Polycarp, neither you nor FoG have answered my questions at all. People don’t willingly choose to go to Hell anymore than they “choose” to die when threatened by a mugger. That is a false choice. It is a mugging. It is extortion. It holds as much water as negotiations with a viscious kidnapper.
Niether one of you have told me what “sin” could be worth eternal damnation. What kind of demonic monster would set the same indescribably torturous sentence for all the different ways we humans can break a rule? What the bloody Hell is the purpose of a punishment that cannot rehabilitate?
Last question that will not be answered: In all the different pantheons of godhood, among all the different religions that exist, has any been found that could be crueller than the Christian one?
“…and if love never
lasts forever
tell me, what’s forever for?”
As to what happened to you in your epiphany, in my humble outside opinion: I would say a paradigm shift. You’d probably been going around with beliefs that were in conflict, but you didn’t quite notice it yet, like when you’re trying to understand something and you’re being held back by some hidden assumption. For example, FoG will never truly understand atheists as long as he maintains some sneaky little assumptions about us, like that we’re willfully “rejecting” God. And he may even say he understands, but those beliefs tend to lurk subconciously and influence everything you think even if you consciously believe you’re chosen to discard them. However, eventually the schism between two conflicting beliefs becomes too great and one must be discarded (doublethink aside). For you, the tension between your budding belief in the eternal nature of love and your disbelief in God eventually got to the point when one had to be discarded–not just as a trivial mental exercise where you ignore the axoim that parallel lines do not intersect to do different types of geometry, but a fundamental change all the way down to the bone. Then boom–suddenly there were no conflicts in your worldview, and everything fell into place.
As for me, I’ve never had an anti-epiphany to make me an atheist; I’ve always understood that other people truly believed in God, but I never did. At first, I simply didn’t have much of an opinion about religion or Gods, aside from lasting fascination with ritual and symbolism and myth, but as time went on I realized that “atheism” most accurately described my lack of belief. I am contented and joyous as an atheist; I am secure in my place in the universe and my goals in life. The eternal life and heaven proclaimed by theists are certainly attractive on the surface, but in the end, to me, just–unbelievable.
First of all, sorry for messing up the italics on my last post! I’ll have to be more careful. I’m now up to …
Near the bottom of page 4 of the original post
My response to SeatTime
I mentioned the story of someone who converted from Islam to Christianity. You responded:
I can’t really comment on this in detail because I’ve never met or heard of someone who converted from Christianity to Islam. If you know of any stories on the web or that you just know about, I’d be interested in the specifics.
What do you mean about “reason creeping into the picture”?
And what do you mean you “felt nothing”? Do you mean you didn’t feel guilty, or didn’t feel God’s presence?
I mentioned that you must come to Christ as a child and you responded:
No. Childlike as in uncomplicated. Many times, children understand common sense better than adults do because they don’t overcomplicate things. “I don’t deserve heaven, but God sent Jesus to take my punishment so I can go anyway? Oh. That makes sense.” The gospel is exceptionally simple and easy to grasp, but adults like to make it complicated. You have to be a child and take it for the simple, logical message that it is.
One of the greatest deceptions of our age is that you have to “throw your mind away” to become a Christian. This is ludicrous. God is the author of logic and common sense.
This is a little vague and I’m not totally following. Do you believe Christ was a ‘good teacher’ but not God or the son of God? Are you saying you believe in Christ but not God or Satan?
You later said, referring to me:
Simple. “Hearing” God is only part of knowing God’s will for your life. God confirms or “de-confirms” what you are hearing as you go. He opens and closes doors for you. Basically, something I heard a pastor say years ago is true: if you want God’s will for your life, it’s hard to not walk in it. If you want God’s will, God’s going to back you up. If you’re steering off course, He will help nudge you back in the right direction. If you don’t want God’s will on the other hand … My response to Ben
You said:
Uh, right. Care to quote that scripture to me? In the OLD Testement this is basically true, but not in the New Testement. This, again, was one of the reasons I should have done a mini-Bible study on the subject first. What you said is a popular misconception even among many Christians. In the NT era (which continues today), God can speak to each believer individually, wheras in the OT, the only way to “hear God” was through the prophets so the stakes were higher.
