Thank you for proving my entire point with a textbook example of what I was describing...

In general, people see these discussions as game to be "won" or "lost."

They are more interested in "winning" than actually learning anything or learning about the opposing party's point of view. In this case, victory is even declared in full before any discussion has actually even taken place. From a technical stand-point, the first reply is the fastest a discussion can possibly end and it is not possible for an individual to be any more closed off than that.

People seeking knowledge usually ask a lot of questions and make far less statements. In this case we can see Amadeus already going on the offense with typical "go to" canned attacks that they use over and over again like "intellectually insincere" in the attempt to make me look irreputable, provoke me to an emotional response, etc.. Also canned "strawmen" stuff that would suggest that the closed-off people I described do not exist, when everyone knows that they do.

I will further highlight my main point by asking everyone some questions:

"In the above post, does Amadeus seem like the type of individual that is open towards intellectual discussion, seeking new knowledge, asking questions, and is interested in taking in new ideas that may totally change his worldview?"

"Based on the above post, would you spend time engaging with Amadeus on the topic of religion with the sincere belief that you could change his mind or heavily influence his belief system while doing so?"

Most people in the world approach this topic of discussion like Amadeus just did, hence why it is a giant waste of time in most cases. A person as closed off as him, will not even consider any viable evidence towards much of anything, because they already know that they have already won the game to the point of the opposing party having given their "ultimate surrender". If the opposing party has already surrendered, they are no longer in a position to provide new information that would show any insight on any truth.

Therefore Amadeus's post translates as "I already know more than you. There is nothing that you can teach me." Which is how he truly feels.

In general, most people feel this way...

I will be falsely accused of having "no evidence" or "no argument" and that's fine by me. I'm secure in what I know enough to accept that false accusation and how it may cause me to appear to others, as I do not value "winning." Being falsely accused is far preferable to wasting hours of my time on someone that has already openly declared themselves entirely closed-off.

I have heard literally hundreds of people try to explain why they hold whatever religious beliefs they hold, and not one of them had a good reason for it. I speak from experience.

But if you want to take a shot at being the one to buck that trend, be my guest. Tell us what you believe and why, I'd genuinely love to hear it.

Then you are a closed minded idiot who only spoke to double digit IQ people such as yourself.

Guys nobody has a good enough reason to explain beliefs ingrained in humans for hundreds of thousands of years , amadeus says so. He knows everything there is to know about the topic as you can tell.

It's an open invitation. Go on, let's hear what you got.

Go on boys, take 3 minutes to type a few sentences explaining the extremely simple and well understood system of higher belief and human consciousness. Ez peazy.

That is exactly what a close-minded person would say.

Most people have good reasons to believe the things they do, regardless of their worldview.

You already declared it GG and I have apparently give you my "ultimate surrender."

I would never assume you were telling lies about that, so why would you invite someone into a futile interaction?

Can you explain your genuine interest?

:lolwut:

So if a lot of people tell you something that you know to be wrong, and you still don't believe it, that makes you close-minded?

If you make a tour of indigenous hut-dwelling tribes, and listen to hundreds of people telling you that illnesses are caused by bad spirits that need to be chased away with drums and incense, are you close-minded for not believing them?

Not when it comes to religious belief, as evidenced by the fact that the methods we know to be reliable for determining truth consistently fail to confirm such beliefs.

Feel free to put yours to the test though.


I care about truth. If you have some to share, I'd love to hear it.

Prove that I was wrong to call GG by engaging in an intellectually honest conversation about what your religious beliefs are and why you hold them.

The truth has nothing to fear from investigation, but anyone can make up a false claim and be all "nah man you're just close-minded" when people challenge it.

It's like asking for a "reason" why you enjoy a particular piece of art or why a poem or play illicits a strong emotional response. What's the "reason" all humans are drawn to the same archetypes in stories and why are these stories as old as mankind? Go on just casually type out the reason... be sure to include empirical evidence and perhaps a PDF or 3D model of your consciousness.

If someone here could so easily provide you with a reason why they believe in higher power, like all humans before them for millennia, the idea would've been dead long ago.

It be like me trying to explain to you why I like Blink 182. Even I don’t understand why I like that cheesy band.


But I do.

I can explain that. You like simple things. The end.

Cheesy simpleton lulz

You're talking about opinions. Religious beliefs are not opinions, they are statements about reality. As such, they are subject to investigation.

an emotional response to a piece of art is an opinion? ur a ****ing robot

:lolque:

What a ****ing turd...holy ****.

I do, I certainly do.

Now who's arguing semantics?

My point still stands though. A religious belief is a statement about reality which is either true or false. If you care about the truth of your statements, then the onus is on you to have a good reason for making such a statement.

Look at him squirm lol

You had no point. My post sailed so far over your head you couldn't even see it....

a belief is still an opinion... just not from the perspective of the believer

Tell me about it. Same thing happens to me each and every time I am talking to a male that believes it is a female and is demanding that I refer to it as what it believes itself to be.

"But I feel this way!"

So, I try to get them to explain why they believe they are a woman and not one of them had a good reason for it.

Is the emotional response to a musical arrangement also an opinion? Let's explore that one a little bit deeper.

Call it whatever you want, but you're talking about two very different things here.

Yes, people throughout history have had a tendency for religious belief. That does not mean that whatever they believed in was true though, as evidenced by all the other long-held beliefs that we've since discovered to be false.

"There is a god" and "I believe there is a god" are two different statements that can have two different truth values.

the majority of religious people were raised to be religious by their families and their communities. children don't just decide they're going to believe in god, their faith is something they learned from their parents.

most of the devout christians here would likely be devout muslims if they were born and raised in a different region of the world.

religion gives an easy out for some of life's harder philosophical questions. why are we here? god made us. why did this terrible thing happen? don't worry it's part of god's plan. what is the meaning of life? just follow our religious teachings and you'll get to live next to god in eternity. etc.

My point was that your asking for a logical and reasoned explanation for why someone believes in god is an impossible request. I'm likening religious faith to the same type of experience one has with art or music or love or any other number of experiences which can't be explained logically, let alone in a casual forum post.

The question of faith then becomes why your consciousness is so open to the idea in the first place.

The mainstream conversation is always around origins, but that's hardly the point of faith. It serves me no purpose as an individual to know the exact origins of life. But it does serve me purpose to model my being after a higher ideal, which is what faith is in its essence.

Your experiences with music or art are subjective and confined to your consciousness. Religious faith usually posits the existence of something in reality outside that, something that affects the real physical universe that we all share and experience. Therefore, such claims are in fact subject to independent investigation.

On a side note, you're doing that thing again where you say that music and love "cannot be explained logically", when I think what you mean is we currently cannot fully explain them. Not the same thing.

Nope. That's not my argument.

My argument is that saying "people don't have good reasons to believe there is no God" or vice versa is a close-minded statement.

There are many good reasons to be an Atheist or a Theist.

Premises like this are highly problematic for many reasons, however if I entertain this, my answer would be:

That completely depends on your response.

An open-minded individual might ask for hard evidence to consider before deciding. If those people were then able to provide a spirit in a cage that could be experienced, the individual would then begin to believe.

A closed-minded individual would dismiss it outright and begin speaking in a condescending manner to people of "inferior" thinking.

If only life were so simple, as everything in reality being able to be tested and measured.

Please prove to me right now that you love your family, and if so, by how many "love units"?

Consider going back in time 1000 years and trying to tell people about electricity?

How well equipped are we now in 2020 to measure truth by scientific means? With how vast and mysterious our universe is, it is like using a tooth pick to attempt to slay a dragon. We can't even get off our own planet...

You are incorrect that the methods that we know to be reliable to for determining truth fail to support religion, quite the opposite. Thousands of archeological digs have been performed with the eagerness of disproving the historocity of various religions, and many of them have been woefully disappointed to find out that many people talked about throughout history in religious texts were actually real.

Why would I do that?

Why the change of heart?

