dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
I have believed a lot of things since whenever I started believing stuff. Not everything I believed in my many years of believing things could be tested by those that could I found out later I was wrong. Maybe 90%. So 10%, and that's being generous, my beliefs were right. Usually because I based it as least partially of information and evidence I was somehow able to verify. So as far as what you believe to be true, I don't see were we are justified in placing much faith in.
Right! That sounds like non-belief. I understand that. I don't get the dis-belief.
Or all of them could be 100% wrong. What we humans know about the universe is very limited. We don't have the knowledge to make any educated guess. From this position, one guess/belief about God is as good or bad as any other guess. Reality or whatever the truth is could be something that no human has ever imagined before. Because of our limited understanding of the universe, we may not even be capable of imaging what the actual "truth" is. To me I see it like being blind in the middle of the universe and trying to hit a spec of dust a billion light years away with a bow and arrow.
"Or all of them could be wrong", is still non-belief. Dis-belief is "Y'all are certainly wrong." And that's where I still don't really get it. The weak point in the chain is non-belief. So the whole chain resolves to non-belief not dis-belief.
And it's not like hitting a spec, when there are two mututally exclusive options. Now the odds are 50/50, not 1/infinity.
For reasons stated above, no one need necessarily have actual knowledge about God. Far more likely that no one, regardless of how many people have tried shooting at it have been able to hit that dust spec with no knowledge of which of an infinite number of directions to aim in nor how far away it actually is.
Not if it's a 50/50 binary option. Omnipotent or Not. All that's needed is two people who disagree, and one of them is going to correct about that 1 aspect.
Perhaps a bow and arrow isn't even the right tool to make the attempt. IMO, we have to start with what we know we can verify to the best of our ability to verify and build on that. Not try to hit a target at some unknown direction/distance away with tools we don't is even capable of hitting it.
As the god concept gets bigger and bigger and bigger, then the odds of hitting that target get bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah, it's stacking the deck. But, the same thing happens when the number of arrows increases and they are shot in all different directions.
As far as verifiable, it's verifiable that people have been thinking about God/god/gods for a long time, and many people have claimed encounters with the divine. That's a place to start for those who care about a god concept. I'm not one who says, a person is going to punished for being an atheist.
However, let me put it a different way.
I can tell you all you need to know about God. I've have had several conversation with God. God has given me visions to explain reality to me. I even know how something came from nothing. I asked God to show me and they did.
Oooh. Don't tease me. I love that stuff.
While I've no reason to intentionally lie to you as I don't care whether you believe me or not.
Why should you believe anything I tell you?
It would be like I said. What you told me would be compared to my life experiences. And. If i like it, I would test it and see if it accurately predicted observable phenomena: how people, animals, plants, insects, inanimate objects, forces of nature, actually behave. And maybe-maybe if there was a method for connecting with the divine, if it was kosher ( fit for a Jew per jewish law ) and didn't seem like it would break my poor little brain, I might try it.
But. If it undermined what currently works for me. If it introduced doubt in my own, let's call them, known good methods... I wouldn't try them. But that doesn't mean I would conclude they werent true. Just that I wasn't going to dabble in that.
Make sense?