Quote from ARogueTrader:
Here is where I believe you fail in your comments below of judging faith, as you ultimately use your own faith by which to judge another man's faith. .
I have asked previously to the atheists the following question:
By what criteria would you know God?
If God is not material, and not relative, but rather existing at all places at no particular time (a relativistic impossibility) then by what measure could you confirm that you were in fact meeting God if God does in fact exist as non material and absolute?
It is by the fixed nature of the criteria you use, i.e. relativistic logic and physical senses that you could never extend beyond the tools at your disposal to arrive at anything absolute in nature.
Imagine that if God did in fact exist as absolute and Divine, and did in fact appear before you in the form of a man so that you could see and hear Him, and He says:
"Have faith in Me, and I will give you My Absolute Vision. I will bestow upon you the ability to see my Divine form, which exists at all times in no particular place. My form is beyond your material senses, it is beyond relativistic logic, yet if you have faith in Me, I will Divinize your senses, Divinize your mind, and allow you to see me as I am. This is a gift from Me to you, and all you have to do is have faith in Me, trust in Me, and be willing to see Me with My eyes."
Naturally, your skepticism would want proof first, but the demand is for faith first from God.
So, as you will not practice faith first, you would not receive God's gift.
So you have placed a condition before God that He must meet your requirements of a proof, requirements that are bound to your own limited nature. You would never be able to rise above your own level of intelligence.
If God did exist as I describe, you would have zero chance to progress in knowing His real nature, as you would be required to leave behind your relativistic and materialistic tools to do so.
You would have no chance to know God, the faithful would have a chance.
In the same way, that to know something completely different than our previous experiences, it often requires a leap of faith into a new human experience previously unknown.
On a practical level, this happens when people try new foods, listen to new music, think new ideas, travel to new places, etc. Anything new is going to require moving away from the old and the known.
So the issue is, if God does in fact exist, and does in fact exist outside the reach of relativistic logic and material senses, and if you would never trust or have faith in God before knowing Him, you would never possibly progress to know Him, or anything outside of your comfort zone.
Can't you see that you have set up a condition of what would constitute proof, would constitute knowing, and as such forever remain bound and limited to that field of knowledge and level of understanding? And to top it off, the basis of that decision is circular reasoning.
That criteria you have set forth is based on relativistic logic and limited perception itself. You would forever remain bound to the circle of limits, dualism, and matter.
Is there is in fact something beyond materialism, dualism, relativistic logic, and limited sensory perception how would you ever have the chance to know it if you remained fixed in your criteria that would not allow you to move beyond your present limits?
If there is more than meets the eye, you will never ever know, as you would have to try something different to know.
Say suddenly every human being but you claimed to be seeing God, and knowing God, as God had bestowed His Vision on them through their faith.
Would they be wrong, and would you be right sticking to your criteria of non faith?
Faith would at least allow someone the chance to admit they didn't know everything, to admit that they were possibly lacking, and create an opportunity and willingness to learn and experience something new.
That you choose your own path is perfectly your choice, perfectly your option, and who am I to say that it is wrong for you to think so?
However, how you can say that the experiences of someone else who is having faith are the product of delusion, or possibly not real, or possibly not actually relational with God....when you yourself do not know with absolute knowledge that sense and intellect are not themselves deluding you and keeing you from the experience of absolute truth?
It is not logical as you are stating that your criteria is the only possible and true criteria by which to come to such conclusion.....or your position is logical only by your criteria, which itself is subject to logical doubt as to its ability to reveal truth independent of human senses and relativistic logic.
You can stick to your fixed and rigid position, and that is fine by me, but you can never make a proof that the tools you are using are the right tools to know truth independent of human intellect, relativistic logic, and limited senses.
If it makes you happy.....
For you to pass value judgments on others though on that basis, has been shown to be faulty, and not necessarily revealing a truth independent of nor conditional upon anything but your own personal choice of tools of evaluation and decision making.
As you simply do not know, yet you continue to judge others and their experience of faith, the only conclusion I can reach is that you are in love with your own opinions, your own conclusions, and your own human experience that you believe are right for not only yourself but all other human beings.
I view this as a form of fundamentalist thinking, ultimately based in a subjective and personal belief system, not in a Truth independent of you own mind, nor derived by means of absolute methods or absolute tools.
As I expected, you go straight back to square one.
All the above fails because of your own argument ......
You cannot provide a proof of those claims without dependency on the senses, intellect, and reasoning abilities, hence the conclusion you draw is 100% circular in nature.
