Definitive Proof that GOD Exists?

[Boss]

Electrical currents certainly do prove something, especially when correlated with specific brain activity and mapped by an fMRI machine.

No they don't. A POTATO can produce an electrical current. No machine exists that can tell what a person is thinking. Nothing can measure what took place in the mind of Mozart or Rembrandt or DeVinci. You have presented proof that the brain has electronic reactions and impulses, and these occur when the brain is thinking. You have not proven any actual thought exists, nor have you defined it.

The same with Oxytocin levels rising when people experience feelings of love.

Or any number of other feelings people experience, that's the part you are leaving out. You've proven the brain produces oxytocin depending on emotional circumstance, that doesn't prove love, nor does it define it.

Your level of skepticism here is highly inconsistent with your gullibility in regards to a concept like god.

But I am not gullible. I presented a case you can't refute. You're trying very hard, but failing. Mostly because you keep veering away from the argument to raise superfluous points.

Again, please define god. Appealing to black holes won't save you from having to define god, as I've already proven. This is not a dificult question. Are you a Christian? A pantheist? A deist? A panentheist? There are many different definitions for god. Pick one.

I do not have to define god to prove that god exists. I don't have to "pick" a god to prove god exists. The spiritual evidence is overwhelming, you just refuse to accept it, so you demand that I "define" something, so that you can then attack that. I am not here to argue for Christians or any other religion, I believe religion is a manifestation of mankind who grapples with understanding of something beyond human comprehension. It is a part of my evidence that god must exist, because look at all the various people god inspires? This has been going on for all of mankind's history, and it can't simply be tossed aside as unimportant. Unless you are a moron who refuses to accept spiritual evidence, while clamoring for physical proof of something not physical.

 

[editec]

I have often been puzzled by this argument, because it seems to indicate a complete lack of basic comprehension and logic.

You are puzzzled that people lack basic comprehension and logical thinking ability?

Really?

No you're not really surprised by that.

Not unless you were born yesterday.

Remember, half the people on earth are less intelligent that the norm.

And the normal level of intelligence isn't exactly well prepared to think logically, either.

 

[amrchaos]

If we are talking about spirituality existing as a concept---then I don't have a problem.

On the other hand, when you start to relate the spiritual with energy, I have to ask what do you mean by "Energy". In science, energy can be measured. On the other hand, many of these spirituals being, which many believers tend to suggest are composed of energy, cannot be measured. Thus I do not think that energy in the spiritual sense is the same as energy in the physical sense.

Therefore I do find the op arguments a little vague. In fact I believe there is a bit of bait and switch on the meaning of definitions at play.

 

[Aristotle]

D

God doesn't have to be a "who" nor does it have to be defined, in order to exist.

That makes no sense. Calling God, God and proclaiming an existence of deity requires explanation.

For example if someome says "Aristotle exist." One has to define who Aristotle is before explaining a proof of Aristotle's existence." God can be anything.

I didn't proclaim existence of a deity, we've been over this already.

Someone can say, "Aristotle exists" and this is either a true statement or false statement, it does not require that Aristotle be defined. I can say Los Angeles exists, I've never been there and couldn't tell you anything about it, but I am sure it exists. You are insisting that something be defined to your satisfaction before it can be proven to exist, and that is not a prerequisite for existence or proof thereof.

You titled the thread "definitive proof that God exist..." I am asking you who is God?

 

[amrchaos]

D

That makes no sense. Calling God, God and proclaiming an existence of deity requires explanation.

For example if someome says "Aristotle exist." One has to define who Aristotle is before explaining a proof of Aristotle's existence." God can be anything.

I didn't proclaim existence of a deity, we've been over this already.

Someone can say, "Aristotle exists" and this is either a true statement or false statement, it does not require that Aristotle be defined. I can say Los Angeles exists, I've never been there and couldn't tell you anything about it, but I am sure it exists. You are insisting that something be defined to your satisfaction before it can be proven to exist, and that is not a prerequisite for existence or proof thereof.

You titled the thread "definitive proof that God exist..." I am asking you who is God?

God is apparently a concept--not a person or living entity as far as the logic on this board seems to be going.

 

[Aristotle]

I didn't proclaim existence of a deity, we've been over this already.

Someone can say, "Aristotle exists" and this is either a true statement or false statement, it does not require that Aristotle be defined. I can say Los Angeles exists, I've never been there and couldn't tell you anything about it, but I am sure it exists. You are insisting that something be defined to your satisfaction before it can be proven to exist, and that is not a prerequisite for existence or proof thereof.

You titled the thread "definitive proof that God exist..." I am asking you who is God?

God is apparently a concept--not a person or living entity as far as the logic on this board seems to be going.

Hmm I see

 

[emilynghiem]

When someone believes something, it's true. That is, a truth exists in the universe. That could be totally subjective and impossible to demonstrate to or share with another. That is the problem with this argument. Does God exist? Yes, if you believe. Can you prove it to others? No. All you can prove is that YOU believe and, thus, belief exists. That is all you can show to the world.

Dear T4:
We can prove that all these individual paths align with each other
and point to the same laws and process universal to all humanity.

Some of the proof process is backwards.
by asserting there is unity and universality,
then as objections come up where people explain 'why they don't believe'
we are talking about the same God or universal laws,
then we REMOVE or resolve those objections preventing alignment.
There are only a finite number or patterns of objections; so
as those are removed (or we show consistently there is a pattern
or method to remove these which can be replicated), then
we can show there is a proof process that will work to reconcile and align
the different views no matter how diverse or individualized they are.

The part that may follow the stesps of a traditional proof
is proving through medical science that the
demonic energies exist and can be measured
that make people mentally sick, and that the
prayers in Christ Jesus remove these negative
"viral" blockages and people's brains return to normal patterns
of thought and function. I believe that part can be
proven through traditional science now that we have
technology to measure brain waves and emotional responses
and compare normal brain function to dysfunction in the mentally or criminally ill mind.

For most people, the reason they don't believe is they see too many
people in conflict, so they lose faith an agreement can be reached.
as we forgive and resovle issues, and people see that this process
can be done in an orderly, replicable way, then more people may
be openminded to a consensus being reachable over time.

to prove it physically, we'd have to achieve this consensus in real world
application, and I believe that will happen. because human nature and conscience
is geared to seek consistency for security peace and happiness,
and avoids conflict and suffering out of fear of instability and loss of control.

So in order to find peace by nature of our consciences, people tend toward reconciliation
in order to defend their own freedom beliefs and security.

it's just that the fear of conflict and oppression, that people will not comply
overrides the good that would be achieved; the fear of change and work involved
outweighs any hope of actually succeeding. so this is where it takes a combination
of faith in forgiveness and correction in the human conscience,
and demonstrated proof that the process is working to overcome those obstacles as we go.

if this is done right, the process builds on itself.
people who are able to reconcile across religious differences,
show others how they did so, and other pepole try it and find
that this works. So the proof grows and the faith grows
until we can prove this both as a process and through the end results.

 

[Truthmatters]

a thought exists.


thoughts of god exsit.

thoughts of purple dolphins who have a kingdom under the waves that rival all of mankind and are encrusted with diamonds exist too.

That does not mean there are really purple dolphin who have a kingdom under the waves that rival all of mankind and are encrusted with diamonds

purple dolphins and god exist in the mind

 

[emilynghiem]

D

That makes no sense. Calling God, God and proclaiming an existence of deity requires explanation.

For example if someome says "Aristotle exist." One has to define who Aristotle is before explaining a proof of Aristotle's existence." God can be anything.

I didn't proclaim existence of a deity, we've been over this already.

Someone can say, "Aristotle exists" and this is either a true statement or false statement, it does not require that Aristotle be defined. I can say Los Angeles exists, I've never been there and couldn't tell you anything about it, but I am sure it exists. You are insisting that something be defined to your satisfaction before it can be proven to exist, and that is not a prerequisite for existence or proof thereof.

You titled the thread "definitive proof that God exist..." I am asking you who is God?

can we agree that "God" represents the infinite source of all goodness, life, love, and truth/wisdom in the world, whether this "God" is self-existent as a "God of being" or "creation/universe" itself, or had a beginning or steps in the process of realizing the universal laws or processes going on in the world.

Does this cover everything that people generally mean by God?

 

[emilynghiem]

Dear Boss: Even if we do not NEED to define something in order to prove or even believe it exists; for the sake of making sure we are agreeing what we are trying to prove, it helps to agree on what that thing is, and what it is not.

For example, Boss, I know you've seen this before if I have:
where people define God to be something inherently contrary, such as
defining God to be a judgmental punitive authority to be feared as sending people to hell.

