Oakspear

Not ignorant def, just has a different opinion of the so-called facts. Can't argue with angry though ;)-->

Well yeah! We managed to have a discussion without agreeing, but also without getting mad. I think you are mistaken about worshipping staues of Buddha, although I am not familiar with every sect. Buddhists consider the Buddha "enlightened" and his teachings worthy to be followed, but he is not considered a god in any way, shape, or form

Without looking up Greek words, if the word "keeping" is accurately translated it carries the meaning of "doing", rather than "possessing" as in "I am keeping my Black Sabbath records no matter what my minsiter says".

Sky:I agree with you on this. So many times the "signs" that people see are not so clear that anyone would recognize them as a "sign", they can be rationalized away. Who knows, if I'd have seen Moses' burning bush maybe I would have called the fire department :P-->; or spent my time analyzing the individual wool fibers on Gideon's fleece If you believe, it's personal. It's something that you experience, according to the testimony that I've seen here. So-called signs would be something "objective", that anyone could see...but would everyone interpret that sign the same way? Would everyone ascribe it to God? Nope.

In a loving manner, I'm sure ;)--> - I recognized the sarcasm, but sarcasm has a purpose: it emphasizes for the reader or listener the opposite of what is being said - you wrote that George was tolerant and loving, you meant the opposite. I don't like your proof because it isn't one. There are plausible alternative explanations. You can't use the conclusion to prove the premise. Alrighty then :D--> Can you refresh my memory? I recall hearing that such references existed, but not that they were authoritative in any way and were open to alternate interpretations. If not, I would gladly change my view on this portion of my argument. I don't have trouble imagining them happening. Maybe they did, I just don't accept that the bible is any proof that they did. Must be that lack of a common premise thing again ;)--> I'm not saying that there wasn't a Jesus, I don't say that either side is right or wrong, just that merely saying it doesn't make it so On part of this I can agree with you: a movement that later was called Christianity exploded out of Judea and across the Roman world starting in the late first century C.E. It was compelling enough that many gave their lives for it. It is my opinion that the likelihood that all of it was concocted (i.e. a lie) is vanishingly small. It is also my opinion that the possibility that some of it was embellished, exagerated, misunderstood, twisted or changed is quite good. Christianity isn't the only religion that spread in a hostile world. Hmmm...how about "There are events in the physical world that we have no explanation for"?

Zix: You're right, that was a long post ;)--> The original point of this thread was to ask Christians why they are Christians. Embedded in the initial post is my assumption that the reasons are subjective (although they are judged objective by some :D-->)) I have no problem with "it works for me" I have no problem with "I experienced a, b and c so..." I really have no problem with "God told me" Because I cannot say, beyond a shadow of a doubt that it doesn't work for you, that you haven't experienced a, b or c, or that God didn't tell you. What I do have a problem with is when one person's personal experience becomes the defining standard for everyone. And, in my opinion, the bible is a collection of peoples' personal experiences with and personal opinions of God. It's true because this book says it is. --> I reserve the right to observe that although you say that you are experiencing something, there is no external evidense that I can see, and the experience is therefore useless to me.

Hiya Def: I wanted to jump in to respond to some of your response to George. To keep it all straight, George's word will be in quotes, your's in regular type, and mine in bold (if I remember all that :D--> (Geo, thanks for being so tolerant. Surely, your way is the most loving of all.) George is not claiming to be loving, just rational. You may argue about the logic and reasonableness of his stance...heck, you can even comment on his (lack of) love, but not as if it's the argument he is making What's your proof that God does not exist? As you well know, you can't prove a negative. George is NOT claiming that he has proof that God does not exist, merely that you have no proof that he does. YOU have no proof that the tooth fairy DOES NOT exist, or Santa Claus, or any other of the non-Christian gods. I have a written record and creation. You view that written record as proof of something that is in the written record, it's a classic circular argument. Creation is not proof of God. Personally, I lean toward intelligent design, but not for any reasons that I can defend, it's just a personal preference, but the existance of something doesn't require that an intelligence (i.e. God) was behind it Um, I think it was God. "Um", you base that on what? That the bible says that of itself? Again, a circular argument, which is worthless. Read your Bible again, we know who wrote many booksWe know who claims to have written many of the books, but it is far from unanimous, even among bibliocal scholars. we have non-biblical sources who testify that Jesus existed, and we know archaelogists have used the Bible to find so-called "lost" citiesEven if the questionable non-biblical sources are true, all that they tell us that a person with the name Jesus (or the Aramaic/Hebrew/Greek/Latin equivalent) lived during the time indicated. Finding "lost" cities is a long way from talking donkeys and walking on water *yes we do **ahem, we have the Gospels, the letters and the testimony of the non-biblical [pagan critics]} I adressed this line of reasoning already ***And your point being? The point is that what you have, are other peoples' opinions and impressions of what Jesus said, assumimng that there was a Jesus. It's unknown to you because you choose to reject any knowledge of it. Typical weak arghument. "I can't convince you by evidense, so it must be YOU who don't WANT to see. And no, we are not to blindly accept anything. This isn't the kool-aid line. Christianity is a very reasonable faith. It's only reasonable (which is debateable) if you accept the premises, which are not at all self-evident

Thank you MJ, I read some CS Lewis years ago and enjoyed his writing. But I will not be satisfied by someone else's experience, which is what it all ultimately comes down to. I appreciate the thought though.

