How did you arrive at Christianity?

[possibletarian]

Food, shelter and health could be a part of God's providence to some extent, but I don't think that when we pray according to the Lord's Prayer, we'll be saying (or expecting) anything like: " ...and give us this day our daily Sumptuous, Three Meal Plan, preferably with IHOP for breakfast, Red Lobster for lunch, and Tony's Marvelous Bistro for dinner (with a drink plan, of course tucked in there somewhere)."

But seriously, nothing on the material plane is guaranteed by the simple fact that we have a relationship with God. One could get his daily bread for quite a while, and still get martyred, or fall sick, or face the whirlwind, or whatever other fate may befall a faithful person, even after years of apparent providence from God in other sectors of life.

Look at Stephen in the books of Acts, for instance, as but one example. If Jesus is saying that our faith will provide sustenance, shielding and longevity without fail, then as we look at Stephen, we have to ask, "Where were you God when Stephen needed shelter?" If we look at how Saul decimated and scattered the earliest church, with some being imprisoned, probably ill-treated, hungry, made poor, we have to ask, "Where were you God when Saul persecuted the Church?" And so on, and so on.

When we ask God to provide, as in "give us this day our daily bread," we're not asking with the full confidence that our bellies will be indeed be filled with bread on a daily basis. No, we as Christians are asking God that, if He sees fit, to provide us some bread. We don't assume that it will just be there regardless. I don't anyway, although I do know some churches that will gladly tell you otherwise.

God doesn't have to; but He often does provide.

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

Oh I know churches that will glady tell me otherwise too.

I do think though that the bible does clearly indicate an interventionist god, not only from the example above , which tells us not to worry but from other scriptures such as.

James 5:14
Is any one of you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises. 14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.…

Seems to imply that praying for people will bring healing. In the Old Testament Israel's blessing were directly linked to the tithes and offerings in fact God challenges Israel to test him about this.
One cannot say that god is not interventionist after all does he not bring Blessings and disaster ?

Isaiah 45:7
I am the LORD, and there is no other, 7The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.

What worries me most though is that god seems to be as evolutionary as his followers amount of faith. The reality is that Christians like others die from starvation, illnesses, disease so the scripture that promises God's provision has to be interpreted in a such a way to reflect that reality.

Instead of saying, 'well that scripture clearly is not true' it becomes a kind of true, in a spiritual way. Or excuses are made for god perhaps along the lines of 'his ways are not our ways' or ' It's the next life that we should have our eyes on, not this one' to the point of there being a god and no god are indistinguishable.

'He loves and cares for you' becomes 'He loves and cares for you.. but he feels the next life is more important, and that your child starving to death or you being persecuted is all part of a plan'

Personally I think the secret of the survival of Christianity as a major religion is that it is saying everything, it has lots of little nuggets for every situation, no matter how incompatible they seem. It answers everything, and therefore nothing.

 

[Silmarien]

What worries me most though is that god seems to be as evolutionary as his followers amount of faith. The reality is that Christians like others die from starvation, illnesses, disease so the scripture that promises God's provision has to be interpreted in a such a way to reflect that reality.

For one, I do not think interpretations of the meaning of "providence" have anything to do with how much faith a person has. That someone is more skeptical of intervention does not mean they have less faith; it's a matter of how they believe God interacts with the world. I am not sure why it troubles you that religion evolves, though. Humans change, our way of understanding the world changes, and our approach to the concept of divinity changes with us. I do not understand why non-theists expect the most abstract aspect of human existence to be static when we clearly can't even agree on narratives concerning recent events! I think people ignore just how much subjectivity is at play even in seemingly objective situations.

Instead of saying, 'well that scripture clearly is not true' it becomes a kind of true, in a spiritual way. Or excuses are made for god perhaps along the lines of 'his ways are not our ways' or ' It's the next life that we should have our eyes on, not this one' to the point of there being a god and no god are indistinguishable.

People have been approaching the idea that the truths in Scripture are mystical rather than literal since at least Philo of Alexandria 2000 years ago, and that is discounting the heavy use of figurative language within the Jewish tradition. If you look at Eastern Christian theology, you will find a heavy focus on mystical truths--their iconology is a perfect example, as Orthodox icons are viewed as being something of a window into the world as it is, not the world as we see it. So to say that there is no real difference between whether or not God exists if he does not act in a spectacularly interventionist manner really makes no sense to me. Not when everyone, both in this thread and in 2000 years of Christian history, is stressing the relational and redemptive aspects of Christianity instead.

 

[anonymous person]

What worries me most though is that god seems to be as evolutionary as his followers amount of faith.

Speaking as an evangelical, bible believing apologist, and amateur philosopher, I would say that God works in my life to the degree that I trust in Him and allow Him to. So yes, there is a correlation between my trust in Him and His working in my life. To the degree that we entrust ourselves into His care, He takes care of us. There is a biblical precedent in the OT and NT. So it is not a matter of God evolving. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Rather, it is the degree in which He is able to manifest His presence in my life that changes, more so when I am more dependent upon Him, and less so when I desire to "do my own thing" so to speak.

The reality is that Christians like others die from starvation, illnesses, disease so the scripture that promises God's provision has to be interpreted in a such a way to reflect that reality.

Very well said! I agree.

Instead of saying, 'well that scripture clearly is not true' it becomes a kind of true, in a spiritual way.

One may interpret James to be referring to some sort of spiritual condition which was the cause of a person becoming physically ill, or he may have been referring to just a plain old illness. Or he may have been referring to both. The key point here is that God's will being done is what is prayed for and if that is the case, the prayer will be answered. Plain and simple. I've personally experienced this born out in my life, so no, the scripture is clearly not false here.

Or excuses are made for god perhaps along the lines of 'his ways are not our ways'

I've never used that as an excuse. Rather, I would simply argue that we are not in a position to know that God can't have good reasons for allowing or even causing suffering and pain and disaster to befall us.

or ' It's the next life that we should have our eyes on, not this one' to the point of there being a god and no god are indistinguishable.

But if Christianity is true, then we should have our eyes set on the age to come. That does not mean we shut our eyes and just walk through this life too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. For it is the choices we make in this life that will determine where we spend eternity.

Nor does suffering and death and disaster lead me to think that God is indistinguishable from an imaginary god. Just the opposite. I have experienced God's presence most, not during periods of ease and comfort and pleasure, but in heartache and loss and pain.

'He loves and cares for you' becomes 'He loves and cares for you.. but he feels the next life is more important, and that your child starving to death or you being persecuted is all part of a plan'

If Christianity is true, then everything that happens, good and bad, works together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

You seem to be under the impression that God would be more interested in creating earth to be some sort of terrarium for His human pets wherein they live lives of comfort and ease. But if Christianity is true, then God's purpose in creating us was so that we may enter into an intimate, personal, and loving relationship with Him freely, an incommensurable good, not to be comfortable and at ease.

Personally I think the secret of the survival of Christianity as a major religion is that it is saying everything, it has lots of little nuggets for every situation, no matter how incompatible they seem. It answers everything, and therefore nothing.

