Choosing a faith

Welcome back. I agree that too much discussion was unsubstantive and unconstructive, but they're all just a bunch of yahoos and wing nuts anyway. You contend that there's such a thing as "cosmic intelligence" based on what? And why can there be only one? What's in a name anyway? If there really is such a thing as "cosmic intelligence" and that there is only one, why does it follow that it's a deity? Okay. Hopefully there's more on this further on?
​ Okay. Again, hopefully there's more on this further on?
​ Didn't see this leap coming. Don't you first have to at least advance evidence for your first and second claims? If those were just axioms to be accepted before you moved on to discussing Jesus then that isn't a topic that interests me.--Percy

Rather than reply to your response to my post, it seems more appropriate to respond to this: But Tangle's describing exactly what you're doing. You're faulting him for this?You're doing one of the ten most common things people do here, disappear for a while and then return and attempt to reinitiate the discussion from scratch. Dredge and Greatest I am just did this last month. Mike the wiz can't be far behind. I would say that the purpose of this forum is to move discussion constructively forward through moderated debate, but over 20 years of discussion have demonstrated that this just isn't possible. Most everyone with insufficient or no evidence for their position eventually throws up obstacles to discussion or abandons it altogether.It's perfectly legitimate to eschew examination of the evidential foundations for your beliefs in the Faith and Belief forum, you're well within your rights. You can have a discussion with Phat, Dredge and Greatest I am about different perspectives on God and Jesus. But I don't think the rest of us are interested if you don't first provide some evidence that we're discussing something real. I'm not an atheist or an agnostic or an adherent to any religion, but I do have spiritual beliefs for which I recognize that I have no evidence whatsoever. If you have beliefs for which you do have evidence then I am very interested, but not otherwise.--Percy

I think all us long timers ask ourselves questions like this. Perhaps something like Tangle's analysis is right. We're in some way obsessed and unable to break away, but it does seem fairly harmless.But I keep returning to the psychological reasons. Observing people respond when their unevidenced beliefs are challenged is fascinating, though it often reveals a very common pattern where rather than seeing a subtopic explored to a conclusion of some sort they instead change the subject and cycle endlessly through a rotating cast of issues. I don't know that any other outcome is really possible when no evidence is involved, though what constitutes evidence is a common subtopic, for instance like claims that fulfilled prophecy is evidence of God and so forth.Stick to your guns and your topic. Your encouragement to Tangle to ignore your posts works in the other direction, too. I think only by ignoring us naysayers will you get to discuss your topic. I don't think you'll find the discussion as interesting, but neither will it be as frustrating. Just click the "You have not replied" link at the bottom of the message and it will change to "You have seen this message but not replied," then move on. You can always change your mind later and reply anyway.--Percy

That's your takeaway from what I said? Interesting. I think you may be interpreting what people say about their own beliefs through a lens of your own beliefs. I am not seeking spiritual answers. That's your gig. In my world the spiritual realm has no more reality than hobbits.But clearly you don't believe us when we say we literally give it no thought. You instead see us as in a state of conscious and effortful denial and rejection of the Lord of the universe whose proof lies in every blade of grass. How does what I really said about my beliefs impact my life? Other than influencing what I say in religious discussions like this, not one whit. Why would I ever spend any time thinking about things I have no evidence are real, like griffins and gods, let alone let them influence my life? Let me paraphrase this back to you, but with a different subject of focus:

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Yes I do have reasons for believing the ether exists, which isn't to say that some of the reasons aren't simply personal or from other scientists I find influential. I joke that I am the only one who has their science 100% correct but I know full well that isn't the case. Even one of my favorite scientists often says in his lectures that about 1/3 of what he is going to say will be wrong with the problem being that he doesn't know which 1/3 it is. I'm probably more in the 3/4 bracket.

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If after saying this I state that I still believe the ether exists then I am obviously just believing what I want to believe. And that's how we see you. In our view, your writings do not support what you believe. They're just the mental meanderings of someone who despite all the evidence to the contrary believes that information leading him to what he should truly believe is out there somewhere.--Percy

In the real world, which includes science, there's no such thing as proof. That's the realm of mathematics. If you have "considerable evidence" for your beliefs then we would like an opportunity to examine it. This is just mental masturbation. There's no evidence in any of this. You're asking the wrong question. We accept what the evidence supports. Currently there is no evidence of a cosmic intelligence.You might be heading down the same path that led you to abandon EvC in the first place. Will we soon see a claim that your evidence satisfies different criteria than those of science but that it is just as valid anyway? If so, this will expose you to the kind of treatment you object to.--Percy

But GDR keeps bringing up evidence: GDR is perfectly within his rights to eschew evidence and instead focus on faith and belief, but he's not. He's put evidence smack in the middle of the table in this thread, even after being reminded that he didn't need to touch on evidence at all.But as a practical matter there's not much interest in discussions that go, "I believe this," and the other person says, "I believe that," and the first person says, "Interesting, tell me more." People disagree about what they believe, and they advance arguments that they think contain evidence. There's no getting away from it.And as soon as you start talking about evidence, those of us who have well defined ideas of what constitutes actual evidence are going to chime in. For instance, Jesus's appearing to more than 500 people at once after his resurrection is often cited as evidence by believers, but these are just words on a page, just like the Book of Mormon is words on a page.--Percy

Gee that sounds awfully familiar. Is there any possibility you've already made this argument in other threads and are ignoring that you already know what the responses are? Anyway, don't forget how obviously the banana was designed to fit our hand.You're pretty much doing just what I expected, and likely exposing yourself to just the kind of treatment you seemed to want to avoid. You might try doing something different.By the way, the reality of the anthropic principle is that the universe was created to give astronomers and cosmologists a satisfying object of study. --Percy

As I progressed on through the thread I read that post, too. I think the area that poses the most risk of generating hard feelings is the nature of evidence.--Percy

The authors of scripture made up the God they thought would empower them most. Nothing, and no one suggested there was. Just don't pretend that the God you've made up is the God of the Bible.--Percy

Where are you quoting from? Instead of lengthy copy/pastes you might want to provide a link.--Percy

You have cognitive issues.--Percy

But those of the qualities of the God you've come to think exists and have chosen to follow. Discussions with you center around your reasons for making the choices you do. You consider them imperatives when they're not. "God as we call him" could be my God who hasn't yet noticed our existence. He has higher goals. We're not the focus of his attention or even awareness. And maybe it would if you'd give it a decent definition. As of now is just a blank slate upon which anyone can write whatever they like.
​ Most of the Christian world would disagree with this. Selfless love is a good goal but has little to do with religion, God or Jesus.--Percy

You're getting deep into the woo-woo.--Percy

Can you describe the details of how you copy/paste? Are you first composing your message in some editing tool and then copy/pasting over? Maybe you're using a font that your browser isn't familiar with? I want to understand how apostrophes get turned into these monstrosities so I can figure out how to prevent it from happening.--Percy

Too general. Anyway, the most significant difference between our beliefs is that I know there's no evidence for what I believe and you don't. It is actually unicorns living on Alpha Centauri who are responsible for our existence. I couldn't make grammatical sense of this, but I think I get your drift. But seriously, it's unicorns. I follow the unicorns. It too often doesn't and too often results in people shooting at each other and hurling missiles across borders. So you feel you're getting closer? Why couldn't it be that you're getting further? You have nothing to go by other than what beliefs you find most appealing at the time.--Percy