>Can you think of ANY empirical evidence that would convince you one way or
>the other?
It's hard to say... because even if some paranormal event occurs
to me in my "completely normal" state I can interpret it
in different ways -- from aliens to some previously unknown natural
phenomenon (actually, aliens fall in that category, too :).
On the other hand I cannot prove that something
does not exist if, for example, this something never reveals itself.
So I would say that "the existence of God" is neither provable nor
disprovable - just as many other things as we know from Goedel's incompleteness
theorem (we cannot prove continuum hypothesis either - but we can believe
it's true or false if we want :).
>But suppose you were happier and more productive if you believed it was
>real, but you didn't like playing psychological tricks on yourself, and you
>don't want to believe something just because you like it?
You don't have to view it as a psychological trick - admit it as is,
i.e. as "something" that happened to you, that you don't understand
completely (is there anything in life we understand "completely"?),
but that had a profound effect on your life - and it was a good one.
It could be like trying to understand the nature of lightning by a
person living a couple of thousand years ago - without having
mathematics and physics developed enough to come up with the notion
of electricity. Well, I agree it's worth trying - there are sometimes jumps
in evolution of science :).
>Patrick Glynn argues that a "longing for something transcendent" would be
>probable in a world in which God exists and wants us to know him. There's
>no special reason to expect people to "long for the transcendent" in a
>meaningless universe. Therefore, he argues, the longing for God's
>existence is evidence for God. Perhaps... but to me it's not so strong.
To me it's just logically incorrect - the premise is arbitrary
("there is no special reason..."?), and even if it's true it doesn't
prove the existence of God...well, OK, we are not using logic,
we are using probabilistic induction, but anyway, the evidence of
"longing for the transcendent"
supports equally well an infinite number of alternative hypotheses,
including the one that "longing for something transcendent" is a common
thing in this sometimes scary and unpredictable world where people
often feel lost and need 'something' to support them and 'save' them (usually
from themselves :).
Best regards,
Irina
