Is there really a god?

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This implies people are always logical, which would be a goal (to have everything flow from rationality), but it alas is not so.
But if the question arises, “might there be a reason God chooses not to “show Himself” to others?” I would think the answer would be in the affirmative. People may be hard of heart or prideful or any number of things that keeps them from accepting the gifts of Virtue–and indeed, they are gifts, minimally having much to do with us, but God–but we in the end, still choose to accept them, in some part, and the growth of such requires a work of our free will. It is here that such a thing may matter.

But I disagree about belief. There sre stages between belief and disbelief.
I would phrase it as:
complete denial
minimal acceptance of possibility
plausibility
somewhat strong possibility
probability
assured truth
And the work between one and the other can be found via good argumentation and working rationality.
So, for instance, say I didn’t believe that Reagonomics worked. Over the course of a persuasive argument, one may be swayed slightly and more and more until he may believe they do (this is an example, not saying definitively what I believe about economics). If you have ever changed your mind or beliefs on something, then I think it should be clear that there in fact is a range in between belief and not belief, in particular if there is a very persuasive argument against your position then that should seem fairly similar.
 
I had a dream last night about a lovely chicken dinner.
No way I can prove it. No way to measure it. You can’t experience it. But…you’d believe me, correct? Why would I lie about such a thing?

Point is…you (we) believe things all the time that are not provable and not measurable.

Same with God.
 
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i would just add; if you are looking to come home to " Mother Church" and are considering becoming protestant

; i would ask
which one of the 10,000+ splinters appeals to you?

pastor bobby ray or pastor charlotte? hmm… they both droan on in their homilies that any bible banging protestant already has memorized

or the closest protestant church down the street>?

hard to decide
 
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Hard of Heart and Prideful - We can not know that we are coming across this way to the deity if the deity does not give us this feedback. Just like someone can believe they are acting lovingly to their spouse, but the spouse believes they are being abusive. The level of “Hard of Heart and Prideful” may be of a redictulous level of absurdity for us to accept that your deity is asking for as well. If the deity is claiming that any level of relationship where the person is not willing to be absolutely subjecting themselves as a servant to the deity is considered “Hard of Heart and Prideful” is an absurd level to ask of any human being. This again is all information that the person needs feedback from the deity in order to adjust their approach though. But, apparently, the deity’s only response has been folded arms and playing the best divine hiddeness game ever. Can’t have a relationship with someone that appears to be no different than just not existing in the first place.

Belief - You can believe different sub-points of the topic being discussed but still not be convinced of the overall topic. Again for idea X, you either accept the argued premise for that conclusion or you don’t. Like in my mathematics example: A + B = C. So if someone states Apples + Battery Acid = Nutrition, you would not believe them, but you do believe that Apples = Nutrition. You can’t have a middle ground between believing that or not believing that. There is no middle ground between belief and disbelief.

Your list of phrases: These are levels of how firm you are in your belief or disbelief, not that you do not believe or disbelieve and are in some middle ground. Your firmness is based on how strong you feel about each piece of evidence. I strongly believe that evidence X makes for belief that the world is round hard to refute. But even if I had enough weak evidences of a round earth, I reach a tipping point where I believe the earth is round, even if it is a weakly held position. So you seem to be describing weak belief vs strong belief. I was only talking about belief vs non-belief, regardless of how strong you feel about your belief or non-belief. Again, there is no middle ground between the two. You either believe or you don’t.
 
Then you are talking about “Justified” belief. Justified to others, other than yourself. You are justified in believing that but we may not be. Your experience is hear-say only. However, we all experience dreams, we all don’t experience your deity because it’s choosing to reveal itself sufficiently to you and not to the rest of us. Since we can not control the level of evidence we would need to believe the deity exists, only your deity can, then it’s not our problem to solve since only your deity can do this. Again, it’s either choosing to not reveal to us the information we would need to even know that it exists or does not have the power to do this. Either way, not our problem.
 
Correct. You believe Neil DeGrasse Tyson, though (most likely…he seems to be a god to a lot of people these days…) and consider him an expert in his field. Fully qualified to answer questions that you & I have no way to verify. Try giving the same assent of trust and faith to those who, quite frankly, know more than you do about theological matters. I’m not implying that I’m one of them…I have no idea what your background is or how old you are, etc…I can only add that God reveals Himself in different degrees, in different ways, on His timeframe. The only prerequisite is that WE look for HIM. Unless you look for Him, you will not find Him.

