Just got banned from Christian Forums

[Baruch]

Having just come from CF, what I'm about to ask is a question that I have to word very carefully. In CF, a mis-worded question of this nature would earn me an immediate ban for blasphemy, contempt of Christianity and a million other offences.

This is a question I have been asking for a long time. Nobody in CF gave me an answer. It's come to a point when I don't really believe I'll get an answer but then, you are different. You are not a rude, defensive, arrogant Christian and if you know my question comes from a sincere curiosity, you will no doubt find it more acceptable.

What I have been curious about is how anyone can be a theist intellectually or rationally. Unless one comes up with a convoluted sophistry, it's impossible to place theism in a rational framework. One way many theists approach this is to reduce the framework of what would be rational to such an extent that if theism is to be regarded as rational, so would a belief in pixies. Is your approach the same?

A good question.  Such a diplomat ... wonder where you get that from!  And most people here are very thick skinned if not a pigskin (American football).  You aren't being rude, but there is plenty of rudeness for the adults.  Most posters here would agree with you ... they have rationalizations for their own present and past condition.  Everyone does.  Rationalization can be mistaken for reason however ;-)  Some are able to articulate this, for others, their condition is axiomatic.  Do you have time for most of philosophy ... metaphysics, epistemology etc?

Most posters here object on the basis of epistemology, and on that basis (at least for most of what passes as epistemology) they are right, and so would you.  However most people won't go deeper than conventional epistemology (someone like David Hume was a bit past the edge of convention, into nihilism territory).  To give you something to chew on ... compare Bishop George Berkeley and David Hume, two British philosophers.  This has to do with a deep philosophical question ... that of "qualia", something still argued about (and philosophers always argue, and never come to agreement).  What passes as epistemology?  A Popular Science version of scientific method.  Which is a damn good method, but if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

BTW ... I am not the only theist or semi-theist ... but we are like court jesters, a tolerated minority here.  Some posters however have court-jester-phobia ... but I think that is hilarious!  And no, before someone induces paranoia in you, I am not trying to get you to relate to your traditional practices, on a higher level.  You will do that your own way in your own time.

[St Truth]

A good question.  Such a diplomat ... wonder where you get that from!  And most people here are very thick skinned if not a pigskin (American football).  You aren't being rude, but there is plenty of rudeness for the adults.  Most posters here would agree with you ... they have rationalizations for their own present and past condition.  Everyone does.  Rationalization can be mistaken for reason however ;-)  Some are able to articulate this, for others, their condition is axiomatic.  Do you have time for most of philosophy ... metaphysics, epistemology etc?

Most posters here object on the basis of epistemology, and on that basis (at least for most of what passes as epistemology) they are right, and so would you.  However most people won't go deeper than conventional epistemology (someone like David Hume was a bit past the edge of convention, into nihilism territory).  To give you something to chew on ... compare Bishop George Berkeley and David Hume, two British philosophers.  This has to do with a deep philosophical question ... that of "qualia", something still argued about (and philosophers always argue, and never come to agreement).  What passes as epistemology?  A Popular Science version of scientific method.  Which is a damn good method, but if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

BTW ... I am not the only theist or semi-theist ... but we are like court jesters, a tolerated minority here.  Some posters however have court-jester-phobia ... but I think that is hilarious!  And no, before someone induces paranoia in you, I am not trying to get you to relate to your traditional practices, on a higher level.  You will do that your own way in your own time.

I'm afraid I don't understand half of what you are saying. Let's make it simple. Like you are explaining it to a child. I'm not exactly a child but I'm not 16 yet and so I'm technically not an adult.

Let's take the hypothetical person who is seated in his armchair eating an ice-cream. What makes him suddenly decide, 'Hey! There is an invisible God.' What makes him come up with this notion that there is a God?  What would this God be like? Presumably he is not a physical being? I don't know what you idea of God is but you probably will say he is spiritual? But this guy in his armchair will have to conjure up the notion of a spirit as well.  What about the attributes of God? If you idea of God is the same as the church's or the God of the Bible, this God probably is Almighty. He has 'lovingkindness'. He is truth. He is love.

