I appreciate your time and responses as well, so thank you for getting back to me once more.
God has given mankind all that we need.
I wholeheartedly disagree. If there was a god that had given me everything I needed to believe, I would believe, there would in fact be no other option. The fact that a large portion of mankind does not believe in the bible should come as a clear testament to that.
There is no legitimate excuse for rejecting His provision, demanding more, and insisting that His decisions are unjust, and His provisions are insufficient.
What is illegitimate or invalid about noticing that there is no sufficient evidence to demonstrate god's existence and thus not believing it because of that specific lack of evidence. What is your legitimate excuse for not believing a green unicorn farted out the universe? What is your legitimate excuse for not believing in Allah, Krishna or Thor? You already disbelieve a ton of religions, why am I unwarranted to disbelieve the claims of yours and how are they any different?
He will tell you face to face what He thinks of your demands and requirements on Judgment Day.
If god appeared to me face to face, that might be convincing. But until that happens, the evidence I'm presented with remains unconvincing. If there is no good reason for me to be convinced why would a god punish me?
If I told you that Thor is going to stomp your soul into oblivion when you die because you didn't believe in him and you will miss out on Valhalla, would that be a convincing reason for you to start believing in Thor? Would that in any way be evidence for the existence of Thor?
I do sincerely hope that you will humble yourself and seek the truth that you may escape from the blindness and captivity that has enslaved your heart and mind with logical arguments based on false premises.
Why do you think I am not humble? Isn't it humble to not claim that something is true until you have demonstrated it? I think it is. The position that lacks humbleness is the position that maintains that they know something they can't know. There is nothing humble about requiring belief without reason.
If there are false premises in the arguments I'm presenting, it should be easy for you to save me from my blind evil ways by pointing out why the premises are false. If you've noticed them, it shouldn't be hard to point them out, right? So please do, my heart and mind are open.
It is so sad to see so many beautiful human beings like you, wonderful intelligent creatures end up being deceived, damned, and punished for all eternity, but no one makes us decide what we choose to believe.
I think those are actually baseless accusations that are trying to be demeaning and condescending, hopefully not purposefully. If you know I'm being deceived or deceiving myself or whatever, just point me to the flaws in my logic. If you can't, saying something like that is a baseless and empty assertion. Even worse, it's an attempt for emotional manipulation much like your other assertions about how god will supposedly judge or punish me for not being gullible and for being reasonable. And you keep doing this without addressing any of the points of substance. You keep talking about what we need, about false premises and about reasons, but you have failed to present me with any. If you have good reasons and arguments why avoid them? It's exactly what I'm interested in!
On a separate note, I did go into the website and I read the About Us section. I will give you my thoughts on what I read since you suggested to me that I read it. I hope you don't feel that it's out of bounds, but I expect that you wouldn't as it is my honest assessment.
While I can see that your religious experience has given you meaning and motivation, I didn't find it itself that inspiring or convincing. It's indeed good for you that the experience of a being of light coming into you helped you overcome problems or negative feelings, the question is how do you establish the truthfulness of your experience.
If you want a natural explanation, how do you rule out the possibility that the state of prayer and the group experience in the church didn't put you in a state that is open to suggestion. We know those state exists and are what is utilized in hypnosis and we also know that one could self-suggest as well. So your experience could have been entirely internal and while helpful and pleasant, entirely misleading.
Keep in mind that many people from all kinds of religions have had experienced similar states of trance and have seen beings of light and so on, but all int he name of the gods that were prevalent in their own culture. In fact, Buddhists do this all the time and many of them meditate to get themselves into this type of states. But none of them suddenly found Jesus, they attributed it to the gods they were though about by the people around them.
And if you want a supernatural explanation, how can you rule out that what you felt was caused by a spell by an evil witch to force you to believe in a false prophet, so satan can have your soul when you die? If this is the case, wouldn't it be extremely dangerous to believe then?
Kind regards and best wishes, my friend. It has been an interesting discussion and I hope we continue. I really hope to hear how you address my main points and what weaknesses you find in my reasoning.