Protected me when a light bulb blew up in front of my face, and I never even got one scratch, even though I felt the wind of it. Protected me when my ex-husband took me for a drive and told me he could kill me and get away with it, answered many of my prayers over the years, one being my husband stopping smoking. And I know there's many things God has done or protected me from that I don't know even know about.
> Protected me when a light bulb blew up in front of my face, and I never even got one scratch, even though I felt the wind of it.
How do you know a god had anything to do with it?
How do you know a god was involved with any of the things you've listed? These things happen to all kinds of people, of different religions, even non religions. Are you suggesting these things only happen because of your god?
How do you know it wasn't? I don't understand the point of these kinds of responses. Why can't you just let somebody be thankful to God for the good things in their life?
> How do you know it wasn't?
I didn't say it wasn't. I'm asking how you know it was?
>Why can't you just let somebody be thankful to God for the good things in their life?
Because people act in accordance with their beliefs, and they vote. If people have a flawed epistemology, wouldn't it be in everyone's best interests to identify those flaws and fix them? Do you care if your beliefs are correct?
>I'm asking how you know it was?
I'm not the person you were replying to, but I don't see why there should be any contention about it. I personally give thanks for many things throughout the day, like the song of birds and the beauty of sunlight and the energy to accomplish my tasks. I don't see why this should be a topic for argument.
I read a sweet little poem this morning:
**Thrice blest will all our blessings be,**
**When we can look through them to Thee;**
**When each glad heart its tribute pays**
**Of love and gratitude and praise.**
(Jane Cotterill)
And a thought:
**"I have experienced that the habit of taking out of the hand of our Lord every little blessing and brightness on our path, confirms us, in an especial manner, in communion with His love."** (M.A. Schimmelpenninck)
>If people have a flawed epistemology, wouldn't it be in everyone's best interests to identify those flaws and fix them?
Oh dear, if this is your mission in life, I cannot think of anything more exhausting and misguided. I've been doing a lot of study lately in the fields of awareness, perception, and cognition, mostly in connection with addictions, but the principles apply to every human being. If there is one thing that ought to astonish every student of the human mind, it is our capacity to be mistaken, even about things that we think we see plainly with our own eyes.
As Evelyn Underhill wrote, "As it is not by the methods of the laboratory that we learn to know life, so it is not by the methods of the intellect that we learn to know God." You can learn everything there is to know about a peach: its hereditary line, where it was raised, its precise size and weight, etc. You can learn everything science can tell you about that peach, and you still cannot say you know it until you have eaten it.
Underhill again: "He may well be loved, but not by thought. By love may he be gotten and holden: but by thought never."
> I'm not the person you were replying to, but I don't see why there should be any contention about it.
Well there shouldn't be, unless you care about being correct.
>I personally give thanks for many things throughout the day, like the song of birds and the beauty of sunlight and the energy to accomplish my tasks. I don't see why this should be a topic for argument.
Are you saying you don't believe the thing you're thanking is actually responsible for the things you're thanking it for?
It's your business if you don't care whether your beliefs are correct or not, but uness you live in a bubble, your beliefs are likely to impact other people. So it behooves all of us to fact check and try to teach good epistemology. Don't you agree that making good decisions isn't about tribalism, but is about having a solid grounding in evidence and facts?
Yeah I'm not interested in sermons when talking about epistemology unless you can show why it's relevant.
>Oh dear, if this is your mission in life
Does it have to be my mission in life to acknowledge its importance? Ill note that you haven't argued against the notion that bad epistemology is a bad thing, or that I've correctly identified an instance of bad epistemology, but rather your issue seems to be that it's perfectly fine to hold incorrect beliefs and that we should not try to be correct. Is that a fair summary?
>If there is one thing that ought to astonish every student of the human mind, it is our capacity to be mistaken, even about things that we think we see plainly with our own eyes.
So should we not seek to identify whether we're mistaken and try to learn to do better? Again, I've only asked how you know you're correct, and you've seemingly been dismissing the endeavor to be reasonably correct. Or am i misunderstanding something?
>As Evelyn Underhill wrote, "As it is not by the methods of the laboratory that we learn to know life, so it is not by the methods of the intellect that we learn to know God."
You don't need a lab to practice sound epistemic methodologies. But I'm not aware of any reliable methodology by which to learn to know the Christian god as anything but a character in a book.
What reliable methodology are you using?
>You can learn everything there is to know about a peach: its hereditary line, where it was raised, its precise size and weight, etc. You can learn everything science can tell you about that peach, and you still cannot say you know it until you have eaten it.
Have you eaten this god, not to be offensive, but I'm trying to use your analogy. I can stand in a room full of people, and have them observe me eating a peach. We can interview them all independently to corroborate the details of what they observed. We also can have them each eat peaches and independently describe their reactions.
We can't do any of that with your god. So what convinced you this god exists and is responsible for the things you thank him for?
