I love you. We love each other. You don’t need to be told that. What am I doin?
K: science exists and it doesn’t matter if I believe, but as you pointed out, “IF, god exists”
and god doesn’t exist, so it doesn’t matter if I believe or not…
so your argument is really just another logical argument for the existence of god without
any actual proof… whereas I can show you science and the effects of science and
do actual science experiments…whereas you can’t show me god and you can’t show
me any effects of god… that is the difference… I can show you science and you
can’t show me god…
Kropotkin
My argument was that your logic is faulty. I made no claims about the existence of God.
I simply stated that the existence( or non-existence) of God is independent of your beliefs - which is obviously true.
But I have no interest in showing you God.
Whether you believe in God or not is completely irrelevant to me.
Enter your house … close all the doors and windows … shut down all senses, memory, reason, understanding and so on … paraphrasing Lao Tzu
Apparently it took Siddhārtha Gautama 48 days and nights … some people work hard their entire lives to achieve this particular “state of mind” and never quite get there …
I like Ruth Barrows metaphor
“Surrender and abandonment are like a deep, inviting, frightening ocean into which we are drawn. We make excursions into it to test it, to see whether it’s safe, to enjoy the sensation of it. But for all kinds of reasons, we always go back to dry land, to solid ground, to where we are safe. But the ocean beckons us out anew and we risk again being afloat in something bigger than ourselves. And we keep doing that, wading in and then going back to safety, until one day, when we are ready, we just let the waters carry us away.”
I just can’t believe in the religions of so called gods. There could be superior beings but, their religions are deplorable.
We assign probability to every possibility based on data that we possess. The possibility that “God exists” has 0% probability so it’s safe to say He does not exist.
No need for responses such as “you can’t prove a negative” and “absence of belief isn’t the opposite belief”.
I recently saw a movie on Brooke Ellison story (about the first quadriplegic woman who went to Harvard), and in one scene where she’s still in deep coma after accident the doctor was worried that she may regain consciousness but not her cognition, and I wonder if the state of consciousness without cognition is the same state as Buddha mind.
Wouldn’t Buddha mind state, in a sense, be imitating brain damage? 
Zero probability is called ‘certainty’. (As is 100% probability.) 
It’s good that you are certain but you are in disagreement with the multitude of people who think that there is adequate data/evidence for the existence of God. 
K: You have defenders of the faith like Phyllo and others
and you have defenders of Atheism like myself…
ask yourself, whose side am I on and more importantly
ask yourself, why? Why is the belief in god so important
or why is the knowledge there is no god, important?
Kropotkin
In this thread, I have defended logic.
In other threads, I have defended the right of a person to decide whether God exists for themselves. I have also defended the right to religious freedom, and that includes the right not to believe.
As long as person conforms to standards of ethical and legal conduct, why should I care if he believes that Jesus/God spoke to him?
Commonality in belief is important for the same reason commonality in laws, contracts, ethics, or agreements is important - so that sufficient trust in the behavior of your neighbors can be realized and utilized to produce more freedom for yourself and everyone else.
- What is your young daughter going to face when she walks outside?
Too much “commonality in belief” produces stagnation.
…depends on the beliefs. If they include pursuits, as many do, then stagnation isn’t the issue.
You sound like Biguous. Who cares if there are people who think otherwise?
You have a choice of;
[list]proof,
elitist propaganda,
possibility/probability,
popular belief
personal opinion.[/list:u]
Biguous denies proof and relegates everything to opinion.
Isn’t the purpose of proof to establish agreement – to communicate one’s thought process in an effort to replicate it in others – rather than to establish truth?
When people ask you for proof, they are asking you to convince them that what you’re saying is true is indeed true.
Truth is established through pattern recognition – through what is probable – and it is this that Biguous denies.
Like agnostics, Biguous is doing everything he can to avoid confrontation. He’d rather stop believing his senses than hold an unpopular opinion.
Purpose might be different for different people.
Very true (despite the actual reality of truth).
Truth is established by the lack of any alternative. But Biguous appears to believe that anyone’s belief is another alternative. Logic has no say in the matter. That is his curse.
I wouldn’t accuse agnostics of that, but I agree that Biguous does that. He tries to handle confrontation by going to the opposite extreme of declaring everything to be wrong (a conflict), therefore even good is wrong, therefore he cannot be declared wrong, but is instead commonly good - a common attempt by many of the currently lost and confounded (“If everyone is bad then I’m as good as anyone thus should not be punished”).
Pandora … for me … a very interesting query.
If we are open minded enough to contemplate the possibility that the human mind has utility that transcends cognition … is superior to cognition … one could argue that cognition imitates brain damage. 
Is ‘cognition’ synonymous with the axiom … "familiarity breeds contempt?
Proof of God’s existence can be found in experience of God within us. Christian mystics such as John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart proclaimed personal knowledge of a God.
It is difficult to describe to some atheists the real experience of knowing God simply because they cannot believe a description of God that is morally superior to the fundy, popular straw man. . Who would want to believe in a loser god who allows the majority of humans to suffer excruciating torture for all eternity? The older I get the more I tend to believe in a god who is not a loser in the salvation game. Instead I see a supreme creator who considers all creations good and worthy of reclamation.
Yes. Every option is an alternative. Every choice is equal to every other choice. It’s a game of chance. A dice throw. There is nothing to limit, to direct, movement. There are no probabilities, only possibilities.
Which is a lie. Because there is no absolute chaos. You cannot not choose. A container of liquid cannot not leak into one of its adjacent containers.
The question always boils down to how we should restrict, limit, bound, direct our motion.
Motion cannot cease. Its coordination can cease. But motion cannot. Does not. It merely becomes subject to, controlled by, external circumstances.
In the case of Biguous, he clearly is making a choice. Though one can say his choice is less of a choice, it is nonetheless more than complete surrender to chaos.
What does he choose? How does he choose to direct his motion?
By negotiation, moderation, compromise . . . he’s choosing to dilute his opinions, to mix them with other people’s opinions, so that people can reach some sort of agreement and semblance of truth.
And he absolutely despises those who refuse to do so.
The evil objectivists.