Belief... or lack thereof

[Bradski]

I will remember this statement forever, Bradski.

And it will come back to haunt you.

Just remember I said ‘you can’, not ‘you must’.

That there will be a kookaburra in the tree in my garden sometime today is a proposition I can believe without evidence. That there will be a dragon, I cannot.

The above demonstrates exactly what I said: truth matters.

To a certain extent.

 

[PRmerger]

Just remember I said ‘you can’, not ‘you must’.

Sure.

That there will be a kookaburra in the tree in my garden sometime today is a proposition I can believe without evidence. That there will be a dragon, I cannot.

So let’s flesh this out.

Why is the MV more like a kookaburra and God more like a dragon?

 

[PRmerger]

As I said, it’s only when someone says my niece can’t get married because she’s gay or…

Just so we’re clear on this: we all believe that “some people can’t get married because”…right?

That is, you certainly don’t have a problem telling your son in law, “You can’t get married to your high school sweet heart (because you’re already married to my daughter)”, right?

And you don’t have a problem telling your wife: “You can’t get married to the mailman (because you’re already married to me)”, right?

Or telling your son that he really can’t marry his car (because that’s just gaga, lala nonsense), right?

hurriyetdailynews.com/man-wants-to-marry-his-car-clerks-say-no.aspx?pageID=438&n=man-wants-to-marry-his-car-clerks-say-no-1999-03-07

 

[Bradski]

So let’s flesh this out. Why is the MV more like a kookaburra and God more like a dragon?

Who said they were? I’m just using those examples to show the difference between viable and non viable proposals that have no evidence. God is not a proposal with no evidence. There is evidence which we can accept or reject.

Just so we’re clear on this: we all believe that “some people can’t get married because”…right?

That’s right. And I’m quite prepared to listen to and accept or reject any argument for or against any proposition you may put. Democracy and freedom of speech are wonderful things.

And the arguments can be based on Christian scripture or Catholic Church dogma or Aboriginal Dream Time beliefs or Bhuddism or the Koran or examining the entrails of a goat. Any belief system you’d care to mention.

 

[pocaracas]

Then you’ve just re-defined vacuum.

I suppose you also could say: I want re-define “clothed” to mean “naked” and you’d be like this guy…

“Hey, I’m ‘clothed’ in the finest regalia there is!”

…but he was known as a fool, no?

Really, PR? really?!!

You know Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2 ?
You know what that ‘c’ stands for?
The speed of light in vacuum: physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?c

So, just out of that one, we can have light in vacuum and still call it vacuum! Electro-magnetic waves travel in vacuum.

Then, you have a bunch of other constructs: gravitational fields, electro-weak fields, Higgs field, etc, etc, etc… All of them in vacuum. And it’s still vacuum!

###############

Seriously?

This is your reason for being an atheist?

No… that’s a rationalization that has come to enforce the initial suspicion that people seem to be wrong about the existence of God (or gods).

Using this model you shouldn’t be vaccinating your children either. The belief that vaccinating your children is meshed with psychology, too. “I love my kids so I am going to try to protect them!”–very psychological.

Is there any exploitation of psychological flaws? Or is there a scientific reasoning behind the vaccinations? Are we really going to this again?

##############

Ah. So it seems you’re moving towards retraction of that statement. That’s good.

Suffice it to say that it’s not a Catholic teaching that one must be convinced of God’s existence prior to sensing Him.

What are you talking about with “that book by Luke”???

It’s one of the books in the bible… don’t you know it?

 

[pocaracas]

You see, unlike you, I am able to suspend my belief and look at the facts… for example, the nature of god is, atleast in the abrahamic definition,outside the physical world (ie not dectectible by science) and therefore you cannot ask someone to scientifically prove the existance of god

Then how did Abraham get the memo to kill his kid?
How did he then get the retraction of the first memo?
If there was some interaction with sound waves, or even brain matter, then there was some god-physics interaction, which would be measurable…

 

[DeusExMachina]

Hey, no-ones attempting to change someone’s faith here. But we do look at things differently. That’s obvious. We both are receiving the same (name removed by moderator)ut, but we process it differently. So there must be a difference in the software.

