luvluv

Jobar:

All right. But even in your own case, the fact that your mind occasionally fools you is not evidence that there wasn't something external to your mind communicating with you on those occassions when what your "mind" told you it was true.

Basically, this is all question-begging. You are operating on the assumption that God does not exist, and interpreting all your data from that standpoint. I am operating on the assumption that God does exist, and from there it is not too hard to believe He talks to people. But the bare fact which is in contention is one which we neither of us have conclusive evidence for. You have faith that what appear to be external "signals" in your head are actually internal workings of your own mind. I have faith that what appear to me to be external signals are actually external signals. And never the twain shall meet.

emur:

I don't believe that the Hindu hears from the Christian God. I bellieve the Hindu believes from the one God who actually exists. I believe that God is the one revealed to me through the Christian religion. In the end, I may be wrong. But I KNOW that there is SOME God, and I believe that the God that is revealed through Christ is the best one going, and I believe I can make an effective case for that.

Lewis has argued that all other religions are actually effective groundwork for the Christian religion, and he notes that the success that the Christian message has when in direct opposition with every other faith in a head to head meeting is evidence of the superiority of the faith. In general, when Christianity and any other religion are able to freely compete in the open marketplace of ideas, Christianity will win out overwhelmingly. God, apparently, speaks out to people more forcefully through the Christian message than through any other message.

Further, I don't see any reason why God should deny someone who sincerely calls out to Him simply because they call out the wrong name. If a person is truly seeking the love, forgiveness, and aid of the Higher Power, even if they are calling out in ignorance, I can't see any reason why God would not respond. If you came upon a hungry, confused, desperate child, and this confused child called you by someone else's name, would you help this child or not?

I think you may see religion as in all times and all places being primarily about knowing what is true and what is real. But oftentimes it is the role of God merely to help those who ask for it and to be merciful to those who ask for mercy, and to have a relationship with those who want a relationship with Him. The doctrines are less important.



IMHO, she is hearing from the one God, in all lilkliehood. You are actually asking questions which, while they are completely answerable, would take up significant space to address. Maybe you can start another thread?

Well I'm involved in apologetics because I think the Christian viewpoint is the true one. The fact that I believe God speaks to me has little to do with it. I don't generally use it apologetically, and in fact I believe this is the first time I have discussed it on this forum. I believe God has lead me in this direction but I do not claim that I ever heard a booming voice from heaven saying "Thou shalt be an apologist". It is something I am interested in doing, something I believe I am capable of doing, and something that I actually enjoy.

In addition, this is a misconception of the apologist's role. An apologist does not speak to people of other faiths, or those who have never heard the faith. That is what a missionary does. An apologist speaks to people in his own culture who have lost faith. I'm more likely to encounter a person like you in my dealings, who doesn't think God speaks to them at all, than to speak to a committed Muslim or Hindu. That calls for other gifts than those given to the apologist.

Well, again I would refer you to my statements above. That they call God by His proper name is probably less important to God than that they establish some form of a relationship with Him on some terms. His love for them and His desire for a relationship with them is primary over their ability to have totally accurate information about Him. Further, that doesn't seem to be an actual problem whenever people already committed to one faith are actually exposed to Christianity. They generally recognize Christianity as the truer faith.

I can see why you would think it was a problem. But it's easy for me, at least, to see how God could give anyone who calls out to a higher power some manner of contact with Himself, and then be able to offer a much higher level of confirmation when they come in contact with a higher, more accurate truth. I can also see why He would do so. We can discuss this further in another thread if you want.

Clutch:

This is still an irrational belief, from the evidentialist's view, because you do not have evidence that my specific claims are false. Your only option is to remain in doubt of my claims; to declare them false would require evidence contrary to my claim. You SHOULD doubt me, but you seemingly cannot resist making the further step... a leap of faith to the positive claim that my beliefs are false. This betrays an irrational disdain for the propriety of evidentiary support.

No, sir. If you hold that no one should believe anything without evidence, then all you can justifiably do is to doubt, yet withhold judgement. Any further conclusions would involve fallacious reasoning and/or be acts of faith. Any argument you could construct to arrive at a logically assured negative conclusion from the facts I have given you would be fallacious.

If you doubt that, try forming one.

Where is your evidence that this is the case? I'm trying to get you to understand just how many biased presuppositions which are themselves baseless that you are bringing into this discussion. So far, I don't have any reason to believe that the other claims of supernaturalism from which you are basing your inference are not ACTUALLY FALSE. My impression is that you believe every case in your inferrential sample is false only based on an inference to all other claims of supernaturalism within your inferrential sample and NOT BASED ON INDEPENDANT EMPRICAL EVIDENCE THAT EACH CLAIM WAS ACTUALLY FALSE.

