The search for God is as futile as resurrecting a necrothread

Science is admission of the limitations of our knowledge, religion is fear of the limitations of our knowledge. This is the way it has always been.

The likelihood of the human race discovering the secret to warp theory is higher than trying to explain the existence of god. 

It's genuinely impossible--and if you are intellectually honest you'll acknowledge this--to prove "God" doesn't exist.  Just like it's impossible for us to describe what happens on the far side of an event horizon or what the laws of "physics" are in another dimension.

It also is intellectually honest to challenge and question religious dogma and teaching.  "Because we say it is!" isn't a reason to believe something is true...but it also doesn't invalidate truth that might be there because you disagree with it or they misunderstand it.  A religious bigot doesn't make religion true but neither does he or she prove there is no God.  A skeptic wearing blinders with his fingers in his ears quaoting Hawkings or Dawkins and going, "Inconceivable!! Made up! Made up! Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!" isn't an intellectual giant either and has nothing to bring to a serious discussion of possibilities.  These two are different sides of the same coin-- persons who believe "what they think" has to be "the truth"--no matter what facts or experience anyone else has had.

The bottom line is that if an actual God exists, It exists whether we believe or not, whether we can perceive or not and whether we can understand or not.  All the absurdists "intellectual"  challenges and "logic contests" we might present to such a being are akin to arguing with inhabits of another dimension about how they "can't exist" because they violate our laws of physics.  They would care less and probably laugh at the absurdity of our convictions.

Who is in a better position to assess facts--a being or beings who have insight into ours and their own separate realities or we ourselves who only perceive our own--and that one poorly?

So the only real arguments are, "Has anyone had any sort of experience that might conceivably reflect an actual experience with something beyond what the majority of us refer to as normal?".  There's lot of reason to look at that.  Many "God" experiences may be nothing more than things we don't yet understand but in all the things we don't yet understand it's quite possible some of these experiences actually might be the result of  an encounter we would be forced to call "God" because we lack the language and comprehension to describe it more beyond that.

I've heard many sides of this argument over many years and for me it simply comes down to, "I have had a personal experience."  I am not stupid, I can assess by subjective reality as well as anyone else can and I can conclude I've brushed against things that scientific explanation will currently strain at.  I'm fairly well read and pretty thoughtful but the fact is, after certain experiences, I have had to throw the old playbook out and look for additional answers.

I was blind and now I can see. That doesn't make me smarter than someone else but it doesn't make me stupid either.  I may see through a glass darkly but darn if I haven't seen something that isn't just "here".

This is true in many specific cases but it also is often used as a convenient excuse by skeptics to dismiss all claims of any spiritual experiences.

As to the "Have enough people have enough experiences?" objection.  The problem is in "define, "enough".  For most skeptics "enough" means the majority and with experiences that are readily duplicable at will and scientifically explicable. That's not the nature of contact that must be initiated by another party, i.e., "God" and originates outside of the scope of practical science.  If God traveled in a spaceship and arrived every Tuesday, it would be a start for a skeptic but God doesn't need a spaceship.

The other objection to that objection is one I'll present from a movie (I like movies darn it).  Did  Dr. Ellie Arroway interact with an Alien in the movie Contact--despite the fact that no one else believed anything happened?  Did the fact that other people did not share her experience make it "less real"?  Should she have simply made an effort to forget it happened since it "just couldn't be"?

If you use rules of scientific debate and the scientific method to rigidly determine your choices in life you are going to end up miserable.  Fail to many times?  Then you have a flawed psyche and should just settle for less.  Have an idea no one else has ever had?  Inconceivable so don't believe it and forget it. Galileo and Copernicus, you can just pack your bags and leave.  Benoît Mandelbrot and Christopher Columbus--you're crazy. Saw something no one else has ever seen?  Pictures or it didn't happen. It speaks of conformity--your individuality and potential are not valuable beyond the estimation of the crowd.  Pfft.  look who the crowd elects every few years to run their nations.

I have had actual experiences that have shaped my views.  Some of the experiences I have had have no doubt not been shared by you.  Your lack of my experience doesn't make my experiences untrue and valueless just becasue you don't see any application or effect of them for you.

If I saw Bigfoot in a field eating potato ships and playing cards and I sat down with him and had a long discussion for several months in a row while we played hands of cards, I wouldn't de facto conclude I was insane, work on blotting out the memory and check myself into a mental institution.  I'd think over the experience and try to understand what it was an how it came about.  If during that process I found that Bigfoot had apparently taught me several card games and strategies that I had never heard of before and that my bank account had grown by $500 during that time, I might consider it possible I had indeed played cards with him. If it went further and he had given me a standing invitation to play with him whenever we ran into each other--and I seemed to do so now and again--I'd see value in accepting the perception of our relationship.

So the "expert" on the corner who "knows" there is no Bigfoot and argues I imagined it all is someone I am not strongly inclined to listen to. Opinion won't win an argument  with genuine experience.

You can't tell individuals to "forget their experiences and be silent about them" because they weren't shared by a majority of other people.  In fact, if you spend enough time--real quality time--around enough people of faith, you will find shared experiences.  A skeptic will never see that becasue he won't "waste his time" as he "already knows" its "impossible".

Well I met a few religious people and though they all were a little nuts, ergo, "All religion is nuts"...Sez you.  I can just as easily turn your quote around and say, "Skepticism is the manifestation of fear of the limitations of our knowledge and a method of escape from unpleasant truths."  In many specific cases, this is actually true.

If you do happen to see Bigfoot, please remind him he owes me $50.

P.S.  I'll correct the water drop analogy you used.."everything of this world".

Yep--we are really aren't that far apart.  Dogmatism works badly on either side of the divide.  I am a believer in the human experience and value it above everything else in creation.  If there is a God and no way for humans to experience it--then it is nothing we can even begin to imagine.  If a person can have an inspiration and see through a veil that covers the eyes of the rest of us, I want to hear about it.  I don't have to believe or follow anything anyone says--but i can listen and consider anything.

If you want, I'll pm you some specific experiences and you can tell me what you would do with them.  I'd be interested to hear.

And sometimes, outliers are precursors to new revelation...not just statistical flukes.

More than likely, it is just another force of nature. It justs exists. It is there, always has been. But it is not a being, it is not something to worship... it is just not something we can understand. YET.

You enter a debate explaining your side and then slam the door of debate by presenting a bias that you won't permit to be overcome.  You have framed the debate saying you would like to hear what other people have to, but have defined 'open-minded' and 'rational' insofar as they fit into the frame that God is not a being, not something to worship.  You have instantly close yourself off and ended the debate.

You want facts to support God is not a being, not a creator of all things, and since not creator, incapable of making demands on your person and thus rightly to be taken with a grain of salt.  Religion -primarily Christianity- says God is creator without having been created himself, is capable of making demands on us as his creation and is by his very nature worthy of being worshiped.  This isn't so much 'Religion', but relationship. 

Accepting that there is a God, whose attributes are explained next, there is a choice to have a relationship or to not.  If there is no God, like described next, then there is nothing personal about the universe, no relationship, and no promise beyond this physical existence.  If this is all there is, then take whatever you like for there is no God to hold you accountable, nor judge to avenge your victims.  However, if there is such a God who is a being, creator, king -not simply Elohim, but Yahweh Elohim; not power, but person and power- then there is a God to hold you accountable to the rules he has set out and a judge to avenge your victims.  This is what is either a blessing to mankind or its greatest fear.  Rejecting this personal God, as you do, diminishes him not a bit, but only yourself.

What you really want is a God that is not God.  God, as he defines himself, to the Jewish people and later Christians through his Messiah, is Spirit, Independent and Self-Existent, Immutable, Eternal, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Good, Holy, Righteous, Faithful, Sovereign with none on par with Him, and Omnipotent.  To say, God is not God, but a mere force is to make Him a thing instead of person (no relationship with thing possible), Dependent on the other forces at work in the universe, Changeable just like the universe itself undergoes change over time, Limited in life/presence/knowledge/power, has no goodness because there is no power to do anything, without personal nature there is no goodness, holiness, faithfulness, rulership and again -no true power whatsoever.

