probably creating some language here. my interests continue.
We - atheists - will happily consider - seriously -
any actual evidence you can provide
your willingness to entertain me has proven helpful. thanks.
I no longer believe this, based on the evidence i have seen,
and not just because the only thing providable here is text.
revised to "actual objective evidence" i can understand.
So text cannot be used to point us to objective evidence? ...
only text may be put through this medium. if text isn't enough
to convince you of the point being made, then it will be
insufficient. if you don't follow out or consider relevant
that to which is being pointed, then you will ignore it or
claim that it is "not really evidence". these games can go
on for an unending period.
So, was that a "yes", or a "no"?
no, not to objective evidence of gods. it can only be used
to point to objective evidence of the god phenomenon in
human beings, and what patterns and themes may be found there.
this is not evidence of the kind for which you are asking,
and i have sought plainly never to deceive you or to
misrepresent my interests (typically facilitating
some ignorant theistic approach to the forums to
which this is cross-posted, surrounding 'faith').
I think that atheists are actually afraid of gods in general,
and are avoiding scientific examinations of what is apparent,
holding out for impossible "evidence"
that is a challenge, obviously. many may just be uninterested,
or driven away from such interests by nasty theists.
How strange. Evidence that would be common place, for a man, is
"impossible evidence", for an omnipotent god.
unspecified evidence is impossible no matter who fails to specify
the "evidence". you can limit using similarly fatuous and
ridiculous means anybody proving to you that the sun exists.
I don't specify how such evidence should appear, and then when
someone comes to me with *their* evidence i say "sorry, that does
not qualify" and reject it. this may continue endlessly.
That is because you have been told, times beyond counting,
that only objective, and/or verifiable evidence, will suffice.
my sincere apologies for the thickness. I appreciate the
line of demarcation being made here and cannot provide
that for which you are asking, naturally.
it was never a part of my hypotheses that gods were objective
beings. in all my years as an agnostic i had no personal
experience with those who met and interacted with gods, and
i watched for the evidence for which you ask. had i grown up
in a pantheonic household or been introduced to gods in some
form early on in my life, i might not have later presumed
that the scientific paradigm was sound.
having accepted it, my later recourse was radical materialism
which held a soft atheism that separated me from all religions
(and therefore a good portion of spiritual) people, or a
modified materialism which accepted gods but didn't accept
historical claims about them. as i said, i saw some of the
rudiments (admirable!) of this kind of study in those soft
sciences that i mentioned. I determined to pursue that
study and have been very pleased with the results.
Yet every time, you offer anything, calling it evidence,
it is subjective, and unverifiable
at least it is focussed on the subjective, that is true.
I think your position that it is unreplicable or what
you are calling "unverifiable" is exaggeration without
sound basis. there are enough people now repeatedly
possessed and interacting with gods that conventional
'verification' may be inferredly sustained, methods
even made to identify deities. systems of 'translation'
even exist for masked gods. that won't please atheists
but it's fine with me.
it does
not matter whether it pertains to a god (which is interior to
human consciousness) or the sun (which is an evident object).
the trick is simply more obvious when it relates to objects.
...And always there is the logical fallacy of your
shifting the burden of evidence.
now that i wasn't ever doing. I never mentioned burdens,
and my interests are primarily interactive, so i haven't
brandished strident claims, merely sought to help others
who seemed to want to make them (however badly).
they'll never specify
(note: perhaps for very good reason too! their space is
invaded by butthead theists who want to witness to them.)
It s your god, therefore it is for you to produce the
evidence that convinced you
that's an experience. I cannot produce an experience via this
medium, only an account of this experience.
So it is subjective, and you believe without evidence.
the former is accurate, the latter is disputed.
I have no objective evidence for gods, admittedly.
I have sought it before and never found it. but i
AM beginning an amusing contemplation of suggestions
for empirical studies by scientific theists. your
challenges for me to come up with them is fun.
now i *have* the
event to which i refer described online, but this is unimportant
because no matter what you will tell me that it is not enough.
As I said above, "We ask for objective evidence, and all you
offer is subjectives".
that line is not one i can sustain, and i withdraw any shade
of implication from me that i could proide such objective
evidence. I have never found reliable objective evidence
of the type you are describing here. frauds or the
misled have unfortunately been occasional.
you will always do that because you never specified anything
from the start so that you could "reject" anything brought forward.
it is an old psychological game, and gets those who are really
interested in gods nowhere fast. atheists aren't interested in
doing much more than sitting on sandlot heaps with shoulder chips .
How can we be expected to specify what evidence will persuade us,
it's just text.
Are you saying that you cannot tell us where the
objective evidence is?
no, i'm saying that i can in fact describe things which should
qualify to a point (only in that it is objective), but that
their only appearance here would be textual: extremely limited,
and thus abstracted, nothing experiential or approaching what
would be required of 'convincement' for ordinary skeptics.
Are you saying that you cannot tell us what tests to make,
in order to find the evidence for our selves.
no, i think that i can and have suggested tests that
can be made, but not for *objective* evidence, only
for evidence of a subjective (and tangental) character.
Are you telling us that it is all in your head?
no, i am not. there is evidence that it is not
all in my (or anybody else's) head.
