excreationist

critical thinking made ez:
I think you could do it.... you've just got to correct your thinking a lot.
e.g. if you find yourself scoffing at the idea of god, say to yourself "hey wait... I believe in God! What was I thinking!"
And if someone here talks about pretending to believe, think and say this: "Don't be stupid! I believe in God ok? Atheism is foolishness."
Then go to church a lot and when they say the creed ("I believe...") say it whole-heartedly. I usually feel guilty when I say it because I know it is a lie.
If you feel that you are lying to yourself, say to yourself "hey I REALLY believe this! This is the honest truth!" And say it with conviction, without any uncertainty or hesitation!
And every day you could reflect on the reasons why you DO believe in God - how he HAS revealed himself in the world.

Albert Cipriani

Dear EZ,
1) One cannot try to believe, rather, one can assume a belief that one is ambivalent about.
2) Fault is a moral deficit and no moral deficit is possible without volition. Ergo, if you failed there can be no fault for there was only volition to try, not volition to fail.

Congratulations on approaching the problem of God in a more creative, less binary, more human, less mechanistic, more experiential, less polemic way.

Since God is being, He is experiential more than formulaic. Tho He can be approached intellectually, and that has been my primary approach toward Him, He is most readily approached and found via experience.

Just remember how all of us learned the foundation to all that we know... by putting things in our mouths. Trial and error, that’s the inefficient by highly effect modus operandi we followed first in life. I'm glad to see you returning to it as a methodology. Just do us all a favor and avoid the dog dew! Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Echo

CTMEZ,

<In best John Calvin voice>

As a worthless, unregenerated sinner, your naturl state is one of such enmity toward God that you cannot freely choose to come to belief, thus God must first choose you and enable you to come to belief.

<end John Calvin voice here>

Oh well, this is what I learned at a Christian board when someone posed a question similar to yours.

critical thinking made ez

Faith is null if one uses "reasons" why one should believe. The same with seeing how he has "revealed himself" in the world. Each method is a form of proof therefore, faith can have no part in my belief. Sorry, you get an F in today's lesson on living by faith.

[ December 31, 2001: Message edited by: critical thinking made ez ]</p>

critical thinking made ez

Shame on you Albert, you read the lead in post and nothing more, I will have to have our resident nun wack the back of your hand with a ruler.

You also get an F for failure to understand how your intellectual approach to God nulls your ability to believe by Faith. You can not have both. Your admitance to finding a belief in Jesus via experience and intellecual methods prove you have no Faith.
Happy New Year anyway.

excreationist

1 Corinthians 12:3 - "Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit."

Anyway, just say "Jesus is Lord" and if you do this, then the Holy Spirit must have been involved. It's all about affirmations that are said with conviction - without any hint of doubt.

And don't just "try" to believe. You already DO believe, right? So you should do what believers do (since you ARE one) and talk to the LIVING God and read the Bible, etc.

Albert Cipriani

Tsk Tsk EZ,
You misread me in regard to my not reading the entire thread.

I read it all prior to posting, simply choose not to take your faith/proof bait. That's just too trite compared to you flirting with an experiential approach to God. -- Cheers, Albert

critical thinking made ez

Just got back from the new year's party and wanted to be the first to post in 2002 on EofG. Happy New Year Everyone. EZ

rainbow walking

Season's Greetings critical thinking made ez,
It sounds to me as if you are equivocating knowledge with proof. Certainly no one could be expected to believe something before they have some basis in knowing what they are asked to believe. Could I believe in purple pixies before I ever heard of purple pixies?

Now if you approached me with the idea of purple pixies and described them to me with expansive promises of what believing in them would do for me, would this TESTIMONY constitute proof? Hardly. I would have the choice before me of either believing your testimony or rejecting it.

Now if a purple pixie appeared before me faith would become a null hypothesis as I would have standing before me visual proof of purple pixies.

