Monday, April 30, 2012

Against Faith

*this post is a part of the Assuming the Supernatural series*

Unfortunately there are a great many definitions of Faith (a few of which I'm actually ok with).  Most arguments about Faith get derailed long before deliberations begin- they get derailed because of a fundamental difference the two people have in their definition of Faith.  So I'm going to try to be as specific as possible here and avoid using the generic term "Faith."  Instead, I'm going to talk about "contingent belief", "non-contingent belief", and "divinely imparted belief" as proxies for what most people mean when they talk about Faith

Contingent belief is the kind of Faith that I'm OK with.  This kind of Faith is really just a different way of talking about weak Bayesian belief (I think its a mistake to call this "Faith" at all, because it seems to me so categorically different from the other types of Faith.  But this is the definition some people use- particularly when trying to accuse science of requiring Faith).  It is a mental assent to a proposition that you are less than sure about, but it is necessarily beholden to your future experiences.  Scientific theories all fit into this category.  We're not 100% sure of anything, and if we find sufficient evidence against a theory, we will discard it.  Moreover, we have (or ought to have) no emotional attachment to this kind of Faith, and having this Faith is neither virtue nor vice- it is simply applied logic.

Non-contingent belief is that belief which I cannot accept.  The problem with non-contingent belief is that it separates our beliefs from reality.  We are no longer tied down by experience or reason, but rather let loose to roam the plains of our own desires.  To put it another way, if we allow ourselves non-contingent belief, how are we to decide what to believe without evidence?  Surely there are a great many possible beliefs that we could hold without offering any defense for them.  Why pick Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism?  Why not pick "Jakeism", the religion of Jake, in which I am god and get to decide what is right and wrong according to my own whims?

I want to be clear that I don't think most religions fall into this category- but many do glorify such belief.  The intelligent Christian believes because there are good arguments, and he is convinced of the historical accuracy of scripture, and he cannot make sense of life without the meta-ethical framework that Christianity provides.  This man may well be wrong, but he is not believing without basing his conclusions on evidence.  But when a religion exhorts its followers towards Faith- towards belief without evidence, or worse, belief in the face of evidence- my spider sense starts tingling.  We ought not believe anything on this kind of Faith.  If we find evidence or experiences that contradict our religious beliefs, we should question our beliefs.  Either our beliefs are correct, and we will find good answers to our questions, or our beliefs are incorrect, and we will be one step closer to finding the correct beliefs.

What I want out of my epistemology is to become a more accurate predictor of reality.  The only way non-contingent belief could accomplish this is if there were something that was true, but no evidence could be offered up for it.  While it is conceivable that such truth exists, consider which is more likely- that someone claiming absolute truth without evidence actually has the truth, or that someone claiming absolute truth without evidence is wrong.  Obviously, we expect you to have no evidence if you're wrong.  You haven't differentiated yourself from other people claiming truth if you tell us that we need faith to believe you.  I don't want arbitrary belief; I want belief based in reality.

But I think the best argument against non-contingent belief is the following: any non-contingent-belief-Faith you have derives from your belief in the Authority of something else (a holy scripture, a prophet, a tradition, etc.) which tells you to have Faith (or at least tells you the truth you ought to have Faith in).  Your Faith can never be stronger than your belief in the Authority.  Likewise, that belief in the Authority can never be stronger than your belief in whatever it is that gives your Authority-source it's Authority.  After peeling back all the layers, there are only two places you can end up: experience, or reason.  Your Faith cannot be stronger than your belief in experience and reason, because your Faith derives itself, through layers of abstraction, from this experience and reason.  Otherwise, what you have is a floating belief, not tied to any actual observable reality.  If your Faith in the Authority is working in a feedback loop with the Authority proclaiming Faith, you need to take a serious look at your belief system, because you would believe it no matter what it said.  You believe it simply because you believe it, and for no other reason.  You are perpetuating the status quo for the simple reason that you already believe the status quo.  And that's why non-contingent belief is such a great evil- because it is inescapable, even when its wrong.

This brings us to divinely imparted belief.  I'm not sure what exactly I can say here, other than throwing up my hands and rolling my eyes.  Fine.  You believe you have divinely imparted belief.  You don't need reasons, because you simply *know* something is true that the rest of us don't see.  This is like the man who is convinced the world is one big dream of his, and he will be waking up any minute.  Nothing you can say, nothing you can do will ever convince him otherwise.  Divinely imparted belief is (most often) a veneer placed over a gaping hole in the reasonability of a religion.