And yet none of this proves Christianity is false.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Oh I know churches that will glady tell me otherwise too.

I do think though that the bible does clearly indicate an interventionist god, not only from the example above , which tells us not to worry but from other scriptures such as.

James 5:14
Is any one of you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises. 14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.…

Seems to imply that praying for people will bring healing. In the Old Testament Israel's blessing were directly linked to the tithes and offerings in fact God challenges Israel to test him about this.
One cannot say that god is not interventionist after all does he not bring Blessings and disaster ?

Isaiah 45:7
I am the LORD, and there is no other, 7The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.

What worries me most though is that god seems to be as evolutionary as his followers amount of faith. The reality is that Christians like others die from starvation, illnesses, disease so the scripture that promises God's provision has to be interpreted in a such a way to reflect that reality.

Instead of saying, 'well that scripture clearly is not true' it becomes a kind of true, in a spiritual way. Or excuses are made for god perhaps along the lines of 'his ways are not our ways' or ' It's the next life that we should have our eyes on, not this one' to the point of there being a god and no god are indistinguishable.

'He loves and cares for you' becomes 'He loves and cares for you.. but he feels the next life is more important, and that your child starving to death or you being persecuted is all part of a plan'

Personally I think the secret of the survival of Christianity as a major religion is that it is saying everything, it has lots of little nuggets for every situation, no matter how incompatible they seem. It answers everything, and therefore nothing.

Hello Possibletarian,

You've made some interesting points, and I can very much agree with you that the Bible does posit an "interventionist" God. Like you, I'm aware of quite a few places in Scripture which show God as one who responds to His people. All of that is undeniable, and I won't try to wrestle you out of that position.

However, I do have some contentions with the specifics of what you've said here. One of these contentions would be with the way in which you have arbitrarily chosen to extricate James 5:13-15 from it's literary context(s) and have basically slapped it down on the page for us to look at. Do you realize that by doing this in this way, you're ignoring the implications that the whole of the passage, nay, the whole of the Letter of James is communicating? Aren't there some additional details, some additional contexts, in James that come to bear upon the total meaning of the verses you've cited? That's one contention.

The second contention is much like my first: you've arbitrarily set before us a common snippet taken from Isaiah 45, and you've done so, much like above, in a way that reflects the act of "proof-texting," an act that typically dismantles the flow of meaning in a biblical passage and causes the reader, rather involuntarily I might add, to become a reductionist in handling what should otherwise be consider Sacred Scripture. So, as before, how should we attempt to interpret the idea that "God is the maker of peace and calamity"? How do we come to see what meaning is intended here by this comment from God via the prophet?

My third contention is that you've said that what Christians "do" in handling the Bible really amounts to no more than excuses. Yes, in a society that values the freedom of individualistic interpretation, with little sense of historical accountability, or accountability of any kind, really, we do end up with some sorry excuses for handling the quagmire of issues that the Bible seems to present before us. But, is this set of excuses then to be answered by skeptics, atheists, or even agnostics by merely extricating bits and pieces from the bible in a similar fashion to how those Christians do who make excuses? Because, essentially, THAT is what you are doing here. I'll be the first to side with you that some of what Modern Christians (especially American ones) attempt to pass off as valid spiritual application of Scripture is sheer non-sense, but not because the bible itself is non-sense. No, it is typically reduced to nonsense by those who don't want to undertake the labor of thought and study needed to see that...indeed, some statements in the Bible really are figurative, or conditional, or contextualized, or even difficult to apply, and that to attempt to discern this is a painstaking process. To which I say, too bad!

Lastly, I don't think the survival of Christianity has come about simply because Christians have a way of playing obscurantist semantic games with ancient Jewish texts. No, it's more likely that Christianity has survived because there is, at the least, some spiritual substance to it all, even if Christianity as it may be in reality, and apart from our individual hopes, isn't exactly what each denomination has so emphatically claimed for it to be in its totality.

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

 

[Dirk1540]

I'll throw my 2 cents in. I once had something happen to me that was an undeniable miracle in my book. I later wanted no parts of Christianity and I found a way to write it off, I came up with some counter explanations but it was still an over the top situation for me so for the most part I stopped thinking about it and to back of my mind it went (and of course it was a private miracle that wouldn't have apologetic value unless a person really really trusted me).

There seems to be intellectual free will that goes hand in hand with moral free will. As it has been mentioned in here, why won't God regrow an amputated limb? This question is equal to people asking why doesn't God just have a huge cross burning in the sky 24/7 which would end the mystery of whether Christianity is true or not?

Well both of these miracles would crush intellectual free will. When I got fed up with God and identified as agnostic how could I possibly find a way to intellectually write off God if God regrew an amputated limb for me via prayers? I'd kind of be intellectually locked in. People around me might very well also feel overwhelming intellectual 'Obligation' to be a Christian, especially if they knew prayers to Jesus was the context of my regrown limb. Faith and true free will is impossible if a miracle is an open and shut case that can not be refuted intellectually.

I'll even follow that up with saying that the requirement for faith actually has driven me crazy for most of my life! I'm not a fan of it, I don't like how hard it is for people to grasp what I grasp. But I recognize that something that drives me crazy has nothing to do with it being true or not. At this point in my life I'm feeling very locked into the evidence for Christianity! Is it possible for my position to get intellectually reversed again, I suppose it's possible. But I suppose that would no longer be an intellectual option for me if I once prayed an amputated limb back.

All of this I do not hold to when Jesus walked the Earth, and during times of Biblical revelations however.

 

[Silmarien]

I too have been traveling but with a different set of barriers. South West Kentucky seems to have neither bookstores or cell service in my lake house retreat.

We may have to engage outside this thread as I expect we will end up traveling far-afield of the current discussion.

Firstly we would have to have a discussions about the problem of justifying beliefs. Alston, or Plantinga, Wolterstorff et al.

Secondly we might engage the hard problem of consciousness from an evolutionary naturalistic standpoint.

Thirdly, given some baseline method for knowledge we could examine other ideas such as could God, use natural causes (only occasionally directed e.g. Infusing Homo sapiens with souls), to accomplish his purposes?

Fourthly, once we have a baseline foundation we can tackle some of the recalcitrant facts of theism E.g. Problem of evil. given that we have limits on our knowledge about basic things such as the reality of the past, the external world, other minds, free agency doesn't mean we can make no progress.

If God wants to create a world where creatures with limited and wide-ranging knowledge of God, nevertheless choose to engage him personally on his terms and enter into a relationship with him, it may not be feasible for him to create a world that is without evil.

P.S. Am writing from and iPad mini and since upgrading to IOS 9 safari reload my page every 2 mins or so without saving so this reply had to be constructed 4-5 sentences at a time. Enjoy Europe

Hello, Uber. I still owe you a response.

First off, fair warning that while I'm happy to engage with analytic philosophy, my background is continental and my epistemology is pretty postmodern. So if you want to discuss foundations of knowledge, keep in mind that that particular rabbit hole may well land us in Wonderland. I'm also of the opinion that natural theology almost gets us to theism but unfortunately does not get us to objective morality, which is a somewhat problematic position for a meaningful discussion on the Problem of Evil. There are reasons I am most sympathetic to defences that focus upon dismantling the idea that we are in a position to make judgments about God's moral character.

