Maybe it was a spirit. I don’t have all the answers, all I know is I know what I’ve experienced. A shoulder tap after a prayer that others have experienced.

I didn't say that we believe things that we don't think are true, I said that there are many reasons for holding beliefs and them being true doesn't need to be one of them. We might believe things because they have some practical utility in our lives, or because they make us happy, and never care to even check that they're actually true, or there might be no known way to check if it's true (sound familiar?) and so we just believe it anyway.

I personally don't want to have beliefs that aren't true, so I apply what standards I can to my beliefs to make sure that at the very least, my belief system is coherent, and my beliefs aren't trivially false. It's not useful to say 'we can't ever know if something is true' or 'we can't ever know if something is real' because we would be paralysed by indecision, but we can apply some standards such as our arguments being logically valid or facts being easy to verify, or not believing something purely because of an unverifiable personal experience that could easily be explained by something else (e.g. drugs, in the case of this thread...).

I wasn’t on any drugs during the shoulder taps. I’ve done enough drugs in my life (prescribed opiates at 10 or less after numerous surgeries) (weed at 18) to know the difference between being sedated and stopping breathing and going to a different realm.

"Holding a belief" necessarily entails an intellectual assent to the belief being true.

You claim to be an honest person. That's great, imo. You've also claimed to post on an old account on 22 while receiving praise. It would do you good to state your old account so folks don't think that you're a coward who is completely full of ****. You would receive my honest respect and others attention.

I am OP. Back in 2007 I made a “crazy” ace high call vs Patrick Antonius and I feel like dealing with that criticism has prepared me for my posts. I’ve been called crazy on the internet and it doesn’t bother me. I bet my posts have saved some souls. That’s what’s important.

All I used to care about was fame and money. Saving souls for Christ is where it’s at.

I fail to see how "saving souls" is +EV!
You keep the souls....I'll take the cash! ;-)

No issues with that. Our existence in the timeline of the universe is a mere blip.

Let me tell you something about money. In 2009 I chopped the FTOPs main event for $290k. Less than a week later I overdosed on Percocet because I felt so empty. Didn’t see heaven or anything, only vomited all day. Ask Thay3r. I thought achieving a monetary goal would fulfill me and it didn’t. Helping others is where it’s at. Money is empty. Can’t bring it with you when you die.

This kind of "analysis" of rationality when the underlying commitment in your consciousness is: "I must believe in magic and defend it in the face of all arguments" .... is a flippin' JOKE.

All you did was trade one empty, desperate zealotry for another. I am well aware of the emptiness of the gambling lifestyle and that it is often an attempt to fulfill psychological/spiritual needs that it in fact cannot fulfill. Leaping to one of the thousands of religions with zealotry is not a fulfillment of those needs either.

There are many possible explanations for the shoulder tap. Our sense of touch is as prone to gremlins as is all the rest of the senses. We see things, hear things, smell things .... our brain is doing it sometimes without external stimulus. Hallucination do not have to be visual or auditory -- they can be occur in our tactile sense. Our brains are fully capable of such a thing either through imagination or hallucination. (I could cite one much more involved that I in no way take as supernatural. Whatever happens to you, it just isn't supernatural. It's natural and has natural explanations unless we just magically assume the supernatural.) And simple synchronicity occurring in the trillions of opportunities it has is not even an outlier, let along a miracle.

Not sure what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't this, lol. Interesting why you didn't just post under your original account to begin with, but anyway...

You say you understand the skepticism, but it's not apparent that you do, in the slightest.

You've suggested that a likely muscle spasm in your shoulder is really the creator of the universe literally tapping you on the shoulder. In fact, you think it's evidence of this creator.

But when pressed, you say you don't have all the answers, maybe it was a "spirit". That's a pretty major difference! But maybe it was a muscle spasm, Adam.

Look, you do you, but don't act as if anything you've said here reasonably leads to anything close to "therefore Jesus". You've also ignored the possibility "some percentage of viewers are less likely to turn to religion" because of your stories.


I do have a real question though: did you consider yourself a Christian, or a believer, when you first watched The Case For Christ? I have a hypothesis about that (and similar) works.

The stuff that you have brought up in this thread — the importance of truth, self doubt, pragmatism, etc — are admirable. I wouldn’t want to push back on any of that.

I have a challenge for you though: Contemplate on whether or not the desire for meaning is true. Is the desire for meaning true?

To do this properly and honestly, you are going to have to stand your ground against the hyper rationalist part of you that wants to dismiss the question as irrational, and which only wants to see truth claims in a familiar way. In other words, you are going to have to be a man about this and stand in discomfort. That’s the challenge which I’m offering, not for my sake, so there is no need to respond to this.

No, it doesn't. I can see why you would want that to be the case though.

But what do you in the case of your belief that there's a god, and it's a specific version of that god and you think all the other human god beliefs are false, but your belief is completely unverifiable/unprovable?

How are you establishing 'truth'? That's a hefty standard to meet in a context where it's impossible to meet it, so by your own criteria, you shouldn't really believe in god.

There are many explanations for what you think you experienced. 'God' is at the far less plausible end of that list. How is it that you are so certain when you ought to be reasonably skeptical?

Unless there are no souls, or christ isn't the true god, in which case you swapped one empty pursuit for another. Given that this would be something I'd imagine that you'd need to be certain about, to avoid wasting your time, how are you arriving at your certainty?

I come here for interesting, educational and challenging discussion, so I'm happy to respond, assuming that isn't hijacking or derailing the thread. I'm not naturally an objective person, although I try, I like to take a position and then try to defend it, unless I can already see why it's wrong...

Not sure I understand the question though, are you asking me if it's true that there is a desire for meaning? Doesn't seem like it could be that though since I think that's trivially true. (My personal favourite philosophy on that is 'embrace the absurdity')

So, that's my answer, or, I need you to elaborate, please.

Cause I’m a targeted angel, duh.

Last time I posted on 2p2 I was fighting slander. Also didn’t want to “profit off my old rep” on this subject. Now it might bring more people to God me revealing myself idk.

I grew up going to Catholic school and thought it was so boring. Religion put me to sleep back in the day. My mom was bad at explaining God, or maybe I wasn’t ready yet for my spiritual journey.

I’ve had two shoulder taps at very specific times. The possession was also unexplainable. If you do research there’s lots of evidence for Christ.

Please provide a real-life substitution-instance for a and X in which both of the following statements are true:

Statement #1: a believes X.

Statement #2: a does not believe that X is true.

Thanks.

I don't know what "believe" means in epistemology if not to hold some proposition to be true.

I don't either. (Please see my challenge to MB above in post #69)

But it doesn't actually have to be true.

Think how many beliefs people have in day to day life without knowing if they're actually true or not, myths, old wive's tales, superstitions...

Of course beliefs don't have to actually be true, but all it means to have a belief is that you hold the proposition to be true. If you mean someone can believe something but not have spent any time contemplating it's truth, that's fair, but if you don't think it's true then you don't believe it by definition.

Well said!

This^

I'm an atheist and a humanist. I firmly believe in helping others. Spent yesterday evening at a food bank in Prince William county Virginia. It feels good to help and also makes me feel a little guilty. These are people who wonder where their next meal is coming from. I don't think I've ever been in that situation.