They don't take criticism of "blind faith" well.

Read about your soul mate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus

Proverbs 3:11-12
Proverbs 4:26
Hebrews 12:4-8

Leaving everything else aside, I'm always confused by people that say they are happy to a point where it cannot be of this material world.

I bet I could give you some "material" that would make you feel differently.

It sounds like a teenager whose fallen in love and believes he or she is the only person to ever feel so strongly for a person. These emotions must be mystical and unique to them signifying that there's some special bond between the two of them.

Meanwhile... the other person doesn't know they exist and a year later the person having this mystical magical love will be fawning over some new person whose love is deeper then anything they've ever experienced.

We call that one Satan

I'm glad you're asking this, because I've tried before and never got any response.

As best I can tell, it reduces to:
'Living as if God exists' means 'feeling conviction when you say the words, "I believe God exists."'

Really? If I became convinced that the Christian God existed, then I would live differently in these ways: I would join some faith community and regularly attend meetings, I would pray, I would study the Bible more closely and differently, I would change several of my philosophical views about the nature of the universe, etc, etc.

I don't think there are a set of necessary and sufficient criteria for "living as if God exists" as opposed to "living as if you don't know if God exists," but there certainly seems to be significant differences at the population level.

The completely tilting thing about Jibby is that he posts **** like that over and over again, even though he's repeatedly shown that he is wrong.

Stuff like (all paraphrased):

"Atheism is a religion"
"It takes faith to be an atheist"
"Atheists believe the universe created itself, for no reason"
"Morality isn't possible without God"
"Atheists act like they know that God doesn't exist"

He's trolling atheists when he makes the above (and similar) statements. There's no other explanation.

I think this gets at part of it, but there's another part too.

And that is that, whatever one's view about causation generally, we certainly expect things that have repeatedly happened in particular scenarios to keep happening.

So, when I tell you that I was playing live no limit hold'em yesterday, got my money all-in pre-flop heads up with pocket aces, and they held up, that's the sort of claim that seems quite trustworthy. It is what usually happens.

If I told you that the sun came up this morning, that is even more trustworthy. The only time that doesn't happen is during an eclipse, an exceedingly rare event.

But if I told you that, in fact, the sun never came up this morning, or that I was playing live no limit hold'em, got my money all-in on the flop with four aces on an AsAdKd board against Jd4c, and lost to a runner-runner royal flush, those are not things that usually happen. Those are things that almost never happen.

The point of extraordinary claims needing extraordinary evidence is that you can believe claims that are plausible and consistent with lived experience and causal rules as we understand them, and you will usually or even always be correct in your belief.

However, when you are presented with claims that are not plausible and consistent with lived experience and causal rules as we understand them, and you choose to believe those claims, you are much more likely to be wrong than you are in the previous scenario. Because a claim's consistency with lived experience and causal rules as we understand them increases the likelihood that it is a correct descriptive claim.

Thus, the second category of claim requires a far stronger evidentiary showing than the first category of claim requires.

The thing with extroadinary claims is that they are often paradigm shifting. While we don't get into here, for obvious reasons, there is a field called parapsychology, which deals with the scientific investigation of ESP, telepathy, mediumship and other forms of what has been termed "anomalous communication". If true, our entire laws of physics would likely have to be sent back to the drawing board. These scientists have come up with, say, statistically significant results in their research. Unfortunately, for the most part, these measurable effects are small. So what are we to do with such claims? Well, we have to look at them VERY carefully. We need to look into the methodology a little closer than we would, for a normal clinical trial. We need to examine the results with a magnifying glass.

For example, in some studies, whether or not there is a statistical effet depends on the statistical methods used to calculate that effect. This is a grave concern in a field where the vast majority of the results involve small statistical effects.

What do we do with that research? We say, interesting, let's look into it further, let's replicate the crap out of it, let's tear it apart, and put it back together, and see what comes out. If that doesn't happen because the field of parapsyhcology is small, and most mainstream scientists aren't interested or can't get funding,then so be it. But we don't overturn the entire paradigm based on these experiments. We must wait for the evidence to become unassailable, or at least strongly reliable.

Except how would you know it is God unless he can out do the every day ordinary?

