[quote]H factor wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
You certainly wouldn’t be convinced in a forum, that’s for sure.
I do find it interesting that while ‘your brain won’t let you believe’ you are very curious about it nonetheless.
This curiosity of your’s may be the unidentified spiritual nag laying deep with in you.
I get it though. If I were looking at a lot of Christians from the outside, I would see a bunch of people in their hands in the air in some sort of suspended reality. And the problem only increases when you talk to them and they sound clueless.
But not everybody is clueless, not everybody is in it for some self-serving purpose of avoiding hell.
I am not religious to avoid hell. I am religious because I love God. He answers my prayers. He communicates to me, sometimes in very bizarre ways that when I realize, make me laugh. He has a good sense of humor.
It’s not an easy life, it’s not happy-go-lucky ‘I am saved!’ kind of existence.
I wouldn’t do it just to avoid hell. I wouldn’t do it if it were not a reciprocal relationship.
I look at my life, and all the multitudes of blessing in it, and I know I didn’t do it alone. There has always been someone or something there that has gotten me through each stage, each phase. I am not the product of the work of my own two hands, though I did that as well. The crosses, the sufferings in my life were too much to bear. And I feel like I have had more than my fair share. I am threadbare and worn out from them, but I am still standing. And yes, I will spare you the details as I am still going through a lot. But I am the product of being on the good side of grace. It’s no accident. I have learned a lot from my crosses, most of all how lucky I am, and how blessed I am. Through them, I have always gotten support where none seemed to exist. I have clung to faith when I could have easily said “Screw this!” I will never give up, though I don’t understand suffering. Why God, with all His power good not have made life exist without it, I don’t know.
I know, that I wouldn’t know what I know and feel the humility I feel without it.
In the end I know I will be great, never better, that’s just a matter of time.
A Christian life isn’t a charmed life, it’s a tough life, but a life worth living. There is a joy to it that cannot be expressed or understood, it can only be experienced. And once you do, you could only be a liar to deny it. When you experience it, it’s undeniable.
I think that’s what Christian’s cannot ultimately understand. How do you not see ‘it’? And for non-religious, how do you see anything?
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Honestly I see this as one giant contradiction. If I couldn’t see it in a forum then why are you constantly trying to convince non believers they are wrong on here? Why are you constantly trying to prove your point of view correct on here?
Of course I’m curious about people who believe something so vastly different than me, but CLEARLY you are as well. You are a frequent contributor to discussions based around people like me. We are very similar in that regard? Is that the atheist spirit in you? Frankly I think coming to that conclusion is ridiculous.
The personal stories are fantastic, but the religious and the non religious share them from these threads. I have had many things happen in my life as well, but I give a lot of the thanks to my family, friends, and mentors for creating what I am today. None of us did anything fully alone and I give a lot of credit to the PEOPLE in my life who helped me. If you feel as if that was the holy spirit guiding them then again that isn’t really a conclusion I’m going to agree with.
I can see with my eyeballs. I don’t particularly like when the religious try and act as if the non religious are suffering from some type of disability. When they come out and say stuff like “well you don’t believe in anything. How can you be moral? How can you live without a higher purpose?” I dunno, how can the people who claim to be loving Christians hate gay people if they believe they are God’s creations. Hate Muslims is they are God’s creations? Doesn’t seem to stop them much.
Is it really that impossible for someone to believe the problems with proving the existence of something they have never seen nor heard? “You gotta be crazy if you can’t see/feel/hear him!”
Well, I can’t do those things and I’ve tried. Maybe God needs to turn up the volume? Some of these threads have a tendency to have believers talk to non believers as if the problem must completely lie in them.
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If you want to argue philosophical points, I will argue back. But I only argue on a philosophical basis, not a spiritual one. Why do I do it? To learn more and hopefully others do as well.
I do it to defend theism on a rational basis, to show that there is some very sound logic behind it and it’s not a brain-dead existence as many non-believers try to accuse it of being.
Perhaps nobody goes away changing their beliefs, but they damn sure walk away knowing there is some solid reasoning behind it (theism), it’s not beatable and hasn’t been for centuries. And should damn well know that their previous reasoning isn’t as sound as they thought it was.
Aside from that, I don’t see where there is any contradiction. I was merely sharing my own experience. I was sympathizing with the fact you cannot relate to it.
You put invaluable trust in your senses. I put invaluable trust in that which responsible for experience. You consider sensory experience very trust worthy and valuable. I consider is a very flawed way to understand the world around us. I trust in the systems that run it, the unflappable metaphysics that runs the show. I trust more in the law of nature then the nature itself. I look more at the reason something is, than that it is.
Sure other people helped you in your life? Same here, why? Because they love you? Perhaps? Why do they love you? What is love? Is there a rational explanation for someone to love you when its no benefit to them to do so?
As far as you accusations about what Christians are or do, seems to me you’re just applying a stereotype. Who says Christians hate muslims? Or gay people? That’s a stereotype propagated by our friend the media. It’s horseshit. For instance the piano player at my church was queer as a 3 dollar bill, everybody knew and nobody cared. He was treated just like everybody else. Wasn’t our business, didn’t make it our business. So you are just following stereotypes there.
The only Muslims we have a problem with are the ones trying to kill us in God’s name.
As far as sourcing your morality and purpose, you don’t think those are reasonable questions? What do you base your morality on? Just yourself? So that if you change your mind about something, then morality itself changes? I don’t think that, and I seriously doubt you believe that.
And I don’t know if I have a ‘higher purpose’ or not. I don’t believe I or anything exists for ‘no reason’. I very much side with Spinoza in that there are ‘no brute facts’. It’s not necessary reasonable to believe I exist for some ‘higher purpose’. It’s not reasonable at all to believe I exist for no reason. That I am a brute fact of the universe which itself is not a brute fact.