Ask a Christian

[Birdjaguar]

I also think that science was not meant to tackle some subjects.. such as questions that philosophy was designed to answer.

I think that philosophy is just an attempt to answer questions that science cannot answer using a psuedo scientific approach of word-mathematics. Without actual observations, it just goes around and around in endless circles of rhetoric and argument. Philosophy wants to be meaningful, but lacks the hard knowledge of science and the experience of the mystics to actually make a difference.

 

[Sidhe]

If practical application is your goal, then you will find little of interest in mysticism and should probably stay away from it. The experiencees that lead people to believe in existence byeond the universe are not intellectual ones and cannot be understood through a rational approach. For some mystical experiences do translate into everyday use and are very practical. Ask any christian here whether or not accepting Jesus as lord and savior has affected their behavior.

Yeah but there are penty of mystical scientists and philosophers anyway and (organised) religious ones. It's not like there mutually exclusive. In fact oddly enough Buddhist philosophy has parallels in quantum mechanics. You can muse about such things. But you can't use the two in the same sentence, without disappearing into the abstract.

I wouldn't believe in Christianity, it has too many holes for my liking but I'm not against anyone else's beliefs, provided they don't hurt anyone.

As for going round in circles, that's all spiritualism is doing as well. It's not like you're ever going to convince anyone of anything by just talking about it. So it's an exercise in imagination isn't it, nothing else?

 

[LightFang]

Science tells you what happens. Philosophy tells you if we should have these things happen.

Just one example.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I wouldn't believe in Christianity, it has too many holes for my liking but I'm not against anyone else's beliefs, provided they don't hurt anyone.

As for going round in circles, that's all spiritualism is doing as well. It's not like you're ever going to convince anyone of anything by just talking about it. So it's an exercise in imagination isn't it, nothing else?

In any religion, the leaders try to create a "whole" where all the small pieces fit with the larger ones. Christianity was built very much from the ground up as it incorporated the personal events that transformed its original members, a variety of very different writings that do not fully agree, the Old Testament, and a church bureaucracy to manage a huge organization. It is a bit "messy" for anyone who insists that "orderliness and consistency" is more important than the message or content.

Discussions of spiritualism do go around and around, but if a person applies such beliefs in their life, then they do have real world consequences and it is those that are most important and not the discussions. I am surre that the christians at CFC feel that the application of christian proinciples are more important than the discussion of them here. (or anywhere else).

 

[Defiant47]

No. The counterargument that I read started like this: "I am going to consider what properties the true religion, if there is one, would have." and then listed properties that disqualified various religions and groups of religions until Christianity was left. So there is reason to dismiss all the other possible gods for other reasons than the one set out there. (I don't remember it very well at the moment, I'm afraid. IIRC one of the steps was to disqualify polytheistic religions because "any god capable of creating half a universe can create a whole universe", if you want to try looking for it.)

Ah, okay, so it was something more personally defined (kind of like my assumption that God would want to be respected)

It has to do with Christianity specifically, which makes predictions about how humans will behave, and then I see that reality matches it closely, rather than matching some other religion's claim that e.g. all flesh is evil.

I understand.

"We take 1,000 cancer patients. We pray over 500 of them and we leave the other 500 alone."
I thought I answered this one already. Either the underlying prayer in such tests works out to "God, please make the people in Hospital A well, but keep the people in Hospital B sick", which I would expect to be answered "No", or it works out to "God, make all the 1,000 cancer patients well", and we're back to debating the Problem of Evil (and God's nonintervention) in general if you want to ask why God hasn't made the world as a whole better than it is.

Obviously we'd only tell the praying people of 500 of those people. If God still decides to help both 500's equally, then what's the real point of praying?

Also, appearing at the /your-delusion page but better at home in this paragraph on prayer is the verses it lists where Jesus promises to answer prayer; I counter that Jesus told his disciples how to pray and also how not to pray.

We're assuming that the people praying would also have read that, so they know how to pray and how not to pray.

That analogy seems very flawed.
First, soldiers in a war can hope to win. Usually their leaders tell them that they will win, too. People arguing "I hate God so much I'd rather go to Hell than Heaven with God" seem to have dropped this from the start.
Second, soldiers in a war are usually fighting on behalf of someone or something else, like 'my country' or 'my people' that is expected to reap benefits from their death. ("Unless some of us are willing to die, we will all die.") But going to Hell to protest doesn't seem to have any such effect.
Third, soldiers die and that's it, either way. Going to Hell doesn't end.
Fourth, the weighing of Hell against anything else should surely have Hell being worse, while death may be preferable to life under certain conditions (gulags and whatnot).