At the end of the day I am pretty Pascalian about just about everything, so I am not sure just what sort of conversation you're interested in having here. Once we move beyond the mutual target that is naturalism, if we're still with the question of how far reason alone can get us, I may or may not have anything to add besides chaos.

 

[possibletarian]

Speaking as an evangelical, bible believing apologist, and amateur philosopher, I would say that God works in my life to the degree that I trust in Him and allow Him to. So yes, there is a correlation between my trust in Him and His working in my life. To the degree that we entrust ourselves into His care, He takes care of us. There is a biblical precedent in the OT and NT. So it is not a matter of God evolving. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Rather, it is the degree in which He is able to manifest His presence in my life that changes, more so when I am more dependent upon Him, and less so when I desire to "do my own thing" so to speak.

I have no problem with that

One may interpret James to be referring to some sort of spiritual condition which was the cause of a person becoming physically ill, or he may have been referring to just a plain old illness. Or he may have been referring to both. The key point here is that God's will being done is what is prayed for and if that is the case, the prayer will be answered. Plain and simple. I've personally experienced this born out in my life, so no, the scripture is clearly not false here.

So that leaves us with what ?
That is a very watered down version of the scripture in question, either people are praying without faith, it simply is not true, or there is no god at the other end of the prayer. Or as other others have mentioned it has another meaning entirely.

I've never used that as an excuse. Rather, I would simply argue that we are not in a position to know that God can't have good reasons for allowing or even causing suffering and pain and disaster to befall us.

What is the effective difference then? What's wrong with the original your thoughts are not my thoughts .. my ways are not your ways..

But if Christianity is true, then we should have our eyes set on the age to come. That does not mean we shut our eyes and just walk through this life too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. For it is the choices we make in this life that will determine where we spend eternity.

Fair enough

Nor does suffering and death and disaster lead me to think that God is indistinguishable from an imaginary god.

Of course not otherwise their likely would be no religions at all now. religions were born in the crucible of suffering, to help, to provide hope.

Just the opposite. I have experienced God's presence most, not during periods of ease and comfort and pleasure, but in heartache and loss and pain.

Fair enough but how does that make it real, lots of people believing or not turn to all manner of philosophies and religions with exactly the same effect.

If Christianity is true, then everything that happens, good and bad, works together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

Yes but then what's the difference between that and no god ?

You seem to be under the impression that God would be more interested in creating earth to be some sort of terrarium for His human pets wherein they live lives of comfort and ease. But if Christianity is true, then God's purpose in creating us was so that we may enter into an intimate, personal, and loving relationship with Him freely, an incommensurable good, not to be comfortable and at ease.

That's what religion of all variety's tell us but then it would have no choice but to. Suffering, disaster, death, destruction, murder, rape.. asteroids that hurtle into earth wiping out life, floods.. I could go on.

Religious belief was formed under this reality so it had to be included somehow, while holding out some kind of peace or hope..

And yet none of this proves Christianity is false.

I'm not so much interested in disproving Christianity as finding reasons to believe its true.

 

[possibletarian]

I'll throw my 2 cents in. I once had something happen to me that was an undeniable miracle in my book. I later wanted no parts of Christianity and I found a way to write it off, I came up with some counter explanations but it was still an over the top situation for me so for the most part I stopped thinking about it and to back of my mind it went (and of course it was a private miracle that wouldn't have apologetic value unless a person really really trusted me).

There seems to be intellectual free will that goes hand in hand with moral free will. As it has been mentioned in here, why won't God regrow an amputated limb? This question is equal to people asking why doesn't God just have a huge cross burning in the sky 24/7 which would end the mystery of whether Christianity is true or not?

Well both of these miracles would crush intellectual free will. When I got fed up with God and identified as agnostic how could I possibly find a way to intellectually write off God if God regrew an amputated limb for me via prayers? I'd kind of be intellectually locked in. People around me might very well also feel overwhelming intellectual 'Obligation' to be a Christian, especially if they knew prayers to Jesus was the context of my regrown limb. Faith and true free will is impossible if a miracle is an open and shut case that can not be refuted intellectually.

I'll even follow that up with saying that the requirement for faith actually has driven me crazy for most of my life! I'm not a fan of it, I don't like how hard it is for people to grasp what I grasp. But I recognize that something that drives me crazy has nothing to do with it being true or not. At this point in my life I'm feeling very locked into the evidence for Christianity! Is it possible for my position to get intellectually reversed again, I suppose it's possible. But I suppose that would no longer be an intellectual option for me if I once prayed an amputated limb back.

All of this I do not hold to when Jesus walked the Earth, and during times of Biblical revelations however.

Thanks for that Dirk, that was I believe open, honest and insightful.

 

[possibletarian]

For one, I do not think interpretations of the meaning of "providence" have anything to do with how much faith a person has. That someone is more skeptical of intervention does not mean they have less faith;

I'm not sure that's what I meant, I agree with you

it's a matter of how they believe God interacts with the world. I am not sure why it troubles you that religion evolves, though.

I have no problem with religion evolving nor the gods of those religions evolving with their people, and I am especially grateful that for the most part moral attitudes evolve.

I'm more concerned when they label their scriptures as the inerrant word of god, and then change understood meanings for convenience, especially around things like the early earth and such which were clearly observations from earth-centric point of view.

Humans change, our way of understanding the world changes, and our approach to the concept of divinity changes with us. I do not understand why non-theists expect the most abstract aspect of human existence to be static when we clearly can't even agree on narratives concerning recent events! I think people ignore just how much subjectivity is at play even in seemingly objective situations.

Oh I would agree it's subjective, and in fact should only be interpreted through the eyes of 'now' with due deference to tradition and context as it were. In fact i can see no other way.

People have been approaching the idea that the truths in Scripture are mystical rather than literal since at least Philo of Alexandria 2000 years ago, and that is discounting the heavy use of figurative language within the Jewish tradition. If you look at Eastern Christian theology, you will find a heavy focus on mystical truths--their iconology is a perfect example, as Orthodox icons are viewed as being something of a window into the world as it is, not the world as we see it. So to say that there is no real difference between whether or not God exists if he does not act in a spectacularly interventionist manner really makes no sense to me. Not when everyone, both in this thread and in 2000 years of Christian history, is stressing the relational and redemptive aspects of Christianity instead.

I tend to find the orthodox view more relaxing, more stable and sure in it's delivery and much less out of sorts with the world around it. A lot of my friends whom I love to talk to the most come from an orthodox background, I mostly find peace and friendship with them.

 

[possibletarian]

Oh I know churches that will glady tell me otherwise too.

I do think though that the bible does clearly indicate an interventionist god, not only from the example above , which tells us not to worry but from other scriptures such as.