The NT says we prophesy “in part” and implies that it’s not as huge of a deal as it was in the OT. The purpose of prophesy has changed as well. This is the tip of the iceburg … as I said to someone else, maybe we can do a whole topic sometime on this. My response to Stuffinb
I’m sorry it doesn’t appear that I’m listening. It might appear that way since I’ve got so many posts to respond to. I try to find one or two key points to comment on and then move on to the next one. If you change your mind, I’ll try to read your posts more carefully, k ;)?
Okay, we’ve reached the end of page 4. More in a sec…
I realize many believers are of the opinion that God only speaks through the Bible and through others, but not in any kind of direct way in this day and age. I believe God does use the Bible and others to speak to you, but I also believe He speaks to us individually as well. And no I don’t mean in a booming Charlton Heston-type voice, but in the “still small voice” described in the Bible. Not so much a voice as much as nudgings, senses, leadings, etc. Hard to put into words.
This reminds me of the Christian song called “Spirit Thing” that’s so popular right now. Any of you out there heard it? It’s funny and informative. Here’s a portion of the lyrics:
It pushes when I quit
It smells a counterfeit
Sometimes it acts a bit like a teleprompter
When it’s teleprompting you
I pray you’ll let Him through
… (can’t remember the words here) …
but for now
Chorus
It’s just a Spirit Thing
It’s just a Holy Nudge
It’s like a Circuit Judge in the brain
It’s just a Spirit Thing
It’s here to guard my heart
It’s just a little hard to explain …
There’s more but that’s all I can think of right now. Anyway, that kind of answers your question Chocobo :). My response to GLWasteful
I already responded (at least partly) to your request for miracle stories, but let me now address other points you made. First, you quoted me as saying:
Your response:
I would say that very few people see their own sinfulness to the degree that they actually are sinful. We humans tend to like to justify ourselves and make us feel good about ourselves. I’ve met few Christians that God didn’t have to show them the depth of their own sinfulness before they came to Christ.
Oh, and the “atheist’s favorite reason” was just sarcasm. Sorry you missed it. I was quoting the GASPBible which some atheists on this board always seem to get into fits over.
It is completely consistent … God always touches each person at their point of need, which is different for different people. My response to Modian
No, you’re misreading what I said I’m afraid. I’ve had “bursts of inspiration” and I’ve had “answers to prayer” where God just dropped an answer in my lap, and believe me those are two different things.
I don’t believe God does everything for me. I believe there are many things I just “do”, but even in those things I thank God for the gifts that He gave me to make me able to do those things. Then there are times when I just don’t know what to do. IF I’m smart and using my head, I’ll ask God about it and I’ll many times get a good solid logical answer. Many times (and other believers can attest to this), I foolishly do everything but think to ask God!
Well, who ever said a Christian should blame God for their problems?
No, Christianity isn’t a crutch (are you listening too, David B?) … it’s a wheelbarrow. You can’t even limp through life without God in your life. A Christian is simply someone who is smart enough to realize this. Those that don’t realize it believe that they can do it on their own with no help. That only works for a while, but eventually reality hits you in the face. My response to lawoot
I have no doubt that there are Atheists out there that walk in biblical and/or Christian principles. There are non believers in general who do this. I am glad you do this, and I’m sure you gain benefits in your life from it. But you are missing out on the most important part! God wants a relationship with you, not just for you to “behave Christian-ly”. It’s not about actions, it’s about a relationship.
Regarding your youth pastor friend:
What a horrid trial! It just goes to show that there are two supernatural entities at work here. Satan is not just a playful cherry-colored guy. He hates this youth pastor and wants to destroy him and his entire family. I’m not even remotely surprised this kind of thing happened. It’s becoming more frequent these days.