Again, I want to be clear that I think divinely imparted belief is totally possible.  But you ought to be so suspicious of it that you don't believe it, even if it is true, because you're not the only one claiming this.  If other people can be mistaken about the level of certainty they ought to have in the divine origin of their beliefs, why can't you?  It seems like hubris to claim that we have divinely imparted belief, which we can be sure of because it was divinely imparted, but your divinely imparted belief is purely psychological (and by the way, you should convert).

Before closing this post, I should note that C.S. Lewis has a definition of Faith that I can totally get behind.  He basically says that Faith is the ability to hold on to what you know to be true even when it doesn't seem true at the moment.  Certainly mood, circumstance, and chance play a large role in our lives, and can definitely affect what we consider to be reasonable at a given time.  If all we require of Faith is that it is a caution against impetuous overcorretive steering, then I'm on board- you shouldn't make big life decisions about what you believe in an instant.  But if we're saying Faith can keep us from converting or deconverting long-term, even when we're convinced that the evidence is arrayed against us?  I'm not buying it.  That's what keeps people trapped in false religion.

16 comments:

  1. I found this in a book by Peter Kreeft (Catholic philosopher):

    “Faith is not feeling. Feelings do no save us. Faith however, results in or expresses itself in both belief and trust, for the prefunctional root that is the very essence of the self expresses itself in the two branches or function of the intellectual (belief) and the emotional (trust). But faith is deeper. That is why even some people who seem on an intellectual level to be unbelievers may on this deeper level be believers, and we may be surprised to see some famous so-called atheists in heaven. And is it why some people who seem to have very little emotional faith – little trust, serenity, consolation – may nevertheless be people of great, even heroic, faith. Only God sees hearts.”

    See, more proof that Catholics don't count anyone out!

    I know you have lost trust and ultimately belief in Christianity. But would a conditional belief system ever allow you to trust again? In other words your faith would be all head and no heart. The three theological virtues - faith, hope and love, are virtues because they are done against the odds (to paraphrase Chesterton). And as John Henry Cardinal Newman once said “Calculation never made a hero.”

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  2. Oh, and of course people should not have blind faith, "faith seeks understanding". People should know what they believe and why.

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  3. I'm not quite sure what that quote is getting at... he seems to be saying that you can't judge faith by how it does or does not manifest in someone's life? What exactly is his definition of Faith then? And if it shows no observable results in reality, is that definition of faith even meaningful?



    "But would a conditional belief system ever allow you to trust again?"

    Surely "trust" is not contingent on us being 100% certain of something? If it were, there would be no sense in calling it trust- we should just call it fact. If the only difference between people who trust and people who don't are that the people who trust believe with 100% certainty, then they're wrong. Not only will I never be one of them, I don't want to be one of them.

    The key thing about both belief and trust is that the come after the evidence, not before. It seems like I need a technical definition of trust to answer your question, so for a working model, I'll go with "acting as if something is true even if you are less that certain". I can absolutely have that kind of trust- in fact, I have that kind of trust all the time in day to day life. But the trust must follow from the evidence, not the other way around.



    "The three theological virtues - faith, hope and love, are virtues because they are done against the odds (to paraphrase Chesterton)"

    Depending on how you're defining "against the odds", I'm going to go ahead and reject those as virtues. If "against the odds" means they are irrational or empirically unsupported beliefs or positions, then they are deselecting by nature- people who believe them will statistically suffer for it (since they are statistically unlikely). So, maybe I need a better idea of what you mean by "against the odds"? (btw, I don't think Hope and Love are "against the odds" in this sense. Faith, it depends on which one we're talking about)


    "And as John Henry Cardinal Newman once said “Calculation never made a hero.”"

    Fair enough. But it seems to be the case that following moral intuition makes the hero. And I trust my moral intuitions a lot more than I trust the existence of a particular conception of God.

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  4. Ah, no no no. I didn't mean to confuse the issue when I thought your piece was very reasonable. If I've come across as advocating that someone should believe in something without evidence or warrant, then I apologize, because that is not at all what I meant to say. I agree with you whole heartedly there. My main point was to see if you did come to a point where you thought Christianity was believable (based on evidence) but not completely certain, could you find it trustworthy. It would seem you were still able to answer my question despite my attempts to muddy the waters. I think I'm too quick to skip over everything else and focus on Christianity. I really need to try to get out of my own head and see things from your view.