James 5:14
Is any one of you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises. 14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.…

Seems to imply that praying for people will bring healing. In the Old Testament Israel's blessing were directly linked to the tithes and offerings in fact God challenges Israel to test him about this.
One cannot say that god is not interventionist after all does he not bring Blessings and disaster ?

Isaiah 45:7
I am the LORD, and there is no other, 7The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.

What worries me most though is that god seems to be as evolutionary as his followers amount of faith. The reality is that Christians like others die from starvation, illnesses, disease so the scripture that promises God's provision has to be interpreted in a such a way to reflect that reality.

Instead of saying, 'well that scripture clearly is not true' it becomes a kind of true, in a spiritual way. Or excuses are made for god perhaps along the lines of 'his ways are not our ways' or ' It's the next life that we should have our eyes on, not this one' to the point of there being a god and no god are indistinguishable.

'He loves and cares for you' becomes 'He loves and cares for you.. but he feels the next life is more important, and that your child starving to death or you being persecuted is all part of a plan'

Personally I think the secret of the survival of Christianity as a major religion is that it is saying everything, it has lots of little nuggets for every situation, no matter how incompatible they seem. It answers everything, and therefore nothing.

Thanks for that reply it was informative and educational but given I have ripped these scriptures out of context, what do they mean in context, and why ?

 

[possibletarian]

There seems to be intellectual free will that goes hand in hand with moral free will. As it has been mentioned in here, why won't God regrow an amputated limb? This question is equal to people asking why doesn't God just have a huge cross burning in the sky 24/7 which would end the mystery of whether Christianity is true or not?

Well both of these miracles would crush intellectual free will.

Hiya there Dirk, firstly I would like to repeat that I enjoyed your post, it's honest and from the heart. I do however struggle with the 'we have to have faith he exists.

I have no problem when people say we have to believe and trust God in order to be loved that is a part of any relationship if it is to be successful, I do however take some issue with the 'we have to have faith he exists' which of course could be applied to any god or belief.

I have used this example in my earlier posts but let me use it here again back in times the bible was written it would have probably have been really hard to find anyone who did not believe there was a god much less in the context of Israel. People believing that a god existed simply was not a problem, so the intellectual free will was simply not a problem at all.

However knowing god exists does not hamper ones ability to decide if a god is worth following or not, or to trust him or not, the examples I gave are Adam & Eve, Satan & as many angels that Satan took with him, Jonah who disobeyed God, the Israelites who disobeyed God ..and so on.

To me for God to prove he exists would be a pretty simple matter, now frankly I don't know what would make me believe there is a god (of any variety) but surely a god would be able to put that particular question beyond doubt while at the same time allowing me to choose to follow him or not.

 

[Ed1wolf]

poss: There is of course plenty of evidence Christianity opposed scientific progress, take Galileo, the church opposed his studies like heliocentrism claiming it was foolish, heretical and in opposition to scripture. Even further they went on to oppose observation of sunspots (it opposed their 'perfect creation' model).

No, these are isolated cases and the church never executed anyone for their scientific discoveries. And the persecution of Galileo was a case of the corrupt church leadership at the time placing Aristotle above God's Word. Nowhere in the bible does it teach that the earth is the center of the universe or that the sun revolves around the earth. And Galileo was a devout Christian that understood how to interpret the bible better than most of these theologians at the time. He knew that there were two books from God, the bible and nature and nature helps us to understand which definitions of the greek and Hebrew words we should use.

poss: Again Christianity opposes evolution, though with mounting evidence and in some cases they have tried to distort, torture and twist it into their creation myth.

Yes, many Christians now do not believe macroevolution has occurred and the fact is the evidence is weak for macroevolution. For one thing it has never been empirically observed. But throughout most of the history of modern science Christianity has accepted it and encouraged it as long as it was moral.

ed: Jeremiah 33:25.

poss: I did read Jeremiah, but it proves absolutely nothing, expect observation, like me seeing the sun come up every morning, or the moon staying where it is and attributing it to the rule of a god of my choice, other holy books talk about the world in the same way.

No, it proves that the bible teaches that the universe operates according to fixed laws, which became an impetus for the invention of modern science. No other holy book teaches this unless borrowed from the bible.

ed: And even hurricanes were designed to serve a purpose on the earth, they spread nutrients around the earth. If hurricanes didn't exist, then probably humans would not either

poss: I honestly have never heard anyone say that life would be impossible without hurricanes before. All natural powerful disasters move things around they are violent events. They could of course have allowed in some way life to evolve on earth, but again that does not imply a god of any variety.

Hurricanes definitely increase the diversity of life, and they provide water to areas that sometimes rarely get any rain and they spread nutrients to areas that don't get as many nutrients during other times of the year.

poss; The point being however that a a god of infinite power, creativity and wisdom could create a much less life threatening and destructive way to do it without randomly killing and bringing misery to his beloved creation. Its absurd to say this is the work of a god who loves us dearly.

No, see my post about the purpose of the universe and the biblical definition of omnipotence. The killing is not random, everything happens for a purpose and often the deaths are the result of humans doing stupid things like building houses too close to the ocean and flood prone areas.

ed: A being with a mind, will, conscience, and emotions.

poss: Okay so a brain working

A better answer would be a mind working since there is evidence that a personal being can exist without a brain.

ed: Because we know from all of human experience that only persons can produce the personal, such as personal communication, personal relationships, and etc.

poss: So it's only seen it in the in the human experience?
All personal experiences are are the brain working, absolutely no god needed.

No see above that there is evidence that personal beings don't need brains.

ed: No, because the Christian God does not have a beginning.

poss: How aside from a few words in a really old book, written by men who came across the same problem of casualty do you know this ?
There is no evidence for a god, never mind one that did not have a beginning.

There is evidence that the writers had a personal relationship with God and He revealed some of His nature to them. There is evidence for God, it is called the universe as I explained earlier.

ed: That is not what I did, see my previous post about the law of causality and the BB.

poss: Yes but causality does not imply a god of any variety, much less your god

Yes, it does combined with its corollary, the law of Sufficient cause, see above about how personal beings must come into existence.

 

[Dirk1540]

@Silmarien, hi, I PM 2PhiloVoid sometimes and he helped me realize just how HUGE my request was when I asked you for a reading list in order to 'Learn Philosophy' haha, I suppose I may as well have asked you to help me learn science lol.

Ok for a much more narrow request, we were talking about the problem of evil and you said your favorites are Dostoevsky and John Haught. I was just wondering if you could recommend a specific book from them? There seemed to be a ton of Dostoevsky. If nothing specific stands out for you that's fine I'll just pick anything from them. Also I'm just wondering if you have any specific favorite books on atonement theology?

Another reason I like reading your posts is that you articulate atonement theology in such an entertaining manner, again, I had no idea how well atonement theology could be articulated until reading your posts! My next post will be me trying to explain my atonement theology to possibletarian, let's see how good I do with my limited education on the subject lol.

 

[Dirk1540]

Hiya there Dirk, firstly I would like to repeat that I enjoyed your post, it's honest and from the heart. I do however struggle with the 'we have to have faith he exists.