Christ never promised you’d never have bad circumstances in your life. In fact, are you ready for this? One of Jesus’ promises to us was that we would suffer persecution! His promises aren’t all warm and fuzzy. Dr. Lao I have reached you again, toward the bottom of page 5. I always want to spend quite a bit with my responses to you, so in order to do it justice I will stop here and start with your post tomorrow night.
Have a good evening folks. I hope you have a great Monday!
I asked a question similar to yours, and I am thinking FoG simply hasn’t gotten quite that far down page #5 answering posts of the previous thread. I too, am curious as to FoG’s take on this.
(FOG is talking about why faith healers, Christian prophets, etc., have yet to take the Randi Challenge.)
I disagree totally. It would absolutely be in the best interests of these people to take the RC. For one thing, there’s the money–a million bucks could go a long way toward good Christian charity.
There’s also the legitimacy it would lend. If one of these guys passed the RC, it would be very difficult for all those heathen skeptics to doubt, wouldn’t it?
Last but not least, there’s the press. You said that miracles go unreported by the evil atheist humanist liberal mainstream media. Randi’s challenge is very well-known; if someone met the challenge, it would be hard for the media to ignore.
The assertion that the Randi Challenge would “cheapen” faith healing or prophecy reminds me of the bully on the playground who says that he could beat you up, but he “just doesn’t want to right now.”
(By the way, if you do want to beef up the act, you might check out “13 Steps to Mentalism” by Corinda, available at your local magic shop. I’m a card man myself, but the mentalists consider this book the master work on the subject.)
I don’t know, Spidergal. Now that he’s added poetry to the wide spaces and headers, he keeps falling farther and farther behind.
Presuming, of course, that he has any intention of answering the straightforward questions we’re asking.
Sorta reminds me of those career politicians that take questions, then proceed to read from their cuecards, whether it has anything to do with the question or not. When the reporter dares to repeat the question, his manners get called into question.
You asked if mentally ill people who see/hear imaginagy beings are influenced by them in a posiyive or negative way. I really can’t answer that as becasue I had no opportunity to see these people before they became ill. I have no idea if they were “better people” before or after. I can say that some of them were very nice people who, had they been even nicer before they began hallucinating, would have been in the running for sainthood.
In regards to this:
I find your answer to be VERY arrogant. First, who said anything about these peole believing that they have become better ‘on their own’? These people are as convinced as you are that their GOD is changing their life. Ah, but you are sure that they are being tricked by Satan, but you are worshipping the right God and so could not possibly be mistaken, huh? You admit that Satan succeeds in tricking people (even Christians) all the time, yet for some reason you are certain that others who profess the same feelings toward their God as you do toward yours are hortibly, horribly wrong. What exactly is the difference between your position and theirs? how can you possibly know that they are being tricked by Satan and you are not? Is it because your God tells you so? guess what? Their god tells them so as well.
I’m new around here, and out of my depth for a lot of this thread, but I’ll dive in with both feet.
What it would take to prove God’s (the Christian God’s) existence to me? It would be take Christianity (the Bible, for the sake of argument) to have predictive and explicative power with regard to everything in this world, and not just me. For me, it has neither.
To elaborate. Many of the controvertible statements about the workings of the world in the Bible would not have ‘become’ metaphors over the past couple of thousand years in many people’s minds. I don’t think they were seen as metaphorical at the time, if these truths were revealed to shepherds and whatnot, then they should have been able to write them down with no understanding of them, only for subsequent study of the natural world to illuminate them. Scientific advance would have led us to an understanding of some of the mysteries that were in the Bible, and it would reinforce, or hint at, many others. The Bible would incite anybody to further understanding of the universe, and anybody who tried to further understand the universe would be led to the Bible. Every word of it would still be literally true. A religious/scientific schism would not, and could not have happened. Galileo would have been beatified by the Catholic church. A naturalistic world view would lead to a religious world view, and not be capable of being cited as an incompatible philosophy. The ‘God of the Gaps’ argument couldn’t happen. The whole creationism/evolution thing couldn’t happen. Freewill could lead me to not believe in God, but I’d be a whacko.
