mentalgymnast wrote:I choose a creator/God. I choose faith. I choose to believe that God can communicate to us, but it is us that has to make the first step forward...time after time after time. And even then, we are left to wonder, "What the heck?" Was that REALLY from God/Holy Ghost, or not? And we move forward in faith, or we don't. You folks have chosen to be faithless. I get that. You have good reason for choosing that path. God has not spoken to you directly in an unmistakable way. And that's what you're choosing to go with.
You choose blind faith, or faith with little supportive evidence. Most of us had this faith as well. I gave examples of better faith. I think what bothers you and others is that religions like LDS promote a faith or believing without evidence as a positive trait. We see this in various religious stories. The problem is that this is the same kind of faith for all religious claims whether true of false. It's also the faith asked for by the frauds of the world, so how can this kind of faith be a virtue?
Themis wrote:You misunderstand my posts then. I said recently to MG that my posts here are not meant to prove his beliefs false, but establish whether one knows they are true or not. It has been showed that we don't know. Naturalistic explanations are also not necessarily meant to prove any experience is natural. Only that naturalistic explanations do explain them.
I haven't read the whole thread, too long. Mostly referencing the OP and harsh nature of so many of these posts. Another context we could pull from is human morals in general. Replace "spiritual experience" with "sens of right and wrong." Why do some 90% of the people on the planet profess a belief in god, regardless of the particular form that belief takes? Why do atheists espouse similar moral codes? Why does Everybody Wang Chung care whether Columbus was a moral dude or not over in the other thread? Where does this sense of right and wrong come from? We all seem to have it, to some degree or another. We all seem to possess the capacity of "sensing" things beyond both ourselves and our well-established physical senses. Is it logical, is it natural? To a great extent this whole debate is just a re-litigation of human nature.
Whether or not God exists or not, evolution explains it. It's also not so much a belief in God, but how we humans try to explain the world we don't understand.
There are psychopaths that have no sense of right and wrong. And there is a lot of emphasis to be placed on culture and upbringing. And then what is "right" to one person isn't necessarily "right" to another. You are simply broadbrushing a very complicated issue. But by all means have at it.
Riding on a speeding train; trapped inside a revolving door; Lost in the riddle of a quatrain; Stuck in an elevator between floors. One focal point in a random world can change your direction: One step where events converge may alter your perception.
But it is faith that moves one forward from that point into active belief/hope. Yes, we are all still stepping into the unknown after having experience what we consider...or hope...to be spiritual experiences. We each have to decide what we're going to do with these 'peak experiences' and how they will fit into our overall schema of things, including faith.
Regards, MG
I just recognized they were not good evidence, and they are easily interpreted to favor what we want to believe. This realization didn't change my beliefs. It was other evidences that were really good that changed my beliefs.
And so what do we make of this trend? From the ol' Deseret News...
The marriage rate in America has hit a record low and is expected to drop even further next year, according to a company that specializes in wedding and fertility trend forecasts. But some experts speculate that the headline-grabbing recent retreat from marriage may be bottoming out.
The 2015 U.S. Wedding Forecast from Demographic Intelligence says millennials in the next five years will have more of its members at a typical marrying age than any previous generation. But they are also less likely to tie the knot than their predecessors.
The report shows a marriage rate of 6.74 per 1,000 people this year, with the number expected to fall slightly lower over each of the next two years. In 2008, the marriage rate in America was 7.09.
Riding on a speeding train; trapped inside a revolving door; Lost in the riddle of a quatrain; Stuck in an elevator between floors. One focal point in a random world can change your direction: One step where events converge may alter your perception.
Water Dog wrote: Why do some 90% of the people on the planet profess a belief in god, regardless of the particular form that belief takes? .... . Is it logical, is it natural?
WaterDog wrote:I haven't read the whole thread, too long.
Your questions above were discussed quite a bit within the thread.
We all seem to possess the capacity of "sensing" things beyond both ourselves and our well-established physical senses
"Seem to" is right. Also discussed within the thread. You might particularly enjoy Drw's posts, he gave some fascinating information as to the mechanism behind why we "seem to."
Themis wrote:evolution explains [offers an explain for] it
fix it for you. there are way more questions than answers.
You didn't fix anything. You just restated it. Supernatural was the explanation of the many things humans didn't understand. That list has consistently gone down as natural explanations have grown.