Why Are Christians Afraid To Doubt?

Crashfrog, I never said this. What would be the point of following a religion if I thought there was no preservation? Am I trying to stumble around in the dark here on purpose?I think that if your disdain for religion does not allow you to see the logic of another person's position, then yes, you should refrain from dialoguing with them. You have taken your stand. You have not shown that you are able to doubt yourself or think critically about the way another person has arrived at their conclusions. There is nothing wrong with saying, 'yes, this makes sense, but it doesn't feel right to me as a personal belief'.I think that all of the Christians here are willing to do this towards you folks. We are willing to see that you don't need to be a stark raving lunatic not to believe in God. We are willing to say that you don't have to be an immoral scoundrel as a result either.I for one will never, ever tell you that my faith has no logic to speak of. I can't answer for Phat or anyone else. Mystical experiences are beyond my experiences and may indeed defy logic. Yet, for a person to believe based on what they know of their own experiences, is not something that is is irrational.

Stepping outside of faith, no one 'knows' anything for sure.Within Christianity, the thought that you can never know anything of God or of salvation is a sin against Hope. It also makes God a liar. The Bible and Jesus teach that we can do things to merit salvation. If someone does not like the word 'merit' fine, we can be the benefactors of the grace of God.All we can do is follow to the best of our abilities. If we do this we have every reason to believe in our own salvation. We can not be presumptuous or self-righteous, but we must have hope and confidence. We must not feel that there is a heavenly lottery drawing.Doubting one's salvation is NOT productive. A very strong awareness of how easily we could lose it is not the same as despair in God's teachings. Are we doubting our own merit, or the promises of God? One leads to action, another to despair. It is important to distinguish.

The doctrines of salvation fall into that category of unknowable. I did not think we were discussing the known or the pretty well concluded. HOPE...1. A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.To sin against hope is to make God a liar. I thnk it is important before you become responsible for another's despair to clarify whether you are talking of distrust in God's message and promises, distrust in our own worthiness, or over-all doubt of the existance of the supernatural. 'You don't know if you are saved' is a big burden to put on an initiate or one of weak faith.

From the time of the ancient Israleites, to the New Testament and the song of Mary, there is a preservation of the promises and messages of God. I defy you to show me that these same beliefs are not held and remembered by modern Christians. Show me that no one remembers the promises of salvation, show me that no one believes in them, show me that these things are not 'really' remembered but only made up by countless sects.

No! I asked you personally. What do you WANT to see in order to believe? Does it take a million clones before you could believe in the possibility that one message is preserved? I believe the message of God evolves. It is revealed in due time. This does NOT mean that I am also believing that all messages are 'right' or that they are even from God. God allows people to be wrong. This has no bearing on whether or not He is preserving one message. Why? Why does the number of wrong answers rule out the right one? Oh my goodness, you have too many choices, poor thing. It's all about your own logic. To me, it is perfectly logical that a thousand messages would result from anything transmitted by God. If I saw nothing, then I would have to assume that this 'message' was inconsequential. To the contrary, you have many diffent sects and Bibles, and the similarities amoung those who believe, no matter WHAT Bible they use, is quite striking when put next to the differences. This gives credence to MY belief that God's message is living in people, not in books. This number of different people believing is also something which is found in the Bible, that all nations will be taught, and that all believers will not be found 'correct' at judgement. There are also any number of predictions that this message of God will appear lost, that all traces of faith will be wiped from the earth. When this happens, tell me again that there is no preservation. Don't act like I have never met an atheist in my life before this lovely group. I have had ample opportunity to review where my beliefs are concerning this. As far as incredulity goes, aren't you also guilty of 'I don't know how anyone could possibly believe in this junk?'. I'm only asking you to start finding that out 'how'. No, you don;t have to believe me, and I also see no reason to believe you. You have given no indication that your position is founded on anything 'real'. You have nothing to show except your own opinions. Tell me again that personal experience is relatively poor for getting at truth, and then that you don't 'believe' in a God because you have no personal experience of one.

The Latin Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims. Go look at some more if it pleases you. There is no difference in the message. Well then you are not looking. It is so obvious it is not even something I had to look for. Sure, 11,000 sects that believe in the God of the OT who revealed himself via Christ for the good of mankind. You are being obstinate, and exactly what I told you. You are not willing to see another person's perspective.

The Magnificat is a remembering of the promises of God to Israel and to Abraham. This 'message' of God is proven to have been preserved up to the time of the NT and even in our time.

Ok, so Catholicism has one Bible, one set of beliefs. Does that make this faith true? I can't promise you no war-fare unless I take away your right to think for yourself. A million people freely thinkng about a million stupid things proves nothing. You may want it to, but it doesn't. All it is proving is that we can still think up nonsense in spite of whatever is revealed. There is not static for everyone. No, only some god you are dreaming up. Why would I want God to make things so obvious? Don't you know I already believe that you must seek in order to find? You just want a quick fix perhpas. Maybe I didn't mis speak. Maybe you mis listened. All will not = not all will. I dodn't say 'none will'. So people can choose to believe? So you have proof that things are false which pertain to God?