I have no problem when people say we have to believe and trust God in order to be loved that is a part of any relationship if it is to be successful, I do however take some issue with the 'we have to have faith he exists' which of course could be applied to any god or belief.

I have used this example in my earlier posts but let me use it here again back in times the bible was written it would have probably have been really hard to find anyone who did not believe there was a god much less in the context of Israel. People believing that a god existed simply was not a problem, so the intellectual free will was simply not a problem at all.

However knowing god exists does not hamper ones ability to decide if a god is worth following or not, or to trust him or not, the examples I gave are Adam & Eve, Satan & as many angels that Satan took with him, Jonah who disobeyed God, the Israelites who disobeyed God ..and so on.

To me for God to prove he exists would be a pretty simple matter, now frankly I don't know what would make me believe there is a god (of any variety) but surely a god would be able to put that particular question beyond doubt while at the same time allowing me to choose to follow him or not.

Hi possibletarian, ok my post is about how I too am a bit iffy on literal intellectual belief in the Christian God for those who have never heard, or for those who find it intellectually untenable, sorry if it takes me awhile to reach my point.

Well if you look at my previous post I admit to being a newbie in knowing how well atonement theology can be articulated. I would say that I don't know how to cleanly categorize myself, and I'll admit that I don't even know what technical categories I might fit into. I might be closer to your position than you think though.

First, what I mean by intellectual free will is intellectual 'Wiggle Room.' That if you emotionally want out of Christianity you can always 'Logically' back yourself up (I believe a regrown amputated limb through prayer would not really leave you with that wiggle room). But ok the other side of intellectual belief, the desire to WANT THE TRUTH but to be of a mindset that will not allow it. Yeah this is why I think I might be more like you than you think, I really struggle with the belief that people can be intellectually 'Fooled' out of eternal life. The idea that if a well intentioned person who's heart is in the right place happens to live next to a brilliant aggressive militant atheist, that they are out of luck when it comes to gaining eternal life because the atheist's arguments just sounded too convincing...that idea doesn't sit right with me!! Perhaps I chose poor wording in my prior post, but I would rather talk about a person's stance on their attraction to 'What Jesus Is!' I see Jesus as the perfect human model (there's that old saying "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians").

In a nutshell I think it boils down to this, are you a person who would enjoy living in a world where Jesus Christ is the king of the world, including everything that that would entail? Or are you a person who would be completely repulsed at such a world? I believe that you can go ahead and plug in any religion you would like (including belief in a god or not), but that in the end it would come down to a person's desire to live in that world with Christ as king. So although I do talk about having to believe, I myself have work to do with working out that atonement theology. For instance the 'Deep' conversations in here about the actual meaning of 'Belief', such philosophical questions like that are extremely interesting.

However, and I always preface this next part with admitting that this is 100% my speculation, a part of me believes in extended 'Moments' before the final seconds of a person's ultimate death. I believe that there is more revelation than just scripture (to help us with scripture). As one example we have relativity that teaches us that 1 second could be like 1 hour (or even God telling us that 1 day can be like 1,000 years). As another example I am a very active dreamer and I have had what seems to be hour long dreams between 10 minute snooze buttons. So I believe in prolonged revelations (within literal seconds) at the moment of death (which does not violate a person being appointed to die only once).

And again I'm not afraid to admit that I have atonement questions. God is a jealous God who gets enraged at Baal worship for example. Now, can God wipe out people who's hearts are in the right place, YET people who were fooled into Baal worship...and then have a place for them in Heaven?? Questions like these are why I could use better knowledge in atonement theology, so I can word my thoughts much better. I'm a big fan of pointing out to people that God literally takes everyone's life! If you die peacefully of old age at the age of 100, guess what, God still just took your life. So I actually see very little difference in a person being wiped out via an angry God rage vs a person being wiped out via a random disease (as far as their final fate is concerned). Maybe someone (2PhiloVoid, Silmarien) would know how to categorize my atonement theology based on what I've written?

Now here's a strange twist, why is it that I have found MANY times in my past that when I find myself emotionally gravitating towards Jesus that I also feel an intellectual pull towards him as well?? Now this might not shock you unless you know who I am...I have had so many intellectual objections that lasted so long that I should have had them tattooed on me. I am a natural Doubting Thomas...with a strong religious curiosity (a rather odd mixture). So in regards to emotional pulls towards Jesus, how on Earth would unanswered objections significantly soften because of an emotional Jesus pull? And how would the objections significantly harden again when it was time for me to emotionally dump Jesus again and pull away? I used to ask myself the question a lot on both sides of the fence. I enjoyed playing my own inner psychologist. If I had to guess I would say I intellectually went back & forth on my Christian beliefs easily over 200 times. So that was a strange observation for me. It's almost as if my intellect and emotions were fused. But it's not like I was blind and oblivious to it (like a lot of people), I would always realize it, and ponder why it was happening. I was fully aware that the objections remained.

I think the best way I could explain it is that it was as if God would grab a hold of dials inside my head and turn them to different settings. When I tell you that I enjoyed being my own psychologist I mean that I used to literally toy with this emotional dial turning on purpose as an experiment sometimes...and also a lot of other times I would 'Use' Jesus meditation solely as a means to help my insomnia because I knew it was the only technique that worked...with the full intention to just dump the belief the next day. But sometimes it pulled me in too deep (the dial adjustments in my mind that it caused). Now, as my own psychologist, I used to find it fascinating that I actually had a hard time relating to my mental disposition of just one day prior (when I wanted nothing to do with Jesus at all). I would laugh sometimes because it simply made no intellectual sense, my objections were still very much unanswered, yet there I was with a totally different mindset than yesterday...usually after a couple weeks though I would certainly break out again because I just wanted to get drunk and dump the 'Religious Baggage.'

So this song and dance went on for about 20 years. The thing was that I had both reasons to believe Christianity was true, and also strong reasons to believe it was false. But all of the sudden, after about 20 years of this, I strangely hit this wave where one by one I started running into material that satisfied my intellectual objections (and I am fully aware that this is personal, these were MY objections and I know that they bounce right off of other non-Christians). This was a major turning point for me, so I thought, my intellectual wiggle room significantly shrunk (but still existed to a point). But wait, nothing happened!!?? I was waiting 20 years for these answers, why wasn't I a full blown Christian now? Well about the same time my objections were answered was also the furthest I grew from God...God thoughts flat out annoyed me anymore, I was so sick & tired of it all!! So intellectually I think that I went through phases that very very few people have ever gone through...I might be one of the few people on Earth who went through phases where I totally believed that Christianity was true, yet wanted absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever.

So at this point in my life perhaps God felt the need to toss me into a different disposition because I was growing very cold towards it all (I'm guessing, I'm not a fan of pretending that I can read God's mind for my life), perhaps God had enough of my 20 year seesaw, who knows. I had mentioned my theory that the emotional and the intellectual were fused...well the strange part is that my intellect weighed VERY heavily towards Christianity being true now, but my emotions weren't there so it didn't move me towards being a Christian at all. In fact I found that the 'Strong Christ Emotion' pulled me much more effectively than this new found 'Strong Christ Intellect.' And don't even get my skeptical side started on how much this drives me crazy. I have seen first hand how a person living for Christ will convert more people than the most brilliant apologist who lives like a hypocrite. That truth always made the skeptical thinker in me want to scream! But it seems here that I was now living out a similar reality myself. The stronger intellectual beliefs were now there...but they amounted to nothing. The emotions along with weaker intellectual beliefs were there in the past...but they amounted to something.

