The Marketing Of Christianity

My point of course is that Jesus prayed. You seem to minimize the importance of prayer. Some believe that prayer gets more done in certain situations than can be done through lifting that barge and toting that bale.

The text clearly says that Stephen was a man filled with the Holy Spirit. You seem to dismiss this whole idea that a person can and does undergo a dramatic transformation. I have seen personal evidence to the contrary. So I am assuming that you believe much the same about any claim that dramatic transformations happen...even today. By dramatic transformations I am talking of being Born Again. You claim that it is a marketing tool and not an actual fact. Am I correct?

I would argue that it is not just a matter of starting to do things----anybody can be a do-gooder. The argument that I am making is that there is a transformation in ones life before they really want to do things. Unless they are a liberal humanitarian, of course...in which case they are taking up a cause rather than being transformed.Oh and one more thing. You say that I would agree that GOD performs miracles through people as they do for others...my only caveat being that God uses transformed vessels rather than just eager humanitarians.Edited by Phat, : added point

No one knows in the critical thinking and reality-based logic of daily life since there is no evidence and one would be right to always question what they perceive. But if you were to take an informal poll, most would say that one just knows. The fact that you never knew or claimed to know is telling. Why are you different from the other believers? Are you too busy questioning your beliefs to ever accept any tentative answers? Are you saying--as you always have--that no one can ever know such things? I think its because you have never thought it possible to have any sort of relationship with GOD. You have always been too busy simply doing for others to give any thought or concern whether you were communing with GOD. Maybe you have always believed that YOU were responsible and that GOD being there communing with you was too silly a thought. Comments?

Not everything can be proven through evidence but this does not make it fantasy.

The still small voice. CS Lewis called it the Moral Law.

Mere Christianity writes:

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We all know what it
feels like to be prompted by instinct-by mother love, or sexual instinct, or
the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act
in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of
desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd
instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that
you ought to help whether you want to or not.

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Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires-one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which
should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say
that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note
on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard.
The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.

Granted, Lewis does not say that this is found only within Christians.

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Mere Christianity writes:

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Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the "right" notes and the "wrong" ones. mEvery single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.

Lewis never mentions burritos, though if one only felt this way after eating one could be a test of sorts, I suppose.

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain "
~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith

Lewis seems to think we break the rule all the time. Thus Lewis supports the idea that we often(if not always) fail to do what we should do.Lewis then supports my quote about chance being a myth. Regarding the law of right and wrong...even though we usually disobey it is there any chance that we won't? Does chance even enter into it??

If you would rather believe in chance over certainty, I might have to pray for you more often!

Lewis was not an ignorant man and he explained the plausibility of Christianity much better than chance explains why we are the way we are. So whats so incredulous about that?

aside from scoring points in this argument, what do you really think of CS Lewis? What about Simon Greenleaf?

I've never heard that version. Yes. His most famous book was The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by The Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice I never read where he founded the school either. All that I have read was that he was well educated in law.

Of course. Legal standing does not require physical evidence if adequate eyewitness testimony is found. What else do you want us to know?

Yes. There has been some controversy over Greenleafs conclusions. This critique is found here. Critique of John Warwick Montgomery's Arguments for the Legal Evidence for Christianity Packham essentially concludes that the Gospels were made up. Of course nearly all modern Christian apologists will deny this to be their conclusion, but if we assume that the stories really were just stories told round a campfire, does this impact our belief in any way? You may argue that the tales still have value...but I would insist that Jesus be who the Nicene Creed says He is and not some made up character like Long John Silver.Of course, if your conclusion that all humans are alike and none are chosen or special is true, perhaps we better go with your conclusions in your belief statement.I'll say one thing, though. The view that you defend (and which ringo largely agrees with) is not found anywhere else that I have found. People whom I have met are either believers ascribing largely to Pauls marketing and an inerrant Bible or they are atheists like Tangle who refuse to entertain anything unproven by evidence.If anything, these conclusions strengthen my faith that God will help me to be stronger rather than weaken it.

Nothing. I am just saying that in the course of my limited exposure I have never seen anyone else that believes quite like you do.I expect people like Tangle to deny that God (or even Jesus) ever existed. What I'm not used to is a person such as yourself who agrees with the evidence that atheists use in critical thought and evidence and yet still believe.Are there any notable people that you can think of that believe that Christianity is about what one does and that everyone on the planet is free from damnation without need of a belief in a messiah?

There you go preaching chance again!

quote:

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I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act. ~Buddha

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If that quote attributed to Buddha is correct, Christianity is in fact based on what we do.