If you had exactly the same genes as me and exactly the same experiences, then you would think like I do. You would, in effect, be me, so you wouldn’t have any choice.

Now here comes the bit you won’t like. I believe that my software gives me a more accurate representation of reality. But to be honest, that doesn’t really matter. We’re both happy with the way we view things. it’s only a problem when our views conflict (gay marriage, contraception etc).

When did I mention contraception or gay marriage? It just so happens that Im not adamently opposed to either in a wide variety of circumstances

 

[DeusExMachina]

Then how did Abraham get the memo to kill his kid?
How did he then get the retraction of the first memo?
If there was some interaction with sound waves, or even brain matter, then there was some god-physics interaction, which would be measurable…

He got the “first memo” because God spoke directly to him. He got the retraction when the angel told him he passed God’s test and a ram appeared in the bushes

 

[MPat]

That means that some are indeed convinced of the reality of their friends.

You didn’t look at any more evidence before pronouncing your belief in that um, mythological creature. Thus no new evidence counts (weren’t you in favour of greatly emphasising the first time one starts to believe?). It looks like we are observing all the exploitation of psychological flaws that you claimed to see in religions here - if not more…

It happens. If you really want some stats, here’s a particular stat: children with imaginary friends and schizophrenia (What a combo!):
telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/9828583/We-did-not-know-that-our-schizophrenic-daughter-January-Schofields-imaginary-friends-were-hallucinations.html - “Still, it is incredibly rare – the NIMH study, begun in 1990, has to date identified only 130 children under 13 with the condition.”

You are pretty desperate - someone with schizophrenia sees hallucinations, not imaginary friends. The article you cited is even called “We did not know that our schizophrenic daughter January Schofield’s imaginary friends were hallucinations”. Did you at least read the headline?

Not to mention that even if they would count, you have promised millions of such kids right now - not 130 counting from 1990.

Also, tons of stories of imaginary friends here: iusedtobelieve.com/make_believe/imaginary_friends/imaginary_friends_s1.php.

Unfortunately for you, they are just anonymously submitted stories on a random website that do not seem to indicate that much actual belief…

Oh… how about Asperger’s? circleofmoms.com/autismaspergerspdd-awareness/10-yr-old-with-aspergers-imaginary-friends-684154 It even goes on to teenage years and talking to those friends happens in front of everyone.

So, just a post in a random website? And even then - still not saying what you need? Something socially awkward is no indication of an actual belief.

40%?
So… 60% don’t admit that they do not exist.
It’s not like most religious people do become martyrs, too… Or are you trying to imply that every (at least, most) religious person is a martyr at heart?

No, that is not what I wrote and that is not not what that article you cited said. 40% said that their imaginary friends are not real on their own initiative. Not just without being forced - without being asked. How many religious believers do you know, who say their religion is made up without even being asked?!

So, let’s see… In that post you have offered three additional “pieces of evidence” (and reasserted the “original” one), and you managed to ignore the fact that a couple of them (the ones that are not extra unreliable) actually contradict your claims. One of them - in the headline (!), another one - in the part that I have cited specifically. Yes, you are in no position to criticise not just religious believers, but also ufologists and cryptozoologists - at least they can find evidence that supports their claims (however weakly) instead of contradicting them outright.

Those “psychological flaws” are reasons to understand how religious beliefs may have came about, how they are maintained, how they are perpetuated.
If one is aware that religious belief is borne out of such “psychological flaws”, then how can he maintain such belief? Of course, a believer will retain his belief, even knowing about this possibility.

You mean like you keep your belief about existence of vast number of kids who believe in existence of their own imaginary friends?

About that full argument… it’s now 5000 characters long and nowhere near complete… I knew it was quite the endeavor. I’ll probably put it on pastebin, when it’s done, instead of posting it in full here, because of the 6000 characters limit per post and that would be better in just one go, no?

Maybe it could get a separate thread in that case?

I’ve argued with a few muslims… if they were “real Muslim apologists” or not… I know not.

