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Author Topic:   Fullfilled Bible prophecy
Gilgamesh
Inactive Member


Message 91 of 92 (121110)
07-02-2004 4:26 AM
Reply to: Message 88 by Cold Foreign Object
07-01-2004 6:17 PM


Re: Stunning Prophecy Fulfillment
Hello Willow.
I can tell you are keen to bail, because your post contains mainly preaching.
Willow Wrote:
I am in no way surprised to hear that an atheist believes that "faith is independant of intellect." You could not be anymore wrong about faith residing in the "emotional realm."
Then why is everything to do with religion so emotive for the religious?
By faith, when we drive our cars, we believe the cross traffic will stop at the red light, and that they will stay in their lanes. This means the driver is acting upon a belief (cars will stop/stay in lane), and this belief is sustained by confidence that opposing traffic will obey the rules.
I don't really think this example proves your point, even before we do the dictionary thing which you hate.
I have a logical expectation that the other drivers are going to stop based on past experience, or evidence, if you will. In this sense that you are using the word: even science has "faith" because it proceeds on the basis of trust in past observations. Flying in a plane is therefor all about this sort of faith.
But is this the same use of the word as in the religious context? I think not.
When you guys talk about faith, you talk about belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence, or belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
By using two separate definitions of faith, you are confusing the issue. If you are talking about faith in the same way as I have "faith" in travelling in a plane, then by all means show me the basis on which I should have the same "confidence in the truth, value, or trustworthiness" of your God or religious beliefs.
Remember I will require the same standard of evidence that gives me confidence in knowing the plane will not (often!) crash.
To provide me with anything less is to require me to have belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. And as I have said, that is a poor thing to rely upon cause it will be far from trustworthy (and may get you killed)
Faith:
1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief. See Synonyms at trust.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
A set of principles or beliefs.
Faith Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
By this definition and example EVERYONE has faith.
Yea, but it's not the same sort of faith, is it? It is reasoned, logical faith based on past experience. Nothing like what Christianity asks you to have (how the heck could you have a reasoned logical faith in something (God) that you previously didn't think existed and presently have absolutely no proof of?).
God wants/demands the object of your faith to be a promise recorded in His word, and when a person makes a promise the object of their actions, belief, and confidence THEN He promises to manifest that promise and make it reality. The purpose of the Bible is to show mankind a source that contains one common denominator message: Good or bad whatever God says will come to pass. When it is ascertained that God will keep His word this is intended to supply the hearer/person with the BASIS to make God's word the object of their faith. When God's word becomes the object of faith the trusting one is assured forgiveness of sins and eternal life AND the hope of receiving the promise of whatever they are acting in faith for.
You have hit the nail on the head of the essence of the emotional conversion experience. In many fundamentalist churches, it works like this: the covertee is shown where in the Bible it is says that they can receive the Holy Spirit (and Speak in tongues, depending on the church). They have a conversion experience, which can often take many forms and may or may not include glossolalia. Either way they are told that this experience is the incoming Holy Spirit as spoken of in the Bible, therefor the Bible was true in this point it must be true in everything else; like where it says you have to come to church every week, pay us 10% of your earnings, convert or cease seeing your heretic friends, submit to the authority of the church etc etc.
This conversion experience is exploited to set off the whole process of belief. How does this conversion experience work...
The convertee will be subject to powerful persuasion, often in front of a large body of people, their family and partners, next to forceful charasmatic church elders, often in a physically vulnerable state (baptism requires you to often be in swimmers and completely wet) all pressuring you to perform. It is not disimiliar to those mass hypnotism shows like Martin St James (does he perform in the US) where people and be compelled to do silly things by Martin and the pressure of the deisire to perform/conform.
The humility you are requested to show to "God" is actually humility to the conversion process and those who are directing it.
But there is the additional element of an extreme appeal to emotion. Prospective convertees are usually emotionally vulnerable in the first place, and are sold an emotively appealing product: eternal love and life.
The conversion process often invokes an emotional breakdown, manifesting in laughter, crying, joy, relief: a whole plethora of emotions. If they are asked to repeat multisyllabillic words, particularly with multiple letter "l"s, like Allelula, or Praise the Lord, the reflex response of glossolalia can occur. This alone often bewilders people enough to make the feel as though something of religious significance has happened.
Of course, there is the occasional person for which nothing happens: they are pressured and pressured, and if there is no success told to continue to pray repeatedly over the coming days and weeks, enough until they soften up to finally submit at a future time.
As usual, there is no outcome, from which they will conclude that the experience is not valid. Something vaguely conversional is the Holy Spirit, and lack of such an experience is due to a fault in the convertee (lack of faith, humility etc etc).
So a convert is set up ripe from the outset to believe the Bible (or at least that particular churches interpretation of it) based upon the faulty premise of this promise manifest, as you, Willow, call it. And of course, most people know very, very little about the Bible, it's history and origins and are in no position to question it moving forward.
All of the above it purely an emotive experience, not intellectual. Emotively, the Bible is the word of God. Intellectually the Bible is an intruguing, but flawed non-unique arbitray collection of religious texts.
