(April 1, 2016 at 5:40 pm)athrock Wrote:(April 1, 2016 at 3:52 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote: But what I wonder about from these reported meetings with Jesus is how the believer goes from the private, intra-psychic experience of being with .. something -> to verifying the alleged omni powers of God. Presumably it is the immediacy of the meeting which seals the deal, but the content of what gets believed comes from elsewhere. On account of the experience one becomes resolute in believing a number of things about the nature of God which was in no way conveyed by way of the experience. Shouldn't that bother people? What if they're having a genuine experience of some significance and immediately misattributing it out of some pre-existing bias?
Put God in the natural world as an intra-psychic phenomenon or else leave Him in the round file of the supernatural zone. Your choice.
W-
I would say this about that: If someone MEETS God, I don't think that it will be the case that he or she walks away from that encounter unmoved by the awesomeness of God. I mean, it won't be like striking up a casual conversation about the Mets with the vendor at the train station magazine stand, ya know?
So you doubt what believers experience is a genuine meeting with God? I don't. I think what they experience is actually all there is to God. You guys are always insinuating that God is omni-capable of incredible empirical feats. I think you have that wrong.
(April 1, 2016 at 5:40 pm)athrock Wrote: But at the same time, your point is fair. As a result, I think that someone who has a genuine experience of God will still need to LEARN theology in order to understand what has been reasoned out and gathered from experiences like this from others over the course of several thousand years.
I can't tell that you actually understand my point.
(April 1, 2016 at 5:40 pm)athrock Wrote: IOW, just because Jesus speaks to you in the shower, it does not mean that you will have anything intelligent to say about the hypostatic union or the filioque.
Neither does the experience in the shower suggest anyone needs to learn anything intelligent to say about whatever those things might be. Why should the person trade in the significance they can feel directly in that experience for the conformity of the bible? I don't get it.