Choosing a faith

This just restates your position and offers no supporting arguments in favor or rebuttals of my own position. Far better to call the Book of Mormon writings with no evidential support. Just putting words to paper doesn't magically transform something into evidence. See what as "sufficient validation"? You haven't offered any validation, and concerning epistles, we know now that roughly half of Paul's epistles are fakes. What validation are you talking about? Usually validating something involves evidence, so what is the evidence?And to ask the same question I've asked before, why do you feel you need evidence for what you believe? Where is faith in your belief system? You don't have to remember. I know I don't. But the posts are still there to review, and there's a search facility. I didn't remember it was you who said it in Message 1352. But what you quoted didn't feel like the way I normally say things, and I wondered why I would have said something like that, so I did a search and found that you originally said it in Message 1352.--Percy

If there's a way to miss a point you'll find it.The point wasn't that there lots of good outcomes from bad intentions. No one's arguing that. The point was that the intentions, good or bad, don't matter if the outcome is bad.For an example of a spectacularly bad outcome from good intentions you need look no further than your own country's treatment of its indigenous peoples. It's almost as if Canada asked itself, "How can we outdo the United States in cruel treatment of indigenous peoples while being more insidious and more thorough?"The residential school system was active for more than a century and was a key part of Canada's efforts to wipe out entire nations. Hitler was only in power for 15 years or so and only attempted to wipe out two nations (Jews and Roma). Canada's goal with legislation such as the Gradual Civilization Act and the Indian Act had the explicitly well-intentioned goal of complete assimilation and elimination of its indigenous peoples by turning them into Canadians. This is a wonderful statement of what drives good Christians to do bad things. You want to do unto others as you would have others do unto you. One thing Christians would like others to do unto them is to reinforce and strengthen their Christianity. They think that what Christians consider best for themselves is what is best for everyone. And from that one idea has sprung endless evil.You are a willing, nay, enthusiastic participant in an institution that has been insidiously promulgating evil in the name of good for millennia. Yeah, you engage in good works like helping the poor, but not before you've found some way of communicating your message of the loving grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. "Come, oh poor soul, abandon your religion and culture and join ours and your life will be made better. You'll be saved and live for eternity in God's loving embrace. Oh, you're still poor? Well, don't worry about that, just remember the part about God and Jesus."You want to demonstrate your love of your fellow man? How about a mission to a poor Islamic community where there's no hint, not ever, that the help comes from Christian charities. And you work for years and decades to build and strengthen this Islamic community with selfless disregard for how its success compares to Christian communities.Think that could ever happen? Do you think questions from within your own Christian community won't be asked like, "How could you help that Islamic community when there are Christian communities in greater suffering? And you're not even spreading the gospel - what's wrong with you?"Christianity doesn't make better people. Nothing makes better people. What Christianity does is give people a good excuse to do evil in the name of good.--Percy

You're speaking of the qualities of people. I was speaking of the inherent difficulty in changing people for the better.For example, say we wanted to improve your ability to resist being bamboozled, or convince you that the gold standard is completely impractical. So far no amount of information and persuasion have worked.Or say we wanted to convince someone that raging on the Internet about the dangers of vaccination is a bad thing. Has anyone ever done that?Or say we wanted to convince someone that accusing the Democrats of stealing the 2020 election and asserting that elections are rigged is a bad thing. Does that ever happen?Or say we wanted to convince someone that more guns mean more killings. Is that even possible?Or say we wanted to convince a group that taking up arms against the government is a bad thing. Where has that ever worked?Or say we wanted to convince missionaries that converting people of other religions and cultures to Christianity is a bad thing. How likely would that be?Or say we wanted to convince politicians that using religion to convince poor people to be satisfied with their lot so that they'd be less likely to engage in armed insurrection against a government uncaring of their suffering is a bad thing. Would that be possible?Or say we wanted to convince evangelicals that sex education is a more effective method of reducing teenage pregnancies than "teaching young people the Bible's full picture of intimacy will help to keep them celibate (Cameron Cole)". Would you bet on that one?Or say we wanted to convince people that those trying to illegally enter our country are not drug-addled, covid-ridden criminals and sex offenders but are desperate and fled danger and/or poverty and deserve our help. How would we do that?Or say we wanted to convince people that giving money to the rich is not an effective approach to helping the poor. Is that ever going to happen?--Percy

