If seeing is believing

[SSY]

THE TRUE FAITH THAT ALL SHOULD FOLLOW.  POLITICS:  FAMILY:  NEEDS AND WANTS. OUR GOOD.  NEEDS AND WANTS NEEDS AND WANTS  GOOD PERSON.

I filtered out everything that was NOT IN CAPS, but it does need seem to have distilled sense from your post. Maybe if I clean it it up a little. . .

THE TRUE FAITH THAT ALL SHOULD FOLLOW  POLITICS.  FAMILY  NEEDS AND WANTS OUR GOOD,  NEEDS AND WANTS, NEEDS, AND WANTS  GOOD PERSON.

So, once I redistribute the punctuation thus, we see that the faith all people should follow is politics. Family (as in the Adams family) both needs and wants; our good, it wants (and needs) to have wants and needs, it wants (and needs) needs (again, two portions of need),  and wants (sans needs, just wants) a good person.

Once we got the punctuation sorted, I see it makes sense now, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I don't know why no one else in thsi thread could see that, it was staring them in the face!

[Sophus]

Some theists rarely even think about God; they're almost apatheists despite their beliefs. Thus they act on good will because they really want to.

[elliebean]

Some theists rarely even think about God; they're almost apatheists despite their beliefs. Thus they act on good will because they really want to.

True. I would add that, even among theists who do think quite a bit about their god, there are those who seldom allow that thinking to cloud their otherwise good moral judgement, at least in practice. Thus, they too act on good will because they really want to. Sometimes, even in spite of their religious 'convictions'. After all, not everyone aspires to such flawless, logical consistency between belief and actions as we philosophical thinkers sometimes dream about. The scary ones are the religious fundamentalists who really do aspire to and demand that level of consistency.


/thread derailment

[Gawen]

ok guys, lets be hypothetical for a moment. If somebody were to perform a miracle right before your eyes and they were a christian and claimed that it was the power of the Holy Spirit at work, would you reconsider your views?

No. But if everyone could perform the "miracle" and achieve the same results, I would reconsider my views of natural laws.

Or if a good friend of yours came to you and said they had a spiritual experience from God would you reconsider your views?

No. Anecdotal evidence means nothing to me. There is no way to verify the information.

I hear all the time about how there is "no evidence" but if some sort of evidence came forward in a supernatural form, be it vision, real life miracle or anything else supernatural, would you  rethink things?  

No. I would find a psychotherapist.

So please give me some feedback on how you would react...

I don't know how I would react. Without some sort of frame for reference, who's to say what I would do.

...and wether it would be life changing for you.

Same as above.

[Whitney]

