For all the others :
I asked a simple question. A legitimate question. A question which I justified and took great pains to explain. A question which could teach us all something. That question was :
Is there something you can conceive which would make you change your mind about Jesus?
It is a question anybody who is intellectually honest and who believes in Jesus should ask himself. It is a question most appologists answer in the affirmative and then give their personal something. It is a question most educated atheist have an answer for too. But when I ask you that question here all of the sudden : There is an enemy in the camp! (jesussaves – post #255)
B1Davanda's answer was clearest and boldest:
No.
Magenta evaded it.
Later, Depleted ranted about my hidden agenda and my intent to « destroy the weak in faith »by asking that question, obviously feeling it was threatening to faith. Requoting it twice. And she actually made a good case for it being a threat I would say, I was impressed.
Ladybug calls it a « profanity » and asked people not to requote it so it could be edited out from this forum more easily. A profanity ? Seriously ?
It appears to me I've hit a nerve somehow. What's so dangerous about that question ? Can a question be dangerous to faith ? Is faith vulnerable to questioning ? Hmm... now that Depleted makes me reflect upon it, I see it is so. No wonder you don't like my question.
But I'm disapointed in your reactions, people, I really am. You have gone too far. I can not accept what you are saying because reasonable and honest people do not refuse the possibility that they could be in error. Your dogmatic fundamentalism is utterly repulsive to me and I understand now why it is repulsive to so many, even other christians. I thought that christians on this website would be thinking, like most sensible people do, that being open minded was a virtue and that they would welcome dialogue. It turns out I was mistaken, I landed in a nest of fundamentalists. This « no » is shoking to me. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and that's what I get.
Honestly I have better things to do than talking with people so close minded they won't even consider the possibility that they could be in error, who think that even hinting that they could would be threatening the faith of the « weak » among them. To me that's a complete surrender of reason and common sense and there can be no meaningfull discussion if one side takes the position from the start that the other can not possibly be right. If nothing anybody can say or show you could have any impact on what you believe, then you are not worth talking to. I came here to weigh the pro and cons of what you were saying, a pretty brave move I thought. I did learn a fair bit, but I don't see where we can move from here. Most of you don't seem to think there are cons in what you are saying so you only consider what you claim is the absolute truth. You are in a closed loop where belief reinforce itself, ad nauseam, in an orgy of confirmation bias. That defeats my purpose.
But it is possible that the more extreme among you take the front of the scene and that others, intimidated, do not dare respond from fear of attracting your ire. So I repeat the question and if anybody wants to keep the discussion going, I'm game, just send me a personal message and we can do that in private( beyondET : thinking of what you said for example, but mostly JimmieD), but those who can't or won't answer can stop posting here and ignore this thread from now on, I'm not interested in talking to them any more and I won't respond to them after that.
I imagine some of you are going to talk trash about me and dismiss me as another dogmatic « maltheist », having « faith in the religion of naturalism » as said Robbomango, up to no good and trying to lure the kids away as implied Depleted . I just would like you to ponder on who is open to the other side's view here. I repeatedly said I was, I came here and talked to you, I discussed your views with respect and curiosity. And you threw me off with a resounding « NO » when I merely hinted that being mistaken is something everybody, even you, is at risk of. I do not see how you could reconcile you accusing me of being close minded with your own close mindedness. I wonder if it is that you consider close minded anybody who doesn't agree with you. Well, that's more close minded than I can deal with.
Magenta you ask : Will you allow Jesus a foothold in your life?
If what it takes to be a good christian is to be close minded, then I reject your Jesus and I don't think he is worth worshiping. But deep down I don't think your fundamentalism is really the best christianity has to offer.
Magenta you also say :
When God spoke to me, I knew it was God
Garee concurs, saying « We know Christ, the anointing Holy Spirit of God through His law of faith, as it works in us »
others have made similar claims
That statement, that it seems most of you would accept as self evident, is nothing of the sort. You sound totally ignorant of the latest advances in neurology and psychology, you even seem to dismiss the though that science can have anything to say about the matter. That's plain denial and that's not doing you credit. You seem to ignore for example that knowledge and the awareness of knowing arise in different areas of the brain.
It means you can feel that you know something while not actually knowing that something or even if that something is not true. The most common example is deja vu. This fact casts doubt on how you « knew it was God » because you could be having this impression even if what you believed in was false. Have you looked into what we know about how we know ? Doesn't sound like it. Without that understanding you can not claim knowing anything without a very high risk of being in error and no way of showing you aren't.
And then you ask questions such as this :
Why would I believe you or some unknown philosophers and/or scientists above my own experiences, and the Word of God? What do your scientists and philosophers know?
Garee says something similar.
Well, without going yet once more through the provisional knowledge concept, a good example of what scientists know, let's say regarding spiritual epiphanies, is that there are three main competing explanations available to us, (not just one as you pretend).
They are :
1 – spiritual : direct revelation from a higher power
2 - pathological : it didn't really happen, hysteria, shizoid personality disorder, etc
3 – physiological: feelings that arise directly from activation of localized areas of the brain (limbic system), accidentarily or not.
Each of of those is a possibility although only #2 and #3 have been shown conclusively to explain real life cases, which makes #1 a smaller probability among the lot. When you or anybody else go through a spiritual epiphany, it always feels like #1 and you're convinced. But #2 and #3 feel exactly the same, so the person having the experience, when it happens to her, can not tell the difference. So your certainty that it was #1 is not justified if you have not made sure it wasn't #2 nor #3. It is actually less likely to be #1 than any of the other two given what we know about how we know. So if you take it on faith that it is #1, you are likely to be mistaken about it. It is demonstrable that some people are mistaken that way. Why not you ? If you do not make any effort to find out if it was #1 or #2 or #3, then you are deluding yourself into thinking it MUST have been #1. The key point is that it doesn't matter how it feels to you because all 3 feel the same. I'm utterly baffled how somebody could deny that and go on claiming absolute knowledge that Jesus touched her without further inquiry.