Mind you, the hypothetical guy in his armchair has made up quite a lot in his mind.

Now, he seeks to defend his idea of God with all the properties he has come up with and all the attributes that he has imbued in God. He obviously can't defend God scientifically. Scientific demands are too rigorous and unforgiving for anything fictitious. So he goes to philosophy.

But my point is why does he bother to do that in the first place? He has made a long list of presuppositions which he (or someone else before him) plucks from thin air and then he sets out to defend his presuppositions.

Isn't he better off not making those presuppositions in the first place?

This is the pattern that I find totally needless. When one comes up with a list of presuppositions and then sets out to defend them with philosophy, in my mind, it's just a game he's playing but ultimately, everything is still merely his imagination.

I'm not sure if your idea of God is orthodox Judaism. Supposing it's not and it's your original idea, my question is why come up with it at all?

I am not sure if I have expressed myself clearly enough but perhaps I'll illustrate it with an example. X postulates that we have wind on earth because there is a giant invisible mouth blowing air across the face of the earth. He then constructs a philosophical argument to support his belief. Rather than looking at his philosophical argument, I am more interested in asking him why he comes up with the Giant Mouth Belief. Is there evidence for it? Or is there a reason for him to suggest the existence of the Giant Mouth? I am not so interested in the philosophical justification for the Giant Mouth Belief as I am in asking him what leads him to such a belief in the first place. That is why evidence or reason is crucial here. There must be something that leads him to the belief. That something is the evidence or the reason and that's what I'm interested in; not the philosophy to justify the belief.

[Mike Cl]

[quote author=St Truth link=topic=11977.msg1193195#msg1193195 date=1506333295

What I have been curious about is how anyone can be a theist intellectually or rationally. Unless one comes up with a convoluted sophistry, it's impossible to place theism in a rational framework. One way many theists approach this is to reduce the framework of what would be rational to such an extent that if theism is to be regarded as rational, so would a belief in pixies. Is your approach the same?
[/quote]
I am not Baruch, but I have wrestled with that question for decades.  I have not found a totally satisfactory answer yet.  But this is what I have found on a personal level.  Many people just do not like to, 1--think or use reason, and 2--abhor 'I don't know.'.  It is so much easier to 'believe' because one does not have to think deeply or reason to come to answers.  They are sheeple and simply want to be feed the 'answers'.  One answer that seems to satisfy (for them) is goddidit.  Why did that baby die?; why did that flood happen, why.............fill in the blank.  God has mysterious ways, so don't worry about it, accept it and go on.  I do remember thinking about this at your age (and younger) and hoping I'd find some sort of answer.  This is as far as I've gotten to a total answer.   

[St Truth]

What I have been curious about is how anyone can be a theist intellectually or rationally. Unless one comes up with a convoluted sophistry, it's impossible to place theism in a rational framework. One way many theists approach this is to reduce the framework of what would be rational to such an extent that if theism is to be regarded as rational, so would a belief in pixies. Is your approach the same?

I am not Baruch, but I have wrestled with that question for decades.  I have not found a totally satisfactory answer yet.  But this is what I have found on a personal level.  Many people just do not like to, 1--think or use reason, and 2--abhor 'I don't know.'.  It is so much easier to 'believe' because one does not have to think deeply or reason to come to answers.  They are sheeple and simply want to be feed the 'answers'.  One answer that seems to satisfy (for them) is goddidit.  Why did that baby die?; why did that flood happen, why.............fill in the blank.  God has mysterious ways, so don't worry about it, accept it and go on.  I do remember thinking about this at your age (and younger) and hoping I'd find some sort of answer.  This is as far as I've gotten to a total answer.

That may be the usual approach taken by the majority of Christians. But there are some believers who happily seek justification for their belief through philosophy. As I have said before, philosophy is like a game. With the correct premises, you can even show that the existence of pixies can be philosophically justified.