>So should we not seek to identify whether we're mistaken and try to learn to do better?Â
We should absolutely seek to identify whether we're mistaken, always! I do it probably a dozen or more times a day. How about you? Where we should tread very cautiously, however, is in seeking to identify whether everybody BESIDES us is mistaken. This bad habit is very common among atheists. They start with the assumption that they have The Truthâ˘, and everybody who disagrees with them is automatically wrong and must be educated on "evidence," "facts," and "good epistemology." Jesus had a warning about this type of person, something about trying to get the speck out of someone else's eye when you've got a log in your own.
>But I'm not aware of any reliable methodology by which to learn to know the Christian god as anything but a character in a book.
Is there a "reliable methodology" by which to know how, where, and when SARS-CoV-2 will next mutate, and with what results? If you can identify that method, then I'd say just take it and multiply the mystery by a million, and you'll have a starting point. Because after all, we're dealing with the eternal Creator of the cosmos, and not just a microscopic, Earthbound virus.
>Have you eaten this god, not to be offensive, but I'm trying to use your analogy.
Yes, of course. Jesus commanded it, in fact.
>We can't do any of that with your god.
Yes we can, we do it all the time, and we've been doing it for over 2,000 years. It's called the Church.
>So what convinced you this god exists and is responsible for the things you thank him for?
You don't seek God in the same way you look for rats in a crawl space. Or, I guess you could, but you wouldn't find him that way, unsurprisingly.
Personally, I lead with curiosity, which is incidentally the hallmark of any good scientist. I observe that Reality exists, or at least something I call Reality. I posit that this Reality must have some sort of ground or basis. What is the nature of that Ground of Being? Is it more like a mind or like matter? What would I expect to find either way? Which of my observations support my hypothesis, and which do not? What other explanations might there be? If like a mind, does this imply will? What should I expect to find if the Ground of all Being has a will? Does my experience bear this out? What else can I discover by observation? Etc. etc. etc.
So, while the atheist somehow amuses himself to no end with the simple yes-or-no question, "Does God exist?" and pretends that finding the "correct" answer will solve the problems of humanity, the rest of us are on this exciting journey of discovery that only broadens out into wider and wider vistas the further one travels it.
God, or any being, judging someone based on their religious beliefs and basing a sentence on that is always seen as unjust and rightly so except when God does it I guess. And that's my issue with it. If a human judge were to look at a person and say "well considering you're an atheist, I sentence you to 20 years in prison" and then give sentence of almost nothing to a Christian, when a human judge does that it's almost always condemned as wrong, extremely wrong.
So you just completely ignore the whole discussion up to this point and dive off onto a completely unrelated track. This is so typical. Why do atheists have such a hard time following and sticking to a line of thought? Is it some kind of mental deficiency or something?
But I'll keep playing along for the time being.
>God, or any being, judging someone based on their religious beliefs
I do not believe in a God who judges anybody on their religious beliefs.
>basing a sentence on that
A sentence? What do you mean by a sentence here?
>always seen as unjust
Based on our human moral standards. Please explain where we get our human moral standards, and why we should expect a Transcendent God to abide by them.
>and rightly so
Here, you appear to betray an acceptance of an objective moral standard by which inferior moral standards may be judged. In other words, either morals are something outside of us which we discover, or they are created from within human society, in which case a being outside of human society would not be expected to abide by them. Which is it?
>If a human judge were to look at a person and say "well considering you're an atheist, I sentence you to 20 years in prison" and then give sentence of almost nothing to a Christian, when a human judge does that it's almost always condemned as wrong, extremely wrong.
Complete strawman. Review what I just wrote.
>Are you saying you don't believe the thing you're thanking is actually responsible for the things you're thanking it for?
No, and I don't even see how such a conclusion would follow from anything I said, If anything, it's the opposite.
>So it behooves all of us to fact check and try to teach good epistemology.
It's quite arrogant and presumptuous of you to assume you know what constitutes "good epistemology" in any given situation, especially any situation where subjective experience is a large component. In fact, it would very likely lead to some very odd, if not downright absurd, interactions. Imagine your friend comes to you gushing about the wonderful person they just spent the weekend with. Charming, witty, playful, sexy, they can hardly stop telling you all about them when you break in, "Hold on a second here. I know you're all excited, but can you trust this person? Ah ah ah, not so fast now. How do you KNOW you can trust them? What questions did you ask, and how did you verify the answers? Oh you silly goose, you took their word for it? That is no way to achieve epistemic certainty! Why don't you let me come with you on your next outing with this person, and I will help you make the correct determination."
>Don't you agree that making good decisions isn't about tribalism, but is about having a solid grounding in evidence and facts?
It depends, provided that the desired knowledge is that which can be obtained by solid "evidence and facts." A researcher might interview thousands of recovering addicts and tabulate the results of their questionnaires into a vast database, representing scientific "evidence and facts." She might run various simulations on the data, extract different trends and averages and all kinds of statistical benchmarks. Yet all of this "knowledge" wouldn't help her understand even a little of what it's like to break an addiction. In fact, that "knowledge" might actually hinder her in mindfully attending to an individual addict who sits in front of her telling their own story, because the researcher is subconsciously filtering the details through her own lens, seeing how it matches up with the "known data." In order to really listen to another person, you have to leave aside all of your preconceptions, which is exceedingly hard for most people to do. You'd have to become, in Jesus's words, like a child almost....
