[MarcBee]

Originally Posted by Esaias

The key thing you are missing is your statement : "Some of the claims are testable, and they fail the test."
What test? The test of truth?

When T or I say "truth," we do not mean it with a capital T, nor do we suppose that ultimate truth even exists, (at least in the sense that religious people say it.) But a lower case T, a provisional one, is both sufficiently true and also flexible enough to correct itself toward achieving closer and closer to what is true for a practical demonstrable function. A person may not know that gravity is really a "theory", and well supported by all tests of science, but that person can still report that gravity is the "truth", based on one's own demonstrable evidence, along with the experiences of the rest of mankind. As it turns out, scientists can predict everything about how gravity functions, but they still don't know just what gravity IS! But neither does that exactly matter, because an honest quest for "the truth" is a self-correcting process, whereas belief in the literalist tradition-- infallible, divinely insprired, inerrant Word of God--is set in stone, and cannot be improved. So once it's wrong, it's always wrong, forever.

What test? The test of truth?

Practical truth (the kind we use to live the rest of our lives, that is, in almost every phase of life except religion) merely means, "that which works well." This truth of course has shades of certainty, from "I'm pretty sure--since the stoplight is now green for me, the crossing cars should be waiting on red, and I'll be safe to go through." Contrast with "Not so sure, the light is a stale yellow but since I'm going 65 mph, and driving a semi truck, I'm going through, but I probably won't have a collision." And so it goes throughout life, with different people accepting different levels of what is verifiably reliable and what is not verifiably reliable, and every permutation in between. We all have experience with what we think is known, what is probable, what is possible, and what (lacking much evidence either way) requires the trepidation of taking great risk.

The Bible itself also allows the use of personal experience and our own senses when it says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Some people claim that they have "tasted and seen" and KNOW God is real because they feel him deep down in their soul's gizzards. Others claim they don't really need to taste and see, but they have enough faith that it's all true anyhow. But ex-christians, skeptics, atheists, agnostics, and a few other non-Christian religions now require something more compelling than 3500 year-old claims handed down from desert tribes. Fortunately, as the claims become more and more testable through the centuries, more and more evidence accumulates about the claims. Therefore, some people DARE to judge the reliability of the so-called Word of God based on what can be measured, verified, seen, predicted. The bible fails on most of the testable levels, therefore it is not a reliable source of information on which to stake one's life.

Where does that come from?

It comes from the human ability to survive, adapt, and evolve. When humans use knowledge, and that knowledge works, then that is truth, with a small T.

As I already demonstrated, the existence of truth requires a 'necessarily existing mind' which is the universally accepted definition of 'God'.

You demonstrated all that? Universally accepted? I thought "universal" means almost everyone accepts it except the purely ignorant, or crackpots. To half the world, "necessarily existing mind" AINT NECESSARILY SO. Doesn't the very term "necessary" mean no alternatives are possible? Those who think the Divine Mind is so "necessary" are those who presuppose that same Divine Mind exists. Even if that argument were more demonstrable (other than a fun philosophic thought experiment that has probably converted no one either way!) how would a necessarily existing god-mind therefore point to your particular Yahweh god as the correct god among many other claims about the various gods? They are all based on mere claims, and all equally unfalsifiable to those who have to believe. Millions of christians who mimic each others' claims about their gods are no more persuasive than millions of Muslims mimicking each others' claims about their god, or millions of Hindus mimicking each others claims, etc. My observations and experience with the Yahweh/Jesus god is that that nothing happens to or within any believer that is distinguishable from what ALSO happens in the natural world without the god. The ancient human mind, desiring any answer to life's mysteries rather than no answers, remains wired for religion to this day. This aspect was probably a survival mechanism for Homo Heidelbergensis, but is now appropriate to be discarded (that is, overruled rationally) by Homo Sapien Sapien.

Think it through.

Oh, we continue to think it through. I'm always willing to consider any new (or even old) evidence for the claimed gods. BTW, the emotional wiring of my former belief system and imagination still exists in my brain, since the wiring was active for 30 years. Heehee, I may still, on a rare occasion say, "Thank you Jesus," when something good happens. But I likewise can also resurrect the emotions of beholding our glittering Christmas tree when I was 3-4 years old, when I imagined that a magical superman would bring me gifts while I slept. Both are vestiges we can outgrow.