With the debate thread locked, I can't quote, so apologies that this is all undated.
I was thinking about this last night, regarding these statements of Junebug's.
You say you want evidence of God but you don't have any desire to find God.
you have no desire to find God.
God is not going to reveal Himself to us.
You have to be a willing participant to know God
Most particularly that last. What Junebug appears to be saying here is that there is a kind of evidence that actually changes depending on the attitude of the observer. Not that a person will interpret something differently, but that they will actually perceive it differently.
For example: there is a noise from the attic. The evidence - a noise - is objective and fixed: the noise happened, it had a cause. I may say "burglar!", Junebug may say "mouse!" (so we differ with our perceptions), but ultimately we can go into the attic and look. We may see a burglar, we may see mouse droppings, we may see a broken window, we may see a warm mouse in a trap. Our perceptions may alter the conclusions that we might draw, but ultimately the evidence exists and is fixed and will normally be followable to the correct conclusion. If a mouse made the noise, then ultimately the evidence for that conclusion will build and build, and eventually there will be no choice for me but to agree there was a mouse. With repeatable phenomenon, this is of course a lot easier - a CCTB system in the attic would be pretty conclusive as to what caused the NEXT noise we may hear.
But take another look at Junebug's statements. They imply that as a disinterested observer, I actually will be entirely unable to recognise any evidence that may be presented. I would view the CCTV footage of an attic empty apart from the mouse being caught in the trap,
but I would see a burglar walking around.
Take a moment to consider that. The contention that evidence is being deliberately obscured, that my perceptions are being specifically altered, so that am I unable to perceive the "actual" facts and evidence in place
unless I have already accepted the conclusion.
If that is indeed what Junebug is saying - and it is hard to see any other meaning (especially given her last, bolded statement) - then she has been correct all along. Any discussion on evidence is indeed an entire waste of time, since the two participants will actually perceive the universe in a different way. Not in the trivial "we are standing six feet apart and so I had a better view of the accident" kind of difference, but in the "if we had both been standing in the exact same place,
we would have seem entirely different things".
It is an interesting point of view: that one's beliefs do not just change one's perspectives and conclusions, but also change the nature of reality itself. And it almost - almost - makes a logical sense within Junebug's argument.....except for this one line:
God wants the world to know the Love is there for us all.
Because a god who wanted us to know would NOT cause reality to be perceived differently depending on the state of belief. Reality would be the same for the believer, and the unbeliever,
regardless of their motivations and perspectives.
The statements "God wants the world to know" and "You have to be a willing participant" are mutually exclusive statements if reality is mutable depending on one's perspective.
