I see some events in my life as beyond coincidence. My answer is spiritual. What other answer would you give for events that go beyond coincidence, and why do you have a good reason to believe this?
I never said I believed something because it made me comfortable.
You exactly just showed that you do believe these things becuase they make you uncomfortable. Though you definitely don't seem to realize it. You can't see some things as coincidence, so you say "Spirits did it." You're not comfortable with saying that you just don't know, that you have no idea, so you made up this claim of spirits that influence your life. If you had a plausible reason to believe in these spirits, you would say "Well I have no idea but I suspect benign and malign spirits because(so and so)" you certainly wouldn't put "well I just don't see how these things could be coincidences" as a valid reason.
And why is there a burden on me to justify the model I have come up with? I'm not trying to force it on anybody. You asked what I believed and I told you.
Yes, I did ask you what you believe, but I also asked why you believed what you believe. That's why the justification falls on you, it's up to you to determine what makes your belief valid. I'm just trying to understand. What do you benefit from this faith that you can't get from anything else? What's gained from believing in something as to which you have no reason to believe?
I don't agree with your view that I have to maintain an ignorant stance on questions that can't be proven 100% scientifically. I can use any model I want. My point was that I don't go out of my way to believe something that has been disproven.
Again, though, never the argument. My stance is that's it's useless to believe (or disbelieve) in things for which you have no reason to believe (disbelieve) in the first place. It's not about the model you're using, it's about why you propose the model and what reason do you have for the model in the first place.
I never said I 'knew' anything. I just stated a model that I am using to explain the universe as I observe it. If you choose to not have any explanation, that's your perogative.
Yes, but here's the thing, you propose the explanation, but then you just accept it as plausible or valid. It's not. You just don't say, I think and therefore it is.
Personally, I choose to propose explanations to what I can't explain. And I never said I didn't have "faith".
Don't propose an explanation to things you can't explain unless you're willing to test them. Just because a lack of explanation makes you uncomfortable, don't insert your own wild claim just to soothe something inside, this is faith at its worst becuase it inhibits growth. People stop looking for answers and afraid to move on from the lies becuase they think they've already got the answer.
Agnosticism: the view that absolute truth or ultimate certainty is unattainable, especially regarding knowledge not based on experience or perceivable phenomena; the view that the existence of God or of all deities is unknown, unknowable, unproven, or unprovable.
I never said that my model had ultimate certainty. In fact I said I was open to adjusting my model. And I freely admitted it couldn't be proven.
I'm an agnostic atheist, so I know what Agnosticism is, but it's insertion just doesn't flow with the rest of the argument.
Would you care to elaborate...
I believe in extra-terrestrials, but I don't believe that they have visited earth.
The point is some things just have to be assumed. Someone as thougtful as you must have at least tried to answer the basic philosophical questions. On what do you base your self-awareness? I base mine on the assumption that I have a non physical component, that I am more than just a bunch of neurons in a skull. On what do you base yours, if you do not assume you have a non physical component? What good reason do you have to assume that you exist?
No, don't make assumptiopns unless those assumptions are testable and you test them. My good reason to believe that I exist is that I have yet to been show otherwise. My good reason in not beliving in souls and spirits is that no one's offered anything to show that such things exist. In this case i guess you can say that I do assume they're not real, only because i haven't been shown that they are. In anycase, this is not the argument.
If you haven't done the work to build a basic personal and cosmological framework then I don't see how you have time to critique other's attempts at building such a framework. If your only answer to the deeper questions is 'I don't know' then you don't have much to contribute, do you? The rest of us 'faithful' might not be able to prove our thoughts on our existence, but at least we have an opinion. And as long as we don't 'pretend to know' as you put it, or try to force our answers on others, our opinions are just as good as anyone elses.
:candle:
Crys
I have done such questions and my opinion is that we do not know. You're opinion is "spirits" my opinion just happens to be justified and a little bit more honest than yours. And again, it's not about proving anything, it's about being justified. But you're opinions and my opinions matter nothing if they can't offer progress. My statement offers progress as to try to fill in the gaps of knowledge ( "I don't know") so that we may soon know. You're statement ("Spirits") offeres no progression if you are unwilling to test it or justify it this is why I asked you for some observations or at least a strong reason for believing in these sprits but you seem incapable of doing so.
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