With A Heavy Heart, I Say This to Atheists and Christians

[Jenyar]

To my surprise, she told me that she would like to change the subject when I had her cornered into admitting she didn't know what she presumed to have known.

SouthStar, what you did with your "Socratic method" was convince her that she doesn't know what she presumed to know by the same standards people rejected and crucified Christ in the first place. Think about that.

If you apply that method consistently, you'll realize that you don't know anything you presume to know either. That's what you're heart is trying to tell you. The truth of who God is and what Christ did for you doesn't lie in the reasoning of science or the Bible, it lies in your heart. The completion of the canon lies not in doctrine or even the text itself, but in Christ himself. I could pick your arguments out one by one, but it will serve no purpose.

"It is because of Him that I continue to hope beyond all reason that one day we may soon be reunited."

if the Bible cannot support itself in certain instances (as even you admit) then what is your faith based on? After all there are other religious books that have similar errors in them, why don't you believe in those?

Because we dont' base our belief on errors. You've realized that, but now you're basing your belief on an even greater error: that only scientific or human accuracy can reflect the truth. Even if you look into a distorted mirror, though you might doubt the accuracy of the reflection, you don't doubt that you're looking at yourself.

What makes you rebel against your newfound certainty is not because you were indoctrinanted to believe blindly, but because you realize that you were looking at more than contradictions and vagueness when you read the Bible. Shadows are bound to appear when light shines through something - but those shadows aren't proof that the light is false.

 

[firdroirich]

I don't believe anyone of any belief has been called upon to defend it Southstar, it defends you. Should any man want you to defend your faith he might as well strap a bomb to you & let you walk into the market square.
Every form has it's function to perform - the function of religion (in the form of Christianity in your case) is that you advance from it. That you warm yourself at it's side, & penetrate the darkness with it's glow - not put out every other fire you come across. I tried to get the same thing into Proud Muslim's head as he went around proclaiming himself to be the "Shield of Islam". The reality is that religion sits on the mantle of peace while men indulge themselves in defending it ....the result is war. Allow yourself to be defended, detach. You may have just been sitting too close to the fire.

 

[Jenyar]

Faith proceeds before anything, it goes where reason fears to tread, but not without reason following in its wake. Never without reason. That's why faith is believing in advance what will only make sense in retrospect. Is sees in advance what you will only see when you arrive there. It's not at all costs or against all evidence as some would like to believe, it proceeds naturally from any cause and any evidence - not just scientific. From evidence of love proceeds faith in love and trust in someone. That faith leads to hope that it might be found elsewhere, even where reason would not expect it to be found.

 

[Jenyar]

Amen to that. You're preaching to the choir. For some miraculous reason, however, it's contradiction somehow doesn't negate it's validity. Perhaps a better wording may have been "Everything in the human experience is subjective." But even that assumes an objective frame of reference by which to judge all other things as subjective. Beautiful paradox.

And for some miraculous reason the Bible, of all literature and amongst all truth, is excluded from having such valid contradictions. Can truth still exist in spite of "beautiful paradoxes", or can't it?

The point is, whether or not everything is relative is simply not a claim that any human is equipped to make. It might be true that all human experience is relative, but it also might be false.

Then we've reached an impasse as far as this part of the conversation is concerned. Any further developement on this part of the topic necessitates an agreement on the philosophical nature of truth.

In other words: agnosticism. But you're a believer, aren't you? You have faith that evidence will present itself, it "just requires more study", or greater understanding. What's your evidence for believing that? Is philosophy also a science?

Speaking of which. If lack of love is proof that God doesn't exist, then why isn't the presence of love evidence that He does exist?

 

[Halcyon]

Jen, I have to leave for work, but I WILL reply when I get off. I always wondered when you and I would get into it.

 

[TheERK]

Speaking of which. If lack of love is proof that God doesn't exist, then why isn't the presence of love evidence that He does exist?

It's not really a proof, but it is very strong evidence against a particular subset of possible gods: an omnibenevolent God.

You would expect an omnibenevolent God to ensure that love (or happiness, whatever; something good) is ubiquitous. Therefore, any deviation from this is swift evidence that such a God does not exist. However, the mere presense of any given amount of love/happiness (especially a sub-optimal amount, like in this universe) is not evidence FOR such a God, since we know that such a state can come about naturally.

An analogy might be useful: let's say I claim that a magic elf lives in my basement, and one of his properties is that he always causes my lucky penny to land 'heads.' In a demonstration to you, I flip the coin. What happens?

-A 'tails' flip instantly invalidates the previous assuption about my magic elf--either it does not exist, or it does not have the "omni-heads" property.

-A 'heads' flip is not evidence for the elf, since we can expect heads to come up naturally.

The point is, the more claims you make about God, the easier it becomes to prove such a God false; either make sure what you're saying doesn't have evidence to the contrary, or relax your definition.

 

[Halcyon]

And for some miraculous reason the Bible, of all literature and amongst all truth, is excluded from having such valid contradictions.

The nature of all the contradictions I'VE been privy to in the bible were in reference to historical events, statements and the like. I don't see them as being similar in nature to the statement I made, insofar as the message they tried to convey was negated due to the outright contradictory nature of the passage, whereas the paradox "Everything in human experience is relative," seems to prove itself as valid while at the same time proving itself invalid. People who read the statement will see in it different things, some will see it as valid(Trying hard not to use the word "truth") while others will discard it as meaningless.