Well, it depends. Were they actually engaging in apologetics (defense of their faith), or were they just talking about it?

This sentence reminded me of the “no true scotsman” fallacy… hmmm…

I think I’ll use that as an excuse to link tofspot.blogspot.lt/2014/11/the-summa-of-all-internet-debate.html.

Also, that Muslim seems to value Mo much more than J.C… isn’t that what I said, in a nutshell?

No, it is not what you have said. You have said that Muslims will make a case like Christians, just emphasising “their” miracles.

 

[MPat]

In computers, meta-information of a file is information about that file: it’s size, where it’s stored on the drive, what sort of information is stored on that file (image, sound, text, binary executable, etc) and some other details… Just for JPEG images, there’s a whole plethora of meta-info that can get stored in an EXIF header.

The meta in metaphysics seems to address something else. Something beyond physics.
A thousand years ago, the information about the Big Bang’s existence was unavailable, so that would be in the realm of metaphysics. Magnetics, too… some rocks “magically” bond! Light was magical, etc, etc, etc…
Nowadays, many things have already been discovered and became the realm of physics, instead of meta-physics. Hence, physics is getting there…

I see. No, to keep computer metaphors, difference between physics and metaphysics is more analogous to the difference between data in database and database structure. Metaphysics considers what Physics can find, preconditions necessary for Physics to work (for example, existence of causes).

Also, let’s not forget that materialism is also a “school” of metaphysics. When an atheist claims that spirits (and, more specifically, God) do not exist, that is a metaphysical claim.

Yes, but there was a solid theory behind the hunt for the Higgs Boson.
For God, all I see is a potential exploitation of flaws in human psychology. Yes, many people have believed, have been convinced of the reality of God…but that’s just people being convinced of something that no one can demonstrate exists. There’s no way to build a machine to record the presence of God… but there was one for the Higgs.

But tell me: if I do look for evidence, what will I find?

One more call to speculate when one could just “perform an experiment”?

Yes.
And there’s a theory that allows for such a cause to be natural… QCD.

Are you sure that “theory” is not self-contradicting?

Also, you already said in this very thread, that it is hard to say what “natural” actually means. And that kinda demotivates me. I guess there is little point to go further just to get more similar “digressions”…

Oh boy… I’ve been a bit sleep deprived this past week… what did I say?
hmmm… it was this:

No, I meant that you have accepted the principle of causality in that very same post.

And there is no need to post if you are tired. We are not paying you, after all.

What?! when did I do that?

When you made those claims:

As always, something palpable, testable, even something as finicky as psychology, is far more likely to be correct than philosophical arguments or miracles.

Did you know that people who get a PhD in sciences are getting a Philosophy Doctoral degree?
A scientific argument is a Philosophical one.

Now add them - and you get a claim that psychology “outranks” scientific arguments. That is simple - you have said that psychology “outranks” philosophical arguments, and that scientific arguments count as philosophical ones. And yes, you offered that as a clarification of that previous post.

And yes, you intuitively liked those two claims and intuitively disliked the inevitable conclusion. Intuition is not known for consistency.

 

[DeusExMachina]

You didn’t look at any more evidence before pronouncing your belief in that um, mythological creature. Thus no new evidence counts (weren’t you in favour of greatly emphasising the first time one starts to believe?). It looks like we are observing all the exploitation of psychological flaws that you claimed to see in religions here - if not more…

You are pretty desperate - someone with schizophrenia sees hallucinations, not imaginary friends. The article you cited is even called “We did not know that our schizophrenic daughter January Schofield’s imaginary friends were hallucinations”. Did you at least read the headline?

Not to mention that even if they would count, you have promised millions of such kids right now - not 130 counting from 1990.

Unfortunately for you, they are just anonymously submitted stories on a random website that do not seem to indicate that much actual belief…

So, just a post in a random website? And even then - still not saying what you need? Something socially awkward is no indication of an actual belief.

No, that is not what I wrote and that is not not what that article you cited said. 40% said that their imaginary friends are not real on their own initiative. Not just without being forced - without being asked. How many religious believers do you know, who say their religion is made up without even being asked?!

