Christian Belief: What is your basis? (traditions, pray, creation, prophecies)

[Jrhockney]

Originally Posted by Amaznjohn

I've listened to many Christians who describe their belief system as based in faith (belief without tangible evidence), personal experience, revelations, tradition, training as a child, tangible, testable, evidence, and/or something else. I would like to know what your level of belief is on a scale from 1-100 from weak to strong, and what your belief is based on, with possible percentages.

I promised a response if I had a little time so here we go:

I don't actually define faith that way. For me, faith is based somewhat on a different internet definition: " strong belief or trust in someone or something." As far as a scale for my belief, I can't give you exact numbers but as I mentioned on the other thread, I would probably rate my faith vs what I know with absolute certain differently with my faith having a much higher rating percentage.

Honestly, if you are looking for a scientifically verified example of "someone prayed for me for a new arm and it grew" (I did hear a story of this happening in India at a Revival thing but completely unverified medically since it supposedly happened with a person in the lowest Caste) as the only legitimate proof that God exist, you are not going to find it and even if you did, you would likely look for alternate explanations as would I to some degree. If you are willing to accept a group of indirect evidence leading to a potential conclusion that a person who is spiritually minded who wants to believe in something can point to as evidence, there is potentially a lot of it depending on what you are will to consider.

Just a few things which you may or may not agree with that I find convincing enough for my standards:

-millions of Claims of supernatural occurrences throughout history and even today (many by people who were not known to be crazy or liars) a few of which possibly happened to me in the form of minor healing from prayer (which I did not expect to happen at the time. I'll give details some other time) and "laying on of hands"...weird huh?

-our seemingly built in desire to discover or experience the supernatural (possible but not verified evolutionary causes here of course but still..)

-A group of disciples who were willing to be tortured to death for what they would have almost certainly known was a lie if it was

-assuming the accounts are truthful and I have found no good or convincing reason to believe they are not, over 500 people saw him after his crucifixion and that's probably too many for a mass hallucination.

-an empty tomb (found mostly by Women no less with would have been almost insulting to even report back then but they did anyways) or at least no known tomb for Jesus

-arguably a dozen or much more than a dozen biblical prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ (which the odds of fulfillment being either beyond astronomical or just really really good coincidence depending on who you ask) to the satisfaction of many first century individuals.

-many existing early manuscript copies of a set of documents known as the bible whose writings and historical accuracy have been very consistent at least compared to other historical writings (Illiad, Writings of Plato, etc).

-existence itself which at least to myself and many scientists (perhaps like the one on this thread maybe?) seems too well functioning to be completely natural and random without some form of intelligence behind it...and yes I do consider evolution as a possible method of God Creation.

I feel like I have more but I can't think of them at the moment and I decided to choose very general well known things above that even some atheists my agree to based on what we currently know. These are far from perfect proofs by themselves but taken in combination with each other add up to a decent enough case for spiritually seeking individuals who want to believe we are more than just random meat computers destined for eternal nothingness. These are also more and better pieces of evidence than most other religions I've seen thus far. This in combination with my motivation to continue my families traditional faith and my own spiritual experiences have led me to be strong but cautious in my Christian Faith.

But I do have a few questions for you just out of my own curiousity: why ask and debate here and what is your end goal in doing so if there is one? Anyways, Have a great Independence Day weekend if you are in American and I'll try to answer back when I can.

[nateswift]

Originally Posted by nateswift

I didn't say that it requires faith in the supernatural, you are just pushing your narrative again. My answer didn't fit into what your narrative had planned for, so you are just scrambling to fit it in.

Originally Posted by Amaznjohn

So, you believe God is a natural being, subject to all of the laws of physics that other natural beings are subject to?

God is "spirit." Now for instance, is "school spirit" subject to the laws of physics? "Natural" does not mean "physical." I don't explain "spirit," I just deal with it as prompted.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by mitchellmckain

I would rather stick with Richard Dawkins scale (from 1 strong theist to 7 strong atheist) because it is better described. On that scale I am a 1.5 theist (between his Strong Theist and Defacto Theist). This is because I do question -- intelligence requires this. But I reject the definition of knowledge as justified true belief being nothing but hot air because nobody believes anything without thinking it is true and justified. The question is how do we live -- that is the real measure of knowledge. I know God exists as well as I know anything and it is how I choose to live my life.

basis (i.e. why)

Well there are two ways to answer this: historical and rational. There is the actual path we took to belief and there is the reasoning by which we justify belief.

