JulianaTheory
Feel worthless? To God, U were worth One Jesus!
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CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
Greetings,
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DeleseRose
DeleseRose
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VictorianVelvet
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angelsword
Senior Member
For those who seek the truth please know that they will always find it. May God bless you and your family and may your joy in the Lord and the truth know no bounds
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joyouspirit
I love my mikey!
Wow! What an introduction!! Welcome to Cf!!! Have a great time here! God bless!!!
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BelovedWord
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It has been such a long time (11 years) a new intro is in order.
Since that time I found a church (a Vinyard church) I really liked and attended it every Sunday an actively involved myself until the pastor closed it down due to illness. I haven't found a church to replace it.
My beliefs or way of seeing myself has evolved a tiny bit. I can be called a Christian Agnostic because although I personally believe in God (1.5 on the Dawkins scale), I am an agnostic with respect to the objective knowledge of the existence of God. In other words, I do not believe that proof, objective evidence, or an objectively valid argument for the existence of God is possible. Thus I will side with atheists on any of the proofs for God's existence and defend atheism as a perfectly rational alternative to theism.
I believe in a God who is spirit and that means outside the space and time of the physical universe and therefore not a part of its system of natural laws. I will nevertheless argue that knowledge of God is quite quite possible, for God can make Himself known to us. The fact that He does not do so for everyone means that a knowledge of God is not of universal benefit to all people. I believe this has everything to do with the separation between God and man due to the bad habits often called sin from the time of Adam and Eve.
I believe Genesis is historical but not literal. There is nothing more obviously symbolic than the two trees in the Garden of Eden. We do not get either eternal life or knowledge from eating fruit and Adam and Eve display no knowledge of good and evil from "eating it." Yet I see absolutely no reason to think that Adam and Eve were not real people and I think the story in the Bible does explain the origin of sin and the separation from God. This does not however mean that I take seriously the idea that Adam and Eve were golems of dust and bone created by an ancient necromancer of some kind, or that angels can procreate with women to create fairy tale giants.
I guess this might be a good time to explain that I am in many ways a scientist before I am a Christian. This means that science was already a lens through which I see the world and through which I read the Bible to determine if there was anything meaningful there. It also means that I give scientific determinations the superior epistemological status. In fact I would judge the rationality of belief in the following three tiered way.
1. A belief must be logically coherent in order to be meaningful.
2. A belief must be consistent with the findings of science in order to be reasonable.
3. A belief must abide by the ideals of a free society in order to be moral in the kind of society I want to live in.
These criterion admit a great diversity of belief as rational for consistent with science does not mean determined by science. Science gives us access to an objective means to determining the truth on many questions and it is not reasonable to insist on understanding the Bible in defiance of such findings. The Earth is not flat because the Bible compares it to a table with four corners and life is not a product of design by divine magic just because the Bible tells a story of God creating all living things. Science shows us that the Earth is an oblate spheroid, that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and that the evolution of life is the origin of the species.
This divides the basis of belief into two categories the subjective and the objective. Personal experience will always be the most convincing basis for knowledge but only for the person having that experience. A reasonable basis for expecting others to agree with you requires objective evidence. Without it, you can only live your own life according to such beliefs and it is not reasonable or even moral to judge other people according to things which you cannot prove.
Now, where to place be theologically on other issues... I am a liberal evangelical Christian and thus a protestant according to the 5 solas, but I agree with the Eastern Orthodox on the issues atonement, original sin, and the reason God created. In other words, I don't agree with substitutionary atonement, the inheritance of guilt, or that we exist for the purpose of the glory of God. I am neither Unitarian nor Universalist but Trinitarian, believing that hell is real because I see it on the earth, not as something God has created but something that people create for themselves. I disagree with all five points of TULIP Calvinism, and I am an open theist. I am not anti-pagan (instead celebrating our pagan heritage), but I am strongly anti-Plato and anti-Gnostic and in fact believe that much of Christianity has adopted a NeoPlatonic Gnostic gospel of salvation by works of the mind in believing what they deem is sound doctrine -- and even more legalistic in this than the Pharisees. I know the Bible (the apostle Paul) teaches a bodily resurrection to a spiritual body not a physical body. I have very little interest in eschatology (prophecy, last days, and such) and do not see any practical value in this aspect of Christianity.
