An example would…be if God promised you unconditionally that you would never get sick and you did get sick, that would give you cause not to believe. If, on the other hand, you received that same promise and you never did get sick, that would give you cause to believe.
Interesting that you went to an extreme example that never happened.
Who said I don't believe their religion? I'm certain that I don't believe everything in their religion, but where there is truth, I'm going to accept it.
How exactly do you decide what is true?
Again, God is responsible for these macro questions, not me. Not you.
What God? Yahweh? A typical Near Eastern deity? Until Hellenism changed him to supreme. Then later theologians like Aquinas, Origen, Agustus and others used Greco-Roman philosophy to add-on to that God? That is a myth God.
Hellenistic religion, any of the various systems of beliefs and practices of eastern Mediterranean peoples from 300 bc to ad 300. The period of Hellenistic influence, when taken as a whole, constitutes one of the most creative periods in the history of religions. It was a time of spiritual
www.britannica.com
Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (
e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of
transcendent, supreme deities
The prophet or
saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.
Christian
communities were heavily influenced in their formative period by Hellenistic practices, and this remains fundamentally unchanged to the present time.
Finally, the central religious literature of both traditions—the Jewish
Talmud (an
authoritative compendium of law, lore, and interpretation), the
New Testament, and the later
patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.
This Pastor is not in the critical-historical field as a PhD but his informationis usually the consensus in the field:
Plato and Christianity
36:46 Tertullian (who hated Plato) borrowed the idea of hypostases (used by Philo previously) to explain the relationship between the trinity. All are of the same substance.
38:30 Origen a Neo-Platonist uses Plato’s One. A perfect unity, indivisible, incorporeal, transcending all things material. The Logos (Christ) is the creative principle that permeates the created universe
41:10
Agustine 354-430 AD taught scripture should be interpreted symbolically instead of literally after Plotinus explained Christianity was just Platonic ideas.
Thought scripture was silly if taken literally.
45:55 the ability to read Greek/Platonic ideas was lost for most Western scholars during Middle Ages. Boethius was going to translate all of Plato and Aristotle into Latin which would have altered Western history.
Theologians all based on Plato - Jesus, Agustine, Boethius Anslem, Aquinas
59:30
In some sense Christianity is taking Greco-Roman moral philosophy and theology and delivering it to the masses, even though they are unaware
Agreed. The universe operates on laws such as those you just highlighted. Reaping follows sowing. Growth attends effort. Learning attends study. Etc. None of these are exclusive to a particular religion.
Right, or secular people as well.
Just a moment. What do you know of what I know?
You either have evidence you can demonstrate or you do not. If you only have evidence in your mind, a God spoke to you say, you don't know if that was a God or a hallucination.
I do not prejudice the question of where credit is assigned. Some give themselves all the credit. Some credit the universe. Some credit a deity. Your posts keep pointing things out and assigning assumptions to explain them...
If one credits a deity they need a way to demonstrate it is true. If one cares about presenting evidence for the deity. OR even for themself, if they want to believe true things they need a methodology to determine the difference between life happening by the laws of nature and things done by a God.
We are working with probabilities here.
OK, I'll bite. What is odd about it?
Asking "just right"? How would one determine that? Why would a God be so picky? Why would a method or style of asking be important to an infinite God?
So if millions of working adults prayed that very prayer to God and then became unemployed and starved to death while millions of children were spared who otherwise would have died, that would be the evidence of God you seek?
I didn't say they should quit their jobs? Is there scripture that says prayer is only effective if one prays all day and quits work?
And no, not evidence, there are many factors that would have to be weighed. What if some billionaires decided to pool money and help and it was a coincidence and we were fooled into thinking a deity did it. But it's a start of something. Right now there is nothing.
Mortality rates for disease may say 70% of all people with a stage 4 disease pass away, those stats play out accurate. That predictability shows there is no deity helping people survive, we are governed by probability.
We're working that direction. We're still coming to a common framework of understanding.
I suspect you are trying to frame anecdotal evidence into more than it is.
OK, but what bearing does that have on my life, or on what I know? Should we all measure everything against your experience? If not, what does your observing that "nothing changed" mean? What does it point to?
It points to anecdotal evidence. However I did attribute things to a deity, but when I stopped I was able to see that humans tend to notice coincidences way harder than regular life. If seeking a job and doing interviews and falling up short one day you happen to run into a store you don't usually go to and meet a old friend who ends up getting you into a good new job this stands out as a series of improbable events.
In truth, probabilities and statistics work this way as well as psychology, we notice events like that to be more significant than they are. And we assign meaning and sometimes consciousness to the events. "The universe wanted me to get this job", or "God lead me to the store and my friend".
But every God and guardian deity/angel can be credited because it happens to everyone. As an atheist I see probability and action, will, networking, will make amazing things happen. Cause and effect are not supernatural.
When the law of attraction was big (and other wu) people were getting "messages" from the universe like crazy. "I see number 11 EVERYWHERE" "it means something, the universe is telling me something".
No, it isn't. It's confirmation bias.
So personal experience is not evidence for a deity outside our mind. I want to believe true things so there remains no good evidence to believe in a theistic God.
Again, what do you know of what others do, or do not, ascribe to God? What do you know about what others have, or have not, scrutinized? It would be a cleaner discussion if this kind of thing weren't done. Where we must make assumptions, so be it. But it looks like your posts keep wanting a certain outcome, and so assumptions are tossed in to make things go that way.
No I'm explaining examples of confirmation bias in negative outcomes. You have given no evidence, so I have nothing else to work with.
People who want to find a God working in their life have to take challenges and say God wants to challenge me, or wants me to wait for something better, or wants me to grow through challenges.
Ascribing will to natural processes we already have explanations for.
People get good jobs, good relationships, health, family, sick family getting better and the negative side of all those things, all without a deity. Religious will insert a deity, it is conjecture.
Until there is good reason to believe in something like that.
Why a deity wouldn't want to provide evidence like a 14 digit number? Why the hiding game? Why look like a myth with no good evidence? Why fragment into 45,000 sects and many completely different religions?
All of that is answered by - revelations are made up by people.
Either way, I agree that there are bumps in all roads. Yes, that is life. As for coincidence, I'm still sorting out what is, and is not, coincidence. Evidence I posses points to zero coincidences in my life on matters of great import. But I admit that I'm still learning where that line is drawn.
I haven't heard you mention any evidence. Generally religious people will assume a deity is guiding them and not realizing it's just the normal course of life. There are ZERO indications, studies, stats, evidence that members of any particular religion experience greater success in any are of life outside of emotional satisfaction. They are not better at jobs, relationships, being in the right place at the right time, better at winning sports, academia, anything, everything is the same.
Mormons cannot even seem to get information that Joseph Smith made up a new addition to the Bible? Muslims are 100% convinced the NT is wrong. Catholics think Saints are real, other sects don't. No one is talking to Yahweh.
If a deity was guiding people through life there would be noticeable results. The earthquake in 1700s killed 30,000 people because they were all in church and the buildings collapsed.
People use the Law of Attraction and are convinced they are manifesting everything in their life. Everything positive is proof and anything negative means something better is coming.