But I'm not interested in the games adults play. I prefer a simple answer - what made them believe in the first place? Philosophy is an answer of last resort. You don't go to philosophy and say, 'OK, I will believe in God'. Because the fact is the HUGE MAJORITY of philosophers are atheists. Apart from Plantinga, it's hard to come across a famous modern philosopher who is a believing Christian. To say philosophy explains that God is real is as silly as to say that quantum physics encourages you to believe in God. Again, the fact is the people who truly understand quantum physics are all atheists. My experience with Christians is they love to pick on really tough subjects like quantum physics to squeeze God into the tough areas of quantum physics which are incomprehensible to us.

A lot of religious people and woomeisters claim quantum physics 'proves' God. One example is Deepak Chopra who claimed that he used quantum physics in faith healing. Until Dawkins chewed him up and spat him out for a fraud. He was furious and said that science was a useless tool and scientists were arrogant. Suddenly, he forgot that before Dawkins exposed him, he claimed to use science (quantum physics) to heal people. Then suddenly, when he's exposed for a fraud, he slams science as a useless tool. I laughed and laughed when I saw that video. Deepak Chopra is the foremost woomeister. If you search woomeister on google, you are sure to find Chopra's name. It's what Jerry Coyne calls him. Apart from Dawkins, I have met Jerry Coyne and Lawrence Krauss. I got Coyne to autograph my book. But I didn't get Krauss to do it because he was busy and he was in a bad mood after some Christian asked him a stupid question. He made it clear that the questioner was stupid. Haha. But I was a little afraid of him after that and I was much younger at the time. Krauss is a very intelligent man. These physicists tend to be.

[Mike Cl]

I am not Baruch, but I have wrestled with that question for decades.  I have not found a totally satisfactory answer yet.  But this is what I have found on a personal level.  Many people just do not like to, 1--think or use reason, and 2--abhor 'I don't know.'.  It is so much easier to 'believe' because one does not have to think deeply or reason to come to answers.  They are sheeple and simply want to be feed the 'answers'.  One answer that seems to satisfy (for them) is goddidit.  Why did that baby die?; why did that flood happen, why.............fill in the blank.  God has mysterious ways, so don't worry about it, accept it and go on.  I do remember thinking about this at your age (and younger) and hoping I'd find some sort of answer.  This is as far as I've gotten to a total answer.


That may be the usual approach taken by the majority of Christians. But there are some believers who happily seek justification for their belief through philosophy. As I have said before, philosophy is like a game. With the correct premises, you can even show that the existence of pixies can be philosophically justified.

But I'm not interested in the games adults play. I prefer a simple answer - what made them believe in the first place? Philosophy is an answer of last resort. You don't go to philosophy and say, 'OK, I will believe in God'. Because the fact is the HUGE MAJORITY of philosophers are atheists. Apart from Plantinga, it's hard to come across a famous modern philosopher who is a believing Christian. To say philosophy explains that God is real is as silly as to say that quantum physics encourages you to believe in God. Again, the fact is the people who truly understand quantum physics are all atheists. My experience with Christians is they love to pick on really tough subjects like quantum physics to squeeze God into the tough areas of quantum physics which are incomprehensible to us.

A lot of religious people and woomeisters claim quantum physics 'proves' God. One example is Deepak Chopra who claimed that he used quantum physics in faith healing. Until Dawkins chewed him up and spat him out for a fraud. He was furious and said that science was a useless tool and scientists were arrogant. Suddenly, he forgot that before Dawkins exposed him, he claimed to use science (quantum physics) to heal people. Then suddenly, when he's exposed for a fraud, he slams science as a useless tool. I laughed and laughed when I saw that video. Deepak Chopra is the foremost woomeister. If you search woomeister on google, you are sure to find Chopra's name. It's what Jerry Coyne calls him. Apart from Dawkins, I have met Jerry Coyne and Lawrence Krauss. I got Coyne to autograph my book. But I didn't get Krauss to do it because he was busy and he was in a bad mood after some Christian asked him a stupid question. He made it clear that the questioner was stupid. Haha. But I was a little afraid of him after that and I was much younger at the time. Krauss is a very intelligent man. These physicists tend to be.

