Opinions and conclusions about Religion and God.

With my parents Xian, I learned about Jesus (mainly through Xmass) and heaven and hell but nothing much more than that. True to form I immediately rejected it(I was a passive rebel).However, I started to worry that I would go to hell because I did not belive in xian god. This state of angst lasted for several weeks when I was about 8.Then it went away. I stopped worrying. Don't know why but I did.Fast forwards to 11.Going to a CoE school we had (by law) R.E. every week at primary school. This was taught by a fearsome Cannon who was full of gusto as he recounted the glories of the xian god.Remembering my younger angst and how it just vanished I was completly amazed at someone who would devote his whole life to a religion. He became a figure of fun, I never took any notice of him or his teachings.Fastforwards to 15. My Mum left home and I became quite nilistic. How could xian god make such a cruel thing happen. What had our family done wrong? For the next several years I did my best to consciously expunge any need for other people's support from my life. I hated my residual belief in xain god. I took conscious effort to remove that too.Fast forwards to late teens. I had nothing really to believe in so I believed in pretty much anyting. Even silly codes of honour found in David Gemmel novels. Recoving my wits I examined my beliefs and found that one belief was pretty much as good as another. I became interested in why people choose to believe in gods. I started to study Sociolgy and specialized in Religion. I wanted to know why people believe. I concluded it was simply a product of culture.Fast forwards to early twenties. At university studying psychology I learned why we think the way we do. Exposure to the scientific methodolgy killed any last vestige of religion from me.All these experience led me to look in a very pointed way for some reason to believe in xian god (lets face it, going to heaven would be cooler than hell) but I have found nothing.People on this forum often say that I have to look or search or make the first move to get to know their god. I tried for years. Nothing.Today. I honestly believe there is nothing there. I wish, I really wish all the bad things that happened to me and others (much worse for many, many people) had some justification but I just can't see it.So, religion has been a pretty big force in making me the way I am. Just not the way it is.The factuality of religions and gods are assertions. No more than hearsay and third hand evidences.

I went to a funeral a couple years back. It was so foreign to what a believer actually deeply believes in that it was infact, to me, a complete mis-understanding of what faith is. It was bad to get amused at a funeral, but honestly, there is nothing as plastic or as superficial to me as a church-version of faith.This guy was a real militant atheist, on the TV, and he went to live with these monks with a bunch of other secularists. He had an experience, a religious experience.He said something similar to, "I don't know what that energy was or what I call it, but all I know is that it was real".Sure, you can reproduce the feeling in a lab maybe. Not the point. The point of my anecdote is an observation I made and your post reminded me of it.You see, previously, he rejected belief in God because his example was only things like church. Now this was the reason for his disbelief, and I have witnessed many with the same logical reasoning that goes;God is fake because the religious, and church, as an example, are just so darn fake/a bad example.Ironically Shraff, after his experience, he went to church for a mass, to try and attend as a believer, thinking they'd all be as passionate and on fire as he now was and he infact gave similar sentiments to your post.I haven't been to church for fifteen years apart from that funeral. It was completely foreign to me.So my conclusion is that disbelief in God based on religious roll models or others, is not a good reasoning to not have faith.

I know someone who just got a 1st from a top university who finds her psychology degree of tremendous use in her part-time work as a Christian counsellor.The starting assumptions can inform the end conclusions. I wouldn't worry Larni. That you search is the main thing. Ever try looking for a lost set of keys. You turn the house upside down in your looking. So long as you decide you must have those keys then find them you might.My mother looked all over the house: you name a path and she took it. That they all ended in dead ends didn't stop her looking. Until such time as she looked behind a cushion and there they lay. The keys were always there - it was where she was looking that was the problem.To turn the analogy towards like it actually is. He is the one who finds you (I once was lost but now am found) but unlike a set of keys which lay were they lay, you can run around and escape the search. Better to lay still and let him find you. All(!) you have to do is to trust that he will find you if him finding you is what it is you desire. Anytime it occurs to you to do so: tell him that you do trust him. Ask him that he find you, that that is what your hearts desire is. Then trust that he will. Then relax a little about it. It will occur in his time - he cannot find you until you are ready to be found.Follow any signs he gives you (for he will give you them) - your looking for him, for example, is following the signs he gives you. He put the desire to search him out into you. For he loves you and dearly wants to meet you. This I know.{AbE} Like a set of keys, the search provide until it provides something. The switch is that black and white: blind/see lost/found dead to God/alive to God. Born....again.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

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Might I suggest that you believe I cannot know I am going to heaven but that I only believe that I am going?

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We've been around this circular track before Schraf. Lets break out by agreeing to differ.

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You are equating "knowledge" and "belief".I am not.There is no circularity on my part, iano, only your bullshit semantic games.