That’s precisely what it would take to PROVE God’s existence to me. And I don’t see it happening.
But that’s just me.
Oh, and Christian rock wouldn’t suck.
:::finding it difficult to hit submit while hiding under my desk:::
Hello? Are we on the same wavelength here? I have absolutely no disagreement with what you suggest that the Divine Weasel would unjustly do if he were God. Neither of us supposes he is, so save that vitriol for FoG, whose understanding of God seems to not take the disparity between his alleged lovingness and his propensity to send sinners to eternal torment. (By the way, Friend, addressing that question in a coherent way would do a lot towards redeeming your ability to influence the minds of posters here.)
What I am suggesting is as follows:
Suppose a loving, just God who, for some reason, prizes free will – I suspect but do not append to the for-the-sake-of-argument supposition his reason is the supreme value he places on love; the “love” of puppets is not freely given.
In this world as we know it, created good according to the Christian myth, anything taken to the ultimate extreme becomes destructive to the spirit (not in a religious sense, but in the everyday sense one talks of someone being a “free spirit” sort of person, or the strong, upright spirit of, say, Martin Luther King Jr.). (I welcome refutation of that, but I stand by it. I have known people who were obsessed with being in love, I have seen vibrant personalities disintegrate with alcohol or drug use, and I have seen people so consumed by hatred and revenge that the person they had been was subverted to the attitude, which became the dominant part of the new “personality.” Consider even the scientist whose obsessive quest for knowledge takes the place of what the rest of us would consider a meaningful life. Anything taken to an extreme is a vice.)
Now, in a world where there is free will and a loving, just God, He must give room for people to choose to follow their desires, whatever they are. And inevitably some of them will follow them to extremes, and enter into self-destructive mode doing so. Because He loves, He will try to produce ways out of such a fiasco. But He will not demand they be followed, simply offer them, and keep offering them, because He loves the people who are going down the self-destructive roads. Those who do follow the ways out, He will bring to Himself, He being the only thing, because He is infinite, which is not subject to the “taken to extremes is destructive” rule.
Now overlay this picture with the traditional Christian language. Being with God, taking the way out, is Heaven. Following other paths is Hell, because they ultimately lead to personality disintegration and unsatisfied pangs of longing and regret. He does not judge, except insofar as the world He created allows people to make these choices. And without completely trashing people’s free will to make those choices, for good or ill, I cannot see how He could do otherwise.
On that metaphor, does He seem more like a loving Father who is willing to let His children make free choices once they grow up, and less like a sadistic tyrant? I suppose it would be possible to retailor human nature so that the bad choices would not lead to personality disintegration and the good choices would seem more appealing. But I don’t happen to be in charge of managing the spiritual structure of the universe at the moment, and I don’t have sufficient knowledge to say that it is in fact possible without subverting free will, divine love, or divine justice. If you can see a way around it, by all means post it.
If you respond that this still sounds like a petty tyrant, please make your case as to how and why. I’m honestly giving you the best answer I can from my worldview as to why a supposedly loving God would put things together this way, and IMHO I deserve better than a antifundamentalist diatribe in response. Thanks.
Well, Lucky, according to the story in Charisma, there are more and more people becoming Christians in the Pacific Rim all the time. So one would think that the miracles would have been reported on in a little more detail. Or, perhaps not.
Libertarian:
You mean like my daughter’s birth? That was a time when I felt my heart (using your definition) fill with joy. Ditto when she was released from the hospital after undergoing open-heart surgery. 'Samatter of fact, that still heads up my list of wonderful days in my life. I understand what you’re saying, I think, but what I see as wonderfulness squared, you seem to consider a miracle. I don’t imagine that either of us are going to be changing our minds anytime soon.