In the example you used about the woman who believed Jesus don't forget to take into consideration that to have had personal contact with Jesus likely meant she lived in the geographical area where Judaism was prevalent and had prior knowledge of a God concept so she wasn't operating completely in the blind.

You seem to be saying that genuine faith must be based on the minimum of knowledge of the idea or ideas upon which the faith is established. Faith is belief without PROOF but not belief without KNOWLEDGE of what to believe.

It would be extremely unreasonable to expect you to pluck the concept of God out of thin air and then believe.

It is less unreasonable to expect you to believe someone's personal testimony about God.

It is even less unreasonable to expect you to believe someones personal testimony, coupled with similar personal testimonies of many others about God.

And the reasonableness of expectation diminishes as each successive layer of "knowledge" about God is presented which is why each of these layers of knowledge are under constant examination and or attack by the more skeptical minded.

Now, since you have made an appeal to "belief" appear to be unmerited if it is attached to what you mistakenly label as "proof" I am compelled to present an example of one of the major reasons I have faith that there is a God.

I am 46 years old. In the course of my life I believe God has intervened on a number of occasions to spare my life. This gives the Old Testament concept of "salvation" its impetus. One such occasion stands out above the others in that it occurred before I had any belief in God and very little knowledge of a God. This incident occurred when I was seven years old.

There have been many cases of animals saving the lives of humans. Dogs that drug their masters from burning buildings or cars or from frigid waters or protected children from would be assailants or predators, but the incident that occurred in my case is stranger than fiction and hard to be believed that any dog could have exhibited such intelligence to even recognize the danger much less act upon it in the very limited time frame which was required to prevent me from being seriously injured or even killed. You be the judge.

As I said, I was seven at the time and we had just moved from the suburbs of a small city to the country. Now when I say country I mean country. I'm talking no indoor plumbing country and no neighbors for miles around...nothing but pines and pastures.

At seven I was very short and could easily run under the lowest limbs on the pines that grew in the area of the south east where I grew up. All I had to do was duck my head a little and could run through the woods with my dog Lad with ease, which is what I did every afternoon after school. I would grab up my toy M-1 and go to war against every imaginable enemy concieved by cartoons and comic books, running through the pines, head slightly ducked to avoid the lowest branches and shooting at will. My best friend usually acting as my scout running before me to warn me of any approaching alien or enemy.

It was during one of these missions to save the world that I came face to face with a situation that could have jeapordized my life immediately.

In the south we have these black hornets that build gray paper nests on limbs of trees. The nests are usually about the size of a basketball and house literally thousands of these viscious little critters.

Running through the pine forest with my head down to clear the lowest limbs meant I wasn't able to look strait ahead but was only able to look comfortably about two feet off the ground in front of me without straining my eyes to look any higher. I had no idea this could place me in danger. So here I was running as hard as I could shooting at the enemy and oblivious to the gray hornets nest hanging from the lowest limb of just another pine in a forest of them, but one that I was running fast towards a head-on collision with. A collision that would have certainly taken out the nest, angered the hornets and placed me in danger of my life. I was at least a couple hundred yards from my house.

Now my dog Lad was no stupid dog, being an English Shepherd and having been trained by a professional, he was very alert and responsive to all the basic commands. Being an only child he filled that hole in my life at that time and we were inseperable. But to say he had the comprehension to recognize my danger and act as he did without divine intervention is to ask a bit more than I can grant to any dog regardless of his training.

One of the reasons my dad brought Lad home was the assurance of his gentleness with children, an assurance that was not wasted as Lad proved to be one of the most patient and gentle dogs a boy could hope for. Except for this particular incident.

