oi_antz said:Gotcha, no just be completely honest, it's your discussion to lead, I'm sorry if my observation offended you.
No, no offence taken. I'm finding there's a very fine line (that I may have crossed) between pointing out where my opinions differ from yours and flatly arguing against yours. I am simply looking for information, and not an arguement. Perhaps a debate at the very most.
oi_antz said:That is not true, you don't have to reject any knowledge. Your problem at present is being unable to accept the knowledge God has put for you in His word.
Well, sounds like you guys are much more flexible in your beliefs than many christians are. A lot of christians I've talked to tell me you have reject things like evolution, and you have to think that the universe is only a few thousand years old. Okay, meybe I've been talking to the wrong christians.
oi_antz said:Easy question: do you believe Jesus should have been crucified or exalted as a great priest? (Might pay to read the story from God's POV as written in the Gospels).
That's not an easy question, that's a false dichotomy. I'd really prefer that nobody werre cricified. That sounds like a horrible thing to do to anyone. Exalted as a great priest? I have no opposition to anyone who wants to do that. I'll just respect him for his philosophies personally.
oi_antz said:This might be your misunderstanding, Jesus didn't commit a sin and therefore was not guilty as charged.
Okay, duly noted. What have I misunderstood though? Sorry, I can't see what this sentance has to do with the quote above it.
oi_antz said:About testimonies, I can say that Jesus' spirit has physically appeared and spoken to me through spiritual possession of his disciples several times when it was necessary, they don't remember but we do. Jesus lives!
Again, here I see your story in the context of heterophenomenology. I don't doubt your experience, but I also don't think I would necessarily explain the experience in the same way. I think people trust their senses too much when it comes to things like this. Everyone has direct access to their own concious experience, and so has been effectively studying conciousness for their entire life. Because of this people tend to think they're experts on conciousness, but that's not necessarily true. There are lots of ways in which your brain can fool you. Very convincing hallucinations are well attested to in the feild of clinical psychology. You can even do repeatable experiments where you can trick someone into experiencing something that didn't happen. Do you ever wonder if this was just a trick of the brain, and not an experience that is genuinely what it appears to be?
Digit said:This is a paradox, as it means you will never hold anything to be truly true. Something I refer to as ultimate truth, or ultimate reality, ie, there is only one true version of something. Something cannot be black and white at the same time, it can either be black or white. I can be a mixture of black and white but this is something different, it is grey which is neither black nor white. So there is only one truth to our existence. Saying you are resistant to the potential for your views to change, means you are resistant to knowing what is ultimately true, because there is a stage where you know something to be true. Is there a Christian 'truth' that you do not believe you could hold as a personal truth? Any one come to mind?
You may want to reread what I wrote. We are in perfect agreement. I'm not resistent to the potential for my views to change. Quite the opposite. I value it greatly. As for the second part, I'm worried that we're going to end up buried in nit-picky semantics here, ("what do you mean by 'can', etc.") but here goes. We all have similar enough brains that in principal I could believe anything anyone else does. But there might be things in christian thought that are incompatible with my current world view though, and there are definitely christian tenets that I think have an extremely low probability of ever being able to unseat those current views. How's that sound?
Digit said:I will ask you if there is any scientific claim you feel you would need to reject?
Sorry, I admit I may have been wrong about this. SOME christians certainly seem to think this. I've been given the impression by some that christians necessarily believe in a talking snake, a young earth, god's creation of all the animals in their current form, reject evolution etc. But you guys accept all that. What about walking on water, or turning water into wine, which seem to be violations of the laws of physics and chemistry? I assume your explanation is that god (or Jesus) intervened and modified the laws of physics to make that happen? Same goes for the resurrection, come to think of it.
If god can do this kind of thing, it's a shame that he doesn't give us a sign of his existence every once in a while, just so we don't have to rely on ancient writings. And not something like a Jesus-like shape on a piece of toast. Something totally undeniable, and visible directly to everyone. Like turning the moon from a sphere into a cube for a few years and writing "Yaweh did this" on it. It seems like he enjoys testing the limits of our credulity.
Harry3142 said:I know this is a long post, but I thought that you should know what one Christian believes, and why he believes it. Even though you may disagree with my belief, at least now you know what it is you're disagreeing with and where it originated.
Great post Harry. That explains a lot. Your concluding paragraph, which I quoted, is spot on. Thanks for understanding perfectly what I'm trying to do here. I've spoken to lots of christians who, as soon as I show an interest in their beliefs, start trying to convert me. I just figure that the bible has had such a profound impact on human history that it's worth studying as literature even by people who don't believe it's true. I think it's important to know what 2.2 billion people believe, even if I don't. And you'd probably be surprised how much I agree with. I'd just rather say 'I don't know' on some topics, where you have an explanation that you like.
Sir Wiltshire said:If you're not willing to take sides, then why did even be interested? Just wanting to gain knowledge and do nothing with it?
Yes, just wanting to gain knowledge. I certainly haven't decided to do nothing with it though. Knowledge is always worth having regardless of if you have an immediate use for it or not. I think we are just the product of all the ideas and memes we've recieved bouncing around inside our brains. The more you know the better. And like I said, if 2.2 billion people base their world view on these things, it's pretty important to understand what they think, even if you don't believe it. I want, at very least, to gain a deep empathy for christians, and people of other religions too of course. As a side benefit, much of it is fascinating too. Buddhists, for example, have some incredibly cool philosophies, especially Zen Buddhism. Just fascinating stuff. I'd encourage anyone to learn what they can. I want to at least catch a glimpe of what it's like to be a christian, and you have all helped me to do that. Don't you ever wonder what it feels like to be an atheist?
Sir Wiltshire said:Not logical at all. In fact your argument in the quote above is a
non-sequiter.
Sorry, you're right here. I should have said "my conclusion" instead of "the logical conclusion".
Sir Wiltshire said:And that punishment is shame and separation from God that is proportional to your sins. Unbelief is only one of the thousands of sins non-Christians are punished for in hell. And God won't be impressed that you were unwilling to weigh the evidence just because you're not an expert, when it was in your means to do so.
But I have weighed the evidence, I just don't want to decide. Why does god force you to draw a conclusion? I don't understand why he wants people to decide so badly. I mean, if I live a good life, and I give to the poor and help the sick and love my neighbors and don't hurt people and don't do all the things about sex that he forbids, that's not enough? He's going to punish me forever just because I didn't want to make an absolute decision about his existance? That sounds very unfair. I thought he loved me? This seems like a terrible way to show his love.
razeontherock said:I appreciate your sincerity. We've had a rash of trolls lately, wanting nothing but to stir up trouble. You actually want to know, so here's just a light smattering: light exists in both a place and a way. With what we know today, we know that is true, although it's a rather strange way of describing a travelling wave of small particles that have a physical existence. To the person it was spoken to, they couldn't possibly have any clue what it really meant, but could only marvel inside the verbiage they could fathom.
And thanks for your wisdom as well. As I said above, too many people I talk to are only interested in converting me. It's actually a terrible strategy even for them, because it immediately turns me off wanting to talk to them.
I'm sure you can guess what I'll say about the wave/particle duality thing though. It's not exactly made very explicit, and so I think it could be your interpretation that makes it seem like it's referring to wave/particle duality. If Jesus guides people's interpretations, then is there a record anywhere of Jesus having explicitly suggest this as the correct interpretation prior to the discovery of this phenomenon by physics? And again, the number ten cropping up in physics and christianity doesn't seem that improbable. In fact, I bet you could easily find more numbers that agree. Three gifts of the magi, three quark charges! Coincidence? I think so.
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