The Stage is Yours.

[fr0d0]

No it does not directly logically contradict anything. You simply don't understand what I mean by directly and personally knowable.

Well, I thought that the words "directly and personally knowable" meant that you would directly know who God is, which also implies that, at least, there is a way for "knowing" Him. I didn't exactly mean to say that God has to be empirically provable, but just that there is way to know Him as per your statement "God is directly and personally knowable," whether it is through the Bible, historical accounts of Jesus, or in any other way.

If your answer is the Bible, then the process of knowing Him is indeed metaphysical.

Maybe the language is from my dogma. It's what Christians say. The fully correct wording gets shortened and becomes confusing if you don't understand the references. I try to correct myself, but some slip through.

Yes I/ we do directly and personally know God. It's not just the bible. We accept that the bible is the word of God (is inspired by him and is very accurate), and check our thoughts against that. I need to talk in the lingo to say this, so please bear with me... I talk directly to God and he talks directly to me. This is the function of the Spirit in Christianity. It makes God known to us. Yes this is made possible through Jesus, but Jesus's physical being has no necessity in that (ugh - dogma alert ). His act of sacrifice does.
We treat the historicity as crucial and the miraculous as based on fact. But all of the time God's condition remains that he has to remain empirically unproven.

So the bible to Xtians is like the user manual to a direct contact with God. The bible is a record of what we can know about him. We think he is ultimately unknowable but that we can know some things. This is how we can define him. Part of that definition has to be his mystery.
Our life of faith isn't to live by a rule book, but to be directly inspired by him. To feel and experience the fullness of life that he gives out. I don't communicate with him in the 3rd person. I communicate directly. It's not "God be praised" but "I praise you", "I love you" etc.. This is what I mean by direct and personal.

If you say that you know God through the historical accounts of Jesus, then the belief is not 100% metaphysical, since it relies on documentation. But, God cannot be documented.

Like we've touched on before, God has to have been involved in the physical universe at some stages. I believe he is constantly involved now, in shaping the physical world and on us individually. So 100% metaphysical may be misleading, depending on how you work that out.

It was my understanding that Mohammed wrote down the words of Allah. Is this not documenting god?

To confront that dogma correctly, I think our faiths would agree about the mysteriousness of god. How he is ultimately unknowable. How us Christians take that, and affirm our confidence in the assurity that God is with us, doesn't ever violate that mystery. God remains soveriegn, and Jesus brings him into direct contact. I hope you can understand that, as it still seems dogmatic (what I've said).

I apologize for that.

Appreciated

But, let me ask you this. What's the difference between the following two?
1. God is knowable.
2. God is directly and personally knowable.

Doesn't the addition of the words "directly" and "personally" convey an extra message compared to the first one? That's what was curious about.
If your answer is no, then fine. I won't pick on these semantic bones anymore.

As metaphysical statements, both are correct (the "m" word makes me snigger, dunno if it's the correct usage but we both understand each other I think! ). As statements of scientific fact both are false.

It was a joke Rayaan. You've taken an age to reply, which is perfectly fine. Mine was a joke in return.

Oh, okay. I kind of thought that, but I wasn't sure if that was a joke.

Secondly, the reason I replied two weeks later is only because...<snip> However, it seems that you have used that as an excuse just to avoid addressing my entire post in the previous page at the top (i.e. by making a joke in return). I think that is evasive. But, feel free to prove me wrong.

I saw your reason for the late posting, hence the joke. I haven't had time yet to answer your post. I'm also wasting time addressing smaller posts. I'm just not getting that long to be on the forums at the moment. Maybe I should have noted this above. Apologies that you were insulted by this. I fully intend to address your post, I haven't even read it yet.

Thanks for the insult. Join the queue. Asshole.

Not an insult, but I was just making a joke in return as well (and it's clear), just like you jokingly said to me, "Give me 2 weeks and I'll get back to you."

So, if you can make a joke out of me like that, fr0d0, then why are you accusing me of doing the same?

The gist of your post was to call me a liar and an evasive person.

Now the footer to me is very snide and condescending, given what I've just said:

"Here's an escape trick for you:
If you think that you are unable to satisfactorily address my comments, then pretend as if you forgot to reply in this thread after the 2 weeks. Don't worry, though, because I'll forgive you. =D"

This comment cannot be viewed alone, and I think you shouldn't expect it to be, without clearly stating such.