    I've done Chesterton a disservice. Here is what he says in his own words: "Justice consists in finding out a certain thing due to a certain man and giving it to him. Temperance consists in finding out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and adhering to that. But charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all." - Heretics

    I hope that helps but I think I shall stay away from Chesterton in the future since he likes to talk in paradoxes.

    “But it seems to be the case that following moral intuition makes the hero” – Exactly. Intuition can adhere to our reasoning, but to risk your life to save another, especially someone we may feel is undeserving of being saved, requires something that goes beyond reasoning.

    If at any point I start sounding like a complete ninny and seem a good reason to not trust Christianity, please feel free to tell me to shut up.

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    1. "My main point was to see if you did come to a point where you thought Christianity was believable (based on evidence) but not completely certain, could you find it trustworthy."

      Yeah... so I think my answer here is "yes", but I'm afraid that "believable" is a really loaded term for me. I think it's "believable" now, in the sense that I can conceive of a reality in which it is true. I think it's "believable" now, in the sense that it explains some things about this world than I can't otherwise explain (or rather, don't like/agree with the other explanations atheists tend to give). But I also think Christianity is highly unlikely. I think it has a lot of problems and a lot of things it can't explain. So, I guess I'm saying that I don't know what my critical level of "believability" is, but I think it's pretty high



      "I think I shall stay away from Chesterton in the future since he likes to talk in paradoxes."

      Haha... you summed up my feelings perfectly ;) I'm about 15 pages from the end of Orthodoxy, and I'm going to need a break before getting on to The Everlasting Man (I was recommended a book on Buddhism, so hopefully I'll get an interestingly different worldview to chew on for awhile)


      "Exactly. Intuition can adhere to our reasoning, but to risk your life to save another, especially someone we may feel is undeserving of being saved, requires something that goes beyond reasoning."

      Yeah, I totally agree with you here. Without a supernatural framework to fall back on, I just can't get on board with the morality that I feel is true. I've said before that I think this is the best argument for Christianity (or more generally, the supernatural)- that I want morality to be true. I see it so very clearly, and I find that if I'm to accept atheism, I must reject morality as right, and start using words like "useful" and "advantageous". It gives me the heebie-jeebies to talk about right and wrong this way, and it just strikes me as an incorrect conception of what my moral intuitions are (however, I can't make any sort of reasoned argument for why my moral intuitions ought to be trusted. So, not only is this the best evidence for the supernatural, I also find it the best evidence for why humanity is something more than just rationality + instinct, and why science might not be enough to determine reality)


      "If at any point I start sounding like a complete ninny and seem a good reason to not trust Christianity, please feel free to tell me to shut up."

      Oh, definitely not. Sorry if I gave that impression. I think Faith is a bit of a touchy subject for me, because it led to the bulk of the disagreements between my Christian friends and I in school, so I just have some really strong beliefs about it. I think I have a problem with the way most humans go about discerning truth. It just so happens that many religions have codified dark side epistemology into a virtue- believe what you're told, as a good ____ does, and you will be saved. I honestly don't know enough about Catholicism to say if it falls into this category (most of the Catholics I interact with online seem to indicate a resounding "no").

      I am curious though, how do you deal with the sections of the Bible that advocate "Childlike Faith", and the parts where we are warned not to test God, or where it says "blessed are those who believe and don't see"? It seems to me to be advocating for belief without evidence. Do you read it differently? What do you think is the proper balance between evidence and trust? And is this balance enough evidence-weighted that it would allow you to reject your religion if it wasn't actually true?

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    2. I realized that what I was trying to get at was to help you see a little bit of a “more than meets the eye-ness” of the world. After my last post I went back and reread your posts on grace and love and I realized I was preaching to the choir. I apologize for assuming that as an atheist, you would not see this. My main reason for asking about trust isn’t that I don’t think truth is important. On the contrary, faith, hope and love should be based on the truth. But the truth is what it is. I cannot and will not distort it to guide you to the Catholic Church. It will lead you where it will. My concern is that you have been hurt before by Christianity and like a lover who’s been jilted, you may find the emotional hurdle the hardest one to get over.

      Are you going to go more in depth on the “highly unlikely” aspects of Christianity in a future post? Or are these ones you have covered so far?