So it helps to make sure we do NOT define God to be something like that.
If we are going to prove we all believe in things that come from the same God,
whether or not we define it the same, we can at least make sure it is consistent
among the people discussing God and what it means.

We don't have to agree in full. the Buddhists who seek Wisdom and Compassion for all things in Creation may not personify God at all. But Wisdom can be seen as coming from God. People who see God in terms of love, this is not the same as God as Wisdom.
Love and Wisdom are not the same at all. But we can agree that given those terms and attributes, the proof would involve showing that people agree these come from the same God, whether you personify God or see all laws of the universe and creation as God.

Electrical currents certainly do prove something, especially when correlated with specific brain activity and mapped by an fMRI machine.

No they don't. A POTATO can produce an electrical current. No machine exists that can tell what a person is thinking. Nothing can measure what took place in the mind of Mozart or Rembrandt or DeVinci. You have presented proof that the brain has electronic reactions and impulses, and these occur when the brain is thinking. You have not proven any actual thought exists, nor have you defined it.

The same with Oxytocin levels rising when people experience feelings of love.

Or any number of other feelings people experience, that's the part you are leaving out. You've proven the brain produces oxytocin depending on emotional circumstance, that doesn't prove love, nor does it define it.

Your level of skepticism here is highly inconsistent with your gullibility in regards to a concept like god.

But I am not gullible. I presented a case you can't refute. You're trying very hard, but failing. Mostly because you keep veering away from the argument to raise superfluous points.

Again, please define god. Appealing to black holes won't save you from having to define god, as I've already proven. This is not a dificult question. Are you a Christian? A pantheist? A deist? A panentheist? There are many different definitions for god. Pick one.

I do not have to define god to prove that god exists. I don't have to "pick" a god to prove god exists. The spiritual evidence is overwhelming, you just refuse to accept it, so you demand that I "define" something, so that you can then attack that. I am not here to argue for Christians or any other religion, I believe religion is a manifestation of mankind who grapples with understanding of something beyond human comprehension. It is a part of my evidence that god must exist, because look at all the various people god inspires? This has been going on for all of mankind's history, and it can't simply be tossed aside as unimportant. Unless you are a moron who refuses to accept spiritual evidence, while clamoring for physical proof of something not physical.

 

[amrchaos]

Emily does have a point.


If someone believed that god is the Devil in disguise, what would that say about their theology and morality? Changing fundemental concepts (such as God in religion) changes the meaning of truth and morality in that religion.

 

[emilynghiem]

the difference between purple dolphins and God existing in the mind,
is "what they represent." where one represents a more universal concept that other people
believe in (even if this is represented differently per person especially
for nontheists who do not personify God) and can even be shown to have a positive constructive use,
and one is a concept that other people do not have a belief in or an equivalent of,
and can even be shown not to have as much practical use in a demonstratable way as the other.

Note: instead of comparing iwth purple dolphins, i find it more insightful
to compare people's views or beliefs and concepts about JUSTICE.
Discussing and resolving issues about why there is not equal justice in teh world,
brings up and addresses the same issues that prevent people from believing there is one God.

Even if pepole do not believe in God as personified being,
they normally have some other equivalent that plays the relatively same role
in their system of defining or understanding the world and relations or laws in it.

what is missing is people do not believe that all people's beliefs
are pointing to the same God. they don't believe these can be reconciled.

so the proof is either showing that these different beliefs can be reconciled,
or there is at least a consistent process of reconciliation which can be replicated universally, where any objection or conflict blocking alignmnet can be shown to
come from certain factors that can be resolved and removed over time, and
any failure to reconcile 'correlates' with these factors being present so they follow
a set pattern, both the cases of reconciliation and the cases where it fails.

a thought exists.


thoughts of god exsit.

thoughts of purple dolphins who have a kingdom under the waves that rival all of mankind and are encrusted with diamonds exist too.

That does not mean there are really purple dolphin who have a kingdom under the waves that rival all of mankind and are encrusted with diamonds

purple dolphins and god exist in the mind

Dear TM: the dreams we have at night exist in our minds only.
why is it that when people say they have dreams, we believe them
and understand this is a "universal process" even though the dreams we
have are different and no one can see them but us.

the proof of God is similar, where even though each person has unique
beliefs, we will come to understand this is a universal process.
we will not compete or argue that one person's dreams are
any more or less real than the one's in someone else's mind.

