Can you explain why the above substitutions would not be equally valid, if stated by someone who had "direct experience" of Allah, Brahman, or Osiris?
>snip<
There is only One God. Logically, if the Universe was created, it all goes back to a single Source.
Yeah. If airplanes were created, logically they must have had one inventor. The Wright
Brothers. Oops. But so what? You're avoiding the point. Why would the substitutions I made not be equally valid if stated by someone who had "direct experience" of Allah, Brahman, or Osiris, which would then "prove" that their One True God is the One True God as well as your revelation "proves" that yours is? Because there are people out there who say with equal conviction that they have had a Revelation of the Divine
tm which turns out to be different from yours.
That is what has been revealed onto me. The truths I will impart to you about God here are from direct revelation, so please keep that in mind when you respond.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you" eh? Say, can you walk on water or anything?
I never said or thought I was special above and beyond any other human being. God loves everyone, I love God, I love everyone too. I do not place myself above any other person.
Except that you didn't have to "seek God" or be "sincere" or anything like everybody else. The god you describe could, if it existed, do for everyone else what it did for you. It didn't, and according to the other things you've said, it won't. Out of 7 billion people currently living on Earth,
you are the Chosen One. So, why you? Did your god hold a lottery or something?
I feel I am blessed for the revelation I have received and I share that freely. Regardless of what His plans are, part of His plan was to reveal onto me His existence.
Heh, you're starting to talk like the KJV. Cult-leader status us sure to follow, lol. Are you the next Joseph Smith, perhaps?
However, that doesn't make me special because He does it all the time. If you weren't so insular in your views, and branched out your understanding,
Mind-reading skills: you don't have them. What evidence do you have that I am insular in my views? I mean, apart from the fact that I'm not insular in
your views? Project much?
considering both sides equally,
Whaddaya mean "both?" When it comes to the issue of religion/spiritual belief, there are
thousands of sides. I am the one that's been arguing for considering the various "sides" (i.e., differing claims of Divine Revelation and mystical experience) equally. You want us to privilege yours and yours alone with credulous, evidence-free acceptance. You want us to "sincerely" seek your god and yours alone. You cannot explain why we should not seek the Goddess of the Wiccans (and each one of the other deities people have believed in) with equal sincerity.
you would find abundant testimony from people all over the world from every faith and practice receiving revelation of Gods existence.
Yes, and most of the abundant testimony from all those faiths and practices
contradicts yours. A lot of it says that Allah alone is God, he has no Son, and Allah is his prophet. A lot of it says that Brahman manifests in myriad forms (Krishna, Parvati, Shiva, Kali, etc., etc.). A lot of it backs up the teachings of the Buddha, and goes on to talk about Bardo realms and Bodhisattvas, etc., etc.. Then there are the revelations of the shamans, going back tens of thousands of years to the caves at Lascaux at least, telling of an alternate realm populated with therianthropic nature-spirits. I could go on. BTW, thus far I have demonstrated more knowledge of the various "sides" and the abundant testimony from people all over the world from different faiths and practices than you have. Likewise for my fellow commentators here. And you want to call
us biased and insular in our beliefs?
Of course that isn't evidence for a keen mind such as yours, who apparently needs the Creator of the Universe to dance a little jig in front of you for your amusement before you would believe.
Nope. Just a pattern of behavior consistent with the attributes claimed for it. So, if the Creator is said to be both loving and omnipotent (especially if the "loving" attribute is supposed to be perfect and unconditional), then we should expect to see omnipotence being wielded in a loving way. If I were to claim that Superman was my roommate, that claim would have
effects if it were true. There would be news footage of Superman saving people, shrugging off bullets when criminals shot at him, etc., because "Superman" has, in addition to his powers, the attribute of wanting to use them to save people. In the same way, an omnipotent, omnipresent Deity with a pattern of behavior guided by some principle (unconditional love, a thirst for domination, enjoyment of humans as tasty snacks, whatever) would be
too big and important to miss. We would not find ourselves in a Cosmos that looks and behaves exactly the way it would if such an entity did not exist. You tell us that your god is unconditionally loving, but you can't point to a pattern of behavior on his part that manifests this, because
he doesn't exhibit any behavior at all.First of all, just because I said that the only way to know God is by direct revelation doesn't mean that you cannot seek out God and find Him yourself, which millions of people all over the world find out every day..
