? I have done lots of soul searching, I have asked lots of questions but never received an answer from above.

That's the reason I ask you, how have you come to believe what you believe. Intellectual or not, it's still interesting to hear other people's thoughts on the matter. It's interesting for me how they came to the conclusion to follow a religion.

That's all!

Do you see that what you're setting up is a pretty terrible way to try to find answers to questions? If this is really the reason you don't believe in God, then I think you're wholly unjustified in your (non)-belief.

Look at your past words and tell me whether I have reason to trust your intellectual honesty.

You know none of us were put on Earth directly by God. We were brought to life by our parents and they were brought to life by our ancestors. Humankind has a choice to procreate or not. We don't have to make babies or care for them . But we do . We choose to procreate so we are responsible for our lives both the joys and the pain. God is not responsible for that.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

See, what you are doing. I told you in previous posts, that you would do exactly this. Just bury your head in the sand, ignore the questions and continue to do act really weird, going on about irrelevant stuff.

For a religious person, I'm surprised you are so bitter. You seem so angry and bitter, is that how religious people are? Is that the message you took away from God? I thought he promoted love and treat your neighbor good etc.

LOL - I'm not ignoring your question. But if you can't even put forth a meaningful understanding of your own beliefs (or your beliefs are grounded in such nonsensical epistemological approaches), then what chance do I have of getting a fair hearing from you about what I believe? You think it's irrelevant to a conversation about beliefs that you have no actual concepts about the formulation of beliefs?

LOL - It's not bitterness. It's mental acuity that's been developed over time. I've had a very large number of conversations with atheists who think they know things when really they're quite infantile in their intellect. They all end the same way. It ends up being far from any sort of conversation about anything useful, and the atheist is the one burying his head in the sand because at every step he refuses to even think for himself about the formulation of his own beliefs.

Let me put it this way: If your best answer for why you don't believe in God (which, by the way, I never asked you to justify) is "I have done lots of soul searching, I have asked lots of questions but never received an answer from above" then you literally have no actual idea about why you believe anything. So far, all you've done is parrot statements about Santa Claus with a sense of undignified shallowness of thought. You've demonstrated that you have no actual sense of how evidence informs or doesn't inform beliefs, and you think that repeating the word "logical" means that you're actually being logical.

If you want to have an actual conversation, set yourself up to have an actual conversation. If you just want to parade around like you're a genius who has solved the question of God and it's a blindingly obvious answer because "you've done some soul searching" then I'd rather not waste my time with you.

(Incidentally, I've had similar conversations with religious people. They also end the same way. So it's not a religious/irreligious thing. It's really a matter of what depth of brain power you're bringing to the table.)

Edit: Once again, please notice how I'm challenging you to look at yourself, first. It matters not a whit what you believe about me, whether you think I'm bitter or hiding or whatever. You have the choice to be honestly curious or something else. So far, you've shown me (and anyone else reading this thread) something else. You have to start with understanding yourself, and that doesn't just mean throwing around the phrase "NO EVIDENCE" and thinking you've done something.

Lots of people, religious or not, wander onto this forum that are overconfident in their own views. Your response to these people is often to belittle and insult them. This might sometimes be deserved, but I don't see how it is beneficial to them. Bitterness might not be the right word, but a lack of charity (in both senses) towards others seems indicated.

LOL. You just did again but with more polished words and a larger wall of words.

Also why are you turning this around, I asked you a question, I don't see what my beliefs have to do with anything? I have noted in a previous post that I could be wrong, God could exist. How about you, why don't you persuade me, with your evidence, as you pointed out earlier?

One last thing you also seem to have some arrogance in you, not the good kind, like a confidence thing, but more a I'm better and above you type of arrogance. You seem to want to teach everybody a lesson for some reason! Are you a teacher by any chance?

Anyway whatever dude. I guess I am not good enough or smart enough to converse with you, because of my lack of intelligence and have no clue about my own beliefs or how beliefs are formed.

A+

Indeed. You don't see why it matters. You don't see why your lack of self-understanding of your own beliefs would pose any sort of difficulty to understanding someone else's beliefs. That's another reason why I don't expect a conversation with you to be fruitful.