As I was buzzing along, head tilted downward, oblivious to my collision course with the hornet's nest, suddenly my gentle loving best friend was standing in front of me, legs spread and set as if ready to spring, teeth bared and snarling very convincingly at me. The effect this had on me was immediate. I stopped in my tracks and looked at him incredulously. Only, the moment I stopped he started wagging his tail, dropped his head and approached me submisively so I tentavely began to pet him and he just sat down beside me wagging his tail as if nothing had happened. For another moment or two I just stood there petting him and looking around to see if there was a reason for his strange behavior. I didn't even notice the nest just a few feet in front of me at first until I began noticing this buzzing sound on the tip of my hearing. Then I looked strait up and was shocked to find myself staring into the hole of a huge hornets nest right at chin level and in the very path that I was traveling in my pursuit of the enemy. Three more steps would have been disastrous if not fatal. In fact, I was so close to the nest that I realized the buzzing I was hearing was the sound of a half dozen hornets hovering menacingly around my head as I was almost blocking their path to the opening in the nest. I beat a hasty retreat.

I knew something special had occurred that day. I knew I had narrowly escaped great injury and that my dog had been the instrument of my escape. But it wasn't until years later that I began to realize just how unlikely it was that a dog would have, independently, been able to recognize the danger and react the way he did in such a brief instant of time. I don't even think a human could have done this.

I can see a dog being aware of the danger of water or fire or an assailant or predator...but of bees? How could a dog make such a connection between a hive of bees and the harm that could ensue to a human were the hive disturbed? Is that possible? I think not.

But this incident didn't lead to any religious conversion since no one was there claiming divine intervention. It's just that I never shall forget it and later, as I began to seriously consider the paths of my life, I realized that God had intervened that day through a dog to spare my life. The events were just too deliberate to have been coincidence and too extraordinary to have been natural. I have always felt a divine protection and have personally witnessed it on several occasions since then. That is why I have more than just belief...I have faith. And God has proven Himself faithful time and again. Of course, a skeptic will always seek an alternative explanation and usually find one.

For me, there is no alternative and one isn't necessary. This doesn't make me crazy, stupid, ignorant or foolish...just convinced.

critical thinking made ez

No I’m not. Knowledge is not proof, it is closer to the word “data”. Proof is knowledge with the added belief that it is either true or false or some other objective or subjective opinion associated with it. What you seems to miss is that “proof” can be true only in the mind of the person claiming X, while in fact, it is false or invalid, yet in the mind of the person it constitutes proof enough to believe XYZ. In your dog saving story the dog is X which allowed to then believe in YZ (Gods intervention and thus, existence). You believe that the dog was guided by God whereas I believe it was just instinct preprogrammed in the dog. You degree of proof and mine are different.

Yes, if you had Faith as detailed in the Bible, you could. That is my point here. Do you have faith that they can exist or will you need some type of “proof” or basis for the belief in Ppixies? If you do need something to base your belief on outside of faith, then your amount of proof and my amount of proof will most likely be different. Why should you believe in purple pixies with XYZ proof and expect me to also when I need XYZABC to believe. After all you didn’t believe with just XY or X or at no level of proof, that would have required faith.

The rest of your post only proves what I just described above. Your experiences in the story is the basis of your proof that a god exists. Therefore, you believe not by faith but by reasons you laid out plus, I’m sure many other reasons. Reasons and Experiences have nothing to do with having faith, although you mix the word into your story to make it seem to be the missing link between your reasons for belief and the unanswered question of the existence of God. This is a common mistake made by most all Christians.

The problem still exists that until all forms of proof are removed as a basis for Faith, an atheist can not be expected to believe in God since there is not enough proof (at least in the minds of the atheist)

The meaning of Faith can not be this “Missing Link Faith” most Christians have because most people would not find sufficient proof to every believe.

Therefore, the meaning of Biblical Faith must be the belief in something without regard to proof or having any other basis for the belief; nor can there be any prior knowledge about the subject matter, in other words it must be a true miracle from God to exist. And no Christian has this faith since they all were taught, lectured to, or studied the Bible, its doctrines, or concepts before believing. The new testament writers have painted themselves into an impossible corner on this faith thing. They should have left it out.

[ January 01, 2002: Message edited by: critical thinking made ez ]</p>