Absolutely not. I bet everyone here would respond with the exact same words because it's been said so many, many times: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And we actually do believe the things that we say. Stile was speaking of the scientific method, of course. It is the most reliable and effective method of adding to our knowledge that we know of. It has so far yielded no evidence (validated evidence, if you prefer) of the supernatural. So you acknowledge that prayer has no effect? Yet another example of missing evidence for God that you'd think would be there if he were an actual thing. So for you something is true until proven otherwise. Shouldn't it be the other way around, that something is true only when proven, or more scientifically, is only considered true to a degree commensurate with the evidence? You are lying to yourself. You are using a method that will only yield the conclusions that you want, not the conclusions that are true. You aren't interested in the truth, only in confirming that which you already believe without evidence. Of course we have. You're using the methods of the flim-flam men, and we're using the scientific method. By your own admission your God has no real world effect, while science's impact on the world, whether for good or ill, is immeasurable. You are, in effect, asserting yet again that intelligence cannot arise naturally but could only come about by supernatural means. There's no evidence for this whatsoever.Your ability to restate your premise multiple times in a multiplicity of ways does not make it any less invalid. You're making the same claim again in yet a different way. Where is your evidence that complexity (which isn't subjective but is difficult to quantify, although using entropy as a stand-in for complexity might work) and beauty (definitely subjective) require the supernatural? Yes, this is true, investigating how the real world works says nothing about baseless propositions. It might be sentient but it wouldn't be life unless you change the definition.And of course it might reach those conclusions. And it's conclusions would only be as good as the available evidence. If all evidence of its origins has disappeared then the likelihood of it reaching valid conclusions would be small. And if it was truly sentient and rational then it would realize it had insufficient evidence, unlike yourself who merely declares something evidence if it supports what he already believes.But lack of evidence is not the case today. We have copious evidence going back 13.7 billion years. There's no sign of a cosmic intelligence anywhere.But you don't care whether your conclusions have evidence. That's why your conclusions are as likely to be wrong as those of your far-future AI being where all evidence of its origins has been lost.By the way, the far-future AI being would have enough information to know it couldn't have arisen naturally. It would observe that organic molecules like amino acids, the building blocks of life, form naturally all the time, but not microcircuits. It would conclude it likely that life formed naturally and then constructed artificial intelligences.--Percy

Is putting words in people's mouths dishonest? You said "love sacrificially" without elaboration, but even you can't deny that it sounds pretty dramatic. You can't post-facto claim that "love sacrificially" only means helping people, plus that's absurd anyway. Who out there even among the most deluded devout thinks "I'm loving sacrificially" when they give the street beggar a ten?If you were making valid points then you wouldn't continually be tempted into making dishonest statements like that. What Tangle originally said was this: Why don't you answer the question he asked.--Percy

I think you must be operating under the misimpression that you should be immune from gagging reactions to your saccharine, syrupy and dishonestly whitewashed description of your church. And in this thread I'm just a participant, just like everyone else. This doesn't even make sense. It isn't an argument or an insult but a criticism. You've retreated to the echo chamber inside your church and are uncritically tossing it's impressions of itself out to us. I'm a theist, just not a Christian. Or a Jew or a Hindu or a Muslim or a Buddhist.Think what you're actually asking here. You're asking that people who disagree with you somehow be constrained in how they express their rejections of your views.Your whole post is making this mistake. You're not responding to anything anyone said. Your objecting to the way your views were criticized.Deal with the criticism, not the style. Right now you're just seeking ways to avoid dealing with the criticism.--Percy

Aren't you conveniently forgetting that it was mostly churches that ran the residential schools? And what kind of treatment did the children receive? This is one tiny portion from The Residential School System:

quote:

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Survivors recall being beaten and strapped; some students were shackled to their beds; some had needles shoved in their tongues for speaking their native languages. These abuses, along with overcrowding, poor sanitation, and severely inadequate food and health care, resulted in a shockingly high death toll.