There is a fact here that you seem to be down-playing quite a bit.  You are not typical.  You are clearly a person who values thinking and reasoning--you study the questions you are interested in, not willing to take surface reasons for anything.  You like to dig and get to the heart of the matter.  I think you view the general masses as people who like to do the same.  In a perfect world it would be so.  But this world is not perfect, and the great masses of people are not like you. 

Also, understand I am not European or English.  My view of the masses are shaped by my living in America.  It would seem that Trump has demonstrated that; I cannot now claim that the US masses are simply ignorant (lacking information); they are basically stupid; they care little to nothing for facts; and stupid simply cannot be fixed.

Can the average US person name a single philosopher?  No.  Do they care? No.  So, your average church goes, or fundamentalist christian, does not care for intellect.   They don't go to church or listen to their favorite religious leader to learn how to think better.  They listen to try to learn to believe better--to learn to have an unshakable faith--in a fiction--that god or Jesus existed.  They make these favorite religious leaders wealthy beyond understanding because these leaders tell them that 'I don't know' does not exist; that goddidit is always the reason.  Just believe in the Lord, give you heart and soul to this fiction, and give me (the chruch) money.  That's it.  Quick and simple.  No more do the masses need to worry about death, bad things happening, or anything else, for the Lord God has it in hand even if you can't see it.  Just believe.  And they do.  And reasons and critical thinking has little to no impact on these masses.

You are not a member of these masses.  You are not swayed by 'belief', but by reason and thinking.  It is against your nature to understand how to give yourself fully to belief.  It would be quite the eye opener for you if you could attend for awhile a typical Baptist or Methodist or Church of Christ church and view what goes on; participating would be even better (well, participating as much as you can).  Then you would have a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of these people.

[St Truth]

There is a fact here that you seem to be down-playing quite a bit.  You are not typical.  You are clearly a person who values thinking and reasoning--you study the questions you are interested in, not willing to take surface reasons for anything.  You like to dig and get to the heart of the matter.  I think you view the general masses as people who like to do the same.  In a perfect world it would be so.  But this world is not perfect, and the great masses of people are not like you. 

Also, understand I am not European or English.  My view of the masses are shaped by my living in America.  It would seem that Trump has demonstrated that; I cannot now claim that the US masses are simply ignorant (lacking information); they are basically stupid; they care little to nothing for facts; and stupid simply cannot be fixed.

Can the average US person name a single philosopher?  No.  Do they care? No.  So, your average church goes, or fundamentalist christian, does not care for intellect.   They don't go to church or listen to their favorite religious leader to learn how to think better.  They listen to try to learn to believe better--to learn to have an unshakable faith--in a fiction--that god or Jesus existed.  They make these favorite religious leaders wealthy beyond understanding because these leaders tell them that 'I don't know' does not exist; that goddidit is always the reason.  Just believe in the Lord, give you heart and soul to this fiction, and give me (the chruch) money.  That's it.  Quick and simple.  No more do the masses need to worry about death, bad things happening, or anything else, for the Lord God has it in hand even if you can't see it.  Just believe.  And they do.  And reasons and critical thinking has little to no impact on these masses.

You are not a member of these masses.  You are not swayed by 'belief', but by reason and thinking.  It is against your nature to understand how to give yourself fully to belief.  It would be quite the eye opener for you if you could attend for awhile a typical Baptist or Methodist or Church of Christ church and view what goes on; participating would be even better (well, participating as much as you can).  Then you would have a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of these people.

I was thinking more of Baruch. He is certainly not like the masses. That is why I'm curious what made him believe in a God. That is why I value what he has to say. If he were the average unthinking person - the sort I see in CF, I wouldn't have bothered to ask him why he believed.

In CF, I made my stand very clear. Religion is totally irrational and is not supported by reason or evidence. I have for a long time searched the internet for answers.  I have seen almost every argument between Christians and atheists online. A lot of Christians recommended William Lane Craig to me and I must say that I have seen EVERY debate of his and where I can't find the videos, I have read the transcripts. I find Craig to be a very dishonest slimy debater. I have seen every single trick that he has come up with. Last year, I wanted to write down all his lies and dishonest arguments and his many tricks but I got lazy and my school work got in the way.

