In order for a reality to be everyone's reality, shouldn't there be empirical evidence to back it up?

Question

Isn't authentic reality things that we can verify with empirical evidence, and not just "feelings in our heart"?

If God were real, why isn't there empirical evidence such that every single human person on Earth would be able to believe without a shawdow of a doubt?

Answer 1

If a witch cast spells to heal people, but no one ever got healed, we would laugh at her.

If a priest prayed for someone to get healed, and no one got healed, we would say it was god's will.

The difference between these two things, is that the organization that backs the priest, had the military might to subjugate the organization backing the witch.

So in our modern times, even though there is no difference between the two, society as a whole has been trained to treat the priest's nonsense differently.

And for the record, prayer has been proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to not work. The odds of prayer working are exactly the same as the odds that it won't. (In fact, a recent study suggests that the apathy of people who "gave up" their fate to prayer, may have actually deteriorated their condition)

Answer 2

It is relative to the observer.

Einstein proved this about time. We will eventually prove this about the universe in general.

There is no shared reality, it is an illusion that there could be one. Each person will take a black and white fact in a different way. If you've ever been witness to a horrible trauma, you know that afterward it is very difficult to come to a common consensus as to what "really" happened. Investigator's are well aware of this paradox, in fact, they take multiple identical responses to a question to mean the people giving the responses are in collusion. No one will relay their perceptions of an experience in exactly the same way as another person.

Since we all see the same event differently, it seems unlikely that there is shared "true" reality.

Answer 3

Those are two seperate concepts...reality and faith...and that's just how the church wants to keep it...

"Reality" is defined by perception of the majority....if everyone if the room believes a particular chair is blue...but you perceive it as red...it will be defined as blue...you however, may continue to see it as red...reality is a personal experience...you have beliefs that noone else may share...or you may fall completely in the mainstream...either way...it's your choices and perceptions that define it....A hindu in Calcutta doesn't decide for me what I believe to be true...nor does a roman catholic in the Vatican. I for one believe what I can see or learn of through experimentation.

We all know religion is a tool for control...As Karl Marx once said "Religion is the opiate of the masses" Once you establish a firm belief in a deity, you can establish the rules that the entity demands you live by. One only need look no further than the rewriting of the bible...King James Version...exclusion of some of the gospels...yet the bible is the word of God? wait a second, if it's the word of God, and God is infallible...how can you rewrite his words or choose to leave things out? Religion is a construct of contradiction...period...

I've never believed in "God", yet I live a moral life...I don't steal, lie or cheat...I need no moral compass other than logic...it's illogical to deprive others of that which I would not want to be deprived of myself...sound familiar? It's called the Golden Rule...and it's steeped in social and community logic..as a species our cooperation and communication skill is what allowed us to become the dominant creature on this earth...not divine providence...given that our survival has depended on this structure of mutual cooperation it only makes sense to apply it to your own experience.

Personally, I think faith is a mental disorder, those that "believe" don't possess enough personal conviction to manage their own lives without some sort of intervention...how unfortunate...

There are far too many inconvenient contradictions between the Hebrew Bible, King James Bible and all the other various texts to establish it as a source of historical facts. Therefore, it is irrelevant....isn't it amazing that we aren't born with an inherent knowledge of "God"? we have to be taught/brainwashed....doesn't sound like humanity is somehow "touched by God" inherently...

It's nonsense, but if it keeps people from whacking each other, robbing my house or getting in the way on the highway on Sundays, have at it...

Answer 4

Hence one of the stumbling blocks I have with accepting any religion as valid. If I make a claim that can't be substantiated, no one can be held at fault for not believing me. Even if it actually did happen. I remember living in Hawaii many years ago. I recall touching a frog and getting an electric shock. Did I dream it, or did it happen? Did something else occur that I attributed to the frog? I do not know. Since I was three at the time, I know that my memories of the time are suspect. I know that my testimony is valid only to show that I recall a thing happening, not that a thing actually did happen.

Answer 5

This is one reason why I gave up Christ-insanity. If there really was an all-powerful God, then it would have made itself known in a way that everyone would know who and what it is and what it wants from us. I mean, if it could create the entire universe in 6 days, then surely this would not be beyond its power.

Some are saying that sin somehow separates us from God. If God is everywhere, then how can we be separated from him? Why did God create sin if he didn't want it to interfere with our knowing him?

Sorry, Randy, but atheism is more than a choice, it is the default condition for all of humanity. You were not born knowing about God and believing in him--you learned to believe what your parents and culture taught you, just as you had to learn table manners and how to read, write, and add numbers.

**Is there a God? If there is, then He has decided to remain physically hidden. If God has decided to do so, who are we to question His decision? **

If God is hidden from our physical senses, and everything we experience is through our physical senses (yes, emotions are physical--they are created within the brain), then you cannot even know that God exists! So, how can you say what God has decided if you you have never even experienced him/her/it?

Answer 6

A good argument is that--there IS evidence every single human person on Earth is *able* to believe without a *reasonable* doubt if only each and every person would open him/herself to it. Your argument could be turned on you in that millions don't believe in the empirical evidence for evolution either because they won't allow themselves to. This doesn't make it false.

Answer 7

This has nothing to do with christianity, but seriously, you are a thinking person. Don't you agree that their exist many things that we don't know the answer to? Isn't that the point of philosophy? I don't want to only think about things that have already been thought about ('provable' facts). I rather enjoy thinking about things that cannot be explained or proved. That's why I like the theory of evolution so much. Nobody can prove it, but it's the closest thing we have, right now. Keep thinking. If you don't, you are just as bad as the spoon-fed bible thumpers

Answer 8

Everyone's reality is different. Everyone experiences life through the filter of their own education and experience. If you had experiences that you believed to be miraculous, you would believe in God. If you have had experiences, or grown up being told, to the contrary, that will have an effect on your belief system. It's impossible to pin down "this is the truth"--no one sees things the same way.

Answer 9

Can we verify love, or other emotions with "empirical evidence?" No, we can not. They are nothing more than "feelings in our hearts", and yet we believe them to be true and to exist. And, no; not all humans believe in all of these things either. It is all in the matter of faith.

Answer 10

I'll be the first to admit that my idea of God is pretty different. I believe in a God with a long white beard, a gold crown, and a long robe with lots of shiny jewels on it. He sits on a big throne in the clouds, and He's about five hundred feet tall. He talks in a real deep voice like "I...AM...GOD!" He can blow up stuff just by looking at it. This is my own, personal idea of God.