What do you believe and why?

That The Truth is God, your only salvation, your only liberator, and that loving The Truth above all else is the best possible thing you can do for yourself and everyone around you.

The Good News is that The Truth is God. You have been forgiven your offenses against God, now forgive others their offenses against you, and live with sincere faith and charity. Be a light to the world, pointing out The Way to those who will receive it.

With this shield of faith, this breastplate of righteousness, this helmet of salvation, the belt of truth, and the sword of the spirit, being The Word of God, go out equipped to resist every evil against you. Be a soldier of God. That is what I pray and wish for you.

But if nothing else, walk away knowing that The Supreme And Ultimate Reality is God, and there is none greater. There is no other worthy to be called God, and this is the One True God that can only be denied in ignorance and foolishness. There is no other like this God, none comparable. Go away believing in your heart with certainty that this is God, and be glad that no one can deceive you into believing otherwise, whether they be deniers of God or those false messengers and servants of God, who lead many astray in order that they make gain in this world. Their religion is vain, their rituals abominable, their sacrifices empty, and their hypocrisies are evident for all to see, those who use The Lord's name in vain, these wolves in sheeps clothing denying The One who can deliver them. 

I pray above all else that God will bring you to know The Divine Identity, that in your heart you be certain that The Supreme and Ultimate Reality is God. I pray that you find that everlasting peace that surpasses all understanding, that peace that comes from God, and God alone. I pray for you enlightenment.

Ok there is a lot to unpack here.  Let's start with what do you mean by salvation and to what offenses are you referring?

The Good Teacher is God. Recognize God, and go with God. All your answers are there.

Know that you don't have to let the past define who you are, and that though the things of this world pass away, God is eternal. Abide in God. Abide in eternity.

So that's a hard no on answering my last post?

No, I told you thst God has the answers, and you should go to God.

Then I answered your question.

And the reason I don't why I am growing weary of this discussion is for the same reason that you did not perceive my answer. I can't do all the thinking for you. 

It's very simple.

My religion is Truth Worship.

Meditate that on your own. God is a better teacher than I am. I have made straight the path, now follow it. You know The Way. All that is left is for you to walk the path. I cannot walk the path for you. I must become less so that God becomes more in your life. 

I'm sorry if you find our discussion tiresome and you need only respond if you like but I enjoy these discussions. That is a big part of why I engage in them.

Perhaps we could start with just one concept instead of two. Perhaps that will be easier for you.

Let's start with salvation. Now to me the word salvation implies that someone or something need to be saved. What do you believe I need to be saved from?

It's really quite alright.

Think of the word salvation in the broadest sense. If you are saved from anything, it is God who does it. 

But besides that, even if you are in a terrible situation, making peace with the reality of your situation will deliver you from the pain that comes from not accepting the situation and deairing to be somewhere else.

In every possible way, it is better to go with truth.

I thought if this conversation had illustrate anything it was that when we think in the broadest possible terms we are having such a vague discussion that we very likely aren't even talking about the same thing.

What are you talking about? You're talking about The Truth!

Still trying to determine exactly what is meant by that. On the one hand Mopac claims to mean the truth whatever it is but on the other he seems to also be making claims about what the truth is, though I can't seem to get him to settle on anything definite .

I went round and round with him about this too. He's a hard one to pin down, but hopefully I can spare you the same goose chase:

1. He believes that there is some fundamental essence of Truth-ness which underpins all other truths (https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/147?page=4&post_number=91).

2. This essence exists independent of and is more than simply the set of all things that are true (https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/147?page=3&post_number=67)

3. Without this essence, it would be impossible for other truths to exist (https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/147?page=5&post_number=112)

Basically all truths are contingent on The Truth. The best conception I have is that this is a form of essentialism and that The Truth is the fundamental essence which allows contingent truths to exist in the first place.

Slap the name-tag "God" on this and that about sums up his philosophy.

That is a tautology and pathologies do not provide understanding. 

Yeah, I went down that road with him too (https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/147?page=1&post_number=24).

It always amazes me how people struggle with such a simple concept.

But this is what happens when you feel you have to understand something.

The Truth. No, it isn't vague, it is very specific. It's Trurh in the truest sense.

Everything else is how you relate to that. 

It seems like what is being demanded from me is a grand unified theorem.

