Charismatic Chaos

Sheesh Phat. Why do you keep posting such silly, silly stuff.If something is supported by sufficient evidence then I accept that it is supported. Only the conmen and snake oil salesmen even try to market answers to such questions. Nobody knows Phat and no one alive will ever know.Edited by jar, : appalin spallin

So, in essence, you have confirmed your belief. Correct me if I misrepresent it.
Essentially, you believe that nobody can ever know God.
Your idea of belief centers on what you believe happens after you die.
You believe that God is unknowable.
All Christians who do not acknowledge your "obvious" logic are duped by conmen.
In reality, they are fooling themselves.Got it. No wonder we always disagree. Believers have sufficient evidence based on experience.
Though we acknowledge "conmen" in organized religion, we in no way agree with you that it is so widespread as to include everyone that believes God is alive through Christ. The fact is that there will never be evidence in the scientific sense.Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

No Phat, I have said repeatedly that no one has ever expained how someone could know God and that all the evidence shows that people describe entirely different critters as being God. No Phat, I believe that there is a GOD, creator of all seen and unseen and that I will be judged after I die. No Phat, I acknowledge that no one has ever explained how it might be possible to know God. No Phat, those who buy the snake oil that directly contradicts what is actually written in the Bible or who make claims that cannot be verified are willingly being suckers. Final, you did get one correct. Yet they do not ever present any evidence.Edited by jar, : applin spallin

And you interpreted your experience the way you were taught to interpret it. And you simply can't grasp the idea that IF God exists, it would be an immense coincidence if He happened to be anything like the God you learned about. Among most groups of believers there is little controversy - Mormons, Scientologists, etc. One of the hallmarks of a cult is lack of controversy. Nonsense.

No, we interpreted our experience based on what we felt while experiencing it. You can easily teach a parishioner to jump up and down and act excited, but you cannot give them the will to do it. That is up to how they feel about the experience. What if He sought us out? After all, there is really only one of him. It's not like we are in a Hollywood audition where a roomful of Gods awaits approval. We experienced God. Of course, we know that He is more than we have been taught. Our intuition and shared experience, coupled with positive testimonies the world over convince us that God is good rather than schizophrenic and evil as you suggest scripture itself supports. Yet you cant label 2 billion Christians, or perhaps 500,000 of them who agree that Jesus is alive today, as a cult. I'd like to hear others. I will then tell you whether I would consider them acceptable. We choose our beliefs and become the decisions that we make.Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

That's circular. On the contrary, it is much easier to encourage somebody to fit in by conforming with everybody else. As I have said before, you'd have to have a monumental ego to believe that a god would seek you out and ignore billions of others. That has not been established. There's nothing in your "experiences" to indicate that. It's just something that your handlers have told you to parrot. You experienced something. So did Muhammad. There's no reason to think your experience was different from his. And yet you don't even try to support your claim. I'm not. I'm labellng your version as a cult. The context is Message 335: "This is what bugs me most about believers. If there are things in life that are "unexplained", why do you insist on explaining them? And why do you refuse to accept any explanation but your own?"Some other explanations include

• other gods: Aten, Baal, Cthulu, Dagon... Zeus
• aliens
• mental illness
• plain old being wrong

Nobody cares what you consider acceptable.

Neither truth or reality care whether or not you find them acceptable.Edited by jar, : fix sub-title

Neither truth nor reality is represented by anyone other than those involved.

Oh so its *my* version now, is it? Based on my experience and on my own studies and conclusions, my explanation is what I will go with. No need to change horses in the middle of a stream. Unlikely but hypothetically possible. Your side rejects them all en masse including my version, and my side rejects all but Jesus admittedly possible. More study is needed in this area. For now, aliens are simply unevidenced and unexplained. I consider many of such sightings demonic, but that is my own subjective conclusion. entirely possible on an individual level. So far they have not come for me. If I ever suddenly disappear from EvC Forum, I will likely be in a hospital somewhere or a morgue. Always possible. We each have our pet conclusion. In my mind, you and jar both suppressed belief because you were taught to only have evidence of supportable belief. Many others simply downed the kool-aid. Likely upwards of 5 million-plus...Edited by Thugpreacha, : further 'splainin

WHAT?That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever Phat. It does not even rise to the level of word salad.

