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.