You have to establish, scientifically, that each of the other cases was actually false. You would have to establish that with evidence. THEN, you would have to prove that my claim was similar to those claims. THEN you could have a justified BELIEF that my claim was mistaken. AND EVEN THEN THE ARGUMENT WOULD BE FALLACIOUS, in this form:

1) All claims of supernaturalism that I have investigated have been shown to be false.

2) Luvluv has made a supernatural claim.

3) Therefore luvluv's claim is false.

That's fallacious all day long.


There's one very good reason to believe that you are disposed to reading too little into events. You don't believe in the supernatural. You are a committed atheist. Quite often we cannot see our biases, but you sir are biased. You can believe in a hot hand without believing in God. But you certainly cannot claim indifference to the claim that God talks to me. I would assume that as an atheist you would be biased against my claim from the outset and predisposed to believing it to be false.

Biff the unclean:

Can you prove they are my thoughts? If God exists, do you think it is impossible for Him to talk to me? Can you prove God doesn't exist? Otherwise, aren't we jumping the gun a little bit?

By the way, totally backhanded apology accepted.

Baloo:

Little remembered fact around here: Abraham didn't actually kill the kid. The voice that told him to do it, told him to stop. It also told him it would bless him. And It did.

Ooops! My bad! We're only supposed to believe that the BAD parts of the Bible actually happened. Please forgive me.

Sure. Makes me nervous too. What are you gonna do? <shrug>

SRB

How come the Christian God fails in his attempts to make himself known to the typical Hindu? It borders on incoherence to suppose than an omnipotent being might fail. Or is it the case that God wants his identity (as the Christian God) to remain hidden from the Hindu?

The playing down of the importance of doctrines hardly squares with Christianity. If doctrines don't matter much, then why did God reveal himself through the Bible, and why did he order a worldwide missionary effort to "make disciples of all nations"?

If God’s role is to help people, then how come he is so often silent when people need help and ask for help? Is it really true that anyone who needs help, and has prayed and received no discernable help, is somehow dishonest?

SRB

luvluv

SRB:

These two have a conjoined answer, which is in my view that of free will. When at all possible, I think God prefers to send messages through people rather than directly, because direct messages could interfere with a person's freedom to respond. God does generally directly reveal Himself as an inner witness when a missionary reveals His plan to the Hindu. Christianity does very well in Hindu countries. But I can see why God would not want to pop out of the sky and declare Himself to every Hindu who prayed, because that would put a coercive spin on their conversion. One isn't likely to deny an omnipotent Power, even if it wanted to, out of self-preservation. However, one has the opportunity to hear a truth, and God can confirm that truth gently and inwardly, while making the choice to accept or reject a relationship with him a free, live option.

I am one of the people who does not think that Jesus message were as important as his death on the cross. His sacrifice was probably the primary reason why He came, and this notion is echoed in Paul's writings. The Christian message overall, if you look in the writings of Paul and the apostles especially, is more about what Jesus did than what he taught. The most important fact of the Christian religion is that Christ's sacrifice redeemed us. This is true whether we believe it or not, just as it is true that you no longer owe your rent if someone else paid for it. However, it won't help you if you don't know it. You'll keep working and trying to pay for something that's already been paid for. In the same way, Jesus has paid for all of the sins of humanity, and IMO everyone one day will get a clear chance to hear, understand, and accept or reject this fact. (Either here or, in the case of those who have not heard, in the hereafter).

So, it seems consistent to me.

More likely impatient, or mistaken. Or what they ask for is not actually for the best. There are lots of possible answers. Your question is a little broad. Who are these people you speak of, anyway?

I want to help everyone understand everything as well as I can, but it would sure help me out if we stuck to some kind of topic as opposed to you folks expecting me to answer every question everyone has ever had about God.

Philosoft

This is an odd way for God to employ "free will." If we assume humans are flawed message-bearers (a safe bet), God is essentially saying, "the most important part of your decision is whether or not you, flawed human, choose to believe what another flawed human tells you." This doesn't seem right.

Jesus' death has always seemed like some sort of reverse hostage negotiation.

"Okay, all of you are sinners and all of you deserve to be punished, BUT, if you'll kill this physical part of me, I'll let you all go."

emur

Posted by luvluv:
But the Hindu hears from some God, and if you believe God exists and communicates, then that God is "the" God. "The" God then is just understood differently by different religions.

It's odd to me that God communicates to people of other faiths, but doesn't communicate to them that Christianity is the best one going, if it is the best religion out there. I mean, God seems to have made himself/whatever pretty clear to you.

Really, it is just your subjective opinion that Christianity is the best religion. I'm sure others believe their religion is the best.

