in God...

Of course I can't, since 'God' is a meaningless notion to start with - pay attention.

or have you sought reasons to dismiss the idea of God.

I don't need to: advocates for 'God' do it for me, by presenting the 'God' idea as they do which makes it easy to reject as a serious proposition.
 

Those who seek the latter will have such reasons provided in abundance from the evil one who is determined to ruin souls.

As explained in the quote from VfJUK, the evil one has been defeated by Jesus on the cross.  To enjoy this victory, we need to freely accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

You do love your flourishes of theobabble.

[Stranger]

The major point I keep making is that we are free to choose to search for God, conversely we are free to choose reasons not to search for God.  (Amply evidenced in the last few posts).

The choice is yours.
It is what makes us human.

Here we go again...   

You really never learn anything, do you? You just ignore everything that is said to you and just mindlessly repeat your trite script as if nobody had ever pointed out its countless flaws.

Yet again: nobody needs a reason not to search for something they have no reason to suspect exists in the first place. If a god exists, it is very well hidden and to condemn people (or allow them to be deceived or whatever) for not searching for it, would make such a god evil.

[Outrider]

The major point I keep making is that we are free to choose to search for God, conversely we are free to choose reasons not to search for God.  (Amply evidenced in the last few posts).

Regardless of where you stand on whether that choice is 'free' or not, there are any number of desperate people who genuinely search but don't find, there are any number of people who search and think they find Allah, or Vishnu, or nature spirits, or Gwyneth Paltrow's minge-candles... How come, if there's genuinely a deity, these searches don't result in a consistent outcome?

The choice is yours.

But the evidence that informs the choice is no-one's, because it just isn't there.

It is what makes us human.

The choice, or the search, because I'm not looking and I'm as human as at least most of the rest of you.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The major point I keep making is that we are free to choose to search for God, conversely we are free to choose reasons not to search for God.  (Amply evidenced in the last few posts).

Tell you what – you find an argument that isn’t a logical car crash for there being a god at all and I’ll go looking for it.

Fair enough?

[Alan Burns]

Bully for them: but that doesn't get round that the problem their convictions are based on bad arguments: their 'true for me' doesn't equate to 'therefore true for everyone else', and to think it is would be to commit the relativist fallacy.   

There is only one truth.
There is only one God.
There is ample evidence of mankind's need to search.
Many may think they have found it, but they can't all be right.
Those of us who have discovered it can never renounce it.

[ProfessorDavey]

There is only one truth.
There is only one God.
There is ample evidence of mankind's need to search.
Many may think they have found it, but they can't all be right.
Those of us who have discovered it can never renounce it.

Classic 'true for me' statement. If you want to believe it (in other words to consider it 'true for you') that's fine, but don't expect anyone else to believe it, of that it is true for everyone unless you provide compelling evidence. The silence in that regard is deafening.

[ProfessorDavey]

Many may think they have found it, but they can't all be right.

True - but many of those whose faith beliefs are different to yours are just as convinced as you are that they are right. How can you be sure that your version of faith is correct and their equally strongly held faith is wrong.

Of course in the context of 'true for me' then you can all be 'right' about your subjective views and opinions - however none of that changes whether god or gods objectively exist - they either do or they don't - no amount of subjective faith changes that, nor provides evidence to support objective existence.

[Stranger]

There is only one truth.

Yes.

There is only one God.

Where is your evidence or reasoning? This seem to be nothing more than blind faith.

There is ample evidence of mankind's need to search.

Where?

Many may think they have found it, but they can't all be right.

True - at least most of them are wrong.

Those of us who have discovered it can never renounce it.

The sort of banal blind faith that is expressed by followers of all sorts of faiths, denominations, cults, and sects, not to mention adherents to all sort of other irrational nonsense, at least most of whom are wrong, as you said.

You don't take any notice of what anybody says, you can't or won't properly engage with rational arguments, your attempts to justify your beliefs are comically flawed but you don't seem to care or think it worth while to even try to correct the errors. Why would anybody listen to you?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

There is only one truth.

There are lots of truths, but all truths are probabilistic in nature.

There is only one God.

Unqualified faith claim.

There is ample evidence of mankind's need to search.

To search for explanations, yes. Sometimes too “mankind” arrives at gods as the answers to phenomena for which they do not have more robust explanations, even though gods have no explanatory force at all.

Many may think they have found it, but they can't all be right.

And they may well all be wrong too.

Those of us who have discovered it can never renounce it.

Except you haven’t yet provided a good reason to suggest that you have “found it” at all rather than just a belief about it, and your refusal ever to renounce it in the face of the reasoning that falsifies you is just an indicator of your obtuseness, not of the truth of your beliefs.

[Alan Burns]

True - but many of those whose faith beliefs are different to yours are just as convinced as you are that they are right. How can you be sure that your version of faith is correct and their equally strongly held faith is wrong.

There are many reasons.
A personal relationship exists in prayer.
Many answers to prayer - some truly miraculous.
Many, many personal witness stories about God in other people's lives.
Profound revelations found in scripture.
Discovery of my own spiritual nature.
The miracle of free will, (which many choose to deny).
The miracle of life itself.
The knowledge that none of the above could possibly come into my awareness through deterministic material reactions alone.

[Gordon]

There is only one truth.

My reification detector is beeping.

There is only one God.

There may be, but you've presented nothing to support the idea. Moreover, and inconveniently for you, our species has come up with oodles of 'Gods' to date - but with zero evidence for any.

There is ample evidence of mankind's need to search.

Sure is: but to commence a search there needs to be some kind of method that sets out what it being searched for and how it would be recognised: and this is where you fall flat on your face every time.

Many may think they have found it, but they can't all be right.

Good to see that you recognise the possibility that you might be wrong.

Those of us who have discovered it can never renounce it.

You're begging the question again, Alan. You might be convinced you have discovered 'it' but it seems likely you are wrong, since if you were right 'it' would be apparent to the rest of us - as I noted earlier you are giving the relativist fallacy an airing.