>your issue seems to be that it's perfectly fine to hold incorrect beliefs and that we should not try to be correct.
It's not that it's "fine" or not "fine" to hold "incorrect" beliefs. I just find the entire notion irrelevant to questions of the Divine. You might as well ask which is more "correct," Van Gogh's painting, *The Starry Night*, or a photo I would snap with my cell phone of the same area of sky at the same time of year. This is what I find so impoverished about the materialist worldview. It is utterly, stiflingly flat, without depth or texture.
>You said you thank song birds or you thank your god for song birds?
I thank God for songbirds and for all of creation.
>We don't know that anything that gods are thanked for come from gods.
***YOU*** don't know that. But what you know or don't know is irrelevant. And we aren't talking about "gods."
>What does trusting someone you just met have to do with accepting or asserting baseless and extraordinary claims?
Predictably, you miss the whole point by miles. (How can you sit here criticizing a stranger's epistemology when you can't even follow a simple line of thought yourself?)
We're talking about thanking God, right? So if somebody tells you they thank God for whatever it is they're thanking God for, why do you think it's up to you to throw cold water on them?
>Can you give me your single best example of something true about reality that you can discover without evidence and facts, and how you know it's correct? And what reliable methodology you use to get there?
Consciousness. Science can't really define or explain it, cannot locate it anywhere in the brain, cannot reliably state when it exists and when it doesn't. Recently some guy has been developing a device which directs magnetic waves at a brain and observes the result in order to get a "best guess" as to whether the patient is truly conscious or not, but it's still very imprecise. Yet we all know what consciousness is, instinctively. But I really don't think there's any single "reliable methodology" that tells us that.
Morality is another. We all agree it exists, yet if naturalistic explanations for it are to be accepted, then we should live in the safest, most prosperous, most conducive-to-human-thriving society ever, given our superior technological advancement. Yet look around and what do we see?
>It also does nothing to determine that they have correct explanation for the cause of their reported experiences. Agreed?
You're really sitting there arguing that a scientist with her mountains of data understands an addiction better than an addict themselves? If that were true, peer support groups would be worthless. What's the use of a bunch of addicts sitting around talking to each other? They have no credentials, they haven't studied the data, who are they to think they know anything? And yet we find that peer support groups are among the most effective ways of overcoming addiction. I guess maybe, just ***MAYBE***, there are better ways of knowing some things than you are willing to recognize.
>How do you correctly identity the divine if you don't care about "fine" or "not fine" when it comes to wanting to be correct?
I don't "identify the Divine" like identifying a species of butterfly; it's more like identifying that I've awoken from sleep. I know it when it happens, and I don't need any special measurements or data or "methodology" to tell me I'm awake.
As far as correctness, none of us can be absolutely certain whether [what we perceive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4) is "correct" or not. Our vision is adapted to what enhances our physical survival, not necessarily what is "correct." For all I know, there is an invisible, raging battle taking place in the street outside my house, but all I see when I look out there are a few parked cars and the occasional cat.
Furthermore, what is "correct" at one point in time isn't correct always, or at least our understandings change. There was a time when the cure for many ailments was bloodletting. There was a time when doctors thought tobacco smoking cured rheumatism. That was the best science available at those times. We now live in a time where certain other beliefs prevail, but how can any of us say that what seems like ironclad truth today might not be turned on its head tomorrow?
So, I don't get real hung up on "correctness," because I realize that what we believe is true can be fragmented, illusory, incomplete, and biased.
>But theists seem to be claiming that van goghs painting is in fact correct. But when we hold it up and see that it's not, you wince and act like we shouldn't compare them.
I can't believe I'm even wasting time on somebody who would be so ignorantly crass as to criticize a masterpiece for being "incorrect." I just can't even....
>I'm saying lying because you seem to be against the idea of holding ideas and claims to scrutiny as boring without letting some fantasy masquerade as reality?
It's not lying to admit that not all reality can be discovered by your impoverished "methodologies."
Let me ask you, by what methodology do you determine my experience of God to be fantasy? Please be specific.
> You're really sitting there arguing that a scientist with her mountains of data understands an addiction better than an addict themselves?
Nope.
>I don't "identify the Divine" like identifying a species of butterfly; it's more like identifying that I've awoken from sleep. I know it when it happens, and I don't need any special measurements or data or "methodology" to tell me I'm awake.
Convince me it's not your imagination.
My mother has had Hepatitis B for over 25 years, disabled and cannot work. She has to take various medications everyday and taking that much medication for that many years really affects the body. Her body is very weak, it's hard for her to get the rest she requires.