Yes, I should have been clearer; I was talking only about Jibninjas' intended criterion for "living as if God exists." I'm pretty sure it doesn't reduce to specifically Christian rituals.

What it does reduce to, I have little idea...except for what I mentioned.

I think the argument above has a point.

The line between probability and the intrinsic quality of evidence is blurred by skeptics.

Jibninjas...? I'm particularly curious about this one.

My whole point is that there is no such thing living as it "I don't know".

Completely ****ing ridiculous.

So my friends who say they actually don't know? They're living as if he does or doesn't? How can you tell? Why must they fit into one of these categories?

It seems to me living 'as if God exists' means acting in a way consistent with his existence and inconsistent with his nonexistence (otherwise they could be said to be living as if he didnt). Similarly, living as if he doesn't exist must be inconsistent with his actually existing.

Therefore your schema is incomplete - where do you place people who are living in a way which is consistent with either claim being true?

first you say that living 'as if God exists' means acting in a way that is consistent with his existence and inconsistent with his nonexistence, but then you ask if there is a category that is consistent with both. How can one live both consistently and inconsistent at the same time?

That's not the both, I'm referring to.

Your claim is we either:

1. Live in a way consistent with God's existence and inconsistent with his nonexistence

Or

2. Live in a way consistent with God's nonexistence and inconsistent with his existence

And I reject this dichotomy. I'm not saying we can live in a way to satisfy both of these. I'm saying there are people who live in a way consistent with God existing and consistent with God not existing.

Almost all of my friends live in a way such that you couldn't tell whether they think God exists or doesnt. When you ask them they answer "I don't know". This is what I mean by living in such a way consistent with both - not both of your categories, both the situation where God exists and the situation where he doesnt.

You previously declared they were living as if God doesnt exist (ie that their behaviour is inconsistent with believing that God exists) though you seem to have backed off that claim now. My question is how you can possibly tell which of your categories to place them in? They belong in a third category - living as if they don't know.

How can one do this? How can live both consistent with God existing AND not existing? If one lives as if God exists, that seems to me to by definition exclude living as if God does not exist.

Not being able to tell how one lives there life does not seem like a necessary quality here. By introducing this I think we are just confusing (or making more complicated) the conversation.

As far as how they respond to the "Does God exist" question has no bearing on the issue at hand. It is not about what propositions they believe are true, but how they live their lives.

First, I never meant to be so specific as to make a claim about your actual friends. Sorry if that was confusing.

I have not backed off my claim though. There is no third category. If one does not live consistent with God existing, they are by default living as if God does not exist.

I think this is an example of where the law of excluded middle applies. Either one lives consistently with God existing, or one does not. By living consistently with God not existing one is living inconsistently with God existing. So you cannot both live consistently and inconsistently with God existing. Original Position can correct me if I wrong, but this seems to be true.

I still don't understand by what you mean by "living as if God exists"

Well, as an example, I may have two sugars in my coffee. Fully consistent with either state of affairs. Extend as necessary through a comprehensive list of all the actions I take....

You don't think it's necessary to be able to tell how one lives their life in order to declare how one lives their life?

It has a bearing on sorting out whether they think God doesnt exist, whether they think he does or whether they don't know. It seems to me that 'how they're living' might be at least tangentially connected to what they think is true. If not, I don't see how it helps your case.

It wasn't confusing - you are clearly trying to keep your comments general. My point is that by making this general claim (that people who claim to be living as if they don't know are actually living as if God doesnt exist) you are implicitly making claims about my friends. Unjustified ones, as it turns out. However, I don't particularly care. What I'm looking for is an answer to the question:

How do you decide which group to put them in? I have a friend who doesnt go to church, donates a moderate amount to charity, donates heavy amounts of time in things he considers to be 'worthy causes', really likes hot chocolate, works in the theatre industry, is unmarried (and considers marriage to be an error for everyone), says he doesnt know if God exists but can't see how the universe would just 'pop into' existence, thinks that morality is subjective,....

How is he living? Do you need anything else? When he drinks coffee he has one sugar and milk.
If something is orange it isn't green. If something is green it isn't orange. Therefore nothing is purple.
So you keep asserting - what actions does one perform when living consistently with God not existing which you wouldn't do if God existed?
I can correct you to. It isn't.