you made this statement and you think rational people are rolling their eyes at me. lol: As soon as a "brilliant" scientist claims to be a believer, he automatically becomes someone of "no credible intelligence".
not one of you bible thumpers has been able to make a rational defense of the question asked by the op: "How do you distinguish between the belief in God and the occult? " If âfaithâ is a prerequisite in a belief in order to see the truth of the belief, being if there were evidence there would be no need for âfaithâ in any particular belief. All supernatural beliefs require âfaithâ in its truth, being there is no evidence proving any particular belief. So it must be the âfaithâ itself that dictates what is true. Therefore every one of the worlds religions are true, being they all rely on the âfaithâ of the believer to see its truth. -Unknown
It's not cognitive dissonance it's exasperation at your insistence that I defend a position you created(wished) for me to have and blithely disregard all my efforts to correct your error.
God emerges out of and in times of "need" but not so often out of nothing. Content men do not seek spiritual relief;they're too busy having fun.
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." --Thomas Jefferson Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out. 'This would be the best of all possible worlds' if there was no religion in it." -- John Adams
Einstein believed in a God, albeit an impersonal God, not one that you would pray to to win the lottery.... And I bet he was smarter than all the posters in this thread.