I didn't get your alert; but, thank you for replying. Most people drop the conversation when I get to far into challenging their faith.
I hear what you are saying about placebos, but I cannot say that such a concept is real. I have never experienced a placebo effect. I have never seen anyone who has experienced a placebo effect. Thus, I cannot say such a thing actually exists. The fact that people talk about it doesn't make it real.
I haven't had a placebo affect either. A lot of doctors do test runs for prescription drugs for patients who want to participate in a study involving them. The doctor tells two groups of patients they will be given medication for their stomach ache (for example). Both groups take the meds. One group is given placebo pills the other real pills.
Some studies find that the group with the placebo pills actually had real symptom relief just as those who took the real pills. So, the result of the pain relief in these studies did not come from the pills (outside source) but from the patient themselves. In this case, it was a psychological study.
Placebo pills (say fake Advil pill that has no medicine in it whatsoever) are real. It has nothing to do with religion. If you go to say NIH (National Institute of Health) hospital here in the U.S. or look up studies that use placebo pills to judge what medications work best etc you know they exist/are real.
My point, though, is that placebo affects are from the individual taking the "fake" pills. Belief in god is what it is, it is a
belief in something not knowledge in something. A doctor told patient Jane that the pill he gave her was Advil (but it looked like Advil but had no medicine in it at all. Another name: sugar pill). Jane read the instructions and takes the pill. Miraculously, her pain goes away. It's a psychological thing not something from an outside source. Her experiences came from her mind not from the pill.
No believer has yet to tell me their beliefs are facts without backing them up by faith and mystery (etc). There is always an X factor involved. We guess. We hope. We have faith. We interpret based on
our experiences. It's alright to say we know because our experiences aren't wrong. I'm just pointing out the source is misinterpreted by many religious.
In a RF forum, I don't mind saying so. I know many people who hear that would not want to proceed with the conversation. It's literally saying "god is a product from the mind." I would never say that to a believer. I'm just saying that you cannot see outside of your own reality. If you did, in biblical terms, you would be god. So it comes from you.
When did this happen to you? My guess is that it actually never happened to you, and you are making this story up. My guess is that it is a story you heard from someone else, who probably heard it from someone else. Yet oddly, no one actually ever experiences a placebo effect. That is more likely.
Follow what I am saying. Placebo studies are used
all the time in the U.S.
You can get more information at
NIH.gov. Here is some information about placebo studies and
tests for people with depression.
My point is that belief in god rather than knowledge of god can be compared to a placebo affect. The experiences are not fake. They are not wrong. They aren't invalid. I am pointing that the origin of those experiences do not come from an outside source.
My question is, where are you from?
I don't understand why I should see a correlation between that which is not real and that which is real. I do not necessarily agree that beliefs come from the believer. What we know is true comes from our experiences which includes learned information. When we are convinced that something is true, it is because the experience we have jives with certain knowledge we've learned. Both our experiences and our knowledge come from outside ourselves. Our brains are merely making the connection between that which we have learned and that which we experience. It's all about experiences. All the knowledge we have is a result of some form of experience. Thus, our believes come from our experience. If our knowledge doesn't jive with what we experience, we cannot accept it. We don't believe it. But if it does jive, we might believe it.
Experiences come from the believer and they originate from the believer. The believer can call it knowledge because it exists to them. That's not wrong. It just means you have personal ties to what you believe to be true. So you say it is a fact.
God is not a fact. A fact has to be something that can be tested with evidence and it is universal like mathematics. In one post you mentioned that a lot of people experience the same thing you have so you concluded because you are not alone in those experiences, it must be true.
Thousands of people around the world believe in their ancestors and the interaction with the ancestors and our world. We don't separate the two worlds. Some of us do not believe in god but we do believe in spirits. Others believe that god is female because only a female gives birth to the world. You have many different ways of looking at what we believe, experience, and interpret.
If our beliefs were fact, atheists would know about the same god that you know. You know know about the spirits just as Jane knows. There would be no division in origin. If god is real, a fact not a belief, then an atheist should be able to know this and decide for him or herself whether to follow or not. A lot of things about life we don't know.
However, believers are not the center of the universe. You are no different than an atheist. So what you experience from god, if it does not come from you, an atheist should experience that too. Not because he doesn't want to. Whether one wants to or not does not determine what is real and what is not. It should be a apparent.
Unless there is a way you can make god apparent and universal, it will always be an origin from the believer and based on the experiences of the believer and interpretations from the believer.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I believe you are incorrect. I believe that the existence of God is as certain as a real Advil pill. I can see how one might say that God is the experience, or that God is life, but I do believe you are incorrect that He can't be anything outside of us. That is what I would call blasphemy.
There is nothing wrong with that. What I believe is as real as an Advil pill but the difference between you and I is that I accept my experiences come from me
and they are real while you feel your experiences aren't real unless they come from outside you.
They are both real. They are both valid. Nothing is wrong. Just you got to understand we cannot look outside what we already know, perceive, and experience.
We are not god.
The truth is, you can't see outside your own interpretation and perception of reality. And it is for this reason that no one truly knows God. But that has absolutely nothing at all to do with God. It only shows us how feeble we are. It says nothing of what God is.
"You can't see outside your own interpretation and perception of reality"....this is why what
you and I believe are only from ourselves. They are not from an outside party.
If they were, we would both know the same thing even if I don't experience what you do. You would know what I know is true and visa versa. We don't have to have experience to know something is true. I know there is a moon but I don't have to physically walk on it to know it exists. I don't have to even see it all my life. Because the earth stays put, it exists. It's not an interpretation or perception of reality. It's a fact.
If god is as real as an Advil pill, you would have to give me an experience from god that is unique only to god. To do that, you would have to
be god.
We know about perfection. A lot of humans want to be perfect so the desire is well known. We know about being all knowing. A lot of people in history killed others because they felt they knew everything but really had a desire to "climb up the mountain". It's not alien. It's a desire. There are thousands of stories of creation. Many stories of human sacrifice. Millions of stories of animal sacrifice and still going on today as we speak.
I couldn't agree any less with what you are saying. It's pure blasphemy.
I know it's blasphemy according to what you believe. I'm not asking you to agree with me just understand what I'm saying.
If god of scripture is real as an Advil Pill
and it is literal then I should know this god exists just as I know the moon exists without needing to see it. It's not like not knowing there is a small island that hasn't been charted on our map yet. The moon keeps us grounded by gravity. I don't need to know this to experience it. If god exists and he is the creator, by the same logic, I should be able to experience him to and know what you and believers tell me that this experience comes from the god of abraham and not say a Pagan god or a Hindu one.