Historical: I was pretty much an existentialist coming out of high school and starting at university as a physics major. I came to the conclusion that the most fundamental existentialist faith was the faith that life was worth living. I then realized that the faith in God played the same role in the lives of theists, so I entertained the proposition that these two faiths were equivalent. This gave me my first concrete basis for a definition of the word "God" in order to give it any meaning for me. The question I then pursued was what sort of God to have faith in best served this purpose of providing a faith that life was worth living. That was my thought path into belief in God.


Rational:
As a scientist I am well acquainted with scientific methodology just as I am fully cognizant about how rare are the cases when proof and objective evidence are actually available for the conclusions that people make all the time. Rhetoric frankly has a much bigger role in everyday life than scientific methodology - it is the tool of trade for lawyers, preachers, politicians, philosophers and used car salesmen. Subjective participation is the essence of life and thus imagining that one can restrict life to the objective observation of scientific inquiry is nothing less than delusional. So I don't adopt such idiotic pretense and know full well that science is one thing and life is something else entirely.

As a physicist I have to ask myself as other physicist have asked themselves whether life as we experience really can be summed up in the mathematical equations of physics. My necessarily subjective conclusion, the same as many others, is that the very idea is absurd. Science puts our experience through the filter of mathematical glasses and to be sure this methodology has proven marvelously successful at not only explaining many things but discovering new things about the world that we never expected. But this is just looking at life in one particular way and I think it is quite foolish confuse this way of looking at things with the reality itself.

Thus the point is that I have already decided that reality extends beyond what objective evidence can show. And this includes the God that I believe in. He is a spiritual being and that means that He has no part in the mathematical relationships of time and space that are the physical universe and which make objective evidence a possibility. Thus in my case, there never could be any expectation of objective evidence for the existence of God. Indeed from my point of view that is kind of the whole point of a belief in God at all. I believe that there is a reality beyond what can be measured, tested, manipulated and controlled. The human body and mind may be physical things subject to coincidental external forces that may distort or destroy them at any time, but the human spirit is a matter of our own personal choices and untouchable by things external to it. Thus I reject unprovable assumptions about the limits of reality and assert that God and the human spirit are quite real, even if they are not quite what many religions claim them to be.

I have considerable sympathy with the sentiments of the eastern mystics that logic is stultifying trap for human thought and consciousness. The result is that even if I found no other reasons to believe in a God or a spiritual side to reality and human existence I would very much see the need to fabricate them for the sake of our own liberty of thought. We need a belief in something transcendent in order for us transcend the limitations of logic and mundane (or material) reasons to give our uniquely human ability for abstraction more substance and life.

I feel there are profound pragmatic reasons to reject the idea that reality is exclusively objective because it immediately takes any conviction about reality to a conclusion that the people who disagree with you are detached from reality and delusional or in some other way defective, I don't believe that this is at all conducive to the values and ideals of a free society. The plain fact is that our direct contact with reality is wholly subjective and it is the objective which is the abstraction that has to be fabricated. Now I certainly think there is very good evidence that there is an objective aspect to reality but I see nothing to support taking this to the extreme of presuming that reality is exclusively objective.

Meanwhile, in the studies of my major, physics, we got to the punch line in our examination of quantum mechanics, hearing some of the smarter students stand up and cry in outrage - "but... that doesn't make any sense!" For in quantum physics we find that the physical evidence forces to accept some basic facts that seem to contradict the logical premises of physics and scientific inquiry itself. Its discovery was such a shock to many great scientists that they resisted the ideas and tried to find a way around it to no avail. The evidence was conclusive. Physical causality is not a closed system and we had to accept that there were certain events which have no cause within scientific world view.

So hearing all the reports of shock and incredulity among the physicists that this should be so, it occurred to me, that there was something that would make sense of it to me. If the universe was the creation of a deity who wanted keep his fingers in events then these facts of quantum physics would be a back door in the laws of nature through which He could do so. I am not saying that any such conclusion is necessitated by the scientific facts; only that on this subjective level where quantum physics created such cognitive dissonance for so many physicists, that this idea would make sense of it -- to me.

That was only the beginning of long road, because I certainly didn't jump from there to embracing Christianity and the Bible. The writings of Scott Peck played an important role on that road with his psychological approach to spirituality. Also the study of the history of philosophy gave me some tools to build up my own ideas about the nature of reality, particularly in the ideas of Aristotle. I also found in the pragmatism of Charles Sanders Pierce, some insight into the questions of epistemology that were helpful.

