Your personal insights on God, etc.

cloudyday2 said:

What gives the Bible and a religious tradition credibility? Their credibility relies on the claim that they record the insights from the personal spiritual experiences of others. Unfortunately that is only a claim. There are many religious books and many religious traditions with somewhat differing insights.

At least with my own insights/experiences I can know that they happened. Maybe they happened as hallucinations and imagination, but they aren't fiction. I can't assume that with the Bible or other religious texts. Many of the claims and stories are pretty far out.


If the Bible's accuracy is demonstrable then you ought to be able to demonstrate that to any open-minded person. The academics who study the Bible ought to agree that the Bible is accurate. I don't want to be nasty, but you need to phrase it differently. I don't know what word you might use. Maybe just say that the Bible makes sense to you. I could accept that.

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Very few academics state that the Bible is unreliable, they have questions about it, but most recognise that it is historically accurate, check out what people like William Michael Ramsay had to say about the accuracy of Luke or what Warner the coldcasechristianity author has to say about the gospels.

How do you know your 'spiritual and religious' experiences are true?

The spiritual world is made up of the 'good' and the 'evil' so how do you tell the apart?

cloudyday2 said:

I suppose @Tolworth John can explain, but I wonder if he meant that his version of Christian theology provides a world view where life has purpose and makes sense to him?

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L
To quote the Westminster confession of faith:- The purpose of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.

Take a look at the world, is it perfect, is it good etc why do people a use and take advantage of others?

Christianity as you know, teaches that God created a perfect world, that he put a perfect couple in to a garden to tend it, with one 'do not command'.
They choose to break that command and the chaos we see in human relationships follows from the break in the delay with God.
Humanity has been trying to restore that relationship ever since but humanity won't listen to or obey God's commands.

If there is a God do you really think that being will permit people to adopts 'pick and mix' approach to worship, service and obedience?

Try it with your law enforcement or with the tax office, tell them what laws you will obey or hat tax rules you will obey?

Tax collectors and cops are very bad things to liken God to. It's full of "obey or else". Sure cops can be noble but they won't treat you like an equal because their vocation won't allow it. And tax collectors are thieves that think they know how to do better with your own money than you. If God had to steal from me to "make a better world" then i could never think he could support me forever.

God treats me like an equal. His morality is superior because he actually loves me. He is only lord over those who sleep.

cloudyday2 said:

Just wondering if anybody wanted to share anything you feel you have learned about what God/gods are, what humans are, what this is all about, etc. Hopefully these might be things that you learned through experience that are not biased too much by religious traditions. I hope that makes sense.

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There is only one. He has aspects though -- more than one. He isn't susceptible to simple summaries, though we could try to summarize a part of one aspect at a time, such as how He is the 'ground of being' (among many other things).

There will be aspects no one can touch.

We've all already had or have contact, but what happens to everyone at times, and many for lengthy times, is we lose touch with the part of ourselves that has that contact. But we could potentially turn and reconnect also it seems. (it can be like remembering something long forgotten, but so central) But there is a 'nearness' or times when we can aspect, as you can see here, in one of the most helpful chapters in scripture: Isaiah 55 NIV

MehGuy said:

When I was a Christian I thought the only purpose in life was suffering. Suffering made the soul more divine. It gave it depth. Something akin to a drawing without shadows compared to one with shadows, the object pops out more. Yet I believe that a person who is just in the form of a soul cannot suffer, they have to be in a physical body within a physical world to experience it. Which explains why God even bothered making a universe and giving us physical bodies. I did believe once we died we'd go to a spiritual afterlife and lose our physical bodies and just inhabit as souls. Yet the experience we suffered while being locked into physical bodies could never be taken away.
...

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Makes sense! I'd be 'atheist' to that kind of 'christianity' myself -- one that is just suffering (and so constant also), and without the other things that are so good. I sympathize.

Halbhh said:

Makes sense! I'd be 'atheist' to that kind of 'christianity' myself -- one that is just suffering (and so constant also), and without the other things that are so good. I sympathize.

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Ha ha, my father would say similar things too.

He'd always be like.. I do not know where you got your idea of Christianity from. Someday God will show you true Christianity and you'll see the light and stop being an atheist.

The truth is though, I liked my faith. It is honestly the only faith that makes sense to me. If I were to become spiritual again tomorrow my mind would be exactly in the same space. The hardwiring of my brain will not allow anything else. Since becoming an atheist I've studied my psychology under spirituality thoroughly. There is not any reason besides true spiritual intervention that I would change.