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You say you question the good intentions. Do you really believe the churches that administered the schools had evil intentions? Or did they believe they were doing what was best for the indigenous children, that their methods were the best way to help the children achieve the obviously desirable goal of assimilation? Maybe your church now has it right, maybe not, there's no way I could know enough detail. But the history of churches carrying out evil in the name of good is long. If you're on a religious island that has avoided this pitfall then good for you, but in large part churches are still perpetrating evil. For example, the Catholic Church in Canada is refusing reparations for committing decades of atrocities against First Nation children. But hey, many churches have issued apologies, so it's all good, right.If you want to increase the likelihood that you're doing good you must escape church influence because from within you cannot see the biases that tilt you toward evil. Sounds wonderful, but your history of polyannaish descriptions as well as your continued affiliation with an organization that has perpetrated evil for millennia makes me skeptical. Churches are a force of division. If your extended family is also religious and Christian, just watch what happens within your family if one of your grandchildren marries a Muslim. And don't hand me another of your cherry-picked stories of "My granddaughter married a Muslim and everyone in the family joyfully accepted him." You know very well how common it is for cross-religious romantic connections to cause division and dissension. And also no acknowledgment of all the evils committed in the name of religion. You have your head in the sand. Just because your religion brings you happiness doesn't mean your religion is a force for good. Nazism brought much happiness and good fortune to many, but the public works and rebuilding of the economy were not the whole story. In the same way, the good works you insist on staying focused on are not the whole story.--Percy

And there are individuals who look down on those of other religions as lesser beings. Seems a common Christian quality.--Percy

Find me where someone here argued that the absence of evidence for a deity means none exist and I will help you argue against his position.I doubt you'll be able to find someone here making that argument, but let's say that you do. Why are you taking the invalid position of one or two people (I'd be surprised if it were more than that because I think I would have noticed) and accusing all of us of holding it? At a minimum you're guilty of overgeneralizing, and at worst you're making things up.I think most here would argue that the absence of evidence for deities means we can safely ignore them. Maybe they exist, maybe not, but it isn't something worth concerning oneself with. Believe whatever you like. Just don't claim you have evidence for your beliefs when you don't. I think I see where your confusion is coming from now. Sure we reject "the idea of an outside intelligence" (you still haven't addressed the problem of the infinite regression - are you ignoring this issue, or are you unsure what I'm talking about), and that's because there's no evidence for it, but that doesn't mean we think absence of evidence has disproven the possibility. "Disproven" is forever, and it's a mathematical concept anyway, not a scientific one. When speaking informally we all tend to throw around terms like "prove" and "disprove," but when speaking formally those terms must be discarded. They have no place in science because science is tentative, meaning views can change in light of new evidence or improved insight.Concerning your cosmic intelligence, in a scientific sense when speaking formally we would say that the evidence does not support that idea. When speaking scientifically we would never say that the lack of evidence disproves it. That would not be a tentative expression and so would not be scientific.And it's because "disproven" is forever that we can rarely if ever say that scientific evidence disproves something, because it is almost always possible that new evidence or improved insight could change our minds.My very first post in this thread, Message 3, repeatedly mentioned evidence and your failure to include it, and I have stressed evidence ever since. Everything I've said in this post I've said before, probably several times at least. How you still don't get it after nearly 1800 messages beggars belief. I just did a search in this thread, and can you guess which participant uses forms of the word "reject" more than any other participant? If you guessed yourself then give yourself a cigar. There's no one in this thread running around saying, "I reject the idea of a deity." When other people here used the word "reject" they were usually saying that they reject your views.Someone interested in learning what is true of the real world would hold evidence preeminent. There is no way of knowing that we're aware of that doesn't involve evidence. If you're not a materialist then prove it by burning down your house and jumping off a bridge. I don't know if you truly, after all these messages, still don't understand, or if you're just being contrary and are purposefully misstating what we keep telling you. What we actually believe, as opposed to what you just accused us of believing, is that evidence is how we understand the world, and taking a scientific approach to gathering and assessing evidence is the best way of understanding the world. If you have other ways of learning about the world then you have yet to describe them.But again, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That is what we truly believe, your concerted efforts at accusing us of believing something irrational notwithstanding. You'd have to ask the research psychologists that question, but it seems unlikely to me that we're at a point where that could be studied scientifically. We're fine with you believing that. But if you start claiming you have evidence for it then you're going to receive some pushback. Why do you think it clearly requires a mind?But let's say, for the sake of discussion, that it *does* require a mind. Wouldn't something as complex as a mind capable of designing and creating all of life require a mind to create it? Where did that mind come from? Wouldn't it, too, require a mind to create it? And so forth ad infinitum? This is the infinite regression I keep coming back to that you keep failing to address. I think that if you try to describe for us why you believe mutation and natural selection inadequate that you'll reveal a profound depth of ignorance. Science holds that the processes we observe operating in the world today have been operating throughout time to produce the diversity of species we see today. Actually when I was still working I used to encounter such minds all the time. You continue to misinterpret simple statements. All I've done is state how there is an absence of evidence for a cosmic intelligence. You're again accusing us of saying that the lack evidence is evidence of something. It isn't.One thing we can say about the lack of evidence is that if we have no evidence but are drawing conclusions anyway then we don't actually have any basis for what we're concluding. And drawing conclusions without evidence is something you've built into a lifestyle.--Percy