So which is it then? Either God must reveal itself to us (i.e., God is the active agent, as you allege in your own case), or we can "seek out God and find him" ourselves, thus we are the active agents and God's self-revelation is a triggered response. And, since "millions" of people every day find
all sorts of different gods when they go a-seeking, we're back to the issue you have yet to respond to: why should we trust
your inner revelation more than anyone else's?
The whole point of the gospel is to set you up, so to speak, to receive that revelation, which He does give abundantly. Your childish understanding of the gospel really shines here. Don't you know that when you are baptised by the Holy Spirit you have a personal relationship with the Creator? What happened to me is nothing new; the only thing that is different about it is that I wasn't looking for God. That isn't even new, because again, if you ever bothered to consider both sides equally, which you are loathe to do of course since you would no longer be the center of the Universe,
There you go again. Wherever would you get the idea that I (or any of the other atheists here) think we're the center of the Universe? Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler debunked that shit 500 years ago. We know that, as far as the Cosmos is concerned, we are sub-microscopic organisms living on a dust-mote within a little puff of dust we call the Milky Way, among a hundred billion or more similar puffs of dust, and that the Cosmos is profoundly Not About Us.
You are the one who thinks that you are the crown of God's creation, the purpose for which the Cosmos was made, so that a hundred billion galaxies of a hundred billion (or more) stars each were forged to make your night sky pretty. You really need to stop projecting your own attitudes onto us. It doesn't help communication one bit.
you would see that unbelievers receive visions quite frequently.
Sure they do. I have received some pretty impressive visions myself after partaking of some psilocybin mushrooms.
[1] I can confidently say that anyone here could partake of psilocybin mushrooms or LSD or Ayahuasca or DMT and experience as profound a mystical experience as anything you've had, or more so. Under controlled, laboratory conditions. So once again: why should we trust
your revelations instead of the ones reported by Dr. Rick Strassman's volunteers, or Amazonian shamans, or people using Ganzfeld sensory deprivation or Lilly tanks or meditation techniques or Dervish-whirling, or, or, or...
Once again, the problem is: unbelievers (and believers of different stripes) do not receive visions that match yours, or each other's.
The Kingdom of God can be observed at any time, in any place.
And it happens to look
exactly like the
non-existence of a Kingdom of God. So in what sense can it be "observed?"
The internal and the external is Gods domain, Himself being the Souce of all things, and the Source of all action.
Thump your chest and hoot a little louder, that'll make your beliefs true.
If God wanted to let Himself be proven by instruments, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. He prefers to stay behind the scenes and let humanity come to its own conclusions.
And then (supposedly) brutally punishes us for eternity when we do so, thereby demonstrating his unconditional love.
You miss the point, trying to test reality for God when your life itself is the test.
Oh, well, all right then. My life demonstrates that no gods exist. My Revelation, which happens moment by moment every second that I'm awake is of a Reality that is not haunted by Invisible Magic Persons of any sort--no angels, demons, djinn, faeries, gods, goddesses, burning bushes, talking snakes, wizards with magic powers, etc., etc., etc., and behaves--from the sub-atomic level all the way up to the cosmological--exactly the way a naturalistic Cosmos may be expected to behave. The difference between my Revelation and yours: you have to live and operate according to my Revelation
[2] if you want to do so much as cross the street safely. You live in the same godless Universe I do. You can present no evidence whatsoever that I will ever have any use for yours.
Right now I have an A+ and you have an F. You might want to consult some crib notes because you are not prepared for the final exam.
Thump your chest and hoot a little louder. Maybe it'll make your beliefs true.