Beau and Others -
  There may be no point to continuing the discussion, because I don't think that you will support using logic and evidence to either consider or refute an argument.  It seems like the only consideration you give as to whether something is true or not is defendant on your personal experience, or the personal experience of those you agree with or think support your worldview.
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  I guess as an educator this type of thinking scares me for the future of America, because I run into a lot of people it seems who either do not or cannot value reason, evidence and logic.  At the end of the day, it simply doesn't matter if one has evidence, reason, and logic supporting what they are saying, because it becomes impossible to reason with people would rather disengage, stick their fingers in their ears, and say 'lalala it doesn't matter because I'm not willing to consider anything that could be true that is different than my paradigm, and forget all of that logic and evidence stuff anyways, I just want to create my own reality as I see it'.
  To specifically address that quote, I would say that the sentiment is flat out wrong.  For instance the scientific method as well as deductive and inductive reasoning have given us all of our technological advances that we enjoy, and we would never know much about the universe if we limited ourselves to only validating things that could be experienced directly.  Even things that are not controversial would be rejected by this statement.  In other words, if you had never been to China then it would be speculation to say that a place called China exists.  Or more abstractly, the United States would simply not exist either (as a concept) because we would not experience an abstract concept directly with our senses.  How about if we were on drugs, or hallucinating - do those things experienced automatically exist?  Or could you experience something that you thought was there based on some bad dinner the night before?  Some neuroscientists will note that the only thing we truly directly experience anyways is our brain.  So clearly limiting ourselves to what is true about the universe to the things that one can experience is not an effective way to learn about the universe or judge what is true.
  Some concepts we directly know because we can deductively prove, such as arithmetic or geometry.  Other things we inductively know to be likely true, as I mentioned earlier.  It seems that you are looking at my inductive proof and assuming or misconstruing me to have a deductive type of proof conclusion:
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  I think what you are doing is confusing deductive proof with inductive proof.  I am not arguing that I have proved God exists or so on as a deductive proof.  I am saying that the massive body of evidence out there suggests that the existence of God is very likely.  Put another way: I cannot 'prove' to you deductively that the sun will rise up tomorrow morning.  What I can do is show that based on evidence, it is very very very very likely that the sun will rise up tomorrow as an inductive proof.  That is my case here; taken together all of these lines of evidence that have not been refuted make it very likely that God exists.

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  No, what you mean is that you would rather not have your worldview challenged with lines of evidence that threaten that worldview, and be forced to consider that a/ you might be wrong and b/ you basically have no lines of evidence to back up your ideas other than personal belief or experience, and should we not forget, lets toss in a healthy dose of hatred for anything that might relate to organized religion.  You want to be the captain of your own ship, to design the universe and afterlife as you see fit, as it is most palatable to you.  I'm saying that that view should be different; the universe is as it is and God is as it is independent of what you think of it; you are not the creator.  Truth is truth, independent of how that tastes to you.  We are discoverers of truth, not creators of it.

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  Not true; my inductive argument taken as a whole most certainly points to a God.  My argument has shown (and it hasn't been refuted or even really diluted by anyone here) that this being or beings is 1/ eternal from our perspective, outside of space and time /2 the beginner or cause of space and time 3/ incredibly intelligent assuming it was desired to create a universe that permitted life.  In conjunction with my other arguments due to the existence of absolute good and evil, and the life of Jesus, we can conclude that this being is most likely a God that is portrayed as the Father by Jesus, simply from the physical, scientific, and historical evidence that all my arguments inductively depend on and tie together.  What have you used to justify any alternatives?  I see nothing here.

I've run out of time.  I think we probably are done though; I don't see how anything constructive can happen moving forward.

And perhaps this will clarify the last point:

spec·u·la·tion   [spek-yuh-ley-shuhn]  Show IPA
–noun
1.
the contemplation or consideration of some subject: to engage in speculation on humanity's ultimate destiny.
2.
a single instance or process of consideration.
3.
a conclusion or opinion reached by such contemplation: These speculations are impossible to verify.
4.
conjectural consideration of a matter; conjecture or surmise: a report based on speculation rather than facts.

pratekya wrote on Apr 16^th, 2010 at 4:19pm:


I agree with all of this, and my logic and reasoning gives me these three points as well.

As for organized religion, I'm just going to have to sit with my belief that religious folks will be back after death to get the experience of a free mind which discovers God without the limitation of religion. You can mark my words that there will be a time when religion becomes extremely rare. I can see this very clearly in the younger generations. There will instead be more of a divide between just spiritual people and non spiritual people. This is absolutely necessary. Completely. I don't perceive it means "giving up on Jesus." I'm not a Christian, but I support the messages of Jesus and find there is a good bit to learn there pending everything isn't taken literally. So whose the Jesus people speak of in the afterlife? I would suppose its a divine being which disguises itself as what the individual finds most comfortable. Even Howard Storm called out before he even saw this being. He just imagined what he understood to be the most comforting figure, and that's what appeared.

Regardless it's just a being of love and light. It doesn't really matter how you want to perceive it.

I see no "massive body of evidence" as pratekya suggests, that there is a God. Only faith of Gods existence. I have faith. That said, I have my personal experiences to pull from. Those experiences I can share, but I can have no expectation that others would come to the same conclusions about God that I have. Nor would I want them to. This is where beliefs in religion and God separate. There is no need of organised religion. They have proven themselves to be the center of much evil over the centuries. But people who believe they have never found God, or never realised that God doesn't need to be found, that he/she/it/they are there in your consciousness already. They seem to have a need for Gods love. They are willing to be led like sheep to the slaughter in order to have God within their existence. Willing to kill. Willing to control. Willing to give everything they own. Willing to watch their children die. Willing to except being molested. All in an effort to have something that they believe someone else has, and that they don't. Organised religions and some of their cronies use this to their benefit. They are attempting to sell you a love from God that already exists for you. You don't need religion to have God in your life. You don't need to pay a church to connect you with God or for God to love you. Proof of God is a personal thing. It can not be proven by any individual or religion. I hope that anyone who has not already found their God will look inside of themselves and see that God is, and always has been with them. I see the most valuable thing with organised religions as being charity. Other than that..well I am not so sure.

Come on people. Do you think it is more than a fuzzy belief when you, at a point where all knowledge fails, imagine an "entity" (what is that in this regard?) and give it the name "God"? In philosophy it's called "making a hypostasis". You thought up something and make an "entity" of it. Do a little journey in philosophy and you will see that all these "arguments" have been already brought foward long ago and nothing has remained of it.

Spooky

Came upon this doing some looking around. Pretty interesting but I take everything with grains.

http://www.urantia.org/en/urantia-book-standardized/paper-1-universal-father

It's interesting read but as I kept going I kept getting the thought that someone with a very deep imagination and a lot of free time had contrived this for the purpose of creating a concept and aspect of religion which fit more traditional standards.

I too kind of find the idea of God being "one" and particularly as a male figure (although maybe its only in the same reference that we refer to the planet as "Mother Earth") to make less sense than the idea of multiple conscious beings bringing about creation. That is the general idea of our evolution according to the Maya afterall. That we reach the "conscious of co-creation." We all develop the ability to create, and that could be the life constant of sentient beings.

I find it easier to believe that "God" is more than just one being or force, but I also could not deny it as one. Being one would certainly make it much more magnificent but it makes it sound like the lonely puppet master that made living puppets to keep from being lonely. I like the idea more that consciousness was never alone.