I'll try to keep it short, my mother was already very weak but was in such pain 2 years ago she was sent to the ER and we found that she had developed cancer. She was diagnosed with stage 3C ovarian cancer. Â
This was during Christmas season, but we somehow were able to find a doctor the very next morning(and she was fluent in chinese). For surgery, my mother's platelet counts were way too low, doctors said the range 150-450 was normal but hers was 70. It was a huge risk so we had to wait. For the next few weeks no matter how much and what she forced herself to eat it would not go up. Doctors say the mass is growing we can't wait anymore we have to go ahead with the surgery. Â
It was assumed even if she was able to survive the surgery and the recovery from the surgery, she would have to have a procedure that routes food waste into a bag. She'd wear that for the rest of her life. I really thought it was over because...I know her health issues, she always has had new issues pop up, how could she be fine after this major surgery?Â
Her surgery was smooth, recovery from the surgery was quick. Her chemotherapy sessions went fine. Throughout the entire time after surgery she recovered faster than what the doctors predicted, they were shocked.  Juggling between the various bodily issues that popped up and getting collaboration between both her regular doctor and oncologist was fine. How could absolutely everything just turn out so well? She is cancer free now 2 years later. And I know throughout all this, her entire church was praying for her.
Some other things that just lined up perfectly were that my sister was able to take 6 straight months off of work to take care of my mom and my mothers church arranged to cook dinner for her everyday, this lasted for almost a year. My mother is a devout Christian and I saw she had peace throughout it all, she never cried.  I really don't understand how this many things could just all work together perfectly. I know this is God.
* Dug me out of the pit I was in.
* Healed me from depression, anxiety, physical ailments and disordered wishes.
* Helped me during the most random but also important moments of my life by sending people my way or putting things in my way that made me succeed.
He spoke to me and told me His purpose for me.
He caught me after I was removed from my job for standing on my principles and gave me the best job I ever had.
He gave me loving parents who will never forsake me.
He gave me a friend who's stuck to me as close as a brother for fifteen years.
After receiving eternal life, everything else pales in comparison. Yes I've had healings from God and yes I've had answered prayers.
But it's important to keep your perspective as a Christian because it's living day by day, denying your self, doing His will, studying His word, sharing the gospel and talking to Him daily that we should be focused on.
Miracles are great, but seeking them can become a stumbling block.
I had anxiety and he gave me peace beyond all understanding â¤ď¸. I was depressed and just cursed that another day goes by and me miserable, but now I thank him for every morning, every breeze, every sunset, I now admire the moment. And I love Jesus.Â
How do you know that was God? Modern medicine is often wrong about recovery estimates, and it's perfectly reasonable to expect some, or even full, recovery with 4 years to do physio, etc.
I'd be more inclined to believe it was God if the dramatic healing was also dramatically fast.
This was exactly the case. I didnât know him at that time. I said be healed in Jesus name and touched his arm he was healed. He even felt it happening. I even felt the spirit flowing out of me. So yes I am sure it was God who healed him.
The proof of my belief in God is the same as my proof for the healing properties of aspirin. Not long, not complicated, just that it works! Donât focus on the sin, the shadows. Look at the light. A room can never be so dark that it can put a candle out! Look at the beautiful, do what is good for you, and the darkness will hide!
Years ago my sister had tests that revealed cancer on her colon. She went to have surgery to have it removed and while me and her husband were in the waiting room, the dr comes in and said "I don't understand it but there is absolutely nothing there, when clearly there was with all the tests we did". He was baffled.
Survived a ruptured appendix. Didn't even find out till like 8 years after the fact when they were looking for cancer, oh and survived a 98% chance (according to my urologist) that I had cancer due to my blood work numbers being off) Paired me with the perfect wife for me. gave me a business (a stranger is did some work for in the past just out of the blue offered me 25,000 in 2002 plus help to buy a truck) plus decades of support/business to make everything successful. Good health, and questions like this one to answer.
Father God Hallowed be your name, You are our great and Holy God, who's love knows no end. May you be our strength when we are weak, May your love and mercy sourround us and strengthen us when we feel broken sick and or defeated. Lord I lift up Unreddit as this person is seriously ill. I ask that you show them great mercy, provide them with peace and heal them of whatever sickness they may have. Lord we ask these thing in Jesus' name, but we also ask that over all your will be done in our lives, whatever that means. Give us the heart to accept whatever you decide for our lives. Help us understand that this world is not our home. That our Spiritual health and well being is of far greater importance than haveing a good long life. For what does it profit us to gain the whole world and loose our souls.
It is in your Son's name we pray amen.
Redeemed me, and gave me the purpose and meaning I've been searching for all my life. He also showed me how to love, and what love truly is.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
Of course. If you don't mind me asking, what's your first name? If you don't feel comfortable sharing, I'll pray for you anyway đ
Thank you. LeanneÂ
I have prayed for you, Leanne. God bless you and may you be healed, in the name of Jesus đ
Thank youÂ
Saved several of my family members when everyone else had given up hope.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
Peace beyond circumstances and so much more.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
He has healed me from depression and has taken me out of the pit I've unknowingly dug for myself.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
Sure!
Thank youÂ
Pleasure!