A God who could be fully understood by his creations would be no God at all but a cheap trickster.

I really suggest you read through "KNOWING GOD" by Packer or "Your God is too small"; great books, analytical, dense!  But... best source is bible -old and new.

It is really quite easy to accept God as he explains himself in the bible even if humanity, even those claiming to follow him, acts an opposite manner.  Once God is accepted as he is, then scientific pursuit seeks to give an understanding of his majesty.  But, you have framed this debate to exclude a God who is outside your limited definition and to convince you there is a God as I've described is not my responsibility to prove to your satisfaction, but the domain of the God I have described to you.  But I can yell all day that the sky is blue, but if you refuse to open your eyes even the slightest bit you could tell me it is one of a billion different colors, say that I am a lunatic, and/or say the sky doesn't exist at all.

Up to you m8.  But a 'debate' or 'discussion' really can't happen yet, can it?

I once heard a little girl, six or seven years old, scream of pain for three hours until she passed out and consequently died. Before I believed, and after I did not. You can believe what you want, but I tell you with an absolute certainty there is no benign or good god present in our universe.

(and no, there was no "sinner" of mankind involved in making her suffer. Just a matter of one a not matching up with a b )

I also find it funny he called God immutable. He is pretty damn mute. 

Dictionaries are so five minutes ago.

All the kids today know that words are what you mean, not what they mean.

Or maybe it's "they mean, not what you mean." I can't make up my mind about those pesky pronouns...

I have had a life of experiences with what I can only describe as "God" since I was a young child--and I grew up in a secular home that didn't read the bible, attend church or discuss religion.  I kept my experiences to myself all through my early life because they were too real and important to me to share with people I knew wouldn't understand them.  It wasn't until I was sixteen years old through happening to hear ten minutes of someone else's conversation that I realized my beliefs and experiences were the same as many of those who claimed Christianity as their faith--and I had never studied a bible.

It was not until 11 years later that I decided to attend a church.  In the intervening time every close friend I had was an agnostic or atheist.  I always just shared my experience--I didn't quotation it with bible verses or leverage it to present a religious doctrine.

Ignorance and inexperience are the only places from which one can rail unrestrained against all belief.  When you have had the experience, the uniformed "expert's" opinions really don't count for much to you. 

It doesn't matter if there are a million hypocrites, 10 million religious dogmatists and 100 million liars and deluded.  If there is one person with a true experience, it is truth.  I personally want to know the truth--not someone else's dictation of it to me.  Most people of faith are seeking that and I think anyone who is should be respected.  No one has to agree with them.

You'll also find--if you make the attempt to--that no one is more offended by religion than a person with real spiritual experience.

No matter how advanced human civilization becomes or no matter how evolved it will be a million years from now we will still be unable to explain or prove the existence of god let alone explain why we exist in the first place and the existence of the universe. 

The current state of religions is as follows:

• God created man and everything else..
• Some religions say us westerners made up dinosaurs and they never existed..
• We are the center of the universe...
• All none believers- even if they do good deeds in any religion either remain on earth or go to hell when they die..
• We are the only living sentient beings in the universe..
• Both major religions have killed each other in the name of god..
• God sanctions violence if its for the greater good they say and they'll go to heaven after committing it..
• The good and the bad exist in today's religions. 

The problem starts with the human brain trying to explain things it couldn't possibly comprehend. It twists religion back and forth to do its own bidding. A more highly intelligent species of human would still face the same problems as today: murder, chaos, negative emotions. We are both intelligent and emotional and that will remain true 500 years from now.

Its because of these pros and weaknesses that we create a cultural and religious drive to try perfect ourselves. We strive for a peaceful existance but some of us use religion to create violence and war. This is why people question the existence of god. Its because we are not perfect- so how can we be sure that we have the perfect formula to explain gods existence... 

Yes, I quoted you referring to the subject  of your quote ..."the religious spammer".

Jafo evidently is concerned we may have one or two...namely, forefather1 and possibly me...

The religious "spammer" is not me. I'm old hat in this discussion, what has been so far a very interesting thread.