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Well, Mike, it appears tht your doctrines have the Holy Spirit bound as tightly as you need, but you seem to have missed the nature of that Spirit presented by Jesus and Paul in that Bible you so trust.
So in other word God does not talk to people today except via the bible.
Mike you can except that if you like, but to me God is alive and well and still speaks to us via the Holy Spirit that Jesus said he would send to lead us into all truth.
Note: the OT scripture were present at the time Jesus said this and Jesus made NO mention of them being able to lead us into all truth.
Many people claim to have had an encounter with God and then proceed to teach all sorts of things which are contrary to what the apostles who actually did have an encounter with God wrote. MysticPhD did not have an encounter with God in which he was led to believe things which are utterly contrary to what the apostles wrote.
The bold is absolutely true. But I DID have an encounter with God in which I was led to believe things that are entirely consistent with the "mind of Christ" and what JESUS taught and DID.
Faith is a blunderbuss word. You use it here in a rather uncommon way to denote putting into practice what one believes. But if what one believes in not based on valid foundations, then it is in itself believed on faith and thus the actions based on it are merely faith -based, even if they coincidentally happen to be good - and I already did a discussion on people doing good actions on the basis of humanist morality while claiming they were acting on Religious morality.
Now, the thing about putting beliefs into action is that atheist do that, too. Theist apologists sometimes mistake what we do for 'atheism' but it isn't, really. It is actions that we do on the basis of what we believe. And what we believe in that there is no valid reason to believe the god claim and some pretty good reasons to disbelieve the personal god claims; and we can say with a fair degree of confidence that the Bible and Bible -Jesus are Not True. And you have had some of my reasons why. And even if you don't agree, I doubt that you would deny that I have at least some arguable reasons.
But what is the basis for the beliefs on which a Christian or any other theist bases their actions? (Remember that one could say that humanist morality - arguably -is the basis for doing the good, and not the Bible). The apologetics have been debated at length and I have never seen a single Theistic claim validated or even made probable. Thus believing the god -claim, Gospel Jesus and Christianity is reliably credible is really not a valid claim; and to believe that it is True, life -changingly reliably true - is ..well It is based on Faith, not on fact.
Note, this is Faith in the basics - or some of them. Some of you bods don't even seem to accept the Bible - or not some bits of it. And others don't even seem to believe in Jesus, or the Church, or Christian dogma. Or they disagree vehemently about what it is.
What then do they have faith in? It seem they have faith in what they believe, and if they are pleased to call it "Christianity" and stick onto it like a collage scraps of Bible or Christianity, suitably amended to fit, it is I would argue, as much faith in their own imagination as much as if they invented a new religion altogether.
Which I rather think Mystic has done. At least the Mormons didn't fillet the Bible, but they take it as it is.
Actually I am not using faith in an uncommon way trans, that is the way it is used in scripture. faith without works is dead.
If one does not have the works that accompany the faith then they are no better off then those who have no faith.
If people actually had the faith they boast of the atheist would have the evidence for God they are looking for. Alas thou those who boast are only lying to themselves saying they have that which they do not.
Quite. Well what I mean by it in the context of this discussion is the beliefs that you have, whether they just popped into your head or read it somewhere or worked it out in reasoning or reading, whether taking it as literal historical fact or mythologically - framed symoblic Truths, is endorsed as correct by God. And you know this by mental conviction of your own rightness.
No, just like anyone conducting an experiment there are parameters. First and foremost for the Christian would be the mind of Christ, for the atheist probably the science. Using those 2 parameters one should be able to see what is either logos or mythos.
Objective truth is what the apostles wrote. For instance, they wrote that Jesus is God. That's a plain, straight forward objective statement by the apostles. Therefore, people and groups who claim that Jesus is not God are simply disregarding the truth statements of the apostles. Whose fault is that? Not the apostles, not the Bible. It's the fault of those who deny the truth statement of the apostles concerning the fact that Jesus is God.
Your personal issues have no bearing on whether what is stated in the Bible is true or not. If you can't reconcile certain things, that's on you. Not on the Bible or on the Biblical writers.
Eek gad mike that is only YOUR opinion on objective truth.
But lets try an objective truth on you and see how you fair.
Jesus Christ is the savior of all men, specially of those that believe. this command and teach.
And before the apostle told us what we were to teach he warned us about what he called doctrines of demons and to stay away from them.
So how does your eternal torment view mesh with Jesus Christ being the savior of all men?
And if you cannot make it mesh with what we are commanded to teach then the eternal torment doctrine is one of the doctrines of demons.
Oh, I do, Arq. You see I am convinced that the Comforter is within each human consciousness, including yours. That is why you can access the same morality.
I was going to answer that one but you said it better then me anyway
Be honest, Arq. When you consider what you know to be true, "you know this by mental conviction of your own rightness," don't you????
No. I believe something to be true because the authorities in this or that field of science have verified it. Even then, it's always open to revision.
And I am sure that my understanding of the Gospels is right, because it explains so much that was puzzle and it fits and - as you saw (or maybe you ignored it) it makes predictions that pan out. Even then. I don't "know" it to be right on Faith.
Those who reason that way have completely bollixed their reasoning abilities. It's why we atheists punch greatly above our weight. We have reason and evidence working for us; we do not sweat trying to bend it into the shape we want. Though we do work up perspiration stirring up our metaphors.
Well, here's a nice space...
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Why is the evolution of cognitive constructs about God NOT the same as the evolution of our physical characteristics, Arq? Your fixation on linear chronology is bogus. This is evolution, NOT deterministic causation. Inspiration and human sensitivity to it is NOT linearly or chronologically distributed. You refuse to concede that the inspirations are NOT dictation, not everyone is sensitive to them, and their interpretations of the ones they receive are entirely dependent upon their knowledge and understanding, as well as, their existing beliefs and practices, etc. Add that to the evolution aspect posted above and ANY expectations of consistency, consensus, or chronological linearity is preposterous.
You may not see it but humanist creep is visible here. Of course i cannot prove there is no god behind the evolution of human morality no more that I can prove that there is no god behin evolution. But where is the evidence? The best arguments that could be used in favour of theistic evolution - I/D, order in nature, signs of design - fell flat one after the other. And we see that the learning curve idea, while a brilliant theory, runs into problems you have to ignore like reasons to doubt that Jesus' saying were said by him at all (1) and the sheer incoherence of the learning curve curriculum with differing messages all over the place and -as I have said a couple of times - and you ignored that, too (2) - Buddhism with a (seemingly) superior morality to Christianity and the later appalling religion that is causing us all such grief comes later. And never mind mormonism, Moonies and crackpot scientology but see the underlined section below.
You may feel you have secured your position by saying it is "inspiration' rather than dictation, but in fact you have weakened it, because what sounds like stuff that real recipients of Divine inspiration wrote and stuff that others just wrote out of their own heads, is decided by you on the basis of the true spirit telling you which bits are true and which are not.
But this cunning plan puts you on a tightwire, old son, not because you find yourself in the position of telling others who disagree with you that they have not got the Holy Spirit or they would agree with you, though that is bad enough, but because of the basic glass -house danger of relying on Faith; the first time you get something demonstrably wrong, the whole claim collapses.
Sire, you can shift position a bit but saying that Luke or John wrote this or that 'on inspiration' and it doesn't have to be what Jesus actually said. But that is giving up more ground all the time. "Explaining" the incoherence by calling it 'evolution' may get you out of the 'Giod's curriculum' hole but drops you into the bigger one of: "'it looks like nothing to do with God".
So how can you tell what's God'as teaching plan and what just 'evolving?' The very dangerous faith, faith and yet again, Faith. No. Safer to simply ignore it and claim you are winning.
(1) But then you may (I suspect eventually you will ) say that it wasn't Jesus who was inspired but the Gospel writers who made stuff up to put in his mouth.
(2) though Pneuma went in to bat for you and seems to have limped off with the broken leg you should be rubbing.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 07-03-2017 at 04:38 AM..
Oh, I do, Arq. You see I am convinced that the Comforter is within each human consciousness, including yours. That is why you can access the same morality.
It may sound "Wise after the event' but I rather thought you might say that. It is after all the obvious thing to do. But, rather hilariously, the learning curve does come in- the evolutionary, not the divine one. It is the problem of why it looks like morality is developing and changing all the time and why it now has to trump religion? You now have to cherry pick the NT to leave out the bits that are not up to par with human morality.
The better explanation is that the "comforter" is not from a cosmic consciousness but from evolutionary instinct - just as we see in animals. And because of the ability to reason and the emergence of complex societies (which I rather trace to the invention of farming) led to the urgent need to apply moral codes to complex societies.
You can of course there is a cosmic mind behind all this, but you can hardly wonder if I see no valid reason to suppose it to be so, and reasons not to. Notably the disagreements we get. Though they do seem to be resolving into a battle between 'ironsides" and "cherrypickers". The bullet -biters with the Cafteria Christians. The literalists with the compromizers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Amen, nate. There is no question which one is right because only universalism is compatible with and consistent with the Holy Spirit of Agape as described in those scriptures and demonstrated unambiguously by Jesus.
Good. This is the argument I use myself - that Human morality trumps the Bible.
That of course is only used with those who are Bible literalists. You cherry -pickers avoid that problem and simply toss Hellthreat in the bin, thus depriving Christianity of it's best and only weapon (apart from temporal power and coercion).
