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Mormonism does not reject truth, regardless of its source.
If you have a proof of a god, I’d love to hear it.Yes . . . because we are always right. Theists have always brought proof of god while atheists have never provided a single proof of no gods existing.
Matt Dillahunty would be proud of me.
Thanks. that sounds very similar to what Baha'is beleive.
I also believe that there is a great deal of truth to be found within all denominations of Christianity and even entirely outside of Christianity. What I disagree with are some of the Christian doctrines such as Jesus is God incarnate, original sin, the bodily resurrection, and ascension and return of the same man Jesus.
Well, the doctrine of original sin, for one (so we agree on that). We also believe that original Christianity taught that God created us first as spirit beings that we lived in Heaven in His presence prior to being born, and even (this will come as a shocker, I'm sure) that we actually chose to come to earth and experience mortality. We reject the doctrine of the Trinity. While we do believe in a "Godhead" as mentioned in the Bible, we see the Trinity as a 4th century development and not what was believed by Jesus' contemporaries. We are pretty much universalists in that we believe that almost everyone who has ever lived will ultimately end up in Heaven, regardless of the church they belonged to during mortality. So, even though we do have a strong missionary program, we don't feel compelled to make sure everybody we come in contact is "saved." We believe (and can point to some pretty compelling evidence) that these teachings were a part of the first-century Christian Church. One more thing... regarding Joseph Smith, we don't believe he was divine or has any power to hear and answer prayers or to forgive us for our sins, etc. We leave that entirely up to God. We believe he had a role similar to Moses, Abraham or Isaiah. He was a prophet called by God and personally directed by Jesus Christ to restore the ancient Church. Obviously, that's just scratching the surface, but it should give you a rough idea of some of our core beliefs. We do agree with traditional Christianity with respect to Jesus Christ's role and mission.
The only possible proof of a god's existence is having encountered them. Of course, if you've not had such an experience you'd have to take some-one's word. Or you could be like the man whose first reaction to a platypus was to assume it must be a hoax.
So all arguments for the existence of gods are necessarily wrong?
The only part I’d have to take their word for is the experience itself, not the attribution of that experience.
In this analogy, gods are something remote and rare: it’s plausible that a platypus can exist without me ever encountering one because here in Canada, I’d never have occasion to come across one.
You suggested Christians never make logical arguments for what they believe in. I spent many years studying the great arguments used to defend biblical doctrine specifically because when asked I wanted to be able to ground my faith in rationality. As the bible says, we (Christians) are to be ready at all times to defend our faith claims. However it would be a good idea to establish what separates good arguments from bad ones before we go any further. It is very easy to establish what is necessary for an argument to be valid.
Not so much wrong as futile. You can argue for the existence of unicorns: one-horned cattle or antelopes can occur as a mutation, and that mutation could become stabilised. But it hasn't. Similarly, you could argue for the implausibility of a platypus, but you'd be wrong. Existence and non-existence cannot be proved by theoretical arguments.
So an "experience of a headache" is the experience of a set of sensations that the person attributes to a ...? It's a basic principle of epistemology that experiences are accepted unless there is clear evidence that they are wrong. The experience of seeing a snake is an experience of seeing a snake, unless you pick it up and find it's a toy or a length of rope.
How do you make that out? Religious experiences are hardly rare and often have considerable impact.
Hello @JustWondering , you seem to dismiss arguments from causation in general. However judging from the reasons for dismissal that you posted I highly doubt that you have examined a causation argument as robust, comprehensive, and as detailed as the one I can construct. I am running short on time today so I will not lay out my full argument just yet. I will instead point out the reasons why your specific rejections of any potential argument I could make are not really justified. I will then see what you say in response and then depending on whether you want to go forward or not at that will I post the actual argument in it's entirety.
It is a Baha’i belief that God has always existed and God has never been without a Creation, which means that God’s Creation has always existed. That does not mean that humans have always existed because Baha’is believe in evolution and that humans evolved over time.
What you mean is that there are thousands of “god ideas” that people worship, yet there is no proof than any gods exist. I concede to that. There is no proof, but there is evidence that indicates that One God exists.
Nobody should ever believe in what their heart desires because that could so easily lead them astray. People should only believe in what can be affirmed by THEIR OWN logic and reason. That is why humans evolved to have a logical mind.
The only evidence God has ever provided that God exists is the Messengers that God has sent throughout eternity. The BEST evidence we have is Baha’u’llah, because all that surrounds His life and His writings are verifiable. That is not proof that God exists, but it is good evidence.
Yes and no. A concept can be proven impossible if it's internally inconsistent. It's just that internal consistency isn't a guarantee of external experiences.
The term "headache" doesn't speak to attribution.
That seems like a pretty crappy and unreliable principle: "if you assume it's true, it must be true unless we can confirm it's not?" This seems like a principle invented by someone who had no idea that human beings make mistakes all the time and not a "basic principle of epistemology" at all.
I was talking about the platypus: here in North America, they're rare and irrelevant to people's daily lives. My life in a world where platypi are fictional would be the same in every measurable way to a world where they're real. The literal existence of platypi has no tangible impact on my life.
This is a misunderstanding of what I said and is mischaracterization of my burden. I hold the position of faith and so my only formal burden is the absence of a defeater. However I go way being that and instead adopt the burden of the best inference to a conclusion. In fact virtually every conclusion anyone adopts is based on probability not absolute fact. It is irrational to demand the claims of faith correspond to incontrovertible proof without demanding that of everything else.
This is an unfounded presumption that I can't even consider until justified.
Claiming we can't interact with Yahweh is another presumption for which you did not provide any reason to accept. You couldn't possibly know this even if it was true.
Even if 999 of the thousand gods you mention do not exist, that has nothing to do with whether Yahweh exists. All the gods humans have believed in do not stand or fall together. You have yet to contend with the first argument for God I mentioned and so writing them all off as uncompelling is absurd. I am starting to get the feeling that you presume to write off the mountains of evidence for God without really dealing with any of it.
I did not say anything about assuming anything unexplained is evidence for God. No one in the entire history of human kind has every believed that. The argument you presumed to reject before I have even brought it up is based upon what is consistent with everything we do know. Your counterargument is however based upon what is not known because it has never been observed. Why do you claim that you know more about the reasons I believe in God than I do. I do not believe in God because of something occurring I can't explain, I do not believe in God because I like Christian doctrine (in many way I do not like much of what the bible). We were not discussing proofs, we were discussing the best inference to conclusion.
The only argument for God we have discussed is based on a principle that is true in every single case where it can be tested without a single exception. Yet you want to reject the most probable possibility and affirm the least probable. This simply unjustifiable, but it does explain why you incorrectly assert that no argument for God is credible. You have everything completely backwards.
I never suggested otherwise. In fact the universe's finitude is an absolute necessity to construct an argument for God based on causality.
I made no argument that the cause of the universe is certain, my argument is that using the principles that are true in every single instance where IT IS certain that it is vastly more probable than its negation in instances where IT IS NOT certain. Just as everyone including you base our conclusions on probability in every other part of life I consistently apply it to the philosophy of religion where as you employ a double standard as far as God is concerned. While it is uncertain, every piece of evidence that exists without a single known exception suggests that not only does the universe require a cause that it requires a sufficient cause which once applied rationally leads us to the conclusion that the universe's cause looks identical to the nature of God which is spelled out in detail by bronze age men.