There are a few tricks that Craig and many Christians use when they argue with atheists. But they all seem to have a desperate button. Craig used it once.  The desperate button is a button that unleashes total destruction. It's a bit like what Rocketman may very well employ on the world if Trump doesn't control his tweets a little.  This is the argument that questions everything and the reliability of everything. Can we trust our senses? How do we know if our reality is not merely illusory. But this is nothing more than a cop out.  I can't accept such an argument. If indeed reality is illusory, then there need not be any further argument because whatever we see in a post may also be illusory.

This is the kamikaze argument that religious people resort to when they have lost. Rather than admit defeat, they choose to destroy everything - declare that nothing is reliable and even reality may be spurious and illusory.

[Baruch]

I was thinking more of Baruch. He is certainly not like the masses. That is why I'm curious what made him believe in a God. That is why I value what he has to say. If he were the average unthinking person - the sort I see in CF, I wouldn't have bothered to ask him why he believed.

In CF, I made my stand very clear. Religion is totally irrational and is not supported by reason or evidence. I have for a long time searched the internet for answers.  I have seen almost every argument between Christians and atheists online. A lot of Christians recommended William Lane Craig to me and I must say that I have seen EVERY debate of his and where I can't find the videos, I have read the transcripts. I find Craig to be a very dishonest slimy debater. I have seen every single trick that he has come up with. Last year, I wanted to write down all his lies and dishonest arguments and his many tricks but I got lazy and my school work got in the way.

There are a few tricks that Craig and many Christians use when they argue with atheists. But they all seem to have a desperate button. Craig used it once.  The desperate button is a button that unleashes total destruction. It's a bit like what Rocketman may very well employ on the world if Trump doesn't control his tweets a little.  This is the argument that questions everything and the reliability of everything. Can we trust our senses? How do we know if our reality is not merely illusory. But this is nothing more than a cop out.  I can't accept such an argument. If indeed reality is illusory, then there need not be any further argument because whatever we see in a post may also be illusory.

This is the kamikaze argument that religious people resort to when they have lost. Rather than admit defeat, they choose to destroy everything - declare that nothing is reliable and even reality may be spurious and illusory.

OK, so we won't have to adjourn to the philosophy section then.  Buddhists, yogis and nihilists deny most of what people call reality, but you aren't one of those.  Einstein said that you don't understand something yourself, if you can't explain it to a six year old ... so you do agree with him.  You are argumentative (like debate) ... so you are rather like Plato than Socrates.  Socrates said that he was ignorant ... Plato attempted to fix that defect ;-)  I do think that you would agree with Archimedes in math and physics .. and I would too.  So let us take this in terms of Archimedes, in unsophisticated (and un-sophist) terms.

On debate ... this is a toy problem, all debates are.  They are bad enough when done in formal logic or maths (what is rigor?).  Logic and maths are toy systems, that are useful analogs for a larger reality that includes humans and language.  That is where our ship strikes a reef.  Ordinary language, which isn't a jargon, is messy and inexact.  Most debates dissolve into disagreements on terms, and obstinacy to seeing things from another persons POV.  I am not interested in toy systems, though they are useful enough professionally (in engineering we constrain things such that the maths works reliably, even if inexactly).  Then we have reasonable assurance that the bridge won't fall down.  It is a practical game, with deliberate margins of error, so that our license to practice engineering isn't revoked for cause.  Sometimes that fails anyway, and the bridge falls down, because our understanding of the engineering is inadequate.  At that point, we pick up our slide-rules, come up with a new physical model, and using that, recalculate, until we can explain in maths why the bridge fell down.

Galloping Gertie 1940

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw

So classical physics, but not all forces accounted for.  The bridge is acting as an airfoil, relative to a strong steady wind blowing in from the Pacific, and straight inland.  Harmonic resonance occurs, leading to greater and greater deviations of force and position.  This is why foot soldiers have to break marching cadence when crossing a foot bridge.  Once positive feedback becomes great enough, the "strength of materials" equations go out of bounds and the bridge falls.