You're just bullshitting now. You retreated into misdirection and religious mumbo jumbo when asked a direct question. If an atheist without God can be a better person than you, maybe you could also be a better person without God. Maybe from the outside the bad done in the name of religion would be more apparent. Wouldn't doing less bad mean that you're a better person? One doesn't have to believe in God or be a Christian to work with Christian charities. One can attend church services and functions without being a believer. Of course, it does feel a lot better when people reflect back to you what you already believe. Maybe it's the social/charity aspect of religion that attracts you, and the rest is just a rationalization that when explained to those outside religion makes little sense.--Percy

More like jumping to conclusions. AZPaul3 and I are not stating opposing views. We agree. AZPaul3 said "lack of evidence IS evidence." Nowhere does he say lack of evidence is evidence that something doesn't exist. He doesn't say that, he doesn't believe it, and no one here believes that. He's only saying that the lack of evidence *is* itself evidence of something.Yet you're trying to take his statement that means one thing and make it seem like it means another. Why are you doing that? After nearly 1800 messages can it really be out of ignorance? Or is it more like a determined campaign of studied and selective ignorance intended to deflect attention from views that truly have no evidence.Expanding on what AZPaul3 mean, he was saying that the lack of evidence is a fact that you're ignoring. You continue blissfully along your evidence-free path without recognizing that the lack of evidence is telling you something. That lack of evidence is not evidence that God doesn't exist. AZPaul3 never said that and doesn't believe that.His actual implication is that the path you've chosen is completely arbitrary. At one time and place people applying your approach concluded Odin and Thor were gods, at another that Zeus and Hera were gods, at another that Brahma and Vishnu were gods, at another that Jupiter and Juno were gods, at another that Vajrapāṇi and Mañjuśrī were gods, at another that God was the only god and at another that Allah was the only God.This huge diversity of opinion about the nature of the divine across time and geography is cross-confirming evidence that you have no evidence, yet you're ignoring that lack of evidence as if it weren't evidence that your conclusions couldn't possibly be anywhere close to the truth. Lack of evidence *is* evidence, just not evidence of absence as you attempted to imply AZPaul3 was saying.Why can't you just be honest and play things straight? The information we're providing isn't complicated or confusing, and it represents an extremely deep and broad scientific consensus, but instead of taking the information and delving into it and integrating it with what you already know you're instead fighting it by introducing obvious misdirections and confusions. Everything that happens or exists is evidence. The only difference between ordinary evidence (you look out the window and notice it's raining) and scientific evidence (you have a rain gauge) is the care and discipline of your evidence gathering methods.So if God exists then provide the evidence. Or if evidence of God doesn't exist today then provide a rational explanation why. This latter possibility of evidence becoming no longer available *is* something that can happen. Evidence of ancient upland landscapes from the age of the dinosaurs no longer exists because higher elevations erode away, and much of the ancient world has been lost to subduction. Evidence of the origin of the universe might disappear over the visible horizon in 5 or 10 billion years.So it is possible for all evidence of something to disappear. If there's no evidence of God today, then why is it missing, and why do you believe he exists. Please don't repeat your "intelligence can only be produced by intelligence" claim again without addressing the infinite regression. Repeating what I said earlier in another way, virtually everything is evidence, and ordinary everyday evidence can become scientific evidence if it is studied in a scientific manner. An ancient Egyptian tomb? Whooee, what spectacular but otherwise ordinary evidence of some anonymous ancient Egyptian royalty. But study that evidence scientifically and you might discover that the royalty was King Tut, that he died very young, that he participated in hunts, that royal burials of the period included certain practices, and myriad other things. There's no difference between ordinary evidence and scientific evidence. They're the same thing. It is the way you study that evidence that matters.An additional clarification. While any ordinary evidence can become scientific evidence if studied properly, the reverse is never true. For example, the evidence gathered by the LHC for the Higgs boson is scientific evidence. There is nothing ordinary or everyday about it.--Percy