However, even fifteen years later I had some serious obstacles in various theological ideas like atonement, assurance, the Trinity and the resurrection. I worked through these primarily during discussions on the internet. And on several of these I didn't accept the more popular western positions on these subjects but saw in the Bible reasons to take a slightly different approach. It amazes me that I still came out with a fairly orthodox stand on them though I do admit that my refusal to parrot the usual rhetoric does send the more black and white, intolerant Christians into rants about heresy. So if you want to know what sort of Christian I should be called. I am in the liberal end of the evangelical spectrum and neither fundamentalist or Calvinist, though I lean more towards Eastern Orthodoxy on a couple of theological questions rejecting the typical western approach as a bit too irrational for my taste. Also, like some other scientists that have become Christian, I am an open theist (you can look up the writings of John Polkinghorne for example).


P.S. This was quickly patched together from previous responses so I can only hope it all fits together well enough.

It fit together BEAUTIFULLY. Thank you.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by Amaznjohn

So, you believe God is a natural being, subject to all of the laws of physics that other natural beings are subject to?

You are smarter than your posts here let on, John. God's very EXISTENCE is what establishes all the laws of nature, NOT God's Will. They are what enable God to exist and reproduce His consciousness. How on earth could He be subject to them? They ARE Him.

[pcamps]

Originally Posted by Amaznjohn

Yes. I was a "born again" Christian for nearly 20 years, so I have "sought God" with a fervor. After so long, when one finally questions one's faith, one will accept any grain of evidence to justify the years invested in one's belief. I believe I went much more than the extra mile, so I believe my lead is reasonable.

Kind of funny that I have responded at least twice to your posts and you ignored both, bit now you are claiming you were born again'..........well did you feel yourself born again, well did take punk?

[RevelationWriter]

Originally Posted by Amaznjohn

Do you understand that those of other religions make the same claim? If you and a Hindu were explaining this same thing to an objective observer, how would you provide the evidence that your God is the legitimate source over Vishnu, or some other God?

- There's a Hindu and a Buddhist in my family
I've never heard them say any such things.

[RevelationWriter]

Originally Posted by Amaznjohn

Many people claim to have personal experiences with alien abduction and conversations of Elvis. Though we might believe that these individuals believe they actually had these experiences, do you believe that these are legitimate claims?

- Four days after I was Baptized I was given The Spirit's gift of Tongues.
Which I had no knowledge of before.


- As Peter and Paul I too was caused to 'fall into a Trance' for ministry instructions.


- God speaks to me in Dreams and it comes to past just as He told me.


- When His Spirit comes upon me
I have Prophesied thinking what I said was odd it came to past for people.


Just because you don't have a relationship with God
does not mean God doesn't have relationships with others
just as He did with those of His people in 'scriptures' and verses of the bible.

[twin.spin]

Originally Posted by Amaznjohn

Yes. I was a "born again" Christian for nearly 20 years, so I have "sought God" with a fervor. After so long, when one finally questions one's faith, one will accept any grain of evidence to justify the years invested in one's belief. I believe I went much more than the extra mile, so I believe my lead is reasonable.

Sounds like you're a victim of decision theology that focus' on "I", which puts the burden on "I".
Jesus encountered the same such attitude by a young man who asked:

"What must I do to be saved ?"

And after he confirmed Jesus' answer that he had indeed done everything based on "I", Jesus replied that it still wasn't enough.

All we know that the man went away disappointed despite doing all he could do.

[Amaznjohn]

Originally Posted by pcamps

Kind of funny that I have responded at least twice to your posts and you ignored both, bit now you are claiming you were born again'..........well did you feel yourself born again, well did take punk?

I don't have time right now to respond to many posts, but I did want to respond to this one for now. I believe , if you'll revisit the pages of this thread, you'll see that I responded to most, if not all of your posts. However, I believe the converse might actually be the case.

There are many definitions of "born again", so I'm not sure to which one you are referring. If you'll be more specific I'll answer your question. I certainly felt my belief of what it meant to being born again, a metaphor of course.

[Amaznjohn]

Originally Posted by RevelationWriter

- There's a Hindu and a Buddhist in my family
I've never heard them say any such things.

Knowing Christianity, and knowing Hindus and Buddhists, I doubt that a particular belief is universal in their religions either.