Our "-isms" "-ologies"

@kellyjay said
However, the truth is the only thing that matters, not that we have
perceptions or ideas about them, which you focus on as if only what we think is real
because we think it.

This is your cognition at work.

@kellyjay said
Is God real? Our beliefs don't change the true answer to that
question.

I think there may be some kind of a creator entity. But I find your particular God figure to be a mish mash of [1] arbitary ancient mythology, [2] a contrived and convoluted theology, and [3] complete moral incoherence in crucial ways. But I fully understand the tenets of your faith.

@fmf said
I think there may be some kind of a creator entity. But I find your particular God figure to be a mish mash of [1] arbitary ancient mythology, [2] a contrived and convoluted theology, and [3] complete moral incoherence in crucial ways. But I fully understand the tenets of your faith.

Yes I get that you deny Him, it is not my God, I don’t own one.

@kellyjay said
Yes I get that you deny Him, it is not my God, I don’t own one.

The Christian God is your God figure. If you were a Muslim, the Islamic God would be your God figure.

@fmf said
The Christian God is your God figure. If you were a Muslim, the Islamic God would be your God figure.

That is just you projecting your beliefs on everyone else. If God is real it is He who owns it all and what He thinks matters not the other way around.

@kellyjay said
That is just you projecting your beliefs on everyone else.

All we are doing us swapping our subjective opinions. My experiential knowledge of strong faith for decades and of loss of faith has given me keener insights into the nature and substance of faith than you have; you are still stuck in a very superstitious and not very reflective mindset. But if your faith pushes your everyday life buttons, then good for you.

@kellyjay said
If God is real it is He who owns it all and what He thinks matters not the other way around.

We can only speculate about such unknowable things ~ something you appear to be conceding with your use of the word "if".

@fmf said
All we are doing us swapping our subjective opinions. My experiential knowledge of strong faith for decades and of loss of faith has given me keener insights into the nature and substance of faith than you have; you are still stuck in a very superstitious and not very reflective mindset. But if your faith pushes your everyday life buttons, then good for you.

That may be all your doing; I'm talking about God, who created everything and holds
it all together by the power of His Word. This isn't about you or me; it is about Him.

@fmf said
We can only speculate about such unknowable things ~ something you appear to be conceding with your use of the word "if".

I use 'if' to allow for reasoning it out.

@fmf said
It's just cognition for you too, KellyJay.

Excuse me, but if faith is "just a function of cognition", doesn't that mean we have a choice to have faith or not? Are you finally admitting that free will IS real?

-Removed-

Why don't you ask him if Jesus was ever really in him?

@suzianne said
Excuse me, but if faith is "just a function of cognition", doesn't that mean we have a choice to have faith or not? Are you finally admitting that free will IS real?

Very good question. I have never disputed the fact that free will is involved in terms of what information you expose yourself or who you talk to about religious doctrines and beliefs. This would apply to weighing, considering, meditating and deciding how much of a chance or how much time one gives to religious ideas to get a footing. Even to be open-minded can be a conscious decision.

But, I have long held that one cannot just decide or choose to believe [or not to believe] in supernatural things.

Instead, one realizes that one does; something akin to a gut feeling or something instinctual.

While thinking, weighing, deciding and choosing are all functions of cognition, clearly, so are things like realizing one believes or recognizing or responding to a gut feeling.

One cannot just choose to believe in the Islamic God, for example, without that "gut feeling" [realization], just as one cannot just choose not to if that "gut feeling" [realization] is there.

Either way, these matters are in the mind and they are not supernatural; they are all functions of cognition.

@kellyjay said
That may be all your doing; I'm talking about God, who created everything and holds
it all together by the power of His Word. This isn't about you or me; it is about Him.

I am well aware of what your religious faith is.