First step in Re-Educating yourself is to asked yourself various questions: Who is wise ? When you locate him/her, what makes them wise ? If you anylized them deeply you will find that so and so is not WISE. Aristotle was said to be a wise men as well as a philosopher. He lasted till the late 19th. centruy. Throw everything out and start all over asking the right questions and most all giving yourself the answers and not from someone else. I attended varoius colleges, major in psychology with a minor in history. Later I included teaching as a major. Don't mis-understand my point when regard to EDUCATION. Some may think highly of it cause they may feel that it had molded them into the perosn that they are today. There are many things that are wrong with school and thy don't produce " GOOD INDIVIDUALS ". I did all of my schooling here in the U.S., I hav more than 18 years of it under my belt but one day I woke up and suddenly realized that I had a lot of garbage in my brain. I started re-reading most of the materials that I had study but with another point of referrence. When you start school as a child you are tauch to be PAITRIOTIC, you are presented with the founding fathers of your nation and you learned the traditions. History is presented to you in disguise and wise men are also presented in the same manner. As you get older you learned to respond according to what you had been feat but most important as an adult you respond to POLITICAL and SOCIAL conditions according to what the various MEDIAS presents you with. They know how to arouse you to swim one way or the other, you become control but think not. Once you get rid of what has been placed in your brain you can then see through the cracks immediately. No one can fool you. There are no GREAT NATIONS and just cause you have all these technical gagets it does not make any one nation great. I was telling a co-worker who is a thiest, you are a life and as a living existence you are a part of existence, no one has the right to disturb your life or molest it. You don't have to begged anyone on your knees and all must respect you as you must respect all other life/existences. This is you right as a living being. There are those who VIOLATE LIFE as well as controlling it. Its a little difficult to try and explained it cause everyone has its own point of views and most won't want to do away with what they had live so closely with for so many decades. With what will they replace it with? My co-workers say " you don't eat meat, don't do drugs, don't drink not even beer and you are faithfull to your wife, you are the real christian " . " Yet you say you don't believe in GOD but believe in EXISTENCES ". I tell them, the problem is that you all are a product of SOCIETY and feel that to live life you must do what everyone else is doing. I further tell them that " TO BE A GOOD PERSON YOU DON"T HAVE TO BELIEVE IN ANYTHING BUT ONCE YOU DO, YOU CEASE BEING A GOOD PERSON ". Remember you define good for you. How you are tauch to lie, " the phone rings, honey answer that and tell him/her that I'm not here " . This is something that most children are tauch early on or something like it. My children learned the world views and they learned my views, they attended and one is still attending a christian private school. I have no problem with that cause they will have to deal with the world as it is but along the way they will recalled my teachings cause its all TRUE. BE YOUR OWN MAKER AND NOT A REFLECTION OF SOMEONE ELSE OR A COPY.

wall of text posts hurt my eyes...didn't read.

Everyone else, please let me know when you also decide that hvargas is trolling or otherwise not able to discuss productively.

[Achaios]

I do not know whether the OP has quit the forum or just the discussion on this thread I would like just to drop in and reply

Miracles..hmm..what is a miracle..it is an action outside natural laws right?
Attributing natural phenomena to god or Ra, Mum-Ra, Zeus, Belial etc etc leads me to think that whatever that deity is named they are bound to laws of nature.
Bending the laws of nature and perform something outside of that set of rules automatically grants it the supernatural label.. So a bird flying next to us is it supernatural?
As far as I know Christians do not believe in the existence of other gods, and saying that God is not the only one performing miracles sounds a bit disconcerting christian-wise.
Now, if someone came to me and say..heyyyyy, this miracle happenned to me, then good for him/her.
You have your own personal experiences that only you can attest to their truthfulness. No matter how hard you try, you cannot convince me otherwise nor I can.

[xSilverPhinx]

Regarding the miracle: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." What constitutes a miracle is totally subjective. One person's miracle is another person's magnet trick.

Yeah, it's basically that. if someone performed a 'miracle' in front of me I would want to make sure that there was no trick involved, or any naturalistic explanation to it. If I failed to find one, then I would ask someone who might find a naturalistic reason. If that person failed, I would ask another. Even if nobody I asked knew, I still don't know if I would think it was supernatural in any way and that either we all missed the trick, or we don't know the real explanation behind it yet.

[Log10]

ok guys, lets be hypothetical for a moment. If somebody were to perform a miracle right before your eyes and they were a christian and claimed that it was the power of the Holy Spirit at work, would you reconsider your views? Or if a good friend of yours came to you and said they had a spiritual experience from God would you reconsider your views? I hear all the time about how there is "no evidence" but if some sort of evidence came forward in a supernatural form, be it vision, real life miracle or anything else supernatural, would you  rethink things?  So please give me some feedback on how you would react and wether it would be life changing for you.

I would look for the invisible wires.

[KebertX]

I, personally have a religious mind.  I will believe anything I can convince myself of.  I would love to believe in Jesus, God, Heaven, Krishna, Shiva, Ganesh, The Angel Gabriel, The Prophet Muhammad, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  But... I have thoughts.  And my thoughts are constantly pushing my faith onto a smaller and smaller reservation (I'm still on board with Karma and Reincarnation.  NO GOD ~ I still count as an Atheist).