      You didn’t give the impression that I was being a ninny, I just felt like one. Happens all the time.

      This is a great question about “childlike faith”. God calls us to have child-like faith and not child-like minds. We are asked to be humble, not stupid. Thomas Aquinas is the best example I can give. He was extremely intelligent but there is a story that at the end of his life he wanted to burn all of his works because he thought that next to God, they meant nothing. Christ often rebuked those who demanded a sign and yet the New Testament recounts Him working signs and wonders left and right. He rebuked those who demanded a sign because he knew no miracle would convince them. And how do I know this is what he thought you might ask, well let’s look at the parable of the rich man and the poor man Lazarus. The rich man treated Lazarus badly and when he died he asked to go back and warn his brothers, but he is told that even he if were to visit his brothers from the dead, they wouldn’t believe it because they had already rejected what Moses and the prophets had told them. It was to those who heard Jesus and approached Him with childlike trust that he willingly gave anything they asked. Having humility doesn’t mean we check our intellects at the door, it just means we realize our limitations and position before God. As a Catholic I am free to believe in scientific findings like the big bang, evolution, multiple universes, aliens, or whatever as long as the teachings of science don’t contradict the laws of morality (like eugenics). In fact I think it was a Catholic priest that gave the big bang its name. God is the father and we are the child. A child looks to his parents to take care of him and sees the wonder in the world around him. When we approach the possibility of an almighty, omniscient, all powerful God, we should not try to wrestle with him and make demands we feel we deserve, but instead we should ask to be taken by the hand to understand, knowing that as Jesus says, what father gives his child a snake or a rock when they ask for bread. We must be lovers of truth and follow where it leads, and yes I would have to reject my religion if it wasn’t true, but I think that level of evidence would be pretty high for myself too.

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  5. I would love to hear your thoughts on this video in relation to faith. I do have to warn you though, the video is a little graphic. http://youtu.be/7CIHPor_haA

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    1. Yeah... when we see videos like this (or more traditionally, hear these stories second hand), our empathy makes it hard to deny them. I would point to this video to give you an idea of why we need to be skeptical about these things.

      There are actually several explanations for the video you posted:
      -The man was misdiagnosed as dead (This has historically been a problem, though not a very prevalent one)
      -It was a scam by the preacher and the man
      -It was psychological (the man believed in faith healings, so when he was left alone and moved to a comfortable and quite bed, he heard Jesus' name, and "woke up")
      -It was lucky (the guy was in a coma and happened to wake up at that point)
      -It was a miracle, God actively intervening in our reality.

      "God did it" seems to me the least likely explanation.

      But I think the biggest reason to doubt is that no such claims have stood up to the test of scientific scrutiny. As Ethan Allen said, "In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue"

      I contend that you are just as much of a skeptic as I am on this, for two reasons. First, if that man had woken up (on his own accord, rather than having the name of Jesus invoked), and declared himself the second coming of Christ as evidenced by his Resurrection, would you have believed him? Surely you have better evidence in that case (a live video) than you do to believe in the original resurrection (a few guys who wrote about it 30 years later)

      Second, if you watched this video with the name "Jesus" bleeped out, so you weren't sure if it was a Christian faith healing or a Muslim faith healing, what would you think? Would you declare it immediately credible? And then what if it turned out to be a Muslim faith healing? Would you still declare it credible? Or is belief in the miraculous nature of this event contingent upon some other held belief you have? Because if it is, that doesn't meet the definition of miracle (at least in the religious sense). The whole point of a miracle is to convince us of a truth, not to be judged by a truth we already know.

      So could this have been God? Sure. Maybe. I can't say for sure it wasn't God. But I definitely can't say for sure that it was God.

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    2. Thank you for the thorough answer. You have taken into account multiple explanations and that is appreciated. The video relates to your post because faith, as defined as trusting in something/someone/anything that will/should be as a reality (e.g. I can look at a chair and know that I can sit on it without breaking = my faith in the chair). This kind of faith is integrated into every human being and is necessary for having emotions (love? betrayal? etc.) and logic (machines? processes? etc.). A well-rounded worldview includes a reasonable balance between science, philosophy, belief/emotion, and reality/truth. An example of an unreasonable balance would be this statement: "Science is true and is the only reliable source." This statement is self-defeating because it is a philosophical statement. There is no pH level, chemical structure, or volume measurement to the statement. Science cannot exist without philosophy or math or faith. I'm sure we all agree.

