Meeting with Bishop: Faith is a Choice

[_mikwut]

Buffalo,

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.

Your responses are simply too cliché, lack depth - and insist on inconclusive opinion that you state as resolved fact without support that you provide. I believe as I have stated on my first post on this forum and many following that atheism is possible, nihilism is possible, and theism is possible. That reflects richly and substantively on the real nature of all the evidence and our human and concrete experiences to me. A ridiculous stance that "Buffalo" left the Mormon church and shortly thereafter figured out "the combined knowledge and research of all biology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, psychology, history, anthropology, and geology" and it just so happens to be eerily similar to a rigid scientistic and immature type of atheism that is faddish right now isn't particularly appealing to me. I don't have discussions with fundamentalist dogmatists and you are resembling them in methodology and substance. I will give you the last slogan or bumper sticker to post. This is simply not a satisfying dialogue for me to continue.

my best, mikwut

[_Hoops]

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.

Really, Buffalo. You've been more nimble in the past. Time to step up your game.

I've admitted nothing and there is nothing to be defeated. I've proposed nothing and I've not used any religious language nor appealed to anything other than logic and reason.

I am asking you to provide some logical explanation as to why what you regard as evidence, your experiential interaction with the evidence, comports, accords, or supports what is actual reality.

[_Chap]

I am simply asking him to provide evidence that what he experiences supports what is actually real.

Quite. So if Buffalo accepts your challenge and tries to meet it, how will you decide whether he has succeeded or not? In other words, where is this standard for deciding what is 'actually real'?

If you don't have such a standard, how will you evaluate any evidence he provides?

[_Rambo]

A ridiculous stance that "Buffalo" left the Mormon church and shortly thereafter figured out "the combined knowledge and research of all biology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, psychology, history, anthropology, and geology" and it just so happens to be eerily similar to a rigid scientistic and immature type of atheism that is faddish right now isn't particularly appealing to me.

Hi mikwut,

Are you pointing out that these scientific things are pointing towards atheism? Or does it just seem that way at this point in human history?

I have noticed that atheism is getting more popular especially among people in my age group. Most of the non Mormons I talk to around my age group or younger are atheist or agnostic. Do you think it's because they have learned a lot more because of the internet and because there is more science out there that goes against religion than ever before? Or is it just a popular fad?

[_Themis]

Our faculties form beliefs spontaneously from reality imposing itself on us in the form of evidence.

I agree. The expereince is the evidence, and then we have to provide the interpretation of that evidence. Some may withhold interpretation due to thinking it may be to unreliable to have much chance of being accurate. I think this is where the divide is between religious and less religious if that is the proper words to use. :)

Sometimes the beliefs are reliable, sometimes they are not.

Reliability needs to be reproducible across the board in order to be reliable in the way we need to have the belief/interpretation likely be an accurate proposition of reality. By realty I mean a proposition that is true for everyone regardless of belief/interpretation.

No one, and I mean that literally, no one has formed a belief for spontaneous auto-liposuction from the existence of large boulders.

Don't we have someone who does form beliefs based on their expereince with a certain mountain, and can glean information from looking and analyzing it?

There is no causal connection for our faculties to adduce, it is simply crude nonsense.

Don't be so cruel.

The vast majority of mankind has formed the belief in a God being or beings - that is factual and that is not possible without evidence of some kind from reality upon their/our cognitive faculties.

Very understandable. With very limited knowledge about the world around our ancestors they would've course come up with all kinds of things to explain why the earth shakes, the wind howls, and what the hell is that red stuff coming down the mountain. God really is a generic term that can encompass all beliefs about some powerful creature or entity man has come up with to explain something about the world they inhabit. If aliens have visited us in the past I think our ancestors would have thought of them as Gods. I suspect some of our ancestors also had night terrors, visions, etc. I wonder how they would have first explained their visions they got from trying out that new plant they found the other day. WOW good stuff.

[_Hoops]

Quite. So if Buffalo accepts your challenge and tries to meet it, how will you decide whether he has succeeded or not? In other words, where is this standard for deciding what is 'actually real'?

If you don't have such a standard, how will you evaluate any evidence he provides?

I'm confident that I won't be faced with that problem. At best he can point to some universal experience that he will say means it's real. I.e. everyone sees a blue sky, therefor whether the sky is blue or not is irrelevant. Or something like that.

His problem then becomes that he's making assumptions and is taking by faith that blue is indeed a color. I'm confident that he will have no evidence to support his claim that his evidence gives us full access to external reality.

[_Themis]

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

It's good to see that you have expressed an openness to be wrong. I tend to limit my interpretations of these experiences. I think they are to unreliable to likely come up with an accurate interpretation at this time. Most of what you describe I believe I have experienced.

[_Chap]

Quite. So if Buffalo accepts your challenge and tries to meet it, how will you decide whether he has succeeded or not? In other words, where is this standard for deciding what is 'actually real'?

If you don't have such a standard, how will you evaluate any evidence he provides?

I'm confident that I won't be faced with that problem. At best he can point to some universal experience that he will say means it's real. I.e. everyone sees a blue sky, therefor whether the sky is blue or not is irrelevant. Or something like that.

His problem then becomes that he's making assumptions and is taking by faith that blue is indeed a color. I'm confident that he will have no evidence to support his claim that his evidence gives us full access to external reality.

So you think it possible that blue is not a color?

What kind of evidence would you need to settle the question of whether it is or is not a color?

[_Themis]

I'm confident that I won't be faced with that problem. At best he can point to some universal experience that he will say means it's real. I.e. everyone sees a blue sky, therefor whether the sky is blue or not is irrelevant. Or something like that.

His problem then becomes that he's making assumptions and is taking by faith that blue is indeed a color. I'm confident that he will have no evidence to support his claim that his evidence gives us full access to external reality.

Dodging again. LOL

With the color blue it is irrelevant whether different people see something different. What is relevant is whether we can all pick out the same object that is said to be blue. That's why reliability is important, and how some things are not as reliable as other things.

[_Hoops]

Dodging again. LOL

With the color blue it is irrelevant whether different people see something different. What is relevant is whether we can all pick out the same object that is said to be blue. That's why reliability is important, and how some things are not as reliable as other things.

Except that in no way makes it blue.