First of all, please show the difference. Second, no he's not. He doesn't really do much in the story, and much of his attributes are part of dogma, not scripture. Third, as long as you can't show evidence that he exists, he IS a god of man's imagining.
No. He a God that some know and others don't know. You are the one who is doing the imagining, imagination always rushing in to fill any vacuum in our knowledge. I may not be able to prove to you that God exists (evidence aside for now), but you cannot prove otherwise. And don't try to throw the burden of proof onto me. What is really being debated is two versions of reality: a top-down, created universe verses a bottom-up, sprung out of nowhere one. The burden of proof is on the one trying to prove their case. In fact one could argue that since historically most people have believed in God or at least a spiritual reality, and widespread atheism and its running mate scientific naturalism are fairly new phenomena, the burden of proof is on the atheists.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "standards for truth", which itself sounds a lot like mystical claptrap, if you don't mind me saying.
Okay, I'll explain. My Sunday School teachers made claims I found harder to accept the more I learned, like Methuselah supposedly living for 969 years. By the same token, much later I found my experience of reality differing from the claims made by scientific materialists, for instance that no dream can contain future knowledge (they can). I eventually took the same leap of faith I took before and moved from a smaller reality to a larger one.
Could you show one such piece of evidence here?
I've shown a little on the thread A Second Channel of Communication?
That should tell you something, and here's why: every action of every thing in the universe has an effect on the universe. If you walk, you move the air around you, and crush stuff under your feet. If a photon hits an electron, it can knock it out of its orbit, etc. The things we observe are detectable even when we can't determine the exact cause. If science is unable to even detect the effect that people claim to see, then it should throw the claim into serious doubt, not the science.
These are effects in the material world. Spiritual phenomena generally don't affect it. What they affect is minds.
Many people have reported thousands of different, weird experiences, some of which are mutually-exclusive. UFOs, ghosts, bigfoot, fairies, gods, you name it. If we follow your logic, they are ALL true, but they can't be, so your logic must be wrong: people report things and are mistaken about them, because humans have a tendency to fill in the blanks of their knowledge with nonsense. I'm sure you have personal experience in that as much as I have.
Scientists have had the odd disagreement or two. The Big Bang theory versus the Steady State. String theories in 5, 10, 11 and 26 dimensions (if the maths doesn't work, just add a dimension or two). Gene selection verses group selection. Evolution by natural selection versus Lamarckian evolution. Oxygen versus phlogiston. Scientists once believed in the luminiferous aether . . . Some scientists deny climate change . . . . Science still doesn't know what makes up most of the universe. Quantum physicists argue between the Copenhagen interpretation, the Many Worlds interpretation, the Pilot Wave and Qbism. The differences are not slight - they are immense.
This is why your "standard for truth" rang alarm bells for me.
As yours is now beginning to do with me.
You seem to be conflating perception with knowledge.
You seem to be conflating empirical knowledge with absolute knowledge.
Some people believe that they can move objects with their minds or survive on air and sunlight alone, among other things which are demonstratably not true. What's the most likely explanation? That they are wrong, or that the entire body of scientific knowledge, and logic itself, is wrong?
Given the vast number of claims made, as you acknowledge, I would say the odds are at a few of them may be correct.
That is very naive. First, you are assuming that one's experience necessarily correspond to objective reality.
I never said that. As for 'objective reality' many would say that there is no such thing. This kind of 'show me the evidence' talk is common among devotees of scientism, but it's the arrogance of a brash new mode of thought, successful though it has undoubtedly been. Erwin Schrodinger in his last years said that the ancient Greeks had remembered something that modern man has forgotten: modesty. By that he meant that they took account of philosophy in their reckoning, and didn't argue solely based on what they could see around them. I don't see a lot of modesty on this forum.
. . . Second, why do you assume that it is of a "higher" level? why not lower? Because it feels so?
It was a metaphor, comparing the mind to a mountain. It certainly has heights
and depths though.
I spoke of objective facts, if you read properly. Personal beliefs are not objective facts.
Believing is seeing.
Yes, but you first. Don't change the subject, and don't change the burden of proof. You are the one making the claim, and I am challenging that claim. If you cannot or will not provide the evidence for your claim, then at least admit that it is not an objective truth but a personal belief.
I answered the burden of proof thing above, and a little of my evidence is on the other thread. As for changing the subject, it's very much on subject. I'll ask you again in a slightly different form: can you prove that the world 'out there' is objectively real?
