There is no evidence for God, so why do you believe?

[Sheldon]

But somehow different theists get different answers. Which suggests they are just stating their opinions and not some sort of truth.

This is it in nutshell. No one is claiming experiential evidence is always wrong, only that using it alone is insufficient to support a claim. The very fact this method being lauded by @ElishaElijah as a "path to truth" produces contradictory beliefs, amply demonstrates how unreliable it can be when used alone.

 

[ElishaElijah]

I am not so sure about that. You keep confirming them. And you just confirmed them again more than once in just this post.

Why not prove me wrong? There is a way to do it.

Repeating obviously false claims won't do it.

Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that people use to reinforce personal beliefs. In this bias, people seek information that confirms their preexisting beliefs and disregard any contrary evidence. There are three main types of confirmation biases: Biased information search, biased information interpretation, and biased information recall.
This isn’t how I was delivered and born again. This is not how I’ve stayed sober for 35 years. This is not how I received Eternal Life and forgiveness of my sins, this is also not how I live a content, Holy life presently.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that people use to reinforce personal beliefs. In this bias, people seek information that confirms their preexisting beliefs and disregard any contrary evidence. There are three main types of confirmation biases: Biased information search, biased information interpretation, and biased information recall.
This isn’t how I was delivered and born again. This is not how I’ve stayed sober for 35 years. This is not how I received Eternal Life and forgiveness of my sins, this is also not how I live a content, Holy life presently.

Your beliefs work for you because they are real to you. But that is subjective. So are some of my beliefs and they works for me as real to me.

 

[ElishaElijah]

The very fact this method being lauded by @ElishaElijah as a "path to truth" produces contradictory beliefs

I said Jesus Christ is the path to Truth and is the Way, the Truth and the Life and He confirmed this to me by giving me His Spirit which is my personal experience and not something made up.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The fun thing is the cross over. I am in a limited sense insane, but I know it with another part of my brain, so if my medication works and I am not to stressed, I can compensate for it, but a part of my brain is still insane.

Probably all of us are a bit insane (except for me of course). The point is that we cannot be sure of our feelings and there are ways to see if our unevidenced feelings are trustworthy. One easy check is to see if others have the exact same feelings. If there is quite a range on a subject , such as God beliefs, and there is no clear majority, then we know that most people have to be wrong. If there is a group of 6 people talking about "Steve" and you ask "How many hats was Steve wearing. Mary and John say "None" Liz and Todd say "one". Jim swears that it was two and Jeffrey is adamant that it was peanut butter and claims to have made a sandwich. We automatically know that at least four are wrong and we are considering putting Jeffrey away for a bit of a rest.

 

[ElishaElijah]

Your beliefs work for you because they are real to you. But that is subjective. So are some of my beliefs and they works for me as real to me.

I’m happy for anyone that finds joy and success in life for themselves. I’m sharing my testimony of how I found that and much more, Eternal Life and that life I found in Jesus Christ.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I said Jesus Christ is the path to Truth and is the Way, the Truth and the Life and He confirmed this to me by giving me His Spirit which is my personal experience and not something made up.

And Allah has confirmed that he is the Truth for Muslims. Buddhists have discovered that the eight fold path of the Buddha is the only way etc. and so on. The question is can you show that you are any more right than those other people are?

If one is afraid to test one's belief properly he will only have a belief and never knowledge.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I’m happy for anyone that finds joy and success in life for themselves. I’m sharing my testimony of how I found that and much more, Eternal Life and that life I found in Jesus Christ.

And once again you only believe that.

I believe that I am a peanut butter and jelly sandwich this morning.

 

[ElishaElijah]

The question is can you show that you are any more right than those other people are?

All the claims won’t really be settled in this life, they will be settled at the Judgement, when everyone will appear before God, that’s what I believe and am convinced of.
What will be the fate of everyone who denied this and were so sure of their path?

 

[Subduction Zone]

All the claims won’t really be settled in this life, they will be settled at the Judgement, when everyone will appear before God, that’s what I believe and am convinced of.
What will be the fate of everyone who denied this and were so sure of their path?

Odds are that every last one of you will end up in the same place. Or to put it more accurately,, most likely all of your fates are exactly the same.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Probably all of us are a bit insane (except for me of course). The point is that we cannot be sure of our feelings and there are ways to see if our unevidenced feelings are trustworthy. One easy check is to see if others have the exact same feelings. If there is quite a range on a subject , such as God beliefs, and there is no clear majority, then we know that most people have to be wrong. If there is a group of 6 people talking about "Steve" and you ask "How many hats was Steve wearing. Mary and John say "None" Liz and Todd say "one". Jim swears that it was two and Jeffrey is adamant that it was peanut butter and claims to have made a sandwich. We automatically know that at least four are wrong and we are considering putting Jeffrey away for a bit of a rest.