So, let’s see… In that post you have offered three additional “pieces of evidence” (and reasserted the “original” one), and you managed to ignore the fact that a couple of them (the ones that are not extra unreliable) actually contradict your claims. One of them - in the headline (!), another one - in the part that I have cited specifically. Yes, you are in no position to criticise not just religious believers, but also ufologists and cryptozoologists - at least they can find evidence that supports their claims (however weakly) instead of contradicting them outright.

You mean like you keep your belief about existence of vast number of kids who believe in existence of their own imaginary friends?

Maybe it could get a separate thread in that case?

Well, it depends. Were they actually engaging in apologetics (defense of their faith), or were they just talking about it?

I think I’ll use that as an excuse to link tofspot.blogspot.lt/2014/11/the-summa-of-all-internet-debate.html.

No, it is not what you have said. You have said that Muslims will make a case like Christians, just emphasising “their” miracles.

We’ve tried, but they cant see how illogical theyre being. Feel like giving up?

 

[pocaracas]

He got the “first memo” because God spoke directly to him. He got the retraction when the angel told him he passed God’s test and a ram appeared in the bushes

There you go.
All those would be testable… a nice video camera would do nicely…
Heck, like I said earlier, he could even do the same for us all… speak to us directly, and no more need for religious leaders, nor religious misleaders.
Sadly He doesn’t.
Why did God become shy after that?

Why must I hear what God desires from the mouths or pens (or keyboards) of humans?
Why all the arguments that PRmerger and MPat (and a few others), when all it would take to ensure all of humanity to agree was to repeat that very first action with Abraham…?
Do I need to spell out the problem of evil, so you’d give me Aquinas’ reply… “it’s a mystery”?

How about the mysterious psychological conditions that lead people to see, or hear, or experience things that aren’t there?
What percentage of the population currently suffers from that?
How would people from 5000 years ago interpret such experiences?
How about the very real capability that humans possess for fiction? Story-telling… does it matter if the story is true? Or just that it resonates with the audience? Judging by all the movies, books, tv-shows, etc. we get every year, I’d say the latter is quite important.

Suppose someone combined story-telling, with imagination, with entertainment, with the base desires of most people and delivered that to his closest group. And did so in the right proportions for each, so as not to break the spell, to keep the illusion of reality, while presenting fiction. They’d cheer and want more.
A bit like they show in this nice and silly movie: youtube.com/watch?v=wXYvwEeWrm8

It would be a somewhat rare event, as most people who attempt it would probably fail in presenting things in the correct proportions, but all it takes is a few to succeed… and then achieve some sort of perpetuation of the story.

 

[pocaracas]

You didn’t look at any more evidence before pronouncing your belief in that um, mythological creature. Thus no new evidence counts (weren’t you in favour of greatly emphasising the first time one starts to believe?). It looks like we are observing all the exploitation of psychological flaws that you claimed to see in religions here - if not more…

…]
So, let’s see… In that post you have offered three additional “pieces of evidence” (and reasserted the “original” one), and you managed to ignore the fact that a couple of them (the ones that are not extra unreliable) actually contradict your claims. One of them - in the headline (!), another one - in the part that I have cited specifically. Yes, you are in no position to criticise not just religious believers, but also ufologists and cryptozoologists - at least they can find evidence that supports their claims (however weakly) instead of contradicting them outright.

Oh well… so google didn’t help me there. Maybe I searched in the wrong place…

Although… if I remember correctly, I was going on about the evidence for God is indistinguishable from imaginary friends.
It’s all in people’s heads.
What people do with that conviction about such imaginary friends is something different.

You mean like you keep your belief about existence of vast number of kids who believe in existence of their own imaginary friends?

Just because the majority are aware of their irreality, doesn’t mean that many are not.

Maybe it could get a separate thread in that case?

We’ll see…

Well, it depends. Were they actually engaging in apologetics (defense of their faith), or were they just talking about it?

Defending… and presenting cool pearls of information like this site: islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/earlysaw.html
Check how absent of any miracles are the earliest three accounts of that character known as Mo.

