RE: Paradoxical relationship between belief and faith.
August 2, 2012 at 5:46 pm
(This post was last modified: August 2, 2012 at 5:47 pm by Whateverist.)
(August 2, 2012 at 5:24 pm)catfish Wrote: The strawmen abound in your OP.
1. Christians should really stop looking to the bible as a contract of what they can expect from God.
2. How can you say you have faith in the nearness of God if what you really mean is you have faith that the words written in the bible are true?
3. You have no confidence in anything you experience in your relationship with God that even comes close to your belief in the words written in that book.
4. By clinging to 'the word', Christians miss the 'thing' itself, whatever that may be.
5. That is part of the self-fulfilling prophesy. Once you decide what to believe before you even invite God to reveal Himself to you, you've already decided what beliefs to reinforce in your imagination.
6. Surely you don't think it is the place of humans to direct the will of God? But, in effect, that is what you do when you insist on the infallibility of the bible and distrust what comes to meet you when you truly open yourself to knowing Him.
Maybe you should post your reasoning for Christians believing in the infallibility theory over in the thread where I ask for such a reason.
https://atheistforums.org/thread-13936.html
You haven't convinced me any of them are strawmen. I don't think I understand what you are asking me to do. Post my reasoning for Chrisitans believing in the infallibility of .. the bible? I have no reasoning for Christians and so far as I can tell they have very little for themselves.
My observation is that belief is insistence on assumptions whereas faith is an openness to what is true. Christians have no faith in God, just the beliefs the bible prescribes.
I haven't read much of the bible and found what little I got through too tedious for words. Drivel.