 

[amrchaos]

I don't think proving "god" as a concept is the issue with atheists

It is the personification of god as living entity is the point of contention with atheists such as TM.


Depending on which perspective you choose, the title of the thread seems misleading.

 

[newpolitics]

Yeah. You really shouldn't be talking about logic. You simply don't know what an argument from analogy is, because you are making one. You are saying: " the insides of black holes can not be defined, yet we still believe the insides of black holes exists. Therefore, we can likewise say then that god does not need to be defined, even though I know he exists."

Is this not your point in invoking black holes? This is the use of analogy. You are using something other than god to make a point about god. I am not going to type this again. Look it up if you must.

I haven't made any errors about what you are saying. You simply don't have the self awareness to understand what it is you are doing, logically, and consequently, are contradicting yourself all over the place.

What is your dysfunctional problem (or acronym) which keeps you from posting all of your thoughts in a single post, why do you keep rapid-firing retorts? How about stop posting the same superfluous regurgitation, and debate the points I made.... or shut the fuck up and move along?

Nothing I have actually SAID is a contradiction. I have no idea about what you are imagining me to say, I'm probably contradicting myself like crazy inside your mind, based on how badly you've misquoted me to this point. But the fact that you haven't posted specifics, and you continue to fire off posts like a cat covering a turd in a litter box, tells me your game is to bury the thread in superfluous nonsense and demagoguery, and AVOID the debate.

I'm satisfied with the PWNAGE!

You are hopeless. I pointed out several contradictions and now you want me to dig them back up because you can't read, and now your throwing insults around? Holy cow. You can't provide basic facts to back up your gigantic claim, and yet you expect us all to just believe you. You claimed you had definitive proof for god, and then in your OP said this proof was only available to those who already believe in god (those able to see "spiritual evidence"- whatever the fuck that means). This is question begging. You are employing circular logic but dont want to admit to it. "If i believed in god, then id believe in god." This is essentiallt what you are telling everyone. you deny it, but that is the only truth here. Stop being a little bitch and start defining what it is you are proposing to exist.

I have refuted every single one of your ridiculous points. Stop acting like I'm not confronting your enormous amount of bullshit. There is just so much of it, its tough to comprehend how anyone could be so wrong and yet think they are so right.

 

[Boss]

Yeah. You really shouldn't be talking about logic. You simply don't know what an argument from analogy is, because you are making one. You are saying: " the insides of black holes can not be defined, yet we still believe the insides of black holes exists. Therefore, we can likewise say then that god does not need to be defined, even though I know he exists."

Is this not your point in invoking black holes? This is the use of analogy. You are using something other than god to make a point about god. I am not going to type this again. Look it up if you must.

I haven't made any errors about what you are saying. You simply don't have the self awareness to understand what it is you are doing, logically, and consequently, are contradicting yourself all over the place.

What is your dysfunctional problem (or acronym) which keeps you from posting all of your thoughts in a single post, why do you keep rapid-firing retorts? How about stop posting the same superfluous regurgitation, and debate the points I made.... or shut the fuck up and move along?

Nothing I have actually SAID is a contradiction. I have no idea about what you are imagining me to say, I'm probably contradicting myself like crazy inside your mind, based on how badly you've misquoted me to this point. But the fact that you haven't posted specifics, and you continue to fire off posts like a cat covering a turd in a litter box, tells me your game is to bury the thread in superfluous nonsense and demagoguery, and AVOID the debate.

I'm satisfied with the PWNAGE!

You are hopeless. I pointed out several contradictions and now you want me to dig them back up because you can't read, and now your throwing insults around? Holy cow. You can't provide basic facts to back up your gigantic claim, and yet you expect us all to just believe you. You claimed you had definitive proof for god, and then in your OP said this proof was only available to those who already believe in god (those able to see "spiritual evidence"- whatever the fuck that means). This is question begging. You are employing circular logic but dont want to admit to it. "If i believed in god, then id believe in god." This is essentiallt what you are telling everyone. you deny it, but that is the only truth here. Stop being a little bitch and start defining what it is you are proposing to exist.

I have refuted every single one of your ridiculous points. Stop acting like I'm not confronting your enormous amount of bullshit. There is just so much of it, its tough to comprehend how anyone could be so wrong and yet think they are so right.