The emoji was intended to get your attention because plain English obviously wasn't working.And it worked as far as getting your attention, but you've taken the wrong message from it. You're objecting to the style with which the message was communicated instead of receiving the message itself, namely that what you see as an expression of your religious beliefs is experienced by others as nauseating self-flattery.So if you refuse to understand plain English, and if visual aids are unacceptable to you, what is left? Mockery? Exaggeration? Caricature?My interpretation? You're raising distractions to avoid the real issues, but your mind is so steeped in Christian religious nonsense that you don't even realize you're doing it.--Percy

It wasn't ignored. You posted that only a couple days ago and I'm at least a week behind. I mostly respond in chronological order, the post you're responding to a rare exception, although this one, too, is out of order. Anyway, this will be my only post today, it's all I have time for. It is so easy to create a real list, just click on peek to see how it's done. It literally took me only 15 seconds to change your "list" over to a real list.My views do not fit into any of the world's religions. There isn't even any religion in the world that you could say my beliefs are similar to. That was the point I was trying to make when I said, "I'm a theist, just not a Christian. Or a Jew or a Hindu or a Muslim or a Buddhist." You even quote me saying it.Somewhere in this thread I also told you that I know I have no evidence for what I believe, so the questions you just asked make no sense. I don't know if God created life or not. I don't know if he intervenes or not. I don't know his nature, and I don't know if he cares about us or is even aware of us. Witgenstein: Whereof one cannot speak one must remain silent. Translation: If you ain't got no evidence then the proper answer is, "I don't know."I did not come to my beliefs from misguided thinking about evidence that isn't really evidence. They spring from within and just are. They don't make any sense. Any effort I made to make sense of them would just be post facto rationalization. But I believe them anyway. That's what faith is.AbE: I may have said one thing that's misleading. I called myself a theist, but I don't know if God intervenes in the universe. Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. If a theist is someone who believes God intervenes, and a deist is someone who believes he doesn't, then what do you call someone who doesn't know? I have no idea.--Percy

I am only questioning one of your beliefs, the one that holds that there is evidence for what you believe.I don't see how what I believe spiritually is relevant. I never, ever think about these beliefs unless I'm in a conversation like this, and then I pull them out and examine them and familiarize myself with them again and find them interesting and unusual. They don't guide my life in any way. I would think it silly to tell them to anyone unless they said they wanted to know, as you did. They aren't something I would ever promote or defend.A more accurate statement of my beliefs is that there is a purpose to the universe, but we don't know what that purpose is, and we don't know if we have any role in it or are just along for the ride. And I have one nod to outside influences: God looks like the image on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I do have evidence for this belief, since a man of great talent, integrity and esteem painted it, and he wouldn't just make it up. Ah, the fallacy of appeal to authority, gotta love it.--Percy

I can see any number of people making such a request but with the probable motivation of something like "protective custody."--Percy