      On that note, come now, let us reason together. The CPR, although it was the appropriate execution for the time the video was filmed, was prolonging the brain function of the man. Five compressions to every two breaths and the chest blows are never a way to revive a person but after ten minutes of not providing oxygen to the brain, the brain is 100% dead. If the heart stops, there is no oxygen circulating in the blood stream; therefore, there is no oxygen getting to the brain. There is no conclusive evidence of the duration between the stop of CPR and relocation to the death bed, but I'd say it is long enough to rule out any misdiagnoses or comatose states. The man was clearly dead as defined by people who have seen and diagnosed dead people before not to mention the man's pale/ashen skin color while he is shown in the bed. The prayer the man prayed over the body was prayed to God "in the "name of Jesus Christ."

      That leaves us with two options and I think either option is fittingly described as a miracle. I am sure we both agree this video is interesting and we both would like to clearly know what is really going on behind the scenes in a scientific/spiritual way.

      Jake and Jennifer, which of these options is true (with the given evidence), I would like to hear the reasoning behind your decision and feel free to rephrase or add options:

      1. The revival of the dead man was a medical phenomenon and the man praying on him at the very same moment of that revival was a low-probability coincidence.

      2. God brought the man back to life to allow the opportunity for unbelievers in God to come to believe in God.

      3. Other

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    3. "A well-rounded worldview includes a reasonable balance between science, philosophy, belief/emotion, and reality/truth. "

      I disagree with you completely here. A well rounded world view consists entirely of reality. If it is in fact the truth that there is no God, then believing in God is not part of a well-rounded anything. Your idea of a well-rounded worldview is predicated on your beliefs about reality, but isn't much use to those that don't share those beliefs.


      "Science is true and is the only reliable source." This statement is self-defeating because it is a philosophical statement. There is no pH level, chemical structure, or volume measurement to the statement. Science cannot exist without philosophy or math or faith. I'm sure we all agree."

      I don't think that statement is self-refuting. It's not a philosophical statement, it's a factual one. As I said before, I think science is the most reliable source of truth, because it provides self corrective measures that no other truth-finding mechanism provides. It's a mistake to consider "reliable" as binary- something is not simply "reliable" or "unreliable"- rather, some things are more reliable than others. And science is more reliable than emotion (by a lot). Moreover, science can and does exist without faith. It also exists without philosophy, unless you want to include "The Philosophy of Science", which attempts to answer epistemological questions specific to science (and not particularly applicable to other areas)



      "There is no conclusive evidence of the duration between the stop of CPR and relocation to the death bed, but I'd say it is long enough to rule out any misdiagnoses or comatose states."

      Actually, misdiagnoses of death is not something that can only happen for a few minutes. It can happen for extended periods, up to the point where they've buried people, thinking them dead, and found scratches on the inside of the coffins. And people remain in comas for years.


      "The man was clearly dead as defined by people who have seen and diagnosed dead people before not to mention the man's pale/ashen skin color while he is shown in the bed."

      Yep. Sure looks like they believed he was dead. Doesn't mean they were right. I don't think it's clear at all that this man was dead. In fact, if anything, its clear that he wasn't, as evidenced by the fact that he is now alive. (we can't make natural arguments about how he must have been dead, and then turn around and reject natural arguments about why he might not be dead)


      I think "other" is by far the likeliest of the options you presented. I'll refer you back to the options I listed in my original reply as all being more likely than a miracle.



      From reading your comments, I can't imagine what you would say in response to a video of a Muslim faith healing. Would that convince you that your religion or your epistemology are wrong? I'm intentionally asking this question before I go look for such a video, because I want to know what predictions your beliefs are making, and whether or not you would consider a contradictory video falsification of your belief system (or, as I think more proper, falsification of your epistemological standards).

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  6. Hi Anonymous, I am believer in modern day miracles, but I thought the video was problematic. Why did they wait nearly a full minute before beginning CPR? It seemed as if someone was filming to "prove" he was dead first. And the chest compressions seemed odd, but it’s a foreign country so I’m really not sure how they teach it there. Can God bring the dead back to life, absolutely. And I am in no position to say this wasn't a miracle. But can I see this video as good evidence to help convince others? No. With today's editing abilities, I don't know if there would ever be a video that could be compelling for someone who didn't believe. I would like to thank you Jake for your very tactful and open minded answer as well.