I think I’ll use that as an excuse to link tofspot.blogspot.lt/2014/11/the-summa-of-all-internet-debate.html.

Awesome!

No, it is not what you have said. You have said that Muslims will make a case like Christians, just emphasising “their” miracles.

yep… Valuing Mo’s “miracles” more than JC’s, for he was the last prophet. No other will follow… how convenient.

#############

I see. No, to keep computer metaphors, difference between physics and metaphysics is more analogous to the difference between data in database and database structure. Metaphysics considers what Physics can find, preconditions necessary for Physics to work (for example, existence of causes).

Also, let’s not forget that materialism is also a “school” of metaphysics. When an atheist claims that spirits (and, more specifically, God) do not exist, that is a metaphysical claim.

ok… if you say so…

One more call to speculate when one could just “perform an experiment”?

And what would be the procedure undertaken for that experiment?

Are you sure that “theory” is not self-contradicting?

It’s been checked and rechecked… even got a Nobel prize.

Also, you already said in this very thread, that it is hard to say what “natural” actually means. And that kinda demotivates me. I guess there is little point to go further just to get more similar “digressions”…

huh? “hard to say what Natural actually means”?!
It seems you may be stretching something I said a bit beyond its scope…

No, I meant that you have accepted the principle of causality in that very same post.

A conditional acceptance, if I read what I wrote correctly…

And there is no need to post if you are tired. We are not paying you, after all.

If I don’t reply when I read this, I forget to… and that would be rude of me.

When you made those claims:

Now add them - and you get a claim that psychology “outranks” scientific arguments. That is simple - you have said that psychology “outranks” philosophical arguments, and that scientific arguments count as philosophical ones. And yes, you offered that as a clarification of that previous post.

And yes, you intuitively liked those two claims and intuitively disliked the inevitable conclusion. Intuition is not known for consistency.

oh boy…
Finicky Psychology - because most (if not all) its findings are statistics based. Highly dependent on certain conditions of the experiments and difficult to generalize to everyone in the world. Why? Because it’s just searching for patterns in behaviors. Still, it serves its high-level purposes.

The understanding of how human psychology works (not the field of Psychology, but how brains tend to operate to produce a certain behavior… which is what the field of Psychology tries to discover) can lead one to deprecate certain philosophical arguments, due to the awareness of the reliance of such arguments on certain known psychological flaws which lead to unconditional acceptance of the arguments, provided the correct trigger.

And, well, intuition is all about trying to keep us alive, so there’s that consistency. Intuition on arguments… hehe… like someone said, if it wasn’t for that, 90% of advertising wouldn’t work (again, statistics concerning human psychology).

So… what is outranking what and how?

 

[DeusExMachina]

There you go.
All those would be testable… a nice video camera would do nicely…
Heck, like I said earlier, he could even do the same for us all… speak to us directly, and no more need for religious leaders, nor religious misleaders.
Sadly He doesn’t.
Why did God become shy after that?

Why must I hear what God desires from the mouths or pens (or keyboards) of humans?
Why all the arguments that PRmerger and MPat (and a few others), when all it would take to ensure all of humanity to agree was to repeat that very first action with Abraham…?
Do I need to spell out the problem of evil, so you’d give me Aquinas’ reply… “it’s a mystery”?

How about the mysterious psychological conditions that lead people to see, or hear, or experience things that aren’t there?
What percentage of the population currently suffers from that?
How would people from 5000 years ago interpret such experiences?
How about the very real capability that humans possess for fiction? Story-telling… does it matter if the story is true? Or just that it resonates with the audience? Judging by all the movies, books, tv-shows, etc. we get every year, I’d say the latter is quite important.

Suppose someone combined story-telling, with imagination, with entertainment, with the base desires of most people and delivered that to his closest group. And did so in the right proportions for each, so as not to break the spell, to keep the illusion of reality, while presenting fiction. They’d cheer and want more.
A bit like they show in this nice and silly movie: youtube.com/watch?v=wXYvwEeWrm8

It would be a somewhat rare event, as most people who attempt it would probably fail in presenting things in the correct proportions, but all it takes is a few to succeed… and then achieve some sort of perpetuation of the story.

