What you call “magic” is very compelling “evidence” that God is more than real my friend…u take a chance of NOT believing in God, and one day u will find that u were more than wrong, and for all of eternity (which we cannot even begin to comprehend in our finite minds) that u will spend an eternal amount of time without the one and True Living God in your life…Do you want to know how I KNOW in my heart that there is a God? It was so simple for me when I was 18 years old and in the Marine Corps during Vietnam war…I was an “agnostic”…did not know what to believe. Went to Him in my prayers and asked Him to show me if He was real or not…several years went by and I asked Him into my heart…He did what He said he would do…because I believed in Him, He answered and came into my heart by His Holy Spirit, and for the last 50 plus years He has always been there, and there is no way I could resist His existence in my being. You and anyone else on this planet can do the exact same thing. Ask Him to prove Himself to you (and keep your mind open to things that will come your way in life)…you will be convinced beyond reasonable doubt.
It’s not a gold standard…It’s called common sense…open your mind and your heart…
Professing themselves to be “wise” became fools !
There is a “Way” that leads to life eternal. A road that many there be that follow the way that leads to death. Another road that leads to life, and few there be that find it !
Here’s something else that blows the mind of most theists: Most of us here wouldn’t worship the Abrahamic god even if definitive proof of its existence was provided. This god, as depicted in the bible, is a cruel, sadistic monster undeserving of worship.
What objectively verifiable evidence do you have for the existence of any god? Please note that “knowing in your heart” is not evidence…
I have an alternative explanation: You believe(d) what you want(ed) to believe, in a self-reinforced learning loop. Once you came over a certain threshold with your belief in this stuff, you gave yourself a mental reward, and possibly also were rewarded with nice words and confirmations from your peers. This happened to work as positive reinforcement for your brain, and your brain’s mesolimbic system (the reward system) learned to associate belief with rewards. Thus, you learned to believe in your god, just as one trains dogs to do tricks, namely by positive feedback.
Assuming for the sake of argument that he wasn’t simply cynically manipulating his audience, I would just put it down to motivated reasoning. He was a reformist Catholic and wanted to promote his Church just like any other believer. He could have hit upon this as a way to appeal to a populace already largely committed to SOME form of religious observance. Heck, maybe he even believed his own BS.
But it’s still BS.
Technically an agnostic is one who does not think god is knowable. That is Huxley’s original definition when he formulated the term. His argument was essentially that since god as generally postulated isn’t part of the natural world accessible through our five senses or assistive instrumentation, we can’t know anything at all about such a being. Everything said about this being is just assertions – assertions that are not only not proven, but not proveABLE.
Since that era, “agnostic” has been hijacked and warped to mean “undecided”, something like “moderate” has come to mean that in the political realm. It wasn’t originally so.
At any rate – if you did not “know what to believe” then you had two avenues to make that decision. One would be to seek valid evidence grounded in the real world; the other would be to believe what someone or some book tells you to. It seems that you chose the latter.
I took that path as well, starting at the age of 5, due to childhood indoctrination. So by the time I was 18 I already “knew what to believe”. By my late 30s I had figured out that this did not work as advertised. That was 30 years ago. I don’t like surprises, and the real world out here doesn’t surprise me. Whereas the triumphalist / fabulist world of evangelicalism constantly steered me about 180 degrees wrong.
If you’re happy as you are, then that’s your business. You should do what works for you, provided you have integrity, respect, compassion and empathy and kindness in your dealings with others. And don’t imagine that you have some kind of monopoly on such qualities.
As has been pointed out, you were undecided, not agnostic.
I followed a path similar to yours, but when I got the question answered, it was a “No!” Not any room for misunderstanding. It could very well have been “Yes!”, but it wasn’t.
I did a bit more research and found that the argument Pascal was making isn’t exactly the “just believe” argument we know and love. It was much more nuanced.
What I read seem to point to his being aware that aspects of his argument were troublesome and he took pains to avoid them.
So, yes, it seems to be motivated reasoning.
Which one is that? If the god of the Bible, which one of those?
This string was originally meant to be just entertainment so I started it in the Random Fun room. It has become a debate, do I will be moving it to that room today.
Are you surprised? It’s a cruel, sadistic, monstrous world.
What’s your clan? Personally, I’m a Farquharson - sept “Riach” - notable Riach’s include James Riach of British Columbia who was in the vehicle which got shot up the night one of Bacon Brothers was murdered. Now facing life in prison behind some bars in the Philippines under drug trafficking charges. Might have been a cousin of mine. Not sure. I’ve always stayed on the left side of the law.
A poor version of Pascal’s wager. Can you demonstrate a deity of any kind is even possible? If not then why would assume any risk exists at all?
You are also wrong, as believing in one version of one of the countless deities humans have imagined to be real, seems like pretty long odds to me, and thus even in your assumptive argument, the imagined unevidenced risk isnt statistically much lower.
A nonsensical argument preficated on unevidenced assumption. And of course were you to end up in this imaginary hell, for picking tge wrong deity or the wrong version, the same assertion could be made of you.
I am about as worried of hell, as I am a nefarious mermaid will drag me to a watery grave, and for the same reason.
You ‘spose @25gingerandcash is a…
I do suppose just that, though this overused and overrated argument, made me mindful of a quote from the series Taxi, by the late Andy Kaufman.
“In my country, there is a belief, and rightly so, that the only thing that separates us from the animals are mindless superstition and pointless rituals”.
Quality… 
There is a “way” that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof is death…many of you (most, if not all) will ONE DAY at the end…all of you will BOWL YOUR KNEES and CONFESS WITH YOUR MOUTHS that JESUS CHRIST IS LORD…The Lord God at that time will say either of these 2 things to each and everyone of you. “Enter in thou good and faithful servant”, or He will say “Be gone from Me, I never knew you”
@25gingerandcash, you are welcome to debate ideas but you must stop preaching.
Consider this an official warning.