Yeah, but that is wrong for the shared external world under the axiomatic assumption that objective reality is knowable.
That is wrong for "is", wrong for "ought" is something else. As ought we put Jeffrey away for a bit of a rest? That involves in part another version of right and wrong.

 

[Sheldon]

This isn’t how I was delivered and born again.

Repeating this claim is not evidence it is derived from a supernatural event caused by a deity, and again others make the same or similar claims for different deities and religions, this hardly suggests the method is reliable does it?

This is not how I’ve stayed sober for 35 years.

Others suffering from substance abuse problems turn their lives around, whilst there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that a compelling reason to change can be derived from a religious belief, this is not objective evidence that the belief is valid, nor of course is religion alone in being cited as helping people overcome substance abuse. I believe these facts have been explained multiple times now, so why you think simply repeating these claims, without addressing those facts, is going to be anymore compelling than previously is unclear?

This is not how I received Eternal Life and forgiveness of my sins,

Again you are simply reeling off unevidenced claims, to what end? You already know the atheists you are debating with are unlikely to believe in sin or eternal life, so it is a meaningless claim to them.

this is also not how I live a content, Holy life presently.

Your faith in a deity, has led you to live a life consecrated to that deity, and a religious purpose. Again I don't see how this evidences the belief itself at all? More importantly as I and others have tried to point out, that type of faith enables others to arrive at belief in very different religions and deities. Which demonstrates that as a method for validating the belief it is demonstrably unreliable.

 

[Sheldon]

I said Jesus Christ is the path to Truth and is the Way, the Truth and the Life and He confirmed this to me by giving me His Spirit which is my personal experience and not something made up.

I know, and I pointed out that this method (faith based belief) you are claiming is a "path to truth", produces contradictory beliefs in wildly different religions and deities, and so is demonstrably unreliable. In most cases, during most eras, religious belief was little more than an accident of the geography of your birth. For example if you had been born in the middle east, you'd be every bit as devoutly claiming the Islamic deity is the one true deity and path to truth.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yeah, but that is wrong for the shared external world under the axiomatic assumption that objective reality is knowable.
That is wrong for "is", wrong for "ought" is something else. As ought we put Jeffrey away for a bit of a rest? That involves in part another version of right and wrong.

Objective reality is testable. And one has to be aware of the likely variations. With such a small group it is impossible to tell who is right. Jeffrey might be on to something. Peanut butter can be sculpted into different shape making people think that they saw a man with neatly combed brown hair, A man wearing a hat. or if one got artistic enough a man wearing two hats. That is why a more accurate test would have been needed to have been done. But the point is that we know that either 4 or 5 people were wrong with that example.

When it comes to God claims there is an incredible variety and there is enough difference between those within a religion to say that they paint a picture of a different God. When one person's religious beliefs that he "knows" are totally different from another that "knows" we know that at least one of them is wrong. And since there are going to be countless other beliefs with people that believe them just as strongly we could safely bet that both were wrong.

My point has always been that mere belief is not enough. Yet the religious almost always tend to be afraid to test their beliefs. Many religions even have orders not to do so.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Objective reality is testable. And one has to be aware of the likely variations. With such a small group it is impossible to tell who is right. Jeffrey might be on to something. Peanut butter can be sculpted into different shape making people think that they saw a man with neatly combed brown hair, A man wearing a hat. or if one got artistic enough a man wearing two hats. That is why a more accurate test would have been needed to have been done. But the point is that we know that either 4 or 5 people were wrong with that example.

When it comes to God claims there is an incredible variety and there is enough difference between those within a religion to say that they paint a picture of a different God. When one person's religious beliefs that he "knows" are totally different from another that "knows" we know that at least one of them is wrong. And since there are going to be countless other beliefs with people that believe them just as strongly we could safely bet that both were wrong.

My point has always been that mere belief is not enough. Yet the religious almost always tend to be afraid to test their beliefs. Many religions even have orders not to do so.

You are aware that this axiomatic assumption can't be tested:
1. that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers.
Philosophy of science - Wikipedia

 

[Subduction Zone]

You are aware that this axiomatic assumption can't be tested:
1. that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers.
Philosophy of science - Wikipedia

hat
Yes, I know it is not falsifiable. But the endless confirmation of it indicates that unlike our case with Jeffrey there does appear to be one clear winner.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

They are the universal questions everyone wants an answer to, unless they are mentally unstable or just dishonest with themselves.

No. Science questions are the questions everyone wants answered, "unless they are delusional psychotic idiots."



(sarcasm, btw)


What a badly disguised, condescending, attempt at being insulting...

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Where do you get such an absurd notion? God is the only one who can give life meaning.

Clearly that is not true.

 

[ElishaElijah]

Your faith in a deity, has led you to live a life consecrated to that deity, and a religious purpose.

Yes my trust in God as well as the power He gave me by filling me with the Holy Spirit has done this.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Every belief is subjective.

Not when they are the compulsory result of objective evidence.

My belief in gravity, for example.