No I am not. There is a vast difference between them. You are telling me what I can know and what I cannot. You cannot tell me how you know this except to assert that you simply know it.Whilst very quick with your accusations you never explain how it is that you abandon HMS Semantics.I am prepared to say my statement "I know" cannot be demonstrated without arguing in a circle.You, regarding what you know, are not. Not that not stating how you know squares things off any.If I want to say I know something and you want to too then lets. And stop picking off the scab

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You are telling me what I can know and what I cannot.

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I know that there is a place called Wichita in Kansas, USA. I can go there. I can bring other people there. I can take photos and videos and even become a resident for a while before returning.But even if I never go there, there is abundant evidence that such a place exists, and I certainly could visit Wichita if I truly doubted it's existence.How do you know (rather than believe) you are going to heaven after you die?Show me. Photos, video, whatever. Take me there. Show me bus schedules, or it's location on a map.If you cannot (and I know you can't) then it simply illustrates my point.Whether there is an afterlife/heaven/hell/whatever is a non-empirical question. There is no way to know the answer.One may believe that they are going to heaven, but there is no way to know.

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I am prepared to say my statement "I know" cannot be demonstrated without arguing in a circle.

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Then you are using your own definition of "know/knowledge" which equates it with "believe/belief". (aka iano's semantic games)If you were using the terms as I am, as they are generally understood, there would be no need for you to use a circular argument.In fact, why don't you define your terms, here and now?

I know I exist. There is absolutely no proof that I do exist even though I know I do. It follows that I don't have to prove things in order to know things.If this knowing is not true (ie: I do not exist) then all other (derivative of this) knowing loses any foundation it may have for calling itself knowing.Will that do?

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I know I exist. There is absolutely no proof that I do exist even though I know I do. It follows that I don't have to prove things in order to know things.

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See, this is where your definition departs from the generally used definition of "know/knowledge". It is certainly different from the one I use.There is plenty of empirical evidence, beyond your own assertions, that you exist.If you want to use your more personal, reductionist definition of "know/knowledge" as you have indicated, then you seem to be saying that it is impossible to know or have knowledge of anything at all.This means, according to you, that empirical knowledge and non-empirical belief are the same thing. Edited by schrafinator, : spelling

Iano, is there a difference in the meaning of the word "know" as it is used in the following two statements?:"I know what happens when one mixes vinegar and baking soda together.""I know, in my heart of hearts, that he will come through for me in my hour of need."Edited by schrafinator, : spelling again

All derivatives Schraf. Derivative of that primary, unprovable knowing. You can hardly point to a derivative to proof the primary."I know I exist and because I know I do, I know that mirror exists too and because I know that, I know that what I see in the mirror is me (empirical proof)"Not all knowing requires demonstrable (to others) proof in order for it to be knowing.

Iano, is there a difference in the meaning of the word "know" as it is used in the following two statements?:"I know what happens when one mixes vinegar and baking soda together.""I know, in my heart of hearts, that he will come through for me in my hour of need."

There might well be. The word 'know' is frequently misapplied in the same way as we misapply the word weight (people say their weight is so and so kg's when really that is their mass)If a person is talking about something they know about as opposed to believe then know it they do. Now when it comes to a human coming through for them then patently that is merely belief - the person who is to come through might get run over by a bus before so coming through making the knowing moot. But if they are talking about God coming through then that it different. God cannot get run over by a bus.Your problem - and it has been thus for quite a while - is your difficulty with accepting that people can know things without being able to prove it empirically. As if empirical proof was required in order to know something. Which of course it is not - as knowing one exists demonstrates.

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Your problem - and it has been thus for quite a while - is your difficulty with accepting that people can know things without being able to prove it empirically.

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Well, then you are equating "know" and "believe".The problem is not with me at all.The problem is that you are playing semantic games (and butchering Descartes in the process) with the definition of "know" and "believe".

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As if empirical proof was required in order to know something. Which of course it is not - as knowing one exists demonstrates.

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There is plenty of empirical evidence that you exist.You are like Wichita, Kansas, USA.What you are saying is that your "knowledge" that heaven exists, that you "know" what it is like, and that you "know" that you are going there after you die is exactly the same as my "knowledge" that Wichita, Kansas, USA exists.If you say they are the same, then I could easily say that I "know" that Shangri-La exists, and scoff at anyone who doubts me.Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

I assume you know you exist. If so could you point me to anything which is NOT reliant on yourself to prove your knowledge that you exist. For to do so would be self-verification which is no verification at all. You mean "I think therefore I am" Talk about verbal gymnastics. Did he provide an equally famous proof of that? I think the reason why Rene disappeared up this stripped down side track was that he figured out that all these external proofs were lower order modes of self-verification. He rested on the highest order he could find - but it was still self-verification. Follow his lead and forget all the lower order stuff.You don't prove you exist, you simply know it If you know that then that is good enough for you. Me? I think you are jesting. But I don't know that you are.

Sorry Phat, there is a bloke called Derren Brown who I have seen do a one inch punch from about a yard, behind the guy he was 'punching'.He is quite famous in UK for doing such things and is great debunker of 'magic'.