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  7. Jake, you always have excellent answers. Forgive me for assuming we all agreed on those points. I thought they made complete sense. I Google searched Muslims who have raised people from the dead and I came to an interesting conclusion. All of the search results on the page are stories where the muslim was the dead person and comes to having a relationship with God after being raised from the dead. Same thing on YouTube but somehow a Bhuddist monk makes it on the list and reports of a heaven and hell that he never knew about.

    Also, if you didn't have philosophy, science, faith, emotion, etc, how would you be able to perceive what reality is? If I don't have emotion in reality, then would love exist in theory? Conclusively, ultimate truth cannot be contained in my own knowledge or in any one person's knowledge but in something greater than humanity— an objective truth rather than a subjective collection of blog posts.

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  8. Jennifer, I wasn't there when the video was made but my guess was that they were waiting for EMS to arrive. The chest compressions are an outdated form of CPR for the first responder. That ratio was 5:2, which changed to 15:2, then 30:2, and now it's only 30 compressions. Why the changes? I don't know, I have faith that the CPR maker people know what they're talking about.

    To myself, I find it hard to believe the impossible when the impossible happens but that would make it no longer impossible then wouldn't it? I have a firm trust in science and I hold very high the value of experience. As an example, what if I was in the room when that video was shot and I saw every step of the way in front of my own eyes, would I respond the way we did?

    What if I visually personally witnessed a person walking on water in the middle of a storm? (http://youtu.be/422M4WixG9I)
    (http://youtu.be/45yabrnryXk)
    (http://youtu.be/YpMTR0-4Hag)
    (http://youtu.be/CD3vkC3jga8)
    (http://youtu.be/vMzF5y01TkQ)

    What if biblical accounts of history were supported by science as reality?
    (http://youtu.be/QvsG3E7WAn0)
    (http://youtu.be/4e20Cq5yob4)

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  9. Jake.

    Jennifer.

    I am not saying that I have all the answers or that I know everything because I most certainly don't. I am a simple person that lives in a house and works a job to earn enough to live. With what I do have though, I use it to invest in the lives of people around me and I think that is one of the most important things in life.

    What if I found scientific evidence that there is a spiritual part that belongs to every person and that each person's spiritual part is what I call a soul? And each person's soul is nonspatial and eternal. What if I said we are spiritual beings having a physical experience? How could I stress the importance of my discovery to other people? What about my personal discovery of how to save one's soul from eternal discomfort? Would you believe me if I told you I know in every aspect of my life (science, philosophy, faith, emotion, reality, etc.) that the soul is a reality and there is more than enough evidence to prove there is an eternal nonspatial creator being that desires to show you how much he cares about you? I cannot stress the importance of this matter enough.

    I have faith that this eternal nonspatial creator being will follow through with His promise to me that I will spend the rest of time with Him instead of a place of discomfort and that is based on the premise that God set for all humanity (that includes you whether you choose to accept it or not). God says that we need accept that we have problems in our lives that we cannot solve, some problems that can be clearly deemed as morally wrong. He will judge us according to our moral wrongdoings based on His judgement unless we believe that Jesus sacrificed his wrongdoing-less life for death so that we may be seen as perfectly good according to God's judgement. It is Jesus' resurrection from the dead that has freed our souls from our lifetime attachment of wrongdoings so that we may spend the rest of our lives getting to know God and the rest of time as the spiritual beings we were created to be. This same nonspatial timeless creator being wants to know you better than you know your best friend. He wants you like a hungry fat kid wants cake. Or have you ever heard the quote, "Love is what makes two people sit in the middle of a bench when there is plenty of room at both ends”? That is why God used Jesus Christ to show his love for you in this bench way. It may sound impossible and a bit cheesy but it is definitely possible and completely serious. I know this from personal experience.

    Jake and Jennifer, I wish I could put you inside my head so that you can understand first-hand the intimate encounters I have had with God but for now it is going to have be like describing the color blue to a blind man. The only way you can truly know is if you experience it for yourself, kind of like the video we were talking about.

    Ever hear of Pascal's Wager?

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    1. Hi anonymous, I think you might have the wrong impression of me. I am a Catholic Christian that has a firm belief in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I wasn't arguing that the video was not a miracle, but only troubling as evidence for one. Thanks and God bless!

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  10. Haha, it is a YouTube video isn't it.

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