You people come to us,
that wouldn't be me.
and demand that we tell you what evidence we
want, to support your claim.
no demands from me, just disappointment that when
you began the demands from theists you didn't
give them more specific instances that they
could provide in the medium of the interaction.
I liked the children's hospital one, though.
That is not how it works.
'it' doesn't just work one way.
You say: "Here is my claim, this is the evidence-
I did this experiment, x number of times, and always with this result.
I did that experiment, y number of times, and always with that result.
I did this z experiment, n number of times, and always with the same
result.
In each case, detailing the equipment, materials, and procedures, so
that we can duplicate your tests, and verify your results.
completely understood. that is the character of objective tests.
Until you do that, you have not offered us anything that we would
consider evidence.
that is very helpful, particularly when you specify objective data.
when we do not know what it is that you are trying to
persuade us of.
right, you must begin to construct your own hypotheses to test
if you are honestly interested in studying gods.
No ... We do not do your work for you.
You want to persuade us, you do the work.
no, i have already done some of the work and have occasionally
reported my findings to the interested. my hypotheses are sound
and liable to yield more substance than the bulk constructed by
theists with their heads in the clouds. my God seems to like my
analysis and has been amiable about tests. She does not suggest
that i agree with anything that isn't empirically-based,
If your method worked, anybody could make any wild claim,
and it would for the rest of the world to figure out how
it was done. Not a chance!
my method was to engage gods. that isn't very difficult,
but how to engage gods without being subsumed by a cult
is a good question, and one which i have also studied
in some depth (examining what are called 'cults').
atheists SAY
they are interested in knowing this (likely in response to the
invasions of irritating theists), but they aren't.
Actually, many of us are interested.
that's what i *figured*! (or at least hoped)
mostly what they are interested in is getting theists
to shut up and go away.
...That, however, is also true.
I totally and completely sympathize. it is a sad statement
of religious (and anti-religious!) zealots that they
attempt to disrupt the discussions and communications
of their perceived "adversaries". I abhor and reject that.
correct. relying upon the rats to run the experiments is
not going to help you find out about gods.
What ever makes you think that we are trying to find
out about gods?
you're asking after evidence for them. those who do that
are either trying to find out about gods or are doing it
in a way so as to avoid further contact with those who are
obsessed with gods. many atheists are doing the latter.
What we are trying to find out, is why you believe in them,
personal experience as i have been trying to relate in brief,
as i don't want to waste your time but find the discussion
interesting, compelling, and challenging (keeping both feet in
both 'worlds' *and* grounded, as it were, is not always easy).
and what it is, turns an otherwise rational person,
there you seem to be going outside my field. I have usually
been regarded as a sober and generally rational person. true,
some of my behaviours, punctuations, have caused some concern,
but the overall evaluation has been one of rational character.
into a slavering religious fanatic: Any religion.
I am not a slavering religious fanatic of any religion. I find
Satanism to be a beneficial religion and am pursuing making a
foundation for it in methodical character. I have written the
Gospel of Satan and located its proper harmonic. some of my
closest intimates have accused me of atheism, probably either
in comparison with their own kin, in contrast to how they'd
prefer to have me (unquestioning, uncritical, undelving),
or because the bulk of Satanists appear to be atheists.
Without evidence, there is nothing to study.
soft sciences. never identifying what you would accept
as evidence, you'll alway claim there is no evidence
to study and never begin any kind of study.
Shifting the burden, again.
I didn't ever assign a burden. I have sought gods and
so the issue of burden never arose. I agree with you
that it is not yours to bear in the face of theism.
instead treating them
as if they were conceptual or nonsensical, or physical and
demonstrable, rather than fleeting, and interior to human
experience.
They are real, i.e. physical and demonstrable,
no, they are fleeting and interior to human experience,
like emotions or thoughts or experiences.
Then they are subjectives, and are not evidence.
yes, they are subjective, yes they are evidence of a kind.
ignoring this
facet of gods is comparable to ignoring the sun.
You have failed to demonstrate that "facet of gods",
exists, anywhere outside your head.
it appears to exist also in others' heads at least.
or they are not, i.e., conceptual and/or nonsensical,
fleeting, and interior to human experience.
that's somewhat helpful. if you can admit that this is
true, then there is something that you can study about
them,
Don't be silly, They are figments of the imagination,
and can change with every telling.
do they? there seems to be some kind of integrity.
They are therefore worthless as evidence.
I understand and won't suggest them as "objective
evidence of gods". you will see me suggest them as
objective evidence of the god phenomenon. this is
a periphery of gods we *can* study but few want to.
and your restricted parameters for evidence isn't
necessarily so solid and restrictive,
Yes it is. Let me tell you somewhat.
Once upon a time, I was a xtian, and I had "experiences", such as most
fanatical theists describe.
At quite an early age, I lost my faith, through no desire of my own,
because the situation I was in, my faith was all that I had.
Since then I have had many more "experiences", but now I ask my self,
"what could have caused that?".
...And you know what? I have never yet had an "experience", even the
ones from my childhood that did not have numerous more reasonable
explanations, than supernatural intervention.
agreed that this can all be rationalized away. feel free. :)
blessed beast!
boboroshi at-sign satanservice.org: compassionate Satan-servant since 9666
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