I would like to see this statistically. It's not the case in Japan.

I don't know about the name being wrong, but I am glad that you at least expand God's love and communication beyond Christianity, assuming God's existence and intervention.

In seminary I was taught that the evangelist (missionary) focuses on those outside the faith with the hope of bringing them into the church; the apologist defends the faith from opposing views (including other religious views) from outside the church; and the polemist argues for the "true" faith within the church. It would seem that your outreach with apologetics would be a subset of the whole plus some form of evangelism to bring those who lost faith back in. Assuming, of course, that I was taught correctly.

And you know this how?

I think this question is germane to this discussion - You believe that Christianity is the best religion, but is it necessary for matters of eternity?

Mel

SRB

Hindus have no choice to have a relationship with the Christian God, because they are unaware that he exists. To be put into a position where they have such a choice, they would have to first be made aware that the Christian God exists. People become more free when they are made aware of basic truths about the world. Ignorance hinders freedom. If God existed, the proposition "God exists" would be just such a basic truth, and God could enhance everyone's freedom by making everyone aware of it. I suspect that you have mistaken ideas about the role free will plays in belief formation. For most people, the will plays no role at all in what they come to believe. Instead, they are caused to believe things by the evidence before them. People cannot generally control what they believe by willpower, and rational people cannot do it at all. So it would not harm anyone's free will for God to make people aware of basic facts about the world. [If such a thing were harmful, we would not send our children to school.]

If getting out Jesus' message was unimportant, then he would not have begun the Great Commission, which was aimed at converting the world to Christianity. Nor would Paul have said that God wants all men to be aware of the truth (i.e. the truth of the gospel message).


If God always does what is for the best regardless of whether we ask him, then why bother asking him? Presumably we can never persuade him from doing what he already knows is for the best whether we pray or not, so asking God for help seems like a waste of time.

Sometimes people in dire situations pray for God to save their lives (e.g. children facing a natural disaster), but yet they die anyway, often in pain. Is it for the best for children to die prematurely, and painfully, in natural disasters?

SRB

luvluv

SRB:

I've participated in extensive threads on this topic before, and I am not going to get into one here. It would take 8 or 9 pages of discussion to explore this issue, and I'm sorry but I'm just not up for it. Search the archives under free will or divine hiddeness and you'll likely turn up threads where I've attempted to reply to some of your questions. I'll briefly say all I am going to say about this issue in the following paragraph.

Direct perception of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God, who watched and judged your every action, and who would punish you eternally for your wrongs, and reward you for every right, would be a coercive element that would force us to do what He wanted out of fear and/or self-interest. If He directly informed us about his omnimax attributes in an undeniable way everytime we asked, we could hardly fail to do what He demanded whether we wanted to or not in order to avoid punishment. But our decision to obey Him would have nothing to do with loving Him or trusting Him. But if we are able to know these things by faith, then we are allowed some greater measure of choice in forming a relationship with Him. It is not the result of direct coercion.

I can see of no way that God could reveal Himself to every Hindu without incurring a coerced response.

Anything more, you'll have to check the archives. Not to be mean, but there's only one of me and I can't answer all these questions everytime someone who missed the last conversation asks me. Not when it involves a 9 page conversation.

I never said it wasn't important. But if you asked Paul which was more important, Christ's teachings or his death and ressurection, what do you think he'd say? (Hint: The correct answer is available in First Corinthians)

You know, prayer is not just about asking for things you want God to give you. He ain't Santa Claus. Prayer is primarily a form of communion with God, of talking to Him and spending time with Him. Petitionary prayer, (asking God for stuff) is only a small part of what constitutes the phenomenon of prayer. If you're only interested in God so far as he can give you what you want, then you will probably be disappointed.

But I believe that while it is true God will not give you anything that is harmful even if you ask for it, He at the same time will not act on your behalf UNLESS you ask. Free will, and all.

This certainly could be the case. It is consistent with the Christian view of the afterlife that the child could be better off in the next world than in this one, and it is possible that her painful death on earth could influence someone still here towards some great endeavor. In the end, this situation would in the aggregate be better than what preceded it.

You might not like the answer, because you assume there is no afterlife. But you asked me if it was possible, so as a person who believes there is an afterlife which can compensate for the hurts endured here on earth, I would say that it is certainly possible that even what seems to us to be terrible circumstances can in reality be for the best.

Biff the unclean

Can you prove they are my thoughts? If God exists, do you think it is impossible for Him to talk to me?

Voices can be heard through the ear or in your imagination. If the voice didn't come through you senses then it came from your own brain.


