Knowing God

You call that debate? You do sooo rate yourself. Obviously the result of having God on your side

Who said anything about debate? That might be the goal of this site. It surely isn't mine.

So I had noticed At the risk of going seriously off topic may I ask what your goal actually is?
Do you have anything to say regarding the justification of the bible as the actual word of God or Christianity as more worthy of belief than any other religion (other than some flowery if well written prose asserting that because you believe something it must therefore be true)?

My goal? Evangelism/Apologetics (look it up). If I have to debate while doing so then so be it.Can I prove the Bible is the word of God or that Jesus/Paul/Peter/Jeremiah etc ever lived? No. No one ever will.But thats not the point. The point is not to prove. For to prove would be me proving God. And no-one can prove God.People can take it or leave it. That's up to them. My job is simply to present truth as best I can.

That pretty much sums up the self perpetuating doctrine of indoctrination.My advice to purple teddy bear is to listen to your "truth" and judge it side by side with all the other proclaimed "truths" that exist regards God, creation etc. Then ask if there is any rational basis on which to consider any one of these faith based unprovable assertions of truth superior to any other. If not there is only one sensible conclusion.
The truth is strong in this one. I hope she does not join the darkside.

Curoiously, my advice is the same My advice here would be to ask whether "rational" is the only way to live a life. You sound like a rational addict.I've known a lot of things in my life that weren't rational yet I sat quite happily beside them. Riding a motorcycle whilst stoned and drunk is not rational. Yet I did it. And it taught me things that rational couldn'tEdited by iano, : spelling

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My goal? Evangelism/Apologetics

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And you do that by condescending calling someone a pussy?Your methods need some work. The topic is: And the general answer from the resident Christians is read with the Bible.With that as the answer, the next obvious question is what makes you believe the Bible is the word of god. As Straggler pointed out there are many reasons to doubt that. There are more but I don’t want to take this off topic. I think Straggler was making his point a little too well when you attempted to falsely position yourself above him. You are not setting a good example.In my view, there is no way to know God objectively. You have to commit to a leap of faith. It boils down to faith, a believe without objective evidence or sensory input.Faith in a concept of god leads to err. Look at the prior gods from Apollo to Zeus. People at one time all had faith in these gods - just as strong and sincere as your faith.Most peoples “faith” is determined by their culture. Correlation is in the upper 90 percent. This is not good evidence for faith being a good method to discover the absolute.Furthermore, every major religion is fractured into many sects and sects derived from other sects. This is also not a good measure of the absolute nature of any religion or faith. In fact, you can draw a taxonomy diagram of most major religions and spin offs and they look like a diagrams used to classifying organisms. This gives credence to the concept that religion is a meme. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

"Volunteers required for point duty" Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

Well, there seems to be two parts to the question, one is how to get to know Jesus. To do that we are pretty much limited in sources, there is the Bible, and other scripture that didn't make it into the canons. But that is about all the source material available to those of us still alive.The second question seems more related to some relationship. Their each individual is on his or her own. I don't know of any tests that can be applied to tell if what someone experiences when it comes to things like the supernatural are real. We could track down, perhaps, the individual neurons that fire when someone is having such an experience and say "There, there is the cause!", but is it? Could not GOD cause individual neurons to fire in a prescribed sequency to achieve His communication? Like a telephone, could not GOD or even others use the same method to communicate?As to religions, they are all creations of men. None of them are GOD.Had the question been related to GOD as opposed to limited to Jesus, then the sources would be broader, but when limited to Jesus, you are pretty much stuck with only Christian sources.Edited by jar, : No reason given.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The OP asks how to know Jesus. The opinion that one can't know Jesus at all is really off-topic. Obviously the questioner wants to know what people mean when they say they know Jesus.

The OP has very specific questions. The originator seems to be seeking genuine answers on how one can know Jesus.

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This thread is not about whether one can know Jesus or not and not about whether the Bible is the word of God or not.

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Please stop the rather rude personal comments. They may or may not have been done as humor, but they need to stop.

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Please direct any comments concerning this Admin msg to the Moderation Thread.
Any response in this thread will receive a 24 hour timeout.

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Thank you
Edited by AdminPD, : No reason given.

Lets reexamine this topic according to the O.P. Try to stay on topic, everyone!

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Riding a motorcycle whilst stoned and drunk is not rational. Yet I did it. And it taught me things that rational couldn't

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What did it teach you that rational couldn't?

PurpleTeddyBear,Hi mate! How would anyone know? If they say they do know they are pissing in the wind. If he existed it was 2,000 years ago. You may as well ask what is a relationship with Julius Caesar like, you would at least have the advantage of having independent corroborating evidence of his existence to work with.How can you possibly have a "relationship" with someone you have no evidence of, that even if he existed, lived 2,000 years ago. It's like asking what was it like to fuck Galileo. Well, not quite, almost certainly Galileo existed. Just a feeling.If you think any of the people trying to convince you that a relationship with Jesus is real wouldn't take exactly the opposite view had they have been born elsewhere, the middle-east for example, then you are as deluded as they.I suspect that you aren't, however. If you hadn't worked it out already, I'm an evil baby eating athiest.I ask only one thing of you, that you apply the same standards to all of your knowledge, or understand that if you can't do that, you are a hypocrite. I really mean no insult, after all I know not what position you really take on this, & assume that hypocrisy is as just as heinous an intellectual crime as I do.But if you do, you can't have it both ways. Perhaps you should have been born a Jew or a Muslim, strangly they have no such feeling about Jesus, but have similar about respective figures in their respective religions. Why do you think that is? What mentality allows this "personal" god when such religions are mutually exclusive? Surelely they can't all be right?Clearly such relationships are delusional. This has to be a rhetorical question? Your daughter never had her head flipped open in the same way your son did. Am I right?One of the most disgusting & insidious aspects of religion is that it deliberatly targets children, who accept without question what adults tell them. Is this why there is a difference between your son & daughter?You are wondering for, & looking for a relationship that doesn't exist. Why do you think that Muslim's, Hindu's, Jews etc. don't get a relationship with Jesus but do with their respective gods/deities/prophets? Why do you think that Christians don't get a personal relationship with other religous icons? Why do you think the opposite is equally true?IT'S MAKE BELIEVE! They are indoctrinsated into a religion. Critical thinking is abhorrent. Any feeling they get is interpreted within their religious indoctrination.What makes you think other religious "experiences" are wrong but the Christian one is right?It is purely cultural.You are obviously an intelligent questioning kind of bloke (from the UK here, soz). Take a step back & look at similar behaviour in other religions. Surely the fact that other religions ask the same, & in many cases actually exclaim the same personal relationships but with other deities or prophets should make it obvious that they can't all be true. Why would any be true?Then take another step & realise that in every aspect of your life you require e-v-d-i-d-e-n-c-e before you reach a conclusion. Then ask yourself why your religion, if you really have one, should be exempt from this exceedingly good logic when everything else in your life is held to a logical & evidential standard?All the best,Mark Edited by mark24, : No reason given.Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

How amazingly far you can lean a motorcycle over without slinging it down the road, for one. And how much further than amazingly far you should not go. Edited by AdminPD, : Warning