Can you tell when you do right from wrong? That intuition is what humans were given to know truth. God doesn't have a gender. We say "he" because people sexualize God when we say "she". Why would God pay attention to willful disbelief? If it's not willful than faith can come in its due time. To ask for proof from God is not to exercise prayer. You sound like a Catholic talking to a Protestant "how do you know how to read the Bible without the Pope as it's interpreter? Ya'll disagree with each other". A Protestant uses prayer to read the Bible and it doesn't matter if others disagree with him. You are trying to see things from a God's eye view

Acosmism is theism. You are neither it seems

Why is atheism the default? I'm just claiming what I know from experience. You've tried to refute the search for religion by rational argument. You're main argument seems to be that religion is a continuum. Religion is between you and God though, not between you and organized factions. If you've never had a religious moment than you don't know what this conversation is about. It doesn't matter what others say or do. It matters what you know and do

Most atheist don't mind a deistic God. They just don't want a deity butting into their business. Anyone who says God is in everything in his essence is a panentheist. People debate whether God choices to create or not. I don't see how these are fruitful debates. If we are one with God that is what matters. Im a nondualist. But you seem to be saying Spinoza wasn't an atheist? He believed in loving God in nature. I don't see how this relates to the occult though. The occult is nothing but anti monotheism

QAnon? How are you distinguished from Stalin I can ask? If you don't think truth is attainable than why are you writing posts? Aren't you trying to be objective? Why should truth be hard to find? Is life bad?

If you don't want to find truth than you are truly devoid of both the philosophical and religious spirit. At least you must still be curious about things, right? All I know of God is what I've experienced throughout my life and God is infinite so I must know little about him

To know God is to be one with him. In that moment you are eternal with him where you are not distinguished from God but God is still distinguished from you. That's what I strive for and I've only critiqued the attempt to disprove religion in general in this thread.

Aren't you familiar with Spinoza's "intellectual love of God"?

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Spinoza says we are modes of God just as Aquinas says God is in everything in his essence. Obviously the consciousness we experience here is not God because it is not all perfect. But then again to be one with the eternal is to be eternal as well since you are one.

And it could be what the truth sounds like. You're going to take this as 50/50 chance? Everything has many interpretations abstractly. Conversations are for bringing out clarity

Prayer has never been about getting stuff. It's opening oneself to spiritual things one finds uncomfortable. People who pray for cures already know this. Infinity resides in everyone. To disbelieve God is to doubt yourself.

God demonstrates his presence to those with faith. As I said, God answers prayers as he wants, not as faithless people want. Someone might pray for a dog and instead get a beautiful wife. They might pray for a cure and get more faith instead. You just don't know how prayer works because you don't practice it

Studies can't tell if prayer works because the experiment can't measure faith or know anything something is given in place of what is prayered for

Just how literal one wants to get with the Bible will depend on how you read it. There is hyperbole, figurative language, and stories. The Bible says the world has 4 corners. It says geocentrism is true. It says this at least to those who interpret it that way. Religious stories are all over the ancient world and creations claims are prominent

Nominalism is not saying that two objects can't be identical. They are saying each object has one principle (insteadbof two) that is physically shaped a certain way and two things can be identical in structure. But they don't share a form because all they *share* (own in common) is being in space. Sharing is the key term. Is there something that is in two rabbits or do you have two objects that each separately have the same biology

Matter and form are the same for nominalism. If you say objects don't share an abstract form, then they must share a material one. And then all rocks become one object! So you have to say something abstract is involved in an object, which is to reject matter altogether

Truth is real and ideas are real. Ideas only go together in certain ways. But applying substance outside the mind to truth is to put material reality on them. So you say that means rocks are united in a cloud Form? They are just rocks, each individual.