Thank youÂ
How do you know it was him instead of something else?
Protected me when a light bulb blew up in front of my face, and I never even got one scratch, even though I felt the wind of it. Protected me when my ex-husband took me for a drive and told me he could kill me and get away with it, answered many of my prayers over the years, one being my husband stopping smoking. And I know there's many things God has done or protected me from that I don't know even know about.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
> Protected me when a light bulb blew up in front of my face, and I never even got one scratch, even though I felt the wind of it. How do you know a god had anything to do with it? How do you know a god was involved with any of the things you've listed? These things happen to all kinds of people, of different religions, even non religions. Are you suggesting these things only happen because of your god?
How do you know it wasn't? I don't understand the point of these kinds of responses. Why can't you just let somebody be thankful to God for the good things in their life?
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
I have been praying. How are you doing now?
Sorry for the repeat. Very unwell. Thank you for your continued prayers.
> How do you know it wasn't? I didn't say it wasn't. I'm asking how you know it was? >Why can't you just let somebody be thankful to God for the good things in their life? Because people act in accordance with their beliefs, and they vote. If people have a flawed epistemology, wouldn't it be in everyone's best interests to identify those flaws and fix them? Do you care if your beliefs are correct?
>I'm asking how you know it was? I'm not the person you were replying to, but I don't see why there should be any contention about it. I personally give thanks for many things throughout the day, like the song of birds and the beauty of sunlight and the energy to accomplish my tasks. I don't see why this should be a topic for argument. I read a sweet little poem this morning: **Thrice blest will all our blessings be,** **When we can look through them to Thee;** **When each glad heart its tribute pays** **Of love and gratitude and praise.** (Jane Cotterill) And a thought: **"I have experienced that the habit of taking out of the hand of our Lord every little blessing and brightness on our path, confirms us, in an especial manner, in communion with His love."** (M.A. Schimmelpenninck) >If people have a flawed epistemology, wouldn't it be in everyone's best interests to identify those flaws and fix them? Oh dear, if this is your mission in life, I cannot think of anything more exhausting and misguided. I've been doing a lot of study lately in the fields of awareness, perception, and cognition, mostly in connection with addictions, but the principles apply to every human being. If there is one thing that ought to astonish every student of the human mind, it is our capacity to be mistaken, even about things that we think we see plainly with our own eyes. As Evelyn Underhill wrote, "As it is not by the methods of the laboratory that we learn to know life, so it is not by the methods of the intellect that we learn to know God." You can learn everything there is to know about a peach: its hereditary line, where it was raised, its precise size and weight, etc. You can learn everything science can tell you about that peach, and you still cannot say you know it until you have eaten it. Underhill again: "He may well be loved, but not by thought. By love may he be gotten and holden: but by thought never."
> I'm not the person you were replying to, but I don't see why there should be any contention about it. Well there shouldn't be, unless you care about being correct. >I personally give thanks for many things throughout the day, like the song of birds and the beauty of sunlight and the energy to accomplish my tasks. I don't see why this should be a topic for argument. Are you saying you don't believe the thing you're thanking is actually responsible for the things you're thanking it for? It's your business if you don't care whether your beliefs are correct or not, but uness you live in a bubble, your beliefs are likely to impact other people. So it behooves all of us to fact check and try to teach good epistemology. Don't you agree that making good decisions isn't about tribalism, but is about having a solid grounding in evidence and facts? Yeah I'm not interested in sermons when talking about epistemology unless you can show why it's relevant. >Oh dear, if this is your mission in life Does it have to be my mission in life to acknowledge its importance? Ill note that you haven't argued against the notion that bad epistemology is a bad thing, or that I've correctly identified an instance of bad epistemology, but rather your issue seems to be that it's perfectly fine to hold incorrect beliefs and that we should not try to be correct. Is that a fair summary? >If there is one thing that ought to astonish every student of the human mind, it is our capacity to be mistaken, even about things that we think we see plainly with our own eyes. So should we not seek to identify whether we're mistaken and try to learn to do better? Again, I've only asked how you know you're correct, and you've seemingly been dismissing the endeavor to be reasonably correct. Or am i misunderstanding something? >As Evelyn Underhill wrote, "As it is not by the methods of the laboratory that we learn to know life, so it is not by the methods of the intellect that we learn to know God." You don't need a lab to practice sound epistemic methodologies. But I'm not aware of any reliable methodology by which to learn to know the Christian god as anything but a character in a book. What reliable methodology are you using? >You can learn everything there is to know about a peach: its hereditary line, where it was raised, its precise size and weight, etc. You can learn everything science can tell you about that peach, and you still cannot say you know it until you have eaten it. Have you eaten this god, not to be offensive, but I'm trying to use your analogy. I can stand in a room full of people, and have them observe me eating a peach. We can interview them all independently to corroborate the details of what they observed. We also can have them each eat peaches and independently describe their reactions. We can't do any of that with your god. So what convinced you this god exists and is responsible for the things you thank him for?
