Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

And yet everyone does this all the time. You cant have a scientist around trailing you with a Geiger counter everytime you pick up a rock.When you drive down an unfamiliar road, you make choices on where to turn.In some cases you are wrong. There are maps available, but not all of them are descriptive of the territory ahead...but as we live and walk through the territory, we choose which maps to use in the future. You chose a different map than I (and other believers ) chose...but it is, in the end, YOUR map...it need not be everyone's map. I have seen many maps describing the Bible...some dismiss it and others corroborate parts of it....but it is my decision which mapmakers to listen to. I indeed do validate my own perceptions and live with the decisions.

But can you see why political beliefs (to use your own example) are generally more grounded than theistic ones?Can you honestly not see the difference between a lifetime’s experience at the sharp end of a capitalist economy (for example) that might shape one’s political stance and ‘subjective experiences’ relating to God that shape your theistic beliefs**Can you be more specific here - visions? voices? feelings? what? And that’s exactly my point. Most people don’t base their political beliefs on the sort of hard science that a Geiger counter might provide. But that doesn’t mean theistic beliefs and political beliefs are equally baseless in terms of material evidence.Can you see that?

Well, that's exactly how science works. Nothing is accepted unless it can be verified. And you do the same thing in real life more often than you might like to admit. Do you ignore outside information on every topic and go only with your own "subjective experience"? That's a pretty poor analogy. You want a map that has been verified as much as possible. There's no point in having a map at all if it's one you made up in your head. You can read your own head directly, without a map, but you can't trust it to be accurate. Your choice of map should be based on accuracy, shouldn't it? It might be fun to make up a map in your head of a place with an ice cream stand on every corner but is that a useful map?

Yes and No. Let's take Low Carb Diets as an analogy. There is a growing group of Doctors who have some pretty impressive and verifiable data regarding the wisdom of the low carb approach to treating diabetes. There is also another group of Doctors who challenge this data and rely on the more traditional wisdom. As a diabetic, all that I have to go on is my numbers...my blood sugar A1C, my HR, and my blood pressure, as well as my subjective feelings of health and well-being. I'm not simply going to take some drug that has passed clinical trials. I am going to make my own decision.It is the same with the Bible. Some, such as Richard carrier, have brought forth cases that show Jesus to be a myth and the motivations for writing the Bible to be political and partisan motivated. Others disagree. Both sides have data. In the end, it is our free choice what to believe. I chose Low Carb. I will defend that choice against any argument. Do I have a bias? Yes, in the sense that I try and avoid excessive medications....but also realizing that my choice involves a degree of personal responsibility and discipline.My point is that at this point in time, no one side can claim the final say in verifiable data nor in the results of subjective experiences.

I think you're moving the goalposts. Sure, there are situations where you have to weigh evidence against evidence to make a decision. But I thought we were talking about "subjective experieces" of things like God. You said, after all, that Straggler hadn't had any.

Granted I was assuming.

So, if we are talking about "experiences" where there is no evidence, why would you accept your individual perceptions there? Why not check them against others' experiences and perceptions?

I suppose that a lot has to do with what I want to accept in the first place. Also the fact that I don't agree with some of the others, so why would I want to consider that they might have a point?Which I suppose proves the point that we all create the God that we want. Even if a real and actual One happens to exist apart from our whimsy.And you decided to simply skip a step and not create any sort of God....given that you believe that we all have to do it for ourselves anyway. Which I suppose makes sense. I will hold out for a guiding fatherly Being, however. I hate being alone.

What's your take on reality, Phat? Which of these is reality: I liked the way you expressed it earlier ("If something good happens, we can choose to credit God or fate and chance, though I believe that there really is no such thing---it too being a belief."), which is why I said I agree. Now you've reexpressed this in a way I'm not sure I can agree with because it's unclear what you mean. It's possible you've said nothing meaningful. No they don't. Why would you say this? Huh? Why would you say this? How many times have people said here that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence? Rational beliefs are based upon evidence from the real world. Did you listen to Letting Go of God? There's enough ambiguity that I can't be sure, but it's possible you haven't said anything correct or meaningful in this post, that you're closer to the "not even wrong" category.--Percy

Because you might be wrong. If you don't consider other options, how can you have any confidence in your conclusions? It's better to become right than to stay wrong.

All that I mean is that chance has to be measurable...such as lottery probabilities...rather than arbitrary...such as "the universe occurred by chance"...which is not measurable nor quantifiable.

This one is so out there that I'm going to reply now before reading to the end of the thread. Of course, but if you have no Geiger counter than you can't reach any conclusions about the radioactivity of the rock. In other words, if you have no evidence then you can reach no conclusions. If you're reaching conclusions in the absence of evidence, if you're saying to yourself, "I have no evidence but I deeply feel the need for answers and so I'm going to reach some conclusions anyway," then you're just fooling yourself. If you made your choice with no evidence, then of course you could be wrong. Say you're trying to get to town and you come to a fork in the road and there are no signs, no compass, no hint of which way town lies. You have no evidence of which is the correct way, so no matter which choice you make of course you could be wrong. That's just common sense. I think what you're trying to say is that there are many ways to find a path across a territory, just as there are many ways to find your way through the Bible. But for some reason you don't describe, the particular path you've chosen across either a territory or the Bible is important to you, and you disavow any others.You can call this path your map if you like, but once someone has discovered that their chosen map doesn't lead to the rapture when they thought it did, shouldn't they update their map?--Percy

Data for the existence of Jesus? I don't think so. The Bible describes Jesus causing a magnitude of unrest in the region that chroniclers of the period could not have failed to notice. That they don't mention him speaks volumes. A wise choice based upon evidence. There is a growing body of evidence that will help you defend your position. Yes, you have a bias, but not in the way you describe. You have a bias in favor of listening to the evidence. You've just run off the rails by drawing a false equivalence between evidence-based decision making and subjective judgment.--Percy

For whatever reason, you have become more declarative and specific recently, and consequently have more often been clearly wrong. Chance does not have to be measurable. There's a probability of precipitation tomorrow. That probability was not measured and is not measurable. It was estimated.That the probability isn't accurately measurable but is only estimated does not mean it is arbitrary. That the universe is the result of chance quantum fluctuations is a hypothesis. If the hypothesis proves true then the probability of this past event is likely not measurable after all this time and due to incompleteness of data (there is far more of the universe that can't be observed than can), but it's not impossible that it could be quantifiable by theoretical means. This is all very speculative, but the larger point is that you're wrong about what is measurable or quantifiable.--Percy

Score just today popped way up into the acceptable range, so I've applied to hotmail for reinstatement. Hotmail and outlook.com are actually the same email service, so both were affected, and I've applied to outlook.com for reinstatement, too. I'm not sure how long it will take, hopefully not too long.