Emotionally Mathew was identifying fulfilled prophecy of the Christ as fortold in the OT. Intellectually is was just manufacturing prophecy through optimistic misquoting.
The most impressive thing out of this whole scenario is how people in ancient times identify the above formula for "enlightenment". But study of ancient history has shown me that we can easily underestimate the insight, knowledge and even the guile of our ancient ancestors. And besides, most the other relgions have impressive and successful conversion processes too.
Atheists are attaching themselves to persons who claim to be christians, persons who subscribe to secular worldviews while rubber stamping Jesus name and "teachings" onto it, do so while denying the content of the other 95% of the Bible. Very selective buthchery of Holy Writ in order to justify their clandestine atheist worldview
You have not sustained this point of view. Your emotional faith now declares that everbody, whether thay be Christian or not, who differs from you in their Biblical interpretation is now an atheist.
There is no risk or gamble involved at all.
It's a gamble with your time, money, emotional (and spiritual) energy and well as your mortal soul. Particularly if you risk all this on faith, in the spiritual sense of the word.
What you do not understand is the fact that faith has continual results.
This was the topic of another forum: Method of Madness, Post ad Reasoning and Confirmation Bias.
What you don't understand is that nothing different happens in the life of a Christian compared to the life of a non-Christians. Christians just interpret their world to comply with their belief that God is playing a role in it.
Initially, when a person receives the born-again conversion experience, this experience was the product of faith directed at Jesus.
This is that religious type of "faith" isn'it it? The belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence, or belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will. That's that type of faith you'd be foolish to gamble on.
When this happens they receive the product of their faith - Jesus Himself. He reveals Himself to them incontrovertibly by MIRACLE. When this happens you now know Jesus is alive and real and you have relationship with Him "in the Spirit".
I love this bit. Why then, if you get an incontrovertible miracle, and "knowledge" Jesus is alive and real and a tangible "relationship" do you constantly need to re-inforce this knowledge? What other knowledge that you hold to be true, in order to maintain it requires you to:
- Gather exclusively with others who believe the same
- Exclude exposure to material that contradicts that "knowledge"
- Sing songs and engage in other emotive rituals in support of it
- Constantly here some inane pastor drone on and on about it
- Use mental gymnastics to affirm your belief in it and avoid thoughts that contradict it
This isn't really knowledge is it? When I know something, like where I grew up, I don't need to confirm this knowledge on a daily basis. Vague faith, or hope, in something that is logically and intellectually unconvincing requires this sort of process.
John 14:21 And I/Jesus will manifest myself to him. The context of this promise is the gospel which is the new way to relate to God: exclusively by faith
A conversion process in Christianity gives you Jesus, and conversion process in Islam gives you Mohummad.
And why are we still calling it faith, unless it is in the religious sense? I wonder why don't you guys call it KNOWLEDGE...
Atheists cannot understand this for the life of them. They invent explanations of delusions and hallucinations and what not. This is the epitome of arrogance and ignorance.
I would be so abrupt towards Christians without first fully investigating their claims: that would be arrogance based on ignorance. I completely understand the conversion process and the mental gymnastics involved. Been there, done that.
Atheists make this conclusion because they cannot fathom a God to exist who does not want them. Therefore millions are crazy and a handful are sane.
Eh? But all Christians tell me that God loves me. Emotively that sounds pretty cool, intellectually, given the evidence, God's existence and the existence of his love is unconvincing and somewhat daft.
The millions are not crazy, just wrong. I will admit though, that it is the atheist that are evolutionarily abberant. Religiousity seems to be the norm, and it certainly helps produce more offspring.
The point is that while faith is eternal (you might not recieve all the manifestation of your faith here and now), faith produces results, which is God changing reality in accordance to your faith.
This stuff is getting nutty. It is more like you are changing your own perception of reality. A fairly perilous thing to do.
And, of course historically, faith has been an atrocious method of gathering correct knowledge.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I do not know what you are talking about here.
What has faith given us? An effective treament for epilepse? Astronomy? Modern medicine? Modern agriculture? A consistently applied method of justice? Modern transport? An effective basis for foreign policy? Anything???
The theist method is not seriously flawed IF God exists and the Bible contains His word.
Well it still is flawed because "faith" is going to give you very little chance to determine the one correct religion from the multitude of incorrect ones. Inronically if there was a true religion, and indeed a deity, our best knowledge gathering techniques which underpin science and technology are probably the best techniques to use to find it.
I don't exclude the possibility of a God in the vastness of the picture of the universe, science has laid out for it. Such a God ceratinly doesn't look anything like a Christian God, and it seems he doesn't really even give a dam about us little chemical anomolies in a tiny corner of the universe.
God only wants credit as the Creator, deny Him this (and they have) He removes the capacity to deduce His fingerprints in creation. Persons suffering this wrath cannot see the obvious: Intelligent Design. Romans pefectly explains this current God-hating scientific generation to be the product of His wrath of God sense removal.
What a petty jealous creature this God of your is.
Willow I've run out time this week.
The ONLY acid proof that the Spirit of God dwells within is the one activity that CANNOT be faked. I will only tell you if you ask
Tell me more about this, and I'll respond next week.
Sorry about the typos that I am sure are there, but have no time to look for.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 88 by Cold Foreign Object, posted 07-01-2004 6:17 PM Cold Foreign Object has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 92 by arachnophilia, posted 07-02-2004 5:23 PM Gilgamesh has not replied