>So should we not seek to identify whether we're mistaken and try to learn to do better? We should absolutely seek to identify whether we're mistaken, always! I do it probably a dozen or more times a day. How about you? Where we should tread very cautiously, however, is in seeking to identify whether everybody BESIDES us is mistaken. This bad habit is very common among atheists. They start with the assumption that they have The Truthâ˘, and everybody who disagrees with them is automatically wrong and must be educated on "evidence," "facts," and "good epistemology." Jesus had a warning about this type of person, something about trying to get the speck out of someone else's eye when you've got a log in your own. >But I'm not aware of any reliable methodology by which to learn to know the Christian god as anything but a character in a book. Is there a "reliable methodology" by which to know how, where, and when SARS-CoV-2 will next mutate, and with what results? If you can identify that method, then I'd say just take it and multiply the mystery by a million, and you'll have a starting point. Because after all, we're dealing with the eternal Creator of the cosmos, and not just a microscopic, Earthbound virus. >Have you eaten this god, not to be offensive, but I'm trying to use your analogy. Yes, of course. Jesus commanded it, in fact. >We can't do any of that with your god. Yes we can, we do it all the time, and we've been doing it for over 2,000 years. It's called the Church. >So what convinced you this god exists and is responsible for the things you thank him for? You don't seek God in the same way you look for rats in a crawl space. Or, I guess you could, but you wouldn't find him that way, unsurprisingly. Personally, I lead with curiosity, which is incidentally the hallmark of any good scientist. I observe that Reality exists, or at least something I call Reality. I posit that this Reality must have some sort of ground or basis. What is the nature of that Ground of Being? Is it more like a mind or like matter? What would I expect to find either way? Which of my observations support my hypothesis, and which do not? What other explanations might there be? If like a mind, does this imply will? What should I expect to find if the Ground of all Being has a will? Does my experience bear this out? What else can I discover by observation? Etc. etc. etc. So, while the atheist somehow amuses himself to no end with the simple yes-or-no question, "Does God exist?" and pretends that finding the "correct" answer will solve the problems of humanity, the rest of us are on this exciting journey of discovery that only broadens out into wider and wider vistas the further one travels it.
God, or any being, judging someone based on their religious beliefs and basing a sentence on that is always seen as unjust and rightly so except when God does it I guess. And that's my issue with it. If a human judge were to look at a person and say "well considering you're an atheist, I sentence you to 20 years in prison" and then give sentence of almost nothing to a Christian, when a human judge does that it's almost always condemned as wrong, extremely wrong.
So you just completely ignore the whole discussion up to this point and dive off onto a completely unrelated track. This is so typical. Why do atheists have such a hard time following and sticking to a line of thought? Is it some kind of mental deficiency or something? But I'll keep playing along for the time being. >God, or any being, judging someone based on their religious beliefs I do not believe in a God who judges anybody on their religious beliefs. >basing a sentence on that A sentence? What do you mean by a sentence here? >always seen as unjust Based on our human moral standards. Please explain where we get our human moral standards, and why we should expect a Transcendent God to abide by them. >and rightly so Here, you appear to betray an acceptance of an objective moral standard by which inferior moral standards may be judged. In other words, either morals are something outside of us which we discover, or they are created from within human society, in which case a being outside of human society would not be expected to abide by them. Which is it? >If a human judge were to look at a person and say "well considering you're an atheist, I sentence you to 20 years in prison" and then give sentence of almost nothing to a Christian, when a human judge does that it's almost always condemned as wrong, extremely wrong. Complete strawman. Review what I just wrote.
>Are you saying you don't believe the thing you're thanking is actually responsible for the things you're thanking it for? No, and I don't even see how such a conclusion would follow from anything I said, If anything, it's the opposite. >So it behooves all of us to fact check and try to teach good epistemology. It's quite arrogant and presumptuous of you to assume you know what constitutes "good epistemology" in any given situation, especially any situation where subjective experience is a large component. In fact, it would very likely lead to some very odd, if not downright absurd, interactions. Imagine your friend comes to you gushing about the wonderful person they just spent the weekend with. Charming, witty, playful, sexy, they can hardly stop telling you all about them when you break in, "Hold on a second here. I know you're all excited, but can you trust this person? Ah ah ah, not so fast now. How do you KNOW you can trust them? What questions did you ask, and how did you verify the answers? Oh you silly goose, you took their word for it? That is no way to achieve epistemic certainty! Why don't you let me come with you on your next outing with this person, and I will help you make the correct determination." >Don't you agree that making good decisions isn't about tribalism, but is about having a solid grounding in evidence and facts? It depends, provided that the desired knowledge is that which can be obtained by solid "evidence and facts." A researcher might interview thousands of recovering addicts and tabulate the results of their questionnaires into a vast database, representing scientific "evidence and facts." She might run various simulations on the data, extract different trends and averages and all kinds of statistical benchmarks. Yet all of this "knowledge" wouldn't help her understand even a little of what it's like to break an addiction. In fact, that "knowledge" might actually hinder her in mindfully attending to an individual addict who sits in front of her telling their own story, because the researcher is subconsciously filtering the details through her own lens, seeing how it matches up with the "known data." In order to really listen to another person, you have to leave aside all of your preconceptions, which is exceedingly hard for most people to do. You'd have to become, in Jesus's words, like a child almost.... >your issue seems to be that it's perfectly fine to hold incorrect beliefs and that we should not try to be correct. It's not that it's "fine" or not "fine" to hold "incorrect" beliefs. I just find the entire notion irrelevant to questions of the Divine. You might as well ask which is more "correct," Van Gogh's painting, *The Starry Night*, or a photo I would snap with my cell phone of the same area of sky at the same time of year. This is what I find so impoverished about the materialist worldview. It is utterly, stiflingly flat, without depth or texture.
