Food for thought for Christians

[Shaker]

I've never been to me.

[BeRational]

I've never experience Australia.

Exactly, but Australia exists whether you have experienced it or not.

[ProfessorDavey]

I've never experience Australia.

Indeed, and Australia exists whether or not your experience it, or even whether any human had experienced it. It also exists regardless of whether your experience of it (if you have had an experience of it) was favourable or not favourable.

So our experience of Australia is irrelevant to the objective truth of the existence of Australia. Are you really trying to claim that whether or not you have experienced Australia is relevant to whether Australia actually exists in an objective sense.

Thanks so very much for providing the perfect example to allow me to explain why I am right and you are talking rubbish.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

I cannot give you what you want since that would make me complicit in your error namely that philosophical methods and logical methods are not relevant in religion.

Nope I have never said that. It is simply that you cannot give a logical explanation.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

No,
I can argue philosophically, rationally and logically with another theist and we can compare our witness.

When I argue with Stephen he is putting up an ersatz atheistic best shot at what he thinks a religious person is.

Bullshit.

1) nothing ersatz about it.

2) Are you really saying that there are Jewish people who believe they have a deep experience of God, and that the Jewish narrative is the one which best explains it?

3) It wouldn't matter anyway if you all agreed about your experience. You would still need to show that the cause of the experience was God.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

The alternative explanation is mental aberration. Stephen.
Feel free to demonstrate mental abberance.

You could be mistaken. I don't know why you find this so hard to accept.

You have made a claim that you have had an experience of God which was caused by an encounter with an objectively true God. The burden of proof is all yours.

Again this is very very simple.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Indeed, and Australia exists whether or not your experience it, or even whether any human had experienced it. It also exists regardless of whether your experience of it (if you have had an experience of it) was favourable or not favourable.

So our experience of Australia is irrelevant to the objective truth of the existence of Australia. Are you really trying to claim that whether or not you have experienced Australia is relevant to whether Australia actually exists in an objective sense.

Thanks so very much for providing the perfect example to allow me to explain why I am right and you are talking rubbish.

I think you are prematurely satisfied with your own answers to  the Australia thing.

How for instance do we know it to be objective. You conjured its objectivity out of nothing.

It is objective and experienced. That should trigger investigation.
No methodology was required to make it objective therefore all demands and appeals to methodology are irrelevant to ontology.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You could be mistaken. I don't know why you find this so hard to accept.

You have made a claim that you have had an experience of God which was caused by an encounter with an objectively true God. The burden of proof is all yours.

Again this is very very simple.

Feel free to demonstrate the mistake.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I've never been to me.

I've been undressed by Kings and I've seen some things that a woman should never see...........after three...........
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaave beeeeeen to everwheyer...........but ah Nevvah been ta me.

[ProfessorDavey]

I think you are prematurely satisfied with your own answers to  the Australia thing.

How for instance do we know it to be objective. You conjured its objectivity out of nothing.

It is objective and experienced. That should trigger investigation.
No methodology was required to make it objective therefore all demands and appeals to methodology are irrelevant to ontology.

Because we can use objective methodologies to determine that it is there. But that only proves its existence, it doesn't cause it to exist. If Australia had been uninhabited by humans until the 1700s it would still have existed before anyone had experienced it. That's what objective truth is all about, it exists outside of subjective human experience.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Because we can use objective methodologies to determine that it is there. But that only proves its existence, it doesn't cause it to exist. If Australia had been uninhabited by humans until the 1700s it would still have existed before anyone had experienced it. That's what objective truth is all about, it exists outside of subjective human experience.

But it is there whether any methodology is done or not....you admitted that yourself.

[floo]

I saw this on another forum. GOOD FOR JESUS!

The Freedom From Religion Foundation sued the Chino Valley school board to stop praying during their meetings, and won. Time to award penalaties and costs.

 Well, Judge JESUS G. Bernal awarded $202,000 to the FFRF in the suit, and it appears that the school board members themselves, rather than the taxpayer, are liable.

 Chino Valley school board members ordered to pay $202K in legal fees

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

Feel free to demonstrate the mistake.

No, you need to show that it is God.

Saying that you have not justified your claim is not a claim in its own right. Simply a statement of fact.

[ProfessorDavey]

But it is there whether any methodology is done or not....you admitted that yourself.

Of course it is - that's not what we are arguing about. We are arguing about your claims that your experience of god provides evidence that god is objectively true - it doesn't.

We can all agree that god either exists in an objective manner (i.e. for everyone) or does not objectively exist. Currently we have no evidence to support the objective existence of god and your subjective experience is irrelevant in an objective sense - all it does is suggest that god is 'true for you' (i.e. subjectively) not that god is true objectively.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No, you need to show that it is God.

Saying that you have not justified your claim is not a claim in its own right. Simply a statement of fact.