That’s about the best I can do…
 
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Difference, as I see it, anyone can repeat and verify what Tyson is claiming to understand about reality and have discussions about where the speculation is for currently unfalsifiable claims of reality based on the current understanding of reality.

All deity claims are not able to be verified in any way, yet. No one can verify what goes on in someone’s brain that is able to tell the difference between an imagined event, an actual telepathic event, or an event that the person believes to be a deity communicating with them, but is actually something else entirely.

That is the difference between justified belief and someone’s personal experience it seems. Justified belief is something we can all have access to and verify while personal experiences are necessarily hear-say to everyone else and are not justified for everyone to believe that person’s explanation for their experience.

Relationships with a deity are necessarily both ways. But in this case, it holds all the access to create that experience, we can not go knock on its door and initiate that experience. It has to come to us. So, to the people it hasn’t done that to, it either does not want to or can not do so. Either way, not our problem. Can’t have a relationship with the concept of someone. You have to actually meet the person.
 
Damian said:
There is no middle ground between belief and disbelief.
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Sometimes there are middle grounds. Take for example the question of capital punishment. If there were no middle ground it would be either right or wrong. But there is a middle ground which says that although it may have been permitted in the past, given what we know today, it is best for a Christian not to favor capital punishment.
There a lot of other examples. Take for example, limbo for unbaptized babies. If there were no middle ground then either there is a limbo or not. But the middle ground is that we can hope that in the mercy of God there will be a way for an unbaptized infant to avoid limbo.
 
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Damian said:
Can’t have a relationship with the concept of someone. You have to actually meet the person.
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Some people have relationships through e-mails and blogs without actually having met the person. Everything is done over the internet.
 
Why don’t you ask God yourself ?

If you decide to do so, just be sure that you’re willing to die to self and accept what He asks of you.

Jim
 
Everyone here reading this understands the difference between a relationship with the concept of a person and the person actually emailing you. This is soo absurd of a response that I’ll just ignore replies like this since its an insult to the intelligence of the audience and myself for having to address these types of points.
 
Damian said:
Everyone here reading this understands the difference between a relationship with the concept of a person and the person actually emailing you. This is soo absurd of a response that I’ll just ignore replies like this since its an insult to the intelligence of the audience and myself for having to address these types of points.
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Here’s what you said:
You have to actually meet the person.
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I don’t see where you responded to my objection to this point.
 
I disagree. Belief is the same thing to me as the idea of “being convinced of”. You can hold beliefs in varying degrees of belief. Such as someone telling me they got a dog yesterday. I’ll probably believe them since I’ve seen people with dogs. If they show me a picture of the dog when they adopted her, then I’ll have a stronger belief that they own a dog, even if I’ve never seen it first hand. Now if they try to explain to me that they met a street illusionist that levitated, I’ll not believe their explanation for that event regardless of their justifications for it based on my understanding of reality.
As to capital punishment for example, most people do not draw a hard line between yes or no to capital punishment since they can find extreme examples of where they would be okay with it’s application. It’s like the old joke of, “Pay someone $1,000,000 for some homophobic act. Nope, well what about 1,000,000,000? Well… See there we go, everyone’s gay we just have to find out what their price is.” The middle grounds you appear to be talking about is the varying degrees of terrible someone has to be for capital punishment to be applied and about the justice’s system inability to ensure a fair and partial trial. So if we could ensure 100% accuracy of the death penalty, then some people would be okay with it. I would not since I don’t believe in teaching people that it is okay to have a government with lethal force over the governed.
Limbo in Catholicism is about waiting to be judged as I understand it. There has yet to be a trial, so the person is neither guilty or not guilty at this point. So there is nothing being concluded on, no judgement, nothing to believe or disbelieve about the person.
Hope that clears up what I am trying to communicate about why I do not believe that there is a middle ground between belief and non-belief; of being convinced or not convinced. You can be convinced on certain evidences about the over-all concept of something, but then not enough to believe the over-all concept yet.
 
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