Meeting with Bishop: Faith is a Choice

[_mikwut]

Hello Rambo,

Can I ask what these experiences are?

In the Mormon faith it was mainly just a good feeling. Sure there was some people that said they had visions but they were usually sleeping at the time or I don't know what their state of mind was.

If people told me they saw a ghost I don't believe them cause I have never seen them myself.

In my experience with just Mormons mind you most of them just had a good feeling. I would say about 99% of them would base their belief on this good feeling. The other 1% said they saw something and they were usually the little bit more unstable people in the ward. Plus why should I except what this 1% saw? What makes them so special they get these visions? How come I can't see it too and then I would know god does exist.

From what I have learned I really haven't seen any evidence of a god based on religious experience.

The experiences are manifold. They are basic. I am not meaning a grand vision or ghost sighting. For me personally my experience consists of a general intuition or perception that God is working in my life, that God loves me, that God is. The world, the cosmos and nature often mediate a perception of meaning and a creator to me. I can't help but form the beliefs, it is just there. I experience what I consider to be grace in normal day to day activities, great and small, I can't help but believe it to be what we term grace. My interactions with others provide perceptual beliefs of meaning and depth that further form basic beliefs in a God that loves me and loves us through others. My faith can grow and weaken it isn't static. I have experienced what Rudolf Otto termed the numinous. I experience sin in an existential way that resonates with my belief in God more clearly than without. I find my faculties are more tuned when I live spiritual disciplines. I could go on and on, these are basic human experiences that I discern and judge to be meaningful and reliable in formation of the beliefs that they form in me, i.e. I have faith or trust that they are reliable in the beliefs that they form in me. I don't have to have that trust it is an attitude towards those psychological, existential, concrete human experiences.

my best, mikwut

[_Buffalo]

I think it would be helpful if you could point to something you are prepared to accept as 'reality', and that you believe will be perceptible to those who read your posts.

I think it would be helpful if you could point to experiential evidence that we can know comports with reality. It's not up to me to prove your case for you, it's up to you.

I've already explained to you why questioning of reality itself as a defense of your unsupported faith position is an admission of defeat. If you choose to go on admitting defeat with this weak defense, I won't complain. :)

[_Hoops]

I've already explained to you why questioning of reality itself as a defense of your unsupported faith position is an admission of defeat. If you choose to go on admitting defeat with this weak defense, I won't complain. :)

You're not listening, as usual. I'm not questioning reality. Nor have I written anything about my faith. Your position is at logically incoherent.

Now please answer the question or provide evidence for your position.

[_mikwut]

Hello Buffalo,

Yes, and like all good metaphors, the relationship is nearly 1:1 with the topic being discussed. There is no established relationship between your feelings of faith and devotion and spirituality with the existence of some sort of god.

This is what I meant previously about your use of words. You are proceeding with the word "evidence" and claiming none of it exists. In response to me that your confusing terms you claim otherwise but then proceed with adjectives that are synonymous with proof, like I bolded above. Pick one.

The feelings you feel are evidence that something is going on in your brain.

This is where you are not clear. Of course beliefs form in my brain, where else do you suppose something like belief formation would be going on?

Believers fail to establish a relationship with them to god, or even that there is such a thing as god - just as in my "crude" metaphor.

I believe differently.

mikwut

[_Chap]

I think it would be helpful if you could point to something you are prepared to accept as 'reality', and that you believe will be perceptible to those who read your posts.

I think it would be helpful if you could point to experiential evidence that we can know comports with reality. It's not up to me to prove your case for you, it's up to you.

I think you have me mixed up with another poster, Buffalo probably.

I am just trying to understand you. You ask for evidence that 'comports with reality', which I take it means the same as 'accords with reality'.

That implies you claim knowledge of a standard, called by you 'reality', against which you propose to evaluate the evidence that you have asked Buffalo to provide.

In order for those of us watching your exchange with Buffalo to see whether you are playing fair, it seems quite reasonable to ask you to point to an example of 'reality' that you regard as beyond dispute for you and for the rest of us. Can you do that?

[_Buffalo]

I've already explained to you why questioning of reality itself as a defense of your unsupported faith position is an admission of defeat. If you choose to go on admitting defeat with this weak defense, I won't complain. :)

You're not listening, as usual. I'm not questioning reality. Nor have I written anything about my faith. Your position is at logically incoherent.