Well, to be honest, I fired off a reply without thinking. Truth or lies? Have I again misrepresented the great state of texas? Those Socratic masters taught you to think,(as did Joe Woods) which you encourage me to do...but one reason I stick to my guns on my basic belief is because of my all-too-real experiences and several confirmation biased events. Granted I prefer fantasy over reality, but I have a sneaky suspicion that this whole Armageddon, last days, the war of ideology stuff could pan out to be basically true. And again, I prefer a supernatural answer rather than a sobering and depressing answer such as "the bill will get paid even if many Americans suffer" and "The world will find us useful as gardeners, chauffers, and cooks".

And one further note: The Bill basically can't get paid without upending the entire financial system. Look at the evidence and crunch the numbers.

There are two ways the bill can be paid Phat, only one of those two ways is financial. The other way and the way it seems the US desires is through pain and suffering.But INMP!

Oh yes, it is, or it will be when your money becomes as inflated and worthless as everyone else. You too will have to suffer a bit, but you have prepared better than most. Yes, it looks as if though there will be a lot of pain and suffering in the future. And I don't mean to sound all gloom and doom, as Tangle thinks all religious nutters are. I'm just realizing that the era in which I grew up, 1960-1990, was one of the most stable and prosperous eras in human history. (for a white male living in the United States.) And my family was never classified as wealthy. I can identify with the sociological forces that led to Populism and the rise of Trump.Though I don't really like or respect Trump, my Father would have likely loved him. When you couple these people--the Populists--with the religious Right, an earlier group founded on merging Biblical Christianity with Partisan Politics, you begin to see why Faith likes and respects Trump so much. It is about preserving the suburban fantasy of making America Great Again, as it was in the times in which I grew up. Personally, I am torn between preserving the fantasy and hoping that if reality must change, God owes it to us to help us accept the change knowing that He has the wheel. A deep and uneasy awareness tells me that I may be wrong on both counts.We have discussed this stuff too many times to count here at EvC. I enjoy discussing it only because I hope that I can change the minds of those who have thrown my God away. It would be nice if He came back in my life(time) and rewarded me with a safe and stable eternity. I really don't want to be supportive of white privilege, but I also don't want to be cast aside and marginalized and have to suffer the way that many ethnic people from many other nations and kingdoms have had to suffer for the past 500 years.But I take your arguments thoughtfully if not agreeably.Why should God favor me and my contemporaries who lived during the aberration? I reason that he should because He can and because the sins of our fathers were and are not our fault. You have argued that this attitude proves that I create the God I want, but I honestly believe that I have met God and that I am well aware that there is no way that He is exactly as I would think Him to be or as my society defined him as. What scares me is how different He may end up being.Of course, I don't believe as you do that He is complete. (Having good and evil attributes) and I don't care what scriptures you run past me regarding that. I believe in the ultimate good and ultimate justice. Honestly though, what scares me is that my own dogma which you usually laugh at shows me that there is a possibility that my nation will be judged and has heaped up and is heaping up a multitude of sins against humanity.Faith will argue that America has also done a lot of good in the world and that it is the evil leftists who push the other philosophy. As of now, while I agree that there are evil people in the world, I am unconvinced that they are any more Left than Right. They come in all shapes and sizes. Comments?Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.Edited by Thugpreacha, : fixing a few glitches

No Phat, I'm already well past the life expectancy of a male in the US so INMP.But as long as you and those like you continue to choose the pain option over the financial one, that will be how the bill gets paid. That's a comforting fantasy, isn't it?