Whaa the topic keeps changing so fast XD First I wanted to cover my personal views and expectations of whot I thought would happen, then I wanted to finish the statement I'd made but had to cut short due to class, and now ... oh meh I may as well just hop into the current conversation. Whotever XD
They seek evidence for an entity that transcends everything, including reality itself, and for this reason, it's at the moment when someone proves God that they prove their defeat; they've taken a being that is totally beyond us and ascribed all kinds of limiting characteristics to it.
I actually hold this as a strong indication of the inherent flaw in organized religion as a whole; to be a member of ANY faith is to state that yeu know the unknowable; that yeu understand whot the human mind cannot grasp; that yeu are privy to the things that yeu cannot possibly know, such as the nature of god, whot god 'wants', or whot form god would take in the first place.
Religious texts may or may not have divine influence, but they are, in the end, written not just by humans, who are flawed in and of themselves, but moreso they are most often written by committee, and please enlighten me to the last time anything consistent and accurate has ever come out of one of those.
By the mere definition of FAITH, it can NOT have firm proof or evidence. Or it wouldn't be taken on faith...
Now, that being said... we can infer with some degree of certainty, with the information presented to us, that 'something' may exist beyond mortal comprehension. As to whether this 'something' is even a conscious entity, or just a giant set of clockwork gears, this we do not know, nor would we be capable of perceiving, let alone comprehending such, even if we knew of it.
And of course there's the issue that "some degree of certainty" is kind of a pretty large variable in and of itself, not to mention that it relies solely upon current information and understanding of the information we have at this point in time, which's far from inclusive of everything there is to be known, nor all the factors related to such.
We used to believe thunder and lightning, rainbows, and so on, were manually placed one at a time by demons, gods, angels, and mythical creatures. We now know how they operate mechanically, at least to a degree, and it's become apparent that they're not being generated by hand, and rather, there's predictable factors which create such, implying an automated system. So at the very least, either god's not all powerful, or doesn't have infinite patience, so either way, god is not 100% infinite in all regards.
I'm leaning on.... no. It's hard to imagine getting smacked for simply picking a wrong door. haha... that would be so lame.
Another thing I'd like to point out is this line here by KDude... really, we have how many religions? All professing to be the "one true religion"? That all others are false? Whot proof do any of them have? Anecdotal evidence, and personal beliefs mean nothing... if I had cancer and it went into remission, I could either believe it to be just a bizarre medical occurrence, I could believe it to be the work of god, of allah, or of karma, who knows! But the same information would be interpreted to fit THEIR belief system every time.
All religions claim to be the one true one, and none offer any evidence to support such beyond the same evidence every other gives. It is a blind faith spin of the wheel, a door to be picked... to pick the wrong one out of thousands of choices equals certain damnation for all eternity too, of course. Because it makes perfect sense to drop someone in a room with 500,000 identical objects, and tell them to pick the right one, and if yeu pick the wrong one yeu're tortured for eternity. Because it truly is 500,000 identical objects, they give no explanation, no proof, no evidence, no understanding. How can yeu possibly tell the 'truth'? We don't even physically live long enough for the time it'd take to go through each and every religion and sub-religion in the depth necessary to understand them to make even a remotely educated decision, so exactly how are we expected to pick 'the right one' while blindfolded and given nothing solid to work with?
One can only surmise that, whotever god or goddess there is out there, if any, or multiple, that they don't really care which yeu pick, as long as yeu meet certain factors. Personally, I'd like to assume that those factors are related to yeur attempt to try to learn the truth and generally be a nice person to some extent. Problem there being that 'nice person' isn't even a solid concept, but a variable in and of itself; whot may be polite in one society is an insult in another, there's no common ground really... so there's not even that.
Regardless, if a god truly did expect me to "pick the right religion", with no information whotsoever, even *IF* I got it right, I'd boycott heaven on principle, because I refuse to worship anything that undeserving of such.
The only thing we can be certain of, or at least reasonably so, is that the universe seems to exist... or at least we believe it does with the information we currently possess. We also are aware that at one point it did not exist; be it big bang or divine creation, who cares, it doesn't matter, somehow something had to've come from nothing. Therefore, something exists outside the universe as we know it; M-theory thinks branes make it all make sense, but that still requires the acceptance of something infinite beyond our understanding, so really, is putting the name "god" to it any different?
In the end, we must understand that we can't understand the mere concept of infinity as it is, and that from the very starting point we begin at, we've already hit a snag in our ability to understand the universe and our creation.
So... where's blind faith come in? Well... blind faith assumes yeu know something for certain with no evidence at all; as mentioning to victor earlier, MBTI is not reliant upon blind faith. It states that it is flawed and merely the best shot at a vague guide that made sense at the time, but is in no way flawless. There are individuals who treat it as infallible, but that is the failure of the individual, not the system.
Blind faith doesn't reside there, but rather in those that insist on accepting every single thing written in their holy text as absolute unfettered truth with no possibility of error; that their prophet is a semi-divine being and incapable of error, be they the head of a cult, or the pope, the belief is that they have a direct line to god and know the 'truth'.
Dogma, by definition, is a set of rules for interpretation; they TELL yeu how to think, and how to believe. Blind faith is when yeu truly believe without any idea of whot yeu believe or WHY yeu believe it. To insist that christianity, or muslim, or whotever, is the ABSOLUTE TRUTH, and yet... have no more reason to believe that than any other religion out there, is foolish at best, and definitely negligent if yeu force such beliefs upon children who have yet to be able to think rationally about such things themselves. Telling them it's true from a position of authority, yet giving no reason why... and not even knowing yeurself... really how does this get classified as a good thing?
We need not pick the door in KDude's example blindly though. We can look at the door, inspect the quality, if there's cracks in its' foundation, we can tap the handle to see if it's hot. We can use our minds to try to process this information to try to come up with something that vaguely resembles at least the attempt to've understood.
Of course, if we go by MBTI standards, I have a heavy weight of Thinking preference in my values; to me, to accept the first thing yeu're told blindly without questioning it is madness, and no god who expects that of anyone is worthy of worship, especially if it's a 1 in 500,000 chance to get it 'right'.
Of course, those who are heavy Feelers, and likely Judgers, likely think me a fool for not being willing to accept a strict organized layout on faith alone.
We will never see eye to eye, but I still think that if yeu want to call yeurselves the 'children of god' or treat yeurselves as demigods, or 'better than nature', that yeu should really be using yeur brains for once. I just find it so ironic that those who are of the firmest belief that they are superior, are the same ones who are anything but.
"I'm smarter than a dumb animal! Animals didn't invent guns!" Yeah... that gives yeu all the right to go out hunting... oh wait, yeu're just giving into basic instinct on the need to hunt/kill, thereby showing yeu're not any better than the animal yeu hunt, and yeu personally didn't invent guns, and chances are yeu wouldn't be capable of such since yeu've already shown very little in the way of capacity to outreason yeur natural instincts >.>
Oh well I'm ranting now. I'll stop for now =3
Blah blah blah blah blah!