Suppose you turn two batches of carbon and oxygen into water. Where did the nature come from? They are identical because they share identical structure. Nominalism doesn't deny things can be identical. It denies they are sharing an abstract philosophical form. We know what we are talking about when we say "tree" but that doesn't mean my mind shares in yours

I think this question is empirical and there is a level of cohesion to atoms that form them into objects. We just don't know what that level is

Atheists want religion to be perfectly clear and this itself is against faith. Faith involves using discretion and reacting even when reason doesn't give a reason. "How am I supposed to know which religion to follow" implies one is not immersing themselves in religion

Consider Richard Dawkins for example. Religion pours hot coals on his mind everyday and it clearly has caused him a lot of suffering. Just because he thinks he knows everything when his suffering proves otherwise. Religion use to cause the same thing in me, a subjective ich, but now it's completely gone. Not because I found evidence for God, but because faith gives me peace from that. You can't grow when your rationality feels like it's cloaked in a hair shirt

Religious truths are not like scientific truths. Even scientific truths are relative to a degree. Only God is absolute. If you hold to objective truth and yet remain an atheist because of lack of evidence you're being hard headed and ignoring the whole experience of religion, which is supposed to grow our hearts. God can do anything

Everyone approaches faith differently because they all experience religion differently. The Bible can be true for one and not another. Seriously. God gives spirituality to each person as he likes because it is as if we are children on this earth. Stories can be true and false to a child. The higher truth is God who makes the stories. My general point was that hatred toward religion can turn into love for religion without a conversion. Faith is groping in the dark

Prove that because religion comes in many forms it is not reliable as truth. You make premises without conclusions so it's as if you have faith in non-faith. A simple belief in God suffices.

Without a way to prove god's existence, what we can do is face the dislike we have towards god and really try to find ways not to be bothered by it. Loving god is faith/spirituality

You're really trying to justify ignoring spirituality because you it can't be put in a category? You cant grow much with only rationality. Faith is a calling and a higher logic. Everyone is influenced by it in their souls through society. Some hate it

If you take the Bible literally you've missed its message

Two people can be opposed to each other and still be spiritual. Spiritual conflict is part of religion. People grow from struggle. From your side you would have to say romance is not definable so there is no point sharing stories about your first kiss with a friend

But maybe you don't seem to believe in the supernatural. Those who do have a common experience. I think the word 'religion' has use because it speaks of something, an experience, within society. Is democracy easily defined?

Doesn't "religion" have a certain definite meaning? It's a system of belief in the supernatural that arouses something, love or hatred to various degrees, in the soul

I believe everyone should be exposed to religion and everyone has to deal with their own response to it. It's part of growing, which is the whole point of religion

As far as what I know about early nominalism, they did not deny truths of language or that objects have properties. They denied non material forms and Forms.

What about an argument for non-duality (Forms vs earth)? Either everything is one or it is not and hence there are many things, the latter being the existential stance. Substance vs action

But how can contingent things have universals? Aren't universals our way of knowing a parcel of reality as it exists around us? Your belief in universals indicates knowledge of the world

So if things don't make sense they can never make sense? People who want to believe in God already believe in God. There is not always a great rush about it, especially if other areas of life have your attention

Nominalism makes sense because of things in nature are in a continuum. If I took the time I could find many species of plants that look kinda like trees but are basically in the middle sonewhere. Do we say they have the universal of tree-ness and shrub-ness at the same time? Or is plant-ness the universal? Does a car have an essence? What if we take the wheels off? Humans group things in their mind in order to see reality from an intellectual perspective and they can get tangled up because we can't see all of reality as it is

"When Descartes wished to assure himself of the truth of knowledge, he said : Cogito ergo sum; that is, he ceased to look at the cogitatum which is abstract thought and looked at the cogitare itself, the act of the ego, the centre from which all rays of our world issue and to which they return. And then he no longer found in thought the being which is only a simple idea, a universal to be realized.." Giovanni Gentile, The theory of Mind as pure Act, ch. 8

I do agree that Descartes may have had some genuine level of dissociation

Religion seems to me to be schizophrenia trying to cure a misdiagnosed schizophrenia. Someone can certainly doubt if they are schizophrenic, they doubt themselves and others. Maybe in a different way though. I think the problems in the world are due to people who do wrong things and it's not just about psychosis and chemicals

Isn't it that we find evidence for things and wonder about things and use reason to connect ideas? All manner of thoughts relate to all the others. One does not need to prove something an infinite number of times