Since that time I found a church (a Vinyard church) I really liked and attended it every Sunday an actively involved myself until the pastor closed it down due to illness. I haven't found a church to replace it.
My beliefs or way of seeing myself has evolved a tiny bit. I can be called a Christian Agnostic because although I personally believe in God (1.5 on the Dawkins scale), I am an agnostic with respect to the objective knowledge of the existence of God. In other words, I do not believe that proof, objective evidence, or an objectively valid argument for the existence of God is possible. Thus I will side with atheists on any of the proofs for God's existence and defend atheism as a perfectly rational alternative to theism.
I believe in a God who is spirit and that means outside the space and time of the physical universe and therefore not a part of its system of natural laws. I will nevertheless argue that knowledge of God is quite quite possible, for God can make Himself known to us. The fact that He does not do so for everyone means that a knowledge of God is not of universal benefit to all people. I believe this has everything to do with the separation between God and man due to the bad habits often called sin from the time of Adam and Eve.
I believe Genesis is historical but not literal. There is nothing more obviously symbolic than the two trees in the Garden of Eden. We do not get either eternal life or knowledge from eating fruit and Adam and Eve display no knowledge of good and evil from "eating it." Yet I see absolutely no reason to think that Adam and Eve were not real people and I think the story in the Bible does explain the origin of sin and the separation from God. This does not however mean that I take seriously the idea that Adam and Eve were golems of dust and bone created by an ancient necromancer of some kind, or that angels can procreate with women to create fairy tale giants.
I guess this might be a good time to explain that I am in many ways a scientist before I am a Christian. This means that science was already a lens through which I see the world and through which I read the Bible to determine if there was anything meaningful there. It also means that I give scientific determinations the superior epistemological status. In fact I would judge the rationality of belief in the following three tiered way.
1. A belief must be logically coherent in order to be meaningful.
2. A belief must be consistent with the findings of science in order to be reasonable.
3. A belief must abide by the ideals of a free society in order to be moral in the kind of society I want to live in.
These criterion admit a great diversity of belief as rational for consistent with science does not mean determined by science. Science gives us access to an objective means to determining the truth on many questions and it is not reasonable to insist on understanding the Bible in defiance of such findings. The Earth is not flat because the Bible compares it to a table with four corners and life is not a product of design by divine magic just because the Bible tells a story of God creating all living things. Science shows us that the Earth is an oblate spheroid, that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and that the evolution of life is the origin of the species.
This divides the basis of belief into two categories the subjective and the objective. Personal experience will always be the most convincing basis for knowledge but only for the person having that experience. A reasonable basis for expecting others to agree with you requires objective evidence. Without it, you can only live your own life according to such beliefs and it is not reasonable or even moral to judge other people according to things which you cannot prove.
Now, where to place be theologically on other issues... I am a liberal evangelical Christian and thus a protestant according to the 5 solas, but I agree with the Eastern Orthodox on the issues atonement, original sin, and the reason God created. In other words, I don't agree with substitutionary atonement, the inheritance of guilt, or that we exist for the purpose of the glory of God. I am neither Unitarian nor Universalist but Trinitarian, believing that hell is real because I see it on the earth, not as something God has created but something that people create for themselves. I disagree with all five points of TULIP Calvinism, and I am an open theist. I am not anti-pagan (instead celebrating our pagan heritage), but I am strongly anti-Plato and anti-Gnostic and in fact believe that much of Christianity has adopted a NeoPlatonic Gnostic gospel of salvation by works of the mind in believing what they deem is sound doctrine -- and even more legalistic in this than the Pharisees. I know the Bible (the apostle Paul) teaches a bodily resurrection to a spiritual body not a physical body. I have very little interest in eschatology (prophecy, last days, and such) and do not see any practical value in this aspect of Christianity.
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