(May 11, 2011 at 1:19 pm)tackattack Wrote: Or perhaps if your fundamental doctrine had been questioned earlier and answered sufficiently then you might still be a theist. Alas, we will never know.
I'm quite sure the doctrine was sound. I've been to almost every denomination of church and listened to all types of preachers, from more traditional pastors to contemporary types. Most were very good pastors with compelling, well-thought out messages. I've had personal conversations about these questions with believing friends and pastors. Yet believers always seem to insist that I haven't heard the "right" message or don't have a precise handle on the correct doctrine. That these answers are apparently so elusive to a person like me who, at one time, wanted to continue believing but simply could not, speaks volumes. Why are these answers to elusive? Why didn't the Holy Spirit provide a word or two of clarity to a person sincerely interested in understanding why a loving God would require the sacrifice of his son to atone for sins or why God created us in the first place if he knew beforehand that we would sin and become cursed?" It's profoundly illogical.
Our Daily Train blog at jeremystyron.com
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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