So, If a friend told me that they had had a spiritual experience, and they chalked it up to the Holy Spirit, I wouldn't convert to Christianity.  If he turned water into wine, walked on a pond, or fed a town with fish and bread, I'd think he's a clever magician, like David Blane, or Chris Angel (Angel of Christ).  Even if there were genuinely unexplainable magic happening before my eyes, how do I know it's the Holy Spirit? It could be Brahman, Elohim, The Triple Goddess, Zeus, The FSM, or the Dao?  So, I have a High bar for Miracles.

If a friend came up to me, and invited me on a trip to Heaven, Shot me in the head, and committed suicide, and we both woke up at the pearly gates and Jesus Christ shook my hand, and I went to a Carnival with God, and spent the day having fun with all the saints, angels, and magical ghosts, AND THEN got resurrected in a morgue, and I still had Heaven-Money in my pocket to prove I wasn't hallucinating, THEN I would convert to Christianity.  Anything short of a personal, PROVABLE, encounter with Jesus Christ, is not enough for me to believe anything.

My Damn Thoughts would get in the way.

[Tank]

ok guys, lets be hypothetical for a moment.

Ok

If somebody were to perform what they claimed to be a miracle right before your eyes and they were a christian and claimed that it was the power of the Holy Spirit at work, would you reconsider your views?

No. They would have to do much more than perform what they claimed to be a miracle. They would have to prove it was a miracle. They would have to prove that the only explanation for the demonstrated phenomenon were supernatural.

Or if a good friend of yours came to you and said they had a spiritual experience from God would you reconsider your views?

No. Because this would be an entirely subjective assessment on the part of my friend. Because he was my friend I would do my very best to to ensure they sort appropriate psychiatric help.

I hear all the time about how there is "no evidence" but if some sort of evidence came forward in a supernatural form, be it vision, real life miracle or anything else supernatural, would you  rethink things?

No. Because none of the above is 'acceptable' evidence. What is acceptable? Well there are two measures that I feel could be used as benchmarks. The first would be 'If there was a legal trial would the 'evidence' be admissible in court?' As far as I know supernatural phenomenon are not acceptable as evidence in a court of law, at least since we stopped burning witches to death. The second would be 'Does the phenomenon stand up to rigorous scientific investigation?' Well if it didn't make it past the first hurdle I doubt it would make it pass the second.

So please give me some feedback on how you would react and wether it would be life changing for you.

No. It would not be life changing because personal anecdotal subjective experiences are not 'evidence' upon which I would base my world view.

Another hypothetical for you. Suppose the person performing this miracle, which you believe 100% to be a true miracle, were performed by a Muslim. Would you convert and if not why not?

[Joe Klooski]

No, if somebody who was a stranger did that to me and claimed it was the holy spirit, I would be skeptical of course, and think he was pulling a trick on me, and tell him to go away.

My family members (especially my mother, she has bipolar) has claimed that through the power of 'Christ', they survived car crashes, which just makes me laugh. My mom said that she saw my Aunt in a dream when she wasn't supposed to open up a door with demons in it, and she was at a bar drinking water and she was talking to her, which doesn't make any senseseeming as if it is A DREAM. Also, she claims that she saw her guardian angel before, and the angel ran away from her or something after they said "*named censored*, it is going to be OK", which I do not believe. She also takes the Bible out of context and claims that "God" talks to her. Crazy stuff, I know, but it still doesn't convince me because based on her mental state and tendency to lie (which she does often) is unconvincing.

So, no, it doesn't change my view. The only thing that would is if I saw a big dude out of the sky claiming he was God and told everybody in the world, twice. That is about the only evidence that matters.

[byesadness]

Is human presence in this world not an evidence that God really exist?

[pinkocommie]

Is human presence in this world not an evidence that God really exist?

I don't think so, no.  Why would you suggest that?

[Tank]

Is human presence in this world not an evidence that God really exist?

No. The presence of humans here is evidence of evolution.

[Gawen]

Is human presence in this world not an evidence that God really exist?

No. The presence of humans here is evidence of evolution.

Ahh...you beat me to it.