Pericles,
You ask about thought processes. I said that I put the question, is there a God? Weighing the evidence in a balance, I conclude that there is a God. With yourself, you say,weighing the evidence in the balance you conclude that there is not.

So, the thought processes are actually the same. While its only our conclusions that are different, or perhaps the evidence that each of us are assessing.

Your excuse that you put earlier for not believing was to say God is not or can not clearly be defined.

However, God as revealed in the Christian scriptures is sufficiently and consistently defined. God has been revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a belief that I share with Christian believers of all nations, cultures and languages across many centuries. A summary of the teaching of the Christian Scriptures can be seen in the early creeds, such as the Nicene Creed, which is a confession which unites believers across the Faith throughout time.

Dear Pericles,

Obviously, for worldly success, or even just survival, one needs some knowledge about existence, for example where food, mates and predators are present. How important such knowledge is depends on one's priorities: for the spiritual life, God comes first, before existence.

But if all one wants is a "normal life", then why waste time questioning the existence of God? You cannot eat it and it won't eat you...

Similarly, if all one wants is God, then why waste time questioning His existence? What difference would it make?

<<Yet you still talk about God, as if one did exist. Incessantly. Why?>>

I talk about what I consider important - so are you. For me it is God, for you, existence. Likewise, for me you seem to talk about existence as if you worship it.

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A description is a positive attribute, so by the definition I just provided, God cannot be described, thus you may fill the blank with whatever you like.

By the same definition, the property of 'existing' cannot be attributed to God, so if X exists then X is not God and if God existed, then God is not God... a contradiction.
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<<On the one hand you say there is no God, but at the same time you say there is nothing but God.>>

There is no God in existence, but existence itself is an illusion (Maya). The Truth of it all is God - but due to our ignorance it seems to us as existence instead. The parable for it is, when you go in the forest at night and see a rope, you may be scared because you think it's a snake, looking very real, but when you shine light on it with your torch, you discover that there was never a snake there, only a rope. In Truth there is no existence, real as it may seem in our ignorance, it's all only God.

There's a fairly important step missing here, Dan S de Merengue.

>>You ask about thought processes. I said that I put the question, is there a God? Weighing the evidence in a balance, I conclude that there is a God.<<

You omit to declare what evidence you perceive to be important, in your process of weighing.

What I am trying to understand, I guess, is why and how the evidence evaluated by a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Catholic, differs from "your" evidence. If indeed it does differ.

Do you take the same evidence and evaluate it differently, or simply choose different evidence?

To my mind, either a) there has to be something different in the evaluation process, given that in the twentyfirst century the same evidence is available to all parties, or b) the decision is inevitably reached purely on cultural grounds. And I am gradually coming to the conclusion that it is only culture.

The way I reach this conclusion is as follows:

1. All the data pertaining to different religions, and the various divisions within those religions, is available to all.

2. Some highly intelligent people - i.e. with a highly-developed capacity for reason - from a wide range of religions, have looked at that evidence.

3. Since there is an extremely high likelihood that they will adopt the religion of their tribe, intelligence - reasoning capacity - can have no impact on their selection process.

I often wonder how highly intelligent people can spend countless hours examining history to justify their stance - as Peter Sellick appears to do - when their conclusions have no relevance beyond the confines of their particular sect.

Every argument also seems to be completely circular. "I am a Christian because I believe in Jesus; I believe in Jesus because I am a Christian".

Or

"I am a Christian because I believe the Bible tells the truth; I believe the Bible tells the truth because I am a Christian"

Surely there is something more to it than that? If there is, I have yet to hear it articulated.

Wrong question, Yuyutsu.

>>But if all one wants is a "normal life", then why waste time questioning the existence of God?<<

It is not the existence of God I am questioning - I long ago concluded there isn't one - it is the thought processes that lead people towards a particular belief that fascinate me.

>>Likewise, for me you seem to talk about existence as if you worship it.<<

Nope.

Worship v. show reverence and adoration for (a deity)

Neither you nor I had any influence on the fact of our existence. We simply are. To "worship" something as simple and mundane as that is highly inappropriate. It is a binary state - you either exist, or you don't. All available evidence points to the fact that you didn't exist before you were born, and you will cease to exist when you die. Nothing to revere or adore there.

>>...the property of 'existing' cannot be attributed to God<<

Many religions take a different view. I'm interested in why they think that way.

Dear Pericles,

For me YOU SEEM to worship existence because you talk about it incessantly. In the Hindu mythology, Kamsa was a very evil king, he hated Krishna so much that he couldn't ever stop thinking of him, he talked about him incessantly, he tortured his subjects which he suspected of supporting Krishna and couldn't sleep because he had nightmares and woke up sweating after dreaming that Krishna is going to get him. When Kamsa was finally killed by Krishna, he went to heaven because all his life was thus dedicated to Krishna, even though it was in a negative way.

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Yes, we simply ARE. This doesn't imply that we exist: our bodies exist and as we identify with them we believe ourselves to exist as well for the duration of the usefulness of those bodies. We are who we are when this body is a baby as well as when this body is old - nothing is changed in that regard just as nothing has changed when this body was born and when it will die.

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<<Many religions take a different view. I'm interested in why they think that way.>>

It's like asking why a mother loves her baby. For a mother, her baby is the most beautiful and she totally loves and adores him/her regardless how s/he actually looks (and as per current-affairs, even if he deals with drugs). The question of "[why] is your baby beautiful?" doesn't usually arise unless some fool challenges the mother about it. Our "relation" to God is even closer than that of a mother to her baby: we ARE God!

Some religions do not care about that question of God's existence and haven't bothered to answer it. I only needed to address this question because it comes up again and again on this forum. I wonder whether early Christianity needed to address this particular question before the assault of modernism (or perhaps earlier, Greek philosophy) and its "worship" of this rival new god, existence.

That's just silly, let's-pretend stuff, Yuyutsu.

>>For me YOU SEEM to worship existence because you talk about it incessantly.<<

I refer to existence when the discussion's context requires, which is hardly the same thing as talking about it incessantly.

>>Yes, we simply ARE. This doesn't imply that we exist<<

Actually, it does. More than that, it does not merely imply our existence, it confirms it. Defines it, in fact. Your own existence is confirmed by the fact that you are reading this response. Because you would be unable to do so, if you did not exist.

(This is very much like trying to explain breathing to a five-year-old. "Ok, try holding your breath. You see? If you stop breathing, you stop existing.)

>>The question of "[why] is your baby beautiful?" doesn't usually arise unless some fool challenges the mother about it.<<

Poor analogy. What I am curious about is not the one-on-one relationship of a mother with her baby, but the many-on-one relationship of an individual with the intellectual concept that is a religion. Which you simply cannot avoid by saying...

>>we ARE God!<<

...because that is the view of a very small minority, and one that rejects the notion of religion completely. Even atheists are able to accept that the available evidence can only be explained by the presence within our society of religions, and of many adherents to those religions.

>>I wonder whether early Christianity needed to address this particular question before the assault of modernism (or perhaps earlier, Greek philosophy) and its "worship" of this rival new god, existence<<

At least you are able to accept that "existence" substantially pre-dates religion, of any kind. Even the nullity that you seem to "worship".