Fair enough. I suppose, then, that I am very similar to an awful lot of folk who are simply not searching. Which begs the question, “Why not?” Speaking only for myself, there is no need to search for something that seems so very unlikely. Also, the standard diatribe about what a monster God is, and why on earth would I want to be acquainted with him knowing that.
FriendofGod:
As far as the sarcasm, check your transmitter. As far as atheists being upset when the Bible gets quoted (And which Bible would that be, BTW?), I’ve only seen fits thrown when it’s used as a justification to believe in the Bible. Circular reasoning, and all like that.
Well, yeah. I don’t think either of you need to change your minds to be in agreement. I refer you to David B’s REALL note on having observed a real miracle (the birth of one of his children). (If he doesn’t pop in here to edit this into a link, I’ll dig it out and post it later. David, consider yourself invited to do so.)
To a Christian, the vast majority of “miracles” are not the strict-sense miracles where God magically vanishes a life-threatening carcinoma or instantaneously transforms a rock into gold to help the deserving-but-poor Christian pay his mortgage. They are “Miracles of Convergence” (to borrow Ghoti’s term) where God works through human intervention and “coincidence” to bring about His will. Your daughter was His gift to you and your wife. If you reread my post above regarding my heart attack, nothing in it cannot be skeptically attributed to two decent human beings deciding to care about one another and sheer coincidence that Jay showed up when I was dying. But we both are convinced that God intervened, first to help him through me, and then to save my life through him. It is all, in the last analysis, a matter of perspective.
I can still follow this, but here’s where I lose you…
You may mean something different by “being with God” than what it sounds like to me. To me, I hear “believing in some god” or “having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. If you didn’t mean that, then my next paragraph is based on an incorrect assumption, and I apologize in advance.
I disagree that believing in God will help prevent you from following self-destructive paths and that not believing will lead you down self-destructive paths. Belief may help some people balance their lives. Belief may give some people strength that they wouldn’t otherwise have. But it doesn’t work that way for all people.
I’m pretty sure that the basic Christian equation is:
Believe that Christ is the risen Lord = Afterlife in heaven.
Reject Christ = Afterlife in hell.
That was an awesome catch, and I did not intend to eliminate a step in the process. However, I inadvertently did.
Let me tackle this. Yep, I was not alleging “intellectual adherence to the concept that there is a some god or other” but “personal relationship with Jesus.” However, it has been the experience of most Christians that whichever way they come at the package, it becomes the whole package. C.S. Lewis is the classic example of the intellect leading to the interpersonal, and my own experience has been similar. For others, “taking Jesus as my savior” has led to the intellectual structure that the Trinity entails.
And let me be clear that this is not some kind of simplistic bait-and-switch: “I have here in this poke the Pig of Eternal Happiness, and all you have to do to get it is to recite this formula about Jesus.” (Half this board would say the pig would be bad for their cholesterol, and the Orthodox Jews would consult the Talmud on what to do if someone offers them a pig. C’mon – not my meaning at all!) The idea is that putting God in the position of Lord of your life functions to put the other, potentially destructive needs and wants of one’s life in perspective, so that they do not grow into obsessions. And the experience of every Christian who has done so, universally testified to, is that Jesus Christ becomes a real, known person to them, the Holy Spirit works in their lifes to (usually slowly) transform them into the sort of person that wants a life following God as Lord and taking only the best of the other stuff instead of dwelling on it. And I’m perfectly well aware that this sounds less than tasteful from the non-Christian perspective. All I can say is that I’ve been on both sides of the picture, and it’s not a rejection of anything except excess and unfulfilled want. Through that “Miracle of Convergence” thing I was speaking of, God tends to provide that which was (inordinately)desired to the degree it satisfies, or a satisfactory substitute for it. I will happily give examples from my own life if you want evidence for that assertion.
If something is affecting me and I am unaware of it and there are no consequences I can observe, exactly how is it affecting me? You can give your opinion about what you think God is doing to me or for me or at me, but just like alien visitors and healing magnets and Tarot cards, testimonials say more about the person testifying than about the physical world.
