Re: the greatest thing about freedom is...

On Dec 11, 3:53 am, John Ashby <J.V.As...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
$Zero wrote:
On Dec 10, 4:24 pm, "John Ashby" <j.v.as...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
"$Zero" <zeroi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
On Dec 10, 12:17?pm, John Ashby <J.V.As...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
$Zero wrote:
On Dec 10, 10:38 am, John Ashby <J.V.As...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

So what is it that you recognise that convinces you of the
existence of God?

merely the truth of the existence of God.

Isn't that circular?
not really.
i'd say the same thing about my sense of humor.
You believe God exists because you believe God exists.
i believe my sense of humor exists because it does exist.
if you never saw any evidence of it yourself, would my sense of
humor stop existing?

If I never see any evidence of it, if it has no impact on my life,
what benefit is there to me in positing its existence?

if you saw me constantly laughing my ass off,

Which would be (indirect) evidence...

maybe.


but you didn't see the
direct source of the amusement, wouldn't you at least be
curious about why?

Which is the point of my questions in this thread.

yep.


or would you automatically attribute it to insanity?

Not automatically, but if I asked what was so funny and you replied "Oh,
you wouldn't understand it" often enough, or were unable to explain the
joke and why you found it funny, then I might well send for the men in
white coats.

that seems logical enough.


That's permissible, but I'd like to see more open
acknowledgment of that. In your case, zero, I'll issue a similar
challenge I put to boots. You say you used to be an atheist but
are now a believer. What changed your mind? What events,
experiences happened to convince you?
lots.
very complex and stretching over many years of non-belief.
and even if i could explain it all, you'd only have my word for any
of it.
so what good would that do you?

None in terms of my own belief, but it might help me to comprehend
yours.

but what good would that be to you?

Suppose that as a writer I wished to write a character who had a strong
faith. To do so convincingly I'd need to get inside the mindset of that
character.

i'd imagine that there's many different reasons why individuals have
strong faiths.

just like there's probably many different reasons why people have good
senses of humor.


i suppose it might serve to help you to somehow debunk my belief in
God in your own mind.

that's what i always used to do with all of the gullible saps that i
argued with.

and it was easy to do. because most of them really were gullible
saps.

but you don't come across in that "delightfully debunking" way at all.

Hope does, though.

Good cop, bad cop. Alan has less patience than I have with all sorts of
things.

and he's far more eager to go for the cheap laughs, especially if he
believes it will throw the hounds off the track.


you seem more interested in furthering your understanding.

hopeful for some insight you may have somehow missed along the way.

i was like that too, at times.

not nearly as entertaining as Alan's pokings, but at least it's
sincere.

well, so is Hope's hope, but he has to be a clown about it, it's his
nature.

And for a bonus, why should I accept that to convince me?

you probably shouldn't take the word of anybody but yourself and
your
own experience.

And thus far, I've had no need of that hypothesis.
i never had need of it either.
besides never "needing" God, what made me a thoroughly convinced
atheist for much of my life were most of the people i came across
who were "representing" God.
they always seemed as silly and irrational and illogical and deluded
and gullible as a Flying Spaghetti Monster cult.
for the most part, they distracted me from realizing the truth with
all of their nonsensical positions and comb-overs and wigs and
pleads for cash and whatnot.
and whenever i argued with believers about their beliefs, which was
always fun, they always ended up grasping at straws and sounding and
looking stupid and ridiculous and gullible.
even so, there was always a certain mystery about life and the
universe that i felt somewhere in the back of my mind, regardless of
all the kooks and their nonsense -- though most of it i felt i could
easily explain in some rational way -- and that it didn't really
matter that there was some of it that what was beyond my current
understanding -- that was to be expected.

So, a desire for explanation of how the world is the way it is. Would
that be an adequate summary?

no. like i said, i already believed that i had that mostly figured
out.

the part i didn't understand was fine with me. i still wondered about
it, naturally, but not enough to attrribute it to the Flying Spaghetti
monsters of the world. to me the unknown was just something to marvel
about.

my eventual belief in God didn't come about out of some relentless
curiosity for wanting to understand what i did not already understand.

nor did it come in some sort of fox-hole desperation moment.

(though amusingly, even though i was a devout atheist, when i faced
death a few times in my life, i did find myself praying rather
intensely -- but once the danger passed, i always went back to my
atheism, ASAP).

Hmm, I've just posted a response to Heather about God as crutch, and
here you are confirming that.

well, yeah, back when i was an atheist i had no other use for God.


-$Zero...

after awhile, you figure out why nothing ever changes
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.writing/msg/d10e71396a9d48db
.

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