God and the human mind

I would like to ask of those people who profess to believe in God a few simple questions. What event or state of mind convinced you of the existence of God and if you questioned this event/state of mind what eventually convinced you of the validity of the experience?
Did you in anyway investigate into the possibilty of self-deception and other means of fooling yourself such as confirmation bias,wishful thinking,selective thinking,post hoc reasoning etc..?If you did investigate perhaps you could share with us what you did to eliminate any of these or if you did not why not?

prophex Ok so could you give us some idea as to how you determined that errors such as confirmation bias,wishful thinking,etc..were addressed by you that you might rule them out?

jarThanks for the reply but I am more interested ,not in the belief,but, on how well you may have investigated the possibilty of errors in your thinking that could trip you up into giving creedence to something that is possibly just a construct of your mind?

prophex And please explain how they/he answered issues concerning confirmation bias,wishful thinking,etc..This message has been edited by sidelined, 09-03-2004 12:14 AM

prophexMy point,my point...Oh yes I need you to tell me if you applied critical thinking to the belief system you accepted. For instance The law of Truly Large Numbers.Confirmation bias.Begging the question.Selective thinking.I do not believe this part of my query has been addressed.This message has been edited by sidelined, 09-04-2004 12:46 PM

ProphexAnd what would that critical thinking amount to entailing prophex?

Phatboy I do not see how using critical thinking as applies to me would be a problem. It may be a little overboard to apply citical thinking to surmise my existence but being as I do exist the application of critical thinking would only buttress the fact rather than destroy it.
I am sorry to disagree with you and,of course,you are entitled to your beliefs but it is not your god that is subject to investigation by critical thinking it is your own mind and its capability to distinguish between phenomena that have some level of likelihood and those that are unlikely.
This does not mean that god does not exist but if god is incapable of withstanding investigation by critical thinking of human beings perhaps we may wonder why?

Hangdawg13 I would like to question the basis for this statement.Is there evidence for such a statement or is this simply a belief on your part to support your faith in god?

Darth MalThis is way off topic but I had to ask if in your signature it is supposed to read we are the bog? Do you not mean borg?I also wanted to recommend a new picture of the month from a magazine called free inquiry.There is an excellent cartoon on al-qaeda terrorists on page 16 that I find hilarious.Perhaps you may consider it?

jar I enjoy this paragraph but I think in order for it to be a proper theistic endevour it is definitly limited by our language.We cannot be seriously using thinking in the same way we would for humans since this requires a material existence in order for us to think. That is a highly well thought out statement and I agree 110%.POTM time for you jar.Bravo and well said!

Darth MalI thought I did understand. The famous phrase by the borg is We are the borg! Resistence is futile! And I also know about the relationship of R=V/I.
As for the link unfortunately the website for free inquiry does not include the comic. If I can get a copy of it somehow scanned I will see what I can do.Thanks.

Hawgdawg13 Well, leaving aside the validity of the logic you say it is supported by scripture,yet the scriptures were put together by men,thus it seems you accept a lot of things third hand at best.I will get back to this later today or tomorrow but could you show me the scriptures that state that God is beyond time and space and could you explain to me the concepts of time and space that those writers had in that day and age?
Good day.

Hangdawg13 This makes for an interesting reply but immanence as I am aware of it means structured within reality and transcendence means beyond any knowledge or experience. Now to be structured within reality, to me means, to be accesible to investigation. Transcendent is by definition beyond our knowledge or experience so one needs ask how these people became aware of something that they cannot.But irregardless these vserses do not deal with transcendence of time and space.In order of example This is a statement that is not supported.Who is the person who originated the claim that because of God's word, Heaven and Earth existed a long time ago? Here we are given a statement from someone to a beloved that again is a fine statement to make but again we have no support for the origin of the statement and the means by which this was determined.
Who has had a day with the lord in which one thousand years has passed who then recorded the event. How well did he adapt to being in a world a millenium after spending a day with God? And how does time relate to a description of something that is not of time? Ok we are to seriously consider that God manipulated the heavens in our space-time while remaining beyond space-time. And the logic that ties this together? The satrs are not fixed but constantly in motion. More of the same insistence of a position without a qualification for why we should accept this.One also wonders how the writer knew of this.Can we clarify what is meant by "the Word"? Again a guess that requires a postulating a God to explain existence.There is no meat to the proposition of what is the event of all events the birth of our universe..This is a statement that holds no information to support itself. Again we have something that is supposedly beyond space-time and doing activities within space time.The mention of the constellations of Ursa Major and Orion as though they were meaningful on a cosmic scale reflects the lack of understanding of the appaently related stars within these constellations.For example Orion is recognised by these stars Betelguese is 1400 light years away.Rigel is also 1400 light yearsBellatrix is 240 light yearsMintaka is 920 light yearsAlnilam is 1340 light yearsAlnitak is 820 light yearsSaiph is 820 light yearsThese stars are not even close in proximity to one another just as measured form Earth.The distances between each of them is also great.So in a related note you can wonder just what God meant by asking Job if he could loose the bands of Orion.You would think a God would be aware that the constellation is not bound since He is said to create it.What are the great things that are unseachable? The miracles that cannot be numbered?To not question is to allow no way to ascertain the veracity of the statements. If those statements are devoid of content that allows us to examine them then one may question why such is the case?

Hangdawg13Ok I have obviously made the error of thinking that you were using the bible as support for your notion of a god who is transcendent.I apologize,and will start over. Here is your original arguement; Space-time,mass-energy,all of it is part of a physical universe.You are starting with the premise that {A}God created the universe.You then state he is{B} not bound by the universe he created.What is not apparent is how A was able to do so while have the property of B. Where and when did He exist if Space-time did not exist till he created them? If mass-energy di not exist until he created them what did his existence entail? This is where the logic falls apart, because unless you are claiming special dispensation from logic this does not make sense.Of course, we have the statement that god transcends space-time. What we do not have is evidence to support the notion. This does not mean it is not the case it means that we cannot know either way in which case it is valueless in a discussion. Now here we have a clever use of logic.He is fully experiencing? In what sense does he experience? How do you arrive at this assumption?
He is fully transcendent which means beyond knowledge or experience which begs the question how can we know or experience that which is not of knowledge or experience? To experience is to have had some awareness of a sequence of events occuring in a physical world.How,sir,does something beyond the physical take part in the physical?As for mind our own minds are physical in nature and when the brain that it exists in is damaged as in a coma there is no mind to speak of in the sense of experiencing.Now you state that we and the universe are somehow extant within the mind of god.Does God have a brain? He thinks thoughts? You must substantiate the human characteristics that you are asserting he has and how they can themselves exist without material form and also how you arrive at this conclusion.'Bye for now'This message has been edited by sidelined, 09-11-2004 11:42 AM

sad2kno Really? So explain to us uninformed masses, since you have wrapped your mind around the concept,just what you mean by a being that is operating on all dimensions.Or do you mean to say you imagine you have your mind wrapped around the concept? Can you even tell us what you mean by all dimensions? How many would that be?
What are they like?Where do we find them? So the author of Isaiah states.How could he know what the thoughts are like in a god which you claim is transcendent of physical form and as such has no brain in which to have thoughts.Do you never question the obvious contradiction apparent in these statements?