I challenge God on a daily basis. I’m one of those people who likes to say “May God strike me down if I’m wrong” just to watch people take a few steps away from me. If He really affects my life, then give me an experience:
Dear God,
Please strike me blind or give me testicular cancer or kill my family or make me bald or give me a flat tire. Then I will believe and you can restore my sight and heal my testicles and give me a new and improved family and give me hair and make the tire go flat only 1 mile from the gas station instead of 2 so I will know you are with me.
Amen
Thanks for clarifying that. That post didn’t sound consistent with your earlier posts. I do understand your argument now, but I still am not sure how it answers the false choice question.
I think that this is the crux of your argument.
I’m still a bit confused, 'cause to me this sounds like the earthly part of the Christian life. The false choice argument is concerned with the afterlife. Let’s say that I’m an atheist, a relatively decent person, I don’t beat my wife, indulge in pornography, drink to excess, etc. I live a long and happy life, die of natural causes, and find out that Christianity was right all along. Now, since I gave up the Christian faith, I am condemned to hell, whatever it may be. I made the choice in life not to follow Christ, now I’m in hell.
I’m pretty sure that this is pretty clearly stated in the NT, although I might not be up on the latest in theology.
FoG, I don’t want you to think this is a decision I made lightly. We’re talking about a significant change for me. I’d been raised in the church. My grandfather and his father is/were ministers. I sought (I think I’ve already mentioned that I graduated form Golden Gate Seminary in Marin County) answers and received none. Faith did not work for me, and if not for me, how do I tell others it should be enough for them? That was my quandary. It was a responsibility that I could not take.
Interesting. I confess I would like to hear more. Why do you feel that faith didn’t “work” for you?
Hi again Fog,
I’ve been trying unsuccesfully to come up with a way to explain this to you other than the way I did. The best I can come up with is the house of cards analogy. Basically my faith was believing what everyone else said was correct. My family and friends, the bible, my pastor. It didn’t stand up to my personal scrutiny, and like a house of cards was easily blown down.
Well not easily but you get the idea. I was in a crisis, everything that I believed instead of becoming stronger through study, got weaker. Prayer became talking to myself. Ministries I performed as part of my realtionship woth G-d seemed more for personal satisfaction than the edification of G-d. Faith didn’t work because it no longer had grounds.
Well, except that what Lib or you consider a miracle, I simply see as something that is pretty groovy. Maybe it’s just a matter of semantics to you, but I honestly don’t consider it miraculous. It just made me happy beyond words. And thank you, BTW, for giving me the heads up inre David’s article. I thought that I could remember, back in the depths of my memory, someone mentioning this, but feared saying something only to be told that I was believing too much in the hallucinations again.
And I apologize, but I dug through the last two pages of this topic in the old thread and didn’t see anything about this. Again, I think that you and I are simply coming at this from different directions. It sounds like you were helped by a friend, as was he. If you consider this miraculous, well, I would be hard pressed to prove you wrong. But I consider it a case of two people coming together to help each other. With really good timing. I’m glad that you seem to be doing all right.
First, an apology to Polycarp. I should not have included you in my diatribe. I meant to say that your statement did not exactly answer my question, but it got tied into my statement to FoG.
Second, as far as your metaphor goes: If, in the Christian religion, we were treated as adults that were fully informed, I wouldn’t mind a god that stood back to let us make our own decisions and deal with the consequences ourselves. But this religion treats us as if were children, and adds in a rediculously inappropriate punishment that cannot be avoided unless we are lucky enough to pick the right belief system among thousands. If I put my children into a large room filled with dangerous objects, and let everybody in the neighborhood slip little notes under the door telling them what to do with these objects, what kind of father would I be? With no clear and undeniable message from the Christian “god”, we are punished eternally for guessing wrong.
Third, FoG keeps making the false assumption that the choice is between atheism and his particular version of Christianity, when most of us know that the choice is much broader and thousands of times harder than he claims it is.
