Spiritual susceptibility must mean what I would call disabling the critical thinking apparatus. Yes, I know. There is no way to get to the conclusion that a deity exists except by faith, and faith simply isn't a path to truth. By faith, I can declare whatever I like and call it the truth, including the exact opposite of what you believe. I'm an atheist based on reason, but I could be one based on faith as well. Unexamined thought can go wherever the imagination takes it and be believed if one has "spiritual susceptibility." Not a virtue doing that..
You know nothing about what critical thinking I have used to support my original spiritual susceptibility. You have no idea of the doubts I had when I seemed to find contradictions. I went out of my way to examine if this faith was true, if there was a contradiction, then I seemed to find a few. But after 50 years I conclude that the evidence is overwhelming. In conclusion, spiritual susceptibility and critical thinking were both used in my case. This is how it should be, in my opinion. Critical thinking and spiritual susceptibility are not in opposition.
What I know is that if you have concluded that there is a god, you didn't use critical thought to get there. There is no sound argument that ends, "therefore God." You have used the vague and nonstandard term "spiritual susceptibility" to mean a mental state that permits such ideas into the head, that can only be one thing when translated into the language I use - you're sidestepped critical thought.
We can broadly divide all symbolic thinking (using language) into that which conforms with the strict rules of reason and which reliably produces useful inductions about the world, and all other thinking, which arrives at other conclusions that cannot be validated, are possibly contradicted by evidence, and cannot be used to accurately predict outcomes, which is my standard for truth and knowledge.
I see no merit in the latter, and hope to never engage in it. Furthermore, I have never found value in the utterances of those that do. You call it spiritual susceptibility (I call it faith, or unsupported belief), but that thinking makes you susceptible to any falsehood, so let's just call it susceptibility, and it is the antithesis of critical thought, which is the proper defense against such susceptibility. It is not a virtue as those who participate in it like to imply.
You couldn't have written that? I could:
O people, for it is impossible to know the mind of God or refute his wisdom, nay, even if a thousand men were to try for a thousand years.
Do you see a deity there? If not, why do you offer the words you did as evidence of one? My response to those words was about the same as yours would be expected to be to my version - I'm expected to see that as evidence of a deity? Sorry, but that's ordinary writing. Imagine people trying to convince you that I was a messenger of God using words like those. I can write more if you like:
Speak with wisdom and choose each word with care, for each word is like an invisible spirit, its kiss persisting long after its utterance. Go out and speak words of peace that you may enlighten the world and be a beacon of God. There is no greater bliss than to wear the face of God as one serves his brother in pious observation. Like a seed in fertile soil, your faithfulness will bloom in the expanse of the soul and radiate onto the world.
Can you explain why you consider the words that you do evidence that their author was a messenger from God, but not those I wrote? I don't think you can. I'll bet if you put the words you posted and mine side by side and asked people which were written by a man pretending to speak for a God, and which are evidence for a God, it would be about 50-50, even with Baha'i.
So then crickets, huh
@Truthseeker9 ? How about seeking some truth here rather than just ignoring inconvenient questions? How do you discern which comment is evidence that its author was a messenger of a deity, and which were written for an RF post? Rhetorical question. I know the answer, and judging by your unwillingness to respond, I think you do as well.
I understand that this stuff comforts you, you want to believe it, and that you likely view responses such as mine as hostile and unkind. But there's another world where people just don't think in those terms. They grapple with reason in an effort to discern what actual knowledge is. It's not personal, nor is it competitive. It's cooperative. It's dialectic, or the good faith effort to evaluate ideas according to the standards of reason applied to relevant evidence.
But the faithful tend to take it personally. They find the experience unpleasant. They are likely used to a different environment peopled with like-minded faith-based thinkers, who encourage one another to go down that path. Then they encounter a different culture with different values and methods when they enter the open marketplace of ideas such as an Internet forum, where they are told things they don't like and might not be used to hearing, and decide that atheists are mean people that like to pee on their cornflakes out of malice. No. This is a process that you are welcome to participate in and enjoy as well, but you'd need to have a certain attitude, that for lack of a better term I'll call scholastic susceptibility.
It is definitely wrong for you to offer to be the judge.
We are all judges of one another's words here. We come here to read and evaluate those words, and to laud those that resonate with us and rebut those that we judge flawed. That's what critical thought is - analysis, evaluation, judgment.
I'm not into debate myself, which is about winning.
Not to me. Unless it's in court, it's about learning. I think you have the wrong mindset of what debate is or can be. Once again, it is a cooperative effort among people with a shared set of values regarding how one determines what is true in the world. Because they have those same values and rules of valid thought, they can identify their differences and perhaps one will be convinced by the other. That's not winning and losing. That's teaching and learning.
I was involved in a "debate" over this image yesterday. My answer was 97, since 5 + (5+4+4+5+5) (4), but this was an error. The bundles are not worth 4, but 2 each.
I made a mistake in the third line. The boy was 5, so the things preceding him in that line had to be worth 4 each to total 13. I hadn't noticed that that made these bundles worth 2 each. If I had, my answer would look like 5 + (5+2+2+5+5) (2) = 43. Notice that the kid is holding two bundles and wearing purple shoes in the last line.
My error was pointed out to me, and we all went away in agreement. Someone taught, I learned, nobody won, nobody lost. Dialectic, a cooperative effort, not a battle.
You claimed that you being an atheist is based on reason, so please explain.
Critical thinking requires that no idea be believed without sufficient evidentiary and rational support, there is insufficient reason to believe that gods exist, therefore the claim that they do is to be rejected, ergo atheism. The only alternative is faith and theism, but that requires sidestepping this process.
