Jeremiahcp
Well-Known Jerk
Facts don't care about your feelings.
Feelings are all internalized. They provide no evidence of anything external to yourself.
So fear has never kept anyone alive and love has never protected a defenseless child?
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Love Evidence of God?
- Thread starter Jeremiahcp
- Start date
So fear has never kept anyone alive and love has never protected a defenseless child?
syo
Well-Known Member
in my opinion, absolutely. plus, many christians find jesus' sacrifice as the ultimate sign of love and this has a major impact on their belief.
What does that have to do with evidence?
What a person believes can motivate them to action. That only proves a person can be motivated by their feelings.
Those names, Gaia, Krishna, Allah are to me a synonym for God.
Jeremiahcp
Well-Known Jerk
Evidence of danger? Ever hear someone say, "I don't know what it is but this place gives me the creeps." ? They may be detecting something on an instinctual level. Emotions are not here just because they are cute, it is survival of the fittest and we use them to better interact and understand the objective world around
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Sure, I've had a feeling of fear or danger about a certain place or person. However feelings aren't reliable. I've had to overcome my fears in order to objectively evaluate a place. I've had to overcome my feeling of danger to get over my bigotry of other folks.
I'm not against feelings. I'll go see an emotional movie for feelings. However I'm not going to go about punching some socialist or communist in the face because some movie got me feeling all emotional and patriotic. Your feelings are the easiest why to manipulate you. I suppose that is part of the reason belief in God is so popular. Folks allow themselves to be manipulated by their feelings.
Without facts, I don't think we are capable of making the best decisions. Relying on feelings is a crap shoot. You may get lucky and make the right decision but I think you're relying mostly on chance then.
CogentPhilosopher
Philosophy Student
But the religions they hail from directly contradict each other.
You can truly love without God. Some say God is love and I suppose that is ok and a person can worship love but love exists as an emotion for humans, saying God is love is still only saying love exists, just you've equated something you feel to God.
"The blind men and the elephant". The theology is indeed contradictory but the essence of all the religions after one strips away the doctrine says the same thing. I have a small book "Oneness: Great Principles Shared by All Religions" that has quite a few principles. The golden rule is a classic Golden Rule - Wikipedia
Everyone has such different views on what the word God means or does not mean, that we might be better off if that word disappeared.
And to me, love is much more than a simple emotion. If I'm feeling grumpy and angry but check myself to try to listen to another, that to me is an example of love in action.
CogentPhilosopher
Philosophy Student
Oh no they do not.
The only things you can find the same are either common human ideas that can easily be found outside of religion, like the golden rule or things that they must share to be a religion by definition.
Buddhism stresses introspection and through your own will/ letting go of self and the outside world in order to be free from the cycle of death and rebirth.
Christianity says that you need to believe Jesus Christ as your lord and savior so you can go to a blissful afterlife.
Christianity states that there is clear good and evil while Taoism states good and evil to just be subjective perceptions of humans.
These are just two examples of the differences in the core beliefs of different religions.
No, that would be begging the question, not evidence.
Attributing an experience to the source of that experience is a 3-step process:
1. "I experienced 'X'."
2. "'X' was caused by something external to me and not by some aspect of my own brain/mind (hallucination, mental illness, mistake in processing the experience, etc.)."
3. "'X' is best explained by external cause 'Y'."
The person who had the experience is the best judge of step 1 - nobody else can climb inside their head to see what they experienced (though this also means that the whole process is dependent on how much trustworthy the person with the purported experience is).
Given experience 'X', anybody can consider steps 2 and 3. Often, the best judge of these steps is someone other than the person who had the experience.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
If they feel that that feeling is evidence of god's existence then it is.
If someone sees an arbitrary browning pattern on the surface of a piece of toast, which they think looks like Jesus, and that that is evidence of god's existence, then it is evidence for them.
Basically, what can we take from this? Anybody can view any subjective experience as evidence of anything they want. Doesn't really tell us anything useful about evidence. However, it does tell us something very useful about people.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
How did God get centrally associated with love in the first place?
ThePainefulTruth
Romantic-Cynic
People can (and have) feel love coming from a tree, but that's not evidence that the tree is real. However, a leaf, nut, fruit or limb falling from the tree on your head is indeed evidence.
The abrahamic god, under whatever name, is the god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All the other 5000 (approx) excluding the 30 million Hindu gods are not even the same myth.
Alison Wonderland
Member
That's one of the stupidest things I've ever read.
Jeremiahcp
Well-Known Jerk
"No, that would be begging the question, not evidence."
I did consider that possibility before posting, and I disagree. It would be an experience phenomena, which is exactly how we prove much of what we believe in life.
"Often, the best judge of these steps is someone other than the person who had the experience."
I am not really sure how you reached this conclusion, but it is simply not true. Listening to others is important but each individual should be the judge on what they believe, especially when it concern an experience others can't share in.
Jeremiahcp
Well-Known Jerk
That is not really an equivalent comparison, as there is a difference between the two, which is partly what this thread is about. The toast is an object and everyone can share in that experience and access it on the same level. The toast can be scientifically analyze by established standards. The feeling of love experienced; however, is individualized, the experience cannot be shared on the same level by everyone and it cannot be measured scientifically.