There is no such animal, Iamb, as objective certainty in philosophy or in religion. The closest we can get to that is consensus of subjective agreements and the pragmatic notion that if it works it is true for us. Your anti-theist stance works for you and for all those who think as you do. So it is true for you. It isn’t necessarily true for others who believe in God.
duplicate
Taken me so long to figure out that lamb is not a baby sheep (with a religious connotation) but is instead is iamb (damn fonts).
But my point to you is this: How could you or I or any mere mortal possibly know these things so as to assert them to be true?
Instead, all we have here is our capacity to demonstrate that what we believe or claim to know is true “in our head” [about God and religion] is that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe or to know in turn.
I merely point to an argument suggesting that the manner in which each of us as individuals do come to believe or to think we know these things is embodied existentially in dasein.
On the other hand, some things seem to transcend subjective opinion.
Again, I believe and claim to know that the Pope resides in the Vatican as the leader of the Catholic Church. I believe and claim to know that this can in fact be demonstrated to be in sync with the world that we live in objectively.
But: Can he do the same regarding the existence of this particular God that he claims to worship and adore?
Can you do the same in regards to your own rendition of God?
And my anti-theist stance does not work for me in that I do in fact want to believe in immortality and salvation. Indeed, that is precisely what other atheists will chide me for. It is seen as a weakness to them.
And, over the years, they have belittled me by and large for searching in places like this for arguments that might possibly persuade me to come back into one or another fold.
My conviction that there is a God and He is Love is based on three things:
Testimony of Saints
Nature
Experience.
I could discuss these at length, but I don’t think any such discussion would be credible for you.
Seek and you shall find!
In other words, over the course of the life that you lived, you had experiences, you had relationships, you had contact with particular information/knowledge that predisposed you to think and to feel about God as you do.
But: You have no capacity at all to demonstrate the actual existence of this God beyond the existential parameters of your lived life.
And, in believing what you do, you are able to feel comforted and consoled. And, in this world, that’s not nothing.
On the other hand, given nature as we know it, how can a reasonable man or woman possibly equate it with a loving God?
That’s probably true. Without something more substantial, something more than just a frame of mind, I’m not likely to take your assessment of God as anything other than but one more embodiment of dasein.
As I view it, this is just your own particular existential contraption – a rationalization that serves as the mother of all psychological defense mechanisms. And in a world that is bursting at the seams with all manner of trials and tribulations.
[Bedbugs for example. Whatever possessed God to create them?!] 
Seek and ye shall find? More like want and ye shall seek what ye needs to find.
Once I could do it myself. Just not anymore.
But, sure, perhaps I will again.
Iambiguous, I think the hard thing to comprehend about your posts is that individuals are not sure to take the inherent contradictions in them as unintentional or intentional (an issue of trust, honesty and motives).
How can you explain existence of anything beyond your own existential condition? Science? Philosophy? Just more ideas “in the head”? Whether or not you believe it, there are rational people who have had a God experience.
.
Aren’t we all in the same boat here?
The really, really Big Questions:
Why does something exist and not nothing?
Why does something that does exist exist as it does and not in some other way?
With “God” surely being one possible explanation.
And the evolution of life on earth has predisposed our brains to in fact connect dots between “in my head” and “out in the world”.
And with the capacity to ask “why?” and “how”?" comes the capacity to ask why and how it all began, and what it all means.
And, like you, there have been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of others over the years who have proposed a “frame of mind” for thinking about it…and for “resolving” it.
But: They are either able to demonstrate that what they believe to be true “in their head” is that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe is true in turn or they are not.
But: How are these particular calculations not embodied existentially in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political community?
For you, in other words. And, in particular, for you when your own value judgments come into conflict with others. As that pertains to the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave and that which you imagine your fate to be on the other side of it.
You will either explore that in some detail here [on this thread] or you will not. In any event, that is why I created the thread.
I do believe this. Yet why does that then exempt them from the responsibility of providing something – substantive evidence, substantial proof – that will enable others to confirm this experience; or that enables them to replicate it; or that enables others to experience the same?
The proof for me of the efficacy of a God experience is in seeing how this experience changes lives for the better. Still you seem to require a more rigid proof of the God experience than you do of scientific or philosophical explanations of what exists.
Yes, we all have our own personal anecdotes here rooted in dasein.
For example, there are those who have an experience so traumatic, so ghastly, their reaction is just the opposite of yours: they lose their faith and their belief in God.