Saying that the truth is true because it is the truth that the truth is true is a little vague and a lot circular. I do not feel that I have to understand anything or that I could understand everything but if we cannot understand each other than we won't get very far in our conversation and if I understand you correctly you are making a claim that reality has a mind (or whatever you want to call it) that it wants things and feels emotions and pronounces judgements and you have demonstrated none of that.

If my experience with you holds true you will backpedal now until you reach a definition that is tautalogical enough to be difficult to argue with but does not actually reflect your belief that truth is an entity (or being with agency or whatever you want to call it) and then poke back towards the attributes of an entity later once I have agreed that a tautology cannot be argued with.

Would you care to cut through this to your actual beliefs or would you prefer we continue to dance arround the issue? I am open to either possibility on the off chance that one of us actually learn something.

You know what the word truth means. It's the simplest thing in the world. You are making it unnecessarily complicated, and now accusing me of doing the dancing.

Maybe it is too simple for someone as smart as you, or maybe you've been driven mad by your learning. I don't know.

Don't pin this on me, I grew weary of this futile dance pages ago.

It could be very simple. Do you believe that reality has attributes like emotions, goals, thoughts or the ability to take independent independent action (as opposed to an inanimate object like a rock that only reacts when acted upon by an outside force)?

It's alright to say yes but then my question becomes why do you believe that and can you demonstrate it.

It is also alright to say no or I don't know but in that case you really shpuld stop making statements that suggest this is the case.

If I could be more specific still I would avoid any statement about what reality does, has, wants or is.

If I told you yes, I would be lying. If I told you no, I would be lying. If I told you I didn't know, I'd also be lying.

Instead I will tell you that It Is What It Is.

Why don't you ask that question and really study for yourself? It would be more edifying for you in the long run I'm sure. After all, if you can't equate God's will with whatever ends up happening, what else can I tell you? If you are looking for an invisible bearded man in the clouds, that isn't what God means. God means The Ultimate Reality.

God does not react to anything, like a rock. If God could be effected by anything else, something would have power over God. Therefore, if something is effected by outside influence, it is not God.

Retreating back to a tautology. 

Edging back towards referring to attributes that you have not demonstrated to me that reality possesses.

I  have begun to have reasonable expectations about this conversation based on past experience, which is the closest humans can come to certainty about anything.

The Truth is The Truth.

This is not a tautology. It can only be what it is. If I put into words what it is, it makes me a liar because it is more than what I can say it is. I would be limiting God, which would give you something to argue against that is not God.

No amount of cleverness is going to undermine the existence of God. There is no argument against God. Your accusations against God fall flat. You cannot accuse The Ultimate Reality of being a fallacy.

Youbseem unable to say anything concrete about what you refer to as God. Why is that?

I don't know what you mean by that.

But it seems to me that you want God to be an object of some kind. If you understand what "Ultimate Reality" means, those words together.. it sould be obvious that what I am refering to is beyond those words, and anything I tell about God is ultimately unreal. God is by definition that which is ultimately real. 

I would be doing a disservice to you and anyone who may be edified by this conversation if I were to equate God with anything other than that which is totally true.

The essence of God is that God is reality at its most extreme. There is nothing more real than God. All other realities are only real in some sense, but God is totally real.

So if I were to present you a reality that is only true in some sense, you would find the sense that it wasn't true and we'd go on playing a wizards game for 10 more pages. 

You have to understand that God is The Singularity. This is a very special case. We are not talking about a mere created thing, we are talking about The Ultimate Reality, The Supreme Being. For you to treat God as if it were just any other thing in creation is a type of identity fallacy. 

A man? A rock? These things are incomparable to The Supreme And Ultimate Reality.

So to recap you can't know it but it is self evident, you can't compare it to anything but it is everything and it is what it is but it's not tautalogical.

Am I missing anything?

By the way what do you mean by created thing? Like man made?

The easiest way to tell if something is created is if it has contingent existence. Can it exist on its own or does it need something else to exist? Does it only exist in the comparing of something to something else? 

The human mind can't really make sense of anything without comparing to something else so to rest on the mind is to rest in dualism. Creation is dualistic in nature. God is The Singularity.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say contingent existence. Do you mean not found in nature?

Contingent means that it doesn't exist on its own. It requires something else to exist.

How do you make that distinction? Like what is an example of a contingent and an incontinent thing?