Indeed, it is an irrational feeling.

Pascal's Wager is largely incidental to me; it's aimed at quasi-utilitarians considering conversion and is little more than an interesting topic otherwise. I don't know because that's not what happened to me.

Also a general note about the WDGHA site: It assumes an omnipotent God, something I've already disagreed with, and a literalist reading of the Bible, which I also disagree with, and in general seems to be directed at a specific branch of Christianity. Do you agree with that assessment?

Indeed, but it helps other faiths open up their eyes as well. I mean, the video itself (and the related articles) is perfect for any faith, since they're all bubbles. Prayers are inherent in many religions and usually a pivotal part.

Not all parts may apply, but the entirety can be used to help undo just about all faiths.

Long post over, going to go make hot dogs now.

I recently had hamburgers

 

[Sidhe]

In any religion, the leaders try to create a "whole" where all the small pieces fit with the larger ones. Christianity was built very much from the ground up as it incorporated the personal events that transformed its original members, a variety of very different writings that do not fully agree, the Old Testament, and a church bureaucracy to manage a huge organization. It is a bit "messy" for anyone who insists that "orderliness and consistency" is more important than the message or content.

Discussions of spiritualism do go around and around, but if a person applies such beliefs in their life, then they do have real world consequences and it is those that are most important and not the discussions. I am surre that the christians at CFC feel that the application of christian proinciples are more important than the discussion of them here. (or anywhere else).

Personally I happen to be a fan of the eight fold path, it makes sense. And the fundamental idea of suffering and the ideology that even if you can avoid it you chose not to to help others all really do speak to me in Mahayana Buddhism. Christianity has too much baggage to speak to me and too many sects, it somewhat has lost the plot, but that is a personal opinion. I think I'd make a terrible Buddhist though.

I don't see what the conflict is between science and religion though, they just don't gel on any real level, so there's no point in criticising one from one platform or the other, unless your talking about evolution or the Earth orbiting the Sun, and those arguments are pointless anyway. Philosophy is the mediator, if you don't like that either then you've no room to talk, it's just arm waving off to the side, where as philosophy is arm waving between the two.

That said I agree this is not the place to discuss mysticism or beliefs that are not in keeping with Christianity or my uneasiness with organised religions in the West or for that matter ME.

 

[Sidhe]

In any religion, the leaders try to create a "whole" where all the small pieces fit with the larger ones. Christianity was built very much from the ground up as it incorporated the personal events that transformed its original members, a variety of very different writings that do not fully agree, the Old Testament, and a church bureaucracy to manage a huge organization. It is a bit "messy" for anyone who insists that "orderliness and consistency" is more important than the message or content.

Discussions of spiritualism do go around and around, but if a person applies such beliefs in their life, then they do have real world consequences and it is those that are most important and not the discussions. I am surre that the christians at CFC feel that the application of christian proinciples are more important than the discussion of them here. (or anywhere else).

Personally I happen to be a fan of the eight fold path, it makes sense. And the fundamental idea of suffering and the ideology that even if you can avoid it you chose not to to help others all really do speak to me in Mahayana Buddhism. Christianity has too much baggage to speak to me and too many sects, it somewhat has lost the plot, but that is a personal opinion. I think I'd make a terrible Buddhist though.

I don't see what the conflict is between science and religion though, they just don't gel on any real level, so there's no point in criticising one from one platform or the other, unless your talking about evolution or the Earth orbiting the Sun, and those arguments are pointless anyway. Philosophy is the mediator, if you don't like that either then you've no room to talk, it's just arm waving off to the side, where as philosophy is arm waving between the two.

That said I agree this is not the place to discuss mysticism or beliefs that are not in keeping with Christianity or my uneasiness with organised religions in the West or for that matter ME.

 

[Veritass]

Wow, I miss the days when the "Ask a Christian" thread had people, like, asking questions of a Christian. And I'm not even a Christian.

BirdJaguar, I see you also have an affinity for mysticism; do you consider yourself a mystic? A mystic-in-training? Perhaps you would like to open an "Ask a mystic" thread for these discussions? I believe they have value, but I think they are derailing this thread.

To try to tie these together, I ask (of Christians):

Many non-Christians see in Christianity only the dogma and the areas where the church seems to dissuade its followers from thinking. There have, of course, been Christian scholars and Christian mystics. Do you view the church as supporting you having a personal experience of the Divine, whether it is "walking with Jesus" or some other experience of God? Please share with us your experiences of the Divine.