Similarly, I fully understand how a personal experience that greatly improves someone’s life might be attributed to God. In that way the reason becomes rooted more in necessity [in a teleological font] rather than in fortuity or serendipity or luck or in just making better choices.
In my view, there are two ways to think about this.
First, there are the experiences and the arguments able to convince me in the existence of God. Experiences I either have and arguments I either encounter or I do not.
But: That still leaves me with the problem of being able to demonstrate that what I do believe “in my head” is that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe in turn. Here I either have “the substantive evidence and the substantial proof” or I don’t. Just like everyone else.
And then, secondly, there are the truths that science and philosophy do seem able to establish objectively.
Empirical/logical/epistemologically sound assumptions/premises that revolve around either/or. And are able to be demonstrated as such.
Relationships in other words that do not revolve instead around is/ought. Relationships that are in sync “naturally” with the cosmos…rather than subjectively/subjunctively in personal opinions and political prejudices. In the existential trajectory of individual lives.
What is established here transcends dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. These are “the facts of life” applicable to all of us.
And [so far] the beliefs in God that I have encountered here [like yours] are no where near that.
If we believe that an inner experience comes as a result of God - that we have been touched by God - because we "believe’ in God, then we will think that this God is responsible for the positive changes in our lives especially if we think of God as such a loving moving force in our lives and are not so capable of giving credence to our own wills and desires to mature and grow.
It isn’t necessarily a God who is responsible but our beliefs which are responsible. A person’s beliefs can also wreak havoc and destruction on the world.
Of course, that’s not to say that the God experience cannot be a wonderful, nurturing one but that still is not proof for the existence of God. We also believe at times that we love and that we are loved but at some point we are faced with the reality of it being nothing but wishful thinking/subjective thinking/personal perception and brain chemistry. Perception is everything but often wrong as is intuition and that belief and knowing beyond belief (as in taking that giant leap into faith).
Of course, that is also not proof that there is no God. How could there possibly be any kind of proof for the existence of a God, the actual, true confirmation for the existence of God, based on the workings of the human mind and heart - what we have to work with. It all gets in the way.
The saints? They were just as human and fallible as we are and prone to beliefs based on desire and those wonderful aha moments where God is concerned which only stand for something in the human heart.
No explanation of the God experience will satisfy the die hard atheist who firmly believes that his beliefs and desires somehow smack of objective truth and that those beliefs and desires of others are all in the head.
Can’t say if you’re calling me a die-hard atheist, Ierrellus but I’m not. I’m an agnostic so I withhold judgment either way of there being a God. There is just not enough proof for me in either direction. My mind and my heart are just not capable of taking that giant leap into faith or into the certainty that there is not something - and that’s okay with me since it’s still a beautiful world out there ALSO which i stand in awe of - but that’s as far as I take it.
What I wrote above in the other post is not objective truth for me but my own subjective thinking, my own inner and outer perspective. Many if not most things cannot be written in stone. Some of it may be more true, psychologically speaking, than other things but so much still resides up in the air so to speak.
Also, more so in a person’s entire Being.
I was talking about atheists in general, not about you. Your agnosticism gives you the best of both worlds–doubt and belief.
What part of my agnosticism is "belief’?
Yeah, there are atheists who insist that God does not exist as though this actually could be established beyond all doubt.
And some can be quite contemptuous of those who argue for the existence of God.
But that still doesn’t lessen the obligation of those who claim that He does exist to demonstrate this beyond that which they claim to believe [or to know] “in their head”.
Or based on what they claim to have experienced personally.
If that isn’t the bottom line in a philosophy venue, what is?
And until you are willing to apprise us of your own experiences, we don’t even have the opportunity to react at all.
Let alone to compare the experiences that you have had pertaining to your rendition of God to the experiences that others have had pertaining to a very different rendition of God.
Let alone to connect the dots between the behaviors that you choose on this side of the grave as this is embodied in your belief in God as this is embedded in that which you imagine your fate to be on the other side of the grave.
Where are the theists at ILP willing to go there?
Belief that belief in the existence of God may or may not account for the universe as it is.
I can’t speak for other theists at ILP except perhaps to note the “in you head” needle stuck on a record, replaying ad nauseum. Nothing I could say will convince you of the existence of God.
What your words appear to be saying here, Ierrellus, is that one’s beliefs are responsible for the physical universe as it is in these moments? Re-read your above words.
But at the same time, it IS true that our beliefs influence our lives and the lives of others in both positive and
negative ways.
That being said, what my agnosticism basically gives me is a world of wonderment, questioning, mystery and an intuition which at times brings me to the boundary of something which I refuse to pass over - judgment. faith.