So we humans try to analyze this in lay terms, as cause/effect.  The religious mind is emotional, precognitive (not irrational).  We say ... "oh the humanity" about the woman who drove the car onto the bridge halfway, the dog trapped in the car, and the man who went to rescue it.  As an engineer, we analyze after the fact, that civil engineers in some cases need to know aeronautical engineering too.  Once they add that and apply it to conditions that require it, we can predict if a bridge will hold up under unfavorable dynamic weather, not just static gravity.  And we are back to square one, we can now build a bridge at that location, that doesn't fall down.

But we can't avoid a bit of philosophy about this example.  Modern people understand, in Aristotelian language (jargon) that we only use the material and formal causes, in engineering/physical science.  Theologians try to apply the other two "Causes" ... the efficient and final causes.  Efficient cause answers "how", and final cause answers "why".  The first two causes answers, "what", "where" and "when".  How and why refer to living and sentient beings.  This is not trivial for medicine, as it is for civil engineering.  In building a bridge, we can ignore the "how" and "why" ... while we concentrate on the "what", "where" and "when".  They exist ... the "how" is engineers and their slide rules etc ... the "why" is the chicken question ... "to get to the other side".  But not all problems are "separable" ... a property necessary for analysis to be successful.  The more something is more than the sum of its parts (biological, psychological and social problems) the less analysis works for us (though people try, as hammers, to nail things down materially and formally anyway).  When we get to living systems in general and consciousness in particular, the living conscious system doing the analysis, finds that the circularity is self defeating ... circularity is the very acme of "not separable".  In short, toy problems are useful, particularly in engineering, but while they don't offer much insight into more complicated problems (see philosophy) we can use them successfully.  You don't have to be perfect to achieve good enough.

So no, I don't attribute non-human, human, expected or unexpected events to divine intervention.  That is a stereotype typical of both theists and atheists.  I understand that "explanation", including "cause/effect" is a limited tool.  That knowledge is different from understanding, and untypical of Mike CLs examples, I am comfortable with not knowing.  No G-d of the Gaps for me either, it is all G-d.  I simply don't choose to apply the wrong tools to the correct situations, because I am broad minded.

[trdsf]

This is the kamikaze argument that religious people resort to when they have lost. Rather than admit defeat, they choose to destroy everything - declare that nothing is reliable and even reality may be spurious and illusory.

The deeper irony being that even if observation is illusory, it's still consistent.  If you ask 1,000 random people around the world to go out and measure how long it takes an object to fall ten meters, you will get one consistent answer from all of them -- a shade over a second.

If you ask 1,000 random people around the world to write down a message some god will give them at precisely 1200 UT on Friday 29 September, you will get hundreds of different answers --  perhaps even nearly a thousand.  I expect many will be blandly and broadly similar -- "he says he loves us", "he says repent", that sort of thing, but most will be mutually exclusive, preventing even a fallback to "well, he's god, he gave different messages to different people because he can do that".  Maybe, but he can't give contradictory messages without being either a liar, capriciously cruel, or just insane.

[Baruch]

I'm afraid I don't understand half of what you are saying. Let's make it simple. Like you are explaining it to a child. I'm not exactly a child but I'm not 16 yet and so I'm technically not an adult.

Let's take the hypothetical person who is seated in his armchair eating an ice-cream. What makes him suddenly decide, 'Hey! There is an invisible God.' What makes him come up with this notion that there is a God?  What would this God be like? Presumably he is not a physical being? I don't know what you idea of God is but you probably will say he is spiritual? But this guy in his armchair will have to conjure up the notion of a spirit as well.  What about the attributes of God? If you idea of God is the same as the church's or the God of the Bible, this God probably is Almighty. He has 'lovingkindness'. He is truth. He is love.

Mind you, the hypothetical guy in his armchair has made up quite a lot in his mind.

Now, he seeks to defend his idea of God with all the properties he has come up with and all the attributes that he has imbued in God. He obviously can't defend God scientifically. Scientific demands are too rigorous and unforgiving for anything fictitious. So he goes to philosophy.

But my point is why does he bother to do that in the first place? He has made a long list of presuppositions which he (or someone else before him) plucks from thin air and then he sets out to defend his presuppositions.