You've not refuted anything, you've chortled... you're a very good chortler. I see where you've tried to derail the thread and debate the unrelated, you're good at that too. And you have sprinkled in a good helping of ridicule and ad homs, for good measure. Repeatedly, you have attempted to claim I have said things that I never said. What you HAVEN'T done, is address my points made in the OP and stay on topic.

There is no circular logic to this. Just as we make determinations and evaluations of physical things in a physical world with physical evidence, we have to do the same with spiritual things, using spiritual evidence. You reject spiritual evidence because you don't believe in spirituality. You refuse to try and comprehend anything other than the physical world you understand, just as some spiritual nut may cling to spiritual belief over science. You've put yourself in the same arena of closed-mindedness, by refusing to acknowledge or accept spiritual proof.

And I have explained spiritual evidence, no need to keep adding (whatever that means) each time you type it. This is another attempt by you, to pretend I haven't articulated something. What you need to do, it seems, is go back and read the thread again. Then copy and paste the things you want to contest and present your case, we'll proceed from there. If you've decided to NOT debate, and just try to fill the thread up with whining and chortling, that's fine too... but we're going to be honest about what you're doing.

 

[emilynghiem]

Emily, while I always appreciate your benevolent and patient tone in these often hostile discussions, I do not find your exegesis of the New Testament to be a convicting argument for god, as you are presupposing that god exists and inspired the bible.

Hi Newpolitics:
No, you don't have to believe that either God exists
or that the Bible was inspired by this God

to support or believe in an interpretation of the
Old and New Testament, in a way that represents humanity universally,
such as showing the historical pattern of moving
from legalistic retributive justice (which brings death and war) to
restorative justice by the spirit of the laws (that brings peace and harmony)
by forgiveness and correction that breaks the cycles of war and retribution
and brings about reform for lasting peace and justice.

You can believe the world and human nature is whatever it is,
with or without a God inspiring or creating it,
and the interpretation of the Bible can still mean:

to warn people not to live by greed and material desire for political control
which corrupts laws and society
but to live by the spirit of love truth justice peace etc.
that includes all humanity and does not discriminate by politics
and allows relations and justice to be restored for law and order.

the point does not have to be about God per se at all,
it is about agreeing what is the universal meaning
or message that by definition must apply to all humanity to be universal, right?

so what is the meaning that we can all agree on?
theists or nontheists alike?
if we can all agree on Constitutional laws as
representing inalienable and self-evident principles
that apply to all human nature, why not with other laws
that are claimed to have universal import? so what is it?

 

[Boss]

D

That makes no sense. Calling God, God and proclaiming an existence of deity requires explanation.

For example if someome says "Aristotle exist." One has to define who Aristotle is before explaining a proof of Aristotle's existence." God can be anything.

I didn't proclaim existence of a deity, we've been over this already.

Someone can say, "Aristotle exists" and this is either a true statement or false statement, it does not require that Aristotle be defined. I can say Los Angeles exists, I've never been there and couldn't tell you anything about it, but I am sure it exists. You are insisting that something be defined to your satisfaction before it can be proven to exist, and that is not a prerequisite for existence or proof thereof.

You titled the thread "definitive proof that God exist..." I am asking you who is God?

And I am telling you, I don't need to define god. Things can and do exist, which have not been defined and may never be defined. Defining or explaining the characteristics of something, is not necessary to prove it exists. My guess is, you want me to define God so that you can then turn the debate into an attack on that. I never claimed I could prove existence of a specific incarnation of god.

I don't know that god is a "who" or that any human definition could ever suffice, especially to someone who rejects spirituality and doesn't believe in god. Let's just say for clarity sake, when I use the word "god" I am referring to the spiritual entity humans worship as something greater than self. That's really all the definition needed in this debate.

 

[newpolitics]

Electrical currents certainly do prove something, especially when correlated with specific brain activity and mapped by an fMRI machine.

No they don't. A POTATO can produce an electrical current. No machine exists that can tell what a person is thinking. Nothing can measure what took place in the mind of Mozart or Rembrandt or DeVinci. You have presented proof that the brain has electronic reactions and impulses, and these occur when the brain is thinking. You have not proven any actual thought exists, nor have you defined it.

The same with Oxytocin levels rising when people experience feelings of love.

Or any number of other feelings people experience, that's the part you are leaving out. You've proven the brain produces oxytocin depending on emotional circumstance, that doesn't prove love, nor does it define it.