Could it be that you recognize that replying to anyone challenging your beliefs with "GG ultimate sacrifice" in the first reply is not such a great sign that you are an open-minded person?

Don't worry about it man. You can change tomorrow if you want.

Perhaps the next time you are challenged your first response will be the above quote, which is a very healthy and beautiful statement.

You have already established me as "intellectually dishonest," so why would you ask for truth from a liar? That's like asking for quality merchandise from someone that only sells broken knock-offs. Your behavior makes little sense.

Everyone in the room, you included, all realize that dismissing someone outright before hearing any form of discussion, reasoning, or argument from them is a bad play. I have no need to push that point any further.

Because it could lead to behaviour that survives natural selection. See my example with the lion and the bush earlier.

Well I'm not from the future so my statement remains true. We cannot explain those things in simple logical terms, which is what YOU expect people to do to justify their faith in higher power.

It "could" be lots of things. Agreed.

Give me one good reason to be a theist please.


Ok, so tell me what your "spirit in the cage" is, then provide me with hard evidence for its existence.



One could demonstrate by means of monitoring brainwaves and/or hormone levels when exposed to my family, or observing how my behaviour with them differs from that with strangers. That would already be more hard evidence than I've seen for any god.

Hello god of the gaps. This argument has a terrible history of becoming less and less relevant as human knowledge expands, and every time we actually found an explanation for something, it was never one posited by any religion.

Archeological digs are not evidence of a god's existence.



So that you don't look like someone who makes **** up and tries to act smug about being challenged on it.



There is no change of heart. With every post where you avoid exposing your beliefs to critical review, you're continuing your surrender. Again, anyone can make up a false claim and act like the world just doesn't get it, or that they're too noble to explain it to the plebs. Right now, you look like one of those people, and it's entirely your own fault.


It wasn't a dismissal, it was a prediction. One that you willingly continue to fulfill.

It would be super easy for you to demonstrate that you are not, in fact, intellectually dishonest, if that really was the case. All you'd need to do is start telling us what you believe and why.

No, it's not, because faith in a higher power has different standards of evidence by virtue of being a statement about our shared reality.

But you don't believe that it's purely a product of natural selection, do you? So how did you rule out that option?

Orienting oneself towards the highest ideal.

An individual's faith is not a statement about our shared reality.

An individual's assertion that a physical god created the universe in 6 days is, though. That would be held to a high standard and worthy of scientific dismissal.

There's a difference between these two.

Doesn't work, sadly.

1. Why can you not do that on a secular basis?

2. How do you determine which religion's "highest ideal" to orient yourself to?

These things are not mutually exclusive and your statement that it doesn't work is provably and quite obviously false. It has worked for billions of people. It doesn't mean that its the only way, just that its one way.

Does your god manifest in reality in any way?

If yes, that's a statement about reality.

If not, what reason would you have to believe that this god really exists?

I don't wanna keep going back to my same examples so lets stop asking for reasons why a man believes god exists.

Does the belief in god manifest itself in our shared reality? Yes, it does, by way of its impact on individuals and how they orient themselves in the real world. The effect is real, but that doesn't mean that I can draw you a diagram to explain the reasoning or origins of that belief system.

What I meant was:

That's not a good reason.

For one thing, why can you not do that on a secular basis? I put it to you that any positive effect of being a theist can also be achieved without religious belief.

Second, how do you determine which religion's "highest ideal" to orient yourself to?

I know what you meant, Im saying that my reason does not imply that its the only way to be a good man. You asked for a good reason to be theist, and the one I listed is (as far as Im concerned anyway) the reason for faith. The entirety of the Christian bible boils down to that essence.

Am I saying that faith in higher power is the only way to orient oneself in life? No absolutely not, I don't believe in "god" and Im not a person of faith - I'm still a productive member of society and a good father and good husband.

For your second question, I'd say "you" don't get to determine it in the sense that most folks don't choose their religion. The Christians are down with Jesus. Jews and Muslims and Hindus have their own different paths towards a similar goal.