Isn't he better off not making those presuppositions in the first place?

This is the pattern that I find totally needless. When one comes up with a list of presuppositions and then sets out to defend them with philosophy, in my mind, it's just a game he's playing but ultimately, everything is still merely his imagination.

I'm not sure if your idea of God is orthodox Judaism. Supposing it's not and it's your original idea, my question is why come up with it at all?

I am not sure if I have expressed myself clearly enough but perhaps I'll illustrate it with an example. X postulates that we have wind on earth because there is a giant invisible mouth blowing air across the face of the earth. He then constructs a philosophical argument to support his belief. Rather than looking at his philosophical argument, I am more interested in asking him why he comes up with the Giant Mouth Belief. Is there evidence for it? Or is there a reason for him to suggest the existence of the Giant Mouth? I am not so interested in the philosophical justification for the Giant Mouth Belief as I am in asking him what leads him to such a belief in the first place. That is why evidence or reason is crucial here. There must be something that leads him to the belief. That something is the evidence or the reason and that's what I'm interested in; not the philosophy to justify the belief.

1. Yes, I am not orthodox, I am a heretic.  Only heretics and atheists take religion seriously ;-)

2. In Judaism, orthopraxis is tops, not orthodoxy (as it is in Christianity).

3. Orthodoxy means correct opinion, not correct knowledge, understanding .. let alone correct truth.

4. Orthopraxis means that in a particular community, we all pretty much do the same things.  As an Anglican you will understand this, since orthodoxy has gone by the wayside, but orthopraxis is still essential for maintenance of tradition.

5. As an Anglican, you aren't to far from being Catholic ... both are "high church".  Originally Anglican was just Catholic under the control of the king instead of the Pope.  I have always been in "low church".  We don't have a Chief Rabbi in America, like there is in Britain (in imitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury).  Your POV is implicitly "catholic" ... you seek universals on the basis of practice, but your organization has abandoned universals on the basis of belief.  You have absorbed some doctrine, yet it disturbs you because ... it isn't a shared belief at this time, and you don't share it either.

6. Going further would drag us into philosophy.  Your choice.  All philosophy for the last 2000 years is mere commentary on Plato, yet you are implicitly Platonic.  But you don't yet see that in yourself ... and many here dismiss that they are the propagators of ancient Greek memes ... of people who rejected their own contemporary society.  But as misfits then and now, they do share common cause.

7. Of course the exact reason why person X adopts belief or practice Y, is biographical and unique, and would take way too much time.

[Baruch]

The deeper irony being that even if observation is illusory, it's still consistent.  If you ask 1,000 random people around the world to go out and measure how long it takes an object to fall ten meters, you will get one consistent answer from all of them -- a shade over a second.

If you ask 1,000 random people around the world to write down a message some god will give them at precisely 1200 UT on Friday 29 September, you will get hundreds of different answers --  perhaps even nearly a thousand.  I expect many will be blandly and broadly similar -- "he says he loves us", "he says repent", that sort of thing, but most will be mutually exclusive, preventing even a fallback to "well, he's god, he gave different messages to different people because he can do that".  Maybe, but he can't give contradictory messages without being either a liar, capriciously cruel, or just insane.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds - Emerson.  So who did win the US election, Donald or Hillary?  Agreement among humans is usually group think, propaganda/advertising or a gun.  We are not agreeable creatures.  Sometimes technical people, in technical situations can come to the same conclusion (but only in controlled toy situations called experiment).  Just because a cat falls consistently on its feet, doesn't imply that Newton's equations need to be modified, but it is important to the cat anyway.  Objectivity is really a very limited aspect of a subjective reality.  Personalism trumps impersonalism.  Synthesis trumps analysis.  Art trumps science.  Technical people in general, and IT people in particular, are abnormal, yet useful to the larger society.  Freud said so about nurses and doctors, and they don't like to hear it repeated.

[SGOS]

This is the kamikaze argument that religious people resort to when they have lost. Rather than admit defeat, they choose to destroy everything - declare that nothing is reliable and even reality may be spurious and illusory.