This developed into a jaded admission that I believe Christianity is true, but I KNOW that I'm not a Christian, I know I will never be a Christian, and quite frankly I didn't care! So strange as it sounds, this new situation for me where I believed Christianity was true yet believed that I was on the outs with God and I would simply suffer eternal death, strangely it did not stress me out. I think because I had spent so many years thinking about my religious beliefs that I finally became jaded to letting it stress me. And I actually at times felt relief at the thought of eternal rest (I believe in nihilism not eternal torment). I hit a LONG period in my life with this belief, maybe 3 or 4 years. So basically I was in a spot where I intellectually believed, yet I knew that I wanted NOTHING to do with a world where Jesus was king!! As far as I was concerned a ton of atheists that I knew held to the same end of life belief anyway, that when you die it will just be eternal nothingness, I seriously did not care anymore, I grew tired of the seesaw...looking back it is completely amazing how I just completely shrugged off the answers to the objections that I had waited 20 years for. (However maybe I answered my own question lol, I wanted nothing to do with a world with Jesus at the helm). I consider myself to be a truely odd case of a person who has toyed so much with experiencing the fine line between emotional and intellectual belief.

So during this stretch I would occasionally run into religion debates. My stance actually changed to just having fun arguing that Jesus was a supernatural X-Man (no I'm not kidding I got a kick out of it). I enjoyed arguing that he was supernatural...yet that I had no clue if he was God. My intellectual beliefs were that he was a flat out historical enigma, and I knew some atheists who loved to argue, so I wanted in on the the drunk arguments. Yes I was joking around, but I just had fun arguing that "A Historical Case Can Be Made" for such a stance. Christianity just totally fell off of my 'Serious Discussion' list, I was so tired of it being a serious thought!! So It was pretty strange of me to be of the belief that Jesus did do the things that are attributed to him in the Gospels, yet have no desire to be a Christian...but there I was. Maybe this seems to contradict my previous post about always having intellectual wiggle room, but I probably could have wiggled out of the belief intellectually at this time in my life if I wanted to, if it was causing me stress. But it just didn't stress me anymore, I turned it into a joke, so there wasn't really any need for an attempt to wiggle myself out of it.

Finally what happened was that I had this period of stress come along. My insomnia started kicking up again (it came in waves). For some totally random reason, some religious thing I saw on TV, I decided to tap into that technique that I had not used in years, I took it to the emotional side for the first time in forever. So I did my old Jesus meditation technique...it incredibly worked pretty powerfully for not having used the technique for 3-4 years, I slept great that night. The next day I had those inner dials changed, something that had not happened for years. All day long I was just in a total natural high from it, kind of in shock a little (like I forgot how good it felt), and in addition I shook my head all day long. I kept saying to myself "Ok it's one thing when I was doing this on a constant basis...but is this really happening?? Am I seriously having trouble recalling the past few years of my mental disposition of wanting nothing to do with Jesus, after just one night of toying with this technique again??" But now the difference this time is that it was combined with a more solid foundation due to the fact that I had had some of my major objections answered for me a few years prior. I never went back again.

So welcome to my strange mental journey lol, but that's my story. So in conclusion I have felt a ton of times this strange phenomenon of how my emotions and my intellect work in unison with Christ, how my hard headed inner Doubting Thomas has 'Snapped myself out of it' for years, but how as much as I try to observe it objectively from outside of myself I still can not deny this inner 'Dial Change' that takes place inside my head...and that it has this ability to pull me in if I mess with it, even though I realize what's going on every time. And, contrary to what has annoyed me over the years about the majority of people being converted emotionally and not intellectually...in the end my emotional tugs proved to completely dwarf my intellectual tugs! Also, this journey of mine, where the emotional trumped the intellectual, it adds to my problem of believing that people can be intellectually fooled out of their gift of eternal life. I really think something has to give with those whose hearts are in the right place, but whose minds are not. Those who have a heart that would love to live in a world where Jesus is king.

 

[Silmarien]

@Silmarien, hi, I PM 2PhiloVoid sometimes and he helped me realize just how HUGE my request was when I asked you for a reading list in order to 'Learn Philosophy' haha, I suppose I may as well have asked you to help me learn science lol.

Ok for a much more narrow request, we were talking about the problem of evil and you said your favorites are Dostoevsky and John Haught. I was just wondering if you could recommend a specific book from them? There seemed to be a ton of Dostoevsky. If nothing specific stands out for you that's fine I'll just pick anything from them. Also I'm just wondering if you have any specific favorite books on atonement theology?

Another reason I like reading your posts is that you articulate atonement theology in such an entertaining manner, again, I had no idea how well atonement theology could be articulated until reading your posts! My next post will be me trying to explain my atonement theology to possibletarian, let's see how good I do with my limited education on the subject lol.

Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov is what I am generally thinking of when I talk about the Problem of Evil. To be honest, I haven't read any of his other novels, Russian literature being what it is. The Brothers Karamazov is really intriguing in that it pulls no punches in its attack upon Christianity--one of the main characters expresses the view that no amount of future bliss could ever justify present suffering, so it engages with the most powerful version of the Problem of Evil, not a modern anti-theistic version based of premises that already assume that theism is false.

The only thing I have by John Haught is an article my priest sent me specifically dealing with the question of how to approach the idea of Providence from an evolutionary perspective--I can send it to you, if you'd like, but I may not be able to figure out how to do so till I get back home. I have not read his actual books, though I probably should. I am not sure how you approach the question of evolution at all, though. It's obviously a pretty controversial subject on all sides.

Gustaf Aulén's Christus Victor is a great source Atonement theology. I would also recommed N.T. Wright, who defends a cosmic approach. Simply Good News is the book that really tackles the issue.

 

[Silmarien]

I have no problem with religion evolving nor the gods of those religions evolving with their people, and I am especially grateful that for the most part moral attitudes evolve.

How exactly do you define moral progress? Do you believe that our concepts of right and wrong have actually objectively gotten better over time? I kind of walk the line between subjective and objective approaches to moral intuitions, but if you are less committed to radical skepticism than I am, the interplay between theism and metaethics would certainly be an interesting avenue to explore. If you're looking for reasons to accept theism, I think you'll get more immediate value out of the type of discussion @Uber Genius suggested than arguing over Scripture and inerrancy. Though preferably not till mid October!

 

[Dirk1540]

Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov is what I am generally thinking of when I talk about the Problem of Evil. To be honest, I haven't read any of his other novels, Russian literature being what it is. The Brothers Karamazov is really intriguing in that it pulls no punches in its attack upon Christianity--one of the main characters expresses the view that no amount of future bliss could ever justify present suffering, so it engages with the most powerful version of the Problem of Evil, not a modern anti-theistic version based of premises that already assume that theism is false.