I never said *I* am anything. I never even said that this straight 'dope' is observable to anyone. It is a belief. We believe that God is still working in humanity. We believe that those things which are necessary for salvation are still being revealed. You can't make that go away, no matter how many examples of confusion you invoke. My personal reception? OK. Go talk to GIA about that. Things are obviously NOT obvious to you, which are to me and to others. You still can't prove that your pessimism has anything to do with reality. If there is a message it is preserved. Your confusion doesn't make it go away, the world's confusion doesn't make it go away. That is what preservation is, isn't it? I don't know, do they?Who in their right grammatical mind would say 'all will not' when a nice simple word like 'none' exists?All (children) will not play ball today.Not all (children) will play ball today.If you think this is a fair substitute for;No children will play ball today.well, it isn't. Sure. But that has nothing to do with Christianity.

Duh.The point is that if there was no meaning in the words of the Bible for the Israelites, they would have stopped reading it. It wasn't called a Bible anyway.

If there is a God, and if He has a message, it stands to reason that the almighty God would be able to preserve the message. All I am asking for you to do is prove to me beyond any doubt that there is no message...regardless of whether you can see it. Just prove that too many choices = nothing. Luckily, I read with my eyes. I also find the many different sects quite fascinating, but the numbers still have nothing to do with the probability. The only thing they do is make it harder to find one message. They don't make it disappear. Contrarianism?
I don't know. I only know is that I can say 'all is not lost' and also 'all is not saved' and that most people will understand this even if it is not good grammar. It never has seemed to me that 'all is not lost' means that everything is intact. Well, you said people can believe things that they see with their own eyes and know to be false. This does not apply to Christianity. If it does, I don't 'see' anything that I know to be false.

There is that other possibility that you are wrong. There is that possibility that the words of God are living right under your nose. It's hard for you. It's not like a game of Telephone. It is like many. Actually, the more players playing simultaneous games, the more chance there will be that one team does get the message right. Unless, of course, it is proven that no game of telephone could ever be 'won'. Don't worry about where my fingers are. I don't believe you either, so there. I am sticking my tongue out at you, too. Anyway, water to wine...that would sound to anyone living a few centuries ago much more plausible than would evolution of species and a big bang, complete with life forming from non-life. Much more plausible than landing on the moon. What is the big deal about making water into another liquid? What is so ridiculous about being swallowed by a whale? There are much stranger things that happen every day. Yeah yeah. There is just one problem. You can't see the lines at all. You have no idea if they are long or short. You have no idea who is right or wrong. There is no one alive right now who can 'see' the lines at all. You are guessing. You have to wait until you are dead for the answer, sorry.Anyway, I only started this thing because I think it is fair to defend the poor folks who feel that the Bible is the Word of God from your pessimism. The Bible is a tool for the Living Tradition. If you doubt preservation of some message, take it up with the entire body of Abrahamic faiths.

Don't assume that everyone has your lack of discernment. Why? Why should your woulda coulda's have anything to do with what God does? Your intuition is not going to solve anything either. No one says that God has to preserve a message in every telling. He only has to preserve it once for it to be so. Besides, the 'Telephone' scenerio doesn't fit very well with Christian history anyway. You would have a picture where there was a pyramid game, the RCC and the Jewish people, a few others have been 'playing' the longest, and the vast majority of these other sects created a new message and started their own games. They are hoping that they have it right by accident.The honest and best way to 'play' is to do the good old Bible studies, the research into tradition, to look and compare through the ages in the way that PD and others will do.She will take the concept of 'surrender to God' as it has developed through the ages, and match it up to the Bible. If it fits, it does. The Bible conversely is 'fitted' to history. These are the things that Christians do every day. The purpose of this thread is to ask them what they do when they doubt that things 'match', and whether this negates their faith or negates reality for them.Your table example is not very mysterious. Because of the side view of the table, which includes a view of the thickness in both cases, one table will appear longer or wider. It is an optical illusion. It needs to go in a puzzle book, not a science class. Well, you can use it for either. Just remember that people who do puzzles, architects, artists, and such, are not going to be 'fooled'. The folks who are afraid to doubt their own conclusion even if they find out it is incorrect, are the brunt of this thread. We are a long way from there in Christianity. We have only to deal with YEC's and that ilk as far as 'proof' goes.Also, proving no message from God does not negate God. Ask the deists. So, maybe Jesus was a magician. That is just one direction doubt can go in. Calling you pessimistic is calling you a name? You called me full of 'contrarianism'! You tell me I have my fingers in my ears and eyes! Do you see me getting upset? If you want to tell me in grammatical language, (you know, with verbs and pronouns and adverbs and all of that), how my sentence was incorrect, I am not against learning. While you're at it, fix my placement of commas. If I say"We can not begin the party, because all (guests) have not arrived".I still don't see the problem. There is no implication that I am standing in an empty room.It is probably not the best grammar, but you have made me curious anyway.

No, no. I am not trying to know anything. It just gets boring to hear how 'God can't be real' because of YOUR personal logic. You must feel the same way when you hear someone say 'God MUST be real because of MY personal logic'. Every 'case' that is presented is just one possibility amoung many. There is no valid reason to say God needs to preserve 5 million copies of one message. There is no reason to say He can't, or He did, or He should, do anything. Thus all that we speak on this matter is personal opinion. It is not about who is right, but about accepting the possibility that we are wrong. I only try to state the possibilities fairly. I believe it is fair to note that there is no compelling reason to rule out a message.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.