We've had a couple of Christians lately that are framing the debate as parity between science and religion, which is a stretch to begin with, but once they actually claim, "Therefore, parity," it's just a stone's throw from, "So God is true."

We debate Christians here, although I consider it a waste of time, even though I engage in it at times.  But don't confuse debate with logic.  Skeptics try to approach debate with logic, but logic is not a requirement for debate.  It scores a few points, perhaps at the college debate team level, but debate is about winning, not logic.  That's why you have guys like William Lane Craig participating in debates, and employing logical fallacies that sell to the flock, although a good Christian debater will carefully fluff the fallacies up and package them with leading twists and turns of reason whose irrelevance will space out even a good listener and result in a marginal state of hypnotic boredom.

[Baruch]

We've had a couple of Christians lately that are framing the debate as parity between science and religion, which is a stretch to begin with, but once they actually claim, "Therefore, parity," it's just a stone's throw from, "So God is true."

We debate Christians here, although I consider it a waste of time, even though I engage in it at times.  But don't confuse debate with logic.  Skeptics try to approach debate with logic, but logic is not a requirement for debate.  It scores a few points, perhaps at the college debate team level, but debate is about winning, not logic.  That's why you have guys like William Lane Craig participating in debates, and employing logical fallacies that sell to the flock, although a good Christian debater will carefully fluff the fallacies up and package them with leading twists and turns of reason whose irrelevance will space out even a good listener and result in a marginal state of hypnotic boredom.

Forget the hard sciences ... this is all about human psychology ... and guns.

[St Truth]

1. Yes, I am not orthodox, I am a heretic.  Only heretics and atheists take religion seriously ;-)

2. In Judaism, orthopraxis is tops, not orthodoxy (as it is in Christianity).

3. Orthodoxy means correct opinion, not correct knowledge, understanding .. let alone correct truth.

4. Orthopraxis means that in a particular community, we all pretty much do the same things.  As an Anglican you will understand this, since orthodoxy has gone by the wayside, but orthopraxis is still essential for maintenance of tradition.

5. As an Anglican, you aren't to far from being Catholic ... both are "high church".  Originally Anglican was just Catholic under the control of the king instead of the Pope.  I have always been in "low church".  We don't have a Chief Rabbi in America, like there is in Britain (in imitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury).  Your POV is implicitly "catholic" ... you seek universals on the basis of practice, but your organization has abandoned universals on the basis of belief.  You have absorbed some doctrine, yet it disturbs you because ... it isn't a shared belief at this time, and you don't share it either.

6. Going further would drag us into philosophy.  Your choice.  All philosophy for the last 2000 years is mere commentary on Plato, yet you are implicitly Platonic.  But you don't yet see that in yourself ... and many here dismiss that they are the propagators of ancient Greek memes ... of people who rejected their own contemporary society.  But as misfits then and now, they do share common cause.

7. Of course the exact reason why person X adopts belief or practice Y, is biographical and unique, and would take way too much time.

Hi Baruch,

I hope you don't mind my saying this. Your post has 7 numbered paragraphs and for a while i thought you were giving me a comprehensive answer until i read your post and realised that you offered ZERO answer.

I can't help observing that people in CF did the same thing when I merely asked for a simple reason as to what led them to believe in God. The only difference is they are positively hostile to me while you are perfectly civil and for that I thank you.

Or is that a preliminary to an answer that is forthcoming?

[Hydra009]

Your post has 7 numbered paragraphs and for a while i thought you were giving me a comprehensive answer until i read your post and realised that you offered ZERO answer.

That's standard Baruch.

[SGOS]

Hi Baruch,
I hope you don't mind my saying this. Your post has 7 numbered paragraphs and for a while i thought you were giving me a comprehensive answer until i read your post and realised that you offered ZERO answer. 

Like Baruch himself says, as a theist, he is tolerated here, but it would probably be the same if he were something else.  Don't spend an inordinate amount of time agonizing over what he might be saying.  No one knows what he's saying.  Some people argue with him.  I don't know why.  No one could possibly understand what the argument is about.  Baruch places a high value on being misunderstood.  It's his thing.  You just have to accept that and move on.