It seems you want God that has the events of your life all planned out for you through some software program.
Maybe you misunderstood me. I don't believe in God or any other gods. I don't want God to do anything. I was rebutting the contention that if God existed, it would be doing human beings a favor by programming right behavior into them.
It looks like you didn't read my comments about us being what you are calling a robot. I argued that we are that anyway, and it isn't a disadvantage. For you to say now that God determining our desires is robotic as if that were a reason for this deity granting free will isn't a valid criticism until you rebut that we are robots anyway and that it doesn't degrade our experience of life except to the extent that being robots to neural circuitry doesn't generate as good outcomes as being robots to divine, error-free desires.
But I'm used to that from you. It was the same with your steadfast refusal to comment on the restricted choice argument. It mean that I'm posting for myself and for others who think critically. It means considering the ideas of others open-mindedly and with the skill to evaluate an argument, people who will read those words and either find them compelling or know why they don't and can say so if asked. Imagine conversations that actually included that.
But not this one. It makes no progress. Just as was the case before I made them, I don't think you know what my arguments are, neither the argument for restricted choice being evidence against the existence of an interventionalist god, nor the argument that free will is an illusion caused by not recognizing that your will is given to you and chosen by you, that man is a "robot" as you define it, but to his neural hardware rather than the will of a deity, and that results in a experience of free will as well.
Anyway, I have no further expectation for you to cooperate in a discussion, so we're done right here where we began and have been spinning in circles since, never connecting. No need repeating myself a third or fourth time, you ignoring it a third or fourth time, and you repeating for the third or fourth time what I just rebutted with no evidence that you read or understood what was written. There's nothing in it for me. Nor for you.
Saying 'There's no evidence' carries with it the implication of 'it doesn't exist.'
Is that why so many theists transform, "I lack sufficient evidence for a god belief" into "You say that there is no God"? Where's the middle ground between belief and disbelief (which I like to call unbelief and is neither). When a wedding venue asks for a substantial deposit to rent it, they're not saying that you won't pay them, just that some people wouldn't pay them, and they don't know you well enough to trust you. That is, they neither trust you nor know that you are not trustworthy, but something in between that is neither. We could call it untrust (lack of sufficient experience with somebody to trust them), and if we learn eventually that the person is dishonest, it becomes justified distrust.
I have yet to have a theist who considers atheism the assertion that no gods exist and who has read words like these say, "Oh, I see what you mean now. There is another choice besides saying a god exists and saying one doesn't. I hadn't seen that before. So yeah, that kind of atheist is also an agnostic, unlike the atheist who says gods don't exist." I mean literally never.
Is what you feel genuine spiritual or is it emotional.
What's the difference? The spiritual experience is a specific kind of emotional experience generated by the brain under certain circumstances, just like all other experiences accompanied by positive or negative emotion (love, anger, shame, satisfaction, etc.). The question many of us ask of those who say that they have a spiritual connection with God is why do you think you are experiencing anything more than a mental state, and why are you saying that it comes from experiencing a god rather than your mind? I have such experiences, and don't interpret them as coming from gods or other kinds of spirits.
Man has a long history of misinterpreting his mental states. The ancient Greeks didn't have a concept of the mind being creative, and new ideas were thought to be placed there by spirits such as the muses. Dreams are thought to be messages from somewhere other than the neural circuits rather than entirely psychogenic in origin. You reported on a premonition that you understood as a message from an external source, something separate from you telling you something, but as the comment about confirmation bias implies, and the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy that considers only the hits and ignores the misses, and finds that meaningful, others have no reason to believe that those premonitions weren't entirely generated by your brain and are misunderstood mental states.
Again, I am not asserting that you are incorrect in your understanding of what such mental states represent (signify), only that I have no reason to accept that interpretation as correct even if it is. I'm agnostic here as well. I don't say that you're right or wrong. What I say is neither.
But you've just told me that to you, when I say a lack of evidence prevents me from accepting your interpretation, that I'm saying that authentic premonitions do not occur. No, I am not. Emphatically, no.
Do you understand that? Do you understand that there is a difference between reserving judgment (not believing) and concluding that a claim is incorrect (believing not)? If so, can you understand that citing a lack of persuasive evidence ("no evidence," as you phrased it, or insufficient evidence to convince as I would phrase it) is not the same saying that the claim is incorrect, which you told us that you thought those words implied?
