Religious experience anyone?

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The term magic appears in neither scripture. No support for your statement there. Not all religions discourage questioning. I do not.

That is me. If you can show me a scripture to refute what I've just told you about me personally, then we have something to talk about. There is none. Therefore, you would have to contradict what I'm telling you about me, and you have no basis for such a contradiction. I have questioned, I do question.

The second scripture you quoted, by the way, is taken out of context. Within context, Thomas's questioning was not condemned, but rather was accepted. Jesus' response was to offer Thomas proof. Thomas was not condemned, nor was he chastised for demanding proof. Just because he said those who believe without seeing are blessed, does not mean those that ask for evidence or proof are condemned or frowned upon.

I don't know about how you personally think, but it's a fact that Scripture condemns the intellectual thinking of atheists and anyone against God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom.

If your line of thinking is in disagreement with God, you are Scripturally considered intellectually vain.

If you don't believe in God, the Bible says you're a fool. Consider Psalm 14.

This is a "clever" way to discourage skepticism and rational thinking.

Let's not yet.

Because you haven't yet addressed the main point made in the quote you responded to.

Have you yet accepted it may be possible there is an intelligent creator?

If not, there's really no point in continuing the discussion, because if you haven't yet accepted it as possible, you are rejecting it as impossible, and nothing anyone says will convince you of anything in contrast to your presumption.

Ok, let's turn this around then.

Have you accepted that there could easily be a non-sentient force that must have triggered the existence of this whole universe.

If you can't accept that, then I have no reason why I should accept your "intelligent creator" proposition. As my proposition is more parsimonious than yours anyway. And therefore, it's more reasonable to accept my proposition rather than yours.

Not really. It is a matter of perspective. Psalm 14 is written from the perspective of a man already convinced. Read from the perspective of someone not only not convinced, but doesn't even consider the possibility that what the writer believes could be true, your conclusion is not surprising and even understandable.

It really is a matter of first accepting the possibility. If one can't even get that far, there's no point in discussing it anymore.

The Psalm you cited is actually saying that not even considering the possibility, is foolishness. That simply stating, "There is no god," without even considering it to be possible, is senseless. There is no proof there is not a god. I think we all agree on that.

What Psalm 14 is really indicating is that to simply assume there is no proof, based only on not having seen it oneself, is foolish.

Science would claim the same thing.

Whether I will accept or consider your proposition is irrelevant. "I won't consider your views if you don't consider mine." You engaged me, not the other way around. I never asked you to defend what you believe. You asked me to defend what I believe.

Whether I would accept the possibility is not logically connected to whether you would consider mine. That's an emotional response, and I'm not going there.

It's pretty clear to me that you're already convinced of your beliefs. It should be equally clear to you that I am convinced of mine, and that any further debate with each other would be totally unproductive, since you've already rejected what I've presented so far, so I'm now questioning why you're engaging me at all.

You're making it pretty clear that you think I'm closed minded. You appear to be as equally closed minded as you seem to think I am. What possible good could come from continuing to discuss this with each other?

Just as it's foolish to say there is no dragon, right?

Also, let's not pretend that that passage was only against strong atheism. The Bible overall condemns anyone who doesn't have faith in God and count on him as his refuge whether he's strong atheist or not. It's not just only seen by reading the whole Psalm 14 passage, but by reading the Bible throughout, you get the gist that God doesn't really like those who don't trust that he exists and who don't rely on him as God.

Given such implications, why would a believer feel comfortable to question his faith if he's discouraged by Scripture to even think about the possibility of God not existing and there's not one sign of encouragement in the Bible to do so.

I take it you don't take Occam's razor seriously. I think it's safe to say my proposition is simpler than yours as it doesn't require that an extra feature (in this case, mind) be needed for the existence of this universe. So why would you not want to accept a proposition that's simpler than yours to be possibly true?



In what way is it an emotional response? Care to provide the logic behind what you just said here?



I have never stated anywhere in this thread that I'm convinced that God doesn't exist.

You see, the difference between you and I is that I don't really know who's arguing for the truth, but the way I see it, my proposition would still be the rational proposition regardless. As you have provided no reason why a proposition simpler than yours cannot be true.



Yeah, I do think, due to the nature of your faith, you're pretty closed-minded and not willing to open your mind to the possibility that there are simpler explanations for why something exists rather than nothing.

But this should still not be enough reason for me to not address what you say. If you say anything that needs to be addressed, I will be sure to address it. After all, this isn't simply a private discussion between you and me only. This is a public forum. And many potential readers may be reading our posts and making up their minds about the things we say here.

But if you want to skirt out of this discussion, be my guest.

About 9 months ago I was experimenting with pendulum dowsing. I communicated with many spirits but my most interesting experience was when a spirit gave me a description of Hong Kong, that was about 15 sentences long, in Traditional Chinese. I put together a dowsing chart using about 100 of the most commonly used characters, and punctuations. I spent hours dowsing out the entire message. I used Google Translations to translate the message into English because I can't speak Chinese. The translation was a little botched, but I could make out most of what he was saying. He told me about his family, the city, how crowded port Hong Kong was, and a Christianization movement that was going on there at the time. A few days later I ended up getting a spirit attached to me that was interfering with my movements and constantly pulling on my neck. After about 3 days it became unbearable and I decided that I had to tell someone about it. I went to pastor to for help even though I'm a Spiritualist, but I was desperate at the time so I was willing to try anything that might help. I don't think it helped very much, but it calmed me down a little to talk to someone about it. He told me to destroy the dowsing charts and delete the messages, so I did. After about a month things were back to normal and I wasn't having anymore problems. I haven't experimented with pendulum dowsing since then for fear that something like this might happen again. I wouldn't call it a religious experience because it doesn't support any religious views in particular, but it does support the existence of spirits. I don't have any evidence that it happened, but my own experience is evidence enough for me.

Let me put it succinctly then.

Are you willing to consider the possibility that he does? Yes or no?

I don't think you're paying enough attention to what I'm actually saying.

I accept the possibility of dragons existing, of Zeus existing, of Allah existing, of your God existing, of someone's God existing, and of a non-sentient force beyond the bounds of time and space of this universe.

But just because I accept the possibility doesn't mean I must automatically accept it as actual truth. For me, it makes no sense to believe in God when there's a much simpler explanation that explains the existence of this universe better than any God proposition can do.

Even IF God or the dragon or the invisible pink unicorn or the flying teapot or the spaghetti monster exists, if I have no evidence for their existence or they don't explain anything that simpler explanations can't explain, then there's no valid logical reason why I should accept their actual existence.

And you are dodging the question. Have a nice day.

Or rather, I gave you a valid answer that you didn't like. Because I actually did answer your question explicitly as shown here:

I accept the possibility of dragons existing, of Zeus existing, of Allah existing, of your God existing, of someone's God existing, and of a non-sentient force beyond the bounds of time and space of this universe.

There isn't really a simple explanation for anything.

Well, there are simpler explanations than others.

Or are you going to tell me that the existence of an entity with a complex mind is just as simple an explanation for the existence of this universe than the existence of a similar identity but without the mind? Especially if the mind is extraneous and unnecessary?

No dodge. He told you plainly that he had no evidence that God exists, so he does not believe that God exist. He let you know the state of his belief clearly and plainly, so there is nothing more to add. The is now way -to know- that God exists or does not exists. We only know what we have evidence for or against.

If I told you I do not believe that Zeus exists, would you pester me?

By the way, there is an old star trek episode: "Who Mourns for Adonis?". You ought to watch it some time.

ruveyn