Bathrone

Quite honestly Vinnie, you show to me the existence of the supernatural, the existence of the Xian God, and prove why yours is the one true God, and Ill be your best preacher!

Im not arguing for the sake of it. Rather, I take intellectual belief strongly, and I value truth. I think our progress as humans is very much reflected in the pursuit of truth and the nature of things.

I am however, confident any argument you can present will result in you basically having an emotional point of view, for an emotional faith. No one in the history of man has ever substantiated it. Are you the first? I await your post!

Kosh

BTW - I have been thinking about starting up a pool for when Vinnie will fully deconvert. Any takers? $1 a slot.

Vinnie

[quote]Lets focus on your mind. [/quyote]

That is fine with me. The God of truth is not afraid of our questions. But instead of making this game one sided lets us focus on your need of salvation while we are focusing on my mind. Agree? Salvation is the business that the church is in.

What type of proof you looking for? Only formal arguments? Will evidential and existential ones suffice?

You have a very strange understanding of God. My understanding of God is that which none greater can be thought. How else do we define God? Obviously there can only be a supreme being as such. To speak of Gods is nonsensical.

No matter how you cut it, I think there can only be one true God by definition. I am hesitant to even describe God quantitatively as one. God is not like a piece of fruit I can categorize.. For example, there is one God just as there is one banana in the basket. I prefer to speak of God qualitatively but that assumes a singular sense.

So I have no need of explaining away round squares and other nonsensical things that do not exist.

As for starting evidence I offer you cross-cultural religious experiences with the divine throughout human history.

Vinnie

Vinnie

No God is not "supposed to love you. There is no external force requiring God to love you. If God had to submit to such an outside force she could not be the supreme being of which none greater could be thought. So God is not "supposed" to love you, God does love you. Not because of some external law God must obey, but because of her own nature.

Well, I abandoned a naive form ofg biblical inspiration for precisely those reasons. Christianity, despite what the wooden literalists and evangelicals might tell you, does not rest upon verbal plenary inspiration. I mean, do these people realize how many Christians actually existed without an "official Bible"? Something about Gutenberg and a printing press comes to mind....


Umm, its not nice tp presume one's views. That is not what my theology says at all! Try my wider-hope theory for starters:
http://www.acfaith.com/widerhope.html

Conscious faith in the work of the historical Jesus is not necessary for salvation or going to heaven. Even some evangelicals agree with this! See Kreeft and Tacelli's Handbook of Christian Apologetics!

Think about it. If p were required for q then babies would all go to hell.

P is knowledge of Jesus' historical work and q is salvation. If p is strictly necessary for q so much for Moses, all those who never heard, babies who die in infancy etc. None of them had p and thus would not be able to obtain q.

The fact of the matter is that most Christians either do not think conscious faith in the work of Christ is strictly necessary for salvation or that they think this but they contradict themselves on other points (e.g. age of acountability, salvation of OT people etc which directly states that P is not strictly necessary for obtaining q).

God gives a clear message. We just miss it. I missed it for some time and even know after salvation I still miss God's clear message. I am putting something up now on salvation though. So I will not pursue this until that is done. It is relevant here and I will post the link when I'm done (probably by tomorrow night).

Actually, my answer would be "the wounds of existence". That is it in a nutshell. But this will be explained more in my paper and I wont comment further until that is finishes.

Thanks for the response.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Hand waving and dismissing Vinnie's Christianity (tm) as a social thing will not work here. Christianity is more than some "social go-with-Christian-flow" type deal. To me Christianity is strictly about healing the wounds of existence and experiencing God. That is what drives Christianity-the transforming and risen Jesus.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Yes, absolutely Greg!

Next time you are at a wake or a funeral and a grieving widow or child speaks about the deceased person and finds consolment and consoles others with the fact that they "irrationally think" their lost loved one is in a better place, shout out from the back "No they are not. There is no God or heaven. You are decieved."

Have a good time challenging all irrational beliefs. The rest of us will continue to not always put "brute facts" over the needs of people and let them be in certain situations (but definately not all!).

All beliefs can be challenged, but there is a time and a place for everything. If an apologists confronts you with evidence and says you should believe, sure you can slap them silly with a rebuttal. But my point is, why go looking or out of your way to do such?

Vinnie
*spelling and grammer edits

Vinnie

I don't oppose all other religions. My website overview makes that clear:
http://www.acfaith.com/firststop.html

So does my wider-hope view (link posted above).

Vinine

Celsus

Eh? This sounds to me like the Argument from Square Circles:
I hate it when I'm right

Joel

Vinnie

Um, no, I never said that. I just said that verbal plenary inspiration is naive. John Meier said that same thing in V1 of his Marginal Jews series.

Its interesting to one exposed mainly to fundamentalism. In academician circles, verbal plenary inspiration is rightly considered naive. In Raymond Brown's estimation, centrists "may well constitute the majority of teachers and writers in the NT area." Centrists usually hold to a form of qualititative inspiration. My link above talks about that.

There is a huge world out there. What would you make of Catholicism? The RCC is hardly a fundamentalist group and its one of the largest Christian groups as far as I am aware. As Raymond Brown said, regognition of qualittative inspiration was implicit in the statement made at Vatican Council II: "The books of scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation." I hardly think the RCC requires said naive form of inspiration.

There is a whole new world just around the riverbend for those who bother to look.

Now you are rigging the game. Define accurate? Didactic historical fiction does not need to be historically accurate to be inspired by God. Could God only inspire history? If so, why? And who said a Bible with errors cannot be inspired? Only verrbal pleanry inspiration says that but we've already noted that such a stance is naive.

Actually, these are not flaws in its foundation unless one holds that verbal plenary inspiration is the foundation of Christianity. The Bible is a foundation of Christianity in many circles with these "errors" known or recognized. I have not said the Bible is worthless by any means. Nor have I said it was not God's word. The Bible as qualititatively inspired can be a foundation just as it can under verbal plenary inspiration.

Yes, harmonizing plain errors is more honest than recognizing them as diversity within the canon

Christianity does not rest on verbal plenary inspiration despite any misinformation you have received. Errors in the bible do not rule it out as God's word either. Christianity is all about salvation and healing the wounds of existence.

That would make me a Christian who accepts natural inspiration. Of course, my specific form of qualitative inspiration, on a functional level, tells me the same info as would a qualitative inspiration stance so I don't really need to distinguish between these two. My understandings always start on a functional and existential level and work up from there. Not vice versa.


Vinnie

Vinnie

That was cute. But I never argued that so it doesn't apply