So by saying "Everything in human experience is subjective," and being aware of the implied "...even this statement," and observing that other peoples' experience of the statement is indeed subjective, does what at first seems to be a paradox turn out to be true? Should the word truth even be in our vocabulary?

Can truth still exist in spite of "beautiful paradoxes", or can't it?

I'd be the wrong person to ask; I don't believe yet in the ability for truth to exist, the closest I've even been able to come to the concept of truth would be that statement on subjectivity. I would like to believe in the one truth used as a frame of reference by which to judge all things subjective as I mentioned in another post, it would reconcile a lot and be the closest I could get to a belief in god, it doesn't seem possible.

But you're a believer, aren't you?

Of course, everyone believes in something; god, science, themselves....being that nothing can ever be proven to be true by any act of faith or science necessitates it. I do not believe in god, not by any definition or understanding that mankind has ever been able to apply to the concept, I do not believe that science is infallible, but that it only provides us with a way to reconcile what we observe with our limited perception. I do have faith that this is a valid point of view.

You have faith that evidence will present itself, it "just requires more study", or greater understanding.

What I meant by that sentence was that ERK should study the subject more in-depth, get more information. Because he didn't see any reason for such a belief, I felt that he needed to get a better understanding of the topic at hand to see why other's feel that there IS reason for such a belief. Yes, yes, I have faith that more research will help to make my point.

What's your evidence for believing that?

This is going to make me sound arrogant, and I'm going to ask that you not take it as such; Because Erk wasn't aware of the application of the concept of entropy to Sociology, I felt he didn't have as strong an understanding of Sociology as I did. I felt that if he had a more in-depth knowledge of the topic, then he would understand my point and possibly recognize it as valid. This a hypothesis based on everyday observation, in fact, the start of this thread could be said to have been a product of this process.

Is philosophy also a science?

I have no love for philosophy and do not recognize it as a science, I do however recognize it's necessity and it's contributions.

Speaking of which. If lack of love is proof that God doesn't exist, then why isn't the presence of love evidence that He does exist?

I do not understand why you brought this up> I don't think that anything I said here or elsewhere conveyed that sentiment or brought that concept into discussion... I've never been of the mind that a lack of love necessitates the inexistance of a supreme being, and/or vice versa. How does a lack of love prove such a thing, by the way?

 

[Halcyon]

You say everyone has belief, or the "act of accepting something as true", but then you go on to say that nothing can be proven true.

Precisely because nothing can be proven true, we must have our own beliefs, or opinions, about what information we should accept from and about the world around us. If we do not believe in religion, we have established another belief on the validity of religion. By choosing not to believe something, we are forming a belief.

Wouldn't the logical conclusion to the latter statement be that we should hold no beliefs?

We cannot function without some sort of belief system; we have to accept certain aspects of the world around us in order to function within it. If we do not believe anything, then all incoming information is useless and we have nothing to react to, we become vegetables.

If nothing can be proven true, why should we accept anything as such. Isn't doing so ignorant?

Like I said before, I don't yet believe in the ability for truth to exist, but as for being ignorant, that's an inevitable part of human nature. Being that we cannot ever really know anything, only form opinions and beliefs based on evidence, we are essentially ignorant(not knowing) in nature.

 

[Cyperium]

To §outh§tar:

I can assure you, that I've had faith even when I decided to go against the teachings.

But I was blinded from my faith by not trusting it.

Now I've seen my faith again, and it's the same as it was when I was a child.

Faith is not something taught to us by our mother and father, it comes naturally to have faith when you are a child.

When you doubt faith, you see doubt, not faith. Sure faith will stand, but by doubting you draw yourself away from faith (if even for the moment), you may think that faith has "lost" the battle, but it hasn't.

It's not because of the Bible we have faith. The Bible is only a guidance, it's not from the Bible that people has come to believe in God. It comes naturally.

The Bible is a collection of books and letters written by many people thousands of years ago, we can see that the people had faith by the way the explain things and the way they reason.

The people of this age seems to have been impressed by the teachings of Christ, and the story about Him have gone from mouth to mouth finally ending up in the Bible. This means (to me) that they tried to carry the essence of the teachings forward (and I do think they were very cautious not to twist the message), but since it was carried forward by people we can't say for sure that the message wasn't in some way altered. But I do believe that the essence of his teachings came through unaltered.

The Bible is very important, the message that it carries out is also very important. By faith you see what you have faith in. By faith you can tell what is believable to you. Every person is looking through their own view, what's simple and understandable to you, may not be to others and what's simple and understandable by someone else, may not be to you.

Find your own faith, what you doubt in and what you can't believe doesn't belong to your faith.

When you have your own faith stabilised as a ground, then you can look forward and see what else you can believe in.

Obviously there are some errors in the Bible. So maybe you shouldn't believe that the Bible is without errors?

But try nevertheless to see the message that the Bible carries out. Maybe the Bible aren't trying to tell us that the world is flat. Maybe it's a picture for something else? Cause often when it comes to scientific claims in the Bible, the Bible is actually trying to show something else, it isn't trying to show us that the world is flat, but is trying to show us that God is above all (for example). By reading in the Bible you shouldn't believe that the world is flat, but believe in the message carried out.

I want to tell you why you should have faith, but it is your faith! Not mine! You must find your own faith. Maybe we find out it is the same faith? But I can't describe my faith in such a way as to reveal it's inner essence, thus I'm only describing my interpretation of my faith. Which can vary from person to person, for you to build your faith on my interpretation could be devestating.

So what should my advice be? To find your faith. I can't explain it any better than that.

I don't think that doubt is good for building faith, it may be good to know what you shouldn't believe in though - what you doubt in. But you should find by faith what you do believe in, and don't doubt.

As I said before, doubt works it's way downwards, by taking away things that seem irrational. Faith builds it's way upwards, by adding things that seem believable. The faith is never complete, you can allways doubt what faith has found - cause you will never be able to know the perfect truth about why you had faith in that particular thing, you have to trust that your faith had it's reasons for picking that thing to believe in.

- Now I feel some doubts that maybe you don't understand what I meant, but I really can't explain what I meant, cause I just felt that it was a good thing to say, I believe in it, and maybe the explanation comes by itself.

I'm describing what is my own view on this, I can't guarantee that you see what I see, I just have to trust that it's good for you even though you may see it in a different light.

About the old plane:

I understand what you mean, and I do agree with you.

But the old plane can be verified in the world, you can see by examining the plane that it's not good for flight.

It's not the same with God, you can't easily verify that He exists. But you could verify things in the Bible and say "this contradicts with this". If you find a contradiction then don't have to throw away the whole Bible, just have to accept that there are contradictions, and there may be a truth that could solve them - or there may not be.

The people in that age seemed confident that Jesus would come before the generation would pass. The Bible also recognise the problem when it stated that people would say that many generations has passed and He has yet to come. Maybe Jesus said that, so that we would allways be alert. I don't know. I care, but I don't know and it's not up to me to give the solution to it either. The only thing that I can do, is interpret it in a way that is satisfying to me, and is believable. But there are passages in the Bible that are much easier to take in, and I rather concentrate myself on those passages.

You may think that I'm ignorant by interpreting it my own way so that it fits with what else I believe. But I'm not ignorant, I do see the problem of some passages, but I try to see the hidden meaning of them in a way that is beneficial to my belief and my well-being. So that even if it wasn't meant by the one writing the passage, it can become a good advice for me.

But understand this though, I don't fool myself. I don't give it a meaning that's just simply not there. I give it a meaning that is believable for me, and doesn't contradict what the passage said.

I really hope this has helped you in any way. You seem like a reasonable person and I trust you to find your way through this.

 

[Bells]

I am terribly shipwrecked inside, as my mind constantly wars with my heart; I simply cannot help it. I continously (and I mean that literally) think about the flaws in Christian reasoning as my heart consistently pleads with me to overlook these difficulties and hold fast in faith. Only one will hold out, total faith or total reason; for the two are like water and oil and are immiscible in these instances.

South, it is normal to have doubts and to have questions. Your rational brain is questioning the irrational belief in something that you have neither seen nor heard for yourself. Your faith was merely in what you were told to be true. You had no proof of it for yourself. I am quite surprised by this whole thread. Your past Christian fervour was worrying to some extent because you appeared to be an intelligent person, but you were only interested in towing the Christian line and rhetoric. Anything any one ever said about God was refutted by you based on faith alone.

Your heart and your brain tells you to overlook these questions and difficulties because it is seeing itself in a new world, a world where you feel that you are alone and on the outside of all that you have ever known. But you are not alone and you are not on the outside looking in.

You are on the inside looking out and you are seeing that all is not as it seems.

I'm sorry that your family, friends and church are treating you this way. But for them, you have become what you saw in us, the heathen's who are out to take their faith away. And you are not that. Who you are and what you are is someone who's trying to find his own truth and not someone else's truth. Don't ever let them or anyone else dissuade you from doing so. Life is meant to be lived as you choose to live it. And most importantly, it is your choice to believe and to have faith in what you choose. Where in the past you only had faith in the Bible and in God, you are now realising that you must have faith in yourself first of all. You should never believe in something because you are told to believe in it. You must believe because you feel it is right for you to believe. Don't ever let your Church or the people associated in that Church tell you otherwise.

Ironically, it is in the greatest period of turmoil in my life that I have no family, friend, Bible, or God to turn to.

You have yourself. The faith you had in God and in your Church was not your own. Now you must turn to yourself to see where your own truth lies. Questioning God's existence and the Bible is not bad or wrong. It is only through such questions that you will find the answers that you seek. If after this personal journey, you feel that there is no God, then so be it. If instead you feel that there is a God, then so be it. But at least you've taken the huge first step in trying to find out for yourself, instead of being told by someone else what the answer should be. At least you've come to the point where you feel that you must look into yourself to see what you truly believe in. Most importantly, do what is right for you. And always remember, you're not alone.

Life is meant to be lived South. Live it and find yourself and find your own answers to the questions and doubts that are plaguing you, not the answers that someone tells you is right because it is from a book.

 

[§outh§tar]

I know SouthStar, I was just trying to say that I doubt you'll find that "magic bullet" to absolutely disprove Christianity. After all, how do you disprove a theology? I think it ultimately comes down to what you WANT to believe. There's "evidence" for just about every belief anyone has ever devised. Look at how studies are done today, if you have a lot of money you can create a study to "prove" just about anything you want. What do YOU want to believe, SouthStar? Sure, you can look at anti-Christian arguments, believe that Christians use farfetched "how it could have been" explanations to reconcile "alleged" Biblical discrepancies, you can read how the Bible does not seem totally historically accurate, how the Bible does not appear to agree with science, how there are many variants of Biblical manuscripts (missing verses, words, different words, additions, compared to other manuscripts) how the deity of the Bible doesn't seem very moral, consistent, etc, but, there will always be something which still seems true about the religion, won't there? What I'm saying is that ultimately I think you will need to accept that a religion doesn't have to be total, complete nonsense in every way in order to disbelieve its theology. That is, if you want to overcome the "what if it's true" doubts. Then again, you are just now leaving Christianity (or having doubts), from what I can tell, you have been raised in it, so I don't think your rejection of Christianity will be sudden. I think it's going to take some time if you're really serious about "throwing off the shackles", so to speak.

I took that into consideration, that we are unable to disprove the theologies of the Bible. Therefore I looked to historical accuracy and internal agreement, only to find to my horror that even arithmetic was a problem for many prophets of God, not mentioning the fact that the Bible believes the earth to be flat. Since we cannot prove that any of the prophets spoke to God, the very fact that they made such huge errors discounts the belief of inspiration. I am forced to conclude that the Bible was written entirely by men, and ultimately, the individual books were never meant to be interpret in light of each other.

I think the explanation for the masses looking to religion is that we want to believe.. for whatever reason.

Oh, and SouthStar, you see all those passages acting like Jesus is coming soon, but you know, whoever wrote that passage in 2nd Peter had it figured out, which I gather you're aware, "A day with the Lord is as a thousand years." Sounds like a rationalization, doesn't it? So that totally negates all the other passages, see, when "Paul" (or whoever wrote that passage) says "we who are alive and remain" will join up with Jesus, what he REALLY meant was "those Christians living thousands of years from now and still are living when Jesus comes back"..

I will be making a thread on that soon, hehe. But then He did say "this generation will not pass away", and it's been a thousand years and we're assuming none of those present were immortals.. Every generation has now been hyped up as the one to be persecuted for their faith and be delivered up unto kings, and yet they come and go like waves and still nada. Anyway I'll go deeper into the subject at a later date.

To be honest, I myself have a feeling that, sure, if all Christianity taught is to "believe in Jesus", then ok I guess I could do that. But then what? Christianity doesn't stop there, as we both know. It continues to have a claim on your life, that you need to follow Biblical precepts (many of which I don't think are bad, but which ones are they exactly?, the Christians themselves don't seem entirely sure, I mean, look at how many Christian sects there are). And not all Bible manuscripts completely agree with each other, nor do some sects totally agree on which books to believe in, Catholic, Protestant, Ethiopic canons are different from each other.

Did I mention each sect thinks they are right and everyone else is wrong?

 

[§outh§tar]

Okay, but I was curious about what questions ya asked and her responses.

Well, I can't remember exactly but it went something like this:

1) Asked her about God telling Adam he would die in the day he ate the fruit.
2) She responded by saying the usual excuse (which even I have used countless times): "God meant spiritual, not physical death".
3) I showed her that the Hebrew clearly means physical, not spiritual death.
4) She was clearly stumped, at which point I asked her why she believed certain people were going to hell for a lack of faith.
5) She said cos the Bible says so. (Typical response )
6) I asked her why she believed this, especially when Gandhi was an upright man.
7) She said it doesn't matter, he's still going to hell because the Bible says so. (At this point I became a little distressed, because I recognized she was going to keep using circular reasoning, and secondly because it seemed like an echo of the very words I used so staunchly in previous times)
8) I said, "do you then believe that your belief is superior to others?"
9) After much dallying around because she knew the implication of the question and where it was leading to, she finally answered "yes".
10) I asked why, to which she could only reply something to the effect: "I can't fully explain it and give you the details. My life has just been totally changed so I know it's true."
11) After which she asked that we change the subject. I hoped I had planted a seed of reason in her, but it seemed that even though she realized she was ultimately unable to account for her faith, she still believed staunchly. Unfortunately, I realized again how all of this was such a reflection of myself, as I believed I was right and everyone who did not agree was "worldly" and "damned". Even when there could be no logic behind faith, I shut my eyes and kept believing.



I probably ommited a lot of things I don't remember so it may seem incoherent but it went something like that.

 

[§outh§tar]

SouthStar, we out necessity change views overtime. For instance, when I was a lot younger I studied the Bible on my own, which led me to the misconception that the Bible was the sole source of the faith. Deciding to read the Bible from the beginning, I came to the conclusion that God was quite arrogant and cruel, and could never make it past Leviticus. But I eventually did read other material, and found this prior view to be false. I don't think this kind of drastic shift is possible in one day, but I've once changed a theological position after one day of studying. It's possible.

For this reason I don't think the Bible should be the sole source of one's faith. The signficant failure of this is less a matter of the doctrines which arise, but that it's better not to have single point of failure. Even though any given passage will have a explanation behind it, attempting to quell every contrivance against each and every passage is simply a waste of time. The Church Father's, being closest to the origin of the Bible, did not treat the entire Bible this way, and so I see the Bible being an example of truth, of truth fullfilling itself in the lives other people. But this need not mean that we should make the Bible become our one and only truth.

Well the Bible regardless provides the base of the Christian faith even if you do not agree it is the final authority. Do you not base your belief on the deity of Jesus on the Gospels? Surely it has to play some part. But then we realize for example that Jesus supported the Old Testament's cruelty (by claiming to be the God of Abraham), believed the earth to be flat, and that Paul did not believe even in a physical resurrection. There is no evidence whatsoever in the epistles of an empty tomb which obviously would have been a gargantuan argument to any audience. Even if I am wrong on a few of this points, it still remains quite obvious through any objective inspection that the writers of the Gospels each had separate and incompatible theologies (which have now been arbitrarily forced to appear harmonious). There is also the overwhelming evidence internally that both Jesus and the disciples expected His speedy coming, not one that would be drawn out over 2000 years.

SouthStar, also context is everything. Both James and Paul wrote those letters when the Bible did not exist as a full-bound book. Hence, why would James use wisdom to mean interpretation of the Bible?

Wisdom
KNOWLEDGE b : ability to discern inner qualities and relationships : INSIGHT

Quite obviously, wisdom is of utmost importance in interpreting the Bible (since there are supposedly 'incorrect' interpretations). Therefore for one to ask God for wisdom in interpreting and understanding His requirements and so on, means by the promise He made, He WILL answer. After a year of praying and still no understanding of contradicting accounts in the NT, one can only assume that either there is no God, or God does not answer His promise. Saying that God answers in His own time instantly rejects the promise He specifically made and is akin to saying what Jesus and the disciples really meant was that His coming would not be for another 2000 years despite the internal evidence to the contrary.

 

[§outh§tar]

Mis-statement about the bible.

http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1990/1/1flat90.html


The evidence is against you.

 

[§outh§tar]

No, I don't remember reading in the Bible any such statement but the "four corners." The expression "four corners" is never used to convey anything about the earth. It is an expression, much we say "four corners" today. I think the science <a href="http://www.prca.org/articles/issues_in_hermeneutics.html">hermeneutics</a> answers these type of questions. I haven't yet read it all, though.



Well, what exactly do you mean by inspired?

The above link should be of help to you.

By inspired, I mean the belief that these writers were moved by the Spirit of Holiness to pen God's revelations which otherwise could not be attained by mere human knowledge.

 

[§outh§tar]

SouthStar, what you did with your "Socratic method" was convince her that she doesn't know what she presumed to know by the same standards people rejected and crucified Christ in the first place. Think about that.

If you apply that method consistently, you'll realize that you don't know anything you presume to know either. That's what you're heart is trying to tell you. The truth of who God is and what Christ did for you doesn't lie in the reasoning of science or the Bible, it lies in your heart. The completion of the canon lies not in doctrine or even the text itself, but in Christ himself. I could pick your arguments out one by one, but it will serve no purpose.

Then we will all bask in all uncertainty since we are certain that nothing is uncertain. There is no evidence whatsoever that Christ even knew of a canon. And if the truth of God lies in my heart as you claim, then certainly there is "no way in hell" (pun intended ) that I can ever arrive at the Trinitarian notion or the knowledge that Christ's death was actually atonement for anything. We can at least say that Jesus did die on the cross, but you certainly mustn't toy around by saying that in my heart lies the truth that He was a sacrificial lamb.

Did Jesus not say that whoever believed His Word would see the Kingdom? How else is this possible but by the spreading of the word?

Romans 10
14 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

Obviously if the truth is not found in the "reasoning of the Bible" as you claim then that put's Paul's Gospel in error at the expense of your theology. In fact Paul says the word MUST be preached for them to hear (obviously meaning they didn't know it in the first place).

Since you say that my questioning of her points to my own hypocrisy, then I will ask how you plan to reconcile the implication that your certainty (that truth is in the heart) is any more valid. How do you "presume" that the Gospel (truth) is in anyone's heart? And if it is, how do you presume that it is the same Gospel to all and not everyone's interpretation for themselves? Or do you presume to know something that I don't, even though the truth lies in my heart?

"It is because of Him that I continue to hope beyond all reason that one day we may soon be reunited."

Because we dont' base our belief on errors. You've realized that, but now you're basing your belief on an even greater error: that only scientific or human accuracy can reflect the truth. Even if you look into a distorted mirror, though you might doubt the accuracy of the reflection, you don't doubt that you're looking at yourself.

What makes you rebel against your newfound certainty is not because you were indoctrinanted to believe blindly, but because you realize that you were looking at more than contradictions and vagueness when you read the Bible. Shadows are bound to appear when light shines through something - but those shadows aren't proof that the light is false.

I only hope that you will get past the word spinning which in effect tells me nothing, only to have me interpret your words and have you tell me that my interpretation is wrong. Only reason can "reflect" the truth. I am not basing my belief on science or "human accuracy" for your information. I actually allowed the Bible a chance to account for it's own internal disagreement and so on, which it is unable to do. Therefore I can only conclude that each individual book contain's it's own separate theologies, never meant to be harmonized as is done today.

 

[§outh§tar]

To §outh§tar:

I can assure you, that I've had faith even when I decided to go against the teachings.

But I was blinded from my faith by not trusting it.

Now I've seen my faith again, and it's the same as it was when I was a child.

Faith is not something taught to us by our mother and father, it comes naturally to have faith when you are a child.

When you doubt faith, you see doubt, not faith. Sure faith will stand, but by doubting you draw yourself away from faith (if even for the moment), you may think that faith has "lost" the battle, but it hasn't.

It's not because of the Bible we have faith. The Bible is only a guidance, it's not from the Bible that people has come to believe in God. It comes naturally.

The Bible is a collection of books and letters written by many people thousands of years ago, we can see that the people had faith by the way the explain things and the way they reason.

The people of this age seems to have been impressed by the teachings of Christ, and the story about Him have gone from mouth to mouth finally ending up in the Bible. This means (to me) that they tried to carry the essence of the teachings forward (and I do think they were very cautious not to twist the message), but since it was carried forward by people we can't say for sure that the message wasn't in some way altered. But I do believe that the essence of his teachings came through unaltered.

The Bible is very important, the message that it carries out is also very important. By faith you see what you have faith in. By faith you can tell what is believable to you. Every person is looking through their own view, what's simple and understandable to you, may not be to others and what's simple and understandable by someone else, may not be to you.

Find your own faith, what you doubt in and what you can't believe doesn't belong to your faith.

When you have your own faith stabilised as a ground, then you can look forward and see what else you can believe in.

Obviously there are some errors in the Bible. So maybe you shouldn't believe that the Bible is without errors?

But try nevertheless to see the message that the Bible carries out. Maybe the Bible aren't trying to tell us that the world is flat. Maybe it's a picture for something else? Cause often when it comes to scientific claims in the Bible, the Bible is actually trying to show something else, it isn't trying to show us that the world is flat, but is trying to show us that God is above all (for example). By reading in the Bible you shouldn't believe that the world is flat, but believe in the message carried out.

I want to tell you why you should have faith, but it is your faith! Not mine! You must find your own faith. Maybe we find out it is the same faith? But I can't describe my faith in such a way as to reveal it's inner essence, thus I'm only describing my interpretation of my faith. Which can vary from person to person, for you to build your faith on my interpretation could be devestating.

So what should my advice be? To find your faith. I can't explain it any better than that.

I don't think that doubt is good for building faith, it may be good to know what you shouldn't believe in though - what you doubt in. But you should find by faith what you do believe in, and don't doubt.

As I said before, doubt works it's way downwards, by taking away things that seem irrational. Faith builds it's way upwards, by adding things that seem believable. The faith is never complete, you can allways doubt what faith has found - cause you will never be able to know the perfect truth about why you had faith in that particular thing, you have to trust that your faith had it's reasons for picking that thing to believe in.

- Now I feel some doubts that maybe you don't understand what I meant, but I really can't explain what I meant, cause I just felt that it was a good thing to say, I believe in it, and maybe the explanation comes by itself.

I'm describing what is my own view on this, I can't guarantee that you see what I see, I just have to trust that it's good for you even though you may see it in a different light.

About the old plane:

I understand what you mean, and I do agree with you.

But the old plane can be verified in the world, you can see by examining the plane that it's not good for flight.

It's not the same with God, you can't easily verify that He exists. But you could verify things in the Bible and say "this contradicts with this". If you find a contradiction then don't have to throw away the whole Bible, just have to accept that there are contradictions, and there may be a truth that could solve them - or there may not be.

The people in that age seemed confident that Jesus would come before the generation would pass. The Bible also recognise the problem when it stated that people would say that many generations has passed and He has yet to come. Maybe Jesus said that, so that we would allways be alert. I don't know. I care, but I don't know and it's not up to me to give the solution to it either. The only thing that I can do, is interpret it in a way that is satisfying to me, and is believable. But there are passages in the Bible that are much easier to take in, and I rather concentrate myself on those passages.

You may think that I'm ignorant by interpreting it my own way so that it fits with what else I believe. But I'm not ignorant, I do see the problem of some passages, but I try to see the hidden meaning of them in a way that is beneficial to my belief and my well-being. So that even if it wasn't meant by the one writing the passage, it can become a good advice for me.

But understand this though, I don't fool myself. I don't give it a meaning that's just simply not there. I give it a meaning that is believable for me, and doesn't contradict what the passage said.

I really hope this has helped you in any way. You seem like a reasonable person and I trust you to find your way through this.

Cyperium, I am trying to see things your way, honestly I really am but I simply don't see the sense in what you are saying.

You are trying to tell me trust and have faith. But WHY should I have faith? For a valid reason of course. As you admit the Bible has contradictions. You can talk all you want about the Bible trying to say God is above all by calling the earth flat, but absolutely none of the passages in question even allow for such an interpretation, in or out of context. Can you not reason with your faith, that if even your God supposed the earth to be flat then He really can't be omniscient? Will you continue to believe in His omniscience even past this reasoning? Then what is the effect of your faith, but to bypass reason and be exalted in ignorance. But rather we say that reason exalts faith, not ignorance.

For if knowing that a chair could hold me up, by reason I could have faith in sitting on it. But if by faith, I supposed a chair to hold me up but each time a leg broke, and each time I tried, it simply collapsed, what is the point of my stubborn faith? Why continue to believe the chair will hold me up when it obviously can't hold itself up? Surely, if the Bible cannot even support itself, then again I ask, why must you support it? Now if however I doubted the chair could hold me, and yet I sat on it and it did hold me, has my doubt not increased my faith that the chair is actually capable of supporting me?

The teachings of Jesus are not at all what is at stake here. There are many external sources which outline the same moral message of Jesus. The issue at stake is His claim of divinity and that He is the only "truth, way and light". If the writers of the Gospels bungled so much that they could not even keep a straight story about Jesus' last years on earth, then what reason do you have for believing that they kept a straight story on His teachings and did not alter them?

I can NOT believe that a Messiah and His disciples who believed He was returning quickly is still going to come, even after 2000 years. None of the so-called prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament even vaguely make that claim, and neither does the New Testament. Why then do you continue to hope in vain when it is clear to you that Jesus' own prophecy has failed? Does the same Bible not instruct you to stay clear of prophets whose prophecies do not come to pass?

Again, if you accept that there are contradictions and the Bible is not inerrant, then why is it that you do not believe in other religions since the same principle of faith applies? So if you are arbitrarily ignoring Jesus' failed prophecy and yet claiming you "care", then you actually are being ignorant, since either Jesus was mistaken or He wasn't. If He was mistaken about when He would return, what makes you think the disciples/writers of the Gospels weren't mistaken equally about His deity?

 

[§outh§tar]

South, it is normal to have doubts and to have questions. Your rational brain is questioning the irrational belief in something that you have neither seen nor heard for yourself. Your faith was merely in what you were told to be true. You had no proof of it for yourself. I am quite surprised by this whole thread. Your past Christian fervour was worrying to some extent because you appeared to be an intelligent person, but you were only interested in towing the Christian line and rhetoric. Anything any one ever said about God was refutted by you based on faith alone.

This is what distresses me about Cyperium. There is simply no valid reason for his belief and yet he persists in believing the New Testament, conflicting interpretations of Jesus, Mosaic law, eschatology and so on.

My fanaticism was perhaps an attempt to soothe and assure myself, rather than to assure others. Ironically enough, my doubt started as a result of my arrogance; I saw an article against Christianity and proceeded to read it, thinking I would easily refute some inane speculations concerning the Bible. I was however vastly shocked at the quality of the argument which made me look like a total fool to believe in something I could not reasonably hold as "Gospel" truth. I realized just how circular my reasoning was and how much of a vessel I was for propagating the evolved interpretations of the Bible passed down through time. I realized that I do not actually know anything for myself but what they tell me. Since I do not expect them to be liars or "brainwashers", I presumed they were correct. After all, what Christian would even fathom the most remote possibility that over 1 billion persons have all simply got it wrong?

I'm sorry that your family, friends and church are treating you this way. But for them, you have become what you saw in us, the heathen's who are out to take their faith away. And you are not that. Who you are and what you are is someone who's trying to find his own truth and not someone else's truth. Don't ever let them or anyone else dissuade you from doing so. Life is meant to be lived as you choose to live it. And most importantly, it is your choice to believe and to have faith in what you choose. Where in the past you only had faith in the Bible and in God, you are now realising that you must have faith in yourself first of all. You should never believe in something because you are told to believe in it. You must believe because you feel it is right for you to believe. Don't ever let your Church or the people associated in that Church tell you otherwise.

You have yourself. The faith you had in God and in your Church was not your own. Now you must turn to yourself to see where your own truth lies. Questioning God's existence and the Bible is not bad or wrong. It is only through such questions that you will find the answers that you seek. If after this personal journey, you feel that there is no God, then so be it. If instead you feel that there is a God, then so be it. But at least you've taken the huge first step in trying to find out for yourself, instead of being told by someone else what the answer should be. At least you've come to the point where you feel that you must look into yourself to see what you truly believe in. Most importantly, do what is right for you. And always remember, you're not alone.

Life is meant to be lived South. Live it and find yourself and find your own answers to the questions and doubts that are plaguing you, not the answers that someone tells you is right because it is from a book.

It is hard to tell them because they simply will not believe. I know because I was there, and if anyone told me the things I now know, I would think them terribly deluded and pity them more than anything. Even if the evidence for contradiction was outrageously blatant, I would squeeze my eyes shut and contend that there are somethings which cannot be answered. I now look back at myself as a moron for believing such things and I don't plan to be anybody's fool anytime soon. What moron would believe the propaganda that Churches dole out time and time again? I understand that Christians are well intentioned, but their reasoning is wrong. Few, if any Christians will ever believe my testimony and they will treat me with pity like I am a sick dog or something. The power of faith over reason is surely indisputable.

 

[Cyperium]

Cyperium, I am trying to see things your way, honestly I really am but I simply don't see the sense in what you are saying.

You are trying to tell me trust and have faith. But WHY should I have faith? For a valid reason of course. As you admit the Bible has contradictions. You can talk all you want about the Bible trying to say God is above all by calling the earth flat, but absolutely none of the passages in question even allow for such an interpretation, in or out of context. Can you not reason with your faith, that if even your God supposed the earth to be flat then He really can't be omniscient? Will you continue to believe in His omniscience even past this reasoning? Then what is the effect of your faith, but to bypass reason and be exalted in ignorance. But rather we say that reason exalts faith, not ignorance.

First of all, the Bible isn't stating that the earth is flat, but we can easily see that the writers of the Bible believed that to be the case.

But in the passages that the earth is described to be flat, the message is otherwise. The passages that have those descriptions might have the message that (just as a example) God is above all.

You may have assumed that I meant that the Bible say that God is above all by stating the earth is flat, but that wasn't what I meant. The Bible only indicates that the earth is flat. It's message is NOT to tell you whether the earth is flat or not, it uses this as a image that was common understanding at the time.

If I tell you "there's alot of people on this flat earth that can show you love if you allow them to", what do you think my meaning is? What am I trying to tell you? That the earth is flat??

Or if I tell you "God controls the winds from the four corners of the earth and knows the height of the heavens and the depth of the sea" (something like that is in the Bible), what am I trying to tell you? That God is above everything or that the earth is flat?


If you still don't understand what I mean, then tell me so, and don't draw conclusions from it, I'm not having irrational beliefs. They are thought-through and based on healthy reasoning.

There will allways be misunderstandings, after all, we are human, imagine what would happen if a human got a insight from God, obviously the human have to use the associations that he allready has to describe the feeling that the insight has given to him.

So if the writer believes the earth to be flat, and the feeling tells him to use the image of earth to describe Gods greatness, then the writer will show us a image of a flat earth. The truth is in the meaning, not necessarily in the pictures that the writers used to describe the meaning.

I hope you understand now, and I'm sorry if I was a little bit frustrated when I realised that you obviously didn't understand what I meant, but more or less doubted my ability to reason (also judging from the post to bells that you made).

For if knowing that a chair could hold me up, by reason I could have faith in sitting on it. But if by faith, I supposed a chair to hold me up but each time a leg broke, and each time I tried, it simply collapsed, what is the point of my stubborn faith? Why continue to believe the chair will hold me up when it obviously can't hold itself up? Surely, if the Bible cannot even support itself, then again I ask, why must you support it? Now if however I doubted the chair could hold me, and yet I sat on it and it did hold me, has my doubt not increased my faith that the chair is actually capable of supporting me?

As I said before, the chair can be easily verified if it can support your weight or not, God is unknown to us, thus we can't verify His existance that easily.

We can see that there are contradictions in the Bible, but we can also see what message that the Bible carries out.

When you see something that is wrong in the Bible, then it's up to you to believe that or not. But you shouldn't judge the whole Bible based on it.

The Bible has errors in it, just as any book which contains enough claims.

But if I claim that 2+2 = 4 and 3+3 = 5 should you then take away both my claims just because I got one wrong?

You have to see what you can believe in, even a prophet may make mistakes, but if the prophet has a true inspiration then there are no mistakes in what he writes during that inspiration. But a prophet can be tempted to make claims when he doesn't feel inspired because it is what his intellect tells him to conclude from the inspiration after the actual inspiration.

For example;
If by inspiration I get "1 2 3 4" then I'm tempted to write "5" also. But this may not have to be the case, if I was inspired after the "4" then it could just as easily been "6" (like "1 2 3 4 6") or it could be that there wasn't meant to be anything after "4", maybe the sequence has stopped there?

It's easy to conclude things based on our idea of reality, even though some concepts were new to the inspired prophets, they may have been tempted to further the ideas by making claims based on the before concepts.

The writer that said that Jesus said that He would come before "this generation has passed", may have wanted this to be true, maybe he wanted to give hope to the people, it can be various reasons. Also there can be that the actual words were altered when it was passed on mouth to mouth.

However, the feeling that is given by that message (that Jesus would come before the generation would pass) is very similar to the feeling of being alert and ready for His arrival cause it can happen anytime. It may be that the audiance had misinterpreted that message to mean that He would come in their generation, while He was actually telling them to be ready and alert.

I mean, I can take you as an example:

I said:
"the Bible is actually trying to show something else, it isn't trying to show us that the world is flat, but is trying to show us that God is above all (for example)."

You said:
"the Bible trying to say God is above all by calling the earth flat"

You misunderstood what I originally meant, then replaced my words with your own.

This isn't a personal attack against you, I've done similar mistakes and I've seen others make similar mistakes, I guess we are just humans which from time to time misunderstand eachother. If we then tell anyone else about it then you may have replaced my words entirely. This is also how rumors are made ("do you know what he said!") - or something to that effect.


The only thing I know is that there may be reasons that is above our understanding, and there are alternative explanations for everything.

The teachings of Jesus are not at all what is at stake here. There are many external sources which outline the same moral message of Jesus. The issue at stake is His claim of divinity and that He is the only "truth, way and light". If the writers of the Gospels bungled so much that they could not even keep a straight story about Jesus' last years on earth, then what reason do you have for believing that they kept a straight story on His teachings and did not alter them?

Some things may have been altered, and it's a great sorrow if anything is. But I don't think that the whole message has been altered, I think that if there is changes then they haven't been made with intention and I think that there are still a relation to the original message (often misunderstandings carry at least some of the original intention).

Again, if you accept that there are contradictions and the Bible is not inerrant, then why is it that you do not believe in other religions since the same principle of faith applies?

Because those religions doesn't appeal to me, and I like Jesus and the teachings He had (has).

So if you are arbitrarily ignoring Jesus' failed prophecy and yet claiming you "care", then you actually are being ignorant, since either Jesus was mistaken or He wasn't. If He was mistaken about when He would return, what makes you think the disciples/writers of the Gospels weren't mistaken equally about His deity?

Í said that I realise the problem with the passage, thus I'm not being ignorant about it.

I just don't conclude that the rest of the teachings are wrong because of it.

I also have the option that there might be explanations as to why Jesus said that, or even the option that the peopled that carried His message might have misunderstood what He originally meant.

 

[Athelwulf]

Well, I can't remember exactly but it went something like this:

. . .

I probably ommited a lot of things I don't remember so it may seem incoherent but it went something like that.

Vielen Dank, §outh§tar.

These posts have gotten pretty long now. I've got quite a lot of Saturday reading here.