I am a ''theist'' dumbass, I can't ignore theism anymore than I can ignore hunger.
I said you liked to ignore the "greater reality" of theism. That is, the reality of theism beyond your own particular brand of it. What brand is that you ask? It could be described as the platform from which you declare the practices and beliefs of other theists to be either fundamentally flawed in some way (your thoughts on Christian fundamentalism for example) or not genuinely theistic (your thoughts on Deism, for example).
If you're going to reply to a comment it's generally a good idea to pay attention to the details.
I'm guessing you saw yourself as a ''theist'' back in your bible-thumping days, but you've proved, in this post alone, that you you've no idea (outside of your big old ego) what it means to believe IN God. We'll see as things unfold.
Whether I was a theist or not is actually irrelevant. The fact that fundamentalist Christians believe that they are theists
is.
And it's laughable how you complain about big egos while simultaneously declaring that theism isn't theism unless it's
your brand of theism.
For example, unless your faith is exclusively Jesus-centric, you are not accessing God through the correct channel, and therefore not accessing God at all.
I'm not sure how one can direct ones faith towards something, maybe you can enlighten me.
Faith only kicks in when necessary, when there is absolutely no way of knowing but you have to make a decision. The kind of ''faith'' you're talking about is something you decide to back or believe in, but doesn't really tax you beyond what you are prepared to accept. It's not real faith.
This wasn't intended to be a comprehensive definition of
what faith is. It was simply a statement about what the Christian faith
revolves around. Again, please pay attention.
Here are some
very comprehensive perspectives, provided by Christian fundamentalist denominations, on what it means to lead a life of faithful devotion to God:
http://apostolicchristian.org/faith_statement.php
http://apostolicchristian.org/faith_worship.php
http://apostolicchristian.org/faith_belivers.php
http://www.ibfi.us/files/Declaration of Faith/DofFaithIBFI001.pdf
After you've perused this small but representative portion of the available resources, come back here and explain why the Christian notion of faith is so fundamentally inferior to your own that it doesn't actually constitute real faith at all. And then, demonstrate that your assessment is correct.
Anything short of that and your whole argument boils down to a rather pathetic No true Scotsman fallacy.
''The lost sheep'' does not mean people who only accept Jesus as God's representative, and this woman being a caananite, was the religious opposite of Christians.
She had faith that God could heal her son, period, and Jesus could help her because she had faith in God. Jesus himself took no credit for anything, all the credit went to the One who sent him. But I seriously doubt you have the capacity to comprehend that so I won't go any further.
At the very core of the Christian faith is the idea that Jesus, through His cleansing sacrifice, prepared humanity to engage with God on a more personal level. In other words, even though it was certainly possible to engage with God before He took human form, the dynamic was somewhat different. See the following Q&A entry by William Lane Craig which is essentially a treatise on the fullness of Christian faith (and as such is a suitable addendum to the resources provided above) but also reiterates and expands upon my primary point:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/what-does-it-mean-to-have-relationship-with-god
You're talking nonesense.
What do you mean ...'' the part of God that makes such access possible.''?
The only way that could seem like nonsense to you is if you are entirely ignorant about the basics of Christian theology. The above resources should remedy that to some extent, if you bother to examine them that is.
What does the bolded section mean?
Errr, it was followed by an
example. Examples are essentially illustrations. Illustrations illustrate. Let me know if you can't comprehend the example that followed.
Can you demonstrate anything you say with the scriptures so I can get a picture of what it is you're trying to convey.
All I have to do is provide examples of Christians talking about what the Bible says, since rather than trying to defend the
veracity of Christian fundamentalism I am simply pointing out that it exists. To that end, see:
The Ultimate Question of Origins: God and the Beginning of the Universe
Politically Incorrect Salvation
Middle Knowledge and Christian Exclusivism
Does the Balance Between Saved and Lost Depend on Our Obedience to Christ’s Great Commission?
Hinduism and Morality
How Can Christ Be the Only Way to God?
What does the Bible say about reincarnation?
The Future Judgment of the Believer
Funny how all I really have to do in this exchange is cite other theists who oppose your stance. Funny how this action, all by itself, makes my case. Funny how you keep failing to realize that. It borders on the inexplicable, actually.
I'm not sure how you're using the term, because you seem to have your own spin on what God, theism, and real religion is, so if you can, please use something scriptoral to demonstrate the context.
My spin for the purposes of this discussion point is the Christian spin. See above.
I've no idea what a being ''practicing theist'' entails. Is this some kind of materialist idea?
For example:
What is the difference between a Christian and a devout Christian?
What Does it Really Mean to be a Practicing Catholic?
What is repentance and is it necessary for salvation?
Practicing Your Faith – The Marks of a Christian
Such perspectives should, of course, be considered in the light of a proper exploration of the nature of faith, as linked to earlier.
It's not an opinion, one only need to read any scripture, and further more deists don't have a different opinion, they simply deny that God intervenes with those who want Him to.
Errr,
denying that God intervenes in human affairs is a different opinion to affirming that he does! That one opinion is based on a claim that scripture is revelatory, and the other is based on the claim that it isn't, doesn't change a thing!
