Well you certainly had alot more repeatability in the sun rising than you did in six years.
I beg to differ, I think there was more than a little Faith involved.
I've been to that alter too.
No, there really wasn't. There was due diligence, but not faith as you are describing it.
Well I think your selling him short.
Quite the contrary, there is "liberty" in Christ.
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Galatians 5:1-3
Like I said before, thats where the Founding Fathers got the concept from.
Hardly. But that's still a topic for another thread. And since I am not in bondage now, why would I
pursue bondage to a deity? You are certainly entangled in the yoke of your faith, whether you chose that entanglement or not.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.
I'm trying to say that God only seems to appear to people who are under great stress or who are yearning for
something that they feel they are lacking in their lives. Both of these things tend to make the mind more impressionable and more likely to grasp at something intangible out of desperation for hope. It's hardly a surprise that people in those situations are more likely to get "saved".
The real trick would be for God to come "save" someone like me or
danoff or
Famine or
Sage. We are completely comfortable in our own mortality and rationality, and we would prefer to wait for the most correct answers to the Big Questions rather than insist on a complete (even if inaccurate) answer RIGHT NOW.
Oddly enough, God never seems to appear to people like us, only to people who are terrified or yearning for a God. That tells me those people create the god in their own minds (or at least latch onto the idea of god like a life preserver). It's like the issue of the whether God or the Bible came first - the conditions create the god, not vice versa.
There were still no gaurantees of anything. Particularly for you, anything future is a total unknown.
I never said there were guarantees; I said that I could predict the outcome based on past experience.
You certainly don't have any guarantee beyond your own arbitrary faith.
And I have to disagree strongly that anything future is a total unknown, "particularly for [me]". I can predict a very great deal about the probable future based on recurrences in the past, both large and small. The laws of physics indicate quite a bit about what will happen in the future, and observed human nature does too. I do not need any "guarantees" because I have a relatively stable logical system that I can use to analyze and adapt to conditions.
You, on the other hand, and other people of religious nature, cannot predict anything because you do NOT have a stable system to use. Your world exists completely at the whim of a non-understandable, invisible, all-powerful god. He could do literally anything in the next 5 minutes - from destroying the world with a flood of holy fire to dressing us all in clown suits. He works in Mysterious Ways, after all. Perhaps an entire planet full of clowns would make Him laugh - he could conjure up a Volkswagen and make all 7 billion of us climb out of it.
How can you predict anything based on that?
Men didn't wright it.
Every Scripture is God-breathed (given by His inspiration) and profitable for instruction, for reproof and conviction of sin, for correction of error and discipline in obedience, [and] for training in righteousness (in holy living, in conformity to God's will in thought, purpose, and action),
2 Timothy 3:15-17
2 Peter 1:21 (Amplified Bible)21For no prophecy ever originated because some man willed it [to do so--it never came by human impulse], but men spoke from God who were borne along (moved and impelled) by the Holy Spirit.
...according to the Bible itself. I can claim that the Invisible Pink Unicorn is dictating these very words to me right now, with equal validity. Quoting scripture to prove scripture is like saying the sky is blue because it's blue.
Indeed, I already have. I've learned that it is possible to make a recursion amplifier that can force a radio wave to travel faster than light. That's pretty cool, and more importantly, it's another step on the continuous process of refining our understanding of the universe.
Hmmm, I guess that could include the acceptance of a higher power, that invented the very relationship you enjoy?
...according to the Bible, a higher power invented my relationship. I have no reason to believe that is true. Our relationship is the product of billions of years of evolution, the circumstances that introduced us to each other, and our own intellectual, emotional, and physical investment in each other. I don't have a problem with that or see it as a flaw - quite the opposite, in fact. I find it fascinating, rewarding, and joyful.
I suppose we could
decide to "accept a higher power", but why would we? That offers us nothing we need or want. We've accepted our own mortality, we're intellectually unsatisfied by supernaturalism, and we already have a good ethical/moral code to live by. There's nothing to be gained from faith in a deity except entanglement in the yoke of irrationality.
We already covered that a couple times.
And you've repeated that it is proved by the feeling that is not a feeling and the logic that is not logical. I'm not buying.
Thats pretty rich since a deity invented it.
...according to the Bible, a deity invented marriage. Again, repeatedly insisting it doesn't make it any more true.
My covenant of marriage was made directly to my wife, and hers to me. We're the only parties involved. We made the promise to each other and we need to uphold it for each other for the sake of our own integrity. Frankly, it's no one else's business.
You just said it did: "There was very little "faith" involved in that aspect of it," and since the predictability is not assured and certainly not in the same league with the other things you mention, faith, was most certainly involved.
No, predictability is assured as well as it can be. Faith is not involved - just an acceptable level of probability. If I thought my future wife was likely to go off the deep end or was prone to making irrational decisions, I would not have married her.
Well I don't think its any secret that man and woman were made for one another. Thats in the book too.
...according to the Bible. That doesn't mean anything. It certainly doesn't prove that love was
invented by God. Especially not since homosexuals can experience love, which the Bible says is punishable by death.
With that, I can agree, except love is from the heart not the head.
The physical desire is "Lust" not "Love".
No kidding; that's why I was at pains to explain that true love starts intellectually and
creates desire, not vice versa. True love is not originated from the heart (by which I assume you mean "emotion", not the physical organ in your chest); it is originated from the mind.
Again, that only makes it more wonderful, not less. At least to a person who values logic and rationality.
You know we can go on and on and back and forth, but in the final analysis
its really quite simple. Either the Bible is true or it isn't. Now in my experience it is absolutely true and repeatably true.
So the Earth was created in 6 days about 4,000 years ago, there were no dinosaurs (or if there were, they lived at the same time as man), and God not only created enough water to flood the entire planet, but then found somewhere to drain it off to?
We shouldn't eat shellfish, masturbate, or seek knowledge of life?
Not only that but I have received as a result of faith in that, the same "Holy Spirit" that it describes and it is a seperate dimension from the carnal ones I've had since birth.
It is as much of a reality, if not more so than those. With it is a power, peace, joy and a completely revolutionary affect on the intellect, unlike anything I had previously. Also with it, is the personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore again it is as real as anything I've ever known.
Thats all I can attest to. Its up to each person to examine it for themselves and choose to embrace it or not to. I would just recommend you take a very close look before you discount it as untrue.
I am:
- Comfortable with my own mortality
- Not yearning for an immortal spirituality
- Intellectually and emotionally satisfied by logic and reason
- In joyful love with a very compatible human partner
- Following a perfectly fair and workable code of ethics based on secular rights
- Not bothered by yet-to-be-answered questions
- Not willing to accept any answer just to avoid having an incomplete answer
- Not interested in believing in everything that could be possible even if I can't see it
So what could I possibly have to gain from religious faith in a deity that has no proof of existence?
