christ-on-a-stick

davidH,

On Eric's "Why Not Believe?" thread we had the following exchange:

You wrote: Trust me on this one - if you truly seek God with all your heart you will find him.

To which I replied, Care to explain why that didn't work for scores of us here???

And you said,

I put it to you - answer this sincerely if you can.

"Was your whole heart devoted to finding God?"

And I said... YES.

For many years, you have no idea how earnestly I sought God... prayed and read the Bible DAILY, went to church several times a week, read all the Xian literature I could find and on top of all that, spent countless nights praying, begging, crying & pleading for God to make himself real to me.

Vain protestations to an empty sky.

As you might imagine, there is almost nothing more insulting than being told "you weren't REALLY seeking" (as I have been by family members) when the aching pain of wanting desperately to feel God - and getting only stone silence - is still fresh in my mind.


I wanted to start a separate topic for you to address this so that it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Several others on that thread responded that they, too, had "devoted their whole hearts to finding God", yet are now atheists. Even a cursory overview of the "Atheists' Testimony" thread shows countless examples of ex-theists here who have spent years of their lives "seeking God" only to come to the conclusion, many times to their severe disappointment, that he didn't exist to be found.

In light of your previous "assurances", what is your explanation for this???

Muad'Dib

I heard a Christian observe once that "It's not wise for a human to make promises on behalf of God."

I don't know if that's helpful to this discussion, though.

Rhea

I'm interested in an answer to this, too. It's always been a puzzle to me. How can they read those accounts without feeling the honest yearning? How can they call those testimonies lies? Beats me.

markstake

I'm glad this made it into another thread, since I wanted to answer, but didn't want it to get lost in all the pages of the other thread.

Christ-on-a-Stick wrote:
Because you weren't willing to delude yourself! If you were really searching hard enough for God, you would have found him whether he was actually there or not! So, as was suggested, you weren't looking hard enough.

Anyway, you wanted davidH to answer, so I'm just butting in and agreeing with you. Sorry.

But I have my own question for davidH, which I think is on topic for this thread:

Why should we be looking for God, when what we really want is truth?

christ-on-a-stick

Markstake asks, An excellent point and definitely germane to this topic.

For those theists who ask - I would ask,

"Is your whole heart devoted to finding reality, even if that means giving up your belief in God?"

I've actually had one theist (my grandmother) admit that there is *nothing* that could convince her that God doesn't exist because she doesn't WANT to - she said that even if it could be proven that he isn't there she would still choose to believe because "her life would have no meaning otherwise".

Very sad. LOL! You can butt in and agree with me anytime.

Rhea, Just think of the implications it would have for their worldview if they were to accept that so many HAVE in fact earnestly sought, but not found.

Jack the Bodiless

How would davidH address Christian presuppositionalists such as theophilus, who apparently believe that looking for God is the wrong approach: that you have to assume that God exists?

Ab_Normal

How do we politely ask davidH to address this topic? He's at it again in Eric's topic:

(emphasis added) I'd really love to know how he justifies this statement.

beastmaster

Ah, but did you try self-flagellation? Fasting in the desert? Beating your head with a flatboard?

I sense your devotion to the search for god fell short.

Talulah

I am dealing with this now on another board I am being told that obviously I didn't seek hard enough, didn't trust enough, didn't do it the RIGHT way.

The only thing I can say is that they HAVE to say this. They have no other choice, because to admit that people have tried as hard as they did, leaves them open to two serious problems.

1.) It could happen to them. I believe that all Christians have doubts about whether God is really out there and if he really listening. They are terrified to let those doubts out of the dark hole they have pushed them in.
2.) It contradicts the teaching in the bible, the whole 'knock and the door will be answered, seek and ye shall find, ask and it will be given unto you.' We knocked, sought and asked and still came up empty handed. In their minds, the ONLY anwser can be we didn't do it right.

christ-on-a-stick

Afraid? Afraid???? AFRAID??????
(Hmmm... can you tell that irks me ever so slightly???) Hey, 2 out of 3 aint' bad!!!! Actually, kidding aside, I did fast a couple of times. As far as self-flagellation goes... does doing it mentally count???

Talulah, I agree with this and your 2 following points 100%. I see it as a classic example of circular reasoning - "The Bible says it will work. It didn't work for you. You must be lying/deluded. Because the Bible said it would work!!!"

:banghead: