Tell her to sanctify herself and be patient. It takes a while sometimes. Sin hinders peoples experience of God.

Please don't lead her away from God. Please don't. I'm begging you. It is real. I promise you it is real. Please don't. I would send you a hundred dollars to make you not do it. Seriously.

God does answer prayers to people proving God's existence. He has for me, hundreds of times. You have to remove yourself from sin and sanctify yourself.


As for Occam's razor, have you ever read William of Occam? He was a Christian and scholastic theologian. Maybe he would be a good person to consult whether his methodology actually disproves Christianity or tends towards it. I think it tends towards it, because it seems highly unlikely to me that people are the same as rocks and killing is the same as loving.

(March 24, 2013 at 11:10 pm)jstrodel Wrote: I would send you a hundred dollars to make you not do it. Seriously.

Someone take this joker up.

I believe that in real life discussions, it is morally wrong to talk against a believer's faith, because it's a source of joy for them. However, I think it's perfectly justified to talk to her and give her the perspective against it, especially since I used to believe.

Quote:You have to stop mocking God and listen to God as if God may exist, treat God with respect, then God will listen to you.

Done that, done all of that. I haven't always been an irreverent bunster. I took him seriously, I was the the best daughter he asked for, and how did he treat me? Well, he didn't. That's the problem. He didn't listen. Because he wasn't there, and I was prayin to air. I "felt" his presence for years, but where was he? In my brain. Nowhere else, and everything I saw in life that was "Him" could easily be rationalized as wishful thinking and skewed viewpoint. I know it's hard to believe, but, good things do happen to you in life without an all powerful god orchestrating them. You can be at the right place at the right time, without him changing all of space/time and people in order for that one thing to take place. You know you can get your brain to release certain chemicals, praying? Masturbating too, but that's another matter altogether especially if you're a baptist or a catholic.

PS. I want a hundred dollars

Did you sanctify yourself and live for the glory of God? Did you have sin in your life? God reveals Himself to people that really sanctify themselves.

You never saw anything? You never experienced anything you even thought might be God? I have experienced so many things in my life. Was there ever a point where you reinterpreted things that you thought before were God?

Chrissake, Strodel, you REALLY don't get it, huh?

(March 24, 2013 at 11:27 pm)jstrodel Wrote: Did you sanctify yourself and live for the glory of God?

And if she says yes?

(March 24, 2013 at 11:27 pm)jstrodel Wrote: Did you have sin in your life?

I thought it was impossible not to.

(March 24, 2013 at 11:27 pm)jstrodel Wrote: God reveals Himself to people that really sanctify themselves.

How do you determine how much sanctification is needed? How do you measure sanctification? I assume you just kind of guess for both, but then you can say that anyone who didn't find god must not have been sanctifies enough, regardless of how much they were.

(March 24, 2013 at 11:27 pm)jstrodel Wrote: You never saw anything? You never experienced anything you even thought might be God?

Why wouldn't he be more up front about it? Remember, the ancient Greeks though lightning might be god.

(March 24, 2013 at 11:27 pm)jstrodel Wrote: I have experienced so many things in my life. Was there ever a point where you reinterpreted things that you thought before were God?

Well, we know what lightning really is now, and it isn't god. Just like every other piece of "evidence" we have found for any sort of god...

Sanctification is when you wake up and your mind is set on glorifying God and all of your actions are directed towards loving God and loving others. To be sanctified means that you do that all the time. Many people are able to sanctify themselves to a great degree.

It is a choice whether you do so or not. Most people that you see around do not sanctify themselves, and there thoughts and actions are not intended towards good.

In order to experience God, you need to sanctify yourself. Charles Finney (I think it was him) talks about how one sin can prevent God's power from flowing and remove the unction of the holy spirit.

If people want to experience God they have to be all in.

I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, the life I now live, I live by faith in the son of God who loves me and cares for me Galatians

To be sanctified is to be crucified with Jesus Christ and to recieve the nature of Jesus Christ as the air your breathe and the food you eat.
When you live for the glory of God it is like everything that you do ends in trying to manifest God and let the spirit of God and the revelation of God transmit through you.

I am going to say yes. I was the squeakiest clean Christian girl for appx 6yrs until I decided he wasn't there. I'm still squeakishly clean. Squeakish. I just don't feel guilty when I masturbate, really. That's about the biggest difference I can think of from then to now. Let me show you what I mean by squeaky clean: I didn't have sex, period. I prayed every day, assured those suffering around me with his platitudes constantly, converted many of my own athiest family members into believing in god because I was so one tracked on god in the face of death over and over again. I set aside my well being for others, I gave every cent I had to people who needed it. I forgave the second I was wronged. It "hurt my spirit" to hear cussing and to see Bill Mahr on the television. I prayed every day and every night and guess what? When I stopped praying and started doing things: life stopped persecuting me and I used my brainpower not to conspiratize an entire unseen belief system onto my life--but to figure out how to better my life without waiting for god to re arrange all of the fabric of space to accomodate me.
Have I seen god or evidence for him? No. Did I assume that any good thing that happened in my life was god? Yes.
Problem is, bad shit has a tendency to bring you down to earth out of that cloud. The moment I was dying in a hospital bed and realized that I was truly alone: that was the moment the god thought died.


Would you define refusing chemotherapy in order to let god "do his work" on my body, all in? Cuz if so, I was all in.

I am sorry you had that experience. I don't know why you didn't experience more of God. Did you goto a church that believed in spiritual gifts? Was there anything good about the experience?

Life is hard.