I'm not going to try right now because I'm not interested in beating my head against a wall. I have no reason to even think I'm getting a fair hearing from you. Would you agree with this based on how you entered the conversation?

You can call it arrogance if you choose. And it's absolutely true that I'm treating you condescendingly right now. I'm doing this based on what I perceive as the level of thought you've put into your position. You've come in and claimed things about what I believe, and then you've shown a lack of reading comprehension in trying to respond back to me. OrP is correct that I'm not being very charitable towards you right now. But in my perception, I need to put up the strong wall up front based on your approach. If I engage right now, anything I say will merely be met with "NO EVIDENCE!!" and you won't actually be comprehending anything I'm saying.

I'm engaged in this conversation with you because you asked for it. I'm trying to teach you something about what I believe, but you're not willing to listen to what I have to say. Do you want to know or not? If you do, then you need to first start to understand the process of coming to beliefs and not just prance around saying "NO EVIDENCE!!"

It's your choice to engage and your choice to disengage. But you should take an honest look at what you've written so far and really try to assess the level of honest inquiry that you've communicated. If you come back with less attitude, I'll come back with less attitude. But if not, that's also fine with me.

I often check to see the level of perceptible honest inquiry. My response is usually based on the approach. Consider SuperMario's first response to me in this thread.

What part of this response gives any appearance that this is a truly honest inquiry about what I believe? There's also the pretty poor reading of "I have not yet made claims... But I will now make a claim." It doesn't even make sense as a response to my statement.

I'm similarly blind to the benefit to the poster of not responding, or trying to respond with content to a content-less accusation.

I think you leave yourself at risk of overinterpretation here. I only very rarely read something as being less aggressive or insulting than intended, but often read it as being more so. Thus, if I try to match my tone to the perceived tone of my conversational partner, I'll end up often actually escalating the level of aggression, which has a similar impact on them and so on.

I probably agree that not responding or responding with content isn't any more beneficial for the person you are responding to. However, those responses mostly avoid the corrosive effect that trolling has on the your own intellectual virtues.

You are right I don't see entirely why it matters, or more precisely what you mean exactly. Why don't we at least try to see if anything good comes of our conversation, I think that's at least better then just assuming nothing good will come of it.

I see what you are saying, I don't agree with you,I am willing to be open-minded and take in what you have to say. I am trying not to be biased towards my own beliefs and I am working on my skills to be as open-minded as possible.

I hear you, you are entitled to think like that, yes based on that "schizo" comment, you have every right, I sometimes write things a little aggressive but I did not mean it that way. like I said above, I am open-minded, working on being the best version of myself, but that's not that relevant here.

Also it's not only about evidence, some things are very hard to prove, especially if the other person has not had the same experiences/gone through the same stuff/seen the same stuff. It's still interesting.

I'm all ears, I am not trying to knock you or your belief, really! I understand that calling for evidence on such a matter is extremely difficult, perhaps even impossible to produce, but I am willing to take everything on board and think about a different perspective to my own, and try and make sense out of it.

(I think why I have such a hard time accepting any religion and or God, is my experiences and life. I find it hard to believe God could exist and that he did nothing to help me in certain situations. Actually I should say prevent those situations, because it is pointless in my opinion to offer help afterwards.

I guess I would have to define God but I think generally people think the same things when it comes to a God. A God that can intervene, a God that is good and not evil.) This last bit is not really relevant because it is part of my story, and I am after yours.

You see you might of had a different life to mine, a privileged life, a very good life. Who knows, you might feel God,hear him, he might of saved you when you needed it or not but you can't help but feel that your life is fantastic and somebody is watching over you, I really don't know. But I am curious as to why you believe, or anybody for that matter.

Sure I am more intrigued if the person is actually sane and quite logical,and still is religious. What I mean is there are lot of people that are either drug addicts, drunks, been in jail for a long time, etc etc and they found God. I am less inclined to take their word for it because of their circumstances, if that makes any sense.