Your level of skepticism here is highly inconsistent with your gullibility in regards to a concept like god.

But I am not gullible. I presented a case you can't refute. You're trying very hard, but failing. Mostly because you keep veering away from the argument to raise superfluous points.

Again, please define god. Appealing to black holes won't save you from having to define god, as I've already proven. This is not a dificult question. Are you a Christian? A pantheist? A deist? A panentheist? There are many different definitions for god. Pick one.

I do not have to define god to prove that god exists. I don't have to "pick" a god to prove god exists. The spiritual evidence is overwhelming, you just refuse to accept it, so you demand that I "define" something, so that you can then attack that. I am not here to argue for Christians or any other religion, I believe religion is a manifestation of mankind who grapples with understanding of something beyond human comprehension. It is a part of my evidence that god must exist, because look at all the various people god inspires? This has been going on for all of mankind's history, and it can't simply be tossed aside as unimportant. Unless you are a moron who refuses to accept spiritual evidence, while clamoring for physical proof of something not physical.

You are really dense. Seriously. I can't debate this level of idiocy. I'm done deconstructing your myriad logical fallacies and bad analogies, but I will restate that because you are making an existential claim, you need to define it. I will make an ANALOGY (watch and learn). This is what you are doing:

"Hey. I have this thing in my garage...."

"What is it?"

"I don't need to define it."

"Okay. Can you tell me anything about it?"

"I don't need to. Can you define the inside of a black hole? No. Therefore I don't need to define this thing in my garage. You should just believe me because I say it exists."

"That's a bad analogy. We know that black holes exist. I have no idea what it is you are claiming is in your garage. It could be anything."

"I'm not using an analogy. I'm just using something else to make an argument about what's it in my garage."

"..."

"There is tons of evidence! It Is definitive proof!"

"Show it to me"

"You can't see it because you don't believe it exists."

"Why should I believe this evidence exists?"

"Because without, there is no evidence for what's in my garage."

"Just show me the evidence!"

"It's not physical."

"What is it?"

"It's spiritual."

What does that means?"

"It's not physical."

"So, in order for me to believe that there is something in your garage that you claim, which I can't detect with any I my five sense, I need to believe in this evidence which neither can be detected with any Of my five senses?"

"Correct!"

(Walks into oncoming traffic)

 

[newpolitics]

By not defining god, you aren't claiming anything. This thread is utterly pointless. You could be claiming the existence of a giant Bloo-Bloo in outer space for all we know. What's a Bloo-Bloo? I don't need to define it. It exists.

 

[emilynghiem]

I don't think proving "god" as a concept is the issue with atheists

It is the personification of god as living entity is the point of contention with atheists such as TM.


Depending on which perspective you choose, the title of the thread seems misleading.

yes, a lot of what I run into is
people either not believing in how the Christian God is taught,
or not believing that Muslims/Christian believe in the same God,
much less atheists who don't even personify God at all.

my bf came from an agnostic background who decided there is
a God and not just intelligent design but a source of all things,
but he does not believe this is in line with whatever Christians teach.

so a lot of it is that.
And most of the work is people either forgiving or resolving their past conflicts
or misperceptions so we can move toward an approach to God
that allows for all these differences without contradiction.

As soon as you bring up this idea of reconciliation and universality,
people think you mean making everyone's beliefs the same
so that fear has to be addressed first. Then they tend to bring up things like "how are you going to
get Muslims and Christians to agree if they are killing each other in war,"
and "liberals and conservatives can't even agree when they are under the same
laws and don't agree how to interpret or apply them," etc.
or the "other people are the problem" argument. I get this a lot.
Where people say I am the exception, they can reconcile with me, but
those "other people" aren't going to go along with it.

the key is forgiveness so corrections can be made.
so there is a process of reconciliation involved where people respond if they see how it works first, by experiencing it themselves and finding out it doesn't force them to convert but helps them to be more consistent with the principles they already believe in, before
they see the same process can work for others.

it is like proving the process works by
jumping in and using it to show how it works.

At some point, the patterns can likely be documented by statistics
to show that people across different views and groups follow the
same process, and it's not dependent on any one set of beliefs.
So the common factor that either allows or blocks reconciliation
is forgiveness or unforgiveness, which doesn't even have to be proven
as a cause, but can be shown as a "correlating factor" and that's good
enough to show a consistent pattern of why the process succeeds or fails.