I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity

What do you mean by "a real GOD"...?Doesn't every theist believe theirs is a real one?

I'm not following you and I don't see that you have a point.

Belief has little to do with whether or not something is real.As I have explained to you over and over and over and over again, you can use the scientific method to determine whether or not some described God or god is likely real but that applies only to that particular God or god and says nothing about whether there is a GOD or not.

I asked - "If we want to test the veracity of a theistic claim using these non-empirical methods you allude to how do we do that?"If the only answers you have to that question involve internal states of mind (e.g. your example of feeling fulfilled) then they have little or no relevance to the satement "I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity" which is the subject of this thread. Because neither God not gravity are being put forward as things which exist only internally to one's mind.Are these non-empirical methods you allude to relevant to theological claims (i.e. claims pertaining to God) or are they only relevant to internal states of mind (e.g. feeling happy, fulfilled etc.)?

Ah - I wondered when you'd find the caps lock key. I see we are back to that non-described, definitionless, attributeless literally meaningless (but which we mustn't call "ambiguous" - that would be dishonest wouldn't it?) term of yours.We've been through all that before:

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GOD. A thing which on one hand is completely undefined and devoid of any attributes. A term which when it suits you is, in a very literal sense, completely and utterly meaningless.

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And yet despite this insistence that the term has no definition. most of the time when discussing this thing you implicitly imbue this thing with some very conventional godliness. We have the fact that this term is spelt G-O-D with all the conceptual baggage that entails. We have the fact that you are talking about it in a thread titled Can You Define God?. We have the fact that you persistently class this thing in the same company as gods and God(s). We have your personal belief that this thing is the ‘creator of all that is seen and unseen’. We have your insistence that belief in this GOD thing qualifies one as a theist (despite it not being a god). We have your assertion that any knowledge of this thing can only come after death. And we have your re-definition of the term supernatural such that GOD and GOD alone (i.e. not Thor or Voldermort or demons or anything else one can conceive of) qualifies as supernatural.

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So on one hand we have a term with no meaning about which any belief or discussion is incoherent and completely lacking in cogency. And on the other we have an entity which suffers from all the same problems as all those other gods you dismiss as obvious human constructions.

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That is because I, at least, am honest.

I would say that ambiguity can be a form of dishonesty....So don't get too self-congratulatory.

You are of course free to hold that belief.

And you are free to believe in your own honesty.But your belief of this is no indicator of it's veracity

You also asked:

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If one wants to believe things that are likely to be true how does one decide which parts of the bible are helpful and which are a hindrance?

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That is what I answered.But now you've moved the goalpost to: So you are just creating a convoluted tautology.How can I give you an example of something that can be tested and that is external to the mind but is also non-empirical?

Yes, "to believe is to accept as true." However, it is important to make a distinction between whether we accept something because of the evidence or we believe it despite the lack of any evidence.

As I made clear to jar (I guess you missed it) all the way back in Message 47Obviously those who advocate these non-empirical methods that keep being alluded to are going to fixate on the words "helpful and "hindrance" rather than the "true" part of my question. Because it gives them a chance to waffle on about feelings of fulfilment and suchlike rather than actually examining the statement " I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity" under discussion. Then it seems we agree that these non-empirical methods you speak of are entirely useless with regard to things external to one's own mind and thus have no real relevance to examining the statement " I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity" because both God and gravity are being put forward as things extant to human minds.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Which is what a thread examining the statement " I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity" is all about.

It should be possible to compare one's own mind with somebody else's mind to some extent. It should be possible to discuss concepts like "I like ice cream" in an almost objective way without being able to empirically test the "liking" of ice cream.

And yet you wasted oh so many posts saying I was wrong.