The only thing I have by John Haught is an article my priest sent me specifically dealing with the question of how to approach the idea of Providence from an evolutionary perspective--I can send it to you, if you'd like, but I may not be able to figure out how to do so till I get back home. I have not read his actual books, though I probably should. I am not sure how you approach the question of evolution at all, though. It's obviously a pretty controversial subject on all sides.

Gustaf Aulén's Christus Victor is a great source Atonement theology. I would also recommed N.T. Wright, who defends a cosmic approach. Simply Good News is the book that really tackles the issue.

Awesome reply!! Thanks I will check all of this out. And I would totally be interested in that John Haught article, no matter how long it would take you to send it.

Evolution doesn't bother me. I dabble in questions but in the end either common descent being true or not being true doesn't mean much to me because I consider either position to be extremely guided by intelligence. My problem with believing atheism is the argument that our reality is random chance.

 

[anonymous person]

Hi possibletarian, ok my post is about how I too am a bit iffy on literal intellectual belief in the Christian God for those who have never heard, or for those who find it intellectually untenable, sorry if it takes me awhile to reach my point.

Well if you look at my previous post I admit to being a newbie in knowing how well atonement theology can be articulated. I would say that I don't know how to cleanly categorize myself, and I'll admit that I don't even know what technical categories I might fit into. I might be closer to your position than you think though.

First, what I mean by intellectual free will is intellectual 'Wiggle Room.' That if you emotionally want out of Christianity you can always 'Logically' back yourself up (I believe a regrown amputated limb through prayer would not really leave you with that wiggle room). But ok the other side of intellectual belief, the desire to WANT THE TRUTH but to be of a mindset that will not allow it. Yeah this is why I think I might be more like you than you think, I really struggle with the belief that people can be intellectually 'Fooled' out of eternal life. The idea that if a well intentioned person who's heart is in the right place happens to live next to a brilliant aggressive militant atheist, that they are out of luck when it comes to gaining eternal life because the atheist's arguments just sounded too convincing...that idea doesn't sit right with me!! Perhaps I chose poor wording in my prior post, but I would rather talk about a person's stance on their attraction to 'What Jesus Is!' I see Jesus as the perfect human model (there's that old saying "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians").

In a nutshell I think it boils down to this, are you a person who would enjoy living in a world where Jesus Christ is the king of the world, including everything that that would entail? Or are you a person who would be completely repulsed at such a world? I believe that you can go ahead and plug in any religion you would like (including belief in a god or not), but that in the end it would come down to a person's desire to live in that world with Christ as king. So although I do talk about having to believe, I myself have work to do with working out that atonement theology. For instance the 'Deep' conversations in here about the actual meaning of 'Belief', such philosophical questions like that are extremely interesting.

However, and I always preface this next part with admitting that this is 100% my speculation, a part of me believes in extended 'Moments' before the final seconds of a person's ultimate death. I believe that there is more revelation than just scripture (to help us with scripture). As one example we have relativity that teaches us that 1 second could be like 1 hour (or even God telling us that 1 day can be like 1,000 years). As another example I am a very active dreamer and I have had what seems to be hour long dreams between 10 minute snooze buttons. So I believe in prolonged revelations (within literal seconds) at the moment of death (which does not violate a person being appointed to die only once).

And again I'm not afraid to admit that I have atonement questions. God is a jealous God who gets enraged at Baal worship for example. Now, can God wipe out people who's hearts are in the right place, YET people who were fooled into Baal worship...and then have a place for them in Heaven?? Questions like these are why I could use better knowledge in atonement theology, so I can word my thoughts much better. I'm a big fan of pointing out to people that God literally takes everyone's life! If you die peacefully of old age at the age of 100, guess what, God still just took your life. So I actually see very little difference in a person being wiped out via an angry God rage vs a person being wiped out via a random disease (as far as their final fate is concerned). Maybe someone (2PhiloVoid, Silmarien) would know how to categorize my atonement theology based on what I've written?

Now here's a strange twist, why is it that I have found MANY times in my past that when I find myself emotionally gravitating towards Jesus that I also feel an intellectual pull towards him as well?? Now this might not shock you unless you know who I am...I have had so many intellectual objections that lasted so long that I should have had them tattooed on me. I am a natural Doubting Thomas...with a strong religious curiosity (a rather odd mixture). So in regards to emotional pulls towards Jesus, how on Earth would unanswered objections significantly soften because of an emotional Jesus pull? And how would the objections significantly harden again when it was time for me to emotionally dump Jesus again and pull away? I used to ask myself the question a lot on both sides of the fence. I enjoyed playing my own inner psychologist. If I had to guess I would say I intellectually went back & forth on my Christian beliefs easily over 200 times. So that was a strange observation for me. It's almost as if my intellect and emotions were fused. But it's not like I was blind and oblivious to it (like a lot of people), I would always realize it, and ponder why it was happening. I was fully aware that the objections remained.

I think the best way I could explain it is that it was as if God would grab a hold of dials inside my head and turn them to different settings. When I tell you that I enjoyed being my own psychologist I mean that I used to literally toy with this emotional dial turning on purpose as an experiment sometimes...and also a lot of other times I would 'Use' Jesus meditation solely as a means to help my insomnia because I knew it was the only technique that worked...with the full intention to just dump the belief the next day. But sometimes it pulled me in too deep (the dial adjustments in my mind that it caused). Now, as my own psychologist, I used to find it fascinating that I actually had a hard time relating to my mental disposition of just one day prior (when I wanted nothing to do with Jesus at all). I would laugh sometimes because it simply made no intellectual sense, my objections were still very much unanswered, yet there I was with a totally different mindset than yesterday...usually after a couple weeks though I would certainly break out again because I just wanted to get drunk and dump the 'Religious Baggage.'

So this song and dance went on for about 20 years. The thing was that I had both reasons to believe Christianity was true, and also strong reasons to believe it was false. But all of the sudden, after about 20 years of this, I strangely hit this wave where one by one I started running into material that satisfied my intellectual objections (and I am fully aware that this is personal, these were MY objections and I know that they bounce right off of other non-Christians). This was a major turning point for me, so I thought, my intellectual wiggle room significantly shrunk (but still existed to a point). But wait, nothing happened!!?? I was waiting 20 years for these answers, why wasn't I a full blown Christian now? Well about the same time my objections were answered was also the furthest I grew from God...God thoughts flat out annoyed me anymore, I was so sick & tired of it all!! So intellectually I think that I went through phases that very very few people have ever gone through...I might be one of the few people on Earth who went through phases where I totally believed that Christianity was true, yet wanted absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever.