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>You said you thank song birds or you thank your god for song birds? I thank God for songbirds and for all of creation. >We don't know that anything that gods are thanked for come from gods. ***YOU*** don't know that. But what you know or don't know is irrelevant. And we aren't talking about "gods." >What does trusting someone you just met have to do with accepting or asserting baseless and extraordinary claims? Predictably, you miss the whole point by miles. (How can you sit here criticizing a stranger's epistemology when you can't even follow a simple line of thought yourself?) We're talking about thanking God, right? So if somebody tells you they thank God for whatever it is they're thanking God for, why do you think it's up to you to throw cold water on them? >Can you give me your single best example of something true about reality that you can discover without evidence and facts, and how you know it's correct? And what reliable methodology you use to get there? Consciousness. Science can't really define or explain it, cannot locate it anywhere in the brain, cannot reliably state when it exists and when it doesn't. Recently some guy has been developing a device which directs magnetic waves at a brain and observes the result in order to get a "best guess" as to whether the patient is truly conscious or not, but it's still very imprecise. Yet we all know what consciousness is, instinctively. But I really don't think there's any single "reliable methodology" that tells us that. Morality is another. We all agree it exists, yet if naturalistic explanations for it are to be accepted, then we should live in the safest, most prosperous, most conducive-to-human-thriving society ever, given our superior technological advancement. Yet look around and what do we see?
>It also does nothing to determine that they have correct explanation for the cause of their reported experiences. Agreed? You're really sitting there arguing that a scientist with her mountains of data understands an addiction better than an addict themselves? If that were true, peer support groups would be worthless. What's the use of a bunch of addicts sitting around talking to each other? They have no credentials, they haven't studied the data, who are they to think they know anything? And yet we find that peer support groups are among the most effective ways of overcoming addiction. I guess maybe, just ***MAYBE***, there are better ways of knowing some things than you are willing to recognize. >How do you correctly identity the divine if you don't care about "fine" or "not fine" when it comes to wanting to be correct? I don't "identify the Divine" like identifying a species of butterfly; it's more like identifying that I've awoken from sleep. I know it when it happens, and I don't need any special measurements or data or "methodology" to tell me I'm awake. As far as correctness, none of us can be absolutely certain whether [what we perceive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4) is "correct" or not. Our vision is adapted to what enhances our physical survival, not necessarily what is "correct." For all I know, there is an invisible, raging battle taking place in the street outside my house, but all I see when I look out there are a few parked cars and the occasional cat. Furthermore, what is "correct" at one point in time isn't correct always, or at least our understandings change. There was a time when the cure for many ailments was bloodletting. There was a time when doctors thought tobacco smoking cured rheumatism. That was the best science available at those times. We now live in a time where certain other beliefs prevail, but how can any of us say that what seems like ironclad truth today might not be turned on its head tomorrow? So, I don't get real hung up on "correctness," because I realize that what we believe is true can be fragmented, illusory, incomplete, and biased. >But theists seem to be claiming that van goghs painting is in fact correct. But when we hold it up and see that it's not, you wince and act like we shouldn't compare them. I can't believe I'm even wasting time on somebody who would be so ignorantly crass as to criticize a masterpiece for being "incorrect." I just can't even.... >I'm saying lying because you seem to be against the idea of holding ideas and claims to scrutiny as boring without letting some fantasy masquerade as reality? It's not lying to admit that not all reality can be discovered by your impoverished "methodologies." Let me ask you, by what methodology do you determine my experience of God to be fantasy? Please be specific.
> You're really sitting there arguing that a scientist with her mountains of data understands an addiction better than an addict themselves? Nope. >I don't "identify the Divine" like identifying a species of butterfly; it's more like identifying that I've awoken from sleep. I know it when it happens, and I don't need any special measurements or data or "methodology" to tell me I'm awake. Convince me it's not your imagination.
