The Banned said:
You counter with a 3rd scenario (please reword it if I'm off):
IF a Creator exists and IF this Creator created moral truths that I need to conform my life to, will I submit to those truths? -> Maybe? But I'm not going to spend any time worrying about it until the Creator gives me 100% reason to believe It exists first. Then I'll decide.
Here is how that translates to the marriage analogy:
IF marriage between a man and a woman can be loving and faithful for the entirety of the marriage, would I be willing to commit the rest of my life to a woman? -> yes -> receive evidence from different women, potentially finding the woman I believe will love me and be faithful forever, even if I can never receive 100% proof.
If no, might as well play the field or sit the game out altogether.
Your 3rd option would translate as:
IF a woman can be loving and faithful for the entirety of the marriage, would I commit the rest of my life to said woman? -> Maybe? But there are zero guarantees any woman I meet will actually do that, so I'm not going to spend any time considering potential partners until some woman gives me 100% proof she'll love me and be faithful forever. Then I'll consider whether or not I like her enough to marry her.
Would you consider that posture towards marriage somewhere on the scale of resistant (albeit not as resistant as a man who says he'll never marry)? Or do you think that is still non-resistant? Do you think this mindset has any realistic chance of finding a woman worth marrying when incontrovertible proof has to be offered before considering a woman worthy of marriage?
You might counter with "no woman could ever prove that" on the front end while God can prove Itself to be real. I would disagree because there are hypotheticals where a woman could willingly offer contractual terms to ensure it.
For sake of argument and round numbers, lets say that I believe there is a 20% chance that the Christian God exists. And a 20% chance of some other established religion's God. And a 20% chance of a God that does not interact with humanity. And a 20% chance there is no God. And a 20% chance of 'other' - meaning we lack the intelligence or creative to even be asking intelligible questions about 'God'. In this scenario, I hope you can understand why someone might choose to 'sit this one out' and watch and observe with both an open and skeptical mind.
Now, we can talk about how I come up with those percentages or how you are 98% sure of your faith. Almost certainly, there is at work some combination of available evidence, intelligence, reason, personal dispositions, culture, education, indoctrination, experience, bias, prejudice, etc. And within some of those factors, particularly bias, you can always find something like resistance. We are human. We have bias. All humans will treat some ideas with resistance. But, I don't think that is necessarily what we mean when we talk about resistant / non-resistant. If it is, then 'non-resistant' is an impossible bar. One would need to not be human or need to be God to be non-resistant. To me, 'Resistance' in the context amounts to a concerted and intentional effort against something.
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Maybe you suggested this, even if its not stated explicitly, but I think that 100% proof of intention is an impossible standard for any potential relationship partner to reach. A contract doesn't ensure anything - contracts can be broken. Yes, a person that is unwilling to enter a relationship until receipt of 100% proof of faithfulness is someone I would characterize as resistant - because they've set an intentionally impossible standard. I do not know if the inability to present perfect and complete evidence extends to God , but I'm perfectly willing (both in theory and practice) that its not a reasonable expectation - at least in this life.
So, yes, I would agree with the position that someone demanding 100% proof of God and God's nature prior to submission is being resistant. Or stubborn. Or close minded.
I hope that I haven't stated that I require 100% proof of God and God's intentions / nature. I'm not even sure what that would / could look like. Even my scenario of God appearing to everyone at the same time could be chalked up to programming of the simulation we might live in. But, if my proposed evidence that God could provide gets me to a high level of conviction, then yes - I'm in. Sign me up.
This thread started off with a question about whether some people are more inclined toward belief than others. I think the answer is certainly 'yes'. But, I don't automatically assign any moral value to that 'yes'. In other words, some people are inclined based on some combination of the factors listed above toward faith and some are not. My hope is that my intellectual humility prevents me from judging one person differently than another based on arriving at a different conclusion. I know that I fail at this sometimes, but I have become convinced that this is a form of humility is a virtue that I should pursue.