What if you can't look at it from a human (earthly) point of view and understand it?

What would be God's purpose in allowing it? Do preceding generations and/or culture or human psychology compound the need for it?

Then belief in God cannot be grounded on reason.

None that I can see.
No.

Wesley in one of his sermons said:

"But who is able to receive these hard sayings? Who can believe that they are the great truths of God? Not many wise not many noble, not many famed for learning; none, indeed, who are not taught of God. And who are they whom God teaches? Let our Lord answer: "If any man be willing to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." Those who are otherwise minded will be so far from receiving it, that they will not be able to understand it. Two as sensible men as most in England sat down together, some time since, to read over and consider that plain discourse on, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." After much deep consideration, one of them broke out, "Positively, I cannot understand it. Pray, do you understand it, Mr. L.?" Mr. L. honestly replied, "Indeed, not I. I cannot conceive what Mr. W. means. I can make nothing at all of it." So utterly blind is our natural understanding touching the truth of God!"

http://hbs.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/87/

What is the point of this story?

It seems related in some way.

How about trying a mental exercise. Try reviewing your life and see if you detect an intersection with God. Anything keep repeating in your life? Does a flaw keep re-surfacing?

I keep thinking I detect one but the way he'd work with me wouldn't be the same as you as we're different people with different influences.

Just my 2 cents.

How is it related? It doesn't seem related to me.

I don't detect an intersection with God in my life.

Splendour, make a new thread or attempt it via pm's if you want to personally convert OrP. (lol)

It's a long term exercise. I wouldn't discuss it further on here because it's too introspective and this environment tends to downgrade introspection as it's hard to verify empirically.

Cite:
Heb. 12:5-11
Prov.: 3:11-12
James 1:2-4

I realized after I made my post that it was rather myopic of me to assume that if somebody did as I described, the only outcome was atheism. Personally, I can't imagine how to arrive at the conclusion that theism is valid after doing this, as such I find it impossible to understand your position without implicating my old friend "preexisting personal bias". The only way forward I see on this point is for me to gain a better understanding of your position by debating specific points in other threads.


I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "intellectually sufficient". I don't disagree that introspection is a viable method for attaining faith, but obviously I would argue that it would not be done through completely rational thinking.

I don't think I'm splitting hairs by saying that this isn't "evidence against a loving God", but a lack of evidence for the existence of God. Perhaps it's just my understanding of the word "evidence", but I don't see how something that is inherently not disprovable can have evidence against it. I suppose I am excluding thought experiments as a type of evidence by saying this.

By "intellectually sufficient" I mean the following:

If a believer abandons his faith due to whatever process of introspection one goes through, is that person intellectually justified (from the point of view of an atheist) in his conclusion? In other words, has he reached his conclusion through a process that the atheist would conclude is "rational" (or whatever word you want to use there to describe a valid intellectual process of introspection)?

And if so, and it is indeed the case that you can attain faith through the same intellectual process, would it also then be considered "intellectually sufficient" if a non-believer accepts faith as a result of the same process?

Clearly whether the person is being rational depends on the actual evidence and reasoning he is using and not whether he is converting to theism or atheism. For instance, atheists readily admit that it was far more rational to believe in god 2000 years ago when we didn't have scientific explanations for many of the phenomena that exist.

How do you determine when a belief is "more" or "less" rational? Is this different from simply being "rational" with no qualifiers?

Wouldn't it be ironic if Coyne is the least expert to talk about religion?

What if people are reincarnating through various spiritual states until they reach a stage of spiritual perfection?

Then all the open interfaith dialog does is ****** spiritual progression because the people with the least expertise are trying to seize control and pass faith through empirical litmus tests before the thing they are trying to test is complete.

It's a good thing God is in control.

1 Cor. 8:1: Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But the man who loves God is known by God. (NIV)

Based on how closely it aligns with the person's goals or how well it approximates reality, or however you want to define it in this situation. Using "rational" with no qualifiers implies that the claim has met some minimum baseline towards that end.

The bibles knowledge sure does make some of its believers puffy, so you might have a point.

That's a pretty big what if. Do you have any evidence of this reincarnation and spiritual progression?

It wasn't evidence that caused me to abandon my faith, it was lack of evidence. The lack of evidence for the beliefs I had so much faith in. I came to the conclusion that they were pretty much unfounded and I had no idea why/how I or anyone else decided there was a God.

The "tipping point" is the moment when you honestly question your beliefs and why you hold them, realise they're unfounded, and willingly let them go.

The same can be said for the adoption of whatever your new belief system is.

"Only a fool will believe a statement without sufficient evidence" ... but what is the sufficient evidence to believe this is true?

Why do I strongly suspect (without reading it) that Coyne is claiming that reality is better when its real.

Spiritual brain function is the kind of made up terms used by people who can't claim strength in any rational areas so they make up some new ones (or cling to the made up nonsense of others). Usually tested by such rigorous methods as taking multiple choice tests with questions like: "do you feel really spiritual?", "Do you sometimes just 'feel' things that are true?"

I do enjoy this circle by believers. They believe based on evidence that when pressed most usually admit won't hold up as any sort of evidence that can be examined or tested. And, let's face it, when there is any sort of proposed evidence that can be tested it usually fails. In the end, we end up with many theists resorting to the position that they require faith. "without it there would be no freewill."

Every once in awhile we'll have a thread like this where someone again ventures to claim there is evidence. Meanwhile, this claim is a drop in the ocean of other theists (and particularly Christians, at least in my country) who continually wear their faith as pride and boldly claim how faith is required and if there was proof of God's existence it would invalidate their faith (which is bad)

When you end one belief there's no reason why it has to be replaced by another.

If I believe aliens are beaming mind control directives into my brain, question this belief, and then abandon it, there's no "new belief" system. You just no longer believe that aliens are probing your thoughts. They could be, but you have no reason to believe that to be the case.

I guess perhaps the new belief system here could be "the idea that aliens are using mind control on me is unfounded". This belief could be easily verified by examining the evidence to support the mind probe scenario, and seeing that it is in fact flimsy.

are you new here?

It's not so much that you're replacing "I believe in God" with "I do not believe in God" (or some variant including non-declarative atheistic statements like "I do not hold a position regarding the existence of God"). But instead, you're leaning on a "deeper" belief system which tells you how you're going to evaluate such statements.

So there's still a system of beliefs *somewhere* which forms your evaluative basis.

So you're basically saying we should re-evaluate how we evaluate evidence in order to come to the conclusion we'd like? (pie in the sky)

I dunno really what you're getting at, unless you'd like to specifically point out flaws in how atheists evaluate the evidence (or lack thereof) for Jesus.

Are you criticising the idea of not thinking something is true when you have no reason to think such? It does seem rather irrational to think something is true when nothing suggests this is reality. And if you want to challenge this so you can cling on to Jesus, it opens you up to believing... well everything.