I understand social psychological manipulation. I understand having deception so deep that you cannot actually detect it within yourself. But as it relates to sheer numbers.....is the power of the Gospel to change people toward the positive, it's own proof?
First of all, why would you credit the Gospel with the change?
The way I generally see it done is the same the magic weightloss pills work... which is, the pills only seem to work when one eats a proper diet and exercises. Then the pills work really well, but is it really the pills that do the work? Not really. People do the work, because they follow certain instructions that can be done without pills.
When people see the change, they attribute it to the only thing that they were presented as a solution... hence why many people "experience weightloss" through the power of pills.
Hence pills seem to be the anchor that people use to credit their change too... hence why would you say that you understand the social manipulation aspect of it, when you seem to be asking as to how we know it's not the magic pills that help people lose weight?
We know, because we see people lose weight without the pills, and we can yank the pills and people lose weight, or we can yank the regiment and people will stop losing weight.
what I mean is that no one can prove God. You can't stick him in a testube and say, yup there is a God. But when you see the volume of lives changed in history and even today....toward the positive.
How can you deny that this is not a supernatural act?
The same way that we know the pills can't do the work. Belief in many cases serves a catalizing placebo to do things that people would otherwise think they can't do.
It doesn't merely work in religion. Michael Jordan had Leroy Smith, which was largely an imaginary nemesis that he focused on his own life and attributed much of his success to anger and fighting against Leroy Smith.
Our imagination can serve as a powerful catalyst for change. Of itself, it's not any viable commentary on reality behind such imagination.
I'm aware that my testimony could be chalked up to "delusion" or "brainwashing" and these are not lost upon me. I retain my insatiable need for knowledge.I pray for clarity and I stay up on nights such as this and research BOTH sides of the argument. Atheist and Christian sources. I will humbly admit some questions remain unanswered. But despite MANY hours spent enveloped in research, dialoguing with atheists, agnostic teachers of my near by high school, christian pastors, and even a fair share of Muslims, my faith has yet to be rooted out or proven wrong.
The obvious problem is that Christianity in the way it was framed is an unfalsifiable claim that can't be proven wrong.
Would the following testimony make sense?
"In the past I could not believe that I could turn invisible, but one person convinced me and I never looked back. He told me that I can turn invisible only when no one is looking, or recording it... and that when I do turn invisible, only I can see myself. No one has been able to prove me wrong, but this power transformed my life for the better. If I could do that... I feel I can accomplish anything."
Why would such testimony matter? It doesn't when it comes to critically assessing a claim. People get confused, and so did I. I've turned from young atheist to a Christian, and stayed that way for most of my life. As I've learned more about Christianity and went past the emotional appeal, there were plenty of cracks in it that eventually shed light on things that I wouldn't see before. Looking back, I've been on mission trips and claimed miracles in my life... but all it was is a projection of my belief on the events that are otherwise natural and ordinary. Hence, I don't really see any power in such stories now. Quite the opposite, these remind me of my own misconceptions.