So at this point in my life perhaps God felt the need to toss me into a different disposition because I was growing very cold towards it all (I'm guessing, I'm not a fan of pretending that I can read God's mind for my life), perhaps God had enough of my 20 year seesaw, who knows. I had mentioned my theory that the emotional and the intellectual were fused...well the strange part is that my intellect weighed VERY heavily towards Christianity being true now, but my emotions weren't there so it didn't move me towards being a Christian at all. In fact I found that the 'Strong Christ Emotion' pulled me much more effectively than this new found 'Strong Christ Intellect.' And don't even get my skeptical side started on how much this drives me crazy. I have seen first hand how a person living for Christ will convert more people than the most brilliant apologist who lives like a hypocrite. That truth always made the skeptical thinker in me want to scream! But it seems here that I was now living out a similar reality myself. The stronger intellectual beliefs were now there...but they amounted to nothing. The emotions along with weaker intellectual beliefs were there in the past...but they amounted to something.

This developed into a jaded admission that I believe Christianity is true, but I KNOW that I'm not a Christian, I know I will never be a Christian, and quite frankly I didn't care! So strange as it sounds, this new situation for me where I believed Christianity was true yet believed that I was on the outs with God and I would simply suffer eternal death, strangely it did not stress me out. I think because I had spent so many years thinking about my religious beliefs that I finally became jaded to letting it stress me. And I actually at times felt relief at the thought of eternal rest (I believe in nihilism not eternal torment). I hit a LONG period in my life with this belief, maybe 3 or 4 years. So basically I was in a spot where I intellectually believed, yet I knew that I wanted NOTHING to do with a world where Jesus was king!! As far as I was concerned a ton of atheists that I knew held to the same end of life belief anyway, that when you die it will just be eternal nothingness, I seriously did not care anymore, I grew tired of the seesaw...looking back it is completely amazing how I just completely shrugged off the answers to the objections that I had waited 20 years for. (However maybe I answered my own question lol, I wanted nothing to do with a world with Jesus at the helm). I consider myself to be a truely odd case of a person who has toyed so much with experiencing the fine line between emotional and intellectual belief.

So during this stretch I would occasionally run into religion debates. My stance actually changed to just having fun arguing that Jesus was a supernatural X-Man (no I'm not kidding I got a kick out of it). I enjoyed arguing that he was supernatural...yet that I had no clue if he was God. My intellectual beliefs were that he was a flat out historical enigma, and I knew some atheists who loved to argue, so I wanted in on the the drunk arguments. Yes I was joking around, but I just had fun arguing that "A Historical Case Can Be Made" for such a stance. Christianity just totally fell off of my 'Serious Discussion' list, I was so tired of it being a serious thought!! So It was pretty strange of me to be of the belief that Jesus did do the things that are attributed to him in the Gospels, yet have no desire to be a Christian...but there I was. Maybe this seems to contradict my previous post about always having intellectual wiggle room, but I probably could have wiggled out of the belief intellectually at this time in my life if I wanted to, if it was causing me stress. But it just didn't stress me anymore, I turned it into a joke, so there wasn't really any need for an attempt to wiggle myself out of it.

Finally what happened was that I had this period of stress come along. My insomnia started kicking up again (it came in waves). For some totally random reason, some religious thing I saw on TV, I decided to tap into that technique that I had not used in years, I took it to the emotional side for the first time in forever. So I did my old Jesus meditation technique...it incredibly worked pretty powerfully for not having used the technique for 3-4 years, I slept great that night. The next day I had those inner dials changed, something that had not happened for years. All day long I was just in a total natural high from it, kind of in shock a little (like I forgot how good it felt), and in addition I shook my head all day long. I kept saying to myself "Ok it's one thing when I was doing this on a constant basis...but is this really happening?? Am I seriously having trouble recalling the past few years of my mental disposition of wanting nothing to do with Jesus, after just one night of toying with this technique again??" But now the difference this time is that it was combined with a more solid foundation due to the fact that I had had some of my major objections answered for me a few years prior. I never went back again.

So welcome to my strange mental journey lol, but that's my story. So in conclusion I have felt a ton of times this strange phenomenon of how my emotions and my intellect work in unison with Christ, how my hard headed inner Doubting Thomas has 'Snapped myself out of it' for years, but how as much as I try to observe it objectively from outside of myself I still can not deny this inner 'Dial Change' that takes place inside my head...and that it has this ability to pull me in if I mess with it, even though I realize what's going on every time. And, contrary to what has annoyed me over the years about the majority of people being converted emotionally and not intellectually...in the end my emotional tugs proved to completely dwarf my intellectual tugs! Also, this journey of mine, where the emotional trumped the intellectual, it adds to my problem of believing that people can be intellectually fooled out of their gift of eternal life. I really think something has to give with those whose hearts are in the right place, but whose minds are not. Those who have a heart that would love to live in a world where Jesus is king.

Excellent.


The Confessions of Saint Dirk!

Augustine would be proud!

 

[anonymous person]

Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov is what I am generally thinking of when I talk about the Problem of Evil. To be honest, I haven't read any of his other novels, Russian literature being what it is. The Brothers Karamazov is really intriguing in that it pulls no punches in its attack upon Christianity--one of the main characters expresses the view that no amount of future bliss could ever justify present suffering, so it engages with the most powerful version of the Problem of Evil, not a modern anti-theistic version based of premises that already assume that theism is false.

The only thing I have by John Haught is an article my priest sent me specifically dealing with the question of how to approach the idea of Providence from an evolutionary perspective--I can send it to you, if you'd like, but I may not be able to figure out how to do so till I get back home. I have not read his actual books, though I probably should. I am not sure how you approach the question of evolution at all, though. It's obviously a pretty controversial subject on all sides.

Gustaf Aulén's Christus Victor is a great source Atonement theology. I would also recommed N.T. Wright, who defends a cosmic approach. Simply Good News is the book that really tackles the issue.

Dr. Craig had the same thing to say about Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. He laments the fact that so few aren't more familiar with him, being the brilliant apologist he was.

 

[bhsmte]

Define "care" and define "influence." The sun rises on the evil and the good, after all. Christianity promises a world to come; there are no guarantees in this life... or at least no pleasant ones. I do believe that genuine theism involves influence and interaction, and also personal transformation, but I also believe that it entails a God who is continuously maintaining the universe in existence, so I don't really draw a sharp line between natural and supernatural causes. If theism is true, I see no reason why psychology cannot have a divine aspect to it and would actually expect that it does.



In the most broad sense, being a theist who rejects naturalistic explanations for the beginning of Christianity and has no prior commitment to a different religion's interpretation. I would prefer some real grappling with Atonement theology and belief in the uniqueness of the Christian revelation, but I'm not going to tell the pluralists that they're not Christian. I would also prefer it if someone were not out to discredit orthodox beliefs at every step, a la Spong, but if you call yourself Christian and don't start talking about Vishnu or Mohammad immediately after, I'm not going to complain too much.

That is pretty nebulous, but I distinguish between orthodox belief and broader Christian theism. The Nicene Creed is orthodoxy, and if you are within the bounds of historic interpretations of the religion, you are orthodox. If you're trying to pass off unorthodox ideas as orthodox or insisting upon narrower interpretations than the Church did historical, I will take issue, but I won't call you non-Christian.

Do you really need me to define how most christians claim how god cares for christians and has influence over their lives?