Sometimes God does speak directly to people… thats where you get miracles from. And as for the problem of evil, God would rather his imperfect creations(us) have free will than him controlling our every move.

 

[PRmerger]

God is not a proposal with no evidence. There is evidence which we can accept or reject.

Excellent, excellent.

And the arguments can be based on Christian scripture or Catholic Church dogma or Aboriginal Dream Time beliefs or Bhuddism or the Koran or examining the entrails of a goat. Any belief system you’d care to mention.

I never base my arguments against homosexual marriage on Christian Scripture or Catholic Church dogma.

Just like I never base my arguments against pedophilia on Christian Scripture or Catholic Church dogma.

And just like I never base my arguments against murder on Christian Scripture or Catholic Church dogma.

 

[PRmerger]

Really, PR? really?!!

You know Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2 ?
You know what that ‘c’ stands for?
The speed of light in vacuum: physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?c

So, just out of that one, we can have light in vacuum and still call it vacuum! Electro-magnetic waves travel in vacuum.

Then, you have a bunch of other constructs: gravitational fields, electro-weak fields, Higgs field, etc, etc, etc… All of them in vacuum. And it’s still vacuum!

No, poca.

Once it has something in it, it’s not a vacuum anymore.

thefreedictionary.com/vacuum

 

[PRmerger]

It’s one of the books in the bible… don’t you know it?

Ah. Can you cite where St. Luke professes that God’s existence must be presupposed before one can sense Him?

 

[pocaracas]

Sometimes God does speak directly to people… thats where you get miracles from.

Oh?.. and how can those “sometimes” be discernible from some psychological condition that only happens to a few people?

And as for the problem of evil, God would rather his imperfect creations(us) have free will than him controlling our every move.

Well then, why the desire to spread the faith patent in the early believers and Europeans sailors of old?
That sort of cut short the free will detail for many people.
“Believe what I say, or go to hell” is something that still to this day haunts many people into remaining in the belief side of things.

Also, God had no qualm in cutting the free will of Abraham, nor Moses, nor many other so-called prophets… and they turned out alright, apparently.
If they could handle it, why can’t I? Why can’t everyone else?

Oh… but Abraham already believed… the same with Moses… oh… so, there seems to be some sort of a pre-requisite.

 

[pocaracas]

No, poca.

Once it has something in it, it’s not a vacuum anymore.

thefreedictionary.com/vacuum

Did you read your link?
“a. Absence of matter.
b. A space empty of matter.
c. A space relatively empty of matter.
d. A space in which the pressure is significantly lower than atmospheric pressure.”

Let’s ignore c. and d. for these purposes, as they are just approximations.
a. and b. talk about “matter”
I said something about fields.
Let’s use your dictionary: thefreedictionary.com/field
“9. Physics - A region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure, having a determinable value at every point in the region.”

############

Ah. Can you cite where St. Luke professes that God’s existence must be presupposed before one can sense Him?

According to a well read Christian at AF.org: it is outlined in luke 11:5-13.
Let’s see what it says… biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2011%3A5-13
"
Luke 11:5-13New International Version (NIV)

5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[a] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for** a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”"**

 

[PRmerger]

Did you read your link?
“a. Absence of matter.
b. A space empty of matter.
c. A space relatively empty of matter.
d. A space in which the pressure is significantly lower than atmospheric pressure.”

Let’s ignore c. and d. for these purposes, as they are just approximations.
a. and b. talk about “matter”
I said something about fields.
Let’s use your dictionary: thefreedictionary.com/field
“9. Physics - A region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure, having a determinable value at every point in the region.”

I accept all this.

And not sure what your point is?

According to a well read Christian at AF.org: it is outlined in luke 11:5-13.
Let’s see what it says… biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2011%3A5-13
"
Luke 11:5-13New International Version (NIV)

5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[a] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for** a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”"**

Can you point to the part which limns that God’s existence must be accepted before one can sense Him???