Lol you have no idea if he does or not. If you want to know if unexpected or unusual things happen, as in your post, you would need to investigate those cases personally, like this person did, for example
All you're demonstrating is that you have nothing to bring to the debate except "I'm right, and you'd see it if you bothered to look." As such, all you've got is an empty assertion that you're right because you say you are.
Whether or not unusual things happen is something independent of what you think.
Yes. I know. That's what I said. But that's what you're disagreeing with, with your "everyone has a viewpoint, and we can't tell them apart".
Anyone can quote the bible selectively. Jesus, and the epistles, give a broader picture that fits in largely with the world as it is today - people experience different things, or the same things differently, according to their understanding and perception of the world.
Well, feel free to prove me wrong if you can.
Anyway to keep it short a starting point is accepting the kind of idea that ‘because I know x and y to be true everything must fit into how I see the world, or it isn’t real’ is just a bit daft.
Indeed it is. Fortunately I didn't say that. You seems to like putting words in people's mouths.
It is no more real in any objective sense than any other way of looking at the world.
Interesting. So you're saying that no way of looking at the world is valid?
Aha so you are the arbiter of the real?
Actually, it seems to be you who thinks he's the arbiter of what is true and what isn't.
What you believe to be the ‘real world’ is a limited concept. You might get that in a limited kind of way, but to really understand it you need to invest the necessary time into completely absorbing a perspective different to your own.
On a debating forum, you're expected to be able to back up your arguments.
o, not at all. As above, to understand the passages you quote you also need to understand all the other passages that refer to how perception and experience are affected by what we think and believe. You have simplistic notions about this
Again, you
say you could prove that I'm wrong, but don't take steps to show it.
Experiential learning is something deeply absorbed through the process of experience, if the idea isn’t clear. You can try it.
Again, debating forum. "I'm right, and you'd see it if you tried being like me" isn't a valid argument. Here, you are expected to defend your views with logic and reason.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. As presented here, your way of thinking is something you expect other things to fit into. You could learn a lot by reflecting on how absurd that idea is.
No, I don't expect others to fit into my way of thinking. Again, you're talking about yourself. What I expect is others to point out the flaws in my reasoning, if they are able. I invite them to.
That has limited use, it may be interesting but it has no scope to actually provide and answer to anything, just some more or less interesting, abstract, arguments about this or that thing. Jesus’ approach is a lot simpler and more effective - try it and see.
Sorry, all I see there is empty space. Let me know when you have a point to make.
Apart from that, it’s simply a fact that trying to interpret the bible without understanding what it meant at the time, without some idea at least of the overall way of thinking it was grounded it, is a pretty pointless exercise.
True. Maybe if we're lucky you'll get to it sometime.
I didn’t say anything of the sort, just that I hadn’t experienced it in that direct sense. Actually however I had forgotten that I did once, as a teenager. I completely forgot about it but it came back to me for some reason. Anyway, not I didn’t say that God doesn’t answer prayers.
No, I'm saying that God never answers prayers. I rather have to, since I'm an atheist, and so don't believe God exists. I am here on this debating forum inviting you to prove me wrong.
Think again. What answers are valid, or useful, depends on the question and the subject matter. It’s not a difficult idea.
Well, you're the one who said (starting with post 204) that prayer could never be proved, because "The options for explaining one thing or another are endless, and we mostly choose one over another according to our overall perspective, way of thinking etc."
As I said: a very "creationist" style of thinking.
In other words, any point of view is a
