That is up to the individual*. There is objective reality, and subjective reality. Most people live in realities designed by others (objective), though our minds are designed to do that for ourselves.
*By saying it’s up to the individual I’m saying that the person should decide for themselves once they experienced both, which required accepting both as real.
Jack Batty, if what I say offends you in any way the reason is not in myself, but inside you. There is some issue in your past that is not healed and people can use that to get to you at any time by bringing it up, or even hinting at it. As long as you leave that underlying issue unhealed you are allowing others to bother you.
Whatever can get to anyone is a internal issue, not external. I have meant you no harm, nor do I have any intent to harm you.
If the truth hurts then you should be asking why and how can you correct that instead of living inside a lie that distracts you from your pain.
My depth perception and extent to which my eyes work together is not so affected that I have no 3D sight at all, but enough so that my depth perception is pretty bad and I simply can’t see magic eye pictures. They’re too different, alas.
That makes sense, but I don’t see how a person can experience both. How do we know at what level of understanding we know all applicable to know? At what point during our study of the physical or spiritual do we know “Right, that’s it, I know enough of this subject to be able to make this pronouncement”? Do I need the equivalent knowledge of the physical to a high school level, degree level, perhaps a doctorate? How do I know when i’m done, since, by definition, we can never know what we do not know we know.
On top of that, you have the problem that whatever you pick first will forever colour your perceptions, if what you say is true. You can’t *forget *what you know. If you have true understanding of the spiritual, you can’t abandon it to go understand the physical, and vice-versa. May I ask which you yourself started off with, and how you avoided whichever that was colouring your perceptions of the other? How did you “remove your blinkers” as it were, and if this is possible, why isn’t it possible to do just generally.
When do you stop learning about the physical world? It’s a process that really doesn’t end. But that’s not to say you don’t progress. It is just like your physical life, you start as a baby and progress to adulthood, which would be spiritual maturity, which you will know when you get there. It is the point where you are self sufficient to think on your own, and can see and follow your own path. You are no longer tossed around like a reed in the wind.
This is a hard thing to do, and we usually try to mold the spiritual into the physical world we know, this however is the opposite as the spiritual contains the physical, not the other way around, or to put another way our physical world is like 2 dimensions in a 3 dimension spiritual world.
But OTOH we really experience spiritual first (in the womb), then physical, so there is a part of us that remembers and helps guide us.
Again we all start spiritual, then physical at birth (with the exception of IMHO some like autistic children). Like many people I tried to fit the spiritual into the physical, and though it didn’t work, I did notice patterns, those patterns continuously steered me from the physical and had me construct a spiritual reality, which under the light of scripture and teaching from the Holy Spirit the spiritual world was revealed.
No, it’s inside the callous things you say. Your rhetorical strategy consists of claiming ineffable spiritual knowledge, most of which appears to be made up on the spot because it’s nearly incomprehensible, and then blaming people for things that any thinking person would understand are not their fault, such as sickness or medical problems in their children. It’s really shocking behavior and these are terrible things to say. After making those comments you usually drive home the point that whatever happens is always the fault of the victim “spiritually,” and then you invent medical knowledge and (this is the topper) encourage people to use their brains. The problem is entirely with your remarks.
Actually, it doesn’t matter how you can observe things. If you can observe them, if you, kanicbird can observe or otherwise be aware of spiritual events, then they can be studied scientifically. In fact, if you made notes of your spiritual experiences, those notes could then be studied by people who actually know what science is to draw conclusions about what you are actually experiencing.
Of course, whenever that happens, the evidence fails to hold up to scrutiny or to corroborate anything else more directly observable, in objective reality. Funny, that.
Let’s presume for a moment that you are indeed speaking to an extraphysical entity, rather than an imaginary friend. And that there do exist, as you state, other deceiving gods. How could you possibly know you aren’t dealing with one of them, who is lying to you and pretending to be a true God, the maker of heaven and earth?
Answer: you can’t. Period. At which point we ask ourselves, if you are able to fool yourself into certainty that your God isn’t some deceiver god when such certainty is unmerited, why shouldn’t we think that you are capable of mistaking an imaginary friend for a God?
Answer: There is no reason to think you are not mistaking an imaginary friend for a one true God.
This is a classic case of “truthiness.” It doesn’t matter what medical science says about the cause of birth defects-it’s what you, Kanicbird, “feel in your gut”, or, “heart”, in this case. It’s what you “know”, because God would say so. Evidence doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter.
Just as by study you know the facts, this works the exact same way, by faith you know the truth. What we can prove in the physical and know, the same thing happens spiritually, but the process is faith, which leads to knowing.
Seek God with all your heart and He will reveal all truths to you. While facts are what you can prove physically, truths are eternal wisdom of God and are far above facts.
To use another example:
Using facts:
Science can determine the number of stars it can find, science can estimate the number of stars in the universe - that estimation is not capable of determining the number however.
Using the Wisdom of God:
God created every star and knows them by name. God will reveal His truth to you if you need to know it in His work for you
For if God revealed to me that there are exactly 678,485,699,329 stars He created in the universe, you can see how people grounded in only the physical can’t accept that, though the truth was revealed to them, their facts are a stumbling block to the truth.
Kanicbird, if you want eternal happiness, then wire $50,000 into my bank account. Don’t study this instruction; just trust it. Otherwise it won’t work.
By some estimates there are more stars than that in our galaxy alone. And let’s not forget all the other 10[sup]24[/sup] galaxies in the observable universe. So where did all the other stars come from if they weren’t created by your God?
Face the truth, man - faith is not an investigative process, it’s a ceasing of investigation. Faith denies doubt, and in doing so prevents you from noticing the lack of reasons or even the nonsense in your beliefs. I could have absolute faith in the existence of santa claus. Doing so would tell me that santa claus is real - I’d know it. But, despite your assertions that faith proves things, actually would not prove that santa claus exists. By the exact same token, your faith does not prove that your God exists.
Unless, of course, something else reveals all truths to you instead. Or a bunch of lies that seem close enough to truths if you don’t look closely. And you’d never know…faith, of course, just has you unconditionally trust in whatever you happen to already believe, so it can’t possibly warn you against fraud, or simply being completely wrong.
Dude, there are only two* stars. You have to believe that - it was revealed to you! By me! And for all you know, perhaps I heard it directly from god. So you aren’t allowed to doubt me.
What, you don’t like that? That’s exactly what you’re saying to us.
*Yes, two! You know it’s true. I said so. Don’t let pesky facts like a sky full of visible stars dissuade you from the Truth! Such things are only a stumbling block!