I'd be willing to car pool with anyone along or near my route: I-29 from Nebraska through Iowa to KC I-70 through Missouri and through St. Louis Through southern Illinois and onward by way of a yet to be determined route

I am taking care of all paper & plastic: plates, bowls, cutlery, garbage bags, cups. I'm working on getting some of it donated I also have access to a thirty-cup coffee pot that I plan on bringing. Rascal, I can contribute some food, as long as it doesn't need to be refrigerated, email or PT me and we can work something out

I believe that another reason that the "witnesses" were there was to give the illusion that it was not all one man's opinion. Also there was an element of "good cop/bad cop" in some of the confrontations. Before I was the subject of the inquisition myself I was often called upon as one of the "witnesses". Probably because I was adept at taking accurate notes of what was said. The leader would refer back to my notes if he thought that the one accused was giving contradictory answers. I wish I had thought to take notes of what the accusers were saying; I might have caught them in contradictory statements.

Mike, when you use the word "neat" I get flashbacks Can you say "groovy" for me?

Thanks Whitey, but the translation question was clear already for me. Hebrew was without question the original language of the old testament, there's no argument as there is about the NT. I don't have access to an Aramaic text of Genesis, and couldn't find one online, so I can't verify the word order in that language, but since Aramaic is similar grammatically to Hebrew it is likely that the word order is the same. The fact that Lamsa translated Genesis 1:1 to put the word "God" first, does not guarantee that it was first in Aramaic.

Since the assumption in TWI was that in a disagreement between a leader and a non-leader, the leader was always right, whatever the leader said in these confrontations was also assumed by the witnesses to be right and therefore requiring agreement. In my experience, the "accusation" was usually nothing more than an interpretation of a person's behavior as being "off the Word". Numerous things that personally ticked off a leader might be described as "slothfullness"; a messy house, a bad haircut or a rusty car might be called failure to adhere to the "decent and in order" admonition; but it all boiled down to the leader's opinion that the action actually fell into the described categories. Since the leader defined the "broken fellowship", failure to satisfactorily address the issue became disobedience, which was also confronted. The "witnesses" who were shanghaied into participating only got one side of the story, and were never asked if the action by the accussee warranted confrontation, just observe. More often than not the one accused would admit to the accustaion ("well, sure, my car is rusty -->) and then be pounced upon by the leader. If theyt fought back, they weren't "meek", if they didn't, then they were cornered into having to explain why they didn't change.

Thank you all for the answers, and for keeping the discussion civil :D--> All of you Christians have stressed how God and Christ are real to you, how you experienced his love in many fashions. Some of you experienced miracles, for others the confirmation of God's love and the correctness of Christianity was more subtle. Most of you, in addition to your experience, say that you adhere to Christianity because, on some level, it makes sense to you, or appeals to you, and that other forms of theism do not. Here's where I stand, folks: For over twenty years I believed what TWI taught about the bible, and accepted it, though not without question, certainly without argument. At the end of the year 2000, some months after Martindale's resignation from the Way presidency and later expulsion from The Way, I began a systematic review of what was being taught in THe Way. I started with Martindale's WayAP class, and identified so may errors that they took over ten pages to enumerate. When I say errors, I mean errors similar to Raf's "Actual Errors in PFAL", not differences in interpretation, but errors in fact. For example, Martindale said that it said such-and-such "in the text" when "the text" said no such thing. Fabricated definitions of Greek or Hebrew words, misrepresentations of scientific theory...the list goes on and on. As I was slogging through Martindale's errors, I started looking at Wierwille's writings as well, since Martindale often used them as his source; I started seeing many of the same problems with Wierwille as I had with Martindale (not as many to be sure, but plenty nonetheless). An example that pops up is Wierwille's assetion that the first word in the bible "in the original" is "God". The problem is that there is no evidense for this. The word "God" is placed third...Wierwille even quotes the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 in his section on "formed, made, created" as "berere sh ith, barah, elohim..." Now, looking for errors, I was not applying a denominational or "orthodox" standard, but the Way's own: read what's written, etc. I was seeing The Way's errors using The Way's own yaerdstick. About this time I started checking out information from various ex-Way offshoots and was surprised at the different answers many people were coming up with, not only from The Way, but from each other. Doctrinal discussions on Waydale & GS added to the mix. Seems to me that the magic self-interpreting bible wouldn't yield so many different interpretations using the same set of "keys". Add to the existing mess the plethora of denominations, sects, and past "heresies" and you have quite the mass of contradictions within Christianity. Beyond interpretation, I dfon't believe that you can make the bible "fit like a hand in a glove" without verbal and linguistic gymnastics. To me the bible, while chock full of wisdom and the experience of godly men and women is NOT perfect, or given word-for-word by God himself. There's too many contradictions, not the least being the contradiction between the bloody tribal god of the OT and the loving father of the NT. I had come to the conclusion that I couldn't trust The Way, I couldn't trust Christianity, I couldn't trust the bible, I couldn't trust someone else's vision or version of what God was...I would go with my own experience. Can I prove that any of my experience has objective reality? Nope, not any more than you Christians can. Is my experience appliocable to anyone else? Maybe, but probably not. Is God capable of being big enough to include a multitude of faiths and realities in what is "true". Why not?