Now please answer the question or provide evidence for your position.

You've already admitted defeat, and my characterization of your weak-ass position is accurate.

For your reading pleasure, I submit to you a portion the body of evidence in support of my world view. That is, the combined knowledge and research of all biology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, psychology, history, anthropology, and geology

If you need more, let me know. I know this pales in comparison to the tingly feeling in your tummy when you think about god or engage in solipsistic defenses of god on the internet, but I hope it's sufficient.

[_Buffalo]

Hello Buffalo,

Yes, and like all good metaphors, the relationship is nearly 1:1 with the topic being discussed. There is no established relationship between your feelings of faith and devotion and spirituality with the existence of some sort of god.

This is what I meant previously about your use of words. You are proceeding with the word "evidence" and claiming none of it exists. In response to me that your confusing terms you claim otherwise but then proceed with adjectives that are synonymous with proof, like I bolded above. Pick one.

The feelings you feel are evidence that something is going on in your brain.

This is where you are not clear. Of course beliefs form in my brain, where else do you suppose something like belief formation would be going on?

Believers fail to establish a relationship with them to god, or even that there is such a thing as god - just as in my "crude" metaphor.

I believe differently.

mikwut

You believe differently, but you cannot establish a connection between your intuitions and between a real third party, namely God. Your intuition is evidence of the state of your particular psyche. Your brain is not an extrasensory organ, and you have no evidence that it is. Your emotion is indicative of states internal to you, not external to some supernatural being whose existence has not even been established.

[_mikwut]

Buffalo,

For your reading pleasure, I submit to you a portion the body of evidence in support of my world view. That is, the combined knowledge and research of all biology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, psychology, history, anthropology, and geology

If you need more, let me know. I know this pales in comparison to the tingly feeling in your tummy when you think about god or engage in solipsistic defenses of god on the internet, but I hope it's sufficient.

This is ridiculous. Are we to understand that when your mind or brain makes deductions, inductions, and abductions based on the reading pleasure you have provided us that nothing of a resonated reasoned feeling is the result for you? Like when I first grasped arithmetic? What is it about judgment, discernment, interpretation, decide, form opinion regarding, drawing of conclusions, probability, indefinite, unsettled, subjective, intuited, etc... do you not seem to understand? Or think that when you use the banal term "feeling" that that same "feeling" shell game applies to you?

mikwut

[_Hoops]

I think you have me mixed up with another poster, Buffalo probably.

I did do that, Chap. Sorry.

I am just trying to understand you. You ask for evidence that 'comports with reality', which I take it means the same as 'accords with reality'.

That implies you claim knowledge of a standard, called by you 'reality', against which you propose to evaluate the evidence that you have asked Buffalo to provide.

No, I'm not impying that at all. First, Buffalo is accusing me of Solipsism, which to my understanding (which I'll grant could certainly be flawed) is that it means that the only thing that actually exists is one's own mind. That's not what I'm saying. As a Christian, I readily agree that their is an external reality. One could call it God.

Buffalo seems to want to reject anything that does not meet his experiential criteria for evidence. I am asking how he knows that what he regards as evidence is evidentiary of reality. Of course, he can not. He is taking it on faith that what is real can be experienced by him. So his wholesale rejection of faith is incoherent with his own world view.

In order for those of us watching your exchange with Buffalo to see whether you are playing fair, it seems quite reasonable to ask you to point to an example of 'reality' that you regard as beyond dispute for you and for the rest of us. Can you do that?

I don't think so. Buffalo consistently makes positive assertions about evidence. He is sure of certain things based on the evidence he accepts. I am simply asking him to provide evidence that what he experiences supports what is actually real.

[_Rambo]

For me personally my experience consists of a general intuition or perception that God is working in my life, that God loves me, that God is. The world, the cosmos and nature often mediate a perception of meaning and a creator to me. I can't help but form the beliefs, it is just there.

Thankyou mikwut.

I'm just curious how you tell the difference between you feel that God is guiding you or it just being the thoughts in your head? Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to be rude but when I believed I did feel god was guiding me in my life. Now I just think those were my own thoughts and there wasn't a god at all in the equation.