Ask not "Does God exist?" Ask "Why is God not different than He is?"

[MattiMuck]

The bible is not a document that has any validity in that its claims do not necessarily lead to the christian conclusion. Only half of the book is decidedly Christian anyway. The other half is Jewish, mind you.

Similar experiences do not lead credence to yours unless there is more than simple coincidence and even a shared belief among many people doesn't validate its truth.

The historical truth of the Bible's chronology does not say anything about whether the supernatural events or influences it describes actually happened or had those influences.

You're making a hasty generalization here from historical validity to metaphysical validity. The Bible happening to be true about Jesus' existence doesn't mean Jesus was God, for example.

Even if you've made arguments besides your experience, they are sufficient. That is the major issue at hand.

The center of Christianity is Jesus Christ, of whom the Bible even the "Jewish" half references, alludes to, and especially prophesies of. The entire bible is used to come to the conclusion of Christianity. In fact, according to John 1:1, Jesus is the Word and the Word is God...the entire Bible points to Jesus in some way, therefore leadimg to the Christian conclusion.

Similar experiences as a result of the same source whether it is Christ, the Bible, the Holy Spirit or something altogether unChristian is automatically more than mere coincidence. Although there is no validity to them unless based on truth.

The historical truth does not say anything about the supernatural aspects, I know, but if the history and chronology is accurate, then it is not unreasonable to say the rest of it is. It is not a generaliazation it is a logical inference.

I assume you meant "insufficient" in your last paragraph. The bottom line is, for me, and any true Christian, I can say Christianity is the only truth, what I believe is the only truth based on evidence, experience, faith, and fellowship. I think we can both agree (I hope) that we have had a pretty good discussion and will probably continue to despite that statement.

 

[muichimotsu]

The center of Christianity is Jesus Christ, of whom the Bible even the "Jewish" half references, alludes to, and especially prophesies of. The entire bible is used to come to the conclusion of Christianity. In fact, according to John 1:1, Jesus is the Word and the Word is God...the entire Bible points to Jesus in some way, therefore leadimg to the Christian conclusion.

This is eisegesis of teh Torah. You're putting your Christian bias into something that is not necessarily resultant from those scriptures, regardless of how familiar your "messiah" may have been with them. You want to see Jesus in everything, you're doing something fairly intellectually dishonest: interpreting things to conform to your belief system when there is a clear system that doesn't interpret it as such, e.g. Judaism

Similar experiences as a result of the same source whether it is Christ, the Bible, the Holy Spirit or something altogether unChristian is automatically more than mere coincidence. Although there is no validity to them unless based on truth.

This presumes you can verify that these come from the same source with someone who isn't biased towards that source.

The historical truth does not say anything about the supernatural aspects, I know, but if the history and chronology is accurate, then it is not unreasonable to say the rest of it is. It is not a generaliazation it is a logical inference.

It doesn't necessarily follow. It's a poor inference is the issue. You're making the correlation leading to causation fallacy, seems to me.

I assume you meant "insufficient" in your last paragraph. The bottom line is, for me, and any true Christian, I can say Christianity is the only truth, what I believe is the only truth based on evidence, experience, faith, and fellowship. I think we can both agree (I hope) that we have had a pretty good discussion and will probably continue to despite that statement.

Yes, not sure how I misspelled that. Now we go into the notion of a "true Christian". So much of this seems to get into esoteric and cult like behavior, where anyone who doesn't conform is shamed and ostracized in some way.

Experience is not the same as evidence, which can be remotely agreed upon by anyone. It's basically an outsider's test: if you present evidence that could convince them, maybe it's more reasonable, but there's still more than that. Merely convincing an outsider is only showing that the rhetoric is good or the evidence is loose enough that the average person wouldn't see through the holes in it.

 

[MattiMuck]

It is exegesis of the books of the prophets as well as the books of Moses.

 

[muichimotsu]

Clearly the Jews and Muslims wouldn't think so. And the Jews could arguably know their text better than Christians who use it vicariously and after the fact. Plus, Christians tend to dismiss a good third to a half of the Torah and such except as it benefits proving their religion's better than the Jewish one.

 

[MattiMuck]

Jesus and the disciples were Jews. Paul was a Jew...a Jew who persecuted Christians who at the time were exclusively Jewish. The first Christians were Jews waiting for the Messiah who was prophesied of in the Old Testament from Genesis to Micah. All prophecies of the Messiah were accurately fulfilled by Jesus. This was a claim by Jews, not Christian outsiders projecting their own beliefs on Jewish theology.

 

[muichimotsu]

They were one group of Jews who had a particular interpretation. Christians of the Gentile variety are what managed to continue to ignore any criticisms from other Jews (not strictly Pharisees at all) that they are misinterpreting or otherwise misreading prophecy. The Isaiah verse which mistranslated the word for young woman as virgin comes to mind, but I would imagine there are others. The early Christians' Jewish-ness does not automatically give them carte blanche to ignore Jewish precedent from before or reassert some new form of Judaism and then everyone call it Christianity instead

 

[dlamberth]

This is arrogance.

No it's not. It's just one of those questions a person may ask in their spiritual journey as they search for Truth.

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