Makes sense once you accept the existance of God, the form he or she takes ought make sense, as Christianity does for you

http://mail.bluzecentral.net/smf/index.php

You know, you can go back and edit posts that you made errors in ;)-->

P.S. - I didn't email you - I sent you a Private Topic. You can respond by going to the PT itself and treating it like any other thread.

sky: They don't have the emo that you want, unless you can do the custom smiley deal, which I can't. It was not my original intention to post this thread here. I posted the same question at Raf's Living Epistles Society forum (where I am the token non-Christian :D-->) Raf initially set his site up for Christians. When I registered we exchanged a few emails and he referred to me posting there as "an interesting experiment". Recently though, he set up a forum for non-Christians to question Christians. I initiated the forum with the question that started this thread. (Check it out, there is an excellent post by markomalley). Another GS poster asked me to start the same thread here so she could respond to it. It didn't want to at first, since these type of threads usually go nowhere, and often end up as free-for-alls with the Christians maligning our lack of faith, and my fellow non-believers and I criticizing the believers for lack of thinking ability...it gets real ugly. The discussion here hasn't devolved into that this time. I've in particular enjoyed our sparring, sky4it. While I don't believe that a believer should be required to explain his or her faith, or "prove" it to anyone for it to be valid, posting on these type of threads is a bit more productive if the discussion goes beyond: Christian: "Well, I believe in Jesus...I don't care what anyone says" Agnostic: "Prove it" Believe it or not, I really am interested in peoples' answers to "Why Christianity?" - I haven't completely rejected any form of religion at this point, nor have I completely bought into any of them, discussions like this are helpful. Nor have I rejected thinking either; if God did indeed create me, then the ability to reason is part of the package...I'm not going to abandon that ability at this stage of the game. (You going to the Weenie Roast?)

Or, or, or...We can trade "or's" back and forth forever, G; my point was that your statement, while possibly true, was not at all obvious. I realize that you think very highly of VP's class (while thinking little of his attack-dog "Corps), but not all agree. Have a good 'un

Responses to sky4it (as Oak rolls up his sleeves and squares his shoulders) Response to the "Muslim" paragraph You do understand that I'm not a Muslim, right? I was not quoting Mohammed "as if it were objective". Islam is just as subjective as anything else. My point was to demonstrate that there are many convinced-beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt Muslims, who believe that they have the no-argument-is-valid "One Truth" and would call you a liar for denying anything in the Koran. You spent a paragraph arguing why the Koran is inferior to the bible, why Mohammed was "off the beaten path" and why Islam therefore isn't true, objective or otherwise. Guess what? I mostly agree with your assessment of the Koran and Islam. However, don't you see (what am I thinking, of course you don't see ;)-->) that a devout Muslim would reject your arguments against his "holy scriptures" for the same reasons that you reject my arguments against yours? Circular Argument Response Okay, we're operating under slightly different definitions of what it means to be objective. Can we agree to disagree on this one? Anyway, I don't think that you are lying about your experience. My point (which I thought was stated reasonably clearly) is that I have experiences too, so does everybody else. They're not all the same. Do you in your mind decide that anyone with a different experience is lying? Possessed? Seeing devil spirits? Deluded? I would think that you'd have to take a position like that if you maintain that your experience (objective as far as your definition goes, subjective in mine)is true while others' experience (when different than yours) is false. Response to the "Proving God's Existance" section I have never asserted that God does not exist. You may be confusing me with others who post here. Response to the Lazarus paragraph Sorry, but I find the scriptures unconvincing as a whole. God was talking up a storm to Abraham, Moses, and even Balaam, but he can't talk to people now? He sends us off to read a book? Hey! How come you're rolling your eyes at me at the end of that post? Response to next post Correct, others saying that they have the truth don't invalidate the truth of your assumptions...IF they are true. I'm not sure what you're apologizing for, but we're both being long winded :P-->, and with Mr. Websterhopper there, we're all getting windy

There's a name I haven't heard in a while. Mel had a contract to install the windows in all the public schools in Lincoln one year (1982). While he was here one of his workers enrolled in PFAL and took it at my house. He also had a co-worker or partner named Bob Pinali (sp?)

But you apparently can't see the difference when it comes to your own dearly held beliefs. Your statement is a logical fallacy, I believe it is "appeal to authority", where you hold your attendance in various classes as if that was an answer to the argument at hand. Thanks. I don't think that you are trying to be offensive, and you aren't being unintentionally offensive either. :D--> Circular argument, once again. We are not calling God a liar. George is stating that he doesn't see any evidense that he exists, and I'm saying that I see no evidense that your version of him is necessarily more true than any other version of him (or her).

"There is no god but God, and Muhammed is His prophet"...some might say that you are calling God a liar sky4it ;)-->