Little remembered fact around here: Abraham didn't actually kill the kid

I think the most frightening part in the Bible is the story of Abraham. Not his life story which is a laundry list of psychotic episodes that culminate with the attempted murder of his own son. There have always been mentally unstable people. IMO the most frightening part is the people around Abraham. These people lived in a time and place that was awash in ignorance and saturated with superstition to a degree that is almost inconceivable today. Not only didn't they recognize severe mental illness when it was being tragically played out in front of them they thought it was something admirable. No, Isaac wasn't stabbed. Jewish folklore says that he didn't see the angel but ran home, got his stuff and left for parts unknown without stopping to say goodbye to Sarah. The Bible says that Abraham rustled somebody's livestock and slaughtered it without their permission.

Abraham created his own evidence. Only he heard the voices. How the rest of his tribe saw this happening and did nothing is beyond me.

Clutch

luvluv, there's no polite way to engage your last comments line-by-line. So let me just recap the things I have actually defended, as opposed to the various views you seem to have confabulated on my behalf.

1) You claim to detect, by personal experience, the influence of a god in some events in your life.

2) There is a large and empirically well-founded scientific literature demonstrating the propensity of people to read significance into chance events, and excessive significance into non-chance but simply explicable events.

3) My knowledge of this literature constitutes powerful (though of course defeasible) inductive warrant of the sort universally employed in science, to conclude that you are mistaken about the significance you claim to detect in these events.

4) While it is conceivable that I am somehow biased against the detection of divine influence in my life, there is no large and empirically well-founded scientific literature demonstrating the propensity of people to read too little significance into events.

5) Hence, while I certainly would not rule out the possibility, you have no comparable grounds for believing that I am mistaken in not seeing divine influence in the events of my life.

Amergin

What region of the brain is fear in?

The best evidence is that it is centred, controlled by the amygdala. Information is processed by visual, auditory, and tactile association areas, connecting to the Limbic (Emotional brain) temporal lobes and hippocampi. The amygdala takes that an alerts autonomic centers for increasing respiratory and pulse rate, pupillary dilation, hyper-alertness, tonic effects and increased blood flow to muscles for fight or flight.

When you fear something, do you recognize that it is only a "brain state" and then keep on walking right out into traffic?

Hopefully not. Your brain is complex and it processes data faster than any computer. Your normal reaction is to "obey" your limbic lobe and not resist your amygdala's signal to "put on the friggin' breaks you gomeral."

Or does it occur to you that God (or Nature) might have outfitted us with BIOLOGICAL hardware IN OUR BRAINS that might actually correspond to a reality OUTSIDE OUR BRAINS.

This is near the end of the article I posted. It is like the chicken or the egg argument. This complex circuitry has been well mapped in at least suprficial detail. We know that it "allows" the experiences, by inhibiting certain brain lobes and stimultating others. Does that mean that man created God in one of these expeeriences? Perhaps it contributed to the creation of god along with other factors such as seeking explanations for physical phenomena, and desire for immortality. That is my personal view. But the opposite is equally tenable. That is that God directed evolution to produce this set of circuits as a "telephone to God" (sounds like an American Country Song.) Perhaps those of who don't experience mystical states are too rational and suppress them. It is an open question. My bias is if this is God's outside contact then it is some generic god. That is because not only Christians experience them. All religions do, and the person experiences their own cultural religious figures.

I sure hope so. The brain is where I do most of my thinking! If my spirutal feelings happened outside of my brain, I'd have trouble putting them to any use!

Everything that you experience must be via the brain, and that includes god communication.

Newsflash: EVERY experience you have stimulates some part of your brain. Fear can be faked with chemicals and electricity the same as "religious experiences". Do you believe therefore that all incidents of fear are "all in your mind" and that you can ignore what they "appear" to be pointing you towards? Like that oncoming truck?

I don't think so. If I see a truck, I will know that the fear is in my head but I will bloody well get the feck out of the way. Just like fear can be mimicked by LSD and other chemicals, religious hallucinations can also be produced by LSD, mescal, and other stuff illegal outside of Netherlands.

Why, exactly, wouldn't God make our spiritual senses rooted in our biology? If the brain state of "fear", which is just a chemical and neurological signal, can actually be a response to something outside of the brain, then why exactly can't feelings of "faith" located somewhere inside the brain, actually be corresponding to something outside the brain?

They can. I am not denying the possibility. My view is that the mystical experiences are real neurophysiological-neurochemical states. It is just that I think the visions or auditory events of Gods, angels, virgin marys, Muhammad, Brahma, Vishnu, The Great Raven, the Manitou of the Cree are part of the experience related to which religion in which you are indoctrinated. It may be that God doesn't care what you call him or how you see him/her. Or it is like I think it is.

Amergin