OrP makes a good point, but then it's difficult to post as well as OrP :P

Okay, so let's start with your epistemological approach to Santa Claus. Do you agree or disagree that your presentation is an accurate reflection of how one comes to dis-believe in Santa Claus:

Analyze it for yourself. Tell me what intellectual systems you see in play and whether or not these are reasonable reflections of the development of human thought on a topic.

---

Your bias is showing again.

What percent of people who believe in God do you think fits the category of "drug addicts, drunks, been in jail for a long time, etc etc"?

I thought we were going to continue, I guess we are not then. Are you going to nit pick every post.

I asked you 1 question. You replied with I have evidence that God exists. What you are doing right now is to long winded, I am not interested in this. Thanks for your time but I'll pass on the back and forth. I feel like you are going to drag this out to the end of time.

I still stand by my original thought, you do ignore the question.

I am going to work towards getting you the tools you need to understand how people come to form beliefs about things. This is a necessary step if you are going to come to understand how I've formed my beliefs.

You are free to engage or disengage. But you should consider next time that if you want to learn something about someone, that it's not always an easy answer you can understand in a matter of minutes.

As I stand by mine. You don't really have a good grasp of how people come to believe things. (Hint: the answer to my question about your Santa Claus presentation is easy.) Also, given your misleading blanket observation about people who believe in God ("a lot" is a Trump-style vague claim)...

You might be working, but you're not working very hard. Or you're working hard and making very little progress. The statement about drug addicts and the like is so obviously factually incorrect based on any type of demographic survey that you can find. But you seem unwilling to even confront the simplest of your biases and you're making extremely closed-minded claims.

So I have no confidence in your open-mindedness at all.

Thats fine, I appreciate that but you are going to too slow. If you want to me to understand something then just explain what you mean, in very clear to understand (layman) English. Don't use big words, I don't know any top scientists that use big words (like you do) to talk to the general public. Just keep it simple, clear and concise.

I appreciate that. I have time, but at the moment it seems like you don't want to converse with me but rather fight me or something.


Well you can always explain to me why or how beliefs are formed, but if you start with read this wiki page and read this website, then I will pass. Feel free to educate me if you feel I have a limited understanding on the matter.

Cmon now, stop with the insults, already. You are also showing a bit of closed-mindedness, not everyone works at the same tempo you do, no need to again, belittle me!!!

I'm trying to stay level headed here, as you can see I am open-minded enough to continue to converse with you, to hear your side of the story. Convince me!!!

Spread the love!!!

You might think that, but I think you're wrong. All I'm looking for to start the conversation is for you to actually analyze a totally non-controversial statement about Santa Claus. Your first attempt at attempting to characterize how one might come to dis-believe Santa Claus not a very good one. So I want to give you another chance to get that right because we'll need that foundation moving forward.

Asking you to actually look into something and try to learn something will cause you to pass? Then you probably want to pass. This is simply not the attitude of someone who actually wants to learn.

I'm trying.

It's not an insult. It's called pointing out an error, and it's called pointing out a pattern.

You're feeling insulted, but did you know that you basically did a Trump level insuation that the people who believe in God are drug addicts, drunks, and criminals? (But some, you assume, are good people.)

Spread the love starts with you.

I just want to address this, as you seem to be on different page. Who said I wanted to learn, did I? You have it mixed up!

Again, I want to hear your story, your evidence!

Lets stop going back and forth.

If you need to explain anything you think I might not understand, then go into some detail explaining whatever it is you might think I don't understand.

Let's continue. Your story Aron, your evidence!

I'm all ears!

Sane, logical, educated, caring, non-drug user, non-alcoholic, non-criminal Christian checking in to say hello. Hello.

God is real. Jesus is real. He loves you all.

How do you know?

Personal reasons. The problem with these types of discussions is twofold:

1. Nonbelievers tend to not accept the concept that truth can be known in ones heart by faith.

2. 2 Corinthians 3:14

So, you don't want to learn anything? When you express interest in learning about how I believe things, you don't actually want to learn something?

You're such a troll caught in his own mess of words. Thanks for proving me right about your intellectual honesty and intellectual capacity. You clearly have no honest interest in this conversation.

There's no point engaging in an argument if you're not willing to learn. What a waste of everyone's time.

Of course not. And either do you, for most other things