The Comforter is real

[mordant]

Originally Posted by arleigh

You answered the question ,
no matter what's shown you you choose not to believe.

You forget that many of us used to believe and now don't.

Faith is needed only and precisely because life experience does not match up to dogma. Faith only works over the long haul -- things are only made consistently and finally right by an invisible guy in the sky in an invisible afterlife that no one is clamoring to get into. When something happens in this life now and then that matches the things god has supposedly promised to his own (a stopped clock is right twice a day, after all) then god gets full credit. The rest of the time man gets the full blame. It's a great gig for god.

All that anyone has ever had to "show me" is god and that his word is actually true in some present and meaningful way, as opposed to some metaphorical / theoretical / eventual sense.

Back when I was attending bible institute, they used to talk about "positional truth". It is a special kind of truth that doesn't operate by ordinary truth rules such as that it's actually happening. We are "seated with Christ in the heavenlies", are his "joint heirs", "high priests", and just generally, to borrow from Charlie Sheen, "winning!!". These are nice little pep talks until you encounter the actual vicissitudes of life and have to deal with how life actually is experienced and felt.

[Nosmas]

I believe that you believe that. However billions of people believe all sorts of things. The plural of anecdote isn't "evidence". You act as if your personal experience should be convincing to any of us. If there were the case I would have to start believing all sorts of thing that people believe. I'm sure many people who have comitted horrible crimes really believed the voices in their head were God.

How do you expect reasonable people to destinguish between the true unfalsifiable personal experiences and the untrue ones? You can't all be right but you can all be wrong. Next time you're talking to God get some insight on a future event. Predict that in detail and you might be on the road to begenning to seperate yourself from from people who swear they've been abducted by aliens or those who have the power to fly but choose not to when watched.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

The effect of the Christian myth is not happenstance, Shirina. I selected it from among the many alternate versions of the template. It is the character of the consciousness and the experience that defines it for me. The label Christ and His story match the template in the "spiritual fossil record" and match the character of the consciousness I encounter. Do I think that means it MUST be Christ? No. Do I think it probably IS? Yes. Do I accept any of the primitive and barbaric nonsense attributed to Yahweh as part of it? Absolutely not. The defining characteristic of the consciousness I encounter is unconditional love and acceptance which is perfectly described in the story of Christ. Let's face it . . . loving those who have scourged and crucified you is pretty strong love and acceptance. I am not succumbing to primitivism or fundamentalism . . . but I am a pretty committed believer in a God of agape love. I am as annoyed as you by the mainstream Christian dogma, exclusivity and intolerance . . . to mention only a few of their absurdities. To paraphrase Ghandi: "I love Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ."

Originally Posted by Amaznjohn

Or, "Who are we to question God?" Or, "We are not supposed to know the mind of God."
It all gets so predictable at a point.

Why the pretense that we do not know what the standard is . . . agape love . . . even if we do not follow it. I think it is that most may not know what agape love refers to. Here is a quote that may help:

"There is a word from the time of the cathedrals: agape, an expression of intense spiritual affinity with the mystery that is 'to be sharing life with another life.' Agape is love, and it can mean 'the love of another for the sake of God.' More broadly and essentially it is a humble, impassioned embrace of something outside the self, in the name of that which we refer to as God, but which also includes the self and is God. We are clearly indebted as a species to the play of our intelligence; we trust our future to it; but we do not know whether intelligence is reason or whether intelligence is this desire to embrace and be embraced in the pattern that both theologians and physicists call God. Whether intelligence, in other words, is love."

~Barry Lopez, "Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape."

There was a time I was absolutely certain that every single human being would know and recognize agape love when they saw it . . . even if they couldn't define it or describe it completely. I thought it was in that category of knowing that is reserved for things otherwise undefinable . . . kind of like the less pure and wholesome phenomenon we refer to as pornography . . . "We know it when we see it." Unfortunately, my time on this forum has altered that expectation considerably . . . and not for the better. The power of indoctrination into the bigoted intolerance of our barbaric ancestors is apparently too strong for many to overcome. What Christ revealed unambiguously . . . the religions have polluted and corrupted to make His pure agape love virtually unrecognizable in the dogma created by the "precepts and doctrines of men." I remain hopeful that the agape love God has "written in our hearts" WILL find expression as the Comforter within our consciousness continues to prod and guide us to the truth . . . "From my keyboard to God's ears!!"

[monumentus]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

Why the pretense that we do not know what the standard is . . . agape love . . . even if we do not follow it.

Thats your standard. But it is a human emotion you describe. Where would this emotion be if all humans were simply magically not here tomorrow? If the race was wiped out. Where then is "love"?

You appear to think there is some god - universal conciousness - or some such that would still be feeling - experience - or be the embodiment of "love" but you appear to be just making this up out of nowhere. There is no evidence suggesting any such thing exist - unless you have been holding out on us?