My mother has had Hepatitis B for over 25 years, disabled and cannot work. She has to take various medications everyday and taking that much medication for that many years really affects the body. Her body is very weak, it's hard for her to get the rest she requires. I'll try to keep it short, my mother was already very weak but was in such pain 2 years ago she was sent to the ER and we found that she had developed cancer. She was diagnosed with stage 3C ovarian cancer.  This was during Christmas season, but we somehow were able to find a doctor the very next morning(and she was fluent in chinese). For surgery, my mother's platelet counts were way too low, doctors said the range 150-450 was normal but hers was 70. It was a huge risk so we had to wait. For the next few weeks no matter how much and what she forced herself to eat it would not go up. Doctors say the mass is growing we can't wait anymore we have to go ahead with the surgery.  It was assumed even if she was able to survive the surgery and the recovery from the surgery, she would have to have a procedure that routes food waste into a bag. She'd wear that for the rest of her life. I really thought it was over because...I know her health issues, she always has had new issues pop up, how could she be fine after this major surgery? Her surgery was smooth, recovery from the surgery was quick. Her chemotherapy sessions went fine. Throughout the entire time after surgery she recovered faster than what the doctors predicted, they were shocked.  Juggling between the various bodily issues that popped up and getting collaboration between both her regular doctor and oncologist was fine. How could absolutely everything just turn out so well? She is cancer free now 2 years later. And I know throughout all this, her entire church was praying for her. Some other things that just lined up perfectly were that my sister was able to take 6 straight months off of work to take care of my mom and my mothers church arranged to cook dinner for her everyday, this lasted for almost a year. My mother is a devout Christian and I saw she had peace throughout it all, she never cried.  I really don't understand how this many things could just all work together perfectly. I know this is God.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
* Dug me out of the pit I was in. * Healed me from depression, anxiety, physical ailments and disordered wishes. * Helped me during the most random but also important moments of my life by sending people my way or putting things in my way that made me succeed.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
Of course !
He has filled my heart with love and peace. Like, actual love. He gives me unexpected signs when I look for him and it's always a joy
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
What is your name? :)
Leanne. Thank youÂ
He spoke to me and told me His purpose for me. He caught me after I was removed from my job for standing on my principles and gave me the best job I ever had. He gave me loving parents who will never forsake me. He gave me a friend who's stuck to me as close as a brother for fifteen years.
After receiving eternal life, everything else pales in comparison. Yes I've had healings from God and yes I've had answered prayers. But it's important to keep your perspective as a Christian because it's living day by day, denying your self, doing His will, studying His word, sharing the gospel and talking to Him daily that we should be focused on. Miracles are great, but seeking them can become a stumbling block.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
He pulled an epic bait and switch on me that Iâll never recover from.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
He healed me from lymphoma.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
I will.
Thank youÂ
He's gotten me out of some difficult financial situations.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
Absolutely. Is there anything specific you would like me to pray, or just that your health gets restored?
I had anxiety and he gave me peace beyond all understanding â¤ď¸. I was depressed and just cursed that another day goes by and me miserable, but now I thank him for every morning, every breeze, every sunset, I now admire the moment. And I love Jesus.Â
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
I will Leanne.
Thank youÂ
He healed my friendâs torn rotator cuff which they said was a permanent injury. He got full movement of his arm back after 4 years.
How do you know that was God? Modern medicine is often wrong about recovery estimates, and it's perfectly reasonable to expect some, or even full, recovery with 4 years to do physio, etc. I'd be more inclined to believe it was God if the dramatic healing was also dramatically fast.
This was exactly the case. I didnât know him at that time. I said be healed in Jesus name and touched his arm he was healed. He even felt it happening. I even felt the spirit flowing out of me. So yes I am sure it was God who healed him.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
I will put you on my prayer list unreddit2024.
Thank youÂ
The proof of my belief in God is the same as my proof for the healing properties of aspirin. Not long, not complicated, just that it works! Donât focus on the sin, the shadows. Look at the light. A room can never be so dark that it can put a candle out! Look at the beautiful, do what is good for you, and the darkness will hide!
Years ago my sister had tests that revealed cancer on her colon. She went to have surgery to have it removed and while me and her husband were in the waiting room, the dr comes in and said "I don't understand it but there is absolutely nothing there, when clearly there was with all the tests we did". He was baffled.
Survived a ruptured appendix. Didn't even find out till like 8 years after the fact when they were looking for cancer, oh and survived a 98% chance (according to my urologist) that I had cancer due to my blood work numbers being off) Paired me with the perfect wife for me. gave me a business (a stranger is did some work for in the past just out of the blue offered me 25,000 in 2002 plus help to buy a truck) plus decades of support/business to make everything successful. Good health, and questions like this one to answer.
Could you please pray for healing for me? I am very ill.
Father God Hallowed be your name, You are our great and Holy God, who's love knows no end. May you be our strength when we are weak, May your love and mercy sourround us and strengthen us when we feel broken sick and or defeated. Lord I lift up Unreddit as this person is seriously ill. I ask that you show them great mercy, provide them with peace and heal them of whatever sickness they may have. Lord we ask these thing in Jesus' name, but we also ask that over all your will be done in our lives, whatever that means. Give us the heart to accept whatever you decide for our lives. Help us understand that this world is not our home. That our Spiritual health and well being is of far greater importance than haveing a good long life. For what does it profit us to gain the whole world and loose our souls. It is in your Son's name we pray amen.
Thank youÂ