  
arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 92 of 92 (121275)
07-02-2004 5:23 PM
Reply to: Message 91 by Gilgamesh
07-02-2004 4:26 AM


Re: Stunning Prophecy Fulfillment
Atheists are attaching themselves to persons who claim to be christians, persons who subscribe to secular worldviews while rubber stamping Jesus name and "teachings" onto it, do so while denying the content of the other 95% of the Bible. Very selective buthchery of Holy Writ in order to justify their clandestine atheist worldview
You have not sustained this point of view. Your emotional faith now declares that everbody, whether thay be Christian or not, who differs from you in their Biblical interpretation is now an atheist.
this is a standard fundamental christian view. i get it from other christians alot. it basically boils down to the assumption that only their specific sect or church of christianity is right, and everyone else is going to hell. of course, they've learned not to SAY that anymore...
do i have a "clandestine athiest worldview?" i guess by his definition, i do. i was raised as an athiest and a skeptic, and a militant one at that. when i was little, i wanted to be a paleontologist, and so i studied a lot of geology for a kid. i have a very good understanding of things like the geologic record, the age of the earth, evolution, and things of that nature.
when i converted to christianity as a teenager... what was i supposed to do? reject things i knew to be true, because some minister warned about the dangers of "evilution" and that we had to accept his particular interpretation of the bible to get into heaven? no, i know better than that. in fact, i know more archaeology and history than to allow me to believe the bible wholesale as the complete and inerrent word of god. it is impossible for me to look at any other view as anything but ignorant of the things i have learned.
i have studied the bible and its history, i know a lot of it has A LOT of problems. almost all of it was written with an agenda. for some portion of the new testament, that agenda is anti-semitic, and anti-woman. two views very obviously not contained in the old testament. paul even teaches things in opposition to christ's teachings. tell me, is it ok to reject these parts because they don't make any sense? because that's the book of john, parts of even matthew, and all of paul's letters. (and probably the histories too, i've never been interested enough to read them)
i understand that much of the bible has been subject to editting, re-writing, bad copying from original sources, hearsay recorded as history, bad translations, bad translations from bad translations, and wholesale removal of views that did not fit the church because they were too mystical or too jewish. is it ok then to take the good book with a grain of salt, and have the idea that it's subject to error? or does god's inaction in stopping this equate to his personal stamp of approval?
i understand that hebrew people fabricated much of their so-called history in favor of a mythical, moral teaching system. they borrowed stories from their neighbors. (including the creation story and the flood story. why are we arguing over babylonian myths?) the disregarded details in favor of more important allegorical agendas. is it ok to not take them literally then?
i take the bible pretty much as it was meant to taken, a guide to morality written, editted, and translated by men who were often very flawed and not always of the best intention. i try to find the true meaning, the good message buried within that. i think it's not me who's butchering holy writ, but those who would call it holy writ.
i'm not an athiest. i believe in god. and i'm a christian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 91 by Gilgamesh, posted 07-02-2004 4:26 AM Gilgamesh has not replied

  
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