No you need to demonstrate it is a mistake otherwise you are claiming mistake as the default. I am quite willing to seek to demonstrate God using testimony, philosophy, rationality and logic.

What are you doing about demonstrating mistake?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Of course it is - that's not what we are arguing about. We are arguing about your claims that your experience of god provides evidence that god is objectively true - it doesn't.

I don't believe I have said that.
Relating of my experience of God couldn't possibly be the same as say dropping God on top of you.
You have to find God for your self. All I can do is give witness statement and philosophical, rational and logical explanation.

I still haven't experienced Australia....and I won't until I make some kind of movement or Australia comes to me.

[BeRational]

I don't believe I have said that.
Relating of my experience of God couldn't possibly be the same as say dropping God on top of you.
You have to find God for your self. All I can do is give witness statement and philosophical, rational and logical explanation.

I still haven't experienced Australia....and I won't until I make some kind of movement or Australia comes to me.

But there is a method by which you could confirm its existence.

You could book a flight there and stand on it.

There are any number of ways, perhaps looking at pictures of the Earth from space. We do not need to take anyones word for the existence of Australia, but you are asking everyone to accept your word for god.

Can you not see this simple mistake?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But there is a method by which you could confirm its existence.

You could book a flight there and stand on it.

I think I've made that point already.

Have you been in space Be Rational?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope I have never said that. It is simply that you cannot give a logical explanation.

Why not? If that is so then logic is naturalistic.......surely that isn't true except in the wet dream of an ontological naturalist.

[Stranger]

...philosophical, rational and logical explanation.

Where were those?

I still haven't experienced Australia....and I won't until I make some kind of movement or Australia comes to me.

Yes, but you don't dispute that it exists. Why not?

[horsethorn]

No,
I can argue philosophically, rationally and logically with another theist and we can compare our witness.

And what happens if they don't match?

When I argue with Stephen he is putting up an ersatz atheistic best shot at what he thinks a religious person is.

Not really, no. It's odd that if it is the way you say, you should be able to demonstrate the 'ersatzness', and yet you don't...

Methodology is not ontology.

And yet ontology is a methodology.

ht

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

No you need to demonstrate it is a mistake otherwise you are claiming mistake as the default. I am quite willing to seek to demonstrate God using testimony, philosophy, rationality and logic.

What are you doing about demonstrating mistake?

No, I am claiming undemonstrated as the default, it might be true it might not be true.

As you have not been able to demonstrate it is objectively true then I think that's a pretty sensible position to take.

[ProfessorDavey]

I think I've made that point already.

Have you been in space Be Rational?

You don't need to travel into space to be able to prove it exists in an objective manner. And space existed as it does now even when human's subjective experience of looking up into the night sky lead them to think that there was a big dome with light points on it which moved around, as was the case for many ancient civilisations.

Their experience told them that - it wasn't objectively true.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Well we are asked to take you word for it that you have had a personal revelation of God. Actually no one has said they believe you to be insincere just how do you know you are not mistaken. I see you won't extend that courtesy to others though.

And you haven't' answered my other question (this is third time of asking). Do you really no accept that there are other people out there who have deeply held personal beliefs based on experience of God that are mutually exclusive to yours?

No.............. you asked me for my experience and it was so given. You have made of it what you have.

There is no question of me saying that no Jew has an experience of God.
I had an experience of God before I became a Christian where I acquired an awareness of the 'voice or mind' behind religious writings.

What I am questioning now is how an experience of Jesus not being God differs from, say, your acquisition of a belief that Jesus is not God?

This requires obviously the testimonial of someone you say has such a religious experience.

Just because we are religious doesn't mean that all our views are derived by direct divine experience particular if your faith partly involves having faith in the faith of your fathers.

Put bluntly I suspect atheist confusion and conflation in the understanding of religion on your part and it's fair to say that I am supposed to accept your account of another's experience.

Have you in fact contacted your friend after you said you would do so?

[Dicky Underpants]

Just because we are religious doesn't mean that all our views are derived by direct divine experience particular if your faith partly involves having faith in the faith of your fathers.

Oh dear - and are you suggesting that your experience was totally undetermined by the dominant religion of the society in which you were brought up? If you could ever extricate your 'experience' from such societal/religious influences then one might give your particular 'revelation' a little more respect - if you were an indigenous tribeperson from the Amazon who had never encountered Christianity before - and only learned later to fit his experience with the written/spoken theology of the Christian tradition.
You learned the Christian tradition in some respects just like the rest of us in western civilisation, and are inextricably conditioned by many of its claims. Unless of course you led a remarkably sheltered life.

I would just add - since I am no stranger to such phenomena - that such things can seem so overwhelming that their veracity is not often questioned. Overwhelming mental experiences do not ipso facto indicate divine truth.