"Evidence and Faith"

That's the problem.To science, it's "cause unknown yet". The cause might be discovered tomorrow and religion will have to retreat again.People of faith need to come to a better understanding of what miracles are. Miracles do not have to defy the laws of the universe.

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That's one way of looking at it.I've told this story before: Two of us were stranded miles from nowhere in the dead of winter. Five minutes after we discovered we were stranded, a friend came by (by chance) and rescued us. If we hadn't been stranded, he'd have missed us completely. If he'd waited till the next day, he'd have found us dead.Was it a miracle? I'm alive because of it, but no laws of nature were broken. So what if He didn't?

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No it doesn't.You mentioned the two Great Commandments yourself. They focus on what is seen - i.e what we do. Faith is no substitute for action. You can't "make good sense" if you reserve "miraculous power" as the fall-back position on every issue. "Goddidit" is the answer to every question, but it isn't a useful answer to most questions.If your pastor's air-conditioner doesn't work, do you say, "God doesn't want it to work," or do you try to figure out why it doesn't work?If he expects that kind of good sense from you in your professional work, why would he expect less in your spiritual work?

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Yes they are.You love God by loving your neighbour and you love your neighbour by your actions.
If there are no actions to be seen, there is no love. Can you show an objective difference between that fraud and the miracles that you claim to have experienced?

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I didn't say "always". But if the effects of our love are not seen, if there's no evidence of our love, how is the love "real"? As I've already said, I don't define a miracle as a violation of the laws of physics. I'd define a miracle more like a highly improbable event. I gave an example. Just out of curiosity, have you proven the gems "miracle" false? Can you duplicate the trick? In my example, if I believed that our rescuer was sent by God, nobody could prove that false.(Incidentally, "love" can easily be proven false: just look for the bruises.)

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That's kinda what I'm asking you. Why would God choose to "communicate" by defying the laws of the universe? Is He so insecure that He needs us to "believe" in Him? Should law-defying miracles improve our faith in Him?It seems to me that "miracles" are meaningless unless they have some practical, real-world effect - like saving somebody's life, or feeding somebody, etc.That is why I don't see the gemstones as a miracle: because they weren't used for any practical purpose. They were only held up as a miracle, as a sign of God's ability to break His own physical laws. That's the hallmark of a fraud.A "real" miracle would be a soup kitchen that never runs out of donations. God's love for us is the most subjective of all.

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Religious texts are pretty much worthless (except as literature).Religious texts may or may not be the source of somebody's faith, but the only evidence we have of their faith is their actions. People can claim all the faith in the world, but if they don't act, their "faith" is a sham.

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People are the only way to "measure" religion with any kind of objectivity. Peoples's actions are the evidence of their faith.

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That's what I'm saying: You can't see people's faith and you can't trust what they claim to believe. The only solid evidence we have about what's "inside" another human being is how he behaves on the outside. I couldn't care less about "converting" anybody to Christianity. (In fact, if anybody asked for my advice, I'd say don't convert to Christianity.)The only "conversion" that counts is an improvement in your behaviour. If you become a Satanist and treat your fellow man better, that's a good thing.

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As I said, I couldn't care less about the so-called "conversion". That's what I'm saying: The behaviour is what's noticeable. If the behaviour doesn't change, the "conversion" isn't real. Well, no. We can't look at Jesus, because He isn't here - at least not in any visible way. The only thing we can "look at" is His representatives.

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Why not?If people follow wrong teachings, don't the teachings (and the teachers) bear some responsibility?That's why I've been saying that the only way you can tell what's on the inside of people is by how it's reflected on the outside. You can't see the teachings themselves - you can only see the results of the teachings. You can't see the religion itself - you can only see the results ofthe religion.

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Suppose somebody does X and claims that the Bible teaches X. If X is wrong, then the teaching of X is wrong too.You can't just claim that X is not what the Bible "really" teaches. That's just one example.Look at the persecution of homosexuals. Some people claim that the Bible teaches homosexuality is wrong, and they use that "teaching" as an excuse for persecution, like denying the right to marry.There's your bad fruit.Is people's interpretation of the Bible wrong? Or is the Bible just wrong about homosexuals?

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But how do you know that the Bible isn't wrong?If people who believe in the Bible do wrong, how do we know whether their interpretation is wrong or the Bible itself is wrong? "Science" can't make mistakes. It can't be "bad". Science is a method.What I've been talking about is the methodology of deciding what's right and wrong. If you decide right and wrong based on a book, you're letting the authors of that book make up your mind for you. It doesn't matter whether or not you let some Holy Spook tell you what it "really" means. You're still parking your brain at the door.We can assess the usefulness of the book based on how believers in the book behave. If they do what is clearly wrong, and they do it because the book tells them to (or the Holy Spook tells them to), then we can conclude that the book (or the Spook) is wrong.

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Not at all. It's exactly the same issue. If people do wrong, it could be caused by them misinterpreting their source or by their source being wrong.It's back to simple logic: If the conclusion is wrong, it could be because the reasoning is wrong or because a premise is wrong. You could study it for eleven lifetimes and if it's wrong you still won't learn anything from it. I don't think it has anything to do with "getting closer to God". I think it's about getting along with our fellow humans.For that matter, I don't think it's about what's right or wrong "in the eyes of God" either. It's about what works in our day-to-day lives with our fellow humans.All this "getting closer to God" mumbo-jumbo isn't very productive. Not at all. You want to claim that the "good" end of the spectrum comes from the Bible but the "bad" end comes from misunderstanding the Bible. Somebody else might say that the "bad" end comes from the Bible.Since there is a braod spectrum of behaviour among believers, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Bible doesn't determine anybody's behaviour - i.e. it isn't useful for molding behaviour. I used to think like you. I was about fourteen at the time.

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No. I've used the word "or" ever since I introduced the possibility of the Bible being wrong in Message 189. I never disagreed with that point either. I only brought up the additional possibility that the text itself is wrong. Not at all. No. That's just more mumbo-jumbo. The only way you can "know" what other people "see" and "understand" is by their actions. You have no way of knowing whose ear God is whispering in. You seemed to be crediting the Bible (and the Holy Spirit) with people's good behaviour but exempting it (and the Holy Spirit) from responsibility for their bad behaviour.Some people who read the Bible (and listen to the Holy Spirit) have good behaviour but some people who read the Bible (and listen to the Holy Spirit) have bad behaviour. So it seems that neither the Bible nor the Holy Spirit is a reliable source of good behaviour.Once again, we can only know about people's "hearts" by the deeds that they do. There's no clear correlation between "goodness" and having the Bible in your heart or the Holy Spirit in your spleen.

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