It means, of course, that we can't argue with them so well, because any problem with the scripture they refer to (and they always do) and they simply drop it and rely on the nice -sounding stuff.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Whenever you presume to think what Mystic has done, you inevitably fail, Arq. But who am I to suggest you quit while you are behind. What we have faith in is that Gods exists. Your fixation on religion is what causes your main confusion. Religion is irrelevant to God. Religion is an effort by humans to become arbiters of what God wants from us and that is an enterprise fraught with danger. We are all looking at the same reality and trying to understand what it is all about. That is why I used the entire spiritual fossil record, not just the Bible, to find any common template to the evolution of our understanding. The Christ narrative fits my experience of God and the spiritual template in what I consider its most evolved form. That is why I call it Christianity, Arq. I have no intention of creating a religion, just correcting what I consider to be errors and corruptions in the existing one. It has little to do with my imagination except that it does take creativity and imagination to see the pattern in the spiritual template and its relevance to existing ideas about God.
As you see from my above, I am ahead of you, not behind, and I have been consistently, and you have simply ignored anything that showed I had it right and just went on denying everything and claiming you'd won.
You have wrong -footed yourself because even though you have Mike on the ropes because he is a bit of a literalist, you are still using Bible leftover -literalism and in the crucifixion as re -interpreted by you, plus quoting from John as though what is written is reliable.
I concede that what you have done (going a bit further an inventing a whole hypothesis) can still be called Christianity as much as Mormonism or Seventh -Day adventism is still Christianity. A new Sect of Christianity, perhaps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Now I understand what you were referring to. We were definitely talking at cross purposes and I bear the blame. I assumed (always a mistake) that you were referring to God changing His mind - a frequent argument by those defending the OT descriptions of God's motives. God's Spirit (Character) is unchanging because He IS love and what that means is described in detail in 1 Cor 13, Galatians 5 and the Sermon on the Mount. That is the absolute standard of God's truth. Sorry for my presumptuousness about your view.
I can see a train -wreck looming there, but we'll see.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 07-03-2017 at 04:05 AM..
No, just like anyone conducting an experiment there are parameters. First and foremost for the Christian would be the mind of Christ, for the atheist probably the science. Using those 2 parameters one should be able to see what is either logos or mythos.
Yes but ...and I'm sure I argued this with Pneuma - science is verified and reliable (Hah! The footnore became five times as long as the post so...) and the Mind of Christ (your own person opinions, and anyone who disagrees does Not have the Mind of Christ. I've seen you in action on the Christian Forum, telling everyone else that they were wrong and you were right - even when contradicting yourself over whether Paul was to be scripturally trusted or not - the answer was -cherry pick what you agree with so paul was writing the bits you liked under inspiration and the rest that you didn't like was just hios own ideas.
But it's all ok. God will send a divine geiger counter to bleep when you come across the radium of truth in the pitchblende of mere human thinking, The only problem is - whose machine is working correctly?
I recall that during the Matrix -Plantinga thread years ago, you (Mystic) argued the unreliability of science on the grounds of Imperfect human Perceptions, and then went on to make a case for guesswork and 'what if' as reliable because it was divinely inspired. You (Mystic) and MissionImpossibru had a thread arguing the reliability of Revelation, but the fact is, old chum, divine inspiration has a track record that wouldn't pass the grade to make 'Just plain wrong' while science has the best and only track record for validated info.
I might suppose you had taken the defeats on board and modified (as you do) your arguments to adapt the theory to make it hold up. Buit the basic -that Faith is divine inspiration and thus reliably true -is still all it is about and all it ever Is, was and shall be, untill this foolish and incredibly arrogant delusion is seen for what it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pneuma
Actually I am not using faith in an uncommon way trans, that is the way it is used in scripture. faith without works is dead.
If one does not have the works that accompany the faith then they are no better off then those who have no faith.
If people actually had the faith they boast of the atheist would have the evidence for God they are looking for. Alas thou those who boast are only lying to themselves saying they have that which they do not.
I have to confess that looked quite uncharacteristically incoherent to me. "Works' in relation to whether cherry picking the Bible on the basis of what one believes -on Faith - to be Inspired rather than just invented - is totally irrelevant. If that was an attempt at a red herring, I can only marvel at how feeble it was. And your final para. alarms me. Maybe - and this is not a cheap smear - it would be a good time to call a halt
Ah!! sorry. Not Yours Mystic, but Pneuma. Apologies and a relief to know you are not Losing it. And of course you (Mystic) know all this, but it's all new stuff to Pneuma.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 07-03-2017 at 05:28 AM..
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) say that it wasn't Jesus who was inspired but the Gospel writers who made stuff up to put in his mouth.