MehGuy said:

Ha ha, my father would say similar things too.

He'd always be like.. I do not know where you got your idea of Christianity from. Someday God will show you true Christianity and you'll see the light and stop being an atheist.

The truth is though, I liked my faith. It is honestly the only faith that makes sense to me. If I were to become spiritual again tomorrow my mind would be exactly in the same space. The hardwiring of my brain will not allow anything else. Since becoming an atheist I've studied my psychology under spirituality thoroughly. There is not any reason besides true spiritual intervention that I would change.

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Ah, you were talking not about only suffering from the outside, or only suffering from one's own particular personal situations, but some amount of....maybe....truth to yourself? A kind of integrity part?

.....


Talking about another, different aspect, one of the things I didn't realize until more recent years is that there is special thing given after one does the unusual thing Christ says at the end of Matthew 11 NIV, verses 25-30. Notice it's not just verse 28-30, but instead the full meaning as He meant it, which relies on all the verses from 25 to 30 (and then subsequently on more from other passages then also). To 'learn' from Him isn't the same as being Christian or being in a church or such, or even believing. It's a special thing we should do, to lay aside thinking we already know all about His words, and truly listen, with a true desire to be taught. Then this special outcome happens. It reminds somewhat of the profound lesson in Matthew 7:24-27, where we learn that our house will collapse unless we put his instructions to us into consistent action, doing.

cloudyday2 said:

I remember a post in another thread where you described a toy car that moved without batteries. There is your spiritual intervention

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Toy motorcycle. Battery powered too, but without the batteries inside.. but you know the thing was electric. I just don't know enough about electricity to comment where it got its power source from.

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

Can't give them the Good News
until you give them the bad news.
Oh Lord have mercy on me a sinner.
MB

cloudyday2 said:

The most naturalistic explanation might be that you hallucinated or had some sort of false memory. How many people saw it moving around and how long did it move around? I can't imagine any electrical explanation, but I don't claim to be an expert. I think you need some batteries in there to close the circuit so the electrons can move. I have heard of light bulbs that glow near radio stations, but that only requires a little vibration in electrons to heat the filament. An electric motor turning while the toy is moving seems harder to explain by far. But maybe somebody knows an explanation.

Appliances running while they are unplugged and so forth is pretty common in paranormal accounts.

My mother had a grandfather clock given to her by her father. It didn't work at all. I don't think the arms even moved. But when I visited at Thanksgiving one year it started chiming. It seemed like my grandfather was telling me he was glad I visited my mother on Thanksgiving. But who knows. (I am certain he was glad even if the clock chiming had another explanation.)

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I was not hallucinating.. as far as other witnesses it was just me and two other friends playing PlayStation 2 games.. lol.

Part of me thinks I shouldn't have shared this story here.. especially when some people struggle with faith issues. I don't want to trip anyone up. Its just honestly my weirdest story of something unexplainable (least to me) happening. I wouldn't look too deeply into it. Lol.

It wasn't like the motorcycle was driving around in circles or a pentagram shape either, lol.. it just slightly jerked every so often. The most I think it drove forward for like 3-4 inches and then stopped.

Mountainmanbob said:

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

Can't give them the Good News
until you give them the bad news.
Oh Lord have mercy on me a sinner.
MB

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Good news and bad news,

Bill and Ben were old friends, they were both football crazy.
So seeing as they were getting on they started talking about their future,

Heaven and the like.
So suddenly Bill passes on, Ben was left on his own and often wondered how it was going for Bill.

One night Ben has a dream, Bill appears in the dream,
Ben was overjoyed,
"Wow, fancy seeing you again Bill."
"How,s it going up there in heaven, do they have football?"

"Well Ben, good news and bad news"

"Tell me the good news first."
"The good news is we have football up here."

"Well that,s terrific, what,s the bad news?"

"Tomorrow you are in goal."

I feel that even the most intellectual definitions of "god" model divinity upon the human psyche: our drives, needs, emotions, motivations.
"God", in essence, is ascribing purpose and agency to events that are driven by neither; a personification of the impersonal.
Illness becomes a test or a punishment, natural disasters are seen as volatile divine reactions to displeasure, and even the success of a politician or sports team may be ascribed to the fancies of a deity.

I think that's pretty silly, like a small child bumping into a chair and calling it "mean" for making her foot hurt.