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Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
So, the certainty of the individual offering you the pill wouldn't satisfy you? You'd need more than that? How then have you convinced yourself based on your own certainty, can you see how circular that is?
You are comparing someone else claiming to be certain, with my believing in God. Just because I believe in God doesn't mean that I have to believe everyone who claims to be certain about something, they could be lying for all I know. It would also depend on how well I know the individual making the claim. If a good friend of mine whom I trust was convinced about something, I'd be more willing to trust him.
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Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
This is not how I use the word 'faith'. Faith isn't a suspicion that could lead to further discovery, faith is a belief in something that required someone to simply believe precisely because there weren't any good reasons to. If you have a good reason to believe something is true, then you don't need faith.
That's why I said it's not always black and white. Sometimes it takes faith to walk in the door, but once you're in the room, your faith is rewarded with information you would not otherwise have been granted.
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Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Scriptural evidence for anything other than it being an example of historical record is not convincing to me and frankly it's just begging the question again. I don't believe god exists, so naturally I'm not going to place any confidence in the bible as evidence for anything that suggests that god exists. I don't think anyone should. Even if god existed, the bible couldn't be trusted.
The historical record for Christ is biblical, many scholars use this as evidence for Jesus being God.
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Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
My point was that you would not be convinced of the existence of the monster simply by someone offering such 'evidence' (their personal experience). Now, what's the difference between the Loch Ness Monster and any of the god theories? Why do so many of the religious rely on personal experience, such an unreliable type of evidence? If Nessie isn't helping, we can move onto UFO abductees as another example of how unconvincing personal experience anecdotes would be to you.
I may not be convinced, but I would be more inclined to check it out for myself if the person was someone I trusted, and they were convinced. If someone came to me with an impressive claim, my first reaction is not to reject it and look at all the possible ways he could be wrong, and when he suggests he himself could be wrong, to reject that for another explanation of my liking.
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Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
I'm not comparing our experiences, I can't do that because I have no idea what yours were. I was simply pointing out, in response to your suggestion that I haven't had any that have convinced me that god exists, that actually I might have, but they simply failed to convince me that god exists because of the difference in how you and I perceive our realities.
If you concede that we may not have shared experiences, how can you be so sure that these experiences are not enough to convince me of God?
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Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
I actually can't imagine what would constitute proof to me that any of the gods really exist. In light of our current understanding of how our brains fool us all the time (cognitive biases) there's literally no personal experience that I would trust. So, this is the crux for me, how is it that your personal experiences were so convincing to you? How did you get from not believing, to believing the explanations provided by a mainstream religion with such certainty?
My experiences were convincing because they carried with them a conviction. I believed it was Christ, as it was part of the revelation, and I later went on to study the bible and met many people who corroborated my story. I still have a relationship with Christ, this is not just a one-time vague feeling that I thought to label "Christ", it's an ongoing part of my life, that I cannot dismiss.
What I fail to understand is how you can claim that nothing would convince you of God. If God came down and spoke to you himself, you're saying you would reject it altogether, and that does not seem objective. To be that rigorous with your beliefs, you would need reject almost everything, all your senses can misguide you, things you see, things you touch, things you think. I have heard many people say, "I'll believe it when I see it", but you're seemingly saying that even then you won't believe it, which seems surprising.