Unless you can conclusively demonstrate that scripture
does contain revelation from God, you can't demonstrate that Deists are wrong. And yes, Deists have a similar burden if they want to claim that scripture definitely
doesn't contain revelation from God. So what we have is a situation where for every argument there is a counterargument, and for every counterargument there is a counter-counterargument, and so on. People on both sides feeling perfectly justified in adopting mutually exclusive positions, with no objective proof one way or the other. In other words, nothing new! In other words,
you are still highlighting my argument instead of advancing yours.
They recognize that there must be a creator of the universe, as anybody with a human brain can work out, but they make up some story that He made the universe and then left it to it's own device, having nothing more to do with it.
''....In fact, the only real difference lies in their explanation for the origins of time and space. Deists claim that a god created the universe and its rules, but did (and does) nothing else. Atheism simply takes this one step further by denying any existence, and therefore involvement of any 'god' at all, in the beginnings of the universe or otherwise; in this way, deists can be thought of as atheists in everyday practicality...''
Here:
This is utterly hilarious. Honestly. Not only have you completely ignored the distinction between deism and
spiritual deism, you aren't even sourcing
actual deists or their recommended resources! Let me remedy that for you:
"It is only in the CREATION that all the ideas and concepts of the word of God can come together. The Creation speaks a universal language that does not depend on any human speech or language. It is an eternal 'original copy' that all men can read. It cannot be faked or counterfeited. It cannot be lost or changed. It cannot be kept secret. It does not depend on man deciding whether to publish it or not. It publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all the nations, and all the worlds. This natural word of God reveals to us all that man needs to know of God."
"Do we want to think of his power? We see it in the vastness of the Creation. Do we want to think of his wisdom? We see it in the unchanging order of the universe. Do we want to see his generosity? We see it in the abundance that fills the earth. Do we want to think of his mercy? We see it in the way he does not withhold abundance even from the ungrateful. In fact, do we want to know what God is? Do not look in the bible (that any man could have written), but look instead to the Creation."
"If man was as fully and strongly impressed with the belief of a God as he ought to be, his moral life would be ruled by the force of that belief. He would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do anything that was offensive to either. To give this belief full power, it is necessary that it acts alone. This is Deism."
- Thomas Paine
And upon this foundation, we get:
"Since Deism is specifically correlated with rationalism, there is the erroneous belief among many that spirituality does not exist among adherents. However, this is untrue, as spirituality is a major component of Deism. There are many religions that believe that spirituality is attained simply by believing in the proper doctrines. The opposite is true in Deism. Spirituality is about the ability to experience God and it is a multi-faceted experience that can be accomplished in numerous ways by the individual with the primary ways being awe, epiphany, fellowship, communion and the transcendental. These spiritual experiences are beyond description and allow the individual to have unique and profound experiences of God and nature." - Modern Deism: A Primer
You will of course persist with your claim that this is not
true worship, but that doesn't really matter. The whole notion of worship is all bound up with a particular conception of the nature of God and God's relationship to creation anyway. In other words, your criticism is actually only valid if you can demonstrate that the deists have it wrong. If they have it right (or even just
less wrong than everyone else, which is what some of them believe) then they are indeed setting the benchmark for what constitutes the most genuine communion with God that humans are capable of.
In fact this whole thread is a farce in that sense. It really should be entitled: "Is it possible to believe in
my conception of God, and be a darwinist at the same time?". The answer of course is no, which, by the way, reveals the disingenuous manner in which you entered
this discussion since far from being open minded as you claimed, and possibly willing to accept theistic evolution as you implied, it has now become clear that a prior investment in your beliefs about the specific nature of God and his relationship to creation precludes you from doing so. In fact since you also reject other theistic viewpoints on the same grounds, you are essentially no different from a fundamentalist yourself, which introduces even more hilarity into this discussion since you try to paint yourself as an inclusivist.
Oh! Do you?
Why is that then?
I don't know. Maybe because they have more spiritual depth than you, and a superior understanding of reality.
Go on then Sherlock, explain How they worship God?
Already done. And expounded upon.
And what is suspect about what ''anthropomorphic frameworks''.
An anthropomorphic framework, in this context, is an embellishment of the concept of God with human, or human-like, characteristics. They are suspect because the details are always different, sometimes to the point of being mutually exclusive. But more importantly, they are inextricably linked with metaphysical and theological ideas that
also often differ to the point of being mutually exclusive. Thus the truth value of any such conception is highly suspect, to say the least.
This is not an argument against the
existence of God of course, or even against the possibility of human-like characteristics being manifested by God. It is instead an argument in favour of the cautious stance deists take with respect to the veracity of such conceptions, and the scriptures they are based upon.
My ''assertions'' would sound ignorant to you, because you are out of your depth when talking about these subject, while believing you are superior to me and as such cannot accept anything I say. You think being smart is the same as being intelligent, and because you probably have a wealth of useless, information in your evolved chimp mind, you consider yourself intelligent.
I'm not really concerned what someone such as yourself thinks of me, and I am content to simply rest on the merits of my contributions in the eyes of our other readers.