This thread has gone way off topic. Well... admittedly it's related, but noone is looking at the title anymore. Unless someone decided to use the argument that we believe the Bible because God gave it to us, and then tried to prove the existence of God, I can't see any direct correlation. I would have thought this discussion would be going the other way, that if we can believe the Bible there is a God, but we need to examine whether the Bible is trustworthy first. In addition, I'm a little irritated that noone has answered my main point that is on topic, although CSflim has kindly replied to my flippant off topic criticism of his pet.
To be incredibly hypocritical, I'm going to have to defend my pointless statement: When you say something is purple, you mean it presents to your visual sense the impression we term purple. By definition, if something is invisible, it presents NOTHING to your visible sense. I wouldn't have thought this needed explanation. To call it a projection of something you see elsewhere doesn't make it any less contradictory, you are just weaving words. One wonders at such faulty logic even when applied to a joke, and if it portends anything concerning more important matters. But perhaps you don't give a damn about whether your jocular metaphor makes any sense, quite rightly. So let's just move on from that...
Charlatan: Firstly, I never so much as implied an initial premise that you do not exist, which is preposterous considering I'm arguing with you, and did not mean to imply, nor include in my working in any way, any assumption that God exists, which would be equally preposterous given the nature of our argument. Please show me the quote you get this from, and your analysis thereof, if you find it important enough to need working out.
As to belief in hypochondria, and the presence of people who are not there, and could not possibly (due to death or otherwise) be there, surely these are in somewhat a different category... You might say that a hypochondriac does not have these symptoms, but not that the symptoms do not exist at all. You might say that a grieving person did not sense the deceased, not that the deceased never existed. These are misplaced expectations of something which is known to exist. If someone claims to have experienced God, when there is not, and hever has been, any such being, it follows a different pattern from the misplaced expectations you present as analogies.
NONETHELESS, while you will note that I have answered several posts at length here (whether accurately or not is obviously for you to judge), I have not at all touched on the ACTUAL topic of this thread, and niether has anyone else since my previous post... should we start a new thread as to whether God exists, and either close this one or get back on track? Should we rename this one? Or just ignore the topic entirely... I'm kinda new here, maybe you noticed =P